Tower of Glass

15

“Good evening, good evening, good evening!” the alpha on duty at the New Orleans shunt room said as Manuel Krug and his companions emerged from the transmat. “Mr. Krug, Mr. Ssu-ma, Mr. Guilbert, Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Mishima, Mr. Foster. Good evening. Will you come this way? Your waiting chamber is ready.”

The antechamber of the New Orleans shunt room was a cool tunnel-like structure about a hundred meters long, divided into eight sealed subchambers in which prospective identity-changers could wait while the stasis net was being prepared to receive them. The subchambers, though small, were comfortable: webfoam couches, elegant sensory-drift patterns on the ceiling, music cubes available at the touch of a switch, a decent variety of olfactory and visual channels in the wall, and a number of other contemporary conveniences. The alpha settled each of them in a couch, saying, “Programming time tonight will be approximately ninety minutes. That’s not too bad, is it?”

“Can’t you speed it up?” Manuel said.

“Ah, no, no hope of that. Last night, do you know, we were running four hours behind? Here, Mr. Krug — if you’ll let me clip the electrode in place — thank you. Thank you. And this one? Good. And the matrix-scanner — yes, yes, fine. We’re all set. Mr. Ssu-ma, please?”

The android bustled about the room, hooking them up. It took about a minute to get each one ready. When the job was done, the alpha withdrew. Data began to drain from the six men in the waiting room, The stasis net was taking profiles of their personality contours, so that it could program itself to handle any sudden surge of emotion while the ego shifts were actually going on.

Manuel looked around. He was tense with anticipation, eager to embark on the shifting. These five were his oldest, closest friends; he had known them since childhood. Someone had nicknamed them the Spectrum Group a decade ago, when by coincidence they showed up at the dedication of a new undersea sensorium wearing costumes of the spectral sequence of visible light, Nick Ssu-ma in red, Will Mishima in violet, and the others neatly arranged in between. The nickname had stuck. They were wealthy, though none, of course, was as wealthy as Manuel. They were young and vigorous. All but Cadge Foster and Jed Guilbert had married within the past few years, but this was no bar to their continued friendship. Manuel had shared the pleasure of the shunt room with them on a dozen occasions; they had been planning this visit for over a month.

“I hate this waiting,” Manuel said. “I wish we could plunge into the stasis net the minute we get here.”

“Too dangerous,” said Lloyd Tennyson. He was agile, long-legged, a superb athlete. Three mirror-plates gleamed in his high, broad forehead.

“That’s the point,” Manuel insisted. “The thrill of danger. To jump in boldly, instantly, hazarding everything in one glorious leap.”

“And the preciousness of irreplaceable human life?” asked narrow-eyed, chalky-faced Will Mishima. “It wouldn’t ever be allowed. The risks are well known.”

“Have one of your father’s engineers invent a stasis net that programs itself instantaneously,” Jed Guilbert proposed. “That would eliminate both the danger and the waiting.”

“If they could, they would,” Tennyson pointed out.

“You could bribe an attendant to let you go in without a programming wait,” Nick Ssu-ma suggested slyly.

“Tried it,” Manuel said. “An alpha in the Pittsburgh shunt room three years ago. Offered him thousands; the alpha just smiled. I doubled the offer and he smiled twice as hard. Wasn’t interested in money. I never realized that before: how can you bribe an android?”

“Right,” Mishima said. “You canbuy an android outright — you can buy a whole shunt room, if you like — but bribery’s another matter. The motivations of an android—”

“I might buy a shunt room, then,” Manuel said.

Jed Guilbert peered at him. “Would you really risk going straight into the net?”

“I think so.”

“Knowing that in case of an overload or some transmission error you might never get back inside your own head?”

“What are the chances of that?”

“Finite,” Guilbert said. “You’ve got a century and a half of life coming to you. Does it make sense to—”

“I’m with Manuel,” Cadge Foster said. He was the least glib member of the group, verging on taciturnity, but when he spoke he spoke with conviction. “Risk is essential to life. We need to take chances. We need to venture ourselves.”

“Pointless chances?” Tennyson asked. “The quality of the shunt wouldn’t be any better if we went in immediately. The only difference would be that we’d eliminate the waiting time. I don’t like the odds. To gamble a century in order to save a couple of hours? I’m not that bored by waiting.”

“You might be bored by life itself,” Nick Ssu-ma said. “So weary of it all that you’d stake a century against an hour, just for the sake of diversion. I feel that way sometimes — don’t you? There once was a game played with a hand weapon, a game called — ah — Swedish Roulette — ?”

“Polish,” Lloyd Tennyson corrected.

“Polish Roulette, then. In which they took this weapon, which could be loaded with six or eight separate explosive charges, and loaded it with only one—”

Manuel disliked the trend of the conversation. Breaking in, he said sharply to Cadge Foster, “What’s that thing you’re playing with?”

“I found it in a niche under my couch. It’s some kind of communications device. It says things to you.”

“Let’s see it.”

Foster tossed it over. It was a gray-green plastic rectangle, vaguely cubical, but beveled to a curve at most of the intersections of its faces. Manuel cupped it in his hands and peered into its cloudy depths. Words began to form, making a brilliant red strip across the interior of the object.

YOU HAVE FIFTY MINUTES MORE TO WAIT

“Clever,” Manuel said. He held it out for Nick Ssu-ma to see. When he took it back, the massage had changed.

LIFE IS JOY, JOY IS LIFE. CAN YOU REFUTE THAT SYLLOGISM?

“It isn’t a syllogism,” Manuel said. “Syllogisms take the form, All A is B. No T is A. Therefore, T is not B.”

“What are you babbling about?” Mishima asked.

“I’m giving this machine a logic lesson. You’d think a machine would know—”

IF P IMPLIES Q AND Q IMPLIES R, DOES P IMPLY R?

“I’ve got one too,” Ssu-ma said. “Just to the left of the channel selector. Oh. Oh, my. Look at that!” He showed his cube to Lloyd Tennyson, who emitted a guffaw. Manuel, craning his neck, still could not see the message. Ssu-ma held the cube so that Manuel could read it.

THE CHICKEN IS MIGHTIER THAN THE PIE

“I don’t understand it,” Manuel said.

“It’s an android dirty joke,” Ssu-ma explained. “One of my betas told it to me a few weeks ago. You see, there’s this hermaphrodite gamma—”

“We’ve all got them,” Jed Guilbert announced. “It’s a new thing for keeping people amused while they’re waiting, I guess.”

DEFEND THE FOLLOWING THESES:

GOLD IS MALLEABLE

ALL ELECTRIC RADIOS REQUIRE TUBES

ALL WHITE TOMCATS WITH BLUE EYES ARE DEAF

“How does it work?” Manuel asked.

Cadge Foster said, “It’s primed to pick up anything we say. Then I imagine it relays a signal to a randomizing message center that picks out something vaguely relevant — or interestingly irrelevant — and feeds it onto the screen inside the cube.”

“And we each get a different message?”

“Nick’s and mine are the same right now,” Tennyson reported. “No — his is changing, mine is staying—”

THE SUM OF THE ANGLES OF A TRIANGLE IS 180 DEGREES

THIS IS NOT BOTH A CHAIR AND NOT A CHAIR

WHO SHAVES THE SPANISH BARBER, THEN?

“I think it’s insane,” Mishima said.

“Maybe that’s the whole point,” said Manuel. “Is it handing out anything but gibberish?”

BECAUSE OF NECESSARY CLIMATE ADJUSTMENTS THE FOURTH OF NOVEMBER WILL BE CANCELLED BETWEEN 32 DEGREES AND 61 DEGREES SOUTH LATITUDE

“I’m getting a news report on mine,” Guilbert said. “Something about your father, Manuel—”

“Let me see!”

“Here — catch—”

FEMALE ALPHA SLAIN AT KRUG TOWER SITE.

POLITICAL EXECUTION, AEP FIGURE CHARGES.

KRUG ORGANIZATION DENIES CLAIM, ALLEGES

“More nonsense,” Manuel said. “I don’t think I find these things amusing.”

CLEVELAND LIES BETWEEN NEW YORK AND CHICAGO.

“I’m getting the news story on mine, now,” said Tennyson. “What do you think it’s all about?”

ALPHA CASSANDRA NUCLEUS DIED INSTANTLY.

THE FATAL BOLT WAS FIRED BY KRUG’S PRIVATE SECRETARY, LEON SPAULDING, 38.

“Never heard of her,” said Manuel. “And Spaulding’s older than that. He’s been working for my father since—”

CAN THE RHYTHM OF THE UNIVERSE’S BREATHING BE DETECTED BY STANDARD METABOLIC ANALYSIS?

“Perhaps you should call your father, Manuel,” Ssu-ma said. “If there’s really trouble—”

“And cancel the shunt? When we’re booked in here for a week? I’ll find out about it when I come out. If there’s anything to find out.”

ACTION FOR DAMAGES HAS BEEN INSTITUTED BY LABRADOR TRANSMAT GENERAL, PROPRIETOR OF THE DESTROYED ALPHA, EARLY SETTLEMENT IS EXPECTED.

“Let’s go back to syllogisms,” Manuel told the cube he held. “If all men are reptiles, and alpha androids are reptiles—”

THE SUM OF THE PARTS IS EQUAL TO THE SQUARE ON THE HYPOTHESIS

“Listen to what mine says!” shouted Tennyson.

PANTING WITH DESIRE SHE WAITS FOR THE ARRIVAL OF HER COAL-BLACK PARTNER IN UNSPEAKABLE SIN

“More!” Guilbert cried. “More!”

THEREFORE, YOU ARE A REPTILE

“Can we put these things away now?” Manuel asked.

SHOWING DEEP EMOTION, ALPHA SIEGFRIED FILECLERK OF AEP ACCUSED KRUG OF PLANNING A PURGE OF ANDROID EQUALITY ADVOCATES.

“I think this really is a news broadcast,” Cadge Foster murmured. “I’ve heard of this Fileclerk. He’s pushing a constitutional amendment that would open Congress to alphas. And—”

WEEPING AS THE DEAD FEMALE ALPHA LAY IN THE SNOW BESIDE THE MIGHTY BULK OF THE TOWER, AN ALMOST HUMAN SHOW OF GRIEF.

“Enough,” Manuel said. He began to toss his cube to the floor; but, seeing the message change, he glanced at it once again.

DO YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR OWN MOTIVES?

“Do you?” he asked. The cube went blank. He dropped it, gratefully. The alpha attendant entered the subchamber and started to disconnect the electrodes.

“You may proceed to the shunt room, gentlemen,” said the alpha blandly. “The programming has been completed and the stasis net is ready to receive you.”