Savant (32 page)

Doctor Wooh couldn’t see Saintout, but he sounded far too relaxed for her comfort. On the other hand, she was relieved that Tobe seemed settled, and not at all bothered by the conversation that Saintout had foisted upon him. She just wondered whether the Tech team could get into and out of Tobe’s room without Tobe realising it, either now, or later; later mattered less, since no one knew how much time was left to them.

“It’s the same, every day,” said Tobe. “I wanted to know how it could be the same. Nothing is the same.”

“What?” asked Saintout. “What is the same every day?”

“Eggpro,” said Tobe.

“And that’s bad? I had some of Metoo’s eggpro, and I thought it was brilliant.”

“Not bad,” said Tobe, “impossible.”

“I
DON’T GET
it,” said Branting to himself. “What the hell is he going on about?” Once Qa was established on screen one, he had tuned in to screen eight, to see Master Tobe, live. Screen seven then blinked into life, streaming Tobe’s Service screen. Screens three, nine and fifteen all came to life at the same time, showing the Operators in their interview rooms, and, finally, Branting cued screens seven and thirteen.

S
PLIT SCREENS APPEARED
on the vid-cons in the Operators’ interview rooms. The left hand screen started to fill with wafers that made Perrett and Marquez sit up and take notice. Chandar put down what he was doing, and looked up, too, when he heard Perrett’s gasp. None of them had ever seen anything like it.

“That’s got to be her,” said Marquez, staring at the screen.

“Who?” asked Burgess. “No, don’t tell me; that’s ‘the Mother of all things’, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Marquez, staring intently at the screen.

“That’s her,” said Goodman. “I never thought I’d see her screen twice.”

“Wow!” said McColl. “You didn’t tell me about this!”

“It’s the girl,” said Goodman.

“The girl?” asked McColl.

“The beautiful girl we were looking at when they showed us all that footage.”

“This is her? How do you know?”

“I just know. Frankly, it comes as a surprise that other people don’t know.”

The right hand screens in the interview rooms fizzed into life, but instead of wafers blending from one to the next, this looked like a live Service screen.

“And we’ve all seen that,” said Goodman.

“The Master,” said McColl.

“I think we can probably cut the crap, now, can’t we? And call him the Active.”

“When did you know?” asked McColl.

“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter, it’s not him that’s causing this bloody crisis.”

Goodman looked again at the screens, his eyes flitting from one to the other.

“I need a line-check,” said Goodman. He looked up slightly and said more loudly, “I need simultaneous line-checks on these two subjects, now!”

Branting’s voice was calm, as he spoke to Qa. He left Goodman’s audio channel open.

“Request concurrent line-checks on Master Tobe, and Assistant-Companion Metoo, Agent Operator Henderson,” he said.

“Prep station 7,” said Goodman, getting out of his seat. He left the room without further ceremony, and ran back onto the Service Floor as quickly as he could. He was a big man, but fit, and Chen barely had time to reset the switch on the facing edge of the counter-top, and vacate the seat, before Goodman was striding towards Workstation 7, the first place where he had seen Metoo’s mind at work.

“He’s right,” said Perrett, from her interview room in Mumbai. “Look in the 60 to 80 range. There’ll be an anomaly, on both sides. You’ll see something in both subjects.”

Marquez joined in. He was peering, intently, at the split screen vid-con in front of him.

“It’s not the same, though,” he said. “The intellectual and emotional cortexes are... I don’t know... cross-pollinating, somehow. You won’t find the same data in both subjects. Think laterally.”

“Thank you, Operators,” said Branting. He could not keep up with what they were suggesting, and could not see what they could see on the feeds in front of him, but the tests, so far as they had gone, had convinced Branting that these three Operators were a rich seam when it came to interpreting Service screen data. He secretly promised himself that he would never allow any of them to read his own Service screen.

Goodman completed the change-over in thirty-five seconds, a record, even by his standards.

“Who’s doing the line-check?” he called over his shoulder.

“Who do you want?” asked Henderson.

“Mayer,” said Bob, rolling the rubberpro sphere around under his hand. “Is Mayer on the Floor?”

“Here,” said Mayer, bouncing out of the dicky seat at Station 9. “I’ve got the Active.”

The glistening figure of eight was swirling on Bob’s screen as he began the countdown for the simultaneous line-check.

“Line-check,” they said, together.

“Verify,” said the Operators in the dicky seats at Workstations 9 and 7, on cue.

“Verify line-check,” said Goodman and Mayer, together.

Chapter Forty-Nine

S
CREEN
6
IN
front of Branting fizzed into life. Snow drifted across the screen, and then it blacked out. There was no visual signal, but a jagged line crossed the screen, pulsing up and down, and back and forth to the sound of Qa’s voice.

“Patching through Doctor Wooh, redirected from Service Global,” said Qa. “Screen 6.”

“Okay,” said Branting. “Doctor Wooh, can you hear me? This is Control Operator Branting.”

“Sir,” said Wooh, breathily, the jagged line squeezing up with the frequency of her excited voice. “All of the maths is pouring out of the mini-print slot in Tobe’s room, here in the flat. Send in a Tech team, and get the information out into the World.”

“Done,” said Branting signing off. The maths had been sent around the World via the mini-print slot in Tobe’s office, without anybody knowing how the print-out related to the actual material in the office; perhaps sending the work out in its entirety would solve the problems that it had caused in its partial state. It had to be worth a try.

Wooh was able to relax, knowing that the Techs were in the flat, and that all possible information concerning Tobe’s maths was being disseminated.

Metoo watched the same pictures that Doctor Wooh was watching. She too felt more relaxed than she had since leaving the flat, but for different reasons. She could relax, because she could see Tobe; it only remained for her to be reassured that he was his old self, and not some shadow of his former Active self.

“I
TELL YOU
what,” said Saintout, “why don’t I make us some eggpro?”

“It’s not the same,” said Tobe.

“Okay, Buddy, so talk me through it.”

“Tobe gets up at the same time, every day. Tobe has a shower. Then Tobe comes here,” he said, patting the kitchen counter in front of his stool. “The eggpro waits for Tobe, and Tobe eats it.”

“So, every day, you come in here and eat the eggpro that Metoo makes for you. I don’t get it. Why is that impossible?”

“Probability.”

“You’ve lost me, Buddy.”

Tobe looked up at Saintout, and said, “Who’s Buddy?”

Metoo smiled at the screen. If it looked like her usual Tobe, and it talked like her usual Tobe, maybe it was her usual Tobe.

“What has breakfast got to do with probability?” asked Saintout.

“A coin,” said Tobe in teacher mode, “has an obverse and a reverse. How many elements are there in breakfast?”

“I don’t know,” said Saintout. “No, hang on, I do know. I’m pretty sure Metoo told me how she makes Eggpro... What was it, again?”

“Tobe doesn’t know,” said Tobe, answering Saintout’s rhetorical question. “There are more than two elements in breakfast. I know that. More than just obverse/reverse.”

“I suppose so,” said Saintout, but he wasn’t really listening; he was trying to remember Metoo’s eggpro recipe.

“Tobe doesn’t understand cooking,” said Tobe. “The more elements there are, the less likely something is to be the same.”

Saintout was still trying to remember what Metoo had said, and didn’t answer Tobe.

“Like a dice,” said Tobe. “A dice has six elements, so the probability of throwing a one is one in six, or one-sixth. The probability of throwing two ones in a row is one-sixth times one-sixth, which is one-thirty-six. Should Tobe draw you a probability tree?”

“Two scoops of eggpro powder to one of powdered milk,” said Saintout, hesitating for a moment before going on. “A pump each of salt and pepper, out of the dispenser, and let the steam do the rest: 45 seconds.”

M
ETOO LOOKED AT
Strauss.

“I know what he’s doing!” she said, beaming.

“We’d better tell someone, then,” said Strauss, unable to keep a broad smile off her face.

G
OODMAN AND
M
AYER
worked through the line-check, while the rest of the Operators and Techs on the floor stood or sat in silence, barely able to move, hanging on with bated breath.

Every time either man called out a sector number the other checked the corresponding position on his screen.

The sparkling blue shoal that wove its way in a magical infinity symbol, like a figure of eight or a mobius strip, across Goodman’s screen, was difficult to implement a line-check on; nothing on Goodman’s screen remained static for long enough to read it thoroughly, even at the speed Goodman could work at, and the intensity of the pulsing lights obscured Goodman’s view, even when he was able to home-in on something. It was also extremely difficult to track sectors in the line-check, since they seemed to be constantly on the move.

Operators Goodman and Mayer reset, zoomed in, and hovered, according to each other’s instructions, but coordinating the two very different screens was proving impossible.

“Abort line-check,” said Goodman. “This isn’t working.” He threw the switch on the facing edge of the counter, and got up out of the seat. “Stay on her, though,” he said, as Chen took over.

Goodman walked up behind Mayer, and looked at Tobe’s screen over his shoulder.

A
S SOON AS
Goodman left the interview room, Branting filled screen twelve with live feed from the Service Floor, so that he could keep an eye on progress. When Goodman aborted, Branting apprised Perrett and Marquez of the situation.

“The line-check has been aborted,” said Branting. “I need any ideas you might have, and I need them fast.”

Perrett and Marquez acknowledged Branting, and went back to work, scrutinising the screen-feeds in front of them.

R
ANKED
O
PERATOR
C
HENKEYED
in her signature using the toggle switch on the facing edge of the counter. She sat watching the screen for a few minutes, mesmerised by the ebb and flow of the light and colour, and the sparkling of the particulars as they followed each other around and around, forming a perfect figure of eight. She rested her hand on the rubberpro sphere set into the counter-top in front of her.

Chen had seen Metoo’s screen before. She had been with Goodman when he had reviewed the screen; it seemed like months ago. She remembered suggesting that Goodman do a line-check, and she remembered him resisting her suggestions. Then the screen had...

“Oh my God!” said Chen, almost under her breath. She sat for a moment, staring at the screen.

“Goodman,” she said, still barely making a sound, and then, “Goodman”, a little louder this time.

Several seconds passed while the twenty-seven Operators on the Service Floor stared at their screens.

Branting switched audio out to Henderson’s headset.

“Check out Ranked Operator Chen, at Station 7,” said Branting.

“Goodman, sit here,” said Henderson, throwing his switch, and leaving his seat.

“You’re the boss,” said Goodman, “but I should be –”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Henderson, cutting him off.

Agent Operator Henderson walked up behind Chen at Workstation 7.

“What is it, Chen?” he asked. “Control Operator Branting wants to hear what you have to say.”

Chen stared more intently at the screen, partly because she couldn’t take her eyes off it, and partly because she was willing herself not to turn around and look Henderson in the eye when she told him what she needed to say. She wanted to make sure that he listened to her, and took her seriously.

“It’s this screen,” said Chen. “The last time Goodman and I viewed this screen, there was a massive change, to a form that might be easier to complete a line-check on.”

“Explain,” said Henderson.

“She can’t,” Goodman called from across the room. Chen’s voice had finally carried to him, and he rose from the seat that Henderson had just vacated. He crossed the room in barely a couple of strides, and was behind Chen before she’d had a chance to throw her switch. She did it now.

“I don’t need to sit,” said Goodman. “We just need to work out what triggered the switch from this pattern,” he said, indicating the screen, “to the spherical pattern that followed it, the last time we had Metoo on screen.”