They took the lift tube outside and rode it as high as it went. It
opened out into the biggest room Alan had ever seen, bigger even than
the main registry downstairs--a vast affair perhaps a hundred feet high
and four hundred feet on the side.
And every inch of those feet was lined with computer elements.
"This is the nerve-center of the world," Hawkes said as they went in.
"By asking the right questions you can find out where anybody in the
world happens to be at this very moment."
"How can they do that?"
Hawkes nudged a tiny sliver of metal embedded in a ring on his finger.
"Here's my televector transmitter. Everyone who has a work card or Free
Status carries one, either on a ring or in a locket round his neck or
somewhere else. Some people have them surgically embedded in their
bodies. They give off resonance waves, each one absolutely unique;
there's about one chance in a quadrillion of a duplicate pattern. The
instruments here can pick up a given pattern and tell you exactly where
the person you're looking for is."
"So we can find Steve without much trouble!"
"Probably." Hawkes' face darkened. "I've known it to happen that the
televector pattern picks up a man who's been at the bottom of the sea
for five years. But don't let me scare you; Steve's probably in good
shape."
He took out the slip of paper on which he had jotted down Steve's
televector code number and transferred the information to an application
blank.
"This system," Alan said. "It means no one can possibly hide anywhere on
Earth unless he removes his televector transmitter."
"You can't do that, though. Strictly illegal. An alarm goes out whenever
someone gets more than six inches from his transmitter, and he's picked
up on suspicion. It's an automatic cancellation of your work card if
you try to fool with your transmitter--or if you're Free Status a fine
of ten thousand credits."
"And if you can't pay the fine?"
"Then you work it off in Government indenture, at a thousand credits a
year--chopping up rocks in the Antarctica Penitentiary. The system's
flawless. It _has_ to be. With Earth as overpopulated as it is, you need
some system of tracking down people--otherwise crime would be ten times
as prevalent as it is now."
"There still is crime?"
"Oh, sure. There's always somebody who needs food bad enough to rob for
it, even though it means a sure arrest. Murder's a little less common."
Hawkes fed the requisition slip into the slot. "You'd be surprised what
a deterrent the televector registry system is. It's not so easy to run
off to South America and hide when anybody at all can come in here and
find out exactly where you are."
A moment went by. Then the slot clicked and a glossy pink slip came
rolling out.
Alan looked at it. It said:
TELEVECTOR REGISTRY
21 May 3876
Location of Donnell Steve, YC83-10j6490k37618
Time: 1643:21
There followed a street map covering some fifteen square blocks, and a
bright red dot was imprinted in the center of the map.
Hawkes glanced at the map and smiled. "I thought that was where he would
be!"
"Where's that?"
"68th Avenue and 423rd Street."
"Is that where he lives?" Alan asked.
"Oh, no. The televector tells you where he is right now. I'd venture to
say that was his--ah--place of business."