Peremptory bleeps from a wall video had Kanes stubbing irritably at the pause button on his editing console.
Interruption number three in as many minutes; it meant one more playback of the complex paragraph he was monitoring. Congealed crap, spoken with nil animation by a robot record clerk. Even now, very now, it was giving him an ache in the gut and to hear it again would be simple masochism.
Visually, the face which claimed his notice was no aesthetic bonus. Howard G. Reid had the set, meaty pan of a long-term top exec. Full-colour treatment brought up the boiled blue hue of his bulging eyeballs and a suffused purple glow of high living on massive jowls.
It was hard to read any human expression there; but a reasonable clue to his state of mind came through strength nine in his gravel voice.
"It takes you a long time, operator. What are you doing in that office?"
Since the bare, functional cube that Kanes called home was spread out in total simplicity to the viewing eye, it could only be rhetoric; so he let it ride and looked attentive. An eager beaver. All ready to leap up and down.
"How long have you run the memory bank?"
That was an easy one. Although it seemed like a full life span, Kanes knew the answer. Even without marking up chevrons on his cell wall, he had it pat.
"Four years, one hundred and sixty-three days"--he looked at his time disk--"and two hours fifty, Controller."
Reid's face notched itself up another point on the chromatic scale. "Don't you know who I am?"
Prosper Kanes leaned forward looking thoughtful. Obviously, he ought not to say no. But any answer would be the wrong one. His direct contact with the hierarchy went up to the controllers on second level and he had given that rank automatically. If it was somebody else, he could only wait with bated breath for the veil to be torn aside.
"Don't stare at me like a cod. This is Chairman Reid. I want some facts and quick. There was a damp squib investigation that went on about thirty years back. Outside your time, but it shouldn't be hard to find."
Reid paused and Kanes thought that if that was all he was going to get, it would take some finding. Now he had the name, he was, anyway, surprised into silence.
There was a short, stage wait, while the Chairman of Actualities Inc, that monopolist of all there was of news in the Western Hemisphere block, gave himself the unaccustomed labour of reading something for himself off a memo pad.
"Dated 2167. Place, Glastonbury, the Research Centre. Weisman Experiment so called. I want all the data. Who? How? Why? What? Bring the tape up here yourself. No log entry. Do you understand?"
Coming on top of his morning's drudgery, it nettled Kanes. He was probing around for a telling phrase to contain agreement coupled with the reservation that all intelligence was not god's gift to the higher echelons, when the screen blanked and he was left staring at an empty wall.
It is said that a man can see anything he wants to see on a bare surface; but he passed up the fair chance and played the data on his pianola.
A low digestive hum filled his narrow cell. Light flickered intelligently along a multifaceted, six-metre spread of translucent panelling. It took all of sixty seconds and then switched itself out.
Kanes preserved human dignity by walking slowly to the delivery slot to pick out the shuttle of micro tape that would tell all.
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