Chapter Twenty-Nine
With the help of the Chief of Police, Barrent put a message aboard thenext ship to leave for Omega. The message told about conditions on Earthand urged immediate action. When that was finished, Barrent was readyfor his final job--to find the judge who had sentenced him for a crimehe hadn't committed, and the lying informer who had turned him in to thejudge. When he found those two, Barrent knew he would regain the missingportions of his memory.
He took the night expressway to Youngerstun. His suspicions, sharplykeyed from life on Omega, would not let him rest. There had to be acatch to all this splendid simplicity. Perhaps he would find it inYoungerstun.
By early morning he was there. Superficially, the neat rows of houseslooked the same as in any other town. But for Barrent they weredifferent, and achingly familiar. He _remembered_ this town, and themonotonous houses had individuality and meaning for him. He had beenborn and raised in this town.
There was Grothmeir's store, and across the street was the home ofHavening, the local interior decorating champion. Here was BillyHavelock's house. Billy had been his best friend. They had planned onbeing starmen together, and had remained good friends afterschool--until Barrent had been sentenced to Omega.
Here was Andrew Therkaler's house. And down the block was the school hehad attended. He could remember the classes. He could remember how,every day, they had gone through the door that led to the closed class.But he still could not remember what he had learned there.
Right here, near two huge elms, the murder had taken place. Barrentwalked to the spot and remembered how it had happened. He had been onhis way home. From somewhere down the street he had heard a scream. Hehad turned, and a man--Illiardi--had run down the street and thrownsomething at him. Barrent had caught it instinctively and found himselfholding an illegal handgun. A few steps further, he had looked into thetwisted dead face of Andrew Therkaler.
And what had happened next? Confusion. Panic. A sensation of someonewatching as he stood, weapon in hand, over the corpse. There, at the endof the street, was the refuge to which he had gone.
He walked up to it, and recognized it as a robot-confessional booth.
Barrent entered the booth. It was small, and there was a faint odor ofincense in the air. The room contained a single chair. Facing it was acomplex, brilliantly lighted panel.
"Good morning, Will," the panel said to him.
Barrent had a sudden sense of helplessness when he heard that softmechanical voice. He remembered it now. The passionless voice knew all,understood all, and forgave nothing. That artfully manufactured voicehad spoken to him, had listened, and then had judged. In his dream, hehad personified the robot-confessor into the figure of a human judge.
"You remember me?" Barrent asked.
"Of course," said the robot-confessor. "You were one of my parishionersbefore you went to Omega."
"You sent me there."
"For the crime of murder."
"But I didn't commit the crime!" Barrent said. "I didn't do it, and youmust have known it!"
"Of course I knew it," the robot-confessor said. "But my powers andduties are strictly defined. I sentence according to evidence, notintuition. By law, the robot-confessors must weigh only the concreteevidence which is put before them. They must, when in doubt, sentence.In fact, the mere presence of a man before me charged with murder mustbe taken as a strong presumption of his guilt."
"Was there evidence against me?"
"Yes."
"Who gave it?"
"I cannot reveal his name."
"You must!" Barrent said. "Times are changing on Earth. The prisonersare coming back. Did you know that?"
"I expected it," the robot-confessor said.
"I must have the informer's name," Barrent said. He took the needlebeamout of his pocket and advanced toward the panel.
"A machine cannot be coerced," the robot-confessor told him.
"Give me the name!" Barrent shouted.
"I should not, for your own good. The danger would be too great. Believeme, Will...."
"The name!"
"Very well. You will find the informer at Thirty-five Maple Street. ButI earnestly advise you not to go there. You will be killed. You simplydo not know--"
Barrent pressed the trigger, and the narrow beam scythed through thepanel. Lights flashed and faded as he cut through the intricate wiring.At last all the lights were dead, and a faint gray smoke came from thepanel.
Barrent left the booth. He put the needlebeam back in his pocket andwalked to Maple Street.
* * * * *
He had been here before. He knew this street, set upon a hill, risingsteeply between oak and maple trees. Those lampposts were old friends,that crack in the pavement was an ancient landmark. Here were thehouses, heavy with familiarity. They seemed to lean expectantly towardhim, like spectators waiting for the final act of an almost forgottendrama.
He stood in front of 35 Maple Street. The silence which surrounded thatplain white-shuttered house struck him as ominous. He took theneedlebeam out of his pocket, looking for a reassurance he knew he couldnot find. Then he walked up the neat flagstones and tried the frontdoor. It opened. He stepped inside.
He made out the dim shades of lamps and furniture, the dull gleam of apainting on the wall, a piece of statuary on an ebony pedestal.Needlebeam in hand, he stepped into the next room.
And came face to face with the informer.
Staring at the informer's face, Barrent remembered. In an overpoweringflood of memory he saw himself, a little boy, entering the closedclassroom. He heard again the soothing hum of machinery, watched thepretty lights blink and flash, heard the insinuating machine voicewhisper in his ear. At first, the voice filled him with horror; what itsuggested was unthinkable. Then, slowly, he became accustomed to it, andaccustomed to all the strange things that happened in the closedclassroom.
He _learned_. The machines taught on deep, unconscious levels. Themachines intertwined their lessons with the basic drives, weaving apattern of learned behavior with the life instinct. They taught, thenblocked off conscious knowledge of the lessons, sealed it--and fused it.
What had he been taught? _For the social good, you must be your ownpoliceman and witness. You must assume responsibility for any crimewhich might conceivably be yours._
The face of the informer stared impassively at him. It was Barrent's ownface, reflected back from a mirror on the wall.
He had informed on himself. Standing with the gun in his hand that day,looking down at the murdered man, learned unconscious processes hadtaken over. The presumption of guilt had been too great for him toresist, the similarity to guilt had turned into guilt itself. He hadwalked to the robot-confessor's booth, and there he had given completeand damning evidence against himself, had indicted himself on the basisof probability.
The robot-confessor had passed the obligatory sentence and Barrent hadleft the booth. Well-trained in the lessons of the classroom, he hadtaken himself into custody, had gone to the nearest thought-controlcenter in Trenton. Already a partial amnesia had taken place, keyed toand triggered by the lessons of the closed classroom.
The skilled android technicians in the thought-control center hadlabored hard to complete this amnesia, to obliterate any remnants ofmemory. As a standard safeguard against any possible recovering of hismemory, they had implanted a logical construct of his crime beneath theconscious level. As the regulations required, this construct containedan implication of the far-reaching power of Earth.
When the job was completed, an automatized Barrent had marched out ofthe center, taken a special expressway to the prison ship depot, boardedthe prison ship, entered his cell, and closed the door and left Earthbehind him. Then he had slept until the checkpoint had been passed,after which the newly arrived guards awakened the prisoners fordisembarkation on Omega....
Now, staring at his own face in the mirror, the last of the consciouslessons of the classroom became conscious:
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_The lessons of the closed classroom must never be consciously known bythe individual. If they become conscious the human organism must performan immediate act of self-destruction._
Now he saw why his conquest of Earth had been so easy; it was because hehad conquered nothing. Earth needed no security forces, for thepoliceman and the executioner were implanted in every man's mind.Beneath the surface of Earth's mild and pleasant culture was aself-perpetuating robot civilization. An awareness of that civilizationwas punishable by death.
And here, at this moment, the real struggle for Earth began.
Learned behavior patterns intertwined with basic life drives forcedBarrent to raise the needlebeam, to point it toward his head. This waswhat the robot-confessor had tried to warn him about, and what themutant girl had skrenned. The younger Barrent, conditioned to absoluteand mindless conformity, had to kill himself.
The older Barrent who had spent time on Omega fought that blind urge. Aschizophrenic Barrent fought himself. The two parts of him battled forpossession of the weapon, for control of the body, for ownership of themind.
The needlebeam's movement stopped inches from his head. The muzzlewavered. Then slowly, the new Omegan Barrent, Barrent-2, forced theweapon away.
His victory was short-lived. For now the lessons of the closed classroomtook over, forcing Barrent-2 into a contrasurvival struggle with theimplacable and death-desiring Barrent-1.
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