Address: Centauri, F. L. Wallace [best ereader for pc .txt] 📗

"She'll be up long before you think," said Jordan mildly but the doctor chuckled at the wrong time and the mildness vanished. Jordan had come to tell them but now he couldn't. Cameron thought he was good and so he was but he forgot he wasn't dealing with ordinary people. His rules just didn't apply to Anti, nor to Nona, Jordan, or even the spectacularly useless robot. The doctor didn't understand and because of that he'd have to wait, Docchi too.

"I discovered where Nona does most of her work these days," Jordan muttered. He described where it was, omitting the details of how he got there. He was also careful not to mention anything he saw.

Cameron looked out the window as Jordan talked. "Glad you told me," he said. "I've been meaning to see what I could do for her. It might help if I watched her working."

"Very ordinary," said Jordan. "She putters around—but things fall together when she touches them."

"I imagine. I've seen great surgeons operate." Cameron gathered up his notes and left.

Jordan lingered for a while trying to make up his mind whether to tell Docchi what he had refrained from discussing while the doctor was present. He wanted to, but the longer he kept it to himself the harder it was to share. Eventually Docchi tired of chatting and bent over his work and Jordan wandered out, his secret still safe, too safe.

Docchi stopped foggily when he was alone again. Cameron would soon be trying to help Nona. Somebody had to and he, Docchi, couldn't. It was enough to settle all the prosaic details that must be attended to if the place were to function properly.

It was a relief to know that he no longer be concerned about her. Nevertheless a certain grayness descended that didn't lift until Jeriann came in to check on a patient's file.

In the beginning there was silence and it never changed. No sound came to break the stillness. Darkness changed to light with regularity or not, but in the particular universe in which she lived there was never any noise nor any conversation, and music was unknown. She didn't miss it.

There were also machines in the universe in which she dwelt and these too observed a dichotomy. Some machines were warm and soft and this distinguished them from those which were hard and cool. The warm ones started themselves when they were very small. Later they grew up but they didn't know how they did it. Neither did she. Once she was little and she didn't remember doing anything to change it, but it did change.

The hard machines she knew more about. They didn't always have picture receptors on top. Some were blind and some saw more than she did, though not quite in the same way. She could never tell by looking at them which was apt to do which.

(There was a stupid little running machine that she had discovered once that was perpetually scurrying about looking for things to do. It would never have survived on Earth because there was an unexpected flaw in it. She herself had sensed the fault and started to fix it only to realize that here was an unexpected stroke of luck. Curiosity circuits there were by the million but they were all mechanical and what they produced could be strictly predicted. But this was unique. A deviation in the manufacturing process, a slight change in the density of the material, whatever it was something extraordinarily fine had been put together and it would take a hundred years of chance to duplicate it.)

(Midway she had changed her mind and instead had altered the machine to encourage the basic sensitivity. She hadn't seen it recently. She hoped someone who didn't understand hadn't undone her work.)

The known order crumbled under the touch into something that was strange. But where sight itself would not suffice, it was possible to touch reality, to soak it into the skin, like understanding which cometh slowly to the growing mind. But what was understanding? Parts of it were always left out and she could venture toward it only a little way.

She twisted the head on the bench. The silence was unchanging. (What was silence?) Other heads on the bench didn't move; they weren't supposed to. Once they had been attached to clumsy machines and could move about with a stiff degree of freedom. They couldn't now, though they could twist the light perceptors in whichever direction suited them.

But they didn't know where to look.

She herself couldn't see the thing that was approaching. It was because her eyes were imperfect. Lenses were pliable and nerve endings were huge things, too gross to catch the instant infinitesimal signals. Or perhaps it was permeability—force bounced on distant impenetrability and bounded back to and through her senses.

She'd have to align the heads to help them help her, string them together for what reinforcement they offered each other. And still they wouldn't see because what they depended on for seeing was too slow. By itself the hookup wouldn't correct their sight.

But nearby was a fast mind though a lazy one. It liked routine once the meaning of it was made clear. And it worked with instantaneity. Blind itself it could fingertip touch the incredible impulses and interpret what it felt for those who had eyes. It would join with her, reluctantly but surely if she made it interesting, a game at which it could always win. And winning wouldn't be difficult for it, not against these nine circuit bound minds, even if it was true that they did augment one another. Singly there were stupid and even added they were not much better. Their virtue was that they were electronic.

(Alone) Were there intangible machines? Sometimes she thought there might be. People twisted their mouth and (not because they were smiling) to indicate that they too understood. She could touch the air coming out but the impulses had no meaning. It was not like vibrations machines set up, harmonics that told of the unseen structure. There was nothing mechanical that could be concealed from harmonics—there were no hard and fast secrets. But what came out of mouths was senseless. It told nothing, or if it did have meaning her hands and her skin were unable to relay the interpretation further. (People were soft machines and they did not ring true. It was difficult to understand.)

Her hands were usually quite capable. (Now) she wove wires so fine that only occasional light was caught and brilliantly reflected. Each strand led somewhere. She removed panels from the robots' heads and grouped them closer. They were beginning to shake off their incomplete individuality. They were no longer separate mechanisms, each of which could only grope for a small fragment of reality. They were merging, becoming larger and stronger. There was more to be done to them but she couldn't do it.

As light as her touch was it was too inaccurate for what must follow. There were objects smaller than her eye could see, movements finer than her muscles could control. She summoned a repair machine whose microsenses were adequate to begin with. She would like to have the one she repaired some time ago (actually it was quite smart) but it had disappeared and she didn't know where to find it. However this one would do.

It was set merely to repair what was already built, but what she wanted was not yet made. She changed the instructions; they were not to her liking anyway.

She delved into the machine and set the problem. The statement of it was complex and she wasn't sure how much data the robot aide would need. When she finished it stood there thrumming. It didn't move.

She waited but nothing happened. The robot, whose senses were far finer than her own, remained frozen and baffled. Impatiently she restated the problem, rephrased it so that it could reach every part of the circuit almost instantly. Where it was complex she simplified, reducing it at last to an order the robot could act on. It began to work, slowly at first.

It copied exactly a circuit she had made previously. After she approved it started another, like the first but much smaller, attaching it in series. Satisfied it was obeying instructions, she left it. It would continue to make those circuits, each one progressively smaller, the final one delicate enough to contact the gravity computer.

Meanwhile there was her own work. It wouldn't suffice that the geepees be linked with the gravity computer. They would then see what she had discovered long ago—but it was people who had to be shown. Their eyes were even less sensitive than hers.

Fortunately this was the easiest part. She went to the screen and began to alter it. It could be made to scan what the gravity computer passed on to the geepee heads. A row of dominos, each of which would topple if the first were struck, and the screen was the last of the series.

"Hello," said a voice. "So this is where you always are. What a dreary place to work."

She didn't hear the voice. She felt the footsteps and the air brushing against her skin. She turned around, letting her hands continue, deft and sure. She didn't need to see what she was doing. The smile was involuntary.

He leaned against the wall, watching her. It was embarrassing the way she gazed back. He wished she could say something but then he'd always wished it. He'd had a thesis once, hadn't he? that for mechanics deafness wasn't a handicap considering how noisy machines were. A deaf person could withstand a concentration of sound the average man would find intolerable. And there was no need for such a person to talk since there was no one who could hear.

The connections in her hands grew swiftly. She felt that she could work better while he was near. Why was this?

"What do you respond to?" he said gruffly. "Diagrams, blue-prints? If so I'll have to learn to draw the damnedest things." He laughed uncertainly. "Come on, help me a little bit. I've got some ideas that might help you break out of your shell if you'd try to respond."

He fixed things too, warm soft mechanisms. She didn't know but she thought it was a higher skill than hers. He was not as adept as she was, though he could learn to be. There was so much more he could do if he would realize. His mouth was a handicap. He moved it often when he should be thinking.

"Listen, robot face, I left a career for you. Do you think they wouldn't take me back? The Medicouncil wouldn't like it but I'd have been a popular hero. Sometimes they want their heroes to fail. Besides from their viewpoint it was the best possible solution. Now they don't have to think of people like you out on that god-forsaken asteroid. You're off their conscience and they don't have to have bad dreams about you."

She smiled again and it was infuriating. What he said or did had no effect. "At least show that you recognize me. Stop what you're doing. It can't be important."

He drew her to him roughly and the work fell from her hands. The connections had been done minutes before and she'd continued to hold them because she didn't want to move away from him. She was willing to let him look at her closely if he wanted. It was surprising how much he wanted to.

Later he held her away from him. "I take it back," he said softly. "You're not a robot face. There's no point of resemblance to a machine. And look, you've even discovered that you've got more than one expression."

The robot aide that had been laboring on whirred inaudibly and clacked its extensibles. It rolled away from the work bench, brushing lightly against the doctor as it did so.

Cameron glanced down blankly, not actually seeing it. "What do I do now?" he said with unexpected gloominess. "You're a child. You're as old as Jeriann, maybe as old as I am, but in this you're hardly more than a child." What was consent and how would he know when he had it? Well, no, that was not the problem—he knew, but would she? What could he explain to her? He put his arms around her and gazed thoughtfully over her head at the odds and ends of machinery she had been stringing together. The screen flickered and sprang into illumination.

He glared at it for interrupting his thoughts. It seemed to him he had just discovered something very significant and if he'd had a few more minutes he'd have been able to say it in a way he'd never forget. But there was a shape on the screen and he couldn't ignore it. The image wavered in and out of focus, growing clearer as the machine learned to hold it