Transhuman (39 page)

Piersen's coolness and the way she distanced herself emotionally were caused in part by an undertow of resignation and resentment that was coming through clearly now. Naylor attributed it to a lack of appreciation and reward in her present situation. As a lawyer she was a league above the typical state-appointed hacks that he was familiar with, and his guess was that she had chosen to get experience and courtroom exposure from the ground up by doing time in the ranks straight from the bar exam before moving on to better things.

"I want to thank you," he said when she paid one of her routine visits to see how things were going. "It's not just that I have a future instead of no future. It could be a very different kind of future—just the way you said."

The surprise that flashed across Piersen's face made him want to smile, but he kept an earnest expression. "How do you mean?" she asked.

"I don't know if it's something about the way this new brain works, or just from being in a different kind of place with different people . . . But there's a lot about the world that I never saw before. Constructive things. People trying to make it better. I'd like to think that one day I might be able to contribute to something like that. You know . . . sort of, a way of making up for things."

"That's . . . very gratifying to hear," Piersen told him.

"There are a couple of things that you could maybe ask about for me," Naylor said. "To do with rights. I could probably do it myself, but I figured it was more your department."

"What do you need?"

"A regular exercise schedule. I don't mean the physical tests that they run here. But getting outside once in a while, and being able to walk for a few minutes in the air. See the sky and some trees. There was even a stipulated minimum back in the pen. These scientists are okay, but they get so wrapped up in this stuff that sometimes basic things don't to occur to them. It was spelled out there that I had the right of access to a phone, too."

"I'll see what I can do," Piersen promised.

"I'd appreciate it."

Lisa Ledgrave was probably in her early forties, with a fullish but still curvy figure and looks beneath her waves of raven hair that were not bad and could have been even better if she helped them a little and made an effort to ease the pinched look that tended to sharpen her face. She had become engaged to marry late in life after foregoing the chance of having a family of her own in order to pursue her career—a decision that she now regretted, Naylor had learned—and then lost her fiancé in a traffic accident only two years previously, which had left her alone and embittered. Forcomb aroused her frustrated maternal instinct, and she was jealous of Howell's ability to enjoy professional success along with a secure and socially active private life.

"But that isn't everything, is it?" Naylor said to her from the recliner in the living area of his residential suite adjoining the lab. She had come in to show him her portfolio of pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors, which he had asked to see. Her talent seemed to be for older buildings and houses, and landscapes with water motifs—a harbor mouth and several lake settings, also studies of flowers and trees. There were some sketches and various stages of development into portraits, but she needed to work at facial proportions and noses. "Howell could never produce anything like this." He raised a golden-lustered hand and turned it to show both sides. "I might look more like a robot, but Robert is more of one inside. He's got about as much artistic ability as that box of wires and chips that he's talking to out there. The trouble is that although he doesn't think so, he still unconsciously regards me as just another one. But I am everything he was aiming at, yet he can't grasp what that means. I need to widen my horizons in ways that he doesn't understand. It needs an input from someone like you, Doctor Ledgrave."

Lisa's smile was a mixture of amusement and response to flattery. "I'm not sure I know what kind of input you mean."

Naylor gestured at the sketch pad resting on his knee. "There's more to existence than reasoning, retention, and reflex responses. I'm discovering things I want to explore and experiment with that I didn't even know existed before. Art. Music. Books. Building and making things. This might be just a place to work in and go home from for other people. But, for the time being, anyway, I live here! It needs more in the line of home comforts and interests. Things to do and relax with."

"Well, yes, I see your point. But couldn't you simply ask Doctor Howell yourself?" Lisa said. Naylor seemed to consider it, then made a face. "I'd feel like a child, following him around begging. That's not my style. It would be better if it came from the staff. Especially if you could put it to someone like Bruce Forcomb, and have both of you propose it. And I know Bruce would listen to you. He has a lot of respect for what you say—more than Howell does."

The curling of the toe inside Lisa's shoe told of her effort to suppress any bodily reaction but the interest showed in her eyes. "Oh, really? Do you think so?"

"Sure. The two of you approaching him together would carry it." Naylor treated her to a wry grin. "And you know, I'd like to see Bruce having a little more say in running things and getting some support. It wouldn't do any harm around here to give Robert a gentle lesson in democracy."

A call from the security desk outside confirmed that the contingent of eight city police had arrived, which meant four would be already posted around the fenced part of the grounds at the rear of the Institute. They came three times a week, when Naylor's sixty-minute exercise period outside was due. One of the lab's technicians handed Forcomb the video camera that she had just finished checking. Forcomb would be coming along too to capture details of some running and jumping exercises that Howell wanted to analyze, which weren't practical to perform inside.

"How's it going, Dave?" Naylor asked the sandy-haired guard at the door as he opened it for them to pass through.

"Ah, the usual."

"How did your guys do in the game yesterday?"

"They won, would you believe? Twenty-five twenty."

"Glad to hear it."

Dave was the soft touch. There was always one. When Naylor decided on a definite time for his break, it would be when Dave was on inside duty. Early in the morning, a half hour before they changed shift, when they got sleepy and sloppy, and just wanted to go home.

The other four cops were waiting outside the door to escort them to the exercise area. The guard at the desk commanding the way into the short hall outside the lab was the one with the black mustache who never talked. That was where the screens from the inside cameras were located. The hall itself was covered by another at one end. Naylor had already noted the QIS logo at the bottom corner of one of the monitors and learned from a quick web check that the equipment came from a company called Quantec Imaging Systems. He had also memorized details of the Institute's layout and studied maps of the surroundings. And he was getting quite proficient with the painting materials that Lisa had brought in, along with other things, following her and Forcomb's meeting with Howell. Naylor now had formulas for mixing pigments that would pass him off in daylight as anything from a native black to a Swede. They came out of the rear entrance into the Institute grounds. Naylor drew in a deep, appreciative breath of air. The gas flow was mainly to exhaust the coolant heat exchangers, since the body was primarily energized by direct chemical-electrical conversion, and therefore its composition was of secondary importance. But the habit was long-buried somewhere deep in the pattern or whatever it was that made up "him," and he derived what had to be a healthy satisfaction from programming his sensory system to detect the quality of fresh outside air and respond with feelings of wholesomeness and invigoration. Forcomb smiled at the ritual. He was a lot more at ease these days around Naylor, who made a point of finding something to compliment in whatever he was doing.

"Were those fences always wired at the top like that?" Naylor asked him as they began walking. "Or is that something you put in for my benefit?"

"Not us," Forcomb replied. "Apparently it's regulations. The state made us do it." Naylor half turned to gesture back at the building. "And the structural changes and the new doors?"

"Right."

"I hope it came out of their budget, then, and not yours."

"Oh, yes."

"How do you know?"

"I supervised the contract work. Believe me, I went over every penny."

"Knowing your thoroughness, Bruce, I believe it. Did the same outfit take care of all of it—you know, fences, doors and windows stuff, security electronics . . . ?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Strange as it sounds, an old buddy that I used to go drinking and trading war stories with worked for one of those companies. Great guy. Sam, his name was. You'd have gotten along with him. He was nuts about motor racing too, like you. Drove some kind of souped-up European sports thing. He worked for . . . who was it, now? I don't know if it would have been the same people? If you told me the name, I'd remember it."

"Lowry-Terman?"

"That was the contractor here?"

"Uh-huh."

Naylor screwed up his face and shook his head. "No, I don't think that was it." He shot Forcomb a look of sudden mock alarm. "Hey, I don't think we should tell Robert about this. Am I supposed to be able to forget things?"

"I wouldn't worry too much about it," Forcomb said, smiling. "Your old memory might not have retained any trace of it to be transferred. How things like that work is one of the big things we're trying to find out."

Naylor nodded. "Yeah, I guess you're right. And thinking about it, Sam might not even have told me."

"This is Quantec Imaging. Thank you for calling."

"Hi. Sales department for contractor sales, please."

"One moment."

"Industrial sales office. Brenda speaking."

"Hi, Brenda. I'm calling from the Reed Institute of Biorobotics. My name is Arthur Donis. I'm trying to put together a maintenance schedule for some of the electronics equipment we have here, and I think I need a bit of help."

"Okay."

"We had some work done here a few months ago—it would have been around January—by a contractor called Lowry Terman. I've been on to them, but the person I talked to couldn't seem to find the right information. I wonder, do you have any record of supplying an order to them at around that time for the Institute? It would be for things to do with a surveillance and security system."

"Let me see what we've got here . . . Lowry-Terman. Yes, we deal with them quite a bit. Reed Institute, you said?"

"Right. Reed Institute of Robotics."

"January . . . December . . . November . . . Got it."

"You have? Hey, that's fantastic!"

"Cameras, monitors, control boxes, some other accessories. Does that sound like it?"

"That's it. What do you have?"

"What do you need to know?"

"If you could just give me a list of the item types and quantities, I can probably get the rest online. If I find I need anything else, I can always call again."

"Okay, we've got three kinds of indoor cameras, remote sensors, display monitors and mounting panel, channel filters, signal processing unit, switching unit, amplifier and drivers, selection and control panel, remote controllers."

"Let's start with the cameras. You said there were three kinds?"

"Right. Regular mounted full spectrum, type BD-76A. There were four of those. Then four miniaturized regular, type EDS-22, and four miniaturized infrared, type EDF-32."

"Just what I needed. Brenda, you're a godsend."

"Tell my husband. Then we have remote sensing pickups, four type SRC-6, and eight type SRC-2M . . ."

Hiro Katokawa's interest was primarily in the physics of the holoptronic brain. He also captained the Institute's chess club and had opponents all over the world that he played online. Naylor studied the basics and played through a number of demonstration and tournament games from books that he acquired on various subjects. He practiced with a selection of chess-playing programs, and then asked Katokawa if he could try a few trial live games. They quickly became regular playing partners, and before long Naylor was soliciting his advice and assistance in a widening circle of other interests.

"Well, since I'm told that it's got something to do with the way my brain works, I guess I'd like to understand more about it," Naylor said. "It's not like taking an ordinary photograph, right?" They were playing with the board set across the corner of the bench used for setting up and testing electronic gadgetry and instruments. Naylor had taken over one end of it, where he was entertaining himself by putting together some basic circuits. He had also taken to spending long spells at the laboratory computers to delve into the subtleties of programming.

"That is correct," Katokawa said, still studying the board. "A photograph is a point-to-point recording of the image. Each point on the photograph records just the intensity of the light wave that illuminates that particular point."

"Okay. Incidentally, why did you double your pawns instead of recapturing with the bishop?"

"I think the opening of the knight file is better. You won't be able to take advantage of the weakness."

"Why not?"

"Gut feel."

"Can you explain it analytically?"

"No. I've just seen a lot of positions like this before. It's an acquired instinct."

"Do you think you analyze it computationally, but at an unconscious level?"

"Well, I have no way of knowing, have l?"

Naylor conceded the point with a nod. This was one of the things that Howell was trying to find out more about. "So what's different about a hologram?" he asked.

"The light that comes from a real object isn't specified just by its amplitude and wavelength," Katokawa replied. "At every point, the light also has what's called phase."

"That's how far you are along the wave, right?"

"Exactly. In an ordinary photograph, the phase of the light is lost, and with it the three-dimensional effect. In a hologram, information from both the intensity and the phase is recorded as an interference pattern. When the pattern is illuminated by the appropriate light, it reconstructs exactly the same wave front that was reflected from the original object." Katowaka picked up a king from the board and turned it around in the air. "If you move your head, you can see parts of the shape appearing that were hidden, just as if the original object were physically there."