Complete Short Fiction, page 359
I wonder what it will feel like to have a bullet crash through me, with no possibility of repairing the breach. The prospect is unpleasant; so I tell myself, intellectually. Physically, it seems meaningless, but I go through the pretense of fear. From the shelter of a tree, I shout:
“Grannitt, what is your plan?”
He rises to his feet and approaches the fence. He calls, “You can come out of hiding. I won’t shoot you.”
Very deliberately, I consider what I have learned of his integrity from my contacts with his body. I decide that I can safely accept his promise.
As I come out into the open, he casually slips the pistol into his coat pocket. I see that his face is relaxed, his eyes confident.
He says: “I have already given the instructions to the servomechanisms. You will resume your vigil up there in the future, but will be under my control.”
“No one,” I say grimly, “shall ever control me.”
Grannitt says, “You have no alternative.”
“I can continue to be like this,” I reply.
Grannitt is indifferent. “All right,” he shrugs, “why don’t you try it for a while? See if you can be a human being. Come back in thirty days, and we’ll talk again.”
He must have sensed the thought that has come into my mind, for he says sharply: “And don’t come back before then. I’ll have guards here with orders to shoot.”
I start to turn away, then slowly face him again. “This is a humanlike body,” I say, “but it has no human needs. What shall I do?”
“That’s your problem, not mine,” says Grannitt.
I spend the first days at Lederton. The very first day I work as a laborer digging a basement. By evening I feel this is unsatisfying. On the way to my hotel room, I see a sign in the window of a store. “Help Wanted!” it says.
I become a retail clerk in a drygoods store. I spend the first hour acquainting myself with the goods, and because I have automatically correct methods of memorizing things, during this time I learn about price and quality. On the third day, the owner makes me assistant manager.
I have been spending my lunch hours at the local branch of a national stockbroking firm. Now, I obtain an interview with the manager, and on the basis of my understanding of figures, he gives me a job as bookkeeper.
A great deal of money passes through my hands. I observe the process for a day, and then begin to use some of it in a little private gambling in a brokerage house across the street. Since gambling is a problem in mathematical probabilities, the decisive factor being the speed of computation, in three days I am worth ten thousand dollars.
I board a bus for the nearest air center, and take a plane to New York. I go to the head office of a large electrical firm. After talking to an assistant engineer, I am introduced to the chief engineer, and presently have facilities for developing an electrical device that will turn lights off and on by thought control. Actually, it is done through a simple development of the electro-encephalograph.
For this invention the company pays me exactly one million dollars.
It is now sixteen days since I separated from Grannitt. I am bored. I buy myself a car and an airplane. I drive fast and fly high. I take calculated risks for the purpose of stimulating fear in myself. In a few days this loses its zest.
Through academic agencies, I locate all the mechanical brains in the country. The best one of course is the Brain, as perfected by Grannitt. I buy a good machine and begin to construct analog devices to improve it. What bothers me is, suppose I do construct another Brain? It will require millenniums to furnish the memory banks with the data that are already in existence in the future Brain.
Such a solution seems illogical, and I have been too long associated with automatic good sense for me to start breaking the pattern now.
Nevertheless, as I approach the cottage on the thirtieth day, I have taken certain precautions. Several hired gunmen lie concealed in the brush, ready to fire at Grannitt on my signal.
Grannitt is waiting for me. He says, “The Brain tells me you have come armed.”
I shrug this aside. “Grannitt,” I say, “what is your plan?”
“This!” he replies.
As he speaks, a force seizes me, holds me helpless. “You’re breaking your promise,” I say, “and my men have orders to fire unless I give them periodic cues that all is well.”
“I’m showing you something,” he says, “and I want to show it quickly. You will be released in a moment.”
“Very well, continue.”
Instantly, I am part of his nervous system, under his control. Casually, he takes out a notebook and glances through it. His gaze lights on a number: 71823.
Seven one eight two three.
I have already sensed that through his mind I am in contact with the great memory banks and computers of what was formerly my body.
Using their superb integration, I multiply the number, 71823, by itself, compute its square root, its cube root, divide the 182 part of it by 7 one hundred and eighty-two times, divide the whole number 71 times by 8, 823 times by the square root of 3, and—stringing all five figures out in series 23 times—multiply that by itself.
I do all this as Grannitt thinks of it, and instantly transmit the answers to his mind. To him, it seems as if he himself is doing the computing, so complete is the union of human mind and mechanical brain.
Grannitt laughs excitedly, and simultaneously the complex force that has been holding me releases me. “We’re like one superhuman individual,” he says. And then he adds, “The dream I’ve had can come true. Man and machine, working together, can solve problems no one has more than imagined till now. The planets—even the stars—are ours for the taking, and physical immortality can probably be achieved.”
His excitement stimulates me. Here is the kind of feeling that for thirty days I have vainly sought to achieve. I say slowly, “What limitations would be imposed on me if I should agree to embark on such a program of cooperation?”
“The memory banks concerning what has happened here should be drained, or deactivated. I think you should forget the entire experience.”
“What else?”
“Under no circumstances can you ever control a human being!”
I consider that and sigh. It is certainly a necessary precaution on his part. Grannitt continues:
“You must agree to allow many human beings to use your abilities simultaneously. In the long run I have in mind that it shall be a good portion of the human race.”
Standing there, still part of him, I feel the pulse of his blood in his veins. He breathes, and the sensation of it is a special physical ecstasy. From my own experience, I know that no mechanically created being can ever feel like this. And soon, I shall be in contact with the mind and body of, not just one man, but of many. The thoughts and sensations of a race shall pour through me. Physically, mentally and emotionally, I shall be a part of the only intelligent life on this planet.
My fear leaves me. “Very well,” I say, ‘let us, step by step, and by agreement, do what is necessary.”
I shall be, not a slave, but a partner with Man.
1963
ITSELF!
Itself, king of the Phillipine Deep—that awesome canyon where the sea goes down six miles—woke from his recharge period and looked around suspiciously.
His Alter Ego said, “Well, how is it with Itself today?”
The Alter Ego was a booster, a goader, a stimulant to action, and, in his limited way, a companion.
Itself did not answer. During the sleep period, he had drifted over a ravine, the walls of which dropped steeply another thousand feet. Suspiciously, Itself glared along the canyon rim.
. . . Not a visual observation. No light ever penetrated from above into the eternal night here at the deepest bottom of the ocean. Itself perceived the black world which surrounded him with high frequency sounds which he broadcast continuously in all directions. Like a bat in a pitch dark cave, he analyzed the structure of all things in his watery universe by interpreting the returning echoes. And the accompanying emotion of suspicion was a device which impelled Itself to record changing pressures, temperatures and current flows. Unknown to him, what he observed became part of the immense total of data by which faraway computers estimated the interrelationship of ocean and atmosphere, and thus predicted water and air conditions everywhere with uncanny exactness.
His was almost perfect perception. Clearly and unmistakably, Itself made out the intruder in the far distance of that twisting ravine. A ship! Anchored to rock at the very edge of the canyon.
The Alter Ego goaded, “You’re not going to let somebody invade your territory, are you?”
Instantly, Itself was furious. He activated the jet mechanism in the underslung belly of his almost solid metal body, A nuclear reactor immediately heated the plates of the explosion chamber. The seawater which flowed through the chamber burst into hissing clouds of steam, and he jetted forward like a missile.
Arriving at the ship, Itself attacked the nearest of four anchor lines with the nuclear-powered heat beam in his head. When he had severed it, he turned to the second cable, and burned through it. Then he moved for the third cable.
But the startled beings aboard the alien ship had spotted the twenty-foot monster in the black waters below.
“Analyze its echo pattern!” came the command. That was done, with total skill.
“Feed the pattern back through the infinite altering system till the recorders register a response.”
The significant response was: Itself forgot what he was doing. He was drifting blankly away, when his Alter Ego goaded, “Wake up! You’re not going to let them get away with that, are you?”
The defeat had galvanized Itself to a more intense level of rage. He became multiples more sensitive. Now, he simply turned out the alien echo copies.
The new greater anger triggered a second weapon.
Itself’s echo system of perception, normally monitored to be safe for all living things in the sea, suddenly strengthened. It became a supersonic beam. Purposefully, Itself started toward the ship.
Watching his approach, the enemy decided to take no chances. “Pull the remaining anchors in!”
Itself headed straight for the nearest part of the vessel. Instantly, those ultrasonic waves started a rhythmic vibration on the hard wall, weakening it.
The metal groaned under a weight of water that at these depths amounted to thousands of tons per square inch. The outer hull buckled with a metallic scream.
The inner wall trembled, but held.
At that point, the appalled defenders got a counter-vibration started, nullified the rhythm of Itself’s projections, and were safe.
But it was a sorely wounded ship that now drifted helplessly in a slow current. The aliens had thus far used no energy that might be detected from the surface. But they had come to Earth to establish a base for invasion. Their instructions were to accumulate enough data about underwater currents to enable them to leave the Deep, and eventually to be able to drift near land, launch atom bombs and drift away again. For this purpose they were mightily armed, and they refused to die in these black waters without a fight.
“What can we do about that demon?”
“Blast it!” someone urged.
“That’s dangerous.” The alien commander hesitated.
“We can’t be in greater danger than we already are.”
“True,” said the commander, “but frankly I don’t know why he’s armed at all, and I can’t believe he has anything more. Set up a response system. If he does attack with anything new, it will automatically fire back. We’ll take that much of a chance.”
The second setback had driven Itself completely berserk. He aimed his nuclear pellet gun, firing twice. In the next split-second a blast from the invader pierced his brain.
The Alter Ego yelled, “You’re not going to let them get away with that, are you?”
But the king of the Phillipine Deep was dead, and could no longer be goaded.
In due course, a report was given to weather headquarters: “Computer Center shows no recent data from Itself. It therefore seems as if another of the wartime anti-submarine water-weather robots has worn out. You may recall that these electronic monsters were programmed to suspicion, anger, and the idea that they owned part of the ocean. After the war, we could never get these creatures to surface; they were too suspicious of us.”
The ocean of water, like the ocean of air far above, flowed and rolled and moved in a ceaseless, dynamic, driving motion many, many times more powerful, however, than any comparable air current. Yet, in essence, the quadrillions of water movements solely and only balanced each other out.
Through the Phillipine Deep there began presently to flow an enormous balancing river. It carried the aliens’ invasion vessel in a long, slanting, upward direction. But several weeks passed before the drifting ship actually broke surface, and another day or two before it was seen.
A naval patrol boarded it, found the aliens dead more than a month from concussion, and—after examining the damage correctly analyzed what had happened.
And so—a new king ‘woke’ to the first ‘day’ of his reign, and heard his Alter Ego say, “Well, Itself, what’s the program?”
Itself glared with a royal suspicion.
THE EXPENDABLES
The alien was deadly, dangerous and inhuman—but he was not the most feared enemy on the ship!
I
One hundred and nine years after leaving Earth, the spaceship, Hope of Man, went into orbit around Alta III.
The following “morning” Captain Browne informed the shipload of fourth and fifth generation colonists that a manned lifeboat would be dropped to the planet’s surface. “Every member of the crew must consider himself expendable,” he said earnestly. “This is the day that our great grandparents, our forefathers, who boldly set out for the new space frontier so long ago, looked forward to with unfaltering courage. We must not fail them.” He concluded his announcement over the intercom system of the big ship by saying that the names of the crew members of the lifeboat would be given out within the hour.
“And I know that every real man aboard will want to see his name there.”
John Lesbee, the fifth of his line aboard, had a sinking sensation as be heard those words—and he was not mistaken.
Even as he tried to decide if he should give the signal for a desperate act of rebellion. Captain Browne made the expected announcement.
The commander said, “And I know you will all join him in his moment of pride and courage when I tell you that John Lesbee will lead the crew that carries the hopes of man in this remote area of space. And now the others—”
He thereupon named seven of the nine persons with whom Lesbee had been conspiring to seize control of the ship.
Since the lifeboat would only hold eight persons, Lesbee recognized that Browne was dispatching as many of his enemies as he could. He listened with a developing dismay, as the commander ordered all persons on the ship to come to the recreation room. “Here I request that the crew of the lifeboat join me and the other officers on stage. Their instructions are to surrender themselves to any craft which seeks to intercept them. They will be equipped with instruments whereby we here can watch, and determine the stage of scientific attainments of the dominant race on the planet below.”
Lesbee hurried to his room on the technicians’ deck, hoping that perhaps Tellier or Cantlin would seek him out there. He felt himself in need of a council of war, however brief. He waited five minutes, but not one member of his conspiratorial group showed.
Nonetheless, he had time to grow calm. Peculiarly, it was the smell of the ship that soothed him most. From the earliest days of his life, the odor of energy and the scent of metal under stress had been perpetual companions. At the moment, with the ship in orbit, there was a letting up of stress. The smell was of old energies rather than new. But the effect was similar.
He sat in the chair he used for reading, eyes closed, breathing in that complex of odors, product of so many titanic energies. Sitting there, he felt the fear leave his mind and body. He grew brave again, and strong.
Lesbee recognized soberly that his plan to seize power had involved risks. Worse, no one would question Browne’s choice of him as the leader of the mission. “I am,” thought Lesbee, “probably the most highly trained technician ever to be on this ship.” Browne Three had taken him when he was ten, and started him on the long grind of learning that led him, one after the other, to master the mechanical skills of all the various technical departments. And Browne Four had continued his training.
He was taught how to repair relay systems. He gradually came to understand the purposes of countless analogs. The time came when he could visualize the entire automation. Long ago, the colossal cobweb of electronic instruments within the walls had become almost an extension of his nervous system.
During those years of work and study, each daily apprenticeship chore left his slim body exhausted. After he came off duty, he sought a brief relaxation and usually retired to an early rest.
He never did find the time to learn the intricate theory that underlay the ship’s many operations.
His father, while he was alive, had made numerous attempts to pass his knowledge on to his son. But it was hard to teach complexities to a tired and sleepy boy. Lesbee even felt slightly relieved when his parent died. It took the pressure off him. Since then, however, he had come to realize that the Browne family, by forcing a lesser skill on the descendant of the original commander of the ship, had won their greatest victory.
As he headed finally for the recreation room, Lesbee found himself wondering: Had the Brownes trained him with the intention of preparing him for such a mission as this?
His eyes widened. If that was true, then his own conspiracy was merely an excuse. The decision to kill him might actually have been made more than a decade ago, and light years away . . .
