The Computer Connection

3

We were mugged by some senior citizens on the way from the chopper to the main gate, but no great harm done; they were using vintage revolvers. There was one funny incident. After we chased them I looked around and there was Nemo kneeling on a prostrate maladroit and sincere as hell. He was slamming the Shortie across the face with his own pistol and chanting in rhythm, “This is not… the road to… survival… You must… transplant… transplant… transplant…”

We pulled him off the poor old Shortie and were met at the gate by Fee, who seemed rather impressed by Nemo’s performance. Muggings she knew all about, but this was the first time she’d ever seen one used as an excuse for a lecture. Fee conducted us to the landing site and it was my turn to be impressed.

It was an enormous theater-in-the-round with a circular stage. There were seats for a thousand in the amphitheater, all filled with U-Con brass and politicos doing their best to keep JPL happy and paying taxes in the state. Fee seated us in the reserved section and went down to the floor to join Guess, who was standing at a huge control console alongside the stage. I thought she was behaving with poise and assurance. Either the Chief had kept his promise or she’d found her identity. Either way or both, I had to admire her.

Guess took stage center, looked around, and spoke. “Senoras, gemmum, soul hermanos, ah gone esplain brief, you know, what this esperiment mean, dig? You got like any preguntas, right, ax da man.”

He motioned to Fee, who did something at the console. Projectors flashed on and there were three bods on the stage alongside Guess, bowing and smiling. They were smallish but looked strong and tough.

“These are the three courageous volunteers,” Guess said (in translation), “who have taken the first cryogenic flight in history. This is in preparation for the Pluto mission and eventually the stars. The constraints are time and payload. It will take the mission many years to reach Pluto, even at maximum acceleration. It will take centuries to reach the stars. It would be impossible to freight enough supplies for these men. There is only one answer, the cryonic technique.”

He motioned to Fee again. The projectors flicked and there were the cryonauts, naked, being helped into transparent coffins by technicians. Quick cuts of them being injected, variously attached to tendrils, given some sort of sterile wash. The coffin lids were bolted.

“We lowered the temperature in the cryocoffins one degree Celsius per hour and increased the pressure one atmosphere per hour until we produced the effect of Ice III, which is denser than water and forms above the freezing point. Mid-twentieth-century cryonics failed because it was not known that suspended animation could not be achieved through freezing alone; it requires a combination of low temperature and high pressure. Details are in your fact-tapes.”

Shot of the coffins being tenderly loaded into a capsule. Cut to interior of capsule and techs hooking up complicated plumbing.

“We launched them on a ninety-day orbit, a deep ellipse.” Long shot of the launch; a gentle liftoff and then, at altitude, flames roaring down from the rocket vehicle carrying the capsule, and acceleration to out-of-sight. The usual. Edison looked bored.

“Now they’re returning. We’ll trap the craft in a projected kinorep cone, center it with its lateral gas jets, and let the offset of kinorep and gravity bring it down slowly. For those of you who aren’t tech-oriented, kinotrac and kinorep are our abbreviations for kinetic electromagnetic attraction and repulsion. That’s how the craft you travel on take off and land without shaking you up.

“The cryonauts will arrive in about ten minutes and be brought up to nominal metabolism so slowly that I’m afraid you’ll have to wait quite a few days before interviewing them — not that they’ll have much to tell you. For them, no time has passed at all. Now, are there any questions?”

There were some smart-ass questions from civilians: Where was the orbit of the capsule? (In the plane of the Earth’s orbit. All in your fact-tapes.) Why not a comet orbit around the sun? (Refrigeration constraints plus the fact that it would be thrust into a no-return parabola. All in your fact-tapes.) What are the names and qualifications of the cryonauts? (All in your fact-tapes.) How do you personally feel about this dangerous experiment? (Accountable.) He looked around. “Three more minutes. Any further questions?”

“Yes,” I called. “What’s an Ugly Poppy?”

He gave me a look that made me feel for George Armstrong Custer (West Point, ‘61) and returned to the console. “Iris open,” he ordered. Fee touched something and the entire roof above the stage leafed back. “Kino trap.” She nodded, concentrating so hard that her teeth were fastened on the tip of her tongue.

We waited. We waited. We waited. There was a loud bleep from the console. “In contact,” murmured Guess. He took the controls. “Each time the craft contacts the kinorep wall we reverse it with its lateral jets, trying to pin it to the center of the cone.” He thought he was thinking out loud. In the anxious hush it sounded like a shout. His hands flickered over the console controls and the bleeps merged into a sustained discord. “Centered and descending.” It was obvious to me that pokerface was under a tremendous strain even though he showed nothing. He began a droning count: “Diez. Nueve. Ocho. Siete. Seis. Cinco. Cuatro. Tres. Dos. Uno. Minuto.” He was peering up through the iris and down at the console radar screen. He went on counting and it sounded like a Latin mass. What a hell of an accountability.

Then the ass end of the capsule crept silently through the iris and inched down with the speed of a snail. We couldn’t see the kinorep repulsion but it raised a small storm of dust and paper debris on the stage. There was cheering from the audience. Guess paid no attention; he was completely concentrated on the console controls and the capsule.

He nodded to Fee, who ran to the edge of the stage, knelt, and began making hand signals indicating how much farther the capsule had to drop. We knew it had landed when we saw the stage give slightly. Guess switched off the console, drew a deep, shuddering breath, and suddenly electrified us with a Comanche whoop. We all yelled and laughed and applauded; even Edison, who was consumed by professional jealousy.

Three techs, realsies this time, appeared and unsealed the capsule. Guess stepped to the hatch. “As I said, you won’t be able to talk to them but you can look at them. Think of it. They won’t be aware of any time lapse.” He poked his head into the hatch and his voice was muffled. “Frozen ninety days in orbit and—” He stopped abruptly. We waited. Nothing. He didn’t speak; he didn’t move. One of the techs touched his back. No response. The two others joined him, muttering anxiously, and then slowly pulled him back. He moved like a sleepwalker and when they let go he simply stood, frozen. The techs looked into the capsule and when their heads reappeared they were white and dumbfounded.

I had to see what had happened. I scrambled with the crowd to the capsule. When I finally got a chance to look in I saw the three coffins. There were no cryonauts inside. There was nothing inside the coffins except three pasty, naked rats. The mob pushed me aside. Through the bedlam I heard Fee-5 shrilling, “Guig! Here! Guig! Please! Guig!” She was alongside the console. I fought my way to her. She was standing over Guess, who was on the floor behind the console in the throes of a classic epileptic seizure.

“All right, Fee, I’ve got him.” I did what had to be done. The tongue. The foam. Loosening the clothes. Easing the thrashing arms and legs. She was appalled; a seizure is always terrifying. Then I stood up and shouted, “Group! Here!” All four materialized. “Guard of honor,” I said. “Don’t let anyone see him. Are you in control, Fee?”

“No.”

“Sorry. You’ll have to be. Does the Chief have an office? Any private sanctum?” She nodded. “Good. Instructions: My friends will carry him. Show them where to take him. Then come right back. At once, understand? You’ll have to front for Guess when the mob gets around to asking questions. I’ll stand by you. My friends will stand by the Chief. Go!”

She was back in five minutes, out of breath, carrying a lab coat. “Put this on, Guig. You be one of his assistants.”

“No. You’ll have to do this on your own.”

“But you’ll stand by me?”

“I’m here.”

“What do I do? What do I say? I’m not so smart.”

“Yes you are, and I haven’t trained you for three years for nothing. Now — with great assurance and great style — are you ready?”

“Not yet. Tell me what threw the Chief.”

“The cryonauts aren’t in their coffins. They’ve disappeared. There’s nothing in each coffin but something that looks like a naked rat.”

She began to shake. “Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!” I waited. This was no time to cosset her; she had to make it on her own. She made it. “Gung, Guig. I’m ready. What now?”

“Call for attention. Assurance and style. I’ll cue you in.”

By God, she had the style to climb up on the console and stand like stout Cortez having his first look at the Pacific. (While his men looked at each other with a wild surmise.) “Ladies and gentlemen!” she called in Spang. “Ladies and gentlemen! Your attention, please.” (What now, Guig? in XX.)

“Identify yourself.”

“I am Fee-5 Grauman’s Chinese, the confidential assistant of Dr. Guess. I’m sure you saw me at the control console.” (And now?)

“Upbeat. Elegant. This isn’t a disaster, it’s a challenge.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, something unusual has taken place in the course of our cryogenic probe, and you’ve been privileged to witness it. I congratulate you. It was unexpected but, as Dr. Guess says, that’s the essence of discovery, to find what you’re not looking for.” She cocked her head. “Ah, some of you are saying serendipity. Yes, science is serendipity.” (Guig!)

“The Chief is analyzing this surprise with his staff. Very technical here.”

“Dr. Guess is with his staff now in a mode analysis of the phenomenon which you’ve all seen.” She cocked an ear again. “Yes, I know what you’re wondering: Will we go ahead with nominal procedure with the cryocoffins? Dr. Guess is evaluating that now, which is why he must not be disturbed. You’re wondering what happened to the cryonauts. So are we.” (Guig!)

“That’s all.”

“Thank you very much. I must return to the staff conference now. Dr. Guess will issue a full status review as quickly as possible. Thank you.”

I helped her down. She was trembling.

“You’re not finished yet, Fee. Tell the techs to put a hold on the capsule just as it is. Seal it and maintain all systems as if it were still in orbit.”

She nodded and fought her way through the crowd to the technical men, who still looked dazed. She spoke to them urgently and then returned to me. “Now what?”

“First, I’m proud of you.”

“F.”

“Now take me to Sitting Bull. I’ve got to—”

“Don’t call him that!” she screamed. “Don’t call him any of those names. He’s a great man. He’s a — he’s—”

“ — brief him on the situation. He must be recovered from the attack by now.”

“I think I love him,” she said helplessly.

“And it hurts.”

“It’s awful.”

“It always is, first time around. Let’s go.”

“Only twelve hours, Guig, and I feel twelve years older.”

“I can see it. You’ve made a quantum jump. Let’s go.”

Sequoya’s sanctum was a large conference room with a long table and heavy armchairs. It was cluttered with books, journals, tape cartridges, computer software. The walls were hung with ten by ten-foot orbit-tracking charts. The Group had seated Guess in a chair at the far end of the table and was eyeballing him with concern. I closed the door on the curious secretaries in the anteroom.

“How is he?” I asked.

“He has lost his marbles,” M’bantu said.

“Oh, come on, McBee. He had a fit, that’s all.”

“Watch this,” Scented Song said. She took Sequoya’s hand and raised it high. When she let go, it remained where it was. She took Guess by the shoulders and gentled him out of the chair. The Chief came to his feet obediently. When the princess walked him around the conference room, he accompanied her like a sleepwalker, but when she released her hold, Sequoya came to a dead stop in midstride. His hand was still high in the air.

“This is a fit?” M’b asked.

“Put him back in his chair,” I said. Fee was whimpering. I wasn’t exactly joyful myself.

“It’s a washout,” Nemo said. “We’ll never get to him.”

“You’ve got to help him,” Fee cried.

“We’ll do our best, love.”

“What’s happened to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“How long will it last?”

“No idea.”

“Is it permanent, Guig?”

“I couldn’t say. We need an expert. Princess, call Sam Pepys. Borgia is to come to my house with all despatch.”

“Wilco.”

“Why bother?” Edison wanted to know. “He’s blown his fuses. Forget him.”

“Out of the question. First, for Fee’s sake. Second, he’s still my candidate; we’ve got to bring his marbles back. Third, plain humanity. He’s a brilliant guy and we’ve got to preserve his prestige.”

“Just save him,” Fee pleaded.

“We’ll do our best, love. The first problem is how to get him out of here to my place. I can hear the U-Con stockholders clustering in the anteroom. How do we get him past them?”

“Moving him is no problem,” M’b said. “He handles like a baby. We can walk him anywhere.”

“But how do we make him invisible?” I thought hard. I’m sorry to say I was enjoying the crisis. I love a challenge. “Ed, what’s your current identity?” Edison jerked his head at Fee. “Never mind her. We’re beyond that.”

“I know all about the Group,” Fee said, not show-off, just trying to keep it moving.

“We’ll discuss that later. Who are you nowadays, Ed?”

“Director of the RCA Plasma Division.”

“Got identification on you?”

“Of course.”

“Gung. Go out there. You’re a distinguished colleague of Dr. Guess who invited you to witness the event. You’re fully prepared to discuss anything and everything with the stockholders. Fake it and don’t stop faking until we’ve got the bod out of here.”

Edison de- after giving each of us a sharp glance plus a long look at Guess- parted. I heard him start his spiel outside. It sounded like, “u(x + h) – u(x) = 2x + 1.” Most enlightening. I thought some more. “Fee and princess. Take the biggest chart off the wall. Each of you take a corner and hold it as high as you can.” They obeyed without asking questions and I gave them good marks for that. “Hold it taut.” The bottom of the chart just touched the floor. “M’b, you’re the strongest. Put Guess over your shoulder.”

“The hell he is,” Nemo blurted.

“Only physically, captain,” M’bantu said in soothing tones. “Never intellectually. No one can compare to you in that department.”

I plotted the scene for them and opened the door to the anteroom. The two women walked out holding the chart as high as they could reach. “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Fee said to the assembled. Then they sailed the chart out of the anteroom. Behind that screen M’bantu was carrying Sequoya.

When we got to my place Borgia was waiting (I swear I never saw Scented Song making the call) looking like a Sicilian Florence Nightingale, which indeed she is; Sicilian, that is, not a nurse. She’s the damned best doctor I know. Since 1600 she’s taken medical degrees at Bologna, Heidelberg, Edinburgh, Salpêtrière, Cornell, and Standard Oil. Borgia believes in keeping up with the times.

She had a goongang slaving in the house. “Found them starting to rip the place,” she reported. “Your door doesn’t hold. So I put them to work.” She had indeed. Sabu was lushing it up on a bale of hay. Laura was chasing goldfish in the drawing room pool and absorbing them. The house was cleaned and immaculate. A most notable woman.

“Shape up,” she ordered. The gang lined up before her timidly. “Now hear this. You two have incipient embolisms. You three are on bot, which has lethal side effects. All of you are faggots and need a proctal. I want you back here tomorrow afternoon for a full medical. Hear?”

“Yassuh, medico.”

“R. Out.”

They out. A most forceful woman. “Evening, Guig,” she said in XX. “Evening, all. Who’s that thing? She doesn’t belong to the Group. Get her out of here.”

By God, Fee stood up to her. “My name is Fee-5 Grauman’s Chinese. I live here and your patient is my guy. Next question?”

“She talks XX.”

“And she knows about the Group. Quite a gal.”

“It’s the Maori strain,” M’bantu interjected. “A magnificent people.”

Borgia grinned a mile wide, went to Fee, and shook her hand like it was a pump handle. “You’re my kind, Fee,” she said. “There aren’t enough of you around these days. We’ve megabred the backbone out of existence. Now let’s have a look at the patient. Got somewhere more intimate, Guig? This is like a zoo, and that python keeps belching.”

We walked the Chief into my study and Fee put him down in a chair at the desk. The others excused themselves to look after their pets, and Edison went to repair the door which he’d ruined. “Fill me in, Guig.” I described the Chief and the disaster that had overtaken him while Borgia prowled around him and examined him. “Yes,” she said. “All the basic symptoms of postepileptic delirium; mutism, passive negativism, catatonic stupor. Easy, Fee, I’ll drop the clinical jargon. Probably sounds to you like I’m depersonalizing your guy. I’m not. Now, exactly what’s the urgency? How much time have I?”

“We’ve managed to lose the U-Con brass for a little while, but they’ll be howling for Guess tomorrow and a full status review. About seventy million went into the experiment and—”

“Eighty-five,” Fee said, “and I can hear them howling for him now. They’re in a panic and they want the Chief. Explanations or his scalp.”

“They have any suspicions about what’s happened to him?” Borgia asked Fee.

“Not yet. Most of them are saying he’s chickcopped.”

“ESP?” Borgia asked me, much interested.

“No, bug-tap. So you can see everything’s at stake. We have to pull him out fast or he’s sunk.”

“What’s in it for you, as if I didn’t know.”

“Later, Lucy. Not in front of his girl.”

“I’m not his girl,” Fee said. “He’s my guy.”

Borgia ignored the semantics. She prowled around Sequoya again, sensing him with invisible antennae. “Interesting. Very interesting. The resemblance to Lincoln. See it, Guig? Is it a pathogenic type? I often wonder. You know, of course, that young Lincoln went into a cataleptic collapse after the death of Ann Rutledge. He never recovered. Remained a manic-depressive for the rest of his life. Now let’s try a shortcut. Have you got any writing tools? Handwriting-type.”

Fee pulled a pad and a stylus out of the desk.

“Is he righthanded, Fee?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll try a trick that Charcot showed me in his clinic.” Borgia put the stylus in the Chief’s right hand and placed the pad under it. “Sometimes they want so desperately to communicate with us, but we must find the way for them.” She bent over Guess and started to speak in Spanglish. I stopped her. “He’s more comfortable with XX, Borgia.”

“Oh, he’s that educated? Encouraging.” She spoke smoothly to the Chief. “Hello, Dr. Guess. I’m a physician. I would like to have a talk with you about JPL.”

Sequoya’s face didn’t alter; it gazed placidly into space, but after a moment his right hand trembled and wrote:

hello

Fee let out a little yell. Borgia motioned for quiet. “Dr. Guess,” she went on, “your friends are here. They are very much concerned about you. Won’t you tell them something?”

The hand wrote:

doctor guess your friends are here they are very much concerned about you wont you tell them something

“So.” Borgia pursed her lips. “Like that, eh? Will you try, Fee-5? Say something personal.”

“Chief, this is Fee-Fie-Fo. You haven’t kept your promise yet.”

chief this is fee fie fo you havent kept your promise yet

Borgia tore the sheet off the pad. “Guig? Maybe something about the recent disaster?”

“Hey, Uncas, U-Con tried to sell me those naked rats. They claim they’re your soul.”

hey uncas ucon tried to sell me those naked rats they claim theyr your soul

Borgia shook her head. “I’d hoped this might be the road to a breakthrough but it’s just echopathy.”

“What’s that?”

“You find it sometimes as a part of the catatonic syndrome, Guig. The patient repeats the words of another, in one form or another.”

“He’s just parroting?”

“That’s about the size of it, but we’re not licked yet. I’ll show you another one of Charcot’s tricks. The human psyche can be incredibly devious.” She transferred the stylus to the Chief’s left hand and placed the pad under it. “Hello, Dr. Guess. I’m a physician and I’d like to have a talk with you. Have you come to any conclusion about what happened to your cryonauts?”

The placid face still stared into space. The left hand twitched and then began to scribble in mirrorwriting, from left to right:

“Mirror, Fee.”

“Don’t bother,” Borgia said. “I read dextro and levo. He’s written, ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, but—’ ”

“But what?”

“It stops there. ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, but—’ But what, Dr. Guess? What?”

Nothing.

“Failed again?”

“Certainly not, ass. We’ve discovered that he’s functioning deep down inside. Very deep. Down there he’s aware of everything that’s going on around him. What we have to do is peel off the shock layer that’s formed over him.”

“Do you know how?”

“Countershock, but if it has to be quick it’s going to be iffy.”

“It has to be quick. How will it be iffy?”

“They’ve developed a new tranquilizer, a polypeptide derivative of noradrenalin.”

“I haven’t understood a word.”

“D’you know how tranquilizers work? They thicken the connections between the brain nuclei, the glial cells, and the neurones. Slow down the transfer of nerve-firing from cell to cell and slow down the entire organism. Are you with it?”

“With.”

“This noradrenalin derivative blocks it completely. It’s close to a nerve gas. All traffic comes to a dead stop. That’s the operative word. Dead. We may kill him.”

“Why? Tranquilizers don’t kill.”

“Try to cope with the concept, Guig. Every nerve cell will be isolated. Alone. An island. If they link up synapses again, he’ll be recovered and feeling like a fool for withdrawing. He’ll be countershocked out of his flight from the JPL surprise. If they don’t, he’s dead.”

“What are the chances?”

“Experimentally, so far, fifty-fifty.”

“The Greek says even money is a good bet. Let’s try.”

“No!” Fee cried. “Please, Guig. No!”

“But he’s dead to this world now, Fee. You’ve lost him already.”

“He’ll recover some time, won’t he, doctor?”

“Oh, yes,” Borgia said, “but it might take as long as five years without crash treatment. Your guy is in one of the deepest catatonic shocks I’ve ever seen, and if he has another epileptic seizure while we’re waiting it out, it’ll get deeper.”

“But—”

“And since he’s your guy I should warn you that if he pulls out of this on his own he’ll most probably have complete amnesia for the past. That’s strongly indicated in this sort of case.”

“For everything?”

“Everything.”

“His work?”

“Yes.”

“Me?”

“You.”

Fee wavered. We waited. At last she said, “R.”

“Then let’s shape up.” Borgia was in complete control. “He should come out of countershock in a familiar environment. Does he live anywhere?”

“We can’t get in. It’s guarded by wolves.”

“JPL is out of the question. Anywhere else?”

“He teaches at Union Carbide,” Fee said.

“Office?”

“Yes, but he spends most of his time using their Extrocomputer.”

“What’s that?”

Fee looked to me for help. “Carbide built a limitless computer complex,” I explained. “They used to call them ‘stretch computers.’ Now they call them Extrocomputers. This job is stored with every datum since the beginning of time and it hasn’t run out of storage space yet.”

“Gung. We’ll flog him in the computer complex.” She yanked a pad out of her toolbox and scribbled. “M’bantu! Here! Take this prescription to Upjohn and bring the ampul to the computer center at Union Carbide. Don’t let anybody mug you. Costs a fortune.”

“I will transport it in a cleft stick.”

She smacked him lovingly. “You black bastard. Tell Upjohn to bill me.”

“May I ask in what name, Borgia?”

“Damnation. Who am I now? Oh, yes. Cipolla. Dr. Renata Cipolla. Go, baby.”

“Renata Onion!” I exclaimed in disbelief.

“Why not? What are you, some kind of antisemite? Edison! Here! Fixed that door yet? Never mind. I’ll need you to rig a sterilizer for me. Also an oxygen mask. You’ll come with me and bring your toolbox.”

“Sterilizer?” Fee whispered. “Oxygen?”

“I may have to transect and do a coronary massage. Nemo! Nemo!” No answer. She tramped to the drawing room where he was in the pool playing with Laura. All the goldfish were gone and I wouldn’t doubt that he may have eaten a few himself, just to be friendly, you understand. Borgia rapped on the perspex until he stuck his head above water. “We’re leaving. Get out of that and guard the house. Door’s a shambles. Shut up, Ed. Use force to repel force but don’t kill anybody. Just hold them. They may need medical attention. R. Let’s move it out.”

She and Edison picked up their toolboxes. As Fee and I walked Cochise out of the house I looked down into the cellar. Scented Song was sleeping peacefully on Sabu’s back. I wanted to ask her to move over.