The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge Read Online Free PDF Page A

remembered the multi-color glows that appeared near its surface; further in, the infinite reflections and subtle refractions of microcomponent flaws in the glass blended into a mysterious flickering, hinting at the cheerful though immature intelligence that was Norman Simmons. This was the object which had to be found.
    DUNBAR BROKE OUT OF HIS REVERIE. HE STARTED ON A DIFFERENT TACK. “Really, General, I don’t quite see how this situation can be quite as desperate as you say. Norman isn’t going to sell secrets to the Reds; he’s as loyal as a human child could be—which is a good deal more than most adults, because he can’t rationalize disloyalty so easily. Besides, you know that we were eventually going to provide him with large masses of data, anyway. The goal of this whole project is to test the possibility of giving humans an encyclopedic mental grasp. He just saw how much the information could help him, and how much easier it
could be obtained than by study, and he pushed the experiment into its next phase. He shouldn’t be punished or hurt because of that. This situation is really no one’s fault.”
    Pederson snapped back, “Of course, it’s no one’s fault; that’s just the hell of it. When no one is to blame for something, it means that the situation is fundamentally beyond human control. To me, your whole project is taking control away from people and giving it to others . Here an experimental animal, a chimpanzee, has taken the initiative away from the U.S. Government—don’t laugh, or so help me—” The general made a warning gesture. “Your chimp is more than a co-ordinator of information; he’s also smarter than he was before. What’re the humans we try this on going to be like?”
    Pederson calmed himself with a deliberate effort. “Never mind that now. The important thing is to find Simmons, since he appears to be the only one who,” Pederson groaned, “knows where his brains are. So let’s get practical. Just what can we expect from him? How easy is it for him to correlate information in his memory?”
    Dunbar considered. “I guess the closest analogy between his mind and a normal one is to say that he has an eidetic memory—and a very large one. I imagine that when he first began using the information he was just swamped with data. Everything he saw stimulated a deluge of related memories. As his subconscious became practiced, he probably remembered only information that was pertinent to a problem. Say that he saw a car, and wondered what year and make it was. His subconscious would hunt through his copy of Files—at very high speed—and within a tenth of a second Norman would ‘remember’ the information he had just wondered about.
    “However, if for some reason he suddenly wondered what differential equations were, it would be a different matter, because he couldn’t understand the information presented, and so would have to wade through the same preliminary material that every child must in order to arrive at high-school math. But he could do it very much faster, because of the ease with which he could pick different explanations from different texts. I imagine he could get well into calculus from where he is now in algebra with a couple hours of study.”
    “In other words, the longer he has this information, the more dangerous he’ll be.”
    “Uh, yes. However, there are a couple things on our side. First, it’s mighty cold and damp on the surface, for Norman at least. He is likely to be very sick in a few hours. Second, if he travels far enough away from the First Security District, he will become mentally disoriented. Although Norman doesn’t know it—unless he has specifically considered the question—he could never get much farther than fifteen miles
away and remain sane. Norman’s mind is a very delicate balance between his organic brain and the hidden computer. The coordination is just as subtle as that of different nerve paths in the human brain. The