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

‘The modem business corporation is largely a cybrated system where personnel are used to fill particular positions requiring “personalisation”. But for this method UnderMegapolis could not exist, since the complexity of a modern society within a closed environment is beyond the capacity of an individual or group.’

Pictures of early computers and later installations. The account continued, becoming increasingly technical. Obsier quickly lost interest. He called on another subject.

‘IPSEIC HOLOCOM: The introduction of ipseic transmission must be admitted to be the last word in image reproduction at a distance, unless the waveform transmission of actual physical objects one day becomes possible. The first workable ipseic transmitting apparatus was tested in United Laserelec Laboratories (owned by the now defunct Megac RD Consolidated) in year 421.

‘For a number of centuries it had been considered that the standard holo television system provided absolute perfection since it can reproduce images, with full colour and full parallax, that are indistinguishable from the original. United Laserelec drew attention to a deficiency, soon confirmed by psychological tests, that had long been overlooked: holocom, like earlier television systems before it, does not convey charisma. It is easy to ignore someone speaking on an ordinary holo stage, and no display of emotion or insistence on the part of the performer can force attention out of the viewer if he does not feel like giving it.

‘It would be simple to attribute this lack to the viewer’s knowledge that the performer is not actually present and that he is confronting only an insubstantial image. By means of careful experimentation United Laserelec destroyed this myth. Later it was discovered that “presence” – the effect of “being there” that one person has on another – is not a mental supposition but an actual, though subtle, force transmitted between people at short range. Further research showed that this force is an emanation radiated on a frequency of the order of 23 trillion trillion cycles per second. When a transmitter capable of adding this waveform to the normal holocorn waveband was developed it was found that the transmitted image of a person carried the full force of his presence. It achieved ipseity: “he himself”.

‘Ipseic holocom has not come into general use. Although the modifications enabling an ordinary holo receiver to pick up ipseity are inexpensive – and in fact all holo sets are now so adapted – the cost of ipseity transmission is prohibitive. A number of transmitters are owned by the leading conglomerates of UnderMegapolis and are used for political purposes.’

Mettick was on a different tack. He had before him the names and images of all six syn leaders – six heads of colossal business conglomerates. He had decided to investigate their family backgrounds.

Suprisingly, although their biographies detailed brief family histories in each case, these families were difficult to track down. Accordingly Mettick set the library unit he had been allotted to engage on a lineal-and-likeness hunt.

This was on the third day of his somewhat aimless hit-and-miss tactics. Mettick sat back daydreaming as the unit hummed faintly. He dozed, and awoke with a start to find that the unit had been working for several hours.

There was a quiet clatter as a sheet slid out of the copy slit. Mettick picked it up and stared in bemusement.

A picture of Sinatra stared back at him. It was the same face he knew from many appearances on ipse holo – of all the magisters, Sinatra was probably the most sedulous where his public image was concerned.

Beneath the picture there was a caption. ‘Frank Sinatra, years circa minus 790-740 (mid-20th Century, contemporary reckoning), singer and actor on “cinema” (primitive image reproduction system).’ There followed a list of dramas in which the long-dead actor had appeared. The library, apparently, had recordings of a few of them.

Mettick shook his head in wonderment. The library unit had found an individual, far back in history, of the same name as the syn boss – and of exactly the same appearance. It was all there: the smiling blue eyes, the lean, rubbery, wide-mouthed face, the mixture of candour and astuteness, the toughness within the geniality. The amazing resemblance could only represent a centuries-ago emergence of very strong family traits that were still active. Sinatra’s ancestors could be traced, after all.

Mettick folded up the picture and put it in his pocket. Then he leaned towards the terminal and started work again.

Frank Sinatra leaned forward with one arm resting on his knee, sitting relaxed and easy on an upright chair. His life-size form filled the holo stage. In almost the same way, the force of his personality seemed to fill and dominate the entire room.

‘Sometimes I think it’s possible to lose sight of the obvious, just because it is so obvious,’ he was saying to the family in the room – the average, healthy-minded family, like the millions of average families listening to Sinatra at this moment, who were watching the holo stage.

Sinatra gave a wry smile. ‘After all, that’s a natural human failing and we are all prey to it, just as everybody sooner or later drops a hammer on his foot. But sometimes a character will come along and try to take advantage of our momentary inattention. He’ll suggest it would be a good idea if the principles we’ve lived by for so long were to be laid aside. Well, whether that’s so or not is something the whole city will decide, practising the best-established principle of all, the principle of elective democracy. All I’m saying is that before we accept any changes we should think good and hard about it, because the freedoms and the affluence we enjoy today didn’t come about all at once, and they didn’t come about by themselves, either. They needed the right system, and that took a long period of time to evolve.’

Sinatra stopped speaking. He rubbed his jaw reflectively, more serious now, and then turned his warm, steady eyes back on his spellbound audience. ‘If this is beginning to sound like a sales pitch, you’re dead right – that’s just what it is. For my money it will be a sad day for UnderMegapolis if we ever lose sight of the principle of plutocratic democracy. It’s given us everything we have, and I believe it’s the best system of government there is. It ensures that only men rule who have already proved their ability to administrate on a large scale, their ability to increase wealth and to provide the community with goods and services. It means efficiency, intelligence and prowess in the high offices of government. And UnderMegapolis proves it by voting in the biggest and most successful corporation heads – the captains of industry, if you want to call it that – for term after term. Well, it now appears that there are some people who want to subvert this principle. Not having what it takes to make it big by their own efforts, they see the Magisterial Council as an easy way of getting to the top.’ Sinatra shook his head sadly. ‘They just don’t know what they’d be letting themselves in for. Running a supercity is no job for anyone who hasn’t been right through the whole school. The community would soon realise it, too. But that won’t happen, because the voters have got too much sense. They realise what plutocratic democracy is for.’

A red light glowed suddenly on the left of the holo stage. A thrill of unbelieving excitement ran through the listening family. Sinatra was inviting a question from them!

On-the-spot questioning was a regular feature of the fairly frequent magisterial holocasts, but in a population of a hundred million the chances of the red light going on in their household had always seemed, well, infinitesimal.