“You had to be the man who tried to shoot me, the one who has probably been threatening me as the Assassin,” I said. “I trust the people who work with me—except the spies—and I know from my own spies that the government isn’t out to kill me, not just now. Who could get in a place as well guarded as this, and find me, and escape? Somebody with an astronomical amount of luck, a fortune-prone like you—the most pronounced specimen of the breed I’ve ever known.”
“That might all be true,” Tan Eck admitted, “but that still doesn’t give you the authority to refuse my application for Warp aid.”
“I think it does. Listen, Doctor, I don’t know whether you know it or not, but your machine—this ‘Producer’, without all the magic-mumbo—is an illegal patent violation of the Probability Warp! That’s what we practice here—magic. At least that’s what it would have been called once. But we can’t use it indiscriminately, not the way you want to. It has to be used sparingly, under strict supervision.”
Tan Eck’s lips were thin and his eyes wide. “Under your supervision, Baron. Yes! 1 knew what 1 had found • • •
“By luck,” I interjected politely.
“…By my unique genius, and I knew what you were doing with it. You see, I entirely agree with you—the world can’t stand magic, not even a little bit when that magic is controlled by one man. Either all must have it or none.”
“Preferably none?”
“Yes, I think it is better if the device—Producer—Probability Warp—is suppressed as completely as poison gas or bacteriological warfare.”
“I’m sure you do,” I told him. “Not because, as a scientist, you can’t stand to see your basic belief in cause and effect violated; not because, as a lover of freedom, you can’t stand to see ‘magical’ powers in the hands of one man; but because if everybody or even one man has this device, he can be luckier than you are. And you’ve been luckier than everybody else all your life. You can’t stand a threat to that—that’s why you want to kill me.”
Tan Eck’s eyes looked much the same as the boy’s had earlier.
I coughed discreetly. “Before you reach for that spy-proofed gun, doctor, I might point out to you that with all your luck, you have never pulled off what might be properly described as a miracle. There are a large number of guns focused directly on you.”
“Believe him, Tan Eck,” Eddie Valesq’s voice intoned.
“I expected that,” he said numbly. “I knew that I would probably get killed murdering you, but there would be a chance, I thought. I’d certainly die, wouldn’t I?”
“You would. Now get up and get out. Don’t try using that invention of yours. If you do, I’ll sue you for something as mundane as patent infringement. With more experience at manipulating probability, and even more money than you, I’m bound tQ win.”
He nodded. “I think you would. I feel somehow my luck’s run out. It might be better to let your men kill me as I try to kill you. But there’s just a chance it wouldn’t.”
Prince came in as Tan Eck shuffled out.
“Your other midnight appointment,” he said.
“Two others, Mr. Prince. Now for the third—linc rejects your application for Warp aid. Conflict of interests.”
“You have no other political party as a client. None of them want to risk being changed by the ethical provisions.”
“But we have a client who doesn’t want an anti-LiNC party to get into power. Ourselves—our public relations department hires us to work for our own interest. I think 1 remembered there was such a thing as self-interest when somebody was trying to kill me.”
“This won’t look good for you in the news,” Prince said narrowly. “I intend to fight you every step of the way, Baron.”
“Fine, Mr. Prince. I am a dangerous man; it’s absolutely essential that there is somebody to fight me every step of the way.”
Prince hesitated, then nodded briefly and left.
Eddie Valesq and Anne entered through a private passage.
“The government man is with the boy. He seems better; he’s conscious; but he’s still blank. They’ll be trouble.” Anne was worried.
“There won’t be any evidence for trouble. I’m having Wilmot send the boy back where he came from.”
“Is there a way back?” Eddie demanded.
“Of course. I’ve known that all along. Wilmot has been too cocky. He’s holding out on me for personal gain. Technological advances come fast in this age—nobody could work on what amounts to refinement of an existing process and not come up with some kind of an answer in twenty years.”
“Then you don’t want any revenge on the boy?” Anne said, almost happily.
I grinned. “I’m getting plenty of revenge. I’m sending him right back to grow up and go through hell.”
“You can’t do that to your own father,” she protested.
“Listen, Frank, we don’t know that anything like a time paradox exists. Why can’t Eddie and I raise him here? I can guarantee Eddie isn’t going to want his girl when he grows up.”
I exhaled. “All right. I have to tell you the rest of it. I tried to shut myself off from the kind of life I went through as a kid, and I succeeded pretty well. But I’ve had to think about it lately. I grew up in a tough neighborhood. My name was the same as my father’s, but could I call myself ’Franklyn Baron the Third.* Not if I didn’t want kids to beat my pants off to see if they had lace on them. I was “Junior Baron’. That kid is me, from the past.”
“We would still like to keep him here, Frank,” Eddie said for the two of them. “Maybe you and he are different. You had to go through all that but maybe he doesn’t.”
“But he does!” I snarled. “Don’t you two idiots see! In some world—probably this one—that kid is going to grow up to be me and run Luck, Inc. He has to go through file same horrible childhood and early life as I did—he has to be the same dictatorial, opinionated, egotistical, power-mad, well-meaning human monster I am. Because if the Probability Warp—Luck, Inc.—magic ever falls under the control of anybody soft enough to be sane, this world is washed up. Take a peep at the alternate universes where that’s happened. This may not be the best of all possible worlds with me in it,’ but believe me when I modestly state that it becomes the worst of all possible worlds with me—this me—out of it.”
They didn’t say anything. But then I could always control them easily.
“Will one of you get me some coffee?” I said. “I think I’d better start work early this morning.”
RIPENESS
by M. C. Pease
Phillip Reynolds sat slumped in a chair in the room that served him both as office and living-room. His eyes were tired and his mouth bitter as he watched the televised scene on the wall before him. The picture was of the trial even then going on in the bleak building not very far away. A man was weeping his penitence at daring to think that Marcus, the Director, was less than ideal. It was a horrible spectacle to Phillip. The man would die, executed as a public enemy. But the worst was the knowledge this gave that drugs and torture could so destroy the man’s self-respect as to make him beg thus publicly for death. And the thing that made Phillip’s soul writhe was the knowledge that he, himself, had been the kingmaker for Marcus.
Director of the World, Marcus was; omnipotent despot over all mankind. And why? Because he, Phillip, had given Marcus the power to bring order where there had been none. “Matilda,” they called her, the tool whose making had been Phillip’s life. Matilda, because, like a maiden aunt, she was obsessed with details, gathering together the stray threads of gossip and hazy information to build herself a picture of the world. A thing of steel and tungsten and rare elements mixed in a crazy network. A maze of incomprehensible detail, through which small pulses of electricity deftly wove their way—each carrying one small unit of trivial information. A computer, gathering in the news of the world; noting the death of Wong How and the birth of John Smith; observing that Jose Riccardo had lost his job, and that Joe Gr
undy had bought a refrigerator. The data to organize a world and to save the world from chaos.
Without Matilda, the Decade of Chaos would have been a Century unless the dissolution of anarchy had stopped it sooner; with it, Marcus had first organized his own home-country, the Western States. Then, using the Computer as a tool of empire, he had mediated the argument between Eastern America and Canada, and ended up with both of them in his control. Then he had moved on, with a skill that was not his own, settling quarrels, offering hope, and becoming director of the world. He had given peace; he had given freedom from starvation and from uncertainty; he had controlled the unknown winds of economic fortune. And if, with it, he had also brought slavery, Marcus, at least, felt this was only right.
For Phillip Reynolds, watching the telecast of the trial, the moral question was not answered: had it been right to give this weapon to Marcus? Reynolds had not wondered what the results would be; he had always known. And yet, it had seemed to him there were no alternatives other than tyranny or anarchy. Without control there could only have been collapse; and for control there had to be a strong man, a director. It was a terrible price to pay for time, but it had seemed to Reynolds that mankind must have time at any price.
And yet, he wondered.
His brother did not think so. Peter Reynolds was quite sure that nothing was worth the price, and he had been most bitter in telling Phillip his opinion. Five years ago, that had been. Phillip still remembered that evening, and his brother’s unyielding contempt. He had tried to explain; he had tried then, and often since—but never had gotten even a flicker of answering understanding. And finally he had stopped. He had given up going to Stilton University where Peter taught. He had stopped trying, but he had not ever stopped wishing things were different between them. And he had not stopped wondering who was right—Phillip or Peter.
The door burst open to shatter his meditations; Selma and Dirk came tumbling in. These two always amused him, even when they irritated him. But Reynolds could see in each of them some part of himself—himself as he had been, thirty years ago when Matilda had been only a dream. It somehow described himself, he thought, that these two were the mirrored images of that almost-forgotten youth, and yet that they could not get along with each other.
He thought of Selma as the mirror of his heart. This was odd; her specialty was philosophy, though her title only called her his special assistant. Philosophy was supposed to be a cold and unemotional subject; but, then, with Selma, it was far from cold and unemotional. She brought an intense and passionate belief to it; to her, the reign of Marcus the Director was a purgatory for mankind, something to be endured for the sake of a world to be built when it was over. Phillip cherished this dream of an ultimate answer.
Dirk, on the other hand, was a semanticist and cyberneticist. More clearly than anyone, even Phillip, he understood the flow of information through the Computer. And scientists, too, are supposed to be cold, but he was not. He loved Matilda, quite literally. And whatever Matilda might make of the world, however she might be used, was irrelevant before the Computer’s perfection.
The two of them, Selma and Dirk, were hardly able to nod to each other without fighting.
“Boss,” Selma spat out, “this is it. I quit; I resign. Not you or all the lousy secret police can make me do another lick of work here.” She bounced into a chair and looked grim.
Phillip raised an eyebrow at her and half grinned. Then he looked at Dirk. “What’s the matter with her?” he asked.
Dirk shrugged. “I don’t know; she’s gone bats. As far as I know there’s nothing new.”
“Look,” Selma cut in, “this is our chance, the best chance in a long time. Only we got to move fast And this fool won’t do it.”
“Do you think it might help if I knew what you were talking about?” Reynolds asked.
The girl looked surprised, then she smiled. “Sorry,” she chuckled. “I guess I’m not making much sense. It’s the Thorndike cell that Matilda picked up six months ago.”
Phillip knew what she was talking about. The Computer handled an enormous amount of quite trivial data, but the pieces often fitted together in very non-trivial ways. In particular, they often added up to conspiracy, the pattern of revolution. To build their revolution, people had to do things; word of what they did was fed into Matilda, and she could then deduce their purpose. The Secret Police did not know this; no one at the Computer had bothered to tell them, and the outward channels were blocked so that the information could be had only on the control boards inside the Computer. But at those boards, each separate group that tried for revolution could be, and was, followed by interested people. The “Thorndike Cell,” named for the first person identified as a part of it, was one such group.
“I don’t want anything to happen to them,” Selma continued. “They’re not like the usual bunch of neurotic troublemakers that make up most cells. These people are decent folk, and they have brains, too. College teachers, professional people. The kind that really can build a new world. They’re not just revolting against, but they’re working for what they believe in. They’re different, and I don’t want to see them squashed.”
“Who’s squashing them?” Phillip asked. “Dirk?”
“No.” She was contemptuous. “It’s the police; according to Matilda, the police are getting suspicious, beginning to track them down.” It would have interested the Secret Police—interested them greatly—to know how much about them Matilda could deduce.
“Oh? And what do you want Dirk to do? Or not do?” Phillip asked.
She leaned forward. “Help them! You can do it. Matilda’s got the power, enormous power. Just juggle the figures a bit. Make other people do things that will throw the police off. I don’t know what; you guys are the experts on Matilda. You tell me. But do something.”
“I keep telling her there’s nothing we can do,” Dirk said in an exasperated voice. “The Computer either works, or she doesn’t; and if she doesn’t, the roof falls in— complete and utter chaos. Sure, I’d like to help them; but I don’t want to upset the world for the sake of a handful of people with ideals.”
“There must be some way,” Selma cried. “The Computer’s too powerful for there not to be a way to use it.”
“No,” Dirk drawled. “The cobalt bomb is powerful, too, but there’s no way you can use it without using all of its power. Sure, we could shut down the Computer. Then Marcus and the entire Directory would be so busy trying to keep the world from collapsing, they’d have no time at all for a little thing like a conspiracy. So we bum down the house to light our cigarette; that’s not what we want.”
.. “I’m afraid Dirk’s right,” Reynolds said, and his voice was sad. “At least, I don’t know of any way to get the Computer to juggle things just a little bit. It’s either all or none; and I don’t think even you want that.” He wished there were something he could do. He felt the guilt that lay upon him for the original decision he had made, to be Marcus’ tool; but Phillip did not know what he could do now.
“Then I quit.” The girl’s lips were thin. “It’s time to stand up or shut up, and I’m not going to sit in here like a mouse and watch the mighty Marcus sit in sated power. I’m going out and get me a job where I can help the revolution; maybe I’ll go to Stilton U. and find the Thorndike group itself.”
Phillip sat up straight with a start. “Stilton University? Is that…? My brother, is he in this?”
Selma gazed at him with wide eyes. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never thought.”
Phillip jumped to his feet, and strode across the room. Pushing back the curtains that hung there, he switched on the lights of the control-board that the curtains had concealed. It was a simple-looking thing. Three small cathode ray screens; a few colored lights; a typewriter without keys and one with keys; and a battery of numbered buttons—that was all. But it was the main control-board of the vast Computer that was Matilda. Reynolds sat down in the chair before it, and turned a switch that
gave it life.
Phillip moved with practiced speed. One hand, on the panel of buttons, punched out a coded sequence. A screen responded, lighting with a symbol to describe its interpretation of that sequence; the machine was ready to receive a query. Another sequence and another symbol. It recognized the authority of the interrogator to ask questions it would not otherwise have answered. A third sequence and the area of questioning was defined. Revolution. A fourth, and it was narrowed to the Thorndike cell. Only then did Reynolds move to the keyed typewriter and type, “Probable present composition and percentage of probable assurance. Query.” The second typewriter, the one without keys, typed the question with him, then spaced to give the answer.
The wait was too short to be noticeable by human observation, but it began to type the answer—before Phillip’s eyes, the list of names grew. But all he saw was the one in second place: “Second in command—Peter Reynolds—93 per cent.” There was shock on his face as he sat there staring at it. His brother, second-in-command! And with an assurance of 93 per cent that this was true!
It was a long moment after the typewriter had stopped that Phillip bent forward again and typed: “Repeat conditions. Probable present plans of revolutionary nature and percentage of probable assurance. Query.” And the second typewriter answered: “Second query. Assassination of Marcus while leaving the Anniversary Celebration. 78 per cent.”
Phillip’s face was dead as he typed again: “Repeat conditions. Further second query. Probability of success. Query.” His face did not move as he read the answer: “Third query. 0.8 per cent.” And still his face was cold as he typed: “Repeat conditions. Probability of arrest of Peter Reynolds within one year from present. Query.” But his eyes blinked as he saw the answer: “Fourth query. 98.6 per cent.”
Once more Phillip moved to ask the machine a question: “Repeat conditions. Further fourth query. Probability of arrest of Peter Reynolds prior to action noted response second query. Query.” He smiled slightly as the other typewriter answered: “Fifth query. 3.4 per cent.” At least his brother was not apt to be arrested before the Celebration.
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