Savant (29 page)

“Not ever on the odd numbers,” said Tobe, giggling some more.

Saintout thought about that, and finally said, “Because you can’t have half an obverse.”

“Or half a reverse.”

“Funny,” said Saintout, smiling at Tobe. “Good joke, Buddy.”

“Who’s Buddy?” asked Tobe, suddenly serious again. “It’s not true.”

“You said that before. Tell me what isn’t true.”

“Can Tobe go to the office?” asked Tobe. “Tobe’s work is at the office. There isn’t room here.”

“You want to look at your maths?”

“Tobe wants to look at the maths.”

“You can’t go to the office, today, but what if I got you a print-out from the mini-print slot? Would that do?”

“Tobe would like that.”

“Okay, Buddy,” said Saintout, “I’ll see what I can do.”

D
OCTOR
W
OOH SOON
realised that the sound was down on her system, and that, for whatever reason, Saintout couldn’t hear her. She could hear him, though, and see what he and Tobe were doing. He wasn’t asking the questions.

Doctor Wooh was soon signing into Service, urgently. She was horrified by what she was seeing. She had no idea what Saintout thought he was doing, but she knew that she had to stop it.

T
HE
S
HIELD WAS
at risk of perforating, the Earth was at Code Orange, there was a maths virus loose in the mini-print system that no one had been able to get to the bottom of, and, now, some renegade Police Operator was offering to give the cause of it all a whole lot of new toys to throw out of his pram. This could not possibly end well.

Chapter Forty-Four

B
RANTING LEFT
P
ERRETT
with Chandar, and Goodman with McColl, and concentrated on Metoo.

“Why am I here,” asked Metoo, again.

“Mostly, because you know Master Tobe better than anyone, and we’re hoping that you can answer some questions for us,” said Branting.

“We could have done that via Service; I could’ve stayed in the flat. We could’ve had a conversation without you putting a chip in my head.”

“To be fair, you already thought you had a working chip.”

“That’s not the point,” said Metoo, wearily.

“No, it isn’t.”

“So, why don’t you trust me?”

“It’s not a question of trust. If you lied to us, we wouldn’t necessarily know that’s what you were doing, even with the chip.”

“The point is. I don’t lie.”

“No,” said Branting, dropping his head, “I know you don’t. You’re a very rare young woman. Very few people have their chips permanently de-activated.”

“So I understand, but you had a reason for de-activating it, and you had a reason for replacing it, and, as yet, you haven’t explained either to me.”

“Do you remember the selection processes?”

“I was just a child.”

“Well, as you know, everyone undergoes a series of tests during childhood. Some of them are simply done via observation; we have lots of early-learning teachers who monitor children while they’re still in their families.

“Then there are a series of intelligence tests, which begin when a child reaches about two years old, followed by a series of written tests, which begin when a child is eight or ten, depending.”

“Depending on what?”

“The system isn’t entirely regularised, globally. So, for example, a child who doesn’t start day-school until he is seven will take written tests later than a child who begins at five.”

“Okay, go on.”

“Most children fit into a kind of average score system, and about two-thirds of those are not selected. Those who show a particular talent or intelligence level are automatically selected...”

“And the rest?”

“The rest fall into two further categories. At one end of the spectrum, the children continue to be tested, and about one in a thousand of those fall into the Master/Active bracket. Most of those children have already been selected, and the final tests are simply verification of what we already believed.”

“And the other end?”

“That’s where it gets complicated, because we really don’t yet know what the people at the other end of the spectrum are truly capable of.”

There was another long pause.

“Is that me?” asked Metoo.

“Sort of.”

“Are you being deliberately obtuse? What is it that you’re not telling me?”

“You fall into the rarest category of all. Do you understand the concept of altruism?”

“Of course. It’s about doing good for its own sake, without reward.”

“Yes.”

“Although, I’ve never understood that. Doing good is its own reward.”

“Exactly. You have answered your own question, and that is why your chip was de-activated. You are reliable. You have formed a bond with Master Tobe, which is, for all sensible purposes, permanent, indestructible, even.”

“That’s nothing.”

“That’s everything.”

“Only to me.”

Branting coughed and looked at his watch. He was aware that time was moving on, and he still had a great deal to do, not least with Metoo.

“I’m terribly sorry, Metoo,” said Branting, “but we have a great deal to do, today, so I’d just like to ask you for your co-operation, and we can begin.”

“I am more than happy to co-operate. Just promise me that Master Tobe is in safe hands, and that nothing bad is going to happen to him.”

“The point of this exercise is to preserve Master Tobe at all costs,” said Branting. “Rest assured, we have no intentions of harming him in any way.”

“Good. What would you like me to do?”

A
GENT
O
PERATOR
H
ENDERSON
paced the Service Floor. Service Central had let him know that Master Tobe was being interrogated, using a specified set of questions that constituted a particular psychometric test. A time signal was set to appear on-screen when the questions began. The nine screens tuned in to Tobe’s mind appeared not to change at all, other than a few glitches between 09:00 and 09:30. They were within the normal parameters for Tobe, given that someone new had entered his environment. The glitches were, in fact, smaller than anyone on the Service Floor had anticipated.

It was close to 11:00 before the time signature lit up in the top right hand corners of the screens, and the line-checks began, in rotation, around the room. Workstation 1 began a line-check at 11:00, which Workstation 2 picked up as soon as One had finished, at 11:07. It would take about an hour for all the Workstations to complete consecutive line-checks, and then the process would begin again.

It was during the second line-check that things began to happen on the Service Floor.

The line-check wasn’t necessary to show the changes in Master Tobe’s mental/emotional activity. All twenty-seven Operators sucked breath in through clenched teeth as they saw the fizzing synaptic changes in distinct areas of the screen.

“Simultaneous line-check,” said Agent Operator Henderson.

Armed with headsets of various styles and dates, Tech’s danced around the Service Floor, providing the Operators with whatever they needed. Nine rubberpro spheres, set into scratched and greying counter-tops, rolled under nine hands, some of them sweating, or trembling slightly, one or two sticking.

The Operator at station 5 threw his hands in the air. The Operator standing behind him, pulled him off his chair, unceremoniously, and toggled the switch on the facing edge of the counter; he had taken over in less than ten seconds, but it could still prove to be ten seconds too long.

Babbage was one of the first to complete the line-check, but within four minutes, all nine Workstations concurred. The activity was in the emotional range, and scattered.

The readings were highly unusual for an Active.

“Get me Branting,” Agent Operator Henderson said to no one in particular.

No one on the Service Floor looked in his direction. Then a Tech came up beside him, and handed him a headset.

“Here, sir,” said the Tech.

“Thank you,” said Henderson. “Okay, everyone, as you were.”

Q
A WAS WORKING
in his alcove, trying to find more Operators with test scores similar to those achieved by Goodman and Perrett. It was proving more difficult than he anticipated. He’d had about a dozen false positives: Operators with exactly the same scores as Goodman, who didn’t appear to follow any of his traits. Qa hadn’t ruled them out entirely; it was possible that they simply hadn’t been in an environment where they could prove themselves. Goodman obviously took his skills for granted, and Perrett had only shown up because her scores were identical to Goodman’s and she had a history of Codes that tied in with their hypotheses.

Qa found his third candidate with the second batch of tests, as they came through, an hour after the first batch. Operator Juan Marquez was working in Service in a College on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, and had filled in the questionnaire during his regular shift. He was not working Master Tobe’s station on his College Service Floor, and did not understand why he was being escorted to one of the interview rooms adjacent to the Service Floor. A Ranked Operator, called Burgess, had simply come onto the Service Floor and escorted him off, leaving his Workstation temporarily vacant. It worried Marquez; Workstations were always manned, and everybody knew that the World was in crisis, so why would a working Operator be relieved of his duty and not replaced?

Chapter Forty-Five

B
RANTING SWITCHED HIS
vid-con so that Perrett and Goodman could both see and hear him, but could not see or hear each other.

McColl had spent some time calming Goodman down, and reassuring the Operator that Service knew what it was doing. He reminded Goodman of Control Operator Branting’s status, and that Branting was by no means the last link in the chain of command. A lot of people were assessing the situation, people with a lot more training and knowledge than Goodman or McColl could claim to have.

“I know you’ve been working the screens for years,” said McColl, “and you’re a specialist in your field; that’s why they’re consulting you. Trust me; they know what they’re doing.”

Branting let him finish.

“Okay,” he said, and McColl and Goodman, and Perrett and Chandar faced their respective vid-cons, expectant. “I’d like to test your emotional and intellectual responses to some images,” said Branting. “We will be monitoring your responses via your chip, but we will verify those results with verbal questions and answers. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Goodman.

“Yes,” said Perrett, her voice a second or two behind Goodman’s, because of the time lag on the vid-con from Mumbai.

“Pictures are going to appear on your screen, and I’d like you to categorise the people in them, if at all possible,” said Branting. “If you want to guess, that’s fine, too; apparently we can tell a lot about a person by the guesses they make.” Branting’s tone was light, and he smiled a lot, but neither Goodman nor Perrett was fooled; they could both feel the tension emanating from the Control Operator.

The first picture that appeared on-screen was of Bob Goodman.

“No comment,” said Goodman.

“He’s probably Service,” said Perrett. “He’s a bit old, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he sat at a screen all day.”

The second picture was of Perrett.

“Young, serious, ambitious,” said Goodman. “She won’t be reading screens for long.”

“I’m not going to talk about me,” said Perrett, a few moments later.

Branting showed slides of twenty or thirty individuals, from Service Operators to Politicians, and from Students to Civilians. Some of the faces were known to Goodman and Perrett, some were not. Neither subject commented on all of the faces, but, of those they did comment on, they were close to a hundred percent correct in their responses; more importantly, perhaps, on occasions when Goodman’ and Perrett’s evaluations did not match Service Findings, the two Operators had a better than eighty percent chance of agreeing with each other. Goodman scored a little higher than Perrett, over all, but Branting put that down to Goodman’s age.