Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

There was a short silence. ‘If we sank all our assets maybe we could come up with the needed amount, though I doubt it,’ one of the aides said tentatively. ‘But we’d be really out on a limb.’

Karnak nodded.

‘It isn’t just that,’ Mettick injected. ‘There’s the technical data too. I’ve done some research in the library. It isn’t all there: the syn has kept some of it private. Which means that businesses capable of artifactoring ipse equipment are all synowned, too.’

Another of the aides slapped his fist in his palm. ‘They’ve really got it sewn up,’ he said savagely.

‘It’s getting so they’re sewing everything up,’ said the aide who had first spoken. The rate of absorption of businesses taken over by the syndicate – brought into syn, in the jargon – was one of the things Karnak’s team liked to grouse about.

‘ Right: this is what we’ll do,’ said Karnak, cutting into their talk like a hand cutting through smoke. Their attention snapped on to him: the Man had made a Decision.

‘We’ll make an election issue of it, starting as of right now,’ he told them. ‘The syn has a monopoly of ipse holo. That’s undemocratic – it should be available to all magisterial candidates. We’ll push the idea that the owners of ipse equipment should lease it, or even loan it, to anyone on the elective list. Wrap it up in a package – the ever-increasing hold the syn is having on our lives, the stricture on routes to the top in our society, and so forth. But press it hard.’

‘Hmm.’ An aide nodded thoughtfully. ‘The syn’s reply will be that we are trying to subvert the plutocratic principle – anybody not successful enough to have their own ipse apparatus doesn’t deserve to have it, dig? But it will definitely put them on the defensive. They might even have to let us use their ipse to avoid looking mean and brutish. It’s good, K, it’s good.’ He nodded again, enthusiastically.

‘Maximum publicity,’ Karnak intoned. ‘Get to work on it, there isn’t much time.’ He waved his arms; the aides began to leave the room. ‘You two stay,’ he said to Obsier and Mettick. ‘I’ve another little job for you.’

When the three of them were alone Karnak settled himself in his plush black swivel-chair and leaned back, placing his finger-tips together.

‘Did you have a hard time in SupraBurgh?’ he asked, shooting a glance at Obsier.

Obsier shrugged. ‘A little.’

‘It makes me wonder – you know, everything’s so different up above. If it changes your outlook at all when you come back.’

Obsier frowned. The question was interesting. He had been to SupraBurgh five times in all, each time with a view to setting up some kind of arrangement for Karnak. He had tried to identify the unnamed feelings it stirred up in him, but he had always failed.

‘It gives you an outside view of UnderMegapolis, as it were,’ he said, ‘but that soon fades once you return. Frankly I wouldn’t advise anyone to make the trip.’

‘So it does change you?’ Mettick asked.

‘Well, it arouses peculiar sensations, like ideas that drift through your mind. As if you’re resentful that – that we’re living down here, subterranean, and can’t get out, while they’re…’

The other two looked at him in blank incomprehension, as if he had suddenly begun to speak gibberish.

‘But it’s just some sort of illusion, I guess,’ he resumed. ‘Some of the things you see in SupraBurgh would unnerve anyone. I saw an interstellar ship taking off once, just disappearing up and up into the blue sky without limit—’ He broke off, attacked by sudden nausea.

‘My God,’ said Mettick quietly.

‘It was too much,’ Obsier said. ‘Luckily I had tranquillizers. I was under sedation for six hours.’

There was an embarrassed silence at this description of foreign perversions. Karnak changed the subject.

‘Well, you can forget all about that now. But I appreciate your sacrifices, I truly do. I wouldn’t relish going up there myself. Now to more immediate matters. Our campaign for the use of ipse holo will probably turn out to be the most crucial issue of recent times. You and Mettick make a good team, especially where historical research is concerned. I’d like you to spend some time in the library.’

‘What are we supposed to be looking for?’

Karnak placed his hands flat on the desk top, his expression distant, slightly puzzled. ‘I just can’t help feeling there’s an angle on the syn bosses we could use. I’ve got an itch up here.’ He tapped his cranium. ‘The trouble is, I don’t know what it is. Do you realise how hard it is to get close to the syn bosses data-wise?’

‘They are shielded, naturally,’ Obsier admitted. ‘That makes sense. But there are the official biographies.’

‘Yes, detailed but… artificial, somehow. Business, business, business. One long story of public service, private life coming off second best.’

‘It would be hard to sort out the man from the commercial empire in the jobs they are doing.’ Mettick pointed out.

‘True, boys, true. You know, I’ve spent hours studying their holocom talks. After a while I get the feel of their style. You know something? It’s as if they’ve all been to the same school. There’s something in their approach to spiel that’s the same in each of them, despite their being such distinctive characters.’

Obsier and Mettick looked at one another. ‘Perhaps they’ve been coached by the same expert,’ Mettick suggested.

‘Except Schultz,’ Karnak added. ‘He’s different. But of course he doesn’t appear on holo nearly as much as the others. He rides in on Sinatra’s ticket, everybody knows that. And his network is a subsidiary of Sinatra’s, we know that too. As a matter of fact if I get on the magisterial council it’s Schultz I expect to be replacing.’

Obsier mulled it over but came up with nothing.

‘Just give your imagination free play and browse around. Probably you won’t come up with anything, but again you might.’ Karnak smiled ruefully. ‘We’ll soon be in the thick of it. This is a mountain we’re tackling, and it’s as well to know all the slopes.’

Cybration.

Cybration was the key to modern business.

Cybration was the key to how UnderMegapolis was able to exist.

As the transit pod swept across the supercity advertising flashes swung up and receded like star systems undergoing doppler effect, composing a cityscape of endless dimensions; internal hormones of the business world.

RAFT ENTERPRISES ARE HERE TO SERVE YOU

EX-TYPE INTRACTIONS OFFER 100% BIREFRINGENCE

WANT IT? STYLIC ACCESS HAS IT

Having researched the inane selling promotions of an earlier age, Obsier admired modern advertising for its muscular simplicity, its impression of underlying power and reliability. It was functional. It didn’t insult the intelligence. And it was effective.

‘May as well split into two departments,’ Mettick was saying. ‘I’ll research the personalities. You go into the technical side.’

‘Right.’

The pod deposited them ten miles from Karnak’s headquarters. Ahead of them was the towering frontage of the central library. Obsier left Mettick and went wandering through interminable sepulchral galleries. Eventually he settled down before a terminal in the Useful Hardware section. He ruminated; he had no lead, no idea of what he was looking for.

Idly, for the sake of making a move, he called on a subject.

‘CYBRATION: The history of cybration goes back in a realistic sense to the year circa minus 780, when the first genuine cybrators were constructed. The name used for these early machines was “computer”, which was an accurate term since they were in fact little more than high-speed counters. Round about the year minus 700 the term cybration was coined to describe all types of automatic data processing both electronic and laseronic and covering computer, executive and andromatic modes.