Frederik Pohl - Man Plus

When her orders came, wholly without warning, they were directly from the President himself. There was no way she could have refused the assignment. Actually she had no desire to. She welcomed the change. Mother-henning a hurting human being stroked the feelgood centers of her personality; the importance of the job was clear to her, because if there was any faith in her it was in the Mars project; and she was aware of her competence. Of competence she had a great deal. We rated her very high, a major piece in the game we were playing for the survival of the race.

When she had finished with Roger’s simulation it was nearly four in the morning.

She slept a couple of hours in a borrowed bed in the nurses’ quarters. Then she showered, dressed and put her green contact lenses in. She was not happy with that particular aspect of her job, she reflected on the way to Roger’s room. The dyed hair and the change of eye color were deceptions; she did not like to deceive. One day she would like to leave out the contacts and let her hair go back to its muddy blond — oh, maybe helped out a little with a rinse, to be sure; she did not object to artifice, only to pretending to be something she wasn’t.

But when she entered Roger’s room she was smiling. “Lovely to see you back. We missed you. How was it, running around on your own?”

“Not bad at all,” said the flat voice. Roger was standing by the window, staring out at the blobs of tumbleweed lumping and bouncing across the parking lot. He turned to her. “You know, it’s all true, what you said. What I’ve got now isn’t just different, it’s better.”

She resisted the desire to reinforce what he had said, and only smiled as she began to strip his bed. “I was worried about sex,” he went on. “But you know what, Sulie? It’s like being told I can’t have any caviar for the next couple of years. I don’t like caviar. And when you come right down to it, I don’t want sex right now. I suppose you punched that into the computer? ‘Cut down sex drive, increase euphoria’? Anyway, it finally penetrated my little brain that I was just making trouble for myself, worrying about whether I could get along without something I really didn’t want. It’s a reflection of what I think other people think I should want.”

“Acculturation,” she supplied.

“No doubt,” he said, “Listen, I want to do something for you.”

He picked up the guitar, propped himself against the window frame with one heel against the sill, and settled the instrument across his knee. His wings quietly rearranged themselves over his head as he began to play.

Sulie was startled. He was not merely playing; he was singing. Singing? No, it was a sound more like a man whistling through his teeth, faint but pure. His fingers on the guitar strummed and plucked an accompaniment while the keening whistle from his lips flowed through the melody of a tune she had never heard before.

When he had finished she demanded, “What was that? ”

“It’s a Paganini sonata for guitar and violin,” he said proudly. “Clara gave me the record.”

“I didn’t know you could do that. Humming, I mean — or whatever it was.”

“I didn’t either until I tried. I can’t get enough volume for the violin part, of course. And I can’t keep the guitar sound low enough to balance it, but it didn’t sound bad, did it?”

“Roger,” she said, meaning it, “I’m impressed.”

He looked up at her and impressed her again by managing a smile. He said, “I bet you didn’t know I could do that , either. I didn’t know it myself till I tried.”

At the meeting Sulie said flatly, “He’s ready, General.”

Scanyon had managed enough sleep to look rested, and enough of something else, some inner resource or whatever, to look less harried. “You’re sure, Major Carpenter?”

She nodded her head. “He’ll never be readier.” She hesitated. Vern Scanyon, reading her expression, waited for the amendment. “The problem, as I see it, is that he’s right to go now . All his systems are up to operating level. He’s worked through his thing with his wife. He’s ready. The longer he stays around here, the more chance that she’ll do something to upset his balance.”

“I doubt that very much,” said Scanyon, frowning.

“Well, she knows what trouble she’ll be in. But I don’t want to take that chance, I want him to move.”

“You mean take him down to Merritt Island?”

“No. I want to put him on hold.”

Brad spilled coffee from the cup he had been raising to his lips. “No way, sweetie!” he cried, genuinely shocked. “I have seventy-two more hours testing on his systems! If you slow him down I can’t get readings—”

“Testing for what, Dr. Bradley? For his operating efficiency, or for the sake of the papers you’re going to write on him?”

“Well — Christ, certainly I’m going to write him up. But I want to check him as thoroughly as possible, every minute I can, for his sake. And for the mission’s.”

She shrugged. “That’s still my recommendation. There’s nothing for him to do here but wait. He’s had enough of that.”

“What if something goes wrong on Mars?” Brad demanded.

She said, “You wanted my recommendation. That’s it.”

Scanyon put in, “Please make sure we all know what you’re talking about. Especially me.”

Sulie looked toward Brad, who said, “We’ve planned to do that for the voyage, General, as you know. We have the capacity to override his internal clocks by external computer mediation. There are — let’s see — five days and some hours to launch; we can slow him down so that his subjective time is maybe thirty minutes over that period. It makes sense — but what I said makes sense, too, and I can’t take the responsibility for letting him out of my hands until I’ve made every test I want to make.”

Scanyon scowled. “I understand what you’re saying; it’s a good point, and I’ve got a point of my own, too. What happened to what you were saying last night, Major Carpenter? About not cutting off his behavior modification too abruptly.”

Sulie said, “He’s at a plateau stage, General. If I could have another six months with him I’d take it. Five days, no; there’s more risk than there is benefit. He’s found a real interest in his guitar — you should hear him. He’s built up really structurally good defenses in regard to his lack of sexual organs. He has even taken things into his own hands by running out last night — that’s a major step, General; his profile was much too passive to be good, when you consider the demands of this mission. I say put him on hold now.”

“And I say I need more time with him,” flared Brad. “Maybe Sulie’s right. But I’m right too, and I’ll take it to the President if I have to!”

Scanyon looked thoughtfully at Brad, then around the room. “Any other comments?”

Don Kayman put in, “For what it’s worth, I agree with Sulie. He’s not happy about his wife, but he’s not shaken up either. This is as good a place as any for him to go.”

“Yeah,” said Scanyon, gently patting the desk top again. He looked into space, and then said, “There’s something none of you know. Your simulation isn’t the only one of Roger that has been done lately.” He looked at each face and emphasized, “This is not to be discussed with anyone outside this room. The Asians are doing one of their own. They’ve tapped into our 3070 circuits somewhere between here and the two other computers and stolen all the data, and they’ve used it to make their own simulation.”

“Why?” Don Kayman demanded, only a beat before the others at the table.

“That’s what I wish I knew,” said Scanyon heavily. “They’re not interfering. We wouldn’t have known about it if it wasn’t for a routine line check that uncovered their tap — and then some cloak and dagger stuff in Peking that I don’t know about and don’t want to. All they did was read everything out and make their own program. We don’t know what use they are going to make out of it, but there’s a surprise in it. Right after that they dropped their protest against the launch. In fact, they offered the use of their Mars orbiter to expedite telemetry for the mission.”