Free Savant by Nik Abnett Page A

said Bello.
    Mudd took the cables and began to run through Protocols with Pitu 3, who had a strange look of excitement on his face.
     
     
    T OBE STOOD IN his room, the door propped open, as usual. The room was a two metre cube with a low cot on the left and a narrow bookcase opposite. There was a small window close to the ceiling, on the wall opposite the door, which he never looked out of, and the wall opposite the bed was a wipe-wall, partially obscured by the bookcase. There was no storage space, other than the bookshelves, but there was a small table under the window, which served as a desk of sorts. The room was more like a monastic cell than a bedroom, but it suited Tobe. He didn’t care about clothes, which Metoo always organised for him, since he always dressed and undressed in his bedroom or on his way to the bathroom, and he didn’t really have any belongings. The few things he had become obsessed with over the years lived in the desk in his office.
    Tobe sat on the cot for a few minutes. He didn’t need to take so much as a pace to stand in front of the bookcase, so he stood, and pulled a copy of On Probability off the top shelf, all in one, measured movement. He sat down on the cot, again, and began to thumb through the book.
    Metoo was in the garden room. She had told Tobe that she wanted to check on her plants, and perhaps he’d like to work in his room. Tobe had said that he didn’t work in his room, because he worked in his office. Never-the-less, he had turned his back on her, and walked away down the corridor.
    “Service needs to interview him,” Saintout told her.
    “That’s impossible,” Metoo answered. “He wouldn’t understand it, and it’d frighten him. He’s not good with questions.”
    “You don’t seem to understand,” said the Police Operator, “Service needs to interview him.”
    “I understand, perfectly. I just don’t see how it’s going to be possible.”
    “They could do it here.”
    “He can’t have strangers in the flat. He can’t bear anyone in the flat, not even his Students. He won’t talk to anyone from Service. He doesn’t even sign in for himself. I don’t know if he even remembers that Service exists.”
    “We’ll get a doctor in. We’ll medicate him,” said Saintout. “He’ll be fine.”
    “Over my dead body.”
    “You know,” said the Police Operator, “that isn’t out of the question.”
    Metoo thought for a moment that he was joking. She almost laughed. Then she looked at him, and realised that he was, literally, deadly serious.
    “It’s that important?” asked Metoo.
    “I don’t know,” said Saintout, “I don’t have clearance to that level, but the fact that I don’t have clearance to that level tells me all that I need to know. I’m sure you understand what I’m saying.”
    Metoo’s head dropped, and her thumb came up to her mouth, as if she was going to chew the nail on it. She stood that way for several seconds.
    “They have to interview him,” said Saintout. “Do you want me to call a doctor, or what?”
    Metoo was pacing the room. She stopped in front of a shallow shelf where she was growing some ornamental plants, including an old English plant called ‘Honesty’. She was growing it because it had become very rare in the past two hundred years, in Britain, and a plant enthusiast that she corresponded with in Siberia had offered her some seeds. She also liked that it was called ‘Honesty’, and was even more pleased with the name that her friend had given to the flat, oval seed-pods that he had sent to her. They were delicate, papery, silver objects that she almost didn’t want to submerge in soil, because they were so beautiful. The English translation for their Russian name was ‘Moon Pennies’.
    Metoo relaxed, visibly, as she ordered her thoughts: Tobe was as honest as the day was long. He did not know how to dissemble, let alone lie. There had been occasions, when she first became Tobe’s Student, when Metoo