“In view of Gateway Corp’s action,” he said, “I thought you’d call our arrangement off.”
“A deal is a deal,” I said. “We can let the legalities hang. They don’t mean much while Gateway has preempted me.”
He was suspicious immediately. What is it that I do that makes people suspicious of me when I am going miles out of my way to be fair?’ “Why do you want to hold off on the legalities?” he demanded, rubbing the top of his head agitatedly-was it sunburned again?
“I don’t ‘want’ to,” I said, “it just doesn’t make any difference. As soon as you lift your injunction Gateway will drop theirs on me.”
Alongside Bover’s scowling face, my secretary program’s appeared. She looked like a cartoon of the Good Angel whispering into Bover’s ear, but actually what she was saying was for me: “Sixty seconds until Mr. Herter’s reminder,” she said.
I had forgotten that old Peter had given us another of his two hour notices. I said to Bover, “It’s time to button up for Peter Herter’s next jab,” and hung up-I didn’t really care if he remembered, I only wanted to terminate the conversation. Not much buttoning up was involved. It was thoughtful-no, it was orderly-of old Peter to warn us each time, and then to perform so punctually. But it mattered more to airline pilots and automobus’s than to stay-at- homes like me.
There was Essie, however. I looked in to make sure she was not actually being perfused or catheterized or fed. She wasn’t.
She was asleep-quite normally asleep, with her dark-gold hair spilling all around her, and gently snoring. And on the way back to my comfortable console chair I felt Peter in my mind.
I had become quite a connoisseur of invasions of the mind. It wasn’t any special skill. The whole human race had, over a dozen years, ever since the fool kid, Wan, began his trips to the Food Factory. His were the worst, because they lasted so long and because he shared his dreams with us. Dreams have power; dreams are a kind of released insanity. By contrast, the one light touch we’d had from Janine Herter was nothing, and Peter Herter’s precise two-minute doses no worse than a traffic light-you stop a minute, and wait impatiently until it is over, and then you go on your way. All I ever felt from Peter was the way he felt-sometimes the gut-griping of age, sometimes hunger or thirst, once the fading, angry sexual lust of an old man all by himself. As I sat down I remember telling myself that this time was nothing at all. More than anything else, it was like having a little dizzy spell, too much crouching in one position, when you stand up you have to pause a moment until it goes away. But it didn’t go away. I felt the blurriness of seeing things with two sets of eyes at once, and the inarticulate anger and unhappiness of the old man-no words; just a sort of tone, as though someone were whispering what I could not quite hear.
It kept on not going away. The blurriness increased. I began to feel detached and almost delirious. That second vision, that is never sharp and clear, began to show things I had never seen before. Not real things. Fantasy things. Women with beaks like birds of prey. Great glittering metal monsters rolling across the inside of my eyelids. Fantasies. Dreams.
The two-minute measured dose of reminder had gone off track. The son of a bitch had fallen asleep in the cocoon.
Thank God for the insomnia of old men! It didn’t last eight hours, not much more than one.
But they were sixty-odd unpleasant minutes. When I felt the unwanted dreams slide tracelessly out of my mind, and was sure they were gone, I ran to Essie’s room. She was wide awake, leaning back against the pillows. “Am all right, Robin,” she said at once. “Was an interesting dream. Nice change from my own.”
“I’ll kill the old bastard,” I said.
Essie shook her head, grinning up at me. “Not practical,” she said.
Well, maybe it wasn’t. But as soon as I had satisfied myself that Essie was all right, I called for Albert Einstein: “I want advice. Is there anything that can be done to stop Peter Herter?”
He scratched his nose.
“You mean by direct action, I assume. No, Robin. Not by any means available now.”
“I don’t want to be told that! There must be something!”
“Sure thing, Robin,” he said slowly, “but I think you’re asking the wrong program. Indirect measures might work. As I understand it, you have some legal questions unresolved. If you could resolve them, you might be able to meet Herter’s demands and stop him that way.”
“I’ve tried that! It’s the other way around, damn it! If I could get Herter to stop, then maybe I could get Gateway Corp to give me back control. Meanwhile he’s screwing up everybody’s mind, and I want it stopped! Isn’t there some kind of interference we could broadcast?”
Albert sucked his pipe. “I don’t think so, Rob,” he said at last. “I don’t have a great deal to go on.”
That startled me. “You don’t remember what it feels like?”
“Robin,” he said patiently, “I don’t feel anything. It is important for you to remember that I am only a computer program. And not the right program, really, to discuss the exact nature of the signals from Mr. Herter-your psychoanalytic program might be more helpful. Analytically I know what happened-I have all the measurements of the radiation involved. Experientially, nothing. Machine intelligence is not affected. Every human being experienced something, I know because there are reports to say so. There is evidence that the larger-brained mammals- primates, dolphins, elephants-were also disturbed; and maybe other mammals were too, although the evidence is sketchy. But I have not experienced it directly. . . . As to broadcasting an interfering pattern, yes, perhaps that could be done. But what would be the effect, Robin? Bear in mind that the interfering signal would come from a nearby point, not one twenty-five light-days away; if Mr. Herter can cause some disorientation, what would a random signal do at close range?”
“It would be bad, I guess.”
“Sure thing, Robin. Probably worse than you guess, but I could not say without experimentation. The subjects would have to be human beings, and such experiments I cannot undertake.”
Over my shoulder Essie’s voice said proudly, “Yes, you exactly cannot, as who would know better than I?”
