Alfred Bester - The Computer Connection

“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.

No trouble getting into the center; yes, doctor, no, doctor, certainly, doctor; the sleepwalker made a perfect front. There was a crowd in the center; some bright heads playing Prime against the Extro (and losing), and Spangland’s popular broadcast serial, The Rover Girls . We chased the kids but we couldn’t chase the broadcast. Serious Dick, fun-loving Tom, and sturdy-hearted Sam are now cadets at the Pentagon Military Academy (after their transsex operations in Denmark) and are buying pot, poppers, googies, hash, and uglies as refreshments for an orgy to celebrate Serious Dick’s election as Porno Procurement officer of his company.

“I can’t understand why this place isn’t insulated like yours,” Borgia complained.

“It is, but the broadcasts sneak in on the high-voltage lines,” I explained. “Ignore them. What do I do with the Chief?”

“Flat on the floor, face up. Ed, start putting together the sterilizer and oxygen mask while we’re waiting for M’bantu. Forage in the stock rooms for materials. Improvise. Go.”

Of course, the center was open for business, as was the entire university. In the first place, a computer is never turned off. In the second place, everything these days is operating on a twenty-four-hour basis. How else can you get some work out of a jillion deserving welfare cases unless you schedule twelve two-hour shifts?

You all know what a computer complex looks like — the hardware standing like a reunion of grandfather clocks, the satellite computers standing around them. The only difference with the Extro is that the satellites need satellites to feed them. You have to go through channels to get to the boss and he’s rather abrupt. His business is to take a small question which nobody can answer, move it around through his infinity of bits, and then come out with a curt answer.

The Rover Girls were in a jam. Their father has been missing for a year. Ms. Stanhope, widowed mother of Serious Dick’s sweetheart, Bruce, is being romanced off her feet by the wicked Josiah Crabtree, teacher at the Pentagon. Crabtree is really after Ms. Stanhope’s fabulously rich acid farm. He also favors a Pentagon cadet, the bully, Dan Baxter, who hates the Rover Girls. The rotten Crabtree and Baxter were honks, naturally.

Edison and M’bantu ( senza cleft stick) pulled in at the same time. Ed had two heads pushing a skid loaded with gear; oxygen tank, sterilizer, plumbing, and accessories. Don’t bother to ask how he dragooned the bods into helping him or how he liberated the necessaries; the entire Group has the overpowering habit. It’s not deliberate, we just scare the Shorties. The mere fact of youth is beauty; the mere fact of longevity is authority.

“R.” Borgia in control. “Out the heads. Set up, Ed.” She opened her toolbox which didn’t look much different from Edison’s. “Ampul, M’b. We’ll shape up and move it. Fee-5, answer a few questions and then out. His height?”

“Six.”

“Weight?”

“One-eighty.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-four.”

“Condition?”

I broke in. “I’ve seen him in the saddle. Hard and fast.”

“Gung.” Borgia did some delicate loading of a syringe from M’bantu’s ampul. “Ready, Ed?”

“Ready.”

“Out, Fee.”

“I will not out.”

“Out.”

“One good reason why.”

It was a Battle of the Giants. Borgia softened. “This will be horrible to watch, kitten, especially since he’s your guy.”

“I’m not a child anymore.”

Borgia shrugged. “You’re going to be even less of a child after this is over.” She stepped to the Chief and gave him a slow, careful intravenous. “Clock it, Guig.”

“Starting when?”

“I’ll tell you when.”

We waited, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly a ghastly scream was wrenched out of the Chief.

“Now, Guig.”

The scream was compounded by agonized thrashings. Every vent in Sequoya let go; bowels, urine, semen, saliva, sinuses, sweat glands. Fee was alongside me, clinging and gasping. I was breathing heavily myself.

“Synapses breaking connections,” Borgia said in a professional monotone. “He’ll need a bath and clean clothes. Time?”