Cascade Point

There was a moment of silence. Scharn tried to whip up her righteous anger again, but her sister's face kept getting in the way. Maia, who had spent a couple of days in a hospital ten years ago for the routine treatment of brain cancer... "Why don't you build larger ships, then, so that you could use normal people ru

"Because we'd need freighters the size of the original colony sleeper ships to give a normal crew the kind of room they'd need," Ross told her. "Anything smaller and you'd have violence and psychoses within the first five years, no matter how carefully you screened the crews." He hesitated. "Parallax tried that once; the records of those voyages aren't pretty."

"Then why not automate?" Scharn persisted. "Surely a powerstat TPL computer and its mobile units would be able to handle whatever maintenance a starship needs."

"The problem," Halian said, "is that a TPL, or any computer that powerful, requires an extremely high-density memory system, and high-density systems are notoriously vulnerable to radiation damage. On a powerstat that's not a problem because you can afford the weight of extra shielding and you have continuous error-weeding by ground-based systems. On a starship—well, the drive radiations aren't really dangerous to biological tissues, but your TPL would be out of commission in two years at the outside. Putting multiple units aboard would slow the process, but not enough."

"But..." Scharn raised a hand in a frustrated gesture, let it drop impotently to her chair arm. "It's still immoral to do that sort of thing to human beings."

Ross shrugged uncomfortably. "Would you rather we try putting normal people in what amounts to solitary confinement for ten years? Risk their going permanently insane or else drug them to their eyelids and never mind the physiological consequences? Don't forget, the mainters truly like what they're doing. They really are happy out there."

"All except Tomo," Scharn said.

Halian nodded grimly. "All except Tomo. He's an unknown, Dr. Scharn; and along with being worried I don't mind admitting I'm scared. What other supposedly impossible thoughts might he be having? Could he be going paranoid, too, or even homicidal?"

Scharn pursed her lips tightly. She still didn't like what had been done to Tomo... but her immediate responsibility was not for his past but for his present. And if he posed any danger to either himself or the station... "Do you have anything like a standard psych profile for the mainters as a group?" she asked.

Halian's response was to reach for his desk's control ball, fingering the classified-access section. "We've got both that and Tomo's own last profile."

"Good," Scharn said. "I'd also like any previous readings on Tomo that you might have."

Halians screen lit up with lines of print, and he swiveled it to face her. "I'll have the Goldenrod's computer send us up a complete dump. In the meantime, here's the general mainter profile."

Putting her feelings on standby, Scharn began to read.

—

It had been nearly an hour since the others had left him; long enough for Tomo's panic to have subsided into emotional fatigue and then resurface as restlessness. Scharn had said they would talk again later, a statement that could qualify as either a promise or a threat. Whichever, he wished they would hurry up and get on with it. Waiting like this was worse than docking—then, at least, Max could keep him informed as to what was happening. Here at the port, they were both in the dark.

Or were they? "Max?" he called impulsively, sliding into the desk chair.

"Yes, Tomo?"

Just as quickly, he recognized the absurdity of what he'd been about to ask. "Oh, never mind. Um... how's the unloading going?"

"Unloading and refurbishing operations are proceeding smoothly. Is there anything I can get for you?"

"No, no. I'm just—I'm fine."

"I see." Max paused. "Tomo, would you mind coming back aboard ship for a few minutes? There's no one in your pod at the moment."

Tomo frowned. "Why?"

"Your tone of voice indicates stress. My biosensors can't take readings outside the ship." "I'm all right, Max," Tomo snapped. "Why is everybody so interested in me all of a sudden? The second I get here Halian calls me up, then he smothers me in doctors, and now you—"

He broke off abruptly, seeing for the first time the pattern there. But how...? "Did you tell them that I was talking about going dirtside?" he asked suspiciously. The computer remained silent. "Max! Answer me!"

"Tomo, I had no choice. I ca

"Wait a second. What physical or emotional dysfunction?"

There was a short pause. "Your thoughts about a planetward trip were judged to be four sigma outside normal range. A two-sigma deviation is considered—"

"Max, how many times do I have to tell you that there's nothing significant about that?" Tomo snarled, barely controlling his anger. This whole thing was becoming ridiculous. "Why are you making such a major operation out of it?"

Max's answer, when it finally came, was a complete surprise. "I'm sorry; I ca

Tomo's anger vanished into puzzlement and a slowly growing uneasiness. "What is it, something I'm not supposed to know?"

"My programming requires me to protect your emotional well-being. There are certain topics of discussion which would unduly distress you, such as descriptions of warfare or—"

"But this is something a lot more personal than warfare, isn't it?" Tomo interrupted, blocking Max's attempt to sidetrack the conversation. "Something having to do with my physical or psychological makeup, right?"

"I'm sorry; I ca

Aha, Tomo thought. For a moment he gazed into space, searching for a usable loophole. "All right. The information might—might—bother me. Correct?"

"I'm sorry; I ca

"Shut up! It might bother me—but now that I know something's wrong with me, the uncertainty is definitely bothering me." He paused, but Max remained silent. "The tension alone—you know better than I do what prolonged tension does to blood sugar and adrenaline levels. Did your programmers anticipate this kind of situation?"

"They did," Max said in resignation. "Very well, then, but the information must be kept secret from the Goldenrod's other mainters."

"Agreed. So?"

"In order to endure the solitude of starship service, you have undergone a kind of mental conditioning which has made you less dependent than the average person on social interaction."

For several heartbeats Tomo just sat there, attempting to assimilate the rightangle turn his private universe had just taken. Egocentrism, he thought through the numbness. The assumption that you are basically the norm. He'd known the people on planets and ports were different; but somehow he'd never considered the possibility that he was the odd one. And to have been deliberately made this way... "How much less dependent?" he asked.

"It allows you to spend long periods of time alone, which is necessary for your job." Max's voice was soothing, as if he were doing his best to soften the shock. But his best wasn't very good. "But it also makes it extremely difficult for you to interact with others at close range."

"So because I wanted to do something you didn't think I could do, you slapped a 'dysfunction' marker on me and yelled to the authorities." The mental numbness was fading now, anger once more rising to take its place. "Is that it?"