CHAPTER ONE
New York stretched to greet the sunshine of a new day.
The autocab was just one of innumerable silver beads strung out along the tangle of shining threads that wreathed the base of the monolithic city. Below and on either side, rectangular cliffs and chasms of glass, concrete and duroplastic marched stiffly by, revealing occasional glimpses of the nearby Hudson River.
The figure staring out of the otherwise empty six-seat vehicle was still some years below forty and on the tall side of average in height. His features held a sharp-lined ruggedness that was accentuated by his ragged droopy moustache. An ample mane of straight black hair, and the swarthy hue of his skin, were relics of the Amerind blood that his father’s side of the family boasted in its early ancestry. Slightly hollowed cheeks with high-set bones that gave his eyes a permanently keen and narrowed look echoed the same heritage. His loose-limbed frame was sprawled untidily across one corner of the cab and casually attired in an open-necked shirt covered by a lightweight wind-breaker, but the thoughts going through his head that morning were not as serene as his appearance might have suggested.
This time, Dr. Raymond Dyer told himself, it had to stop. Over the previous six months he and Sharon had had some good times and a lot of fun—exactly the no-strings, for-as-long-as-it-lasts kind of thing to be expected between a thirty-four-year-old male divorced for six years, and a single girl who had come to the big city for the sole purpose of finding out what life was all about. At least that was how it had begun, and could have remained if only . . . He sighed his expression to himself. Why did women always have to go and take a good thing too far?
The fingers of his outstretched arm drummed a tattoo on the window ledge. He frowned at them moodily for a few seconds.
He was rationalizing the whole thing, he admitted to himself. Who was he trying to fool? Sharon hadn’t really said anything that hinted at plans for things getting any more serious than he himself wanted—not if he was honest. The truth of the matter was he was getting bored with the whole thing.
His old restlessness was beginning to stir again. Or was it? Either that or he had reached an age where two people simply being in the same place didn’t equate to togetherness . . . not in any sense that mattered. Maybe, unconsciously, he was the one who was looking for a road that led somewhere. Interesting thought, he thought. He’d managed to surprise himself.
The cab skimmed low over an open plaza, brightly colored and cheerful in the light of the May sun, and then plunged into a tube that carried it into the gleaming precipice formed by part of the northern edge of the West Side Tower Complex. Snatches of illuminated arcades, mosaic-paved pedestrian precincts and manicured shrubs flicked by on the far side of the tube’s Plexiglas wall.
A sensor below the track responded to the cab’s identification code and flashed it to the scheduling computers of the Manhattan Sector Three Control Center, a half-mile away across the city. Milliseconds later the reply from the computers activated the cab’s onboard guidance processor. The cab exited from the through line and ten seconds later eased to a halt at a boarding ramp three hundred feet above where some of the original paving of West Fifty-Seventh Street still remained in the lower vaults of the city.
Dyer stepped out and made his way along the short platform of the boarding ramp between the dozen or so people who were in the process of getting into or out of the cabs slowly shuffling toward the dispatch point at the far end. He headed for the exit and emerged into a large enclosed concourse built around a rectangular core housing the nearest elevator bank. The place was not overcrowded—about average for that time of morning. In fact the traffic didn’t fluctuate wildly through the day, or for most of the night for that matter. The standard nine-to-five day with its commuter stampedes was something that had long gone away.
He joined a small knot of people in front of one of the elevators, waited for the doors to open and followed on in. Just as the doors were about to close, a figure that had been approaching quickened its pace, broke into a short run, finished with a leap and landed inside with a split second to spare and a perfunctory “Excuse me” to nobody in particular. The late arrival was in his early twenties, tall, narrow-faced, and generally studentish in appearance with untidy collar-length hair and wearing a roll-neck sweater beneath a dark-blue nylon parka.
“Just as well you’ve got good air brakes,” Dyer murmured as the elevator began to move. “For a second I thought I was going to get flattened here.”
Chris Steeton looked up abruptly as he recognized the voice.
“Hello, Chief,” he greeted with a grin. “Sorry about that. It was just my way of proving that momentum isn’t conserved the way Newton said it is.”
Chris was from England on a two-year research fellowship. He was one of three senior researchers on Dyer’s team, a quiet sort of person, tending toward introverted at times. But he was bright academically and accepted the world with a cheerful mix of optimism and curiosity that made him tenacious in the face of the complicated problems that he was always inventing in order to solve. His greatest virtue, perhaps, was his inexhaustible patience.
“So, how’d you spend your time off while we were all working?” Dyer inquired after a few seconds. “Do anything interesting?”
“Oh, I went to see some more of the colonies,” Chris replied in the serious tone he always employed when he wasn’t being really serious. “Florida, actually. Homo americanus at play. It was . . . an education.” He frowned while he reflected on Dyer’s question more deeply. “I suppose the only interesting bit was when some high-velocity idiot fell off his water skis and broke a leg. Apart from that it was so-so: lots of noisy bars with megaton bands and bare bodies collecting radiation sickness. I’ll take Upton-on-Severn.”
“That means you’re back rarin’ to go, eh?” Dyer said as the elevator whined to an impatient halt at the ninety-sixth floor and they spilled out. “That’s good. Ron’s been putting in a lot of late hours on FISE. You’re going to find yourself busy.”
“Fine by me. What’s Ron been up to?”
“I’m not updated myself yet,” Dyer said. “Been too tied up with budgets and stuff. One of the things I want to do today is spend some time with you and Ron to see how it’s going. Probably later on this morning. I’ve got a few things to clear out of the way first.”
They had cut across one corner of the small plaza outside the elevator and entered a broad pedestrian throughway flanked by display windows on one side and a panoramic view across to New Jersey on the other. They turned off after a short distance and walked through a set of glass doors embossed with internally edge-lit designs to enter a spacious reception lobby. The words glowing softly on the holographic planar image floating a foot in front of the wall by the door read:
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
FACULTY
OF
INFORMATION PROCESSING SCIENCES
SHANNON SCHOOL
OF
SYSTEMS PROGRAMMING
“Much though it surprises me to say so, it’s good to be back,” Chris remarked as they passed on through the lobby and exchanged greetings with Peggy, the smiling freckle-faced receptionist, who was combing her hair using her desk screen as a mirror. “Do you know, Ray, I’ve a horrible suspicion you people will make a New Yorker out of me yet.”
“That I’d have to see,” Dyer told him, smiling.
They left the lobby and followed a broad marble-floored corridor that took them into a part of the building signposted as DEPARTMENT OF SELF-ADAPTIVE PROGRAMMING. The doors that opened onto the corridor at intervals bore an assortment of names, most of them followed by letters and degrees. Signs hanging from the ceiling above marked turnoffs to such places as: NATURAL LANGUAGE PROJECT; LECTURE THEATERS C THRU E; IMAGE ANALYSIS; HEAD OF DEPARTMENT and SIMULATION LAB. Eventually they left the main corridor beneath one of the signs near the far end. The sign read simply, HESPER unit.
Dyer ignored the door marked DR. RAYMOND E. DYER, PROJECT LEADER, and went with Chris through the next, a short distance farther on, upon which the sign read: HESPER lab.
Inside was a miniature maze of partitioned offices divided by an open central area which revealed some of the equipment racks in two lab bays at the rear. The casual jumble of document-scattered tables, sagging storage racks, untidy bookshelves and stacked computer output blended well with the profusion of posters, technical charts, magazine clippings and cartoons that adorned most of the available space to produce the characteristic brand of cheerful disorder that research workers everywhere seem to feel most at home in. It was an environment that had evolved semirandomly to suit the whims of its inhabitants. Orderly and methodically planned surroundings went with more orderly and methodical kinds of work.
Betty Thorn, the Unit’s middle-aged, motherly and meticulous administrator, who also doubled as Dyer’s secretary, was making coffee at the small table near her desk by the second door to Dyer’s office. She turned a head of wavy, slightly graying hair to glance back over her shoulder as they entered.
“Good morning, Ray. Good to see you back, Chris. You’re just in time. Like a cup?”
“Betty, where would I be without you?” Dyer said with reverence. “Mmm . . . please. Strong.”
“Sometimes I dread to ask,” she replied with mock seriousness. “Did you get to Florida in the end, Chris?”
“Thanks. Yes . . . It was quite fun. I’m not sure I’d jump at the idea of making it a second home though.” Chris peeled off his parka and draped it carelessly on the stand inside the door.
“Did you see the Space Center like I told you?” Betty asked him.
“We spent a day there, yes. There were four or five launches. That was worth going to see on its own. Bloody noisy though.”
“The only thing he seems to remember is some guy breaking a leg,” Dyer mumbled absently. He had swiveled the screen on Betty’s desk around on its flexible support arm and was using the touchpad to interrogate the mail.
“Really!” Betty’s voice took on a note of alarm which failed to conceal her interest. “Who?”
“Oh, he wasn’t with us,” Chris replied nonchalantly. “Just some body-beautiful twit who fell off his skis.”
“He wasn’t hurt bad, was he?”
“No—nothing serious. That’s why it was funny.”
“That’s good to hear, anyhow,” Betty said, sounding relieved. “Ron. Want a coffee?” She addressed her last words in a raised voice toward the open door of the shambles of an office that Chris shared with Ron Stokes, another of Dyer’s senior people and Chris’s partner on the FISE project. The figure already hard at work inside jerked his head up from the mess of programming manuals and notes littering the desk in front of him.
“Yeah.” The voice was loud and firm. “Black. Hi guys.” With that, Ron hunched back over the desk and resumed scribbling furiously.
Dyer continued to scan casually over the items that appeared on the screen, tagging them via the touchpad as he went. Progress report from Ron to be checked . . . he’d do that this morning. Looks good. Departmental cost vs budget statistics . . . file and forget. Letter from Prof. Graulich in Hamburg . . . list of questions about Kim’s work on programmed instinctive motivation . . . résumé of Graulich’s own work . . . references to published papers . . . read closely later. Reminder that Chris is due back today . . . delete. Quote from DEC for voice-channel add-ons to PDP-130 . . . delegate to Ron and Chris. Odds and ends of admin stuff . . . Betty to take care of . . . Behind him Betty was telling Chris all about her daughter and her six-month-old grandson in Florida. Everybody in the unit knew all about Betty’s grandson.
“Hey, how about this.” Dyer half-turned and gestured toward the screen. “A group in Tokyo reckon they’ve found a way of growing high-density memories from synthetic DNA. They’re saying it’ll be a hundred times cheaper than e-beaming array crystals.” Chris stepped a pace forward and ran a disdainful eye over the message. It was a news item passed on by Frank Wescott, who ran the HESPER lab at CIT.
“This computer is dangerous. Please do not feed,” Chris remarked in solemn tones. “Could be interesting. Anything else?” Dyer brought up the next item, a note from Laura Fenning saying she would be in later on that morning and would appreciate it if Dr. Dyer could spare some time to comment on the notes she’d prepared. He groaned aloud and his face dropped.
“What’s she doing coming in today?” he protested. “I thought she wasn’t due in until Wednesday.”
“Looks like she changed her mind,” Betty said with inarguable logic.
“Hell!” Dyer muttered irritably. “I’ve got a lot to do today. That’s one thing I could do without.”
“Oh dear.” Chris picked up Ron’s coffee and began moving away toward their office. “I think I ought to go and see how Ron’s been getting on. See you later.”
Dyer continued to fume while Betty turned her attention to returning various documents to the file drawer by her desk. A few seconds later Ron’s voice rose from the other side of the still open doorway.
“We’re gonna have to change the whole structure of the default linkages. I still say they’re all screwed up.”
“They’re not screwed up,” Chris’s voice sighed with infinite patience. “Did you extend the frame-matching algorithm.”
“It doesn’t need to be extended. I keep telling ya that—”
“Shut up for a second, Ron. What test limits did you set on the I-sub-D parameter?”
“I-sub-D had nothing to do with it. I-sub—”
“It has too got something to do with it. In fact, if you’d only stop for a second to think about it . . .”
“It has not! I-sub—”
“Shut up, please.”
“I-sub-D only affects the—”
“SHUT UP, RON!”
Dyer sighed. Despite their diametrically opposed natures, Chris and Ron were inseparable. That meant they would go on like that all day. Still irritable, Dyer frowned at the unoccupied desk standing opposite Betty’s on the other side of the doorway that led out to the corridor.
“Where’s Pattie?” he asked. “I thought she was on early-start this week?” Betty sensed his mood and made a face.
“Usual thing I guess,” she replied in guarded tones. “You know how kids are—especially Pattie.” Without being asked she went on, “Do you want to talk to her about it or shall I?”
“She’s your assistant,” Dyer said. “See what you can do. If that doesn’t work I’ll talk to her.”
“Okay. Oh, Kim wanted to talk to you as well. She’s over in Services but she said she’ll be in around ten. I said I thought it’d be okay. She said it was personal.”
“What time’s that Fenning woman showing up?” Dyer asked,
“The message didn’t say.”
“Personal. Oh God.” Already it had been a long day. Dyer opened the door into his office. “Okay, I’ll be in all morning. I’ve got a report to check over. Tell whoever shows up first to come on in.”
“Will do,” Betty acknowledged.
He sat down at his desk, activated a voice channel on his own console and tapped his personal access code into the touchpad.
“Active,” a synthetic voice informed him from the audio grille.
“Data bank,” he replied. “Reports reference HESPER slash S.A.P. slash Stokes two-zero-nine slash D dot seven. Video only.” The screen presented him with the machine’s interpretation.
“Confirmed,” he said. A few seconds went by while computers elsewhere in the building relayed his request across the city to the local primary node of the North East Sector of the North American Region of the TITAN network.
“Females!” he muttered.
“Excuse me?” the console inquired politely.
He sighed.
“Delete.”
“Deleted,” the console advised.
Machines! he thought to himself.