CHAPTER ONE

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Standing with mathematical accuracy in the center of the boulevard, the android appeared to be giving a generous twenty meters' free passage on either hand; but there was no doubt that its multifaceted, revolving eye, on the crown of its black dome, would check out anything down to termite size that tried to pass.

Experience over the last six years told Gunnar Holt that he hadn't a thing to worry about. Ever since he had outgrown the physical norm for Horizon Delta, the androids had left him alone. Now, nudging the two-meter mark in height and with the flat, powerful physique of a mountaineer, he could look down on any android he met

A less reflective type might have judged that the androids were backing down from a challenge they could not meet, but he knew better.

As a youngster, before he had spoiled the distribution curve, he had judged the power behind an android's arm. Single-handed, one had put down a riot in Barnston precinct when food deliveries had been in a snarl. With men clambering on it like flies, it had methodically carved up a milling crowd, leaving a swathe of dead and injured.

The first hint that he was one apart had come by accident. He had been pushing himself to reach the dormitory area, hurrying to beat the curfew, and had found that he was already too late. The duty guard at the check point had already lined up half a dozen delinquents and was recording identity serials to levy a fine. Gunnar Holt had walked on, determined that he would not submit until he was physically stopped. There was no doubt that the android saw him. It made an indecisive move, then packed it in and went back to its recording chore.

When it happened a third time, he made a deliberate experiment to see how far he could go. Unbelievably, it was true. For some reason, the androids were not programed to list him as one of the flock. His foster parents, aware for some time that they had taken a cuckoo into the nest, were glad to sign off and see him given an early admission to the male dormitory area. So he had freedom, of a kind, to make his own way about the city.

At first he had used his rest days for travel. Day journeys on foot, giving himself time to clock in at his own pad and the refectory service he had to use. That meant only one meal on those days and a growth of self-discipline to mark him out even more.

Northwest from Barnston precinct, he reckoned it was eight kilometers to the outer ring of hydroponic farms and the ultimate perimeter of the city. Northeast it was four; Southwest, six. Southeast was more interesting. Once he had taken two days and pushed to the end of the main axis. Twenty kilometers at the least count

What had taken time was the park. Recreation areas in the precincts were adequate for exercise, but this had a quality of size that filled the mind. Thortonheath Park, the board said; halfway house on his long journey.

It was a quiet place to rest the mind, since every precinct, like his own, was in a frenetic muddle of planned obsolescence and rebuilding. The park and the libraries divided his free time. A high ration of primate curiosity had driven him into the jungle of higher education. Using the teaching machines, with programs from the archives, which the android librarians allowed him to pick for himself, he beat a path through mathematics and engineering out and beyond the needs of his job as a recycling operative which finally closed the circle of apartheid. He was a minority of one. So now, Gunnar Holt carried on down the fairway on a collision course with the stationary android. Today he would force the issue to a confrontation of his own choosing. He would make one of them actually move out of his way.

Its scanning eye stopped turning and fixed him in a direct beam. Even after all the years of success, the direct challenge dropped his skin resistance and a crawl of tension edged along his nerves. At five meters, he could read the detail on the specification plate. It was a top hand, a section leader with a decision-making capability and charge of ten standard units.

At four paces, he was beginning to think he had pushed his luck. Curiosity, far from being the helpmeet of evolution, had led him to a terminal situation. The android was showing uncertainty but, on balance, was still opting for holding the pass.

Holt suddenly felt angry. The tin man was an artifact, even conceding that a self-energizing power pack and a robot repair service made it independent of human intervention in its life cycle. He had studied the history and technical background of robot development and could visualize the circuitry that was currently sorting the angles. It had no conceivable right to interfere with him. Anger routed fear. Now he was near enough to see his own face reflected in the polished black casque. Elongated further by the curve of the metal, it was a long, Indo-European job, topped by thickly waved red hair that added a few more centimeters of height, cleanshaven, composed, and unsmiling. He was pleased to see that it gave no sign of the uncertainty that had possessed him. He said, evenly, "Stand out of my way, Sergeant."

It was unnecessary. The android was already on the move. In a flash of intuition, Holt recognized that it had to do with his mental set. His own doubt had triggered off the debate in the mechanical cortex. Very subtle engineering there; the android was sensitive to the microvoltage seething around in a human skull. The way ahead was clear. On impulse, Holt stopped and spoke again. "Wait. I am not satisfied that your adjustment is correct. Show me your program."

This time, there was no hesitation. The android deftly unclipped its chest console, swung aside the flap, and fished out a flat dispenser of microtapes, which it held out for inspection. Other than on the screen of a teaching machine, it was the first time Holt had seen one, but the layout was self-explanatory. There were many hundreds of instruction loops, schemes of action for any eventuality, except the one that had come up. Without a playback unit, he could not make any assessment. But it gave him food for thought. Sometime, he might work on one of these zombies and adapt it for his own use. Alter its programs. Though to what end, he did not know.

Holt returned the capsule, "That seems to be in order. Just remember me, next time we meet. Carry on."

"Very good, Excellency."

Thortonheath Park worked its usual therapy. There was turf underfoot, and a ceiling of palest cerulean blue at fifty meters that hinted at indefinite distance and in fact took up the full height of Horizon Delta. On the perimeter, the ten levels of the city he knew were stepped back like the processional way of a ziggurat so that there was no abrupt cuff of masonry to stop the viewing eye. After the rabbit-warren complication of Barnston precinct, it was a considerable holiday of the spirit to stand and look about. It was a vindication of a sort for the efforts he had to make and the isolation he was in. Gunnar Holt had long accepted that his privileged position had won him no friends. Over the last few years, he had become as solitary as a man on an island. He had taken it as part of the package deal, but without any enthusiasm. He was not a loner by nature, reckoning, with truth, that there was a limit to the time a man could live out of himself as out of a valise.

He began to walk slowly across open space toward a small copse set on a low ridge, which was skillfully landscaped to give the illusion of great distance.

It was comfortably hot, knocking the 20-degree mark. He unclipped his belt and slipped off his fluted, metal-cloth tabard. Cumbersome to carry, he left it standing like a headless trunk on the grass. As it was a work day in the precincts near the park, it would be in nobody's way. Long before sixteen hundred, when the release bell rang, he would have reclaimed it

A small flock of white birds rose uneasily from the trees ahead, circled twice, and settled back out of sight. There was also a movement at ground level. Somebody was trespassing on his private garden. Holt quickened his pace to check out the phenomenon and reached the winding path up the flank of the ridge in five minutes flat

Up close, the dwarf trees threw a pattern of shadow that was tangibly cool to the skin. There was no one in sight. He went directly for the top, cutting corners on the zigzag, until he made it to a clearing where a round white gazebo on a single fluted column looked over the treetops like a dovecote on a pole. When the park was busy, there was always a patient line waiting to look out from this vantage point, the only one of its kind on Horizon Delta. Today he had the ridge to himself. He went up the spiral stair in the column, sure that whoever had been in the copse must be up above.

Confirmation came before he was halfway. Climbing up had taken its toll. Heavy breathing amplified by the hollow-drum structure was beating back down the well

When he came out onto a circular platform, he was a full minute finding the source. Then he recognized that a bundle of gray cloth, on a bench seat under a window in the curve of the wall, actually contained the living presence of a very senior citizen.

He said, "Are you all right? Can I do anything for you?"

Breathing had been a full-time chore for the oldster and left little over for sorting sensory data. The voice was his first clue that he had company. Parchment-thin eyelids flicked back and a pair of washed-out blue eyes transformed the rubble into an intelligent observer.

Holt was used to being given a second look, but he now saw surprise on a scale that made him feel beyond the human pale.

"What is it?"

"Who are you?" The voice was hardly more than a whisper. At the same time, the old man slewed stick legs off the bench and heaved himself painfully to his feet.

It was not a tour en Pair, but it used up whatever reserves were left in the physical locker. There was pride in it; a gesture that had to be made. Economical in its way, because it cut any number of corners. Before Holt caught him and lowered him back to the seat, they had looked at each other eye-to-eye. The man's presence was explained. They were two of a kind.

There was an interval of silence. On his closed circuit of pain, the old man could neither hear nor speak. Holt filled the time with a bleak look into the future. So it would be with himself years ahead. To date, he had found enough to do exploring the environment to its physical limits, with an undefined notion in the back of his mind that there would always be progression. Here was a skeletal signpost to bring him up short. A lifetime, no less, had ended where it began. Who was to say that there was anything about himself to claim success, where this one had so patently failed?

Speculation cut off as the oldster rejoined the symposium with a question of his own.

"Who are you?"

"Holt. Gunnar Holt. From Barnston precinct. How is it we have not met before? I am often here."

"No time for regret on that score." The words came across like individual beads on a counting frame. "I am George Sutton. Was is the better word."

"Are there others?"

"Not that I know of. But for years now, I have not moved about very much. I think not. Statistics are against it. How much do you know about the city?"

"Roughly the size. I would say it has an elliptical form. Lies on a Northwest-Southeast axis. Ten levels. Could hold twenty million people."

"Go to Burton precinct in the Southwest. There's a library. Don't be put off. They have books there."

"Books?"

"The ones you want are in the vaults. Make them bring them up for you. Or better still, go down yourself and look around. Then you'll understand. Horizon Delta is only a part. Only a part." Sutton had exhausted himself and leaned against the backrest with his eyes closed. Breathing was shallow: short rasping breaths that made his throat swell with effort as he fought to get air down to where it would do some good.

"Don't try to talk. I'll get you home."

A rictus like the lipless grin on a skull supplemented a feeble headshake. "Not a chance. I came here to die. A high board to take off from. Shift me around so that I can look out." When it was done, Sutton seemed to find a small reinforcement of libido, though Holt had to bend close to hear what he was saying. There was a lot he wanted to ask, but he reckoned there was a certain protocol in the diamond moment of dying. Communication should be from the ship to the land. Sutton looked at the engineered prospect as though it were an ocean he had found after an infinite trek through dense bush. He was speaking to himself as much as to Holt, finding comfort in a proposition that had been part of the furniture of his mind. "There are things known and there are things unknown and there are doors between."

Even if he, personally, had never been able to find a way through, the belief that a way existed had been the mainstay of his isolation.

He followed up with another, urgent this time to get agreement. "Don't be brainwashed into accepting the assumptions of society. What is, is not necessarily right. The majority opinion is nearly always wrong." He went very still, and it seemed likely that the oneway link was closed for good. Holt straightened up and looked out over his head.

Suddenly Sutton twisted around from the view and gripped Holt's arm with unexpected bony strength. His voice was almost a shout.

"Have you been into Woodslee precinct?"

"No, I never have."

"Go there. It may be important to you."

"Where does it lie?"

But Sutton was not listening. The grip on Holt's arm had gone slack. Breathing notched up to a frenetic tempo and then cut off in the mid-rasp, with a rattle that shook the whole rickety fabric. A bird flew out from the copse and went in wheeling flight across open ground. An excursion module for the migrating Ka.

Gunnar Holt was used to being alone. Even in the packed living quarters of his home precinct, he was one by himself. Sutton's death underlined it in a new way. It was not natural. Man was a social animal. He needed his own kind.

Optimism had always worked to bring him around to suppose that in the long term he would make out. But Sutton's life cycle was against it. It could happen to him. There was no rational expectation that it would not.

But although he could not prevent the birds of depression from flying around his head, he reckoned it was only prudent to stop them nesting in his hair. There was time to get to Barnston. The journey back would take him past curfew, but that was no problem.

Eight boulevards ran from the park: four along the major axes, four taking intermediate compass points. Precincts were listed on check boards at each outlet.

He picked up his tabard, still waiting for him on the grass like a dumb, surrealist landmark, and followed the boundary to the Southwest exit.

An android standing four-square in the way turned deliberately and watched him read the manifest. It would not all be lost ground. By cutting through connecting avenues, he could get to Barnston without backtracking through the park. In any event, it was the first advice he had been given in a long time and he could not pass it up.

On impulse, he called over to the android, "Come here. Show me your program." When it was in his hands, he tipped the spools out and shoved them back in random order. It was not much, and he was hardly conscious of having crossed any Rubicon; but it was a declaration of intent. From being a passive consumer of whatever the system chose to hand out, he had gone over to an offensive, with real choices and personal responsibility.

Seeing more of the game, the action made more impact on a hatchet-faced onlooker, less than half a kilometer distant, who was building a hard-edged reproduction of the set on a well-tuned actualizer. He voiced his opinion with the querulous harmonic of one who time and again has been proved right by events and who judges that if only people listened to him, there would be less angst suffered by one and all.

"You see, Carlos, the canker spreads. I said years ago that Sutton should have been dealt with. Now he has met another one and infected him with his opinions. I say act at once. There is enough trouble on Horizon Delta without encouraging an anarchist."

Carlos Foden, centrally placed on a long console spread, answered indirectly by speaking to the operator on the right wing, who completed his duty trio and gave more nourishing food for vision than anything the holographic web of the actualizer could net in a long search.

"What do you say to that, Joanna? He is by way of being your protege." The form of words was harmless enough, but the interrogee recognized the underlying sneer. Between the lines, she was being credited with a lapse from scientific detachment, which was only to be expected, in the speaker's book, from an emotion-led woman.

There was also more truth in it than he could guess at. She had spent more time watching Holt than strict scientific interest demanded.

But Carlos Foden ought to have known better than to job, and the face behind it was unruffled by any cat's paw of passion. Masklike and profoundly symmetrical, like nature's own self, its magnolia skin covered a satisfying oval distribution of subcutaneous fat. It was topped off by a generous ration of honey-blonde hair taken severely back and tied by a bootlace bow of electrum ribbon.

"You are both very good at making difficulties where none exist. The project to leave Sutton under observation was agreed by Council. Some useful records on reaction to isolation have come out of it. Nothing new, but such a natural experimental situation could not be neglected. It was good sense. What harm did he ever do? Certainly, I first reported Holt's existence. If proper monitoring had been done, he would have been picked up before. You know as well as I do that it is on report. We shall hear soon enough if any action has to be taken."

Foden made a pantomime of being battered by argument and appealed to the left-winger. "There you are, Prenton. You have your answer. Our environmentalist colleague would record Nero's fiddling while Rome crumbled around her head."

Prenton was not easily appeased. "It's all very well. But Holt has gotten ahead of Sutton. Sutton was already old when he came across the Burton libraries. We should send a party down to destroy that collection."

"You worry too much. Nobody else will see it. Before long, decay will have done the job. Now that our Joanna is so interested in Holt, she won't let him out of sight. More important is the development at Woodslee. Fortunately it is not our affair, or Joanna would have let it spread as another God-given piece of experimental design."

Once again, it would have been easier to let it go, but she had her end to keep up. She knew what was behind it.

Joanna Taubman, as a ward of the Senior Administrator in Wirral City's Management Board of three, had met the attitude before. There was always the suggestion that she had freewheeled into high office on the strength of the name bond with Dr. Gordon Taubman, who had now held onto the top civic slot through two five-year terms and looked set to found a dynasty.

There was enough truth in it to be irritating. She was an ambitious girl who had a fair judgment of her own worth and knew she would have made it, eventually, whoever she had been. But as a realist, she had no objection to starting halfway up the ladder. It meant that she could handle research projects that would not have come her way in the first working decade of adult status. By the time she came to her three-year stint in the Horizon's creche unit, she would be established as an authority in her own right. For that matter, Taubman might well fix it so that she skipped the childbearing bit. Almost certainly she could get it cut to one child instead of the statutory two. A further cutback on population for the Horizon was seriously tabled, even though slow wastage had dropped the Alpha numbers to the 100,000 mark. She said, 'There is no comparison between the two. Woodslee is a security problem. What is happening there is not understood by anybody."

It shifted the argument off course but gave George Prenton opportunity to air another grouch.

"The Council was wrong about that ten years ago, and it's still wrong today. There's only one way to deal with mutants, whether physical or mental. I say exterminate. The planners had good sense when they built lethal capability into the air exchange. There's a precedent, too. It's easy, painless, and humane. They legislated for this kind of situation, and now heirs to the system haven't enough nerve to operate it." Again it had come around to thinly-veiled criticism of the city boss. This time it also involved his other legal ward.

Guy Taubman, equal in age with Joanna, had made assisted progress in the security service. He was now the youngest member of the committee of six that directed law and order under the direct authority of the managing triumvirate. He must have had some say in the policy on Woodslee. Joanna Taubman had a number of reservations about her legal brother and the validity of some Council policies; but no hint of it showed. 'There is no question of loss of nerve. Your solution is over-simple and is no solution at all. Who is to say that the Woodslee situation could not erupt elsewhere? Until we know its cause, it would be stupid to empty the area. They do no harm. The reverse is true. Statistics show they work harder and spend fewer hours in the entertainment areas than any other precinct on Horizon Delta. Granted there is more mental breakdown, but it leads to suicide, aggression against the self and not the group."

Foden said mildly, "That's all right Joanna. George isn't blaming you for Woodslee. But just for the record, I'll remind you that it isn't as innocent as you seem to think. Political action has started up. Direct attacks on the guards. More than twenty knocked out already. It may not be possible to contain them inside precinct boundaries for much longer. Then Prenton could be right." Joanna left it alone. She made deft tuning movements with a set of smooth tapering fingers that would have been more naturally adapted to picking through a pattern book of exotic brocades. She brought up a clear picture of Gunnar Holt, moving with an athletic swing down the center of his boulevard. He was well on the way to Burton precinct, with the air of one who carries an oar on his shoulder. Holt reached Burton precinct with an hour to spare before the official closing time of the public utilities sector, which housed schools, libraries, display galleries, and admin machinery needed to keep its half-million inhabitants at a muted tick.

He had not been there before and judged at once that there was better-than-average provision for the culture vulture. Not that there was any about Reconstruction ploys were over for the day. Passing through the Coliseum district on the way to his objective, he had seen that every actualities stadium was showing a House Full sign. Like everywhere else on Horizon Delta, the third estate was hooked on continuous free entertainment Bread and circuses.

Maybe Burton had been built over a site with a tradition for scholarship. The library complex filled seven levels, with one subject area opening from another in an ascending spiral. Holt spent twenty minutes casing this monument to information. It was an incredible deposit at that Scree, weathered from the slopes of scholarship. Still, except that there was more bulk than he had yet seen in one place, there was no gain on a qualitative kick. A trial sample from a mathematics book brought no surprises.

Sutton's special mention must be reserved for the hidden written material. That would be something to see in its own right, insofar as he had never handled such a primitive tool as a printed book. At the height of the spiral, Holt leaned out over an ornamental baluster and looked down into a well like an amphitheatre, with crescents of study carrels enough to seat a thousand students at the least count. Acoustic cowls were in molded yellow wood, teaching machines were neatly shrouded in pale apricot hoods. Tall, Sat spars, stalactite and stalagmite, ran in well-drawn curves to mark out areas. It was all set up as a powerhouse to belt the accumulated wisdom of the millennia into the captive ears of the eager young.

Seemingly, they all had other fish to fry. Except for android librarians sitting, with infinite mechanical patience, at intervals around the set, the place was empty as the inside of a drum. Holt was turning away to get back to the central inquiry kiosk, when a small movement of color caught his eye. A knot of lime green fabric was making progress down a narrow alley of storage racks. Its owner was invisible, but there was a character lead in the motion. Even at a distance, there was a rhythmic bounce that communicated zest.

As he watched, the green marker stopped dead, made a 360-degree turn, went on to a count of three, and spun again. Whoever lay beneath was not so committed to research that there was no time for the small personal gesture.

Discounting androids, there would be no audience for it.

Even as the thought crossed his mind, the librarian at the end of the gulley jacked itself ponderously off its station and disappeared in pursuit.

Holt was already on the way down when the scene played itself again in total recall. There was something that did not gel. He was halfway down the spiral on an inside track and went to the ornamental rail to look again.

From the shallower angle, he could not see either of the protagonists, but he could remember well enough that the android's dome had been half a meter below the level of the top shelves. That could only mean that if the cloth was carried on a human head, the wearer was at least taller than an android. On the ground, it was not as easy to see where he was going. Circuiting the well had clouded orientation. Interconnecting passageways were identical. Come to think of it, there was some credit due to the green topknot in finding enough libido to truck along such a rats' maze.

Working from first principles, Holt made for the inner rail to look up and identify the point from which he had seen the action. Two dog-legs and he was there, with a bonus that made a further check unnecessary. On an alcove table, there was a flat, gray document case with a library admission counter on it and a serrated identity disk, which had been used to check into the complex, lying on the polished top beside it.

It was a local registration. Face up, it carried BURTON PRECINCT in Tempo Inline with an identity number. On the reverse, there was a neat index-finger print and the name Shesha Haddon written in a round, flowing hand by the owner.

Holt quickened his pace like a hound dog given a sock. All told, this Shesha was bizarre not only in name. Head coverings were never worn in the city. She would stand out as an oddity. If indeed it was a female quarry. But then it would surely have to be with that name.

The section curved away and ended as a cul-de-sac. She had branched off left or right through one of the narrow, connecting ginnels.

Confirmation came suddenly from close by and on the right. A warm, clear voice, with a harmonic of loathing in it, said, "Don't touch me. Go back to your desk." Holt fell easily into a pattern of direct action as though claiming a birthright. He went up the side of the bay, scattering tubes of tape in a small cascade, until he was crouching on the flat top with his head brushing the roof.

There was no remaining area of doubt. Shesha Haddon was female and as nubile as they had ever come in the long history of the planet.

She was standing with her back to a bulkhead that closed off the section and, even under stress, she had fetched up in an evocative stance, like a highly sophisticated bas-relief. Palms were flat against the wall and a little way out from her sides. Her head was tilted to look up at him, over the dome of the android, which had penned her in the corner.

It was a taut, hieratic pose, all fluid line and satisfactory conjunction of plane and curve; round breasts, almost fully defined by a fine, metallic-mesh tunic top in silver gray; long legs only just making the elegant end of the thin-sturdy continuum. A mathematician's delight for any age. Her face was calm, serious, structured on a wide oval; high, clear forehead; straight nose; eyes enormous, gold-flecked, and luminous with intelligence; Melanesian lips full, everted, and currently open to mime astonishment.

She was taller than the android, but not by so much that she was comfortably outside its area of doubt. That, and her individual style, must have triggered off its checking zeal. There was another factor, which only registered on the eidetic image that Holt carried on his retina in the drop to the deck. This high-level piece of biological evolution had another claim to notice. Racial integration had long ironed out extremes of skin pigmentation; but Shesha was a throwback to another age. She was an exotic, regal bronze.

Belatedly, the android sorted the data and decided that it was being involved in a riot. Its revolving eye steadied on Holt, and one flexible arm was whipping around to its chest console to send out an all-stations call when he straightened up and spoke very nastily into its convoluted ear.

"Get back to your desk."

Not built to knuckle its forehead to the squire, it nevertheless managed to look respectful and backed off.

"Of course, Excellency."

Holt was left facing the girl, who did not appear to have moved in any particular and simply stared at him as though he was freshly uncorked from some Eastern bottle.

To make progress, he said, "Shesha Haddon, I presume?"

It was an inspired opening to communication on the highest plane; but not, on the other hand, loaded with any special menace.

It was, therefore, with complete surprise that he saw the brilliant eyes fill emotionally with tears before she covered her face with her hands.

At the same time, a keening wail on a rising and falling cycle began to pump around the set. The android, thinking it through in the privacy of its alcove, had come to a decision to call in the marines.