keeping close to the wall.
He reached the entrance to a stairwell and entered.
It hit him at the top of the steps. First it was just a strange feeling, turning quickly to low-grade nausea. As he went down the stairs, anxiety welled up. It was instant and all-consuming. Stunned, he collapsed on the landing, shaking and sweating.
He remained there for several minutes, totally immobilized, the walls closing in, nameless terrors chewing at him.
At length he was able to climb back up the stairs. He staggered back to the room and collapsed on the bed.
After a while he became aware that someone had entered the room. He turned over and sat up. It was the doctor — or was he just a technician? — and a woman dressed in a shapeless gray suit.
“Hello,” the woman said brightly. “How are you feeling?” She wore no makeup and had lines at the corners of her gray eyes. Her salt-and-pepper hair was drawn up into a bun.
“What kind of drug is it?” he asked.
“We didn’t give you any drugs,” the doctor said.
“You have InnerVoice,” the woman said. “It tells you when you’re doing something wrong.”
“What was I doing wrong?”
“You were leaving against medical advice,” the woman said. She smiled again. “I’m from the Citizens’ Committee for Social Improvement, Orientation Subcommittee. My cognomen is M-D-E-T-F-G. My omnicode is one- dash-seven-oh-nine-oh-six-three-one-two-eight.”
“Don’t you have a name?”
“You can call me M-1.”
“Mine’s B-7,” the medic said.
The woman read from a small recording device: “And
He waved her silent. “Never mind. Just tell me what you did to me. What is InnerVoice?”
“It’s a guide to behavior. It tells you — ”
“I
“Can you explain it to him, B-7?”
“Sure. When I said we didn’t give you any drugs, I was telling the truth. What we did inject you with was a solution, but in that solution were tiny little machines.”
“Machines?”
“Call them computers, that’s what they are, in part. Some of them are no bigger than a bacterium, and most of them are smaller. They’re constructed at a very small level of magnitude, the molecular level. Instead of electronic parts, they have protein parts, enzyme parts. Biological parts. But they’re computers all the same.”
“What do they do?”
“Lots of things. But mainly they monitor things in your blood and lymph. Watch your emotional states, look for telltale chemical signs.”
Gene said, “Signs of what?”
“Well, for instance, when you do something that you shouldn’t be doing, your body reacts in certain ways. It changes chemically and electrically. When the monitoring machines detect these changes, they send signals to your glands to secrete certain things. They also send signals to the brain.”
“I understand,” Gene said. “So, if I don’t do what I’m told, this automatic punishment system goes on- line.”
“Oh, it’s not punishment. It’s your own body’s shame and guilt for doing the socially unacceptable thing. The reactions are just amplified, that’s all.”
“Oh, yes. I got that much.”
“If you didn’t feel any shame or guilt, InnerVoice couldn’t affect you.”
“I feel absolutely no shame or guilt, friend. Stop bullshitting.”
“Of course you feel it. You have to. You had the reaction, didn’t you? InnerVoice was speaking to you.”
Gene had no answer.
“It will take time,” M-1 said. “You’ll get used to it. In time, InnerVoice won’t need to guide you at all. You’ll guide yourself.”
“I bet I will, if I know what’s good for me.”
She grinned expansively. “You’re learning already! I’m so pleased. It will make my job so much easier!”
“Yeah. Glad to oblige.”
Ten
Laboratory
Linda sat at the terminal reading Incarnadine’s message, which Jeremy had assigned to a file in one of the computer’s data storage areas. (The computer had exotic data storage devices as well as conventional ones. One of the former resembled a 1950s jukebox.) She keyed as she read, scrolling the text upscreen.
She was a little distracted. Jeremy’s new “assistant” was unsettling, to say the least. Computer programs usually didn’t wear slinky dresses and have legs that wouldn’t quit. Computer programs ordinarily didn’t vamp their users. Isis had lots of other handy features; among these was the capability of fetching coffee for the chief of data processing.
“How many sugars, Jeremy?”
“Uh … four.”
“Ummm, sweet.”
“Yeah. Linda? What do you think?”
Linda said, “I don’t know. It sounds like Incarnadine is going to have problems getting back. Can you write the program he’s talking about?”
Jeremy shrugged. “You got me. I’ve been looking through the data from the magic books. Some of these spells are, like, enormous! Translating them into computer language will take … Jeez, I dunno.”
Isis set the coffee cup in front of Jeremy. “We might have compiler programs that will do that automatically,” she said.
“We might? I’ll have to check the file directory. But the problem for me is the magic part. What spells would be effective? How do you stabilize the whole universe? Lord Incarnadine will have to make it back, or we’re sunk.”
“Maybe we can hold on till he does,” Linda said. “Gene’s okay, and we should be finding out about Mr. Dalton and Thaxton soon. The guards at Halfway should be all right, too. I mean, I can’t believe anything’s happened to Earth. The castle’s temporarily cut off, but we can live with that. And Sheila’s world is fine, too. I checked that out myself.”
“I hope we can hold on,” Jeremy said. “Because it’s gonna be a while before I can get this gadget working.”
Osmirik came in carrying a stack of loose sheets. He went to the sheet feeder and loaded it, then started the machine. The first sheet slid into the scanner, which began to hum softly.
“That is the last of the cosmology texts,” he said.
“Okay. Isis, can you analyze all that stuff and come up with the technical parameters?”
“I can try, Jeremy,” she said, lightly running her fingers through his hair.
“Uh, good. Can you get started on it?”
“I’ve already started, Jeremy. Did you know you had a lot of red in your hair?”
“I do?”
“Red highlights. I like red hair.”
“Yeah. Well.”
Linda stared uncomfortably at the screen. Really, she thought.
