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here on Ceres " good excuse to be some plugged into a database, but first a
quick tree off my own memory:
No.
Some other way that could be
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BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman done here and now
DALLAS
Sometimes the lifelike way that Eric's image acted made you admire the
programming genius that went into creating a TI. He actually looked startled.
"There's something here," he said. "Something that could be of great
importance to you."
Maria didn't react. "What is it?"
"Eric, the flesh-and-blood Eric, had extensive dealings with a Novy scientist
or doctor, Baird Ulric, back in '73. He shipped him more than twenty thousand
pages of journal articles, in twelve languages actual paper copies from his
library."
"Why in heaven's name would he do that?" Maria said.
"So there would be no record of the exchange. They all seem to be about life
extension and gerontological research."
"Then there would be a record," I said. "Whether he owned a paper copy or an
electronic one. The foundation's draconian about controlling that kind of
information."
"But it's all old stuff. Nothing after late 1998."
"What good would that do?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's just of historical interest. But it was important
enough for him not to tell me about it."
"Or trivial enough."
"It doesn't work that way. Most of my memory space is taken up with
trivialities.
"He spent two weeks on this project but never mentioned it, so I reconstructed
it by interrogating his library and copier, which have a rudimentary kind of
intelligence, or at least memory."
"Why would he keep it secret from you?"
"We discussed the possibility of the foundation, or some other authority,
taking physical possession of
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BUYING TIME - Joe Haldeman me, of the crystal, and analyzing it to see what
Eric was up to. I thought I had convinced Eric that I had adequate safeguards,
but every now and then something like this came up. I could usually figure it
out."
You don't think of TIs as being capable of, "programmed for," initiative, but
of course they are. Eric's TI
had been on its own since November. "You're sure the foundation couldn't get
it out of you?"
"What could they do? Force bamboo splinters under my fingernails? Actually,
the copy that's sitting down in New York has all of the forbidden links
erased. I could do it to this copy in a millisecond, too, and in the process
also destroy the logical structures that allow me to take the action. Leaving
no trace."
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"You're as devious as the real Eric."
"Ah, but I
am the real Eric, now." He raised both eyebrows in a characteristic bug-eyed
expression.
"Shall we see if we can find Gospodin Ulric?"
I took the reader into the kitchen and plugged it into the data jack. The
directory listed Baird Ulric at the address of the clinic we'd just left.
It rang for almost a minute before a harried and shaggy man appeared on the
screen. "Ulric." He leaned forward. "
Lundley?
Eric Lundley? But you're supposed to be ..
"Eric is dead. I'm his Turing Image."
"Oh." He pointed. "You're the Stileman with frostbite who Liz treated this
afternoon."
"Small world," Maria said.
"Biggest one we have." He looked up, toward the corner where Eric's image
would be superimposed. "I
think I know what you want to talk about," he said slowly. "But let's not talk
about it over the phone.
You have dinner plans?"
"No," we said in a three-voice chorus, though Eric probably did have plans:
electrons du jour.
He looked at his watch. "Meet me at the entrance to the clinic at
nineteen-thirty. We'll figure out a place to go." He rang off.
"The plot thickens," Eric said. "He thinks the foundation has his phone
tapped?"
"I suppose it's a reasonable assumption," I said, "if they have any idea of" I
suddenly had a being-
listened-to feeling in the middle of my back "the hilarious way he does
crossword puzzles."
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