Manshape by John Brunner Page B

were equipped to hold down your job?”
    That was a blow below the belt. Thorkild shut his eyes and winced.
    “I mean it!” Lorenzo persisted. “Come on!”
    “Oh, how the hell can I guess? There were people older than me they could have chosen—there were people younger, come to that!”
    “Hmm!” Lorenzo said, and subvocalised a note. Irritated, Thorkild clenched his fists.
    “What are you putting on my file now?”
    “A comment regarding your attitude towards chronological age. It strikes me as a trifle atavistic.”
    “And what’s that supposed to mean?”
    “Are you really interested?”
    Thorkild was about to explode, but caught himself. What a neat trap! As soon as he admitted that he was indeed interested in something, there was the risk that he could be treated in the same way as Nefret: moulded like soft clay. He turned his back by rolling over on the grass and contrived to let loose a resounding fart.
    “Highly confirmatory,” Lorenzo said. “I’ll get the computers to work on it right away.” He rose to his feet. “Oh, by the way! What I was coming to tell you was that Alida has been inquiring after you. She’s called four times in the past two days.”
    “And you didn’t tell me when she was actually on the line?”
    “She didn’t ask to speak with you. Just how you were.”
    “Ah, that’ll be her conditioned politeness. She’s good at it. Well, I’ve seen enough of that kind of thing to last one lifetime. I’ll forget about any attachment I ever had to her and look elsewhere. Do you frown on liaisons between your patients, Doctor? I rather fancy little Nefret. She ran off when she heard you coming. Maybe if you’d go away again she might come back.”
    “Oddly enough, you mean that,” Lorenzo said. He sounded puzzled. Thorkild shot him a suspicious glance. That was the trouble with this man: he was perceptive. Right now the Director of the Bridge System wanted to be surrounded by people who would simply listen without criticising.
    “Tell me something,” Lorenzo went on. Thorkild cut him short.
    “Anything I could tell you, I’m certain you could learn just as easily from my file! Haven’t I been monitored and analysed all my life? Would the machines have elevated me to my position of so-called eminence had people not believed that the records they madeconstituted a tolerable analogue of my personality? Oh, I’m in a state of potential immortality, same as you! In a hundred, maybe in a thousand years’ time someone who wants to know what we were like will be able to punch for one particular record out of billions, and there we’ll be, eating and drinking and making love and generally going through the human motions, especially as and when we use the Bridges.”
    “Bridges—human motions,” Lorenzo said.
    “What?” Beginning to be frightened, Thorkild sat up.
    “Sorry, I meant to subvocalise that. I was just entering an equivalence-postulate on the file.”
    Thorkild scrambled to his feet; he towered over Lorenzo, who remained outwardly calm.
    “Oh no you don’t! You meant me to hear that!”
    “If you can still be angry you haven’t lost all contact with the rest of us. You can still be proud!”
    “Proud? You must be off your head! I’ve given up pride.”
    “When?”
    “I know exactly when! The moment I realised all I had to be proud of was how good I am at being used by other people.”
    “When was that?”
    “Haven’t I already told you? When I tried to answer Lancaster Long’s question, and saw Uskia with a speaker plugged into her navel so her unborn child could eavesdrop on what was happening. And I thought: here I am working like a slave, sweating over everything from petty details to grand policies, standing father to other people’s decisions and pretending they’re my own, taking the blame if they turn out to be wrong… And do I do this for my own sake? No I don’t! I do it for superstitious, knuckle-headed, potbellied morons like Uskia!