CHAPTER TWO
“Okay, Ray. We agree on that one.” Kimberly Sinclair checked off an item from the list glowing on the view-pad balanced on her knee, and paused for a second to consider the next.
As he waited with his chin propped on the ball of his thumb, Dyer studied the soft cascade of fair-brown hair tumbling around her shoulders and the interesting undulations that pressed outward against the jacket and skirt of her expensively tailored pale-blue suit. The lines of her face were straight and firm, but rounded just sufficiently not to appear harsh. One of those fascinating women who exuded sexuality without in any way qualifying as beautiful, he thought. For an instant he felt a pang of envy for her lawyer husband, Tony, who seemed to spend most of his life airborne between one city and another. On second thought, he decided he wouldn’t stand the pace for a month. Maybe Tony had the same problem.
At thirty, Kim was the second oldest after Dyer among the unit’s technical staff, which included everybody except Betty and Pattie, and was generally acknowledged as unofficial second-in-command. Dyer often had the feeling that she shouldn’t have been in research at all. She operated in perpetual top gear, managing to combine a demanding career with an impossible private life that was jammed with citizens’ meetings, committees for this and associations for that, and eternal campaigning, usually against bureaucracy in some form or other. She assailed both with the fervor of an evangelist on doomsday’s eve with half the world still to be saved. Dyer thought she’d have been better placed managing a firm of stockbrokers on Wall Street, maybe a multinational or even the government. But computers had always been her passion and she held a long list of academic and innovative distinctions to prove it. And when a woman like that developed a passion like that, other people’s ideas on how she might otherwise be employing her talents ceased to matter very much.
Two main projects accounted for most of the HESPER Unit’s time. The first was FISE, which was concerned essentially with developing reliable methods of programming computers to exhibit common sense; Chris and Ron were handling that. The other project involved refining existing techniques for constructing self-modifying programming systems that were capable of evolving their own problem-solving strategies as ascending structures of goals and subgoals. In a way it was analogous to implanting basic “instinctive” drives which the machine could then develop progressively more effective ways of satisfying. The process mimicked natural evolution but at electronic speeds. This was Kim’s project, in which she was assisted by Allan Morrow, youngest of the team and one of the two postgraduate students assigned to the unit. The other, Judy Farlin, was also theoretically under Kim’s wing, but spent most of her time working on her doctoral thesis (“Evolution of Objective Hierarchies in Goal-Oriented Self-Extending Program Structures”) and consequently was not really involved actively.
“Oh yes,” Kim said, looking up. “Another thing I wanted to mention. We’re still having problems with Services about the graphics-room reservation system. Somebody really ought to talk to Hoestler about it and get somebody’s butt kicked good and hard over there. I tried getting some sense out of them this morning but it’s useless.”
“Screwed up the bookings again?” Dyer guessed. Kim nodded and tapped the screen of the viewpad emphatically.
“Exactly. Ray, I’m sick to death of them over there. Twice last week Judy was told she had a slot reserved for a room and then couldn’t get in because it’d been double-booked.”
“Aw Christ! Judy again, huh?”
“Yes, that’s the whole point,” Kim said with feeling. “The kid’s right in the middle of trying to get her thesis straight and she needs some time on mural graphics. Those buttheads in Services keep blaming it on the computer instead of learning how to do their jobs. If they don’t know how to run a system properly—here of all places—then they ought to be kicked out and replaced by people who do!”
“Okay, okay,” Dyer held up his hands to stem the tirade. “I agree. They’re doing a lousy job. I’ll talk to Hoestler about it. For the amount they’re charging out of our budget for when we do get in, we could almost set up our own graphics room here in the unit. What’s next?”
“It’s not as if there were anything difficult about it,” Kim went on. “All they have to do—”
“Okay,” Dyer said again, “It will be done. What’s next?” Kim glanced down automatically.
“I guess we’re about done,” she said, cutting the pad off and snapping it shut. She glanced at the clock behind Dyer’s head and uncrossed her legs to begin rising. “I wanted to call Eric before eleven. Anything else you want to add while I’m here?”
“No, but I thought you did,” Dyer looked mildly surprised, “Everything you’ve been talking about’s been University business. Betty said you wanted to see me about something personal.” Kim frowned for a second.
“Oh yes.” She sat down again. Her voice fell to a more confidential note. “It’s Allan.”
“What is?”
“Him messing around with Pattie all the time,” Kim said. “She showed up forty minutes late again today, with him slipping in the door five minutes later and looking furtive, purely by coincidence of course. I don’t want to get mixed up in anybody’s personal affairs, Ray, but there are such things as common sense and discretion.”
“Okay, I know what you mean,” Dyer said, half-raising a hand. “I agree with you. He’s being a public ass and somebody ought to talk to him. Leave it to me. I’ll ask Betty to say wise words to Pattie too.”
“I’m not trying to pass the buck or anything,” Kim told him, “It’s just . . . well, you know how it is with young guys. I thought it might be better coming from you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll—” The chime sounded from his console. “Excuse me a sec.” He touched a key to accept the call and Betty’s face greeted him.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Laura Fenning’s here,” she announced. Dyer could see the familiar classically oval face and raven-black sweep of Cleopatra hair framed behind Betty’s shoulder. He uncovered his teeth in what he hoped would pass for a smile.
“One more minute, Betty. Good morning, Miss Fenning.” He cut the display and turned back toward Kim, who was already rising to her feet. “Where were we? Oh yeah . . . don’t worry about it. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thanks,” Kim acknowledged, “Then I guess we’re about done. I’ll leave you to get on. See you later.”
“Sure.”
Kim vanished abruptly, leaving the door open in response to Dyer’s waved request not to close it. Dyer recalled Ron’s report to the screen and rapidly finished the comments he had been appending when Kim arrived. Part of his mind was vaguely aware of Laura Fenning’s precisely cultivated and seductive voice floating through the open doorway as she talked to Betty. It was one of the usual topics.
“But women were never meant to do men’s jobs, Betty. Why should they? Their place is in their home with their families, that’s all I’m saying. It’s their right.”
“Well now, I don’t know about that,” Betty replied, sounding dubious. “I just wasn’t brought up to think that way. Equal shares for both, they said in my day. That meant everybody. All these young girls today complaining about having to stand on their own feet. Doesn’t sound right.”
“But that’s the point I’m trying to make. Betty,” Laura’s voice urged. “It is right. Fifty years ago it might have been necessary, but times have changed now. Why should we continue to perpetuate outmoded traditions just because men find it suits them?”
Dyer sighed as he added his final comment and tagged the report to be copied back under Ron’s mail code. She’d been in the place five minutes and was subverting the troops already. He snapped off the screen and continued to stare at it for a moment while he reoriented his thinking fully to immediate matters. He didn’t want to be cornered alone in here, he decided. He stood up, braced himself, and walked out of the office.