Savant (21 page)

The wafer faded out to be replaced by a second, and then a third. The first dozen were blue, and all very similar. No one in the room, including the neurological specialists could distinguish one from another with the naked eye.

“It is not unusual,” said Qa, via the screen, “for all of these wafers to be virtually identical. It does, however, prove a stability of character that one might not expect from a Master of Tobe’s calibre.”

The wafer faded out and was replaced by another. This one had a pale area on it, which Qa was able to zoom in on, and show as an inset, projected on top of the original.

“This wafer records the moment at which Code Green was established,” said Qa. “You can all see the area of concern in detail here, and the area of the brain in which the change occurred.”

“This moment represents the beginning of the problem as we recognise it,” said Branting.

“Has that area of the brain been affected continuously, over the period since this wafer was shot?” asked Adjentetti.

“Do we have that information?” asked Branting.

“I’m not sure, sir,” said Qa, “but we do have a series of wafers for the subject taken at regular intervals since the initial ramp-up from Code Blue to Code Green.”

“Perhaps we should see them,” said Branting.

Qa continued to feed the information into his screen, a wafer at a time, and it continued to appear on the large screen at the end of the room, for all those present to inspect.

The mass of threads had changed colour from blue to green, and then, again, to yellow, but the pictures appeared to be largely similar. Several members of the team, sitting around the table, leaned forwards in their seats and peered at the large screen, trying to divine anomalies in the visual information.

“Could we see the sequence again, in close-up on the affected area?” asked Adjentetti.

“Qa?” asked Branting.

Qa moved the rubberpro sphere under his hand, weaving backwards and forwards over the anomaly until it was writ large on the screen. The sequence ran more slowly, but the specialists were able to sit back and read each wafer thoroughly without having to strain.

It took two hours to cover the wafers extracted from Tobe’s Service screen.

The room was silent, except for the sound of breathing, and the rustle of paper and the whispers that pens and pencils made as several of the advisors took notes or drew diagrams.

“Can we see the entire sequence again?” asked Adjentetti. “I’d really like to see all the wafers, back to back, without colour on them, and can we do it at speed so that we can see the changes?”

“Qa?” asked Branting.

“Yes, sir,” said Qa, “just give me a moment to change the settings.”

Qa spun the rubberpro ball under his palm, and hit a button on the counter. The menu on the left-hand side of the main screen in the room came to life, so that the advisors could see the adjustments that Qa was making, altering the contrast on the wafers, and de-saturating the colour in them. When the first image of a wafer appeared back on the screen, it was a mass of white, bright threads, with pearlescent grey hazing between them and around the corona. The surface of the screen had been blacked-out entirely, so that the subtlety of the greys and whites on the screen was more apparent than the colours had been.

“How fast do you want the wafers to feed?” asked Qa.

“Adjentetti?” asked Branting.

“Perhaps one per second, at least, so that we can scroll through the entire sequence and get an overview,” said Adjentetti. “If that suits everyone?”

There were murmurs of general assent around the table, and Qa began to feed the wafers through the system.

Strung together, the wafers began to ebb and flow with light, pulsing in a staccato fashion from one to the next, and the next, right through the sequence. The entire sequence took only a few minutes to complete.

“Can you put that on a loop, Qa and fade from one wafer to the next, rather than jump?” asked Branting. “There’s something odd about this, Adjentetti.”

“I’m not sure yet,” said Adjentetti, “but there’s very definitely a pattern of some sort.”

“Looping now, sir,” said Qa, his voice emerging from the screen in front of the gathered experts, as his instructions were clearly visible from the menu on the left-hand side.

Some of the dozen or so men and women in the room held their collective breath for a moment or two, while the screen interpreted Qa’s instructions, others took a few moments to make more notes or to consult the notes they’d already taken. Branting left the head of the conference table, and went to stand beside Adjentetti, who had risen from his seat.

“Rolling the loop,” said Qa, and the large screen blacked-out for a moment, before coming back to life with the mass of white-light threads, and the pulsing grey corona of Tobe’s screen. They all watched in silence as the wafers cycled through the screen, twice, three times, and, finally, when the cycle began for the fourth time, Adjentetti stepped up to the screen with a telescopic pointer, and made an imaginary circle in the air just in front of it, indicating the section of the screen that he was most interested in.

“What do you make of that?” he asked, when the wafers had cycled through to the end, again, and Qa stopped the screening.

“I think you’re on to something,” said Branting. “Anyone else concur?”

There was a general stirring and murmuring at the table, but it sounded mostly positive.

“It might start to become interesting,” said Miss Goldstein, “if we compare this sector of scrolling wafers with those of other subjects. I’m not sure we can discuss any possibilities before we have made direct comparisons with subjects of known status.”

“Qa,” said Branting, “please set up a control group of wafers for Miss Goldstein. And let’s see the material we’ve collected from anyone that we know to have been contaminated. Let’s get a look at the Student’s screen, to begin with, shall we?”

“Absolutely,” said Adjentetti.

“Please,” said Miss Goldstein.

“I can have those wafers fed through the system in a few minutes,” said Qa, “but perhaps one or two of us might benefit from a break, sir?”

“Of course,” said Branting. “Ten minutes, everyone.”

As the advisors scraped back chairs, and collected notes, briefcases, and empty food and drink cartons, Branting took the dicky seat next to Qa, and waited for the wafers to upload.

Chapter Thirty-Three

“W
HAT WILL
T
OBE
do today?” asked Tobe. They had been talking for about an hour, and Metoo was still trying to stick to the list of questions she had been given. It was useless. She was willing to try to extract the information from Tobe that they needed from him, but she wasn’t sure what it was, or why they wanted it. She also found it impossible to ask a set of bald questions, which Tobe had no way to relate to. Much better, surely, to have a conversation with him that they could both learn something from.

“Can Tobe work today?” asked Tobe. He looked as if he was going to rise from his stool at the kitchen counter, so Metoo put her hand over his, stopping him in his tracks. He shuffled slightly in his seat, but didn’t attempt to get up again.

“Not today,” said Metoo. “You can’t go to the office today. Do you want to work at home?”

“Tobe doesn’t work at home.”

“No,” said Metoo, wearily. She had pointed out, once or twice that he had worked at home the previous day, but this was obviously an aberration that Tobe had forgotten, or had decided, consciously, or otherwise, was a red herring. Of course, he didn’t understand the concept of a red herring; he would call working at home once in twenty years, ‘statistically insignificant’.

“Talk to me about statistical significance,” said Metoo.

“Maths?”

“Maths.”

“But, Metoo knows maths.”

Metoo looked at Tobe, astonished. He had attributed knowledge to her. He knew what she knew. How? Anything out-with Tobe and his unique perception of his immediate experiences did not register in his mind. He either made assumptions or simply disregarded possibilities. He didn’t even remember people’s names.

“What?” asked Tobe.

T
HE BALL OF
lit threads on the view-screen in front of Wooh’s eyes began to dance and bounce all over the place, with bright lights flashing up in all areas of the cerebellum.

“What on Earth is she doing?” she asked.

“What’s who doing?” asked Saintout.

“First, she wasn’t asking him the questions in sequence, and now his mind’s freaking out all over the place. I need to know what Metoo’s doing.”

“Whatever it is. I guarantee that it is in no way intended to do any harm to Tobe. I’d bet my life on the opposite: that she is doing everything in her power to improve his lot.”

Wooh flipped the screen up from in front of her face, and pulled out the ear-bead. She looked at Saintout, pale and wide-eyed, with a feint sheen of sweat high on her brow.

“What do you need?” asked Saintout.

T
HE SCREEN AT
Workstation 2 showed sudden, significant changes. The Yellow threads were weaving and pulsing, and glowing in various cortexes. Synaptic resonance showed an increase of almost twenty percent, and Operator Dudley felt cold sweat drip into the small of his back. There was no room for hesitation, and yet, he did hesitate.

A claxon sounded on the Service Floor. Every screen blinked out for three seconds, and then they began to come back on-line, one at a time, in a predetermined sequence.

Tobe’s screen came back on-line after twenty-seven seconds: twenty-seven seconds in which half a litre of sweat poured out of Ranked Operator Dudley’ and Named Operator Kasapi’s pores. Twenty-seven seconds in which Ranked Operator Dudley found time to be grateful for his extravagant cotton garments; twenty-seven seconds in which they both rose from their seats, both completed Morse signatures, using the switch on the facing edge of the counter, and both raised their hands and called for Techs; twenty-seven seconds in which Named Operator Kasapi found time to wonder whether the sphincter to his bladder would hold fast; twenty-seven seconds in which he regretted eating too fast, sitting at his Workstation, bolting his food without looking at it, rather than switching out, in case anything interesting should happen; twenty-seven seconds in which Ranked Operator Dudley wondered whether his glee at being chosen for the job out-weighed his competence. The longest twenty-seven seconds in the history of this, or any Service Floor in over a century.

After twenty-seven seconds, when Tobe’s screen came back on-line, the ball of throbbing threads was a hot, golden colour.

W
OOH PRESSED HER
button and counted.

“I don’t need anything,” said Wooh, “3... 4... 5...”

“This is bad, isn’t it?” asked Saintout.

“Take a look,” said Wooh, handing Saintout her headset. “10... 11...”

By the time Saintout had disentangled the ear-bead, adjusted the strap, and placed the headset in position, feeding the bead into his ear, and finally dropping the screen down in front of his right eye, it was all over.

He blinked, flipped the screen up, and said, “You can stop counting, now, Wooh. We are at Code Orange.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

A
CLAXON SOUNDED
, and the dozen-or-so men and women, sitting around Branting’s conference table, looked at each other. The man fourth from Branting on the left of the table turned a sickly colour, and clasped his hand over his mouth. The people on either side of him shuffled in their chairs, and he staggered to his feet. Branting was still standing, and he strode to the door and opened it for his erstwhile colleague.

“We are at Code Orange,” said Branting. “Master Tobe’s status has ramped up, and we need to break this problem down, and solve it.” He was speaking through almost gritted teeth, his determination steelier after eighty hours than it had been after eight. “If any one else is feeling the pressure, perhaps you’d like to leave, now, so that we can bring in fresh minds. If you’re not up to it, for goodness sake, go.”