Personal Recognizance (Sime~Gen, Book 9) Read online

  She zlinned him with astonishment, but shrugged it away and added, “If they find out about me starting this board, what do you suppose will happen to me? All you’ve been doing is reading! What about the rest of us? We’re all in this together, even if we don’t know each other.”

  She started the secret board? He had been writing an installment in her novel as four or five other writers had been posting, countering the twisted but seductive sympathy for the junct attitude Blissdrip was posting, but he wasn’t about to admit that—certainly not now that she knew his nickname. I’m not a writer. I’m just rationalizing this fascination with Blissdrip’s pornographic descriptions of Killust by saying it’s research to defend Ilin’s novel.”

  Promising himself to stop sucking Blissdrip’s drippings, Vret asked, “If you found out my nickname, anyone could!”

  “No, not unless they have access to our mainframe. I just correlated when you were in your room with which nicknames were signed on. There aren’t that many of us, you know. Every time Asymmetric was signed on, your room was logged into the network and you were in your room, but your roommate was not.”

  “How could you know that?”

  “Tremind lives in your dorm, doesn’t she? She watched you, our mainframe people watched the logins, and eventually caught five times with a definitive correlation. The faculty could do that, too, if they knew which mainframe log to watch, who to suspect, and cared to bother.

  “Vret, you have to help us find out who Blissdrip really is and stop these postings before some faculty member cares that much! The Secret Killroom is not only being read, it’s being re-read even more often than my D’zehn. Since Killroom started, the sign-on rate for new nicknames has tripled.”

  Zlinning hard, Vret exclaimed, “You’re jealous!”

  “No, scared. Think! If we generate too much demand on the mainframe, someone on the staff will notice. If all they find in our hidden files is the kind of stuff I’ve been writing, there’s a good chance we can convince them to keep our secret—or at least let us simply close down the board. Maybe it wouldn’t go onto our records—if we work it right. But if they find Secret Killroom there’s no hope of that. I think it crosses the line into killporn.”

  “You’ve been reading Killroom!”

  “Shuven, I can’t stop! The thing gets a grip on you. When I realized it was making me raise intil, dreaming about what the Kill had to have been like—Vret, I tried to stop reading it and I couldn’t! That thing is dangerous! We’ve got to put a stop to it.”

  I’m not the only one! “I don’t think it’s legally classifiable as killporn, though.”

  “You’ve read killporn?!”

  “No! I just read a definition somewhere, and I think it has to be about real people to be illegal killporn.”

  “Aunser really existed, you know. But I think that definition had to do with films, not written stories.”

  “Maybe, but one thing is crystal clear. While Aunser may be marginal, Killroom is way outside the campus rules for server usage. If we’re caught, it’ll go on our records. So why not just delete it from the boards—and delete Blissdrip’s access?”

  “We could do that. It would clean that crap off of our board. But it wouldn’t solve the problem. All Blissdrip would need is one tech as good as ours, and he could start his own board. If the read-rate spiked, it would start a hunt that would uncover our board.”

  Reluctantly, Vret suggested, “Well, then close down our board and let’s all just get out of this. If others want to get themselves caught doing something like this, let them.”

  “That wouldn’t solve the problem.”

  “So what is the problem?

  “Have you read Killroom?”

  He wanted to say no. Oh, he wanted it very badly. “Yes.”

  “And...?” she prompted.

  “And?”

  “Does it affect you?”

  “Well...”

  “Ah. I see you understand the problem.”

  “I do?”

  “It’s powerfully seductive. The younger students shouldn’t be exposed to anything like that. I’m not sure I’m old enough.”

  Suddenly the problem snapped into a new perspective. “You started this secret history board. You started the Aunser chronicle, the frank discussion of the realities behind history. If you just cut it off and walk away, that leaves Blissdrip free to victimize people who really can’t handle what he’s dishing up.”

  “If I can’t handle it, and you can’t handle it—and nobody I know who is reading it can handle it—who can? We have to stop Blissdrip—we have to find out who it is and make them understand what they’re doing.”

  “We?” Vret was pretty sure the understanding was already there and the “stopping” wouldn’t be merely a matter of conveying information. He wanted to run away and pretend he’d never been involved.

  “I’m recruiting you into the board management team. So you’re part of ‘we’ now. If you agree.”

  No, I don’t agree. “What if I say no?”

  Her nager whipped out of her control, turning heads of the passers-by on the path behind them. She drew a breath and reined in her showfield.

  In that moment, Vret had zlinned deeper into her than he had ever intended though, and knew he couldn’t refuse to help her.

  “You don’t have to help us. But we watched you sleuthing around, finding me. All right, I helped you a little, but you would have figured it all out. You think of things nobody else would.” Her nager seemed to smile shyly while her face was all business. “We must find Blissdrip before the mainframe staff notices us. We don’t want to delete his stuff and telegraph a warning—we’d never find him then. We don’t know how to do this without you.”

  “Why can’t you find him the way you found me?”

  “There are a few thousand students here, nevermind faculty and second-year students. Only about seventy five are on our secret boards now but we don’t know who they are among the thousands. I knew you were on the board—it was easy to figure out your nickname. Can’t work that trick in reverse.”

  “That’s comforting. If you can’t, the faculty couldn’t.”

  “Some of the Farrises on staff may be telepaths.”

  He laughed, only realizing how much tension that had knotted his spine when it suddenly broke. “Yeah, right, assigned to teach in a First Year Camp to sniff out wrongdoing by the hapless students.”

  She shrugged. “Most channels return to teach in a Camp for a few months. Why wouldn’t the Endowed be included? But it’s worse than that. We think maybe Blissdrip isn’t on the Rialite campus. We think maybe he’s logging on from somewhere else.”

  “How could he possibly have gotten the logon key?”

  “We have no idea. One theory is that he hacked in without a logon key.”

  “Ilin, I know nothing about mainframes or hacking. And if this guy could be off the Rialite campus, there’s no way I could find him.”

  “So that means you’ll join us?”

  Mind racing, Vret saw two futures. One where he walked away from this, cancelled off the boards, pretended he’d never heard of them. He’d become a Troubleshooter, have an exalted career, retire with the knowledge that he’d made the Tecton work for yet another generation. And die with the guilt locked in his heart that he’d let this poison spread just for his own professional advancement.

  Or, he could throw in with Sumz and her friends, risk everything, probably fail to chase down Blissdrip—or at least fail to stop him or her. He would lose his Troubleshooting career, maybe more, and end his days knowing he’d done no good for the Tecton at all. But at least he wouldn’t have the guilt lacing his Need nightmares.

  When he’d been a child, he would have chosen to live with the guilt—because he had no concept of what Need nightmares could do.

  “What do I have to do to sign on?”

  “You just did it.”

  * * * * * * *

  Finding Blissdrip and putti
ng a stop to the Secret Killroom postings was all Vret could think about for the next two days. The first thing he did was to hit the library for a stack of books on how the big computers that ran the campus actually worked.

  Wading into a technical area he had no background for, he missed reading four Killroom postings and three Aunser postings. But it soon became clear he wasn’t cut out to run computers. This was not news to him, but it left him at a disadvantage in solving the current problem.

  Though he kept slogging through the technical manuals, and even joined one of the study groups of the technically minded, he gravitated back into reading Aunser.

  Chapter Seven

  READING ADDICTION

  Then he couldn’t resist the lure of the Killroom stories. Each one took some historical fact Bilateral chronicled and twisted it around into lavishly orchestrated descriptions of the visceral joys of The Kill—and what to do to attain the satisfaction no channel could deliver. There were even detailed descriptions of ways of torturing Gens to evince the most fear.

  Six days after Vret agreed to try to find and stop Blissdrip, both of the ongoing stories had regained an obsessive grip on him. And this time it was even worse. His new found reverent loyalty to The Tecton was severely threatened by The Secret Killroom. As deeply disturbing as the depictions of the torture leading up to The Kill were, he just couldn’t stop reading them. He even caught himself re-reading them, telling himself he was studying his quarry.

  But as the fascination got a deeper grip on him, he wasn’t so sure at all. He knew he would never want to torture a Gen, never want to crave Gen fear and pain to complete the satisfaction that vanquished Need. He knew he would never act on the emotions stirring in him while reading these stories.

  And then Vret found himself staring at a Donor in the cafeteria speculating on what his nager would be like if he were terrified—what it would be like to have that terrified attention riveted to himself. His intil spiked even though he was three days before turnover. Instantly three channels cocooned him in a cushioning nageric haze and his intil subsided. But he’d never forget the harsh lesson that split-instant of vicarious experience drove home.

  Yes, he would never set out to Kill. The very idea was revolting to him. But even though he was a channel with complete anti-kill conditioning that would stop him if he went for a Kill, even though he had a channel’s draw-speed control, even though he had experienced the best transfers and knew that transfer was better than any Kill could ever be—even with all that, he was still a Sime.

  In that split-instant of intil flashing through his nerves, he knew that conscience, will, desire, and conditioning had nothing to do with it. There was a point beyond which he would attack in Killmode and even anticipate satisfaction from it. Wallowing in The Secret Killroom was making it easier for him to be driven past that point.

  Someone had to stop Blissdrip before these stories produced dangerous consequences.

  Once more he swore off reading the board and focused on the hunt for Blissdrip. As time passed, he found it easier to control intil around Gens.

  Every day at nearly noon, he passed Sumz on the cactus lined path as she was going one way and he the other. One fine, hot spring day, only three days before they would both reach turnover, she was late. He paused, zlinning the students racing this way and that in the blazing desert sun, and finally found her coming from the cafeteria at a run.

  Vret stopped her and said, “Ilin, I still don’t have a single idea how to identify and locate that writer.”

  “The operators running our boards are pretty much out of ideas too. I want you to talk to them in person. Maybe the bunch of us can come up with a new idea. If we don’t, we may just have to take this to the administration because we can’t let it go on. And if I’m going to introduce you to our people at the computer center, it has to be before turnover because I’m not yet licensed for free Gen contact after turnover.”

  “Neither am I.” He said zlinning her more closely. There was a haggard edge to her nager that hadn’t been there even five days ago. He mentioned it, and she countered, “I was up late reading. This seems to me, now, to be more than we can handle. Meet me here tomorrow night, at midnight.”

  He could think of other reasons to be meeting her at midnight, but he just flicked a tentacle and flashed his showfield in an affirmative and dashed on to his next appointment.

  About five strides away, he felt her zlinning him and it was a nearly tangible, speculative caress.

  As she raced off in the other direction, he kept his eyes on the pathway before him, but zlinned her back with a silent promise.

  He wanted to turn around and walk with her, but spending all his spare time either reading the boards or studying computers, he was always late.

  And he was late now, too. To his immense frustration, because he’d been late the previous day as well, he was assigned a make-up Dispensary Lab session that would last until just minutes before he was to meet Ilin for the tour.

  Ilin arrived right on time. It was two days before they would both hit turnover again, and she was all business and grim haste while he was still reeling with functional recovery fatigue. As if oblivious to his exhaustion, she gathered him up from the bench among the cacti and led him to the building which housed the computers that tied the campus together.

  Even after a week’s intense study of the matter, Vret found himself utterly bewildered by the shining and flashing walls of machinery that leaked whirling selyn fields that just increased the feeling of bewilderment. Since changeover, he’d never met a subject, except history, that he couldn’t crack in a week—until now.

  In the largest of three huge rooms full of machinery, people worked before a screen and examined printouts. Vret almost recognized what the people were doing but he had no clue why, nor what one thing had to do with another.

  The young Gen who conducted him and Ilin on the tour was one of three people who kept their board a secret. Eventually, the Gen ushered them into a private back room, stuffed with desks and monitors, and introduced Vret to the others. There ensued a quick tutorial on how the board was kept secret, and how easy it would be for the campus administration to discover it, if they ever thought to search.

  As the two Simes and the Gen explained it to him, Vret thought he understood. He was sure it made sense. He followed every word of their explanation of what they had done to identify Blissdrip, and how and why each effort had failed. “So you see,” the Gen concluded, “we have only two or maybe three more things to try. I’m not hopeful, but we really must try everything.”

  By the time he got back to his room though, the only impression left from the whole experience was the dizzying whirl of the selyn fields generated by the selyn powered equipment.

  Chapter Eight

  TURNOVER

  Two days later, he just barely made it to his assigned turnover lounge a few minutes before his Donor arrived.

  The turnover lounge complex was on the top floor of the sprawling Transfer Mechanics building. The huge but well insulated corner window gave a panoramic view of the Field Control Labs where he had vriamic training with Kwotiin Lake on one side, and the Science Complex on the other, where tomorrow he’d be starting Mutation Physiology.

  The selyn insulation gave the Lounge a preternatural hush, probably because they sometimes used the facility as a deferment suite and transfer lounge. Even the dark blue pile carpeting had selyn field insulation woven into it. The furniture was upholstered in sky blue, with a matching pattern in the draperies. The book cases, medicine cabinets, wet benches and the large desk were rich, dark wood.

  As always when he entered a field-controlled environment, the sharp visual impression, stripped of an ambient nager riveted his attention.

  He was still probing at the transfer lounge’s swirling pattern of blues and pale greens when the door opened and a powerful Gen nager swept into the room. Stunned, he missed the first words his Donor spoke.

  “...your new int
erest in computers.”

  Fortunately, as soon as the Gen had closed the door, he came forward with his hand out, reining in that overwhelming nager so Vret could think more clearly as he accepted the white special transfer assignment card.

  Vret took it wondering why it wasn’t green, checked the name the man had undoubtedly pronounced—Joran Nah—and noted the reason for the stunning nager. Nah was a GN-2, not a GN-3 over-matching Vret’s current status as a QN-3.

  Why? Had that public intil spike in the cafeteria put him on some kind of danger watchlist? Or maybe the white and red coded card indicated that maybe, just maybe, here was his opportunity to impress administration with his determination to Qualify Second. I should pay more attention to the assigned reading and I’d know these things.

  “Computers?” Vret prompted, hoping to catch up on the conversation without appearing too overwhelmed.

  “There wasn’t a Third available who shares your interest, so they assigned me.” He went over to the window glancing outward in approval. “Cheerful place here. I think we can manage, don’t you?” He turned with an affable grin that was cleanly reflected in his nager.

  Backed by the bright blue sky, his pale blond hair formed a halo about his head, accenting his searingly bright nager. According to the transfer assignment card, this Gen had given transfer only ten days ago, but already he had much more selyn than Vret would need.

  “It would seem we can manage quite well,” agreed Vret, trying to sound mature, not dazzled, and certainly not over-eager. “Are you sure you’re only a Second?”

  Joran laughed. “At the moment, yes. I’m being re-phased for a Qualifying Transfer.”

  He didn’t elaborate whether that would be his Qualification as a First, or some other channel’s Qualifying transfer as a Second. Me?