9
In the morning when Isaac and Bikie woke at the villa, excellent coffee was already waiting.
“The gentle cooing of this pimped-up coffee machine is akin to the noble note that resounds when I start up my Harley,” declared Bikie, already in a poetic mood first thing in the morning. “I think I’ll listen to it one more time. Isaac, put in a cup. Ah, tell you what: genuine coffee is some mighty stuff! Not like that instant shit. You are one fluky guy, Isaac. Maybe there’s some kind of fluky energy? Just think about it. You’ve got no money, but you will have. Your sister’s sick, but only until you get your money, so it’s a temporary problem. Your brains are in good shape. You went to download your creativity, but Lady Luck saved you. You got a piece of computer plate and you didn’t throw it out, you looked at it. Out of the candidates you found me and Wolanski. Hit the bullseye again! I won’t deny that I’m glad we ended up here, not with that swanky jerk with the Harley.”
“It’s not entirely a fluke. I admit I was lucky with the downloading when Elvis showed up. But choosing you and Wolanski was shrewd calculation. A risk it was certainly, but the analysis of the candidates was correct. Lady Luck likes hard workers; she doesn’t do everything for you herself. And what’s more, I had failures with a couple of other candidates.”
“Dunno. I reckon you’re fluky. And you’ve got good intuition. Sometimes I think about how many little details came together for me to be sitting here, right at this moment, and I realize the math doesn’t explain it because it is unrepeatable from the standpoint of probability theory. I even ended up in the bar because I love motorbikes. The owner of the bar is a biker too. If I were not a biker, I wouldn’t have ended up in the bar, and you might have chosen someone else.”
“You could say that about absolutely anyone starting at least with the fact that every one of us is born from the victor in a race of spermatozoa. One out of tens of millions. It’s like one person from the whole of France, one from Poland, five from America. So mathematics hasn’t got anything to do with it, its fate or something else. Maybe it is flukiness.”
While they talked they had no less than three cups of coffee each. Heady, exquisite aroma diffused through the air and the delicious brew spread invigoratingly though Isaac’s body, clearing his thoughts. He always put in a lot of sugar. Now it was time to sit down at the computer.
“Ok, Bikie. Any ideas on how to find Link?”
“Considering how much sugar you just had, that’s really a question for you. Sugar is the brain’s main fuel. Your tank is over full right now.”
“About the ideas, I meant your professional skills in the first place.”
“Well, there are a few things we can do, and some we can’t. As always, we have to try everything. You never know where you’ll stumble across the trail. Either he’s a total hermit, which is quite likely for a scientist, or sooner or later he’ll leave tracks. Provided he is alive and hasn’t become a Happy.”
“I still hope that he is present in the data base not just by accident or mistake. He’s definitely not a Happy, and clearly not officially listed as dead. Why keep data on the intellectual capabilities of a corpse?”
“Who knows? Many people searched him. Although we are special since we have out-of-the-box thinking. I’ll try to turn the question round the other unusual way.”
Bikie considered himself a super-analyst and was sure he’d find Link if there was even the slightest chance. He downloaded all the information he could find, at the same time creating and running a file comparison program to eliminate identical content. In the end he gathered a vast amount of relevant data.
He also compared articles that were almost identical and copied out any differences into his list of leads. In one place he found the name of a hotel Link stayed in, in another - the make of car in which he was driven there. Then he found out how Link was dressed. He collected whatever could be collected.
Leaving his partner to ruminate, Isaac went off to the next meeting about registering his anti-rain invention.
Isaac hated Collective Mind more and more, his resolve to strike a blow at it was growing stronger. Five years ago his invention would literally have been grabbed out of his hands, they would have lined up for it. But now he was on his way to even more talks with the agent at the patents office, still not even knowing if this was the final meeting, or the first of yet another dozen bureaucratic discussions.
The bald, plumpish patent officer, who introduced himself as Serge Morell, was also an Agency-hater. He had his reasons. He used to be the boss of a large department, almost twenty people, a big wheel and a well-respected man. Now his department consisted of just him, and it was only still considered a department because no