When a machine inside an antigrav flying cab has communicated with a machine inside the Intelligence headquarters tower, the cab deposits Flandry on the fiftieth-level parking flange where his card transfers credit through the meter before the door unlocks. A marine outside the entrance verifies his ID and appointment before admitting him to the building.
He walks through several crowded halls in preference to standing on a moving strip. Since the crowd is multi-species, we remember similar scenes in Star Trek and The People Of The Wind. See Admiralty. On this level, there are civilian visitors. However, when a negagrav field in a lift shaft has taken Flandry to the ninety-seventh level, where he halts by grasping a handhold, everyone he passes in the corridor outranks him. Kheraskov's suite needs only a scanner and a talkbox linked to a low-grade computer because:
"Everybody unimportant got filtered out at an earlier stage." (p. 16)
2 comments:
As an aside, high-ranking intelligence officers talking directly to field agents does happen sometimes.
It's a way of getting around the tendency of large organizations to "filter" (interpret) information in ways that correspond to previous established narratives.
This happens to some extent even if there are conscious mechanisms to prevent it. Even the Mossad, which is probably the best at avoiding it, has fallen victim to this now and then.
There's always enough 'noise' in incoming information to allow selective interpretation to function, because information has to be condensed as it's passed upward along the chain of command, because otherwise the superior officers would be drowned in contradictory triva.
The flipside is the risk of important data being ignored or explained away.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And I tried to rationalize a contradiction I found when comparing THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN with "Honorable Enemies" in my "An Unexpected Contradiction" essay. That is, senior intelligence officers might not reveal to some field agents information they NEEDED to know. That too is another risk.
Ad astra! Sean
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