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bites of the home-cured ham I was digging into. "But in any case-"
I looked back at the rest of them.
"In any case, everyone in the community who won't be needed for the monad
gestalt, when and if we're ready to use it, better start making preparations
to scatter* now. If Paula can't get me back, shell raise bloody hell-and I
mean bloody hell literally-with anyone connected to me she can get her hands
on. Bill, Marie-"
They both looked at me, from farther on down the table.
"You'd better start making plans as to how supplies are to be portioned out,
and where to, and how people are to take off. Also, Doc-"
"Yo."
"We're going to need a fast, a really fast warning system to give us as much
notice as possible when we learn Paula or some of her people are headed this
way. Maybe you can figure out something using that aircraft we came in."
"I think so, Marc." He looked at Ellen. "Right, Euenr
Ellen nodded.
"All right" I finished the ham and pushed my plate back. "Anyone have any
suggestions or comments, before I head out to the lab with Poraiarsk?"
"You need some sleep," said Marie. "You look dead. So does Doc."
I looked at her. The words were Marie-type words, but there was a difference
about her which found an echo in the way she said them. However, I had no time
to investigate such things now.
I slept on the flight coining in," I said. "Doc probably could use some
sleep."
"I slept last night," said Doc.
"Whatever," I said, getting to my feet "Anyway, IH catch up on my sleep biter.
Pomiarsk? Ready to go?"
"Yes," he said. We went out of the dining room together, leaving the others
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behind us.
"It's an unusual situation," said Pomiarsk, once we got to the tank in the
lab. "It's the kind of stoppage as if the extrapolative element of this
device-what you've been calling the computer-had encountered a logical
contradiction, so that further extrapolations from this point would result in
increasing error. But attempts on my part to find out what such a
contradiction might be have produced no results."
"Let me look at where it stopped," I said.
He activated the tank. Once more I stared into the btue-grayness, with the
little firefly points of light flickering through the space of it For a
moment, a small crawling fear woke inside me, a fear that in my step aside
with Paula I had lost whatever had given me the ability to see patterns in the
tank before. But then, slowly, the little points of light began to relate and
group themselves into associations.
The pattern took shape. It was a strange and unfamiliar pattern, which was to
be expected. But when I tried to go one step further and change my perception
from that of small lights in a tank to the actual universe envisioned, as I
had done once before, I could not do it The small crawling fear came back,
stronger.
"I can see what you've got there," I said to Pomiarsk, finally. "But I cant
seem to make it mean anything to me. I don't know what's wrong."
"You may just be tired," said Pomiarsk. "Or perhaps you've been away from the
device long enough to feel unfamiliar with it"
"Maybe."
I gave up and withdrew my attention from the pattern in the tank. Suddenly, I
was dead tired. Tired right down to the marrow of my bones.
"You're right about one thing," I told Pomiarsk. "I need sleep. IT1 go lie
down."
I went back to my own room, part of the suite I shared with Marie and Ellen.
But neither of them were there now. It was only early afternoon, and they,
with the rest of the community, would be hard at work. I felt a child's
loneliness for someone to sit with me while I fell asleep; but I pushed the
emotion away from me. I undressed, lay down on the bed, pulled a blanket over
me and stared at the white ceiling, lightly shadowed now and then by the
clouds outside reflecting from the window.
I was still dead tired; but I began to wonder if I would sleep. I lay there.
I woke to someone shaking me. For a second, I thought I was back on the future
plane again and being woken by Doc and the Old Man. Then I saw it was dark
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