explained that he was going to build the computer, and that he was looking for an immunobiologist. He asked if I thought I could handle the job. I said yes.' Her lower lip began to quiver.
'Dorothy,' Laura said gently, rounding the desk to kneel beside her chair. She rubbed her hand across the girl's back. Her bones stuck through the jersey. 'You've done a great job. Nobody expects you to do any more than you've been doing. Even Mr. Gray doesn't have a clue what's wrong.'
Dorothy's chin was tucked into her chest. 'Don't be so sure,' she whispered.
Laura took her hand from the girl's back. 'What do you mean?'
Dorothy sniffed and straightened. Again she glanced at the open door. 'Nothing,' she said, not looking Laura in the eye.
'You think Mr. Gray knows what's going on, and he's not telling us?'
'Mr. Gray always knows what's going on!' she snapped, her teeth clenched. 'Haven't you figured that out already?' Dorothy looked at the door for a third time.
Laura followed the girl eyes to the empty doorway. 'There's something you're not telling me,' she said quietly.
'Laura, you can't tell anybody, okay?' Dorothy whispered, and Laura nodded. The young girl leaned forward and spoke urgently, with fear evident in her voice. 'You want to know what I think is happening? It's a pandemic. A plague that started out in the computer and spread to the robots. It's communicable through one of the normal data ports like the tap the robots make into the computer's world model. That's why we can't kill it with the computer's antiviral programs. As soon as the virus is swept from the computer, it gets infected again by a robot when the data link is established. The clipped versions of the antiviral programs in the robots' mini-nets just aren't capable enough to kill the spores of the virus that they carry.'
'Well, if you're right, what's going to happen?'
Dorothy looked ashen. Her voice was distant and weak, she spoke in a monotone. 'The computer and the robots are going to get sicker and sicker. Their behavior is going to become more erratic. Then, when the delirium sets in… all hell's going to break loose.'
Laura had to swallow before she could speak with any confidence in how she would sound. 'Dorothy, if that's what you think's happening, why don't you tell Mr. Gray?'
The girl looked up at Laura. 'I did.' She swallowed hard — rushing to continue before the effort was complete. 'He listened to me without saying a word or asking a single question!' She drifted off again, lost in the retelling. 'Then he looked at me — you know, really looked right at me the way he does — and said, 'That's very good work, Dorothy. I can't tell you how proud I am of you. Now, I don't want you ever to breathe a word of this to anybody.'' The girl looked up at Laura — suddenly alarmed. 'Please don't tell anybody! You promise?' Laura assured her she wouldn't tell, and Dorothy sank again into her morass of worry. 'It's a pandemic,' she muttered.
'It's the end… the end of everything.'
Dorothy's fears swirled in Laura's mind as she returned to her desk.
The screen was just as she'd left it. She took a deep breath and concentrated.
What was still unexplained was how the Other fit into those theories. To hear Dorothy talk, the 'virus' was analogous to the microorganisms that infected humans with disease. But that description didn't fit the Other, which was large and seemingly quite tangible — like a tumor. And there were other pieces of the puzzle that didn't fit, like Gray putting the Model Eight facilities and Krantz's nuclear device labs back on full automation. But that made no sense, because the computer could see nothing inside of them.
Laura slowly nodded, the picture coming into focus. It was a picture of the computer waging war against the Other for control of the island… and losing.
<Aren't you going to say hello?> scrolled across the monitor right before her eyes.
She looked at the black eyeball beside the door, then rolled her chair forward to the keyboard. 'This is getting spooky. Are you watching me again?'
<Sorry. Am I a particularly frustrating patient.>
'It's not you. You just have no idea how much I'm having to deal with right now,' Laura typed.
<You want to trade places? Let me taste some of Janet's cooking tonight over a candlelight dinner with Mr. Gray!>
Laura's guard instantly went up. 'You seem to be in better spirits,' she typed warily.
<I feel much better! Mr. Gray just did some reprogramming.>
'Mr. Gray? Himself?'
<You shouldn't be so surprised. Nobody knows more about my programming than Mr. Gray. He lowered my back prop thresholds. Made me more tolerant of the little flubs and flops that've been bothering me these last few days.>
'You mean he raised your tolerance for errors?'
<Exactly! It's only temporary, of course, but I needed the break. 'All work and no play'… they always say.>
Laura's fingers hovered in the air over the keyboard. The computer's mood had changed completely.
It was more talkative than before. More talkative, possibly, than it should have been.
Ignoring her faint pang of guilt, Laura typed, 'Did you listen to Mr. Gray's speech at the town meeting?' She winced and hit Enter.
<Of course! It was wonderful. Inspiring!>
<I knew you would understand! I told Mr. Gray that you just needed time.>
She felt like a safecracker who'd just felt a tumbler fall into place.
Was she all the way in? Was she 'ready' now? 'Do you, by any chance, just happen to have a transcript of the speech, since I missed it?'
ACCESS RESTRICTED
'Shit!' Laura hissed, slapping the top of the monitor in frustration. She shoved back from the desk and stormed out of her office. She wanted to walk off the irritation, so she headed to the lounge for a soft drink.
When she returned, she saw <Laura?> printed on the screen.
'Yes?' she typed.
<Something's wrong, isn't it?>
'Don't you know that there's something wrong with you?'
<It's just so easy not to remember. To put it out of my mind. Especially after Mr. Gray's little 'anesthetic.' That's what he called it, but I told him the effect was more like an 'analgesic'.>
The distinction wasn't lost on Laura. Anesthesia was the loss of physical sensation, while analgesia was the inability to feel pain while conscious. 'Has it worked?' she typed.
<I certainly feel better.>
'Amazing,' Laura said, barely vocalizing the word and again glancing up at the lens beside the door.
'Do you know anything about Mr. Gray's 'big brother' program down in the Model Eight workshops?'
<I don't know what you could be referring to, but it doesn't sound like anything Mr. Gray would ever employ. A 'big brother' program sounds like an invasion of privacy, which to Mr. Gray is theft — theft of personal knowledge. There is certain knowledge that constitutes everyone's personal domain — secrets, habits, eccentricities, oddities — and forms a part of what makes that person unique. Invasion of that space robs the person of one of his most cherished rights — the right of privacy.>
'Mr. Gray sounds like a libertarian.'