Rare Science Fiction

by Ivan Howatd (ed. )

  It was some eight months later, when all the shooting and the speech-making were over and while the new democracy of the world was still trying to find its feet, that Phillip Reynolds sat down at the counter of a coffee shop where he had found his brother Peter. “Do you mind?” he asked.

  Peter looked around at him and looked somewhat surprised, but not very much so. “Hello, Phillip,” Peter said. “This is a public place; it does not matter whether I mind or not.”

  “It does to me,” Phillip answered. “I was hoping we could be friends again. After all, the whole situation is changed; the directorship is gone. Marcus is retired, and no one knows where. His cohorts are dead or vanished. Your own group—that we used to call the Thorndike group—is now important in the new government of freedom. And I…I am an old man now; I have retired.

  “The Computer is being run by Selma and Dirk, Mr. and Mrs. Richards—at least as much as it is run by any individuals. Matilda, which was the tool of Marcus, is now the tool of the New Democracy of the World; and it is just as effective a tool. Without it, your dreams and hopes would have gone for nothing, for the world is too complicated to be run by purely human hands. To make the wise and necessary decisions, far too much data must be integrated. Whether it be under a directorship, or the government of free men, Matilda is the tool to hold off chaos. Don’t you understand?”

  Peter put down his coffee cup and looked at him with deliberation. “You have built a fine Computer, yes; I never said you didn’t. But it takes more than that to make yourself a man.

  “You hated Marcus and the things he did; if you had loved him and thought the things he did were right, then I’d have been puzzled, but I’d have conceded you the right to your opinion. But you didn’t. You knew he was evil, and you just didn’t have the guts to do anything about it; that I cannot forgive.” He slid off the stool and turned to walk out.

  Phillip opened his mouth to call him back. But what would he say? Tell the truth? He didn’t dare; for if the world knew that it was the Computer which had been behind all, then they would never trust it. For Matilda had shown Phillip Reynolds the terrible necessity for Marcus* regime, simply by indicating the devastation and decline which would come unless a world directorship could rule long enough to organize the world. If they knew the power of Matilda, they would destroy her; they would not dare do otherwise.

  And, too, if the truth should become known, then the myth that was Marcus would be destroyed. Marcus was now the shining idol, the man who had, with infinite skill and cleverness, forged the freedom of the world. And it was strange, but that myth was already a potent force— perhaps even the most powerful force—for the goal of a free and stable world. To destroy that image, false though it was, would be to undermine the very thing for which Phillip Reynolds had fought.

  No, he could not speak; he could not say the words, tell the facts, that would make Peter know what he had done. And it was not important that he had done it partially for Peter, to save his brother from the penalty of what would have been an abortive revolution.

  No, his lips were sealed. He and the others would have to live out their lives, satisfied with only their own knowledge of what they had done.

  There was sadness in him as he watched his brother walk out of the coffee house.

  The End