Of Death What Dreams

9

In a back room, Bailey took a seat in a worn leather-covered reclining chair; the tapelegger clucked and muttered to himself as he attached the electrodes to Bailey’s skull, referring frequently to the dials on the wheeled cart beside him. As he pressed buttons, Bailey felt the stirrings and tinglings of the neuro-electric currents induced within his brain by the teaching machine.

“Make no mistake,” the old man told him. “The material you’ll receive here will be in no way inferior to that offered in the most exclusive universities. My prints were coded direct from the masters filed at HEW Central. Once assimilated, a bootleg education is objectively indistinguishable from any other.”

“I’m counting on it,” Bailey said. “That’s why I’m paying you fifty M.”

“A tiny fraction of the value of what is encoded here.” The ’legger weighed the reel on his palm. “The essence of a lifetime of cultured ease. This particular Trace was made by Aldig Parn, Blue One, the critic and collector. You’ll have a fabulous grounding in the arts. Parn was also a Distinguished Master at the game called Reprise. You’ll get it all—and much, much more. It’s not been edited, you see. It’s all as it came from his brain, even to personal tastes and mannerisms, all those subtleties and nuances of culture which we cut from authorized tapes.”

“If it’s as good as that, why sell at all? Why not use it yourself?”

“Why?” the print man snapped. “So that I could become even more acutely aware of the horrors of life in a petrified society? I’ve too much education already. One day I’ll present myself at Unicen for voluntary wipe and begin again as a pink tag crude-labor gangman. The solace of nepenthe.”

“That’s not much of a sales talk,” Bailey said.

“I’m not urging you to buy. I’d recommend a limited tech indoc, sufficient to guarantee you a yellow tag.”

“Never mind; I won’t hold you responsible. Just be sure you watch those meters. I don’t want a burned cortex for my trouble.”