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know what that meant, then.

Chapter 4
    A year had passed.
    The Hall of Technicians was crowded and still; the ranks of white coats blinding beneath massed neon lights. Three thousand Techs ran Britain and half were here tonight. But, crowded as they were, each left a three-inch gap between him and his neighbour; each was a man apart. They weren’t a group, like Ests, but a collection of individuals, held together by brains and envy. Strange how many wore spectacles, which flashed and winked across the hall, hiding eyes that roamed continuously, seeking faults; an incipient flicker in a neon tube, a smudge on a white wall, an error in button-etiquette by their neighbour.
    Button-etiquette… we trainees still wore the short white coats. Tomorrow, our thighs would vanish under the long white coats of graduation. But not all long white coats were worn the same. Techs 2p left one top button undone. Those above 3a left two. Fives left their coats completely open, displaying spotless white smocks and trousers underneath. A mistake in button-etiquette was the worst fault of all…
    Headtech brought his clipboard from his deep pocket with a smoothness none could fault. Wonderful things, Tech clipboards, carrying the flat buttons that keyed you in to a distant computer, the winking lights of personal communicators. Made of light alloy armour plate that could deflect any bullet or blaster, at point-blank range. One edge was honed razor-sharp (under a rubber guard) for personal defence; thrown with a quick flick of the wrist, they could kill.
    How many years had Headtech practiced that smooth gesture? And he didn’t “um” and “er” like an Est. His pronouncements flowed from his lips smoothly and continuously, in that high-pitched, slightly whining tone that gives a listening computer least difficulty: computerspeak. Was it just coincidence that computerspeak, which we’d learned with such throat-wrenching difficulty, was also a complaining, niggling, nit-picking noise that gave any normal human being a pain in the arse?
    “Here is the pass list, in order of merit.” Headtech ran his eyes along our faces, savouring our hope, envy, lust, despair, like a gardener sniffs a rose.
    “First… Kitson, Henry.”
    Every eye swung. Fellow trainees looked daggers. Senior Techs calculated: I was the new threat. I didn’t give a damn for any of them. I was first; nobody could ever take that away. All those endless hours studying systems; even the primitive robo plough still used in Africa. All those worn-out languages that Noah fed into the Ark’s computer: COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL. Endless so-called recreational games of four-dimensional chess, friendly as a razor fight in a back alley. Atomic fusion, neutron spectroscopy…
    It had all been worthwhile; I was first.
    But Headtech’s voice whined on, delicately separating each new Tech from the classmates he’d beaten; the ones who’d beaten him. We’d never forget that order of merit, if we lived to be a hundred.
    He finished. No human buzz of conversation. They were waiting for the big event. My heart was in my mouth: I could still miss the big prize.
    “Comtech awards the degree of ‘Summa Cum Laude’ to Kitson, Henry, for his theses on the molecular motion of water at boiling point and the life cycle of the Indian tea plant. Wheel in the tea trolley.”
    Here you might have heard, with the sharpness of Techs’ ears, the indrawn hiss of mass envy.
    “Kitson, Henry, step forward.”
    I took two steps forward, careful to touch nobody. This placed me exactly a yard from Headtech. My down-flicking eyes picked up the trolley, moving in soundlessly from the left. White, spotless, carrying ancient things. A chipped but shining teapot. An antique electric kettle, absurdly dangling a black cable, because it had no power cell of its own. Once it had been chrome, but years of polishing had stripped it to bare copper.
    “Kitson, Henry, will make the tea.”
    Again, that indrawn breath