'What's that?'
'The readers you'll meet most of the time are too simple-minded to believe your date of birth. So, with your permission, we've moved it up a thousand years.'
'Permission granted. And the rest of the Ident?'
'Optional. You can leave it empty, give your current interests and location – or use it for personal messages, global or targeted.'
Some things, Poole was quite sure, would not have changed over the centuries. A high proportion of those 'targeted' messages would be very personal indeed.
He wondered if there were still self or state-appointed censors in this day and age – and if their efforts at improving other people's morals had been more successful than in his own time.
He would have to ask Dr Wallace about that, when he got to know her better.
4 – A Room with a View
'Frank – Professor Anderson thinks you're strong enough to go for a little walk.'
'I'm very pleased to hear it. Do you know the expression "stir crazy"?'
'No – but I can guess what it means.'
Poole had so adapted to the low gravity that the long strides he was taking seemed perfectly normal. Half a gee, he had estimated – just right to give a sense of well-being. They met only a few people on their walk, all of them strangers, but every one gave a smile of recognition. By now, Poole told himself with a trace of smugness, I must be one of the best-known celebrities in this world. That should be a great help – when I decide what to do with the rest of my life. At least another century, if I can believe Anderson.
The corridor along which they were walking was completely featureless apart from occasional numbered doors, each bearing one of the universal recog panels. Poole had followed Indra for perhaps two hundred metres when he came to a sudden halt, shocked because he had not realized something so blindingly obvious.