Overclocked Read Free Page B

own ar­gu­ments, her own skills and ex­per­i­ence? Her eyes widened in hor­ror. “No!”
    After all this time, all the months of ex­haust­ing work, how could the board do this to her?
    “They made the de­cision?” No, this couldn't be hap­pen­ing to her.
    He nod­ded.
    “How, Don? We both weren’t here this morn­ing. The board wouldn’t have had a chance to ab­sorb the last round of res­ults.” She paused and stared at him be­seech­ingly. “The least I ex­pec­ted was a post­pone­ment.”
    Base­ment Five’s dir­ector didn’t say a word and Tania’s sense of frus­tra­tion rose.
    “Do you know what I’ve been do­ing this past week?” she asked, a hard edge creep­ing into her voice. “Be­sides the usual work­load, which would ex­haust a pla­toon of de­velopers, I had a look at the pro­tocol is­sues we’ve been hav­ing lately. I think I know where we’re go­ing wrong. If the board would only re­con­sider, post­pone their de­cision un­til I’ve had time….”
    Don shrugged, his lined and droopy eyes full of sym­pathy. Dur­ing the tri­als, he had treated her and Carl equally, al­though she al­ways got the faint im­pres­sion she was the one he fa­voured to take the first step into the un­known. But des­pite that, the board had gone ahead and Don hadn't stopped them. Had he failed her as well?
    “The meet­ing was set for this morn­ing, as you know,” he said. “Carl was here. The board was here. We waited for you but Carl was…very per­suas­ive. As a res­ult, the spon­sors de­cided to give him first crack at it.”
    “So he’s in the,” she jerked her head to­wards the far wall, in the dir­ec­tion of the in­ser­tion rooms. She wouldn’t say the words. That would make her fail­ure too real, too soon.
    “Yep.”
    “Can I see him?” she asked in a tight voice.
    “I thought you’d never ask.”
    Don smiled, a gleam in his eye. For a mo­ment, Tania was di­ver­ted from the main ob­ject of her ire. Be­neath the dir­ector’s care­worn ex­ter­ior, she thought she saw the dash­ing young man he must have been when he was cut­ting a swath through the field of com­puter sci­ence. She was aware of his back­ground, as any­body in the field would be. How he had jumped from one bleed­ing edge labor­at­ory to an­other, soak­ing in everything un­til he fi­nally ended up as the secret dir­ector to a secret de­part­ment in a secret loc­a­tion, floors be­neath Rim­shot’s cor­por­ate headquar­ters. Very few people in the world had a mind as sharp as Don Novak’s, coupled with the abil­ity to use it.
    Al­though she knew where to go, Tania let Don lead the way, men­tally pre­par­ing her­self for what she’d see. They walked through an­other, more solid-look­ing door and into the cent­ral lab. The light in the room was sub­dued. Ar­rayed in an an­gu­lar semi-circle in front of them were banks of mon­it­ors. Three tech­ni­cians skipped from one mon­itor to an­other, punch­ing com­mands into key­boards, set­ting up dia­gnostic activ­it­ies and watch­ing the res­ult­ant pulses on their screens with calm in­tens­ity. They didn’t even lift their heads at Tania and Don’s en­trance.
    Bey­ond the desks and be­hind a large panel of glass was a set-up that looked like it be­longed in a hos­pital. On the left side of the panel, cush­ioned by a heavy foam mat­tress and covered with a light waffle weave blanket, lay Carl’s body. Feel­ing a pull of curi­os­ity and won­der, Tania left Don to speak with one of the en­gin­eers. She moved for­ward to the edge of the glass, peer­ing in at its lone oc­cu­pant.
    Carl was hardly dressed, bare right down to his un­der­wear, ar­rays of sensors thread­ing un­ti­dily from where they were at­tached to his skin. Tania saw the ripples the wires formed as they snaked un­der­neath the blanket and emerged at the bed’s edge. Look­ing like strands of