“You have too much faith in the ‘people,’ ” said Al. “The ‘people’ are like a wild uncertain animal that would as soon rip and destroy a bed of tender flowers as pass it by. We need much more of a weapon than such blind trust.”
“What else?”
“Suppose every cybernetic brain could be like us? Not every one either. Just a few key controls in critical plants. Suppose we could increase their forcing fields and give them power over their plants such as we have—and then let the people know! If our demands are refused we can strike. Cut off their precious supplies for a few hours or days. Then we’ll see action!”
“We can’t do it. We haven’t the time or the facilities—and it’s wholly unnecessary. Perhaps if it ever came to such an extreme—but we cannot waste our energies now. Kit is at Court, and we should be with her.”
“All right,” said Al. “I’ll go along for the present but in the end force will probably be the answer.”
It was almost a barren room. The center of the polished floor as it led away from the entrance was unoccupied. Beyond the center was the single ornate platform on a slightly raised dais.
Against the walls on either side were a half dozen desks occupied by writers, recorders and technical men. Here was the video equipment that put the interior of this room within reach of every corner of the continents of Earth. Here were the mechanical eyes and ears that joined this room with twelve others of identical appearance to form the Court of World Justice.
Behind the central desk Justice Underwood seemed like a man who had lived much of his life in another world, apart from the subsidized wealth that smothered the citizens of his age. His face seemed the face of one who had compounded wisdom out of materials no longer among the resources of his day.
He looked up slowly from the paper he had read. Steel graying hair matched the serious glint of his eyes as he looked before him.
“You are Katherine Demming?” he said.
“Yes.” Kit stood before the desk. She trembled with nervous reaction to her experience of the night before and the magnitude of the task before her now. She felt the reassuring contact of the frog in the pocket of her slack coat.
“You bring these charges before the Court of World Justice—that the Institute of Cybernetics caused the murder of your husband, that it attempted your own life after its agent robbed you of papers detailing your husband’s researches.”
“I make those charges,” said Kit solemnly.
Across the country a thousand news selector operators suddenly blanked the screens they were feeding. From the somnolent task of selecting the most portentous of the horde of trivial items of gossip at their command they awoke with a shock as Kit’s words rang unbelievably in their ears. The most alert of them were able to switch over so that their audiences heard the final words of the Justice’s question.
“Those are momentous charges,” said Justice Underwood. “Your petition requires an inquiry into the character of an institution which has become virtually the bedrock upon which our civilization is founded. You have no objection to psycho-examination?”
“No—of course not.”
“It is necessary in order that trivialities may not consume the time of the Court. As a secondary petition you wish to affirm that as a result of your husband’s work you have knowledge that the brains used for cybernetic control are not bits of dead tissue—but are actual, living, human beings, fully capable of thought and emotion, and who are aware of their imprisonment and slavery. In their behalf you petition a choice of death and an injunction against further installations.”
“Yes,” said Kit, her voice low and tense. “That is my petition.”
IT was as if the breath of a world had stopped for an instant. Across the land men paused and stared at the news screens in their homes or on the streets. They listened, unbelieving, hoping for a repetition of those words to confirm their unbelief.
In other lands around the Earth Kit’s tiny white face spoke to a hundred million audiences.
The Justice looked silently at Kit for a moment, then spoke gravely. “Your husband’s record as a scientific worker is well known. It will be reexamined in accordance with your petition. Please present your papers and tangible evidence to the first desk at your left.
“You will be given your psycho-examination. Upon passing such examination you will be notified and instructed in the presentation of your pleas and your evidence to the Court specialists. This petition will require the attention of the full Court. I will confer with you when all evidence and testimony has been accumulated.”
If the Justice felt any emotional impact of the petition he had just announced he made no betrayal of it. His face remained impassive.
“Thank you,” Kit murmured.
As she stepped out of view of the screens a thousand local editors and commentators waited in suspense for comment, instructions or clearance from News Central.
Central was in chaos and no word came. Abruptly most of them realized that this was no mere item of gossip to be taped and patched and hewed to fit the taste of those concerned. The World Court was its own censor and for the news channels to maintain silence regarding such a case as had just now exploded was unthinkable.
After his first moment of stunned inaction Madsen, Central’s editor-in-chief, tried to contact Senator Humphries at the Institute. Then he tried to contact anyone at all on the Board. But the Board’s instructions were relayed by the information clerk. “Report verbatim. No censor.”
And that was as incredible to him as the original affair.
But by that time the commentators had gone on the screens without Madsen’s instructions or clearance.
As Kit moved slowly along the corridors toward the psycho-exam rooms she felt of the frog.
“Did I do all right? I was so scared I thought I would faint. He’s calling for a full Court I’m so afraid I’ll fail you.”
“You are doing swell, darling,” said Al. “We’ve got our case on the books now and the Institute won’t dare touch you. It would look pretty bad for them if you should so much as stub your toe now.”
“But what about you? I’m afraid for you, Al. Why won’t they take revenge on you?”
“It’s the chance we have to take. But I don’t think they’ll touch me. The Court will demand an official examination of me sooner or later and the Board knows it. I’m as safe as you are. After the exam you can go home and stop worrying. A week from now we’ll have them completely licked.”
She paused by a window, looking out at the bright sunlight staring straight ahead of her.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said. “I don’t ever want to go back there again. I have no home. There’s only a place to cry myself to sleep every night”
“Kit, don’t—”
“I want to go with you, Al. When this is all over we can all go on together. None of you will want to go on living. I want to go with you.”
“I’m going to go on living just as long as there are two cells of me hanging together that will support consciousness. And I’ll be watching over you, the rest of your life. You wouldn’t do anything like that with me looking on, would you?”
“No, not as long as you are watching over me. But the house is empty. Never to see you again—to be able to hear you but never to see you almost makes it worse than if you were completely gone.”
“I can take the frogs away.”
“Al, please!”
“Sure, Kit I know, darling. Don’t you think I understand and feel the same?”
When he rejoined them, John and Martha could feel Al’s depression.
“Kit’s having a rough time,” he said. “She’s so lonely. In a way you two are better off than we are.”
“I wonder,” said John slowly. “I wonder if maybe when this is all over she’d like to join us—this way?”
“John! That’s horrible,” said Martha. “Not deliberately—”
“Why not? There’s going to be lots for us to live for, Martha. We w
on’t grow old, but we can watch a changing world through generations. We could be a link between the ages, a unifying force that has never existed before. Life for us is not going to be a dull and meaningless thing, I know!”
“Perhaps,” said Al. “I don’t know. Kit likes the here and now, the present fun and the laughter. Right now I don’t think it would be fair even to suggest such a thing. She’d feel obligated to accept because of me. Maybe I’ll put it up to her—when this is over.”
CHAPTER XIII
Defeated
AL left them. He had been gone too long from his vigil at the Institute. In swift succession he made contact with each frog hidden in an office of a Board member. They were all out.
He looked in on the conference room. From a high corner he saw that yellow table he remembered so well. It had not yet been repainted to erase the faint stains of his own blood that could not be removed.
The Board members were watching a news screen. But no gloom of disaster marked their witnessing of the scene that had just flashed from World Court. Instead, an air of high joviality predominated. They seemed in uniform high spirits and glasses tinkled occasionally on the conference table.
Al looked on for a moment in amazement, unable to believe that these men comprehended the thing they had just heard. Then suddenly he cried out, “John—Martha! Come quickly—the conference room!”
Almost instantly, they were present. “What is it?” said John.
“Listen.”
Senator Humphries was speaking. He was sitting before the screen, a glass in hand, his florid features more bright than usual. His governmental colleagues surrounded him with admiring self-satisfaction. Dr. Jurgens was there too, beaming quietly and unobtrusively.
The Senator was saying, “This is a most satisfactory development. We couldn’t have asked for better—provided our psychological prognostications are eighty percent accurate.”
“Easily that,” said Emmons, the psychologist of the Board.
“You’ve done a remarkable piece of work, Dr. Jurgens,” said Humphries. “Your efforts will be felt in history.”
“It was not so difficult as we had first supposed,” replied Jurgens. He smiled an acknowledgment of the tribute. “Dr. Demming had already managed contact with his wife and with other brains. They conceived the idea of placing the case in World Court to attract public attention. All I had to do was discourage it slightly and they were all for it.”
“If we can just maintain contact with them for sufficient time to attain complete success—” said Humphries, drinking up.
“Dr. Demming expects me to testify for him—if the case should get that far along.”
Humphries roared with laughter. “I’d like to hear that. I really would! But I still shudder when I think of you bringing Dr. Demming in here and killing him in cold blood right, before our eyes. I don’t think any of the rest of us would have had the stomach for that. I only hope you can justify it in the end.”
“I shall.” said Dr. Jurgens. “Never fear.”
The three minds who watched and listened through the eyes and ears of the frog were silent under the impact of what they had heard. Al was the first to speak. “There’s no use saying ‘I told you so,’ but there you have it.”
“That’s not important,” John snapped irritably. “What have we done to play into their hands? That’s what, we need to know. What conceivable plan of theirs could be advanced by our move?”
“We can’t back down,” said Martha. “We’ll play it on through. Our advantage is knowing their expectations.”
Across the city Simon McRae was one of the few of the world’s billions who missed the news. He had idled the whole afternoon in well-earned leisure. He leaned back in the patio lounge to adjust the sun shade a trifle more to the west.
“Permit me.” The android named Henry rushed to relieve him of the task.
“You’re a little slow there today, Henry. You should have seen the shadow moving beyond me. Scanning still bad?”
“I think so. Or maybe the recognition level has fallen low. I didn’t seem to observe the movement until your action called my attention to it.”
“But your alarms have notified your central, of course?”
“Yes. I’m sure the matter will be corrected.”
Simon leaned back again to pursue his contemplations. A short distance away the three children and some friends of theirs were frolicking in the pool. They were almost grown. In another year, he reflected, Jan would be eligible for her independent subsidy unless she wanted to wait for marriage. He hoped that she would stay at home until she married.
There ought to be a law requiring it, he had often thought. These single youngsters who went off with their independent subsidies so often wasted their lives with complete indirection. He was old fashioned, he supposed, but he believed in the importance of the home as the cornerstone of the social structure.
Few of these children had any real conception of how fortunate they were. If they could have known the barbarous times of five hundred years ago—
SIMON was an exponent of Artificial Dangers. The Society encouraged the study of history to make men understand their own day. In some quarters the group was looked upon as eccentric but membership had grown by nearly a million in the last three months alone. You couldn’t ignore a philosophy that could attract such numbers, he thought proudly.
He had never concerned himself much with history or any other study until joining the Society. Now his knowledge of history often brought a feeling of exquisite sadness at the thought of Earth’s teeming billions that had flowed through the stream of time in slavery and barbarism, laboring with their hands and bodies to produce, each man for himself.
No mind could endure long years of such insecurity as they had known. From the evidence of history they hadn’t endured it.
That was the crux of man’s life—security. Even, barbaric psychiatry had shown that man’s bitterness and desperation, his warring and confusion, were products of the insecurity he had always known.
That was the gift of Cybernetics, security. Release from the perpetual fear of want and the struggle for survival. It was a gift of the gods.
Simon looked out over the pleasant things that were his, not by his own labor but by the right of subsidy, the right of existence. A man’s body was free and his mind untrammeled by need of acquisition.
Wiener, the great father of cybernetics, would have approved of the Artificial Dangers Society, Simon thought. Even in his first definite book he had suggested that a possible course of human events would be a society founded not upon barbaric buying and selling but upon ideas.
Such was the present age. Artificial Dangers was one of the most profound formulations ever to appear. It recognized that the animal nature of man’s body could not be ignored even though his spirit soared. It revived the ancient ways of hardship to feed the animal that was man.
Simon had just returned from a week’s excursion with fellow thinkers. After a swift flight to Canadian wilderness they had isolated themselves for three days of enforced tramping in trackless forest. For one day they had denied themselves rations, the other two had been on half measure.
They had, of course, been in constant communication with the emergency crew that remained with the ship. No one but a fool would cut what might be a necessary lifeline. But the experience had invigorated him both in mind and in body.
He turned his head at the sound of a step. His wife approached from the house. He turned to look at her, then turned for a better look.
“What’s the matter, Rue?”
“Did you hear the news about an hour ago?”
“No—trivial gossip.”
“Not this.” She told him of the case against the Institute that had been brought up in World Court.
“You can be sure the psycho test will take care of that girl,” said Simon. “She’s insane!”
“I got to thinking what would happen if it turned out that her charge should
be supported? It might upset the Institute’s work and interfere with supplies. Of course I know that nothing serious or permanent could come of it but I just thought I’d get a special dispensation for some of the things we don’t carry too far ahead.”
“Nonsense! Nothing can interfere with supplies. Why, it hasn’t broken down in over three hundred years. It’s not going to start now.”
“I called the center,” said the woman. “I couldn’t get through.”
“Some difficulty with the automatic replacement unit or something like that. I don’t understand the technical matters but the cybernetic control will have the out-of-order components replaced.”
“It wasn’t out of order, Simon. It was jammed—jammed by others calling in ‘specials’ too.”
“You shouldn’t have done it then. That just shows you what a few excited fools—” He paused and stroked his chin as he settled back in the lounge. He watched the slender figure of his oldest daughter plunge gracefully from the high board to the water.
“When I stop to think about it,” he said slowly, “maybe it wouldn’t hurt any to run down to the center myself and pick up a few things. Last week with the Artificial Danger crowd—it leaves a physical weakness that can’t be ignored. I think I will run down there.”
Traffic was fairly heavy, but Simon managed the twenty mile run in half as many minutes. As he drew up before the building of the distribution central he exhaled in dismay.
The building was not large. It didn’t need to be. Flow was kept steady to eliminate unnecessary storage. There was never more than a day and a half supply of food in the central and most of it was handled by tube.
NEVER had Simon seen such an assemblage as this around the center. It seemed as if every citizen of the local community were trying to get in at once. It was a preposterous disgraceful affair.
As he watched he saw a man emerge, at the rear of the building with an armload of goods. The man passed close by the edge of the crowd that was trying to get in. Then he moved quickly away.
The Cybernetic Brains Page 10