Reality Matrix Effect (9781310151330) (11 page)

“I can
’
t,
”
she said simply, gazing at her shoe tops.
“
Don
’
t forget
your book.
”

Al forced a smile and nodded, then backed out
the door, clutching the book tightly in his hand.

 “
Charlie Wraggon, I want ya ta meet Hank
Tauber,” Barnard said as he gestured for his companion to slide
into the booth, where Wraggon already sat nursing a
drink.

“Hey!  How ’bout a bottle o’
Spacefarer’s over here!” Barnard hollered at the bartender.

“Come get it yourself, pal,” the bartender
answered, placing a bottle and two glasses on the bar. “You and
your friend’ve been in here enough by now to know we don’t provide
service this time of day. And I want cash this time, or you don’t
get the booze!  Your account’s screwed up my payments the last
three times!”

Barnard turned to look at Wraggon, who nodded
in disgust. “What do you expect in a world run by robbies and
computers?” Wraggon grumbled.

“I’ll take care of it,” Tauber said, handing
Barnard his universal transaction card.

“Thanks,” Barnard said before walking to the
bar. “Here,
friend
,” he said with sarcasm,
sliding the card across the counter. “‘Milk of Human
Kindness.’  Hah!  When ya gonna give this bar a decent
name?  The one ya got’s a lie. You’re like everybody else in
this world. All ya care about’s what the damn computers tell
ya!”

“Whatever you say, pal,” the bartender sighed
after charging Tauber’s account. He shook his head in amusement as
he replaced the card on the bar top. Barnard shot an unpleasant
gesture at the bartender’s back, dropped the card into his pocket
and picked up the bottle and glasses.

“Now let’s get down ta some serious
drinkin’,” he said, depositing the bottle and glasses on the table
as he slipped into the booth next to Tauber.

“My card, please,” Tauber said quietly.

“Huh?  Oh, yeah.”  Barnard took the
card from his pocket and handed it back to the other man. Then he
poured each of them a drink.

Tauber was 32 years old, about six feet tall
and 180 pounds of muscle. His light brown hair framed a strong,
almost arrogant face dominated by cold, blue eyes. Wraggon regarded
him uneasily. Even before he spoke, the man radiated a quiet—and
vaguely threatening—power.

“I figured you two oughtta meet,” Barnard
said. “The way Hank talks, and the way you talk, you guys
oughtta  really hit it off. Hank here was in the Merchant
Fleet for about....  Eight years, wasn’t it, Hank?”

Tauber nodded and sipped some of his
whiskey.

“Yeah,” Barnard continued. “Eight years.
Anyway, last week they went and threw ’im out!  Told ’im he
oughtta quit ‘for the good of the service.’”

Tauber’s jaw muscles tightened, but he said
nothing.

“So did you do it?” Wraggon asked Tauber
after a moment of silence. “Did you quit?”

Tauber hesitated before answering. “Yeah,” he
said at last. “Wasn’t going to at first, but then I realized there
wasn’t much point in staying with the service anymore. Every time I
tried to do something, the higher-ups would block me. Sometimes, I
just went ahead and did what I wanted without their okay. Usually
just small stuff. Cutting corners on paper work—that sort of
thing.”  He paused, his eyes gauging Wraggon’s reactions.
“They never said much about it. But last week, they decided to give
me a hard time.”  He shrugged. “I said the wrong thing to some
of the wrong people. So they put me down for gross
insubordination.”

Wraggon nodded appreciatively. He knew what
it felt like to have numbskulls telling you what to do when you
knew more than they did.

“Tell Charlie about the deal you set up in
the Asteroid Belt,” Barnard urged, downing his drink and then
pouring himself another.

Wraggon looked at Tauber expectantly, but the
other man remained silent.

“C’mon, Hank,” Barnard cajoled. “I told you,
Charlie here’s okay.”

“Well,” Tauber began hesitantly, “I guess it
doesn’t really matter if I tell you. It’s all history now,
anyway.”

He took another sip of his drink before
continuing. “What happened was, I got tired of the way the rock
farmers were treating the guys in the merchant crews. Just like
robbies. Seemed to me the bowl-squatters needed a lesson—a little
demonstration of the fact that they couldn’t just order us around.
That’s when I got this idea:  Hold back some of the colonists’
supplies and make ’em pay the crew a bonus to get the stuff
back.”

“Terrific idea, ain’t it?” Barnard said to
Wraggon, nudging him with an elbow.

“So what happened?” Wraggon asked, ignoring
Barnard.

“Fleet didn’t think it was such a good idea,”
Tauber said. “‘A violation both of Fleet’s contracts and of the
Merchanters Code of Ethics.’  That’s what they told me nine
months ago when I went through channels before my last run. And at
first I bought that garbage.”  Tauber shook his head and
sipped his drink. “Anyway, when I was up there last time—I don’t
know. I just decided to go ahead and do it. I was the senior
merchanter on the run, so it was easy to get the others to go
along. Hell, they wanted to show those rock farmers up as much as I
did!  Anyhow, we held out some of the supplies and got a nice
bonus for ourselves in colonial trade goods. Even got some of the
newest molecular computer components.”

“Hey,” Wraggon interjected, “those things are
hard to get!  The CDN has top priority. MECs are kind of
expensive, too. We use ’em to make some of the advanced
experimental robbies at the plant, and we’re always having trouble
getting enough of ’em.”

“What are MECs?” Barnard asked, looking
confused.

“Molecular electronic components,” Wraggon
said unceremoniously.

“The point is,” Tauber resumed, “by time we
got back to Earth, the rock farmers had filed a complaint with
Fleet. That’s when they called me in. After that, they turned me
into a desk pilot.”

“You didn’t expect the colonists to file a
complaint?” asked Wraggon.

Tauber shook his head. “No. You see, the rock
farmers can’t survive without the supply ships. We know it, and we
assumed they knew it. They can’t afford to alienate Fleet. So I
told them that we were implementing a new Fleet policy. Any
sensible people would be more worried about offending Fleet than
about losing a little in trade goods. But then rock farmers aren’t
very bright. After all, their ancestors were Earth’s failures and
rejects. I should’ve known they’d be too thick to realize how much
trouble they’d be in if I was leveling about Fleet policy.”

“Howdaya like that, Charlie?” Barnard yelped.
“They’re too dumb to know when they’re in trouble, but they go
around lording it over us merchanters. They’re so damned used to
ordering robbies around. Makes ’em think they’re better’n we are.
And they get away with it. It’s just like you been sayin’. The
robbies are lettin’ the dummies and the weaklings have too much
power!”

“That’s for sure!” Wraggon put in as he
drained his glass and reached for the bottle.

“Is that what you think?” Tauber asked in a
controlled, low-pitched voice.

“Damn right!  Don’t you?”

Tauber looked thoughtful for a moment as
Barnard refilled the ex-merchanter’s glass.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Tauber finally answered.
“Never really thought of it quite that way, but maybe you’re right.
There’s more to it, though. Has to be. This whole country—the whole
world—depends on robots and computers. Just like you said before.
They’re kind of the foundation of the power structure that runs
things these days.”

“Yeah?” said Wraggon. He had the feeling that
there was more on Tauber’s mind.

“I don’t know for sure. Just seems to me that
superior people should be able to find some way of changing that—or
at least a way of turning it to our own advantage.”

Wraggon looked closely at Tauber. The former
merchanter’s forehead was creased in concentration. Like he’s
trying to come up with some sort of plan, Wraggon mused.

Wraggon’s thoughts were cut short as Barnard
lifted his glass in a toast.

“Down with the robbies!” the big man
said.

Wraggon and Tauber glanced at Barnard, then
at each other, and smiled indulgently.

“Down with the robbies!” they chimed in as
they clinked glasses.

 
The
sudden “click” of the tape player’s automatic shutoff interrupted a
rush of disjointed thoughts that had begun competing for Rayna’s
attention as Al Frederick’s transcribed voice fell
silent.

What was she to make of this?  Did Al
have what they used to call a “nervous breakdown”?  Did he
crack from overwork?  How could Al Frederick—an experienced
newspaperman whose job had both demanded and reinforced a healthy
dose of skepticism—have taken that Zorne mumbo-jumbo
seriously?  Poor Aunt Vickie!  No wonder they broke
up!

As Rayna removed the tape from the machine,
she noticed Al’s letter, which she had tossed onto the coffee table
when she removed the cassettes from the permastore container. What
was it he had said?  Something about listening to all the
tapes?  She withdrew the letter from its envelope. Ah, yes.
Here it was: 
“Please listen to all the tapes before you
draw any conclusions.”
  Well, if Al was a little space
happy at the time he recorded those tapes, at least he seemed to
recognize the fact later on. He realized all this stuff would sound
crazy. Still, he wanted me to hear him out, she thought. I suppose
I owe him that much. He was always willing to listen to me.

“Okay, Al,” she said aloud. “Let’s try
another one.”

She leaned forward, picked up the next tape
in the sequence and examined it briefly before inserting it into
the machine. Glancing up, she found herself momentarily distracted
by sunlight dancing across the gently undulating water of her
holographic seascape. Soothed by the peaceful scene, she smiled,
pressed the “play” key, and settled back.

“Today is Monday, Nov. 1, 1971,” Al’s voice began.
“It’s been quite awhile since my last log entry, but I’ll try to
bring things up to date. The thing is, I’ve been awfully busy. A
whole new world is opening up for me, and I just can’t seem to get
a handle on it. I spent my three-week vacation up north working
with Alec Zorne. Since then, I’ve been going to his place just
about every weekend. In fact, I just got back last night. With
Vickie in New York until late January, there isn’t much else I want
to do with my time anyway.

“Zorne’s not at all what I expected a guy with his
public image to be. He’s very serious about his work. He’s either a
complete nut or else some kind of genius. Trouble is, his ideas are
so tough for me to follow that I’m not sure I can tell whether he’s
the one or the other. At least I have his book as some sort of kind
of written guideline. That helps a little.”

A clicking sound indicated that Al had
stopped and then restarted the machine.

“I’ve got to get myself a little more organized
here. There’s so much to tell, and I’m still not sure I have it
clear in my own mind. I suppose the best place to start is when I
first went to see Zorne in his lab at the Bryant Institute, the
experimental college where he teaches. Hard to believe that was
just a month and a half ago....”

*    *    *

“Not much of a laboratory,
”
Al commented as Zorne ushered him into the room.
“
I was expecting something more like the
pictures I
’
ve seen of labs at the big
universities.
”

“I don
’
t know about
your expectations, but we operate pretty much on a
shoestring,
”
Zorne said.
“
We have the essentials here—” he gestured about the
room
“
—but no frills.
”
  He stopped walking and scratched his head, his
face wrinkled in reflection.
“
Well-l-l-l,
come to think of it, there are some things we could use that are
more than just frills. Faster, more efficient computers, for
instance. But we manage.
”
  He smiled.
“
When we win that new grant money based on
the work we
’
re going to do together,
we
’
ll be able to expand our
facilities.
”

Al nodded expressionlessly and looked around.
The lab was larger than a classroom but smaller than the newsman
had imagined it would be. Along the back wall was a tank Al
recognized as a cloud chamber. The left wall was dominated by
computer equipment. There were two workbenches toward the front of
the room, and a large storage cabinet shared the back portion of
the right wall with several file cabinets.

“This is where we
’
ll
be doing most of our work together,
”
Zorne
said, patting a table in the left rear  corner of the room.
These electrodes are going to become old friends.
”

Zorne was holding what looked like a mass of
colored spaghetti attached to a number of small discs.

“What
’
s this
thing?
”
Al asked, indicating the
unfamiliar piece of equipment to which the electrodes were
attached.
        

“A cousin of the electroencephalograph. I call
it an
‘
electroscan.
’
  I designed it to measure certain
characteristics of the electromagnetic waves in the
brain—characteristics that an EEG doesn
’
t
pick up. I did my early experiments using an EEG, but it
wasn
’
t telling me what I needed to know.
The EEG was never intended to monitor the kind of oscillations that
my equations were predicting. All you really need to know is that
this gadget here measures the activity that I think is responsible
for psychic phenomena.
”