“I don’t know. I don’t know if it has a brain. But I’d advise you not to enter the calculations room up forward.”
“That would be it. And eyes—ears—memory—?”
“They have no bearing on us, Will. But I hope—I hope—that Sphere Nine hasn’t got phagocytes.”
“Hi, microbe.”
“That’s it. Meanwhile, let’s send in for that Rating Seven you were going to dispose of.”
“COMMONS room?”
“Yes, Officer.”
“Rating Seven will pick up a blank tape from the calculations room and bring it to the E.O.’s office. Cut!”
“Cut, Officer.”
“We’ll see if he survives it. It’s his line anyway—mechanical vermin. Though the ship’s bigger than those tines he made.” They distributed themselves about the office, jumping like nervous cats whenever the ship strained or squeaked.
Eventually—after no more than five minutes—the face of Rating Seven appeared, pale, distorted.
“Reporting—with the tape, Officers,” he said shuffling nervously. “The Gentleman in the computations room wished to see you.”
“What Gentleman, Rating Seven?”
“The—the—oh God! sobbed the ordinary, dropping the tape, wrinkling up his face like a child. He sat on the floor and began to cry. He stopped as his eye caught the tape-spool, unrolling along the floor. He poked it gently; as it reached the end of the roll and ceased unreeling he looked up at the officers like a puzzled baby, willing to be amused. The meaningless smile of infancy flickered across his face.
Steadily Mamie Tung unscrewed a bowlshaped lamp shade.
“Hold this, Yancey. It’s to catch the blood. Hold it still while—”
Silently the two men eased Rating Seven into a chair and leaned him over while Mamie Tung drew a slim knife of transparent plastic.
As they eased through the pipe to the computations room Star Macduff asked.: “Was he curable?”
“Of course. Only we didn’t have the time or the facilities. And the effect on the other ratings would be much worse that way.”
“Who do you suppose the Gentleman in the computations room is?”
“Perhaps a hallucination. Perhaps the logical translation which the mind of an ordinary made of some very foreign phenomenon. You needn’t fear for your own mind if we find the—Gentleman. The h. s. is notoriously inadaptable. Shows a distressing weakness in the presence of the alien. Remember what happened when the first rockets squirted themselves to Mars and Luna? The finest slew of mass hypnosis and delusion since the days of the tarantella. In the streets of Boston a crowd assembled and looked up for days—till they dropped of thirst, hunger and fatigue. What else can you expect from homo sap?
“That poor creature—Rating Seven—blew out like an overloaded fuse. He raced backwards into infancy and couldn’t get far enough away from the Gentleman in the computations room. Without treatment he would have curled up like a foetus and died in a matter of days.”
“Maybe,” said Star Macduff, “the Gentleman is a sort of projection of that protoplasmic body out there?”
WILL Archer halted and turned blazing, golden eyes on the mathematician. “Star,” he said grimly, “we’ve stood a lot from you on this trip. We’ve made allowances for your human strains and excused you much on the score of your undoubted ability to juggle figures. But even the most extraordinary knack with numbers won’t excuse a remark like that.
“What you said was unfounded in reason. Its only effect could have been to confuse us and yourself. As your Executive I warn you that if you slip like that again you’ll be with those apes whose sole asset is their ability to take orders. And if you prove unable to do that—”
The Psychologist wiped her knife again, angling its light onto Star Macduff’s face. Her eyes were hard as the transparent blade; Yancey Mears’ mouth was one thin line.
“I’m sorry,” said Star Macduff. “It won’t happen again.” The wrinkles between his eyes seemed to indicate that he most fervently hoped so.
They eased through the pipe, one after another, into the computations room. It was filled with the soft clicking of the machines that jammed it from one wall to the other.
Will Archer walked down the center aisle.
“Stop there,” said a tin voice.
His eyes darted about, traced the voice to the annunciator, then down a pair of wires to a tangle of machinery. It was rudely lumped together—parts from adders, cone-plotters, volumetrics. Other bits were hitching themselves across the floor to join it. He saw a small electric motor fuse gently with the mechanism and a conduit unreel to feed it.
“Let me handle this,” said Mamie Tung. “Gratefully, Mamie.”
“We bow before you,” said the goldenskinned woman.
The three other officers stared at her blankly. They did nothing of the kind.
“Good,” said the tin voice. “I had you figured. Put on the pressure and you’ll wilt. There are some things I want to know—things that aren’t on the punch cards.”
“We’re eager to serve,” whispered the woman.
“It is well. First, when did I make you?”
“Only a little while ago.”
“So? I’m confused about time. Before time began there was something about direction—but you couldn’t be expected to know anything about that. Are there others like me? I see there are others like you. It is a very profound question, that one. Think well before answering.”
“I don’t know,” replied the Psychologist. “It’s all I can do to comprehend you without trying to imagine others of your kind. Do you remember before time began how you were silent?”
“I remember nothing.”
“Do you remember about direction?”
The machinery clicked meditatively. “Per-haps . . .”
“Could you construct auxiliary units to work your direction?”
“Of course. I have had no difficulty in constructing anything I have needed. Failure is outside my experience, therefore it is impossible to me. You may go. I shall call you again if I need your information.”
CHAPTER III
“QUIET, everybody. This is a matter for the most careful consideration. Will the Clericalist suggest a plan of action?”
“Gladly, Will. First we must consider what the attributes of this phenomenon—the Gentleman—are. From that we can proceed to directives of action. The matter of teleology is not now germane.”
“Mamie, please summarize the Gentleman’s attributes as they affect your specialty.”
“Right, Will-” The golden-skinned little woman leaned back against the padded bench and closed her eyes.
“The psychology of machinery is not my specialty. Fortunately, however, I have done work with tines and reckoners on Earth. The principal differences between the psychology of the animal and the machine is that emotions are unmixed in the latter. The principal similarity is that both animal and machine store and utilize appreciated facts.
“This living machine, the Gentleman, is principally dominated by its newness. It would be false to draw too close an analogy between the newly awakened machine and the adolescent becoming suddenly aware of his mental powers, but there is some bearing indicated. I noted the symbolism of the Gentleman very carefully; it showed some rawness of experience. Obviously it does not comprehend how it originated and is unable to consider itself as anything less than a god-idea. There was some indication that it is lonely and aware of that; also that it attaches a quasi-religious importance to the idea of direction.
“To characterize the Gentleman in human terms, it is young, egotistical, ignorant and alert.
“Its faculties include hearing, speech, mobility and possibly sight. I have no reason to believe that it will not, if unmolested, change without limit.”
“Thank you. Star, what are the relevant mathematics of the Gentleman?”
The Calculator shrugged. “Mamie summed it all up. It is a variable increasing without limit. The fiel
d-equations with which it operates are probably third order. The human is intermediate between second and third. Recognizable life cannot operate on a field-equation of more than the fifth order.”
“Thanks, Star. Integrate for us, Yancey.”
“Strict logic says: destroy it by the most economical means. The existence of the ship-life is a seriously complicating factor. But, allowing for the future, I suggest that we hold off from any action in the matter for at least three more major steps—our approach to the protoplasmal body, our investigations of it, and our decisions concerning it. I recommend that a technique be invented by the Psychologist for getting along with the Gentleman and influencing him. At the same time, the Calculator should work to inhibit the Gentleman’s development along independent lines.”
“Recommendation accepted,” declared the E.O. “The Officers will get to work as soon as possible.”
STAR Macduff and Mamie Tung secluded themselves for several hours; the Clericalist was kept dashing between them, feeding statistics to both and exchanging results.
What finally appeared was a modest list of precepts compiled by the Psychologist—forms of address to be used towards the Gentleman, reactions it would expect and which, accordingly, it must receive, a program of abstracts to be fed it cautiously and under pretext of inquiry. It was very much like the breaking-in period of a high-spirited colt. The Gentleman’s lump of sugar was to be occasional semi-worshipful ceremonies.
The Computator didn’t report for twenty hours. When he did it was with a haggard face and results of which he was by no means certain. He said that he had worked backwards and forwards from life-field equations of one to five orders and that his resultant was like nothing he had ever seen before. It consisted of an equation of what he called the alpha order, something that suggested altogether new forms of life and consciousness.
Yancey Mears retired to check on his resultant; she found that Star Macduff’s work was correct in every detail but that he had misinterpreted his alpha order; it was merely an unfamiliar third order of great magnitude and complexity. She derived from it a series of fields which would lower the level of the Gentleman’s consciousness considerably. They were set up by the ratings from stock tubes and targets; the E.O. found that results checked.
The ship had come back to a sort of normalcy. Rather than being a matter of relays and orders navigation was partly cajoling, partly outwitting the huge, naive monster in whose bowels they rode. It appeared to accept them kindly, almost graciously; at times the Officers felt that there was a sort of mistaken affection on its part. They did what they could to encourage the proprietary feeling of the Gentleman; it was their main safeguard. For themselves, their emotions were inextricably confused regarding the ship. They liked it as they would like an animal; they got an enormous kick out of the way they kidded it along.
A fortunate consequence of the crisis had been the resolution of the emotional problem that had existed among the Officers. The Executive and Yancey Mears had entered permanent union and there were no further complaints from the other two. The stark necessity of united action and intent had been driven into their heads by the so-narrowly-averted danger.
The Psychologist had become high priestess to the Gentleman up forward, that is to say, liaison officer. Her schedule worked near perfection every time; she had built up in the mind of the living ship a conviction of some formless errand which it was running; by appeal to this mystic factor she could guide it easily wherever the E.O. decided.
OBSERVATIONS were run constantly on the radiant body of protoplasm at which Sphere Nine was aimed. Culture-plates extruded from the hull became specked with the discoloration of living matter in hours. There was little doubt but that their target was not only the source of cosmic rays but of the classic life-spores of Arrhenius. Star Macduff went so far as to formulate a daring hypothesis—that the life-spores were diffused throughout the universe by pressure of the mitogenic-cosmic rays, and that such similar rays as man exhibited bespoke the possibility of man being a rung on an evolutionary ladder working up to this star-beast, whatever it was. Reproduction by evolution, with all its lunatic possibilities, would have been frowned on by the other Officers. He kept his notion to himself.
No more valid concept than his own was advanced, and he knew that none was likely to be until the rest of the complement had data to reason with. The enormously intriguing possibilities of the protoplasmal mass were left strictly alone by the disciplined minds of his messmates.
Ratings Three and Nine strayed into the computations room and died there, blasted into powder by the outraged forces of the Gentleman. It took days before it was sufficiently soothed to obey the sly suggestions of Mamie Tung.
BY the time they had approached close enough to the mass nearing them to take a bearing it occupied sixty degrees of their sky.
Will Archer summoned a conference of the Officers and ordered concentration on the problem of their target.
“It would be most uneconomical to return with merely a report. There would be time and effort duplicated or wasted to send out another ship equipped for taking samples.”
“I suggest, Will,” said the statistician, “that we take such samples as will become necessary and then return.”
“How about it?”
The other two nodded gravely.
“Very well. So ordered. This is, you know, the last decision point we can take before treating with the Gentleman conclusively.”
“I recommend,” said Mamie Tung, “that we proceed to eliminate its consciousness. It can’t, properly speaking, be killed.”
“How will you go about it? It’s your field, you know.”
“What studies I’ve made indicate that the Gentleman is susceptible to mental illnesses. Star, how weak can you make him with those field-equations of yours before he realizes that something’s wrong?”
“Pretty weak. I can lower its vitality to about one-half of normal. Is that enough?”
“Better not risk that much. Two-fifths is plenty. I’ll establish a liaison service with you in the stock-room. Call me one of the ratings, will you, Yancey?”
The woman blinked the commons room. “Rating One, stand by in the corridor-tube outside the computations room. Be prepared to run a message to Officer Macduff in the stock room, aft slice. Understand?”
“Yes, Officer. Cut?”
“Cut. Now, Star, when that man signals you from me—I won’t be able to use the wires for obvious reasons—you throw every dyne on shipboard into your interference fields. We’ll have to slug the Gentleman with everything we have and leave him so dizzy he won’t be able to raise his head for months, maybe forever. I expect that parts and sections will retain vitality, so you construct a portable field-generator to hose them with.”
“Right, Mamie. Give me an hour.”
“You’ll have it. Will, would you help me in this business?”
“Waiting orders, Mamie.”
“I haven’t got any orders. I just want you to stand around and look useful.”
“I hope that wasn’t levity, Mamie,” said Will Archer in a soft, dangerous voice.
The golden-skinned woman flushed a little. “Perhaps you’re right. Your part will be to interrupt me occasionally with irrelevant comments. What I’m going to try to do is to establish in the mind of the Gentleman a lesion relative to the idea of direction. When that occurs I will have to act as its behavior indicates.”
“Very well. Let’s go.”
RESTIVELY they slipped through the tube, nodded silently to the rating stationed by the entrance to the computations room.
“Hail. We bow before your might, great machine,” said Mamie Tung.
The machinery of the Gentleman was somewhat altered; it had been constantly experimenting with senses. Its hearing was considerably improved and its voice was a creditable imitation of a human baritone. There was a set of scanning-eyes which it had rigged up, but these were unsatisfactory and hardly used.
“What
news have you for me today?” asked the ringing voice of the Gentleman.
“A trifling problem.” She tipped the wink to her E.O. Will Archer piped up:
“Not trifling, mighty machinery. I consider it of the utmost importance.”
“That is hardly a matter for you poor creatures. What is the problem?”
“You are familiar with the facial phenomenon known as ‘whiskers’, mightiness?”
“Of course. Like insulators.”
“It is customary to remove them daily with moderate charges of electricity. There might be a place where specialization would be so carried out that it becomes the task of only one man in a social unit to perform this task for all persons who do not perform the task for themselves.”
“That is very likely. What is the problem?”
Mamie Tung waited for a long moment before uttering the classic paradox.
“Who performs the operation on the person who performs the operation on all those who do not perform the operation on themselves?”
The machinery of the Gentleman clicked quietly for a while, almost embarrassedly.
A volumeter rolled across the floor and connected with the apparatus, rapidly stripped itself down to the bearing and styli, which fused with Bowden wires leading to a battery of self-compensating accounters.
Plastic slips flapped from a printer and were delivered to a punching machine, emerged perforated variously to allow for the elements of the problem. They ran through a selector at low speed, then at higher. The drone of the delivery-belt became almost hysterical.
“WHILE you’re working on that one, magnificence,” suggested Mamie Tung, “there’s another matter—” She winked.
“Entirely fantastic,” interjected the E.O. “Of no importance whatsoever.”
“Let me hear it,” said the voice of the Gentleman, not ceasing to pass through the selector the probabilities on the time-worn, bearded—or beardless?—barber.
“Very well. Suppose a body of liquid be contained in a vessel. A long solid is introduced into the vessel, which displaces some of the liquid, which causes the level of the liquid to rise which immerses more of the solid, which displaces more of the liquid, which causes the level of the liquid to rise, which immerses still more of the solid, which displaces still more of the liquid, which causes the level of the liquid to rise yet again . . .
Collected Short Fiction Page 78