The Tomorrow File Read Online Free PDF

awoke. The hypersonic had no windows or ports. But there was a cabin telescreen, and I saw we were over New York harbor, coming into Ellis. I could see the Statue of Liberty. For safety, they had outlined it in red neon tubing when the airfield went operational. It didn’t spoil the lady’s appearance as much as you might expect.
    A SATSEC copter was waiting for me. That was Paul’s doing, and I appreciated it. A few minutes later we landed on the pad in the compound. Paul was seated in an electric cart near the hangar. He leaned out to wave to me. I walked toward him, brushing the side pocket of my zipsuit with the back of my hand to make certain I still had DEPDIRSAT’s tape cassette.
    Paul waited until I climbed onto the plastivas seat next to him.
    “What was it?” he asked eagerly.
    I fished out the cassette and showed it to him.
    “What’s on it?”
    “I don’t know. For our ears only. We better go to your lab.”
    He nodded and started the cart with a jerk. He was a miserable driver.
    Geo-Political Area 1 was a megapolis that ran along the Eastern Seaboard from Boston on the north to Washington, D.C., on the south. During the decentralization of government offices during the Presidency of Harold Morse, the DOB had assigned SATSEC to a complex of office and residential buildings on the lower tip of Manhattan Island.
    The development had originally been called Manhattan Landing. It was excellent for our purposes, including offices, apartments, shops, restaurants, and small parks. The three level underground area had been converted to laboratories and computer banks at a cost of 200 million new dollars. Like all government compounds, ours was surrounded by a high chainlink fence, with constant security patrols, closed-circuit TV, infrared, ultrasonic, and radar monitors.
    My apartment was on the penultimate floor of the highest residential building, since I was a Division Leader, PS-3, the third highest rank in Public Service. Paul Bumford, a PS-4, lived one floor below me. Angela Berri, a PS-2, had the penthouse. DIROB, the Director of the Department of Bliss, a PS-1, had his home and office in Washington, D.C.
    Paul and I drove directly to A Lab, fed our BIN cards into the Auto-Ident, and took the executive elevator down, down, down. Another Auto-Ident check to get into the general lab area. To enter Paul’s personal lab, he had to speak his name into a live microphone. It automatically checked his voiceprint with the one on file in the Security Computer. Then the door could be opened with his magnetic key. It was all a game. Everyone knew the whole system could be fiddled, but we all followed regulations.
    Over in a comer of the lab, the fluorescents were on high intensity. Mary Margaret Bergstrom, an AENOF-B (an artificially enovulated female with a Grade B genetic rating), was serving with a polarizing microscope. She looked up in surprise when we entered. Paul waved to her. She nodded briefly and went back to the scope.
    “What’s she doing here at this hour?” I asked. It was not yet dawn.
    “She serves all hours. ’ ’ Paul shrugged. “She’s got no social life, no hobbies, no bad habits.”
    “Unless you call playing a flute naked in front of a mirror a bad habit.”
    Paul laughed. “Oh, you heard that story, too!”
    We went into his private office. He turned on the lights, locked the door behind us, pulled the plastopaque shade down over the glass window that looked out into the general lab area.
    I checked the Sharegard monitor on the wall. It was supposed to register the presence of any unauthorized electronic sharing devices. Sometimes it worked. At the moment it showed a normal reading.
    “When did you have your last sweep?” I asked.
    “About a week ago. We were clean then. They found an unauthorized transistor radio over in B Lab. Some done had been listening to the dog race results.”
    “Beautiful. Let’s get on with it.”
    Paul took out a portable cassette deck. The cracked