Christopher Stasheff - Rogue Wizard 04 by A Wizard In Peace

Author:A Wizard In Peace
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

“You have not requested confidentiality,” the voice explained.

“So if I ask you to turn off your audio pickups, you will?”

“Correct,” the computer confirmed.

“I don’t think many of the inmates thought of that,” Dirk muttered. “Must have picked up a lot of interesting sounds.”

“I don’t think it’s possible to shock a machine,” Gar told him, then raised his voice again. “Shall we confer now?”

“The timbre of your voice, and the amount of time you spend sleeping, indicates that you are not yet in proper condition for such a meeting.”

Gar nodded. “Fair enough. But tell me this-can you provide teaching materials for all the people here?”

“Yes. They ,will be provided via the viewscreens in their suites.”

“May I compliment you on the quality of the frames you provide for them.”

“Thank you, but human designers deserve the credit, not I: What subjects will you be requesting?”

“History, both Terran and local; literary classics; military strategy and tactics; local laws and bureaucratic procedures…”

“I am quite out of date in that subject-by several centuries, in fact.”

“Yes, but you can teach them the basis from which the modern ones are derived. As to making the knowledge current, we’ll see what resources we can rustle up.”

Literally, Dirk thought.

“Oh, a whole host of subjects,” Gar said, suddenly sagging back on the pillow. Dirk suppressed the urge to jump to take his pulse.

“I see you are too tired for further talk,” the Guardian said. “Call me at need. For now, good night.”

“Good night,” Gar replied, his voice weakening.

“I’ll let you sleep in a minute,” Dirk said slowly, “but in the meantime, I was just wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Well, your exhaustion is part of the answer, but only part.”

“Glad to hear it. What’s the question?”

“If you can cure mental illness so easily …” Dirk began, then stopped and said, “Let me revise that. If you can cure mental illness so quickly, why don’t you do it more often?”

“In the first place,” Gar sighed, “I can’t. Most mentally ill people are far more complicated than these, with several disorders all twined together. In the second place, even if I could, I’d have no right. It’s a matter of invading somebody’s mind, you see, and sick or not, I have no right to do that without their permission.”

“No, you don’t,” Dirk said slowly. “What gave you the right this time?”

“Necessity,” Gar sighed, “which means that I really had no right-but it was that, or forget about these people gaining their freedom, and I didn’t have any right to do that, either.”

By the end of the week, all the recruits had learned how to fall without hurting themselves, and how to deliver and block a punch and a kick. The few who hadn’t learned to read, had made a good beginning from the lessons the Guardian supplied them, and Dirk had started teaching them the basic outline of the history of their planet.

In the first session of that class, people began to ask questions about where their ancestors came from, and were astounded to learn that the fairy stories about other worlds were true.

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