Savant (31 page)

“That’s it!” she cried, jumping up from her seat, and beginning to pace while she got back to Service. “That’s bloody it!”

“L
ET’S GO BACK
to first principles,” said Saintout. “What was your initial hypothesis? Tell me the question that you were hoping to answer.”

A tone sounded in Tobe’s flat. Saintout looked up. He thought to ignore it, but knew that he shouldn’t. The tone sounded for a second time, almost before the first had ended. Saintout pointed at Tobe.

“Stay there. Don’t move. I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Service?” asked Tobe.

“Service.”

Saintout signed in to Service.

“Master Tobe must be confined to the kitchen,” said Service.

“Why?”

“Master Tobe must be confined to the kitchen,” said Service. “Escort him, and remain with him.”

“Great,” said Saintout. He signed off.

Chapter Forty-Seven

C
LAXONS SOUNDED ON
the Service Floor. The artificial light, set to a very particular bandwidth, pulsed violently for several seconds. One of the Operators at Workstation 8 vomited copiously all over the counter-top in front of him. The screen he was working at was pebble-dashed with old, undigested food. He looked at what he had done with huge, damp eyes, peering out of a grey face, and slid off his chair. Henderson stepped forward to replace him.

He looked once over his shoulder, and said, very loudly, “Anyone else?”

There was no reply.

The lights on the Service Floor stopped pulsing, and the pitch and frequency of the claxons changed dramatically, as if the working parts had been dropped into a very large basin of water.

Henderson keyed in his Morse signature, using the switch on the facing edge of the counter in front of him. He felt vomit on the tips of his finger and thumb. He wiped the residue off on the thigh of his trousers, and called for a Tech.

“Get something to clean this up with, for God’s sake,” he said. The woman in the dicky seat had been mopping gingerly at the edges of the pool of sticky yellow sick, but was afraid that if she tackled it wholesale, she would either incur the wrath of the Agent Operator, whom she suddenly found sitting next to her, or she would succumb to her weaker impulses and join her colleague in a stupor on the floor. Neither appealed to her very much.The good auspices of a couple of level-headed Techs soon brought things back under control. Most of the vomit was removed through the suction cleaner hoses under the counter, and one of the Techs rummaged around in the racks until he found a damp cloth that smelt of vinegar, which he used to wipe the last of the mess off the countertop.

The work surface still felt oddly tacky under Henderson’s hands, but he managed to ignore the flecks of green and orange matter that had wormed their way into the mount that held the rubberpro sphere in place on the surface of the counter. Under almost any other circumstances, the whole incident would have been vile to Henderson. In the middle of a crisis, he was unflappable.

The ramp-up was happening again. The claxons and light pulses told everyone on the Service Floor that the system was approaching critical mass. Code Red was imminent.

If Code Red was reached, the Shield would no longer be impenetrable. The Earth would be visible to the Universe, and would, almost certainly, be destroyed. The planet would, at the very least, have to ‘Go Dark’.

There were protocols in place for practising ‘Darkness’. For four days a year, everything was switched off. In a new ‘Dark Age’, anything that required power would be disengaged from the source of that power. The World would be rendered dark and quiet. Manufacturing would cease. Travel by any method other than human or animal energy would end. The lights would go out. The only source of heat would be fire. Communications between nations, towns, and even people, would cease. Food would have to be grown locally, pipelines would stop pumping, turbines would stop turning. Survival at an individual level would become paramount, and there would never be an opportunity to return to a world of light.

Even in a new Dark Age, the Earth would be visible. It would not sparkle like a rich gem in the heavens, as it would, now, without the Shield, but it would not be hidden behind the magical cloud of synaptic energy that had been harnessed to render the Earth safe from prying eyes.

M
ETOO FLINCHED, AND
twisted in her chair.

“What’s that?” she asked. “Is Tobe safe?” She could sense the faint wail of the claxons, beyond the near-soundproof walls of the interview room, and registered the ebb and flow of light at the edges of her vision.

Police Operator Strauss reached out and touched the back of Metoo’s hand.

“I don’t know,” she said. “If it’s important, Service will inform us.”

Branting’s face appeared on Metoo’s vid-con screen. He had opened channels to all four of the interview rooms he was communicating with globally, and gave them all the same information.

“Okay,” said Branting, “you might be experiencing some minor audio and/or visual disturbances. There is no need for immediate alarm.

“However, it is my duty to inform you that, without a resolution to the current global problem, the Earth will ‘Go Dark’ in approximately six hours. Time is of the essence. Good luck.”

T
HE SCREENS IN
the interview rooms went black. The interviewees stayed in their chairs, but Marquez was sweating and fidgeting in his seat, and Perrett was chewing her left thumbnail. Goodman was looking at McColl.

“This is it, then, is it?” he asked.

“Let’s hope not,” said McColl. “What can you give them? Can you give Service any hope at all?”

“Hope of what?” asked Goodman, his tone resigned. “They’re not listening to me.”

“Explain.”

“They think this entire crisis has been caused by Master Tobe, right?”

“I suppose so. That certainly seems to be the assumption.”

“Well, they’re wrong. I’d stake my life on it.”

“Go on, then.”

“Go on, what?”

“Stake your life on it.”

“Maybe I would, if I knew how the hell I could get them to listen.”

McColl rose from his chair. He looked at Goodman, and then stepped, with one foot, onto the chair he had vacated, and, with the other, got himself onto the table they’d been sitting at. He raised his arms in the air and started shouting, and jumping up and down on the table.

“Aaaaaarghhhhhhh!” he screamed.

Goodman looked up at him. McColl seemed not to be breathing, and the scream sounded like it would never end. Then, as abruptly as he’d begun, McColl stopped screaming, and leaned over, bracing his hands against his knees. He smiled down at Goodman.

“What the hell was that about?” asked Goodman.

“I wondered if I could get them to listen,” said McColl, stepping off the table. “Seems not.”

M
ETOO GOT UP
and began to pace up and down the little room, her eyes never leaving the vid-con screen.

“You need to remain calm,” said Strauss. “We all need your help, and you won’t be able to give of your best if you’re in a state.”

“How could I not be in a state?” asked Metoo, dropping back down onto her chair, ringing her hands together on the table-top in front of her. “Tobe has changed. I’ve noticed the changes, of course, but I’ve tried to ignore them. I only want him to be the person he was born to be, but that doesn’t seem possible any more. He was Active, wasn’t he?”

“I’m not privy to that information,” said Strauss, “not many of us are.”

“He was Active. I know that he was, and I’ve done something wrong. I’ve ironed out his specialness. I’ve made him ordinary. God forgive me, what have I done?”

B
RANTING CAME BACK
on-line on Perrett’, Goodman’ and Marquez’s vid-con screens.

“Time is of the essence, Operators,” he said. “You are one of three Service personnel that have been tracked down for their skills in reading screens, and people. We cannot verify that these skills are genuine, but early tests suggest that they might be useful, and, frankly, we have to try everything and anything we can to get through this crisis.”

“I’ve got something to say,” said Goodman. Perrett and Marquez couldn’t hear him, but he managed to stop Branting in his tracks.

“You’ve got two minutes,” said Branting.

“Master Tobe is not the perpetrator of this... whatever it is.” said Goodman. “I have worked on his screen, and there is nothing wrong with him. His mental state is not deteriorating, if anything, it is stable and possibly even expanding.

“Whoever or whatever is causing the ramp-up, it isn’t Master Tobe. You’ve made a terrible mistake.”

“How sure are you of that?” asked Branting.

“As sure as I can be,” said Goodman. “I just don’t know if I can prove it.”

Branting’s vid-con screen went black. He stared at it, bewildered. The screen fizzed to life with drifting snow, and then blinked before recovering to show a small, elegant man in a very sharp suit sitting in front of him. Branting did not need an introduction. The man on the screen in front of him was responsible for the Earth’s safety. He was the Minister for Global Security, and, possibly, the most important non-Active on the planet.

“Branting,” said Special Operator Tibbets, “we need to consolidate, and we need to do it fast. Your department is the only one that seems to be making any kind of headway, so we are increasing your resources. We are also monitoring all of your activity, minutely. Be aware that you can be removed from your post without notice.”

The screen fizzed again, and the Minister’s face disappeared.

The wall adjacent to Branting’s seat slid slowly back to reveal a bank of vid-con screens, arranged four high and six wide. Branting leaned to his left and hit a button on the wall. The screens fizzed to life to reveal swirling snow; slowly, one by one, Branting assigned them.

“Qa in one,” he instructed, “Goodman in three. Then Service screen-feeds in seven and thirteen, Wooh’s feed in eight, and Perret in nine. Finally, let’s have Assistant-Companion Metoo’s live-feed on fourteen, and put Marquez on screen fifteen.”

Branting had organised a square of three screens, with Wooh’s feed of Saintout and Master Tobe in the middle. Metoo’s feed was directly below Tobe’s, and the three screen Operators had the column of screens to the right of Tobe’ and Metoo’s. The two screens on the left were Service screens.

“Cross feed all screens,” said Branting. “I want to make sure that anyone I choose has access to anything I choose.

“Qa, I need you to feed images to various vid-cons, as and when I tell you, okay?”

“OK,” said Qa. “This is going to take a few minutes to set up. Do I have clearance?”

“This is all on me, but, if I get this wrong, none of that will matter any more.”

“Yes, sir. What’s first?”

“Put me through on Assistant-Companion Metoo’s screen,” he said, “and line up Master Tobe’s feed.”

Metoo watched the screen as Branting spoke to her.

“I know this is very hard for you,” he said, “and I’m sorry that I have to keep you here, but, I am going to show you live feed of Master Tobe, during the time when I cannot be talking to you directly. I hope that it will help.”

“Thank you,” said Metoo, but she was not sure that Branting heard her; the screen had already switched to footage of Tobe.

Branting switched back to Qa.

“I want Metoo’s wafers on screen thirteen, and Tobe’s live screen-feed on seven,” he said. “Then split feed them to Perrett, Marquez and Goodman, prioritising Goodman. I’ll need to speak to them, so put me on their audio.”

Chapter Forty-Eight

“T
OBE KNOWS MATHS
,” said Tobe. “Metoo knows some maths, too, but Metoo knows everything else.”

“Okay,” said Saintout, “I can buy that, from your point of view, at least.”

Master Tobe was sitting on his stool, on his side of the counter in the kitchen, looking up at Saintout. Saintout stood with his back leaning against the kitchen door, his feet crossed on the floor in front of him. He held the print-out, from the slot in Tobe’s room, in his hands.