Friday

xxii

Pajaro Sands used to be a resort seaside hotel. It's a nowhere place on Monterey Bay outside a nowhere city, Watsonville. Watsonville is one of the great oil export ports of the world and has all the charm of cold pancakes with no syrup. The nearest excitement is in the casinos and bawdy houses of Carmel, fifty kilometers away. But I don't gamble and am not interested in sex for hire, even the exotic sorts to be had in California. Not many from Boss's headquarters patronized Carmel as it was too far away to go by horse other than for a weekend, there was no direct capsule, and, while California is liberal in authorizing power vehicles, Boss did not release his APVs for anything but business.

The big excitements for us at Pajaro Sands were the natural attractions that caused it to be built, surf and sand and sunshine.

I enjoyed surfboarding until I became skilled at it. Then it bored me. I usually sunned a bit each day and swam a little and stared out at the big tankers suckling at the oil moles and noted with amusement that the watchstander aboard each ship often was staring back, with binoculars.

There was no reason for any of us to be bored as we had full individual terminal service. People are so used to the computer net today that it is easy to forget what a window to the world it can beÄ and I include myself. One can grow so canalized in using a terminal only in certain waysÄpaying bills, making telephonic calls, listen-

ing to news bulletinsÄthat one can neglect its richer uses. If a subscriber is willing to pay for the service, almost anything can be done at a terminal that can be done out of bed.

Live music? I could punch in a concert going on live in Berkeley this evening, but a concert given ten years ago in London, its conductor long dead, is just as "live," just as immediate, as any listed on today's program. Electrons don't care. Once data of any sort go into the net, time is frozen. All that is necessary is to remember that all the endless riches of the past are available any time you punch for them.

Boss sent me to school at a computer terminal and I had far richer opportunities than any enjoyed by a student at Oxford or the Sorbonne or Heidelberg in any earlier year.

At first it did not seem to me that I was going to school. At breakfast the first day I was told to report to the head librarian. He was a fatherly old dear, Professor Perry, whom I had met first during basic training. He seemed harriedÄunderstandably, as Boss's library was probably the bulkiest and most complex thing shipped from the Imperium to Pajaro Sands. Professor Perry undoubtedly had weeks of work ahead before everything would be straightened outÄand in the meantime all Boss would expect would be utter perfection. The work was not made easier by Boss's eccentric insistence on paper books for much of his library rather than cassettes or microfiche or disks.

When I reported to him, Perry looked bothered, then pointed to a console over in one corner. "Miss Friday, why don't you sit down over there?"

"What am I to do?"

"Eh? That's hard to say. No doubt we'll be told. Urn, I'm awfully busy now and terribly understaffed. Why don't you just get acquainted with the equipment by studying anything you wish?"

There wasn't anything special about the equipment except that there were extra keys giving direct access to several major libraries such as Harvard's and the Washington Library of the Atlantic Union and the British Museum without going through a human or network linkupÄplus the unique resource of direct access to Boss's library, the one right beside me. I could even read his bound paper

books if I wanted to, on my terminal's screen, turning the pages from th~ keyboard and never taking the volume out of its nitrogen

environment. -

That morning I was speed-searching the index of the Tulane University library (one of the best in the Lone Star Republic), looking for history of Old Vicksburg, when I stumbled onto a cross-reference to spectral types of stars and found myself hooked. I don't recall why there was such a cross-referral but these do occur for the most unlikely reasons.

I was still reading about the evolution of stars when Professor Perry suggested that we go to lunch.

We did but I made some notes first about types of mathematics I wanted to study. Astrophysics is fascinatingÄbut you have to talk the language.

That afternoon I got back to Old Vicksburg and was footnoted to Show Boat, a musical play concerning that eraÄand then spent the rest of the day looking at and listening to Broadway musical plays from the happy days before the North American Federation fell to pieces. Why can't they write music like that today? Those people must have had fun! I certainly didÄI played Show Boat, The Student Prince, and My Fair Lady one after the other and noted a dozen more to play later. (This is going to school?)

Next day I resolved to stick to serious study of professional subjects in which I was weak, because I felt sure that once my tutors (whoever they were) assigned my curriculum, I would have no time at all for my own choicesÄearlier training in Boss's outfit had taught me the need for a twenty-six-hour day. But at breakfast my friend Anna asked me, "Friday, what can you tell me about the influence of Louis Onze on French lyric poetry?"

I blinked at her. "Is there a prize? Louis Onze sounds like a cheese to me. The only French verse I can recall is `Mademoiselle from ArmentiŠres.' If that qualifies."

"Professor Perry said that you are the person to ask."

"He's pulling your leg." When I reached the library Papa Perry looked up from his console. I said, "Good morning. Anna said that you had told her to ask me about the effect of Louis the Eleventh on French verse."

"Yes, yes, of course. Would you mind not bothering me now? This bit of programming is very tricky." He looked back down and closed me out of his world.

Frustrated and irritated I punched up Louis XI. Two hours later I came up for air. I had not learned anything about poetryÄso far as I could tell the Spider King had never even rhymed ton con with c'est hon or ever been a patron of the art. But I learned a lot about politics in the fifteenth century. Violent. Made the little scrapes I had been in seem like kiddie quarrels in the crŠche.

I spent the rest of the day punching up French lyric verse since 1450. Good in spots. French is suited to lyric poetry, more so than is EnglishÄit takes an Edgar Allan Poe to wring beauty consistently out of the dissonances of English. German is unsuited to lyricism, so much so that translations fall sweeter on the ear than do the German originals. This is no fault of Goethe or Heine; it is a defect of an ugly language. Spanish is so musical that a soappowder commercial in Spanish is more pleasing to the ear than the best free verse in EnglishÄthe Spanish language is so beautiful that much of its poetry sounds best if the listener does not understand the meaning.

I never did find out what effect, if any, Louis XI had on verse.

One morning I found "my" console occupied. I looked inquiringly at the head librarian. Again he looked harried. "Yes, yes, we're quite crowded today. Um, Miss Friday, why not use the terminal in your room? It has the same additional controls and, if you need to consult me, you can do so even more quickly than you can here. Just punch local seven and your signature code and I'll instruct the computer to give you priority. Satisfactory?"

"Just fine," I agreed. I enjoyed the warm camaraderie of the library study room but in my own room I could take off my clothes without feeling that I was annoying Papa Perry. "What should I study today?"

"Goodness. Isn't there some subject you are interested in that merits further listening? I dislike disturbing Number One."

I went to my room and went on with French history since Louis Onze and that led me to the new colonies across the Atlantic and that led me into economics and that took me to Adam Smith and

from there to political science. I concluded that Aristotle had had his good days but that Plato was a pretentious fraud and that led to my being called three times by the dining room wiTh the last call including a recorded message that any later arrival would mean nothing but cold night-rations and a live message from Goldie threatening to drag me down by my hair.

So I rushed down, barefooted and still zipping into a jump suit. Anna asked what I had been doing that was so urgent I would forget to eat. "Most unFridayish." She and Goldie and I usually ate together, with or without male companyÄresidents at HQ were a club, a fraternity, a noisy family, and some two dozen of them were "kissing friends" of mine.

"Improving my brain," I said. "You are looking at the World's Greatest Authority."

"Authority on what?" Goldie asked.

"Anything. Just ask me. The easy ones I answer at once; the hardest ones I'll answer tomorrow."

"Prove it," said Anna. "How many angels can sit on the point of a needle?"

"That's an easy one. Measure the angels' arses. Measure the point of the needle. Divide A into B. The numerical answer is left as an exercise for the student."

"Smart-aleck. What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

"Even easier. Switch on a recorder, using any nearby terminal. Clap with one hand. Play back the result."

"You try her, Goldie. She's been eating meat."

"What is the population of San Jose?"

"Ah, that's a hard one! I'll report tomorrow."

This fiddling went on for over a month before it filtered through my skull that someone (Boss, of course) was in fact trying to force me to become "the World's Greatest Authority."

At one time there really was a man known as "the World's Greatest Authority." I ran across him in trying to nail down one of the many silly questions that kept coming at me from odd sources. Like this: Set your terminal to "research." Punch parameters in succession "North American culture," "English-speaking," "midÄtwenti

eth century," "comedians," "the World's Greatest Authority." The answer you can expect is "Professor Irwin Corey." You'll find his routines timeless humor.

Meanwhile I was being force-fed, like a Strasbourg goose.

Nevertheless it was a very happy time. Often, as often as not, one of my true friends would invite me to share a bed. I don't recall ever refusing. Rendezvous would usually be arranged during afternoon sunbathing and the prospect added a tingle to the sensuous pleasure of lying in the sun. Because everyone at HQ was so civilizedÄsweet through and throughÄit was possible to answer, "Sorry, Terence asked me first. Tomorrow maybe? No? Okay, sometime soon"Ä and have no hurt feelings. One of the shortcomings of the S-group I used to belong to was that such arrangements were negotiated among the males under some protocol that was never explained to me but was not free from tension.

The silly questions speeded up. I found myself just getting acquainted with the details of Ming ceramics when a message showed up in my terminal saying that someone in staff wanted to know the relationships between men's beards, women's skirts, and the price of gold. I had ceased to wonder at silly questions; around Boss anything can happen. But this one seemed supersilly. Why should there be any relationship? Men's beards did not interest me; they tickle and often are dirty. As for women's skirts, I knew even less. I have almost never worn skirts. Skirted costumes can be pretty but they aren't practical for travel and could have gotten me killed three or four timesÄand when you're home, what's wrong with skin? Or as near as local custom permits.

But I had learned not to ignore questions merely because they were obvious nonsense; I tackled this one by calling up all the data I could, including punching out some most unlikely association chains. I then told the machine to tabulate all retrieved data by categories.

Durned if I didn't begin to find connections!

As more data accumulated I found that the only way I could see all of it was to tell the computer to plot and display a three-dimensional graphÄand that looked so promising that I told it to convert to holographic in color. Beautiful! I did not know why these three variables fitted together but they did. I spent the rest of that day

changing scales, X versus Y versus Z in various combinationsÄ magnifying, shrinking, rotating, looking for minor cycloid relations under the obvious gross ones... and noticed a shallOw double sinusoidal hump that kept showing up as I rotated the holoÄand suddenly, for no reason I can assign, I decided to subtract the double sunspot curve.

Eureka! As precise and necessary as a Ming vase! Before dinnertime I had the equation, just one line that encompassed all the silly data I had spent five days dragging out of the terminal. I punched the chief of staff's call and recorded that one-line equation, plus definitions of variables. I added no comment, no discussion; I wanted to force the faceless joker to ask for my opinions.

I got the same answer backÄi.e., none.

I fiddled for most of a day, waiting, and proving to myself that I could retrieve a group picture from any year and, through looking only at male faces and female legs, make close guesses concerning the price of gold (falling or rising), the time of that picture relative to the double sunspot cycle, andÄshortly and most surprisingÄ whether the political structure was falling apart or consolidating.

My terminal chimed. No face. No pat on the back. Just a displayed message: "Operations requests soonest depth analysis of possibility that plague epidemics of sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries resulted from political conspiracy."

Fooey! I had wandered into a funny farm and was locked up with the inmates.

Oh, well! The question was so complex that I might be left alone a long time while I studied it. That suited me; I had grown addicted to the possibilities of a terminal of a major computer hooked into a world research netÄI felt like Little Jack Homer.

I started by listing as many subjects as possible by free association:

plague, epidemiology, fleas, rats, Daniel Defoe, Isaac Newton, conspiracies, Guy Fawkes, Freemasonry, Illuminati, OTO, Rosicrucians, Kennedy, Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, Pearl Harbor, Green Bowlers, Spanish influenza, pest control, etc.

In three days my list of possibly related subjects was ten times as long.

In a week I knew that one lifetime was not nearly long enough to study in depth all of my list. But I had been told to tackle the subject

so I started inÄbut I placed my own meaning on "soonest"Äi.e., I would study conscientiously at least fifty hours per week but when and how I wished and with no cramming or rawhiding... unless somebody came along and explained to me why I should work harder or differently.

This went on for weeks.

I was wakened in the middle of the night by my terminalÄoverride alarm; I had shut it off as usual when I went to bed (alone, I don't recall why). I answered sleepily, "All right, all right! Speak up, and it had better be good."

No picture. Boss's voice said, "Friday, when will the next major Black Death epidemic occur?"

I answered, "Three years from now. April. Starting in Bombay and spreading worldwide at once. Spreading off planet at first transport.

"Thank you. Good night."

I dropped my head to the pillow and went right back to sleep.

I woke up at seven hundred as usual, held still for several moments and thought, while I grew colder and colderÄdecided that I really had heard from Boss in the night and really had given him that preposterous answer.

So bite the bullet, Friday, and climb the Thirteen Steps. I punched "local one." "Friday here, Boss. About what I told you in the night. I plead temporary insanity."

"Nonsense. See me at ten-fifteen."

I was tempted to spend the next three hours in lotus, chanting my beads. But I have a deep conviction that one should not attend even the End of the World without a good breakfast... and my decision was justified as the special that morning was fresh figs with cream, corned-beef hash with poached eggs, and English muffins with Knott's Berry Farm orange marmalade. Fresh milk. Colombian high-altitude coffee. That so improved things that I spent an hour trying to find a mathematical relationship between the past history of plague and the date that had popped into my sleep-drenched mind. I did not find one but was beginning to see some shape to the curve when the terminal gave me a three-minute warning I had punched in.

I had refrained from having my hair cut and my neck shaved but otherwise I was ready. I walked in on the tick. "Friday reporting,

sir. -

"Sit down. Why Bombay? I would think that Calcutta would be a more likely center."

"It might have something to do with long-range weather forecasts and the monsoons. Fleas can't stand hot, dry weather. Eighty percent of a flea's body mass is water and, if the percentage drops below sixty, the flea dies. So hot, dry weather will stop or prevent an epidemic. But, Boss, the whole thing is nonsense. You woke me up in the middle of the night and asked me a silly question and I gave you a silly answer without really waking up. I probably pulled it out of a dream. I've been having nightmares about the Black Death and there really was a bad epidemic that started in Bombay. Eighteen ninety-six and following."

"Not as bad as the Hong Kong phase of it three years later. Friday, the analytical section of Operations says that the next Black Death epidemic won't start until a year later than your prediction. And not Bombay. Djakarta and Ho Chi Minh City."

"That's preposterous!" I stopped abruptly. "Sorry, sir, I guess I was back in that nightmare. Boss, can't I study something pleasantem than fleas and rats and Black Death? It's ruining my sleep."

"You may. You are through studying plagueÄ"

"Hooray!"

"Äother than to whatever extent your intellectual curiosity causes you to tidy up any loose ends. The matter now goes to Operations for action. But action will be based on your prediction, not on that of the mathematical analysts."

"I have to say it again. My prediction is nonsense."

"Friday, your greatest weakness is lack of awareness of your true strength. Wouldn't we look silly if we depended on the professional analysts but the outbreak was one year earlier, as you predicted? Catastrophe. But to be a year early in taking prophylactic measures does no harm."

"Are we going to try to stop it?" (People have been fighting rats and fleas throughout history. So far, the rats and fleas are ahead.)

"Heavens, no! In the second place, the contract would be too big

for this organization. But in the first place I do not accept contracts that I cannot fulfill; this is one such. In the third place, from the strictest humanitarian viewpoint, any attempt to stop the processes by which overcrowded cities purge themselves is not a kindness. Plague is a nasty death but a quick one. Starvation also is a nasty death... but a very slow one."

Boss grimaced, then continued. "This organization will limit itself to the problem of keeping Pasteurella pestis from leaving this planet. How will we do this? Answer at once."

(Ridiculous! Any government public health department, faced with such a question, would set up a blue-ribbon study group, insist on ample research funds, and schedule a reasonable timeÄfive years or moreÄfor orderly scientific investigation.) I answered at once, "Explode them."

"The space colonies? That seems a drastic solution."

"No, the fleas. Back during the global wars of the twentieth century somebody discovered that you could kill off fleas and lice by taking them up to high altitude. They explode. About five kilometers as I recall but it can be looked up and checked by experiment. I thought of it because I noticed that Beanstalk Station on Mount Kenya was above the critical altitudeÄand almost all space traffic these days goes up the Beanstalk. Then there is the simple method of heat and drynessÄworks but not as fast. But the key to it, Boss, is absolutely no exceptions. Just one case of diplomatic immunity or one VIP allowed to skip the routines and you've had it. One lapdog. One gerbil. One shipment of laboratory mice. If it took the pneumonic form, Ell-Five would be a ghost town in a week. Or Luna City."

"If I did not have other work for you, I would put you in charge. How about rats?"

"I don't want the job; I'm sick of the subject. Boss, killing a rat is no problem. Stuff it into a sack. Beat the sack with an ax. Then shoot it. Then drown it. Burn the sack with the dead rat in it. Meanwhile its mate has raised another litter of pups and you now have a dozen rats to replace it. Boss, all we've ever been able to do with rats is fight them to a draw. We never win. If we let up for a moment the rats pull ahead." I added sourly, "I think they're the second team." This plague assignment had depressed me.

"Elucidate."

"If Homo sapiens doesn't make itÄhe keeps trying to kill himself offÄthere are the rats, ready to take over." -

"Piffle. Soft-headed nonsense. Friday, you overstress the human will to die. We have had the means to commit racial suicide for generations now and those means are and have been in many hands. We have not done so. In the second place, to replace us, rats would have to grow enormously larger skulls, develop bodies to support them, learn to walk on two feet, develop their front paws into delicate manipulative organsÄand grow more cortex to control all this. To replace man another breed must become man. Bah. Forget it. Before we leave the subject of plague, what conclusions did you reach concerning the conspiracy theory?"

"The notion is silly. You specified sixth, fourteenth, and seventeenth centuries... and that means sailing ships or caravans and no knowledge of bacteriology. So here we have the sinister Dr. Fu Manchu in his hideaway raising a million rats and the rats are infested with fleasÄeasy. Rats and fleas are infected with the bacillusÄpossible even without theory. But how does he hit his target city? By ship? In a few days all the million rats will be dead and so would be the crew. Even harder to do it overland. To make such a conspiracy work in those centuries would require modern science and a largish time machine. Boss, who thought up that silly question?"

"I did."

"I thought it had your skid to it. Why?"

"It caused you to study the subject with a much wider approach than you otherwise would have given it, did it not?"

"Uh..." I had spent much more time studying relevant political history than I had spent studying the disease itself. "I suppose so."

"You know so."

"Well, yes. Boss, there ain't no such animal as a well-documented conspiracy. Or sometimes too well documented but the documents contradict each other. If a conspiracy happened quite some time ago, a generation or longer, it becomes impossible to establish the truth. Have you ever heard of a man named John F. Kennedy?"

"Yes. Chief of state in the middle twentieth century of the Federation then occupying the land between CanadaÄBritish Canada

and Qu‚becÄand the Kingdom of Mexico. He was assassinated."

"That's the man. Killed in front of hundreds of witnesses and every aspect, before, during, and after, heavily documented. All that mountain of evidence adds up to is this: Nobody knows who shot him, how many shot him, how many times he was shot, who did it, why it was done, and who was involved in the conspiracy if there was a conspiracy. It isn't even possible to say whether the murder plot was foreign or domestic. Boss, if it is impossible to untangle one that recent and that thoroughly investigated, what chance is there of figuring out the details of the conspiracy that did in Gaius lulius Caesar? Or Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot? All that can truthfully be said is that the people who come out on top write the official versions found in the history books, history that is no more honest than is autobiography."

"Friday, a¤tobiography is usually honest."

"Huh! Boss, what have you been smoking?"

"That will do. Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful."

"I missed a turn."

"Think about it. Friday, I can't spend more time on you today; you chatter too much and change the subject. Hold your tongue while I say some things. You are now permanently on staff work. You are getting older; no doubt your reflexes are a touch slower. I will not again risk you in field workÄ"

"I'm not complaining!"

"Pipe down. ÄBut you must not get swivel-chair spread. Spend less time at the console, more time in exercise; the day will come when your enhanced reflexes will again save your life. And possibly the lives of others. In the meantime give thought to the day when you will have to shape your life unassisted. You should leave this planet; for you there is nothing here. The Balkanization of North America ended the last chance of reversing the decay of the Renaissance Civilization. So you should think about off-planet possibilities not only in the solar system but elsewhereÄplanets ranging from extremely primitive to well developed. Investigate for each the cost and the advantages of migrating there. You will need money; do you want my agents to collect the money of which you were cheated in New Zealand?"

"How did you know I was cheated?"

"Come, come! We are not children."

may I think about it?" -

"Yes. Concerning your ex-migration: I recommend that you not move to the planet Olympia. Otherwise I have no specific advice other than to migrate. When I was younger, I thought I could change this world. Now I no longer think so but for emotional reasons I must keep on fighting a holding action. But you are young and, because of your unique heritage, your emotional ties to this planet and to this portion of humanity are not great. I could not mention this until you shuffled off your sentimental connection in New ZealandÄ"

"I didn't `shuffle' it off; I was kicked out on my arse!"

"So. While you are deciding, look up Benjamin Franklin's parable of the whistle, then tell meÄno, ask yourselfÄwhether or not you paid too much for your whistle. Enough of thatÄ Two assignments for you: Study the Shipstone corporate complex, including its interlocks outside the complex. Second, the next time I see you I want you to tell me precisely how to spot a sick culture. That's all."

Boss turned his attention to his console, so I stood up. But I was not ready to accept so abrupt a dismissal as I had had no opportunity to ask important questions. "Boss. Don't I have any duties? Just random study that goes nowhere?"

"It goes somewhere. Yes, you have duties. First, to study. Second, to be awakened in the middle of the nightÄor stopped in the hallwayÄ to answer silly questions."

"Just that?"

"What do you want? Angels and trumpets?"

"Well... a job title, maybe. I used to be a courier. What am I now? Court jester?"

"Friday, you are developing a bureaucratic mind. `Job title' indeed! Very well. You are staff intuitive analyst, reporting to me only. But the title carries an injunction: You are forbidden to discuss anything more serious than a card game with any member of the analytical section of the general staff. Sleep with them if you wishÄI know that you do, in two casesÄbut limit your conversation to the veriest trivia."

"Boss, I could wish that you spent less time under my bed!"

"Only enough to protect the organization. Friday, you are well aware that the absence of Eyes and Ears today simply means that they are concealed. Be assured that I am shameless about protecting the organization."

"You are shameless, unlimited. Boss, answer me one more question. Who is behind Red Thursday? The third wave sort of fizzled; will there be a fourth? What's it all about?"

"Study it yourself. If I told you, you would not know; you simply would have been told. Study it thoroughly and some nightÄwhen you are sleeping aloneÄI will ask you. You will answer and then you will know."

"Fer Gossake. Do you always know when I'm sleeping alone?"

"Always." He added, "Dismissed," and turned away.