Hot Sleep- The Worthing Chronicle - By Orson Scott Card Page 0,16
I need to know. One is the nonsense file. The other is the contradiction file. If found you in nonsense, of course."
A code. Jas noticed, too, that Doon had a double cover code on the program, besides the basic search and specify. The screen flashed: "All left - handed blue - eyed women with an IQ of 97 who eat more than two pounds of meat a week and who have more than three lovers." The list took three flashes to read out fully on the screen. "You'll be amused to know, Jas, that the list you just saw includes not just one, but two mistresses or former mistresses of Cabinet members. Incredible, isn't it, that they could both meet that description. Amazing things in this computer."
"And you found me under the program for all blue - eyed thirteen - year - old orphans with telepathic gifts," Jas said.
"No. You were part of a much more random search. Everyone knows the computer knows everything - the trouble is that you have to have the keys to find what you want. I have the keys. And here's the program that found you."
The screen flashed: "All children IQ greater than measurable, PQ above 3.8, health excellent, with unfavorable reports from at least two teachers."
Jas's curiosity was stirred. "Why the unfavorable reports?"
"It's possible to be brilliant and utterly uncreative," Doon said. "But brilliant and creative people always antagonize the merely bright, who lack, shall we say, originality. Your odds of running into such unoriginal persons in the school system of Capitol are about 8,000 to one - a reasonably good guide, then, to creativity. Better than any test I've seen."
"And you had unfavorable reports from two of my teachers?"
"Actually, Jas, you stuck out on this list because you've never had a teacher who didn't file an unfavorable report on you, despite the fact that your PQ shows you adjusted at the 3.9 level, which is neurotic but certainly not antisocial. Why the reports? I could only conclude that you were exceptionally creative. So I had the computer file you and gather all data. Merely routine, of course, but I was aware of you. That was five years ago. Between then and now I've been asleep on somec. Normally I take twenty years - " which, Jas realized, meant that Doon was getting more somec sleep than was legally permitted outside the service " - but because of you I came out only three weeks ago."
"I didn't mean to wake you. I'll be quieter next time."
"I had the computer set to wake me when a certain kind of contradiction came up. The contradiction that triggered it was, of course, your score on the astrodynamics test."
"I wish I'd flunked it."
"No you don't. I don't mean the first astrodynamics test. That was routine. It merely identified you as a Swipe, and the computer would have been content to let you die. Luckily for me and the Empire - and you, of course - you're a survivor. You lived long enough to take the second test."
Jas remembered how he had labored over the answers to that one. "I didn't pass that one by checking in on anybody's mind, Doon."
"I know. After all, whose mind would you check in on, as you so colorfully put it? There isn't a single mind - or computer, for that matter - in the Empire or out of it that could have given you all the answers. You missed one test question, of course. But there were three questions on that test for which we didn't have an answer."
Doon paused. Jas slowly realized the implications of that.
"You mean I moved beyond - "
"I mean," Doon said, "that you are a reasonably bright young fellow with prospects for a satisfactory career in astrodynamics. My engineers assure me that they can now construct a ship that moves not the piddling triple - light - speed that our scouts now muster, but rather a dazzling eleven lights. Nothing, my young friend, goes eleven lights. And you twisted up the physicists' understanding of mass somehow, though they despaired of trying to explain the difference to me. I'm not mathematical. I hardly need tell you what this does for the Empire."
"I suppose it will speed up the mail."
"You have a very flippant attitude today," Doon said.
"I always antagonize the merely bright," Jas retorted.