As she was thinking this, three people emerged from around a corner.
All were old. A man wearing a black hat, a man in an electric wheelchair, and a woman wearing sunglasses were in the midst of a lively conversation as they headed toward Balot and Tweedledee.
The man wearing the black hat was the first to notice Balot and Tweedledee, and stopped.
“Ah, Tweedledee, taking that young lady for a walk, are you?”
The man took his hat off and bowed to Balot. Thousands of little connector terminals were planted in his head, so many that they almost looked like a second set of hair.
“Is this young lady a new experimental candidate, Tweedledee?”
“Client…? From the outside world?” the man asked, puzzled. “Dr. Easter’s lab seems to have its lights on at the moment—is he back with us? Is he conducting some unauthorized experiments on his own? Without publishing an official code name?”
“I’m sure that no such code name has been registered,” the man answered.
The old woman beside him was next to speak, blue eyes twinkling behind her sunglasses. “The regenerative metal fibers seem to suit her very well. Beautiful skin. Have you measured her Interference Rate yet? Do you know how far she is into her threshold of consciousness?”
“How marvelous.” The old woman’s eyes and ears were fully mechanized, and her electronically produced voice was indistinguishable from the real thing.
The man in the wheelchair scooted around to Balot’s flank and asked, “Is it the aftereffects of the Lightite skin graft that makes her unable to walk straight?”
Balot shook her head. She wasn’t sure how best to answer this question.
“I think that Pod Number 3 is free at the moment. Let’s have her swim in the Sheep-Dip Craft for a while. She hasn’t shared her data yet, has she? Her muscle pulse may have been overridden by the sudden acceleration of her senses,” the man in the wheelchair continued, happily letting everything go right over Balot’s head.
When Tweedledee said this, the man in the wheelchair assumed a sullen expression. “And do you have a good reason for monopolizing her data?”
The word
“You’ll be sure to get data that we can usefully adapt, at least?” The man in the wheelchair pressed his point nonetheless.
Balot was bewildered by this exchange, and a sense of discomfort closed in on her.
Tweedledee spoke quickly, as if he had sensed Balot’s feelings.
“Well, we’ll file a request for data sharing. Until then, be sure not to upset your biorhythm.” The tall man placed his hat back on his head. The old woman gave Balot a bow. “Take care of yourself, young lady. I’d love to have tea with someone with as much aptitude as you. Tweedledee, you’ll have tea with me, won’t you?”
The old woman laughed. Then the three old people fell back into their previous lively conversation and were gone.
Watching the backs of the three old people as they disappeared down the corridor, Balot thought about how they differed from the Doctor.
She wouldn’t have said that they were bad people in any way. But she couldn’t imagine herself ever becoming friendly with them.
Tweedledee shrugged his shoulders, as if to say
