Savant

by Nik Abnett

  MASTER MOHAMMAD WOKE up to a new day, in Tunis, ready to get back to work on the data that he had received from Tobe. There had been no further communications or explanations.

  His Assistant, Yousef, and his Companion, Sabah, ate breakfast with him, looking out of the kitchen window, across the College, with its towers and minarets piercing the early morning skyline.

  “It is so beautiful today,” said Sabah.

  “Probability,” said Mohammad.

  “Has no memory,” said Yousef.

  “It is like a mantra with you, Yousef,” said Sabah.

  “If it is good enough for Eustache, it is good enough for me,” said Yousef.

  Mohammad looked down into his dish of oatpro and dates. He liked to listen to his Companion and his Assistant playing these verbal games, like he enjoyed listening to the birds singing, or the call to prayer. He had no way to decipher the sounds. He had a hundred, a thousand, a hundred thousand ways to decipher numbers and decrypt mathematical symbols. Maths was his music and his linguistics, and the babbling of his brook.

  “Probability,” said Mohammad, again.

  “He will have me tossing a coin all day long,” Yousef said to Sabah, “and then he will have me toss a different coin, lest the coin I tossed be unbalanced. It is the weight of his mind that is unbalanced.”

  “And yours is perfectly balanced, I suppose?” asked Sabah, laughing. “You feeble-minded men with your left brain this and your right brain that, and your probability. I know my Eustache too, and I’d sooner watch a cat swinging from a pendulum and call it ‘Foucault’s Cat’.”

  “Or ‘Schroedinger’s Pendulum’,” said Yousef.

  “Our jokes are too old,” said Sabah, sighing.

  “And too true,” said Yousef.

  “Off with you,” said Sabah, picking up Mohammad’s dish, and stacking it inside Yousef’s. Go to your play, and stay away until it is time to eat. I have things to do.”

  WORKSTATION 4 AT Tunis College was showing a glowing blue ball of threads, throbbing rhythmically, but calmly, in front of its Operator. The Service Floors of individual Colleges had not been alerted to the global problem, and it was one Operator one screen in Tunis. The atmosphere was as sultry as the day’s weather.

  McBride began a line-check when he came on-station at 06:00. At 06:15 everything was normal.

  IN MUMBAI, SANJEEV was roused by his Companion. He bathed quickly, and efficiently, leaving his towel on the bathroom floor as he shook his robe on over his head. His Assistant ate breakfast with him, while his Companion watched over them. Saroj, the new Assistant, was very young, and Kamla felt like her older sister or aunt, watching out for her.

  “Master Sanjeev, are we to review Master Tobe’s notes again, today?” asked Saroj.

  “I think perhaps you might return to your own work, Master Sanjeev,” said Kamla. “Let Saroj take a look at Master Tobe’s musings, and put them into some sort of order before you review them again. They seem terribly taxing to me, and your own work should not be made to suffer, however notable Master Tobe might be.”

  “I should like that,” said Master Sanjeev.

  “Probability, after all, has no Master,” said Saroj. Then she laughed at her pun, burned with embarrassment and dropped her face, so that her Master could not see her.

  “Saroj speaks wise words,” said Kamla, smiling, and happy to have got her way. “Perhaps Tobe will become the new Master of probability, but, in the meantime, you have work to discuss and share in the community, that is long past being ready. Spend this time more wisely, Master, I beg of you.”

  Sanjeev looked up from his breakfast, perfectly willing to do the bidding of these two chattering women. He did not understand them, and he did not mean to. He only wanted to go to his office and work on his equations, and that was all that these women seemed to want for him. The new one had a lilting sing-song voice too, although most of what she said was totally incomprehensible to him.

  OPERATOR PERRETT SAT at Workstation 1 at Mumbai College. She keyed in her Morse signature, and pulled in her chair. She covered the rubberpro sphere with her left hand, and began her first line-check of the day. The ball of slightly throbbing light in front of her was a glorious shade of sky blue, not intense, but watery and beautiful. The colour was incredibly uniform, and there were no anomalies that could be seen by the naked eye. She completed the line-check anyway.

  She had sat in front of this screen, four days a week, come High or Low, for four years, and she knew the subject like the back of her hand. She did not know his name, and probably never would, and she did not know his rank, although she had long-since guessed that he was a Master, probably in the sciences or maths.

  Perrett had an uncanny knack with these things. She had been working station 1 since before it had been dedicated to this subject, and, although she had been relatively new to the job, then, with only two Lows under her belt, she had known that her subject had been changed. She had come back from her biennial sabbatical, but still, after six weeks, she recognised that her subject had been changed.

  Perrett had queried the change, and the Service Floor for Mumbai College had been in Code Green for six hours while she was debriefed. She maintained that they wouldn’t do it to her again. If they wanted to switch-out her subject, either they’d inform her, or they’d promote her. She was perfectly fine with either option.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  STUDENTS ALL OVER the World pressed their buttons, at intervals, all day long: for Rouse, Roll-call, Repast, Rest, Recreation and various other elements of their routines, which were not always mandatory, but which were cycled between Students and Colleges to get the most comprehensive cover.

  Service needed to monitor what was going on in each College, and how various events balanced across the globe. If an Active was down, for any reason, and they regularly were, the effect on the Student population was monitored via their buttons. They were institutionalised, and never gave their buttons a second thought. Civilians had them, Students had them, and everyone knew that the Masters’ flats had them, even if the Masters, Companions and Assistants were, for the most part, spared the inconvenience of wearing them.

  It was impossible for every Student who had a button to be monitored on-screen; in fact, it was rare, almost to the point of unheard of, for a Student to be monitored, on-screen. That did not mean that the Students were not monitored.

  Every Student button had a hot-zone. Pitu 3 had found the hot-zone on his button when he had clamped his thumb and forefinger over it, after seeing Tobe’s office.

  Every Student button related to a Senior, or a Master, depending on his status, in School or in the College proper. Every Student’s button could be adjusted so that a hot-zone was triggered faster or slower than average. Students in Colleges without an Active tended to have very sluggish, very limited hot-zones, simply so that false positives were rare, and the over all monitoring, globally, was as complete as possible.

  Conversely, where a College had more than one Active, the hot-zone was closer to the surface, and if there was a ramp-up to a Code change, all Student buttons had their hot-zones halved. More than two hits outside the normal response to the Schedule was considered ‘hot’ in these circumstances.

  THE FIRST TIME that Branting addressed his group of advisors, hot-hits on Student buttons were up by 8 percent. After twenty hours without sleep, Branting reviewed the hot-hits. They were up by 23 percent on the standard base level.

  “At what point do we consider setting up more Service Floors?” Branting asked his team of specialists.

  “What’s the ramp-up?” asked Adjentetti.

  “Student button responses are up by 23 percent. That’s what’s hitting the hot-zone. But...”

  “But what?” asked Adjentetti.

  “We’ve made them so damned sensitive that everything and anything is going to set them off. Some kid gets a cold and wants to call his Senior, and the whole system goes into meltdown.”

  “A
ny repeat offenders?” asked Adjentetti.

  “By which you mean?” asked Branting.

  “Can you log Students that have hit their buttons more than others. Are ramp-ups being caused by a hundred Students hitting each of their buttons once, or by one Student hitting his button a hundred times?

  “Can we find that out, Qa?” Branting asked his secretary.

  “I don’t know. I’ll check, sir.”

  “Good. Okay. Where are we with all this? Anything? Anyone?”

  The twelve men and women sitting around the table looked to one another for inspiration; some of them stared down at the notes they had, or hadn’t been taking. Several of them had been useful in various ways, but a number of them had said nothing, written nothing, contributed nothing, and sat in fear. Branting knew who they were. Everyone was monitored.

  Branting reached into the underside of his lapel, and squeezed. He was hitting his button in response to his Schedule.

  “If you could excuse me,” he said to the assembled advisors.

  They filed out, as they had filed out half-a-dozen times in the past thirty hours, or so. Those who had not participated would not be invited back into the room, but even that choice gave Branting problems, and gave Branting’s superiors worse problems still.

  If people chose not to participate in various sections of the briefing, did that mean they had no value? At what point did an advisor become redundant? How long would advisors wait until they chipped in with theories or voiced concerns? Six hours? Twelve? That was what had been decided. If members of the advisory team did not demonstrate some sort of engagement within the first twelve hours of their involvement they were switched out.

  Six more hours, and Branting decided that he would bring back everyone who had contributed nothing during his or her twelve hour stint. How many advisors would that make? Would Global allow him to take the risk and do it? Were the most valuable people in the room those who took the time to really consider the problems? Did the fastest thinkers make the best advisors?

  “Crap,” said Branting. “Crap.”

  Qa had entered the room, and had heard both craps.

  “Is there something I can help you with, sir?” he asked.

  “You can find out who does the thinking, and you can find out who presses his button for no reason, and you can find out how best to sustain this whole damned fiasco without bringing down the planet!” said Branting, taking his hands out of his thick, dark hair, and staring right at Qa.

  “You need to sleep, and, sir, frankly, so do I.”

  “You haven’t slept? In how long?”

  “If you work, I work.”

  “But that’s... How long is that, Qa?”

  “Too long by half... and then by some more, but I’m guessing that you’re not going to excuse yourself any time soon, sir?”

  “How can I?”

  “You’re not the only Control Operator in Global Service.”

  “No, I’m not, but I was the Control Operator on-call when the shit hit the fan, and this is what we do, Qa.”

  “What? Kill ourselves for the greater good, when more minds might make light work of the crap we’re struggling with?”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  Qa dropped his head onto his chest. The fact was, he’d been Branting’s aide for twelve years, and he couldn’t think of a better man to put this thing to bed, sort it out, find the solution, and have everything back on an even keel in record time. It didn’t matter that Service Global switched between almost two-dozen sites, each with half-a-dozen Control Operators. Qa believed that his boss was the man for this job, whether he’d been up to his neck in it for eight hours, or eighty.

  “What can I do for you, sir?” asked Qa.

  “You can find me a laundered shirt, and a cup of something stronger than the usual coffee,” said Branting, “and then you can get me data on which sorry son-of-a-bitch is pressing his button, desperately, every two minutes or so.”

  “On it. Shall I send them back in?” Qa asked, referring to the advisors that had vacated the room.

  “Do me a favour. Rouse the original twelve. Give me twelve angry men, and let’s see if we can’t change the World.”

  SEVEN HUNDRED AND forty-two Colleges had Actives in residence. Eighty-nine of them had critical problems. Eighty-nine of them were in Code Green or higher. Seventy-nine of those Codes had been caused by Assistant level members of College, or lower. The Masters were riding out the storm, for the most part, but when one fell, another followed, and if two, or three, or half a dozen fell, people would start to ask questions. What was the tipping point? At what point did this thing hit a critical mass, and who would cause it?

  Branting was determined not to fall to the pressure of low-grade panic.

  Chapter Thirty

  “DO YOU WANT to sit here?” asked Metoo.

  “Tobe will sit here if you like,” said Tobe.

  “You don’t want to do this in your room?”

  “Metoo doesn’t come in my room. It’s not Tobe’s office.”

  “Should we wait until we can do this in your office? I’m sure it can wait until then.”

  “Why wait? Tobe doesn’t wait.”

  “No,” said Metoo, laughing. “You don’t wait.”

  “Metoo wants to ask me something.”

  “No,” said Metoo, aiming to be meticulous, “I don’t want to ask you anything. Service asked if I would ask you some questions, and I said that I would, providing you didn’t mind.”

  “So, not Metoo’s questions, then?”

  “Does it make a difference?”

  “Will they take Metoo away? They’ve taken people away from Tobe before. It didn’t matter so much.”

  “I’m sure it wouldn’t matter so much if they took me away from you,” said Metoo, her eyes glistening. “Who did they take away from you, Tobe?”

  “Tobe doesn’t know. Tobe would know if they took Metoo away.”

  Metoo wasn’t sure that was true.

  “Probability,” said Metoo.

  “Probability,” said Tobe.

  “Shall I just read the questions?”

  “Ask.”

  “What is your name?”

  Tobe laughed.

  “That’s a joke,” he said. “Tobe knows Tobe’s name.”

  “Of course you know your name. It’s just a beginning. I think the questions are easy at the beginning. What is your name?”

  “Tobe. Master Tobe, the Students call me. I call Tobe, Tobe.”

  “What’s your title?” asked Metoo, referring to the list that had been put together, so carefully, by psychiatrists and psychologists, and behaviour specialists, for her, and for anyone else who had to put a Master through one of these undignified interviews.

  “Master Tobe, my Students call me. Is Tobe Metoo’s Master?” he asked Metoo, a curious expression on his face.

  “Are you?” asked Metoo.

  “Is that a question?”

  “No. Does it make you uncomfortable?”

  “Is that a question?”

  Metoo laughed.

  “Do you know how clever you are?” asked Metoo.

  “Yes.”

  “How many Students do you have?”

  “Some. Not a lot. Fewer than before.”

  “Fewer than before when?” asked Metoo.

  “There seem not to be so many.”

  “Okay. Do you know the names of your Students?”

  “Students have names. Are names important?” He looked anxiously at Metoo, for a moment. “Tobe is Tobe, and Metoo is Metoo. That’s all.”

  “Tell me about a work day.”

  “Tobe gets up. Tobe goes to the office. Tobe works. Tobe works with Students, or alone. Tobe shows Students maths things. Tobe works on maths things. Sometimes Tobe sends maths things to other Masters.”

  “Do you know the names of the other Masters?”

  “Tobe’s the best. Mostly, Tobe’s the best mathematician. ‘The best have
to teach the rest’.”

  “That’s right. Do you like to teach the Students?”

  “Tobe shows them maths things. Tobe works and Students watch. Sometimes Students show Tobe things.”

  “Do you remember that you gave a maths problem to a Student a few days ago?”

  “That was easy.”

  “Why did you ask the Student to do it, Tobe?”

  “SHE’S NOT ASKING the scripted questions,” said Wooh. “She needs to get back on track.

  Wooh and Saintout were still in the garden room. Saintout was spritzing some of the plants, wandering around the room with Metoo’s pump-spray, holding it out in front of him, double-handed, as if he was pointing a gun, like a cop in the old detective movies he liked to watch.

  Wooh was sitting by the door, wearing her headset. She sat with one hand over the ear that held the machine’s earpiece, as if that would improve reception, and the view-screen came down over her forehead a couple of inches from her eye.

  “How do you know?” asked Saintout, turning and pointing the pump-spray at her.

  Wooh was concentrating so hard that she didn’t see what he was doing, and when she looked up at him, she was startled. She placed her other hand flat against her chest, and exhaled through her mouth.

  “Sorry,” said Saintout, “but there isn’t a whole lot for me to do here, now.”

  “What was your question?”

  “Oh, right... How do you know she isn’t asking him the questions she was given?”

  “The questions are engineered so that they engender specific brainwave responses. The responses then show up as particular patterns on visual, and specific tones on audio.”

  “From that you can tell what?”

  “How far out of his normal psychological range the subject has strayed.”

  “So,” said Saintout, putting down the pump-spray, “she could be asking him the questions, and he’s so far out of his ‘normal psychological range’ that he’s just not giving you the responses you expect.”