Daughter of Regals and Other Tales

  “Of course,” said the computer. “You can trust me.

  I’ll tell you everything that’s good for you. That’s what I’m here for. You know that. The Director of the National Library speaks very highly of you. It’s in your records.” The machine’s voice made Norman’s irritation evaporate. He trusted his biomitter. He trusted Doctor Brett. He settled himself in the chair to hear what his lump was. But even that amount of movement raised the dust. He sneezed twice.

  Doctor Brett said, “You seem to have a cold.”

  “No,” Norman said. “It’s the dust.”

  “Ah, the dust,” Doctor Brett said. “Thank you for coming.”

  “‘Thank you for—’?” Norman was surprised. All at once, he felt very uneasy. He felt that he had to be careful. “Aren’t you going to tell me what it is?”

  “There’s nothing to worry about,” the doctor said. “You’re perfectly healthy. It will go away in a couple of days. Thank you for coming.”

  The door was open. Norman stared at the computer. The Director did not act like this. He was confused. But he did not ask any more questions. Instead, he was careful. He said, “Thank you, Doctor,” and walked out of the office. The door closed behind him.

  The woman was still sitting at the outer desk. When she saw Norman, she beckoned to him. “Maybe you—can help me,” she said.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “I remember what I’m supposed to do now,” she said. “After you see the Doctor, I’m supposed to get his instructions”—she tapped the console—”and make sure you understand them. But nobody’s ever come here before. And when I got this job, I didn’t tell them”—she looked away from Norman—”that I don’t know how to read.”

  Norman knew what she meant. Of course, she could read her biomitter—everybody could do that. But except for that, reading was not taught anymore; Enwell certainly was not learning how to read in school. Reading was not needed anymore. Except for the people at the National Library, Norman was the only person he knew who could actually read. That was why no one ever came to use the Library.

  But now he was being careful. He smiled to reassure the woman and walked around the desk to look at her console. She tapped the display to activate the readout.

  At once, vivid red letters sprang across the screen. They said:

  SECRET CONFIDENTIAL PRIVATE

  PERSONAL SECRET UNDER NO

  CIRCUMSTANCES REPEAT UNDER NO

  CIRCUMSTANCES SHOW THIS DIAGNOSIS

  TO PATIENT OR REVEAL ITS CONTENTS

  Then there was a series of numbers that Norman did not understand. Then the letters said:

  ABSOLUTE PRIORITY TRANSMIT AT ONCE

  TO GENERAL HOSPITAL EMERGENCY

  DIVISION REPEAT EMERGENCY DIVISION

  ABSOLUTE PRIORITY

  “Transmit,” the woman said. “That means I’m supposed to send this to the Hospital.” Her hand moved toward the buttons that would send the message.

  Norman caught her wrist. “No,” he said. “That isn’t what it means. It means something else.”

  The woman said, “Oh.”

  The bright red letters said:

  DIAGNOSIS

  PATIENT SUFFERING FROM MASSIVE

  GENETIC BREAKDOWN OF INDETERMINATE

  ORIGIN COMPLETE REPEAT COMPLETE

  STRUCTURAL TRANSITION IN PROGRESS

  TRANSMUTATION IRREVERSIBLE

  PROGNOSIS

  PATIENT WILL BECOME DANGEROUS

  TO HIMSELF AND WILL CAUSE FEAR IN

  OTHERS REPEAT WILL CAUSE FEAR

  TREATMENT

  STUDY RECOMMENDED BUT

  DESTRUCTION IMPERATIVE REPEAT

  IMPERATIVE REPEAT IMPERATIVE EFFECT

  SOONEST….

  “What did it say?” the woman said.

  For a moment, Norman did not answer. His lump was as hard as a magnacite nail driven into his skull. Then he said, “It said I should get some rest. It said I’ve been working too hard. It said I should go to the Hospital if I don’t feel better tomorrow.” Before the woman could stop him, he pressed the buttons that erased the terminal’s memory. The terminal was just like the one he used in the National Library, and he knew what to do. After erasing, he programmed the terminal to cancel everything that had happened today. Then he fed in a cancel program to wipe out everything in the terminal. He did not know what good that would do, but he did it anyway.

  He expected the woman to try to stop him, but she did not. She had no idea what he was doing.

  He was sweating, and his pulse was too fast. He was so uneasy that his stomach hurt. That had never happened to him before. He left the office without saying anything to the woman. His knees were trembling. As he walked down the corridor of the Iatrogenics Wing, his biomitter was saying in blue reassuring letters, You will be OK. You will be OK.

  Apparently, his erasures were successful. In the next few days, nothing happened to him as a result of Doctor Brett’s report. By the time he had returned home from the Medical Building, his readout had regained its placid green, You are OK.

  He did this deliberately. He did not feel OK. He felt uneasy. But he did not want his biomitter to send him to the General Hospital. So while his mobile drove him home he made an effort to seem OK. The touch of his lump gave him a strange reassurance, and after a while his pulse, blood pressure, respiration, and reflexes had be-come as steady as usual.

  And at home everything seemed perfectly sane, perfectly safe. He woke up every morning at the signal of his biomitter, went to work at the signal of his biomitter, ate lunch at the signal of his biomitter. This was reassuring. It reassured him that his biomitter took such good care of him. Without it, he might have worked all day without lunch, reading, sorting the mountain of discarded books in the storeroom, feeding them into the Reference Computer. At times like that, his uneasiness went away. He went borne again at the end of the day at the signal of his biomitter.

  But at home his uneasiness returned. Something was happening inside him. Every morning, he saw in the mirror that his lump was growing. It was clearly a horn now— a pointed shaft as white as bone. It was full of strength. When it was more than four inches long, he tested it on the mirror. The mirror was made of glasteel so that it could never shatter and hurt anybody. But he scratched it easily with the tip of his horn. Scratching it took no effort at all.

  And that was not the only change. The soles of his feet were growing harder. His feet seemed to be getting shorter. They were starting to look like hooves.

  Tufts of pure white hair as clean as the sky were sprouting from the backs of his calves and the back of his neck.

  Something that might have been a tail grew out of the small of his back.

  But these things were not what made him uneasy. And he was not uneasy because he was thinking that someone from the Hospital might come to destroy him. He was not thinking that at all. He was being careful; he did not let himself think anything that might make his biomitter call for help. No, he was uneasy because he could not understand what Sally and Enwell were doing about what was happening to him.

  They were not doing anything. They were ignoring the changes in him as if he looked just the same as always.

  Everything was perfectly sane, perfectly safe, to them.

  First this made him uneasy. Then it made him angry. Something important was happening to him, and they did not even see it. Finally at breakfast one morning he became too irritated to be careful. Enwell’s biomitter signalled that it was time for him to go to school. He mumbled, “Got to go,” and left the table. Soon he had left the house. Norman watched his son go. Then he said to Sally, “Who taught him to do that?”

  She did not look up from her soyham. “Do what?” she said.

  “Go to school,” he said. “Obey his biomitter. We never taught him to do that.”

  Sally’s mouth was full. She waited until she swallowed. Then she said, “Everybody does it.”

  The way she said it made his muscles tight
en. A line of sweat ran down his back. For an instant, he wanted to hit the table with his hand—hit it with the hard flat place on the palm of his hand. He felt sure he could break the table.

  Then his biomitter signalled to him. Automatically, he left the table. He knew what to do. He always knew what to do when his biomitter signalled. He went out to the garage and got into his mobile. He strapped himself into the’ seat. He did not notice what he was doing until he saw that his hands had punched in the address of the General Hospital.

  At once, he cancelled the address, unstrapped himself and got out of the mobile. His heart was beating too fast.

  His biomitter was saying without being asked, Go to the Hospital. You will be OK. The letters were yellow.

  His hands trembled. But he tapped onto the display, I am OK. Then he went back into the house.

  Sally was cleaning the kitchen, as she always did after breakfast. She did not look at him.

  “Sally,” he said. “I want to talk to you. Something’s happening to me.”

  “It’s time to clean the kitchen,” she said. “I heard the signal.”

  “Clean the kitchen later,” he said. “I want to talk to you. Something’s happening to me.”

  “I heard the signal,” she said. “It’s time to clean the kitchen now.”

  “Look at me,” he said.

  She did not look at him. Her hands were busy wiping scraps of soyham into the vacuum-sink, where they were sucked away.

  “Look at me”, he said. He took hold of her shoulders with his hands and made her face him. It was easy. He was strong. “Look at my forehead.”

  She did not look at him. Her face screwed up into tight knots and ridges. It turned red. Then she began to cry. She wailed and wailed, and her legs did not hold her up. When he let her go, she sank to the floor and folded up into a ball and wailed. Her biomitter said to her in blue, You will be OK. You will be OK. But she did not see it. She cried as if she were terrified.

  Norman felt sick in his stomach. But his carefulness had come back. He left his wife and went’ back to the garage. He got into his mobile and punched in an address only ten houses away down the road. His mobile left the garage smoothly and eased itself into the perfectly sane flow of the traffic. When it parked at the address he had given it, he did not get out. He sat in his seat and watched his house.

  Before long, an ambulance rolled up to it. Men in white coats went in. They came out carrying Sally in a stretcher. They loaded her carefully into the ambulance and drove away.

  Because he did not know what else to do, he punched the address of the National Library into the console of his mobile and went to work. The careful part of him knew that he did not have much time. He knew (everyone knew) that his biomitter was his friend. But now he also knew that it would not be long before his biomitter betrayed him. The rebellion in his genes was becoming too strong. It could not stay secret much longer. And he still did not know what was happening to him. He wanted to use the time to find out, if he could. The Library was the best place for him to go.

  But when he reached his desk with its computer console like the one in Doctor Brett’s outer office, he did not know what to do. He had never done any research before. He did not know anyone who had ever done any research. His job was to sort books, to feed them into the Reference Computer. He did not even know what he was looking for.

  Then he had an idea. He keyed his terminal into the Reference Computer and programmed it for autos can. Then he tapped in his question, using the “personal information” code which was supposed to keep his question and answer from tying up the general circuits of the Library and bothering the Director. He asked:

  I HAVE HOOVES, A TAIL, WHITE HAIR, AND A HORN IN THE MIDDLE OF MY FOREHEAD. WHAT AM I?

  After a short pause, the display ran numbers which told Norman his answer was coming from the 1976 Encyclopedia Americana. That Encyclopedia was a century out of date, but it was the most recent one in the Library. Apparently, people had not bothered to make Encyclopedias for a long time.

  Then the display said:

  ANSWER UNICORN

  DATA FOLLOWS

  His uneasiness suddenly became sharper. There was a sour taste in his mouth as he scanned the readout.

  THE UNICORN IS A MYTHOLOGICAL BEAST

  USUALLY DEPICTED AS A LARGE HORSE

  WITH A SINGLE HORN ON ITS FOREHEAD

  Sweat ran into his eyes. He missed a few lines while he blinked to clear his sight.

  IT REPRESENTED CHASTITY AND PURITY

  THOUGH IT WOULD FIGHT SAVAGELY

  WHEN CORNERED IT COULD BE TAMED BY

  A VIRGIN’S TOUCH IN SOME

  INTERPRETATIONS THE UNICORN IS

  ASSOCIATED WITH THE VIRGIN MARY IN

  OTHERS IT REPRESENTS CHRIST THE

  REDEEMER

  Then to his surprise the display showed him a picture of a unicorn. It was prancing high on its strong clean legs, and its coat was as pure as the stars, and its eyes shone. Its mane flew like the wind. Its long white horn was as strong as the sun. At the sight, all his uneasiness turned into joy. The unicorn was beautiful. It was beautiful. He was going to be beautiful. For a long time, he made the display hold that picture, and he stared at it and stared at it.

  But after his joy receded a little, and the display went blank, he began to think. He felt that he was thinking for the first time in his life. His thoughts were clear and necessary and quick.

  He understood that he was in danger. He was in danger from his biomitter. It was a hazard to him. It was only a small thing, a metasensor that monitored his body for signs of illness; but it was linked to the huge computers of the General Hospital, and when his metabolism passed beyond the parameters of safety, sanity, his biomitter would summon the men in white coats. For the first time in his life, he felt curious about it. He felt that he needed to know more about it.

  Without hesitation, he tapped his question into the Reference Computer, using his personal information code. He asked:

  ORIGIN AND FUNCTION OF BIOMITTER?

  The display ran numbers promptly and began a readout.

  WORLDWIDE VIOLENCE CRIME WAR

  INSANITY OF 20TH CENTURY SHOWED

  HUMANS CAPABLE OF

  SELF-EXTERMINATION OPERATIVE CAUSE

  WAS FEAR REPEAT FEAR RESEARCH

  DEMONSTRATED HUMANS WITHOUT FEAR

  NONVIOLENT SANE

  POLICE EDUCATION PEACE TREATIES

  INADEQUATE TO CONTROL FEAR OF

  INDIVIDUAL HUMANS BUT SANE

  INDIVIDUAL HUMANS NOT PRONE TO

  VIOLENCE WAR TREATIES POLICE

  WEAPONS UNNECESSARY IF INDIVIDUAL IS

  NOT AFRAID

  TREATMENT

  BIOMITTER MEDICOMPUTER NETWORK

  INITIATED FOR ALL INDIVIDUALS

  MONITOR PHYSIOLOGICAL SIGNS OF

  EMOTION STRESS ILLNESS CONDITIONED

  RESPONSES INBRED TO CONTROL

  BEHAVIOR FEAR***CROSS REFERENCE

  PAVLOV BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION

  SUBCONSCIOUS HYPNOTISM

  SUCCESS OF BIOMITTER PROGRAMME

  DEMONSTRATES FEAR DOES NOT EXIST

  WHERE CONTROL ORDER

  Abruptly, the green letters flashed off the display, and he terminal began to readout a line of red.

  DATA CANCEL REPEAT CANCEL

  MATERIAL CLASSIFICATION RESTRICTED

  NOT AVAILABLE WITHOUT APPROVAL

  DIRECTOR NATIONAL LIBRARY FILE

  APPROVAL CODE BEFORE REACTIVATING

  REFERENCE PROGRAM

  Norman frowned around his horn. He was not sure what had happened. Perhaps he had accidentally stumbled upon information that was always restricted and had automatically triggered the Reference Computer’s cancellation program. Or perhaps the Director had just now succeeded in breaking his personal information code and had found out what he was doing if the interruption had been automatic, he was still safe. But if the Director had been monitoring him personally, he
did not have much time. He needed to know.

  He left his desk and went to the Director’s office. The Director looked very much like Doctor Brett. Norman believed that he could break the Director with one kick of his hard foot. He knew what to do. He said, “Director.”

  “Yes, Norman”“ the Director said. His voice was warm and wise, like Doctor Brett’s. Norman did not trust him. “Are you OK? Do you want to go home?”

  “I am OK,” Norman said. “I want to take out, some books.”

  “‘Take out some books’?” the Director said. “What do you mean?”

  “I want to withdraw some books. I want to take them home with me.”

  “Very well,” the Director said. “Take them with you. Take the rest of the day off. You need some rest.”

  “Thank you,” Norman said. He was being careful. Now he had what he wanted. He knew that the Director had been watching him, knew that the Director had deliberately broken his personal information code. He knew that the Director had transmitted his information to the General Hospital and had been told that he, Norman, was dangerous. No one was allowed to take books out of the National Library. It was forbidden to withdraw books. Always. Even the Director could not override that rule, unless he had been given emergency programming.

  Norman was no longer safe. But he did not hurry. He did not want the General Hospital to think that he was afraid. The men in white coats would chase him more quickly if they thought he was afraid of them. He walked calmly, as if he were perfectly safe, perfectly sane, to the stacks where the books were kept after they had been sorted and fed into the Reference Computer.

  He did not try to be thorough or complete. His time was short. He took only the books he could carry, only the books he was sure he wanted. He took The Mask, the Unicorn, and the Messiah; the Index to Fairy Tales, Myths. and Legends; Barbarous Knowledge; the Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology; The Masks of God; and The Book of Imaginary Beings. He would need these books when his transformation was complete. They would tell him what to do.