Half an hour of patient searching, though, turned up the man he wanted:
RADANT, CLARK R. Detected 12 May 1987, Brooklyn, New York. Interrogated eight days. Declared date of birth 14 May 2458, declared date of departure? May 2490 . . .
It didn’t give the exact date, but it would do. A close watch would be kept on Clark Radant during the month to come, Quellen resolved. Let’s see if he can slip back to 1987 while we watch him!
He punched for Master Files.
“Get me documents on Clark Radant, born May 14, 2458.” Quellen snapped.
The huge computer somewhere below the building was designed to give instant response. It did not necessarily give instant satisfaction, however, and the response that Quellen got was less than useful.
“NO RECORD OF CLARK RADANT BORN 14 MAY 2458,” came the reply.
“No record? You mean there’s no such person?”
“AFFIRMATIVE.”
“That’s impossible. He’s in the hopper records. Check them. He turned up in Brooklyn on May 12, 1987. See if he didn’t.”
“AFFIRMATIVE. CLARK RADANT LISTED AMONG 1987 ARRIVALS AND 2490 DEPARTURES.”
“You see? So you must have some information on him! Why did you tell me there was no record of him, when—”
“POSSIBLY FRAUDULENT HOPPER LISTING IS ONLY ENTRY. NAME ON LIST DOES NOT IMPLY LEGITIMATE EXISTENCE, EXPLORE POSSIBILITY THAT RADANT NAME IS PSEUDONYM.”
Quellen nibbled his lower lip. Yes, no doubt of it! “Radant,” whoever he might be, had given a phony name when he landed in 1987. Perhaps all the hopper names on the list were pseudonyms. Maybe they were individually instructed to conceal their real names when they arrived, or possibly indoctrinated so that they could not reveal them, even after interrogation. The enigmatic Clark Radant had been interrogated eight days, it said, and he still hadn’t offered a name that corresponded to anything in the birth records.
Quellen saw his bold plan fluttering into the discard. He tried again, though. Expecting to search another half hour, he was rewarded with a new lead after only five minutes:MORTENSEN, DONALD G. Detected 25 December 2088, Boston, Massachusetts. Interrogated four hours. Declared date of birth 11 June 2462, declared date of departure 4 May 2490 . . .
He hoped it had been a merry Christmas in Boston for Donald Mortensen four hundred two years ago. Quellen punched for Master Files again and demanded to know what there was to be known about Donald Mortensen, born 11 June 2462. He was prepared to learn that no such individual was recorded in the voluminous birth annals of that year.
Instead, the computer began to chatter to him about Donald Mortensen—his skill classification, his marital status, his address, his physical description, his health record. Quellen at length had to silence the machine.
Very well. Therewasa Donald Mortensen. He had not—would not—bother to use a pseudonym when he showed up in Boston on Christmas Day forty decades ago. If he showed up. Quellen consulted the hopper records again and learned that Mortensen had found employment as an automobile service technician (how prehistoric, Quellen thought!) and had married one Donna Brewer in 2091, fathering five children on her (even more prehistoric!) and living on until 2149, when he expired of an unrecorded disease.
Those five children no doubt had had multitudes of offspring themselves, Quellen realized. Thousands of modern day human beings might be descended from them, including Quellen himself, or some leader of the High Government. Now, if Quellen’s minions closed in on Donald Mortensen as the critical day of May 4 arrived, and prevented him from taking off for the year 2088—
He felt hesitant. The sensation of bold determination that had gripped him a few moments before evaporated completely as he considered the consequences of altering Donald Mortensen’s chosen path of action.
Perhaps, Quellen thought, I should have a talk with Koll and Spanner about this, first.
4.
The job machine—more formally, the Central Employment Register—was located in the grand lobby of a geodesic dome six hundred feet wide. The dome was surfaced with a platinum spray three molecules thick. Within, along the walls of the dome, were the external manifestations of the computer banks, which were located somewhere else. A busy inanimate mind worked unsleepingly to tally employment opportunities and to match them with qualifications.
Norm Pomrath took a quickboat to the job machine. He could have walked, and saved a piece of change at the expense of an hour of his time, but he chose not to do so. It was a deliberate squandering. His time was almost infinite; his cash supply, despite the generosity of the High Government, was limited. The weekly dole checks that reached him through the courtesy of Danton and Kloofman and the other members of the ruling elite covered all basic expenses for the Pomrath family of four, but they did not go much beyond those basic expenses. Pomrath usually conserved his cash. He hated the dole, of course; but there was little likelihood of his ever getting regular work, so he accepted the impersonal benevolence like everyone else. No one starved except through free will in this world, and even then it took some doing.
There was really no need for Pomrath to have gone to the machine. Telephone lines linked every apartment with any computer to which there should be public access. He could phone to learn of his status; and in any event if there had been some upward twitch in his job profile, the machine would have been in contact with him by this time. He preferred to get out of the house, though. He knew the job machine’s answer in advance, so this was merely a ritual, one of the many sustaining rituals that enabled him to cope with the numbing fact that he was a wholly useless human being.
Subfloor scanners hummed as Pomrath stepped into the building. He was checked, monitored, and identified. If he had been on one of the registers of known anarchists, he would not have been permitted to cross the threshold. Clamps emerging from the marble floor would painlessly have secured his limbs until he could be disarmed and removed from the premises. Pomrath meant no harm to the job machine, however. He harbored hostilities, but they were directed against the universe in general. He was too intelligent a man to waste his wrath on computers.
The benevolent faces of Benjamin Danton and Peter Kloofman beamed down on him from the lofty reaches of the geodesic dome. Giant tridim simulacra dangled from the gleaming struts of the huge building. Danton managed to look severe even while he was smiling; Kloofman, who was reputed to be a man of great humanitarian warmth, was a more inviting figure. Pomrath remembered a time about twenty years ago when the public representatives of the High Government had constituted a triumvirate, with Kloofman and two others whose names he had begun to forget. Then one day Danton had appeared and the pictures of the other two were taken down. Doubtless one day Kloofman and Danton both would vanish, and there would be two—or three—or four new faces on the public buildings. Pomrath did not concern himself too deeply with changes in the personnel of the High Government. Like most people, he had some fundamental doubts about the existence of Kloofman and Danton. There was good reason to believe that the computers were running the whole show, and had been for at least a century now. Yet he did not fail to nod his head reverently to the tridims as he entered the job machine building. For all he knew, Danton might actually be watching him out of the cold eyes of that big simulacrum.