Harvest of Stars by Poul Anderson Page B

and of a liability to stomach ulcers. His uniform was plain, hardly distinguishable from a common officer’s. It was what he did that rated salutes.
    Entering a fahrweg turret, he descended to the office he had commandeered. Personnel sprang to their feet with more salutes. Impatient, he brushed past them and sequestered himself in the room beyond. From his desk he phoned the laboratory. The line switched him immediately to Clarice Yoshikawa.
    “Sir!”
    “Is the new program ready?” Sayre asked.
    “Yes, sir,” replied the chief of the technicians whom he had summoned from Central Command back east in Futuro. “We were testing all night.” More than that showed in her haggardness. Stim and supp would keep a person going only up to a point, and Sayre had driven the team pitilessly since they arrived.
    “Have you gotten it right at last?”
    Exasperation, close to anger, spoke, however levelly: “Sir, you know we have just the single piece of Guthriehardware. All we can do is make copies of the software, revise them, and check them out in limited ways, till we put them in that one computer and they become conscious.”
    “While you’re at it,” Sayre replied, “tell me what month this is.”
    Fear stirred behind the firm visage. “I’m … very sorry, sir. Wasn’t thinking. Dead tired.”
    Sayre smiled. “I know. You people have worked like engines. Never fear, the files will record your loyalty. I may be overstrained myself. This is so important, so urgent.”
    He heard the quiver of relief. “Gracias, sir. I hope this time we’ve succeeded, not produced something that raves or gibbers.”
    “We’ll find out.”
    Yoshikawa ran tongue over dry lips. “You realize, sir, even if it seems right, we won’t know for sure. Excuse me for repeating what’s elementary, but psychomedicine isn’t an exact science yet. A live person given ideational reconditioning can still surprise us occasionally. Here we’re trying it for a download. There’s scarcely any experience with them.”
    Sayre clicked his own tongue. “You
are
exhausted, aren’t you? Talking like that. However things develop today, you and your team shall have, m-m, twenty-four hours of deep sleep and twenty-four of recuperative treatment. Keep going for another two or three hours first. Can you do that?”
    “Of course, sir,” Yoshikawa said, instantly livening. “We’re anxious to know the results too. It’s for the Transfiguration.”
    Sayre’s finger drew the infinity sign. “It is.” He leaned forward. “As for the uncertainty, yes, I’m well aware of it, not merely because you warned me at the outset. If the new Guthrie appears satisfactory, the government will go ahead with him. My duty will be to keep close watch, as one does over any important person whose loyalty isn’t unquestionable. If he seems to deviate, we have punishments to bring him back in line, and rewards to offer forgood behavior. With luck, given computer speed, we’ll soon condition any remaining intransigence out of him.”
    His statement was so obvious that he wasn’t revealing any secrets, although Yoshikawa and her people had not been told explicitly what the authorities planned. To give a self-aware program a virtual hell or a virtual heaven should be technically simpler than to do it for flesh and blood. The trick was to discover what were horror and ecstasy in this particular case. Sayre’s career had made him skilled in finding such things out.
    “Eventually,” he added, “we’ll have to let him go forth on his own, but by then we ought to be sure of him.”
    “Muy bien, sir,” Yoshikawa said. “Shall we make the change immediately?”
    “Stand by,” Sayre ordered. “I want a preliminary private session with him as he is. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
    He left the office and proceeded to the laboratory level. At first, as he strode down those corridors, activity buzzed and clicked. For the most part it was machines at work. Reports