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  “He’s an exception. Now him I could go for. Maybe it’s the accent. But like I said, it’s not the thing to do. Anyhow, he got tangled up with somebody when we were at Houston, before the division relocated to D.C., and nowadays he likes to keep his day-times uncomplicated, too.”

  “You, er, don’t exactly come across as the epitome of detached, intellectual science,” Gina said.

  “Give me a break. I spent a year and a half down a hole in the ice on Ganymede. That’s a lot of time to make up for. Vic said something once about not wanting to get old with a lot of regrets about missing out. I agree with him.”

  Gina, watching the way Sandy’s straight, dark brown hair fell about her face as she leaned forward to pick up her cup again, noticed the firmly defined features and the long lines of the jeans-clad legs. Sandy was the kind of girl that men had told her radiated sex appeal without being especially pretty, Gina decided. Intelligent, adventuresome, and uninhibited. Definitely Larry’s type.

  Sandy looked up. “Anyhow, scientists are supposed to be curious, aren’t they? Like journalists. Isn’t that what the job is all about?”

  “I suppose so,” Gina agreed.

  Back in her own cabin, Gina found herself restless and not inclined toward sleep, despite the time she had been awake. Lurking just below the level of consciousness, something that she couldn’t pinpoint was disturbing her, something tugging for attention, distilled from the day’s flood of events and experiences. She went into the bathroom and brushed her teeth while she grappled with the problem.

  It had something to do with VISAR. More specifically, it had something to do with the way VISAR was designed to function. Back in the bedroom, still fully dressed, she propped herself up with a couple of pillows and stared at the picture of a snowy mountain scene from some world or other, on the far wall of the room.

  The part of the PAC complex on Jevlen that she had “visited” with Hunt earlier in the evening had contained such objects as ornaments and pictures on the walls of the cafeteria from where they had seen the Shapieron, and some tools standing against a wall in the gallery outside. What would have happened, she had asked Hunt, if she had tried to “move” one of those objects to a different place? He had said that VISAR would cause her to experience the action faithfully. In that case, she asked, where would she find it when they arrived physically at Jevlen tomorrow? Obviously, where it had been in the first place, Hunt replied-since the object would never have really been moved at all.

  That bothered her. She remembered, too, the burr that she had felt on the edge of the door into the coupler cubicle, and the business with the cigarette ash on her sleeve. It all bothered her. She got up from the bed, went back into the lounge to get a cup of hot chocolate from the autochef, and tried to fathom why.

  Judged by Terran notions of what constituted worthwhile return for cost and effort, the whole thing seemed a pointless exercise in elaborate absurdity. More than that: a deception that confused synthesis with reality, leaving the recipient to disentangle the resulting fusion that would be left impressed upon memory. But the Thuriens could handle it naturally, without conflict or contradiction. Indeed, to them, in a way that no human could really feel or comprehend, the capturing of the actuality was all-important, and the degree to which the system failed to do so constituted the deception. Hence their extraordinary obsession with levels of detail that to humans would have served no meaningful purpose and made no sense.

  And now, she felt, she was getting closer to what was troubling her.

  Yes, the Thuriens were benign, nonaggressive, and rational, and that was all very nice; but it was also beside the point. What was less reassuring, she realized, was the utter alienness that she had glimpsed of the inner workings of the Thurien mind. The professionals like Hunt and Danchekker had been too close for too long, and were too excited by the technology, to see it. Or perhaps they had forgotten.

  What kind of havoc, then, might have been wreaked on the collective psyche of a whole race immersed in a form of mind manipulation essentially alien to its nature for thousands of years?

  She turned and stared at the door, uncertain for several seconds of exactly what she intended to do. Then, resolving herself, she left the cabin again and returned to the cubicles containing the Thurien neural couplers.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The familiar feeling of warmth and relaxation closed around her as she eased back into the recliner and VISAR’s intangible fingers took control of her senses.

  “Tell me again how these Thurien protocols on privacy work,” she said in her mind to the machine. “What’s to stop you going deeper than just accessing sensory data, and extracting anything you want out of my head?”

  “Programming rules built into the system,” VISAR answered. “They confine my operations to processing and communicating only what users consciously direct.”

  “So you don’t read minds?”

  “No.”

  “But you could?”

  “Technically, yes.”

  “I don’t think I like that. Doesn’t the thought of it bother the Thuriens?”

  “I can’t see why it should, any more than the thought of a surgeon seeing your insides organically.”

  “No? But then I guess you wouldn’t. You were designed by them, so you think the way they do.”

  “Possibly so.”

  “Can the rules be broken?”

  “It would require a specific authorization from the user for me to override the directive. So the user is always in control. Anyway, what could someone have to hide?”

  Gina could not contain a laugh. “Don’t the humans ever have thoughts or a side of their nature deep down that they try to hide even from themselves?”

  “How could I know? If they do, then by definition they don’t reveal it.”

  Really? Gina thought. Ganymean minds might be capable of such commendable self-discipline, but she doubted if a typical human one would. “Were the Jevlenese as sensible and restrained in the way they used JEVEX?” she asked.

  “I suspect not,” VISAR answered.

  “So, what can you do, VISAR? I want to know what this system is capable of.”

  “I can take you anywhere you want to go. Anywhere among thousands of Thurien worlds, natural and artificial, scattered across tens of light-years.”

  “How about Thurien itself, then?”

  This time there were no preliminary sensory disturbances. Gina found herself at the edge of a terraced water garden near the summit of an enormous tower. The view below was of a cascade of levels and ramparts, falling away and unfolding for what must have been miles to blend with a mind-defying fusion of structures stretching to the fringe of a distant ocean. There were numerous figures around her, all Ganymean, walking and talking, others sitting around and doing nothing. She felt a faint breeze, and she could smell the blossoms by the pools and waterfalls. There were flying machines in the sky.

  “Vranix,” VISAR informed her. “One of Thuriens older cities.”

  The sudden transition made Gina feel dwarfed by the scale of everything. It took her a few seconds to adjust. “This is the way it actually is, right now?” she said. “These people are really there?”

  “They are,” VISAR confirmed. “But since they’re not neurally coupled into the system, you can’t interact with them. You’re simply perceiving what actually is. This is called Actual Mode.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Interactive Mode. You’re in the same setting, but superposed on your perception of it are visual representations of other users physically in couplers located elsewhere. The images are activated by voluntary signals picked up from the speech and motor centers of their brains, so they act as they would choose to. The converse is just as true, of course; i.e., they see you in the same way. Hence the illusion of actually being there and interacting is total. It’s the usual way of setting up social and business meetings.”

  “Switch to that, then,” Gina said.

>   The scenery stayed the same, but the distribution of figures changed. Most vanished, and others appeared where none had been before The overall number seemed to be fewer.

  “Those other people that I saw a moment ago, they’re still there really?” Gina asked.

  “They are. I’ve simply edited them out of the datastream into your visual cortex.”

  “So who are these people that I’m seeing now? Where are they?”

  “Here, there, in different places. They’re simply people who happen to have chosen this venue at the moment, for whatever their purpose is.”

  The flying machines were still there, Gina noticed. She wondered how VISAR decided the boundary between edited foreground and authentic background.

  Then a Ganymean couple who had been sitting on a nearby seat got up and approached. “I hope we’re not being presumptuous, but we’ve never seen a Terran this closely before,” the male said.

  Gina noticed that several of the other figures were looking across at them discreetly, and trying not to make it too obvious. “No that’s fine,” Gina replied falteringly.

  “Permit us to introduce ourselves. My name is Morgo Yishal. This is my daughter, Jasene. We like to meet here from time to time. Our family lived in Vranix when Jasene was young. This was one of her favorite places.”

  “Where are you now-if it’s not a rude question?” Gina asked, still off-balance from the strangeness of it all.

  “Oh, I’m teaching on the other side of Thurien now,” the man replied.

  “I’m on a vessel that’s orbiting a world nearer to Earth than Thurien,” Jasene said. “Maybe I could show you it sometime. It’s quite an interesting place. And you?”

  “Me? Oh, on one of your starships, traveling from Earth to Jevlen.”

  “What brings you to Vranix?” Morgo inquired. “Seeing a Terran alone like this is most unusual.”

  “Nothing special. I’m just experimenting with the system, really.”

  “Of course, I can superpose Actual and Interactive modes,” VISAR’s voice interjected. The figures that had been present initially reappeared, mixing the “real” ones with VISAR’s virtual creations, and in moments Gina had lost track of which were which.

  “Er, would you excuse me?” Gina stammered to the two Ganymeans. “I need time to absorb this. I’m still getting used to it.”

  “But of course,” the man answered.

  “VISAR, it’s too crowded. Get me away from people.” Gina glanced at Jasene. “I’ll get back to you about that visit… And thanks. I assume VISAR has your number?” Jasene inclined her head in what Gina hoped was an understanding nod.

  Then Gina was standing on a barren, rocky ridge, looking down into a huge crater of molten magma, dull red and turgid, bubbling sullenly below yellow vapor and oily smoke. She could feel the heat on her face, and a choking, sulfurous odor seared her throat. The far rim was invisible through the haze, and behind her a tortured landscape of jagged peaks and bottomless fissures vanished into banks of dark, stormy cloud.

  “I can take you where you couldn’t survive physically,” VISAR’s voice said. “Here’s a new world being born. The heat and fumes that you feel are just to give the flavor. In reality you’d be asphyxiated instantly, roasted in seconds, and flattened under two tons of body weight.”

  “This doesn’t make sense. Do the Thuriens actually put sensors in places like this? It’s crazy. How many visits does it get in a thousand years?”

  “Actually, this is largely simulation-interpolated from data being captured long-range from orbit.”

  “Too hot and stuffy,” Gina pronounced.

  Then she was in a sea of fantastic, mountain-size sculptures of shining white, rising and curving into delicate pinnacles against a sky of pale azure, fading into pink lower down in every direction. “A wind-carved ocean of frozen methane, not much above absolute zero in temperature,” VISAR said. “Again, interpolated reconstruction by instruments in orbit. Cool enough?”

  “Too much. My bones feel cold, looking at it. But you don’t have to use sensor data at all, do you? It could all be pure simulation?”

  “Sure-I can make you a world. Any world.”

  “Let’s go home, then. How about Scotland? I’ve always wanted to go there but never have. I imagine it with mountains and lochs, and little villages tucked away in glens.”

  She was sitting on a hillside by a rocky stream, looking across a valley over the tops of pine trees at green slopes topped by craggy bastions of gray rock. Off to one side, rooftops and a church spire huddled together before an expanse of water. Birds were chirping and insects humming. The air was cool and moist with spray from the stream.

  “Is this real?” Gina asked, frowning. It couldn’t be, she told herself. Scotland wasn’t wired into VISAR.

  “No,” VISAR answered. “It’s just something I made up-from what you said and what I know about Earth. I told you, I can make any world you want.”

  “It’s too modern,” Gina said, studying the offering. “The road down there is built for automobiles. I can see power lines by the houses, and there’s a tractor in a tin shed.” She could feel herself being carried away by the novelty of it all. Perhaps she was feeling a sense of relief in being back among surroundings that she understood. “If we’re getting into fiction, let’s go back a bit and make it more romantic,” she said. “Maybe somewhere around Bonnie Prince Charlie’s time.”

  “Those times weren’t really very romantic,” VISAR observed. “Most of the people lived lives ravaged by disease, poverty, ignorance, brutality. Three-quarters of the children died before they were-”

  “Oh, shut up, VISAR. This is just a game. Leave that kind of stuff out, and make it the way we like to pretend it was.”

  “You mean like this?”

  The roadway turned into an unfenced cart track, while the power lines, tractor, communications dishes, and Other signs of the twenty-first century disappeared. The houses changed into simpler affairs, with roofs of thatch and slate, and a steel footbridge crossing a brook below transformed into an arched construction of rough-cut stone. A dog was barking somewhere. As stipulated, everything was neat and pretty.

  For a few moments Gina was astounded, even though she should have had a good idea by now of what to expect. She stood up, staring hard and consciously going through all the impressions being reported by her senses. She could feel a pebble under her shoe, and a branch from a bush beside her brushing her arm as she moved. It was uncanny. The sensation of being there was indistinguishable in any way that she could find from the real thing. Her clothes felt unusually heavy and enveloping. She looked down and saw that she was wearing a shawl and an ankle-length skirt of the period.

  She was curious again. “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t look around?” she asked.

  “Go ahead.”

  She followed the stream down to a path that joined the cart track. It led to the outskirts of the village. There was a small marketplace with stalls and crude, wooden-shuttered shops displaying meat, vegetables, dairy produce, all plentiful and fresh, fabrics and linen, pottery and pans. And there was a cast of players to complete the scene, correct in character and role: farmers, merchants, tradesmen, housewives; gentry on horseback, a miller with a cartload of sacks, a jolly-faced innkeeper, two Highlanders in kilts, and children, rosy cheeked and well fed, playing around doorways.

  All of it crushingly bland, empty, and uninteresting. It came across as a not very imaginative stage set, populated by moving pieces of scenery added to finish the effect. Which, indeed, was what the inhabitants were.

  Gina stopped by a gray-haired old man sitting on a doorstep, smoking a pipe. Alongside him was a sleepy-looking, black-and-white collie. “Hello,” she said.

  “Aye.”

  “It’s a fine day.”

  “‘Tis an’ all.”

  “This looks like a nice place.”

  “It’s no’ sa bad.”

  “I’m not from around here.”

>   “I can see that.”

  Gina stared at him. His gray eyes twinkled back at her with good-humored, imbecilic indifference as he continued puffing his pipe. Her frustration turned to exasperation. “I’m from three hundred years in the future,” she said.

  “We dinna get vera many o’ those around here.”

  “VISAR, this isn’t going to work,” Gina flared. “These are just dummies. Don’t they know anything? Don’t they have anything to say?”

  “What do you want them to say?”

  “Use your imagination.”

  “It’s your imagination that matters.”

  “Well, can’t you figure it out from whatever you see in my head?” Gina demanded.

  “I’m not permitted to,” VISAR reminded her.

  “Okay, then, I’m permitting you. Go by whatever you find. Don’t take any notice of the things we humans fabricate to fool ourselves.”

  This time the transition was not quite instantaneous.

  There was music, muted to a background level. Gina found herself clad in a plain but gracious, classically styled gown. It felt deliciously light and sheer. She was standing among others in a reception room of a large house. It was a solid, mature house, dignified but not pretentious, with high, paneled rooms, lofty gables, and intricately molded ceilings, and it stood by the sea. Across the hall was her library, and off the landing at the top of the curving stairway, the office where she worked, with its picture window framing a rocky shoreline. How she knew these things, she wasn’t sure. But she smiled inwardly and gave VISAR full marks. Yes, it was a kind of life that she had sometimes conjured up in her daydreams.

  The room that she and her guests were in had tall windows with heavy drapes, a fine marble fireplace, and furnishings in character. Above the fireplace was a crest, showing arms: unicorn and lion rampant, and a fleur-de-lis surmounted by… a shamrock. The music, she realized, was Celtic harp and flute. But from the dress of those present, and as she knew, somehow, anyway, the times were modern.