Soulminder by Timothy Zahn Read Free Book Online

gently tilt around him. Barnswell—Sands’s secret sale of their Mullner-trace data to him—the work of the past two weeks had completely driven all of that from his mind. “Ah—yes,” he managed at last. “It was my understanding that Congressman Barnswell would discuss any implications of our work before he released it.”
    “Do you confirm his results, then?” someone else asked, clearly uninterested in anything as common and un-newsworthy as betrayed trust.
    “I confirm that our work has proved the existence of a human soul—or a lifeforce, if you prefer,” he added, remembering Sands’s own reluctance to use the more theologically loaded term. “But as to whatever these racial implications are that he thinks he’s found, I would say they are at the very least exceedingly premature, and more likely a whole-cloth fabrication of his followers’ prejudices.”
    “ Are there, then, different types of souls?” someone pounced.
    Sommer gritted his teeth. “There are differences in souls, certainly,” he said. “Each one of us is a distinct individual—how on earth could our souls not be different? Again, though, there is absolutely no evidence at this point that there are any significant differences between racial, ethnic, or any other sort of group.”
    “Dr. Sommer, it sounds as if you haven’t actually seen Congressman Barnswell’s conclusions yet. Is that true?”
    “It is,” Sommer nodded.
    “May I ask, then, how you can dismiss them out of hand?”
    “Simple.” He glanced around the battery of minicams, a small fraction of his mind wondering just how Barnswell was going to take this. “As I said, Congressman Barnswell’s representatives promised not to release our data without our permission. To make sure he didn’t go back on that promise”—he took a deep breath—“I took the liberty of scrambling the personal profiles and Mullner traces of our subjects. Whatever patterns the Congressman’s people think they see, therefore, simply don’t exist.”
    There was a moment of stunned silence. Then, the whole mob seemed to explode at once into a blizzard of shouted questions. Once again Sommer held up his hand; eventually, the wordstorm dwindled and died. “Ladies and gentlemen, as far as I’m concerned, Congressman Barnswell and his theories are old news, and not very interesting news, at that.
    “Now, if you’re interested in a real story … ”
    It was, he thought more than once during that long day, as if he’d dropped a tactical nuke into the middle of the news industry. The shock wave of his announcement utterly shattered their neatly prepared list of events and stories to be covered, sending them scrambling for background and interviews and commentary. By early afternoon the shock wave had reached the political arena, prompting instant speeches from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and assorted foreign capitals. And as afternoon shaded into evening the wave jolted the nation’s religious leaders into statements of their own, ranging from reflexive denunciation on one extreme to cautious wait-and-see acceptance on the other.
    Most of the sound and fury Sommer got only second-hand, mainly in the form of references within the never-ending stream of questions thrown at him by successive shifts of media people. Local media interviews, long-distance phone calls from the international news services, live network interviews on the evening news, late-evening commentary programs—he was put through the entire gauntlet. Occasionally he was asked about Barnswell, but it was clear that the Congressman’s big bombshell announcement had been completely lost in the glare of the Soulminder story, and by the evening commentary shows all such questions had disappeared.
    Finally, just after midnight, it was finally over.
    “Is that it?” Sommer asked as the red light on the camera went out and the monitor showing his face went blank.
    “That’s it, Doctor,” the station manager nodded,