Savant (6 page)

T
HE OTHER MAJOR
incident had happened within thirty years of the first. It had been much less dramatic, and, as it turned out, less damaging, but no one had known that at the time.

A very well-established College in the Urals came under some criticism from Service Central for corruption, and the decision was made to bring in an entire new Service team. The team of brightest and best had been assembled from all points of the globe, when personal travel was still widespread. Specialists were brought in from South America and Western Europe, and the bespoke team was trained together and all started work on the same day.

On paper, the new system had looked perfect, impenetrable, with more built-in fail-safes than would ever be required. It had taken two years for the College to fall apart. The collapse was slow, but the problems were deep-seated, political and incredibly divisive. The imposition of an entire new Service team proved too much for the Masters’ entourages, and the Seniors and Students to bear. The problems went deeper than anyone had realised, including Service Central, and proved impossible to solve. The situation at the College became progressively worse, and culminated in a stand-off between East and West. Sensibilities and prejudices through centuries of back-biting and in-fighting had caused a rift that could not be solved by shared education alone.

Ironically, the College did not have an Active in residence at the time of the collapse, and, for the most part, the Masters, who had very little interest in political and cultural differences, were oblivious to what was going on.

There would never be another Meltdown, but, to prevent it, the College was dismantled, wholesale. The oldest of the Masters were retired, with their Companions and Assistants, and, those that could be, were re-assigned. Some took years to settle in their new positions, and others never managed it, and were, eventually, put out to pasture. The Service team was broken up, and all members re-assigned to Colleges close to their birthplaces, some returning to the Colleges where they had been to School.

At that point, it was decided that, as far as possible, all College inhabitants should be local, and any new Colleges should be populated slowly, over a number of years. It also became clear that trying to move Masters from one College to another was all but impossible, and the rules were changed so that Masters could not be moved without their express permission; it was understood that the very nature of Masters meant that this was extremely unlikely ever to happen.

There was always a free-flow of ideas across the World, especially where education was concerned. Masters, and particularly Actives, did not understand prejudice, and connected only at a cerebral level. They might not be able to make eye-contact, or answer a combination question, but they could share ideas and information at an incredibly esoteric level with complete strangers, without any thought of prejudice.

Their social currency was ideas, not religion, routine, habit, custom, dress, or basic education, and, as such, their prejudices were limited. They felt nothing for those who did not communicate ideas back and forth with them, neither good nor bad.

Chapter Eight

P
ITU
3
WAS
still pressing his Service button between his thumb and forefinger when Metoo arrived six minutes after he had first taken hold of it. She would have been quicker, but Named Operator Strazinsky had no precedent for making his next decision; his adrenalin was flowing, and he had almost no concrete information. It took him four minutes to make his move.

His station was reading Code Green, unverified by any tangible threat, and Strazinsky had used his seventeen years of experience in Service, including five as a Named Operator, to conclude that, not only was he working a Master’s station, but that his subject was ‘away with the fairies’: a not terribly kind, but essentially benign phrase that Service used, informally, to describe the many and varied occasions when a Master, or an Active, veered harmlessly from the norms ascertained for his particular character.

Strazinsky was under a certain amount of pressure, not least because he had been in a Code Green situation for more than thirty-six hours, and he knew that his subject was a Master, which meant that he could also be Active. It was the general consensus among Named Service, worldwide, that there was very little to choose between a high-grade Master and an Active, beyond the very specific brainwave pattern that was critical to the safety of the planet. Nothing had been proved, and scientists had been working on the syndrome for more than two hundred years, but it was generally thought that one gene here or there, or one childhood trauma, more or less, could mean the difference between an inert, but useful, beard, and a fully fledged, dyed in the wool, unalterable, unfathomable Active.

Diagnoses were being made increasingly early in the lives of potential Actives, but tests were, even now, by no means conclusive.

Strazinsky’s experience in Service played a significant part in his decision-making abilities in this particular instance, and, after the metallic taste in his mouth subsided, and his hands stopped shaking, some four minutes after Pitu 3 compressed his button between his index finger and his thumb, Strazinsky took the conservative route.

If it had been Code Blue, the Operator would have taken Pitu 3 out of the equation; he was probably just a frightened kid, witnessing some of his Master’s stranger behaviour for the first time. In the five years that he had been a Named Operator, Strazinsky had worked on Code Green situations a number of times. The Code often got ramped to Green by novice Assistants panicking, or by Students, like Pitu 3, being inexperienced. Things usually cooled off pretty quickly, the problem was resolved, without incident, and the Code Green disabled.

This Code Green had been active for longer than any he had worked before, and Service had not found the problem or neutralised it.

As an Operator, Strazinsky had hit tone buttons that had activated Code Green; as a Named Operator he had never precipitated the ramp-up to Code Yellow.

Strazinsky hit the button on the counter in front of him, despite being fully aware that doing so could change his career, and even his life, forever.

S
ERVICE SOUNDED IN
Tobe’s flat.

It took less time for Metoo, hopped up on adrenalin, to make it across campus to Tobe’s office than it had for Strazinsky to take the decision to press the Service button on the faded, grubby countertop in front of him.

Metoo arrived, breathless, outside Tobe’s office. She looked into the room at him before she did anything else. She looked startled as she peered into the office, her skin pale and her eyes wide as she feared the worst, without knowing just how the worst might manifest.

Tobe did not seem to register her anxiety at all. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by torn pages from academic texts, and swathes of handwritten calculations. As things stood, they did not look unduly troubling to Metoo. Tobe was in his office, in the room where he was most comfortable. He had been working, albeit frantically, and obsessively, but she had witnessed similar scenes before, during her time with him. Service had not been quite so trigger-happy on those other occasions.

Metoo did not know that Tobe’s station was at Code Green, or that Service had been monitoring the situation for so long. She did not know that Strazinsky, tired, frazzled and not a little afraid, had been obliged to make a potentially career-altering decision on the Schedule Service button of a second-rate Student, whose standing in the College hierarchy was certainly significantly lower than the man in question preferred to believe.

Tobe was safe, and oblivious, so Metoo, tense, and sweating slightly, dropped her chin onto her chest and drew in a deep breath, before turning to face Pitu 3.

His face was pale and drawn, elongated by the drop of his jaw that had set fair since it had taken up the position more than six minutes earlier. Pitu 3 had clearly never seen anything like this before.

Metoo had seen Tobe like this two or three times a year for as many years as she cared to remember. As a Student, she had admired his ability to cut out the World completely, in order to concentrate on his mathematics. As his Assistant, she had watched Kit dealing with Tobe, inadequately, she had thought at the time, dosing him with anti-depressants and sleeping draughts, and putting him out of action for days or weeks at a time.

Her breathing back to a more normal rhythm, Metoo took hold of Pitu’s hand: the one that was gripping the button around his neck so tightly that his knuckles were white.

“You need to let go now,” she said. “Pitu, you did the right thing. You did well, Pitu. You can let go of the button now. Let go, Pitu, I’m here. Pitu, it’s safe. The Master is safe. Let go of the button, Pitu. Service has sent me. You can stand down.”

Chapter Nine

“T
OBE,
”
SAID
M
ETOO
, “it’s time to go home.”

“I’ve got a tutorial,” said Tobe, standing, his feet apart, where he had positioned them in gaps between the chalk calculations and the pages of text books that he had torn out and stuck to the linopro. He seemed completely oblivious to the predicament that he had thrust his Assistant-Companion and Student into.

“Service cancelled the tutorial,” said Metoo. “Your Student...” she began before trailing off, and looking at Pitu 3 for inspiration. “Your Student has been taken ill.”

Tobe looked at Metoo, who stood in the corridor next to his Student. She could not tell what he was thinking from the expression on his face, but he did not appear to be unduly distressed. The odd situation, and, particularly, the break in his routine was bound to unsettle him, but Metoo’s panic was subsiding, and her only immediate concern was to deal with Pitu 3, and then get Tobe home, so that Service could do its job.

Pitu 3 was still standing in the corridor beside her, his button still hanging around his neck. Metoo reached towards it.

“May I?” she asked, gently taking the button in her hand. Pitu looked down at the button, and then caught her gaze. He looked like he might cry, and she realised that he was in shock.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m going to get some help.”

Metoo typed C-Q-D into Service, using Pitu’s button and an old Morse signal that she had been taught when she had become Tobe’s Assistant-Companion. If all else failed, and she had no other access to Service, Metoo was authorised to use any Student’s button, which would relay her individual three letter code, overriding the Student button ident.

Service arrived on the scene in less than two minutes. One of them wore the Medic Operator’s armband that reassured Metoo that Pitu 3 would be taken good care of, and one was a Police Operator.

“Ma’am,” he said, “did you identify yourself on a button override?”

“Yes,” said Metoo.

“Which button, ma’am?” the Police Operator asked.

Metoo pointed at Pitu 3, who was having his pulse and temperature taken by the Operator with the Medic’s insignia.

“Mudd,” said the Police Operator, speaking to the Medic, and gesturing towards Pitu 3’s button, hanging on the grubby chord around his neck. The button was illuminated. Neither Pitu 3 nor Metoo, nor Tobe for that matter, nor half of the Service Operators standing in the hall, had ever seen a lit button. “Remove that, immediately, for verification and processing.”

Pitu suddenly broke out in a sweat, and his knees buckled beneath him.

“I...” he began, and then he went down.

The Medic knelt down beside his patient, put him in the recovery position, and slipped the button from around his neck.

“Piggy-back to your Schedule,” said the Police Operator, and Mudd removed a length of flat nylon ribbon, from his belt, with a loop and buckle at each end. He buckled one end firmly around Pitu 3’s right wrist and the other around his own left. Until Pitu 3 was safely back at Service, he was physically and electronically linked to his Medic Operator. It was for his own safety, as well as for the good of Service, the College, and, potentially, the planet.