There were a lot of details that he seemed to be noticing for the first time-the location of the pillars, for instance, as the train pulled into the next station. Except for one broken stump near the far end of the platform the pillars provided excellent cover, and a pillar would never be more than four or five meters away. The occasional bullethole proved that the pillars were a formidable barrier-good defenses to cover a retreat down the tunnel.
What an odd thing to notice, Casper thought, startled by his own musings. Why would he pay any attention to something like that? His study of the crowd back on the platform had been curious, too. He had been vaguely aware of where everyone was, all of the time he was there. And he hadn't so much noticed that everyone was alone as he had noticed that no one was together, that there was no organization in the crowd.
Why was he thinking about that?
Why was he thinking about anything when he felt so rotten?
He turned to face into the train, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. The motion and stink of the train upset his stomach, though, so he opened his eyes again, which seemed to help.
He was staring at the man seated on the other side of the car. The man shifted angrily in his seat, and Casper, realizing what he was doing, averted his gaze.
The train finally pulled into the Race/Vine station, and he swayed to his feet. There were almost as many people getting on here as getting off, and Casper, in his unsteady state, had a little trouble getting through the doors. Eventually he made it onto the platform and headed for the stairs to the street.
The short walk to the office seemed interminable, but at last he made it, only slightly late.
Quinones happened to be arriving at the same time as Casper. He nodded a greeting.
“Feeling all right today, Beech?” he asked.
“Yes, Mr. Quinones.” Casper hesitated, then added, “I had a bad time with the imprinting, but I feel fine now.”
“Good, good,” Quinones said; Casper braced for a slap on the back, but it didn't come. “We've got quite a bit of work for you to do,” Quinones said.
“I'm ready for it,” Casper told him. He didn't bother to try to smile or sound enthusiastic; he knew he couldn't pull it off, and Quinones wouldn't care in any case.
Quinones strode off to his office while Casper shuffled to his desk. He sat down, logged on, and looked at the list of work that awaited him. There were eighteen urgent traces already in the queue, some of them obviously complex and time-consuming, and more would probably come in before quitting time.
He sighed.
“It's going to be a busy day,” he muttered.
Lester Polnovick stopped his crane and rubbed his forehead. He'd had a ferocious headache ever since he had left NeuroTalents the day before, after his imprinting. The flicker from the crane's monitor screen seemed to be making it worse; he couldn't turn the screen off, but he did turn down the brightness.
The headache wasn't important, he told himself. What was important was that after years of failing the qualifying exams for management positions he had scraped up the money to have the necessary skills imprinted. Crane work was getting scarce, now that robots were doing most of it, and the pay wasn't what it used to be; it was time to move on. Soon he'd be exchanging his blue collar for a white one-symbolically, at any rate, since the collar of his work shirt was silver-grey, and he hadn't seen a white shirt in years, not since the city, at the insistence of the Consortium and with the Party's blessing, had given up enforcing the clean air laws.
“Hey, Lester, get a move on!” someone shouted.
Lester waved and grabbed the control levers. He swung his load of temporary flooring around and raised it to the top of the building framework, and then looked over the growing structure while the crew was unloading the sling.
This was to be the Volcker Financial Center, Philadelphia's attempt to claim its share of the booty now that yet another string of terrorist attacks had finally driven New York's Wall Street to decentralize.
Lester was unimpressed with the structure. “It wouldn't take much to bring that whole thing right down,” he mused aloud; due to spending so much time alone in the crane's cab he had gotten in the habit of talking to himself. “Just a small charge there, there, and maybe there, ought to do it.” A certain warm satisfaction seeped into him at the realization.
Then he frowned. “Why did I think of that?” he asked himself. “What do I know about it?” Could there have been information in his imprinting about explosives and demolition? What the hell did that have to do with management?
Had there been some sort of error? Some of the technicians at NeuroTalents had looked sort of worried when he had left.
His headset crackled, and he forgot about it. “Okay, Les, go get another load,” the crew boss's voice told him.
Les swung the crane back toward the pile of flooring, and waited for the next batch to be secured.
Stu and Carl had just finished strapping another load into the sling when the lunch whistle blew. Les reached for the ignition switch, then paused. Slowly, without quite knowing why, he withdrew his hand. He waited quietly in the cab until the rest of the crew had settled down for lunch, and then he slipped out the side door.
He didn't know at first where he was going, but using a stack of pipes for cover, he made his way towards the shack where the explosives were stored.
He stood for a moment at the door, uncertain what he was doing-or rather, why he was doing it. He knew what he wanted, knew that he had to do it, but he didn't know why.
But then he shrugged. It didn't matter why; he had to do it. He reached for the handle.
As he had hoped, the shack was unlocked, despite strict company regulations and city ordinances to the contrary. Convenience had won out over the law once again.
“What's going on here, Polnovick?” said the voice of Keough, the ground-crew foreman, as Les felt a hand on his arm.
“I noticed the door to the shack was open,” he said, turning. “I just thought I'd close it.”
“Yeah, well, why don't you just let me worry about it.” Keough eyed him suspiciously, then pushed past him into the shack. “You got something going in here? Something special, maybe?”
“Nope,” Polnovick answered. He smiled. He knew what to do. “You want to check, go ahead. Whatever you say.” He picked up a discarded length of pipe, hefted it silently, and then followed Keough into the shack.
Casper worked through lunch, eating a vending-machine sandwich at his desk. He was having trouble working-even the simplest, most routine tasks seemed to be giving him trouble. He just couldn't get his thoughts in order; the habits of years all seemed to have disappeared. It was probably a residual effect from his bad reaction to the imprinting, he told himself, but whatever the reason, it meant that it took him longer to do his work.
And so far, he had not picked up any new techniques or knowledge that he was aware of-but then, the new software wasn't running yet. This was Friday, and it would go in over the weekend.
He was also supposed to have been given improved techniques for handling the old stuff, though, and any improvements certainly hadn't made themselves obvious.
His office nemesis, Mirim Anspack, was among the first to return from lunch, and for the moment the two of them were the only people in the main room. She was Cecelia's roommate, and in fact Casper had only met Cecelia when the latter came to the office to pick up Mirim. Even before that momentous occasion, Mirim had delighted in teasing Casper; once he started dating Cecelia he had become the target of endless double entendres, and now that the imprinting and Casper's bad reaction were common gossip she had a new topic to tease him about.
Casper didn't really mind. He was used to it. He could take it, and even dish out a little in return. If he hadn't been able to, Mirim would have left him alone after awhile; she wasn't cruel, just playful.
She loitered near her desk for a few minutes, plotting her mischief, before approaching him.
“So how's our new super-operator doing?” she asked.
“Plodding along, like the rest of you. Wouldn't want to make you look bad.”
“Oh, you needn't worry; none of us would think of competing with you! No, we'll let you do everything, shall we?”
“From the job list, I believe it. Can anyone do anything around here without me?”
“We manage, although how…”
A heavy rumble interrupted her; they both looked up, startled. The first rumble was followed by a second one several seconds later; the building shook, and a window blew out, scattering glass across the floor. Mirim and
