Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol IX

by Various

  "Of course, of course," said Krayton, answering the question. "It's never necessary to use the All circuit. But we could very easily in case of a great emergency."

  "The All circuit? What is that?" Mr. Tanter asked.

  Krayton gestured and led the little man down the long control bank. Their steps made precise clicks on the layaplast floor. The stainless steel walls threw back tinny echoes. The chromium molding glistened, always pointing the way--the straight and mathematical way. They were in the topmost section of the topmost building of Computer City. The several hundred clean, solid, wedding-cake structures of the town could be seen from the polaflex window.

  "The All circuit puts every machine in the city to work on any selection-problem that's fed into our master control here. Each machine will give its answer in its own special terms, but actually they will all work on the same problem. To use a grossly simple example, let us say we wish to know the results of two-and-two, but we wish to know it in terms of total security. That is, we wish to know that two-plus-two means twice as many nourishment units for the Department of Foods, twice as many weapons for the Department of War, but is perhaps not necessarily true according to the current situational adjustment in the Department of Public Information.

  "At any rate, we would set up our problem on the master, pushing the button Two, then the button Plus, and the button Two again as on a primitive adding machine. Then we would merely throw the All switch. A short time later the total answer to our problem would be relayed back from every computer, and the cross-comparison factors canceled out, so that we would have the result in terms of the familiar Verdict Statement. And, as everyone knows, the electronically filed Verdict Statements make the complete record of directives for the behavior of our society."

  "Very interesting," said Mr. Tanter, the little crow-like man. He blinked rapidly, stared at the switch marked All that Krayton was pointing out to him.

  Krayton now folded his hands in front of his official gold-and-black tunic, looked up into the air and rocked gently back and forth on his heels as he talked. He was really talking to himself now although he seemed to address Tanter. "You can see that the Computer System is quite under our control in spite of what these rebellious, underground groups say."

  "Underground groups?" asked Mr. Tanter mildly. Just his left eye seemed to blink this time. And the edge of his mouth gave the veriest twitch.

  "Oh, you know," said Krayton, "the organization that calls itself the Prims. Prim for Primitive. They leave little cards and pamphlets around damning the Computer System. I saw one the other day. It had a big title splashed across it: OUR NEW TYRANT--THE COMPUTER. The article complained that some of the new labor and food regulations were the result of conscious reasoning on the part of The Computer. Devices to build the Computer bigger and bigger and bigger at the expense of ordinary workers. You know the sort of thing."

  "But it is true that the living standard is going down all the time, isn't it?" asked Mr. Tanter, keeping his ephemeral smile. "What about those three thousand starvation deaths up in Hydroburgh?"

  Krayton waved an impatient hand. "There will always be problems like that here and there." He turned and stared almost reverently at the long control rack. "Be thankful we have The Computer to solve them."

  "But the deaths were due to diverting that basic carbon shipment down here to Computer City for computer-building, weren't they?"

  "Now, there--you see how powerful the propaganda of the Prims can be?" Krayton put his hands on his hips. "That statement is not true! It simply isn't true at all! It was analyzed on The Computer some days ago. Here, let me show you." He took several steps down the corridor again and stopped at another panel.

  "We first collected from the various departments--Food, Production, Labor and so forth--all the possible causes of the starvation deaths in Hydroburgh. Computer Administration had its machine translate them into symbols. We're getting a huge new plant and machine addition over at Administration, by the way.

  "At any rate, we simply registered all the possible causes with the Master Computer, threw in this circuit marked Validity Selector. Out of all those causes The Computer picked the one that was most valid. The Hydroburgh tragedy was due to lack of foresight on the part of Hydroburgh's planners. If they'd had a proper stockpile of basic carbon the thing never would have happened."

  "But no community ever stockpiles," said the little man.

  "That," said Krayton, "doesn't alter the fundamental fact. The Computer never lies." He drew himself up stiffly as he said this. Then abruptly he consulted the chronometer on the far wall.

  "Excuse me just a moment, Mr. Tanter," he said. "It's time to feed the daily tax computation from Finance. We have to start a little earlier on that these days--the new taxes, you know."

  As Krayton moved off Tanter's thin smile widened just a little. As soon as Krayton was out of sight he stepped with his odd, crow-like stride to the numerical panel, punched two-plus-two, then adjusted the Operations pointer to HOLD. After that he punched three-plus-one, and HOLD once more.

  He moved over to the Validity Selector, switched the numerical panel in, closed the circuit.

  In his dry voice he murmured to the whole control rack: "Three-plus-one makes four, two-plus-two makes four. Three-plus-one, two-plus-two--tell me which is really true."

  All through the master computer relays clicked and tubes glowed as the problem was sent to all the sub-computers in their own special terms. Food, Production, Labor, Public Information, War, Peace, Education, Science and so forth.

  All over Computer City the solenoids moved their contacts and the filaments turned cherry red. Oscillating circuits hummed silently to themselves in perfect Q. The life warmth of hysteresis pulsed and throbbed along wires and channels. Three-plus-one, two-plus-two--tell me which is really true. The problem criss-crossed in and out, around, about, checking, cross-checking, re-checking as The Computer 'thought' about the problem.

  Which was really true?

  Even before Krayton returned parts of The Computer had begun to get red hot. It hummed in some places and in the other places relays going back and forth in indecision made an unhealthy rattling noise.

  Little Mr. Tanter beamed happily to himself as he recalled the words of an old directive The Computer itself had issued in the matter of public thought control. When a brain is faced with two absolutely equal alternatives complete breakdown invariably results.

  Mr. Tanter kept smiling and rocked back and forth on his feet as Krayton had done. Before nightfall The Computer would be a useless and overheated mass of plastic and metal!

  He took a printed folder from his pocket and casually dropped it on the floor where someone would be sure to find it. It was one of the pamphlets the Prims were always leaving around.

  * * *

  Contents

  THE SUCCESS MACHINE

  By Henry Slesar

  Mechanical brains are all the rage these days, so General Products just had to have one. But the blamed thing almost put them out of business. Why? It had no tact. It insisted upon telling the truth!

  The Personnelovac winked, chittered, chortled, chuckled, and burped a card into the slot. Colihan picked it up and closed his eyes in prayer.

  "Oh, Lord. Let this one be all right!"

  He read the card. It was pink.

  "Subject #34580. Apt. Rat. 34577. Psych. Clas. 45. Last Per. Vac.

  "An. 3/5/98. Rat. 19. Cur. Rat. 14.

  "Analysis: Subject demonstrates decreased mechanical coordination. Decrease in work-energy per man-hour. Marked increase in waste-motion due to subject's interest in non-essential activities such as horseracing. Indication of hostility towards superiors.

  "Recommendation: Fire him."

  Colihan's legs went weak. He sat down and placed the card in front of him. Then, making sure he was unobserved, he broke a company rule and began to Think.

  Something's wrong, he thought. Something is terribly wrong. Twenty-four pink cards in the last
month. Twenty-four out of forty. That's a batting average of--He tried to figure it out with a pencil, but gave it up as a bad job. Maybe I'll run it through the Averagovac, he thought. But why bother? It's obvious that it's high. There's obviously SOMETHING WRONG.

  The inter-com beeped.

  "Ten o'clock department head meeting, Mr. Colihan."

  [Illustration: The steel brain was having more fun than people.]

  "All right, Miss Blanche."

  He rose from his chair and took the pink card with him. He stood before the Action Chute for a moment, tapping the card against his teeth. Then, his back stiffened with a sense of duty, and he slipped the card inside.

  * * * * *

  The meeting had already begun when Colihan took his appointed place. Grimswitch, the Materielovac operator looked at him quizzically. Damn your eyes, Grimswitch, he thought. It's no crime to be three minutes late. Nothing but a lot of pep talk first five minutes anyway.

  "PEP!" said President Moss at the end of the room. He slammed his little white fist into the palm of his other hand. "It's only a little word. It only has three little letters. P-E-P. Pep!"

  Moss, standing at the head of the impressive conference table, leaned forward and eyed them fixedly. "But those three little letters, my friends, spell out a much bigger word. A much bigger word for General Products, Incorporated. They spell PROFIT! And if you don't know how profit is spelled, it's M-O-N-N-E-Y!"

  There was an appreciative laugh from the assembled department heads. Colihan, however, was still brooding on the parade of pink cards which had been emerging with frightening regularity from his think-machine, and he failed to get the point.

  "Naughty, naughty," Grimswitch whispered to him archly. "Boss made a funny. Don't forget to laugh, old boy."

  Colihan threw him a sub-zero look.

  "Now let's be serious," said the boss. "Because things are serious. Mighty serious. Somewhere, somehow, somebody's letting us down!"

  The department heads looked uneasily at each other. Only Grimswitch continued to smile vacantly at the little old man up front, drumming his fingers on the glass table top. When the President's machine-gunning glance caught his eyes, Colihan went white. Does he know about it? he thought.

  "I'm not making accusations," said Moss. "But there is a let-down someplace. Douglas!" he snapped.

  Douglas, the Treasurer, did a jack-in-the-box.

  "Read the statement," said the President.

  "First quarter fiscal year," said Douglas dryly. "Investment capital, $17,836,975,238.96. Assets, $84,967,442,279.55. Liabilities, $83,964,283,774.60. Production costs are--"

  Moss waved his hand impatiently. "The meat, the meat," he said.

  Douglas adjusted his glasses. "Total net revenue, $26,876,924.99."

  "COMPARISON!" The President screamed. "Let's have last first quarter, you idiot!"

  "Ahem!" Douglas rattled the paper in annoyance. "Last first quarter fiscal year net revenue $34,955,376.81. Percent decrease--"

  "Never mind." The little old man waved the Treasurer to his seat with a weary gesture. His face, so much like somebody's grandmother, looked tragic as he spoke his next words.

  "You don't need the Accountovac to tell you the significance of those figures, gentlemen." His voice was soft, with a slight quaver. "We are not making much p-r-o-f-i-t. We are losing m-o-n-e-y. And the point is--what's the reason? There must be some reason." His eyes went over them again, and Colihan, feeling like the culprit, slumped in his chair.

  "I have a suggestion," said the President. "Just an idea. Maybe some of us just aren't showing enough p-e-p."

  There was a hushed silence.

  The boss pushed back his chair and walked over to a cork-lined wall. With a dramatic gesture, he lifted one arm and pointed to the white sign that covered a fourth of it.

  "See that?" he asked. "What does it say?"

  The department heads looked dubious.

  "Well, what does it say?" repeated Moss.

  "ACT!" The department heads cried in chorus.

  "Exactly!" said the little old man with a surprising bellow. "ACT! The word that made us a leader. The word that guides our business destiny. The word that built General Products!"

  * * * * *

  He paced the floor. The chairs in the conference room creaked as the department heads stirred to follow him with their eyes.

  "ACT is our motto. ACT is our password. ACT is our key to success. And why not? The Brains do the thinking. All of us put together couldn't think so effectively, so perfectly, so honestly as the Brains. They take the orders, designate raw materials, equipment, manpower. They schedule our work. They analyze our products. They analyze our people."

  Colihan trembled.

  "There's only one important function left to us. And that's ACT!"

  The President bowed his head and walked slowly back to his seat. He sat down, and with great fatigue evident in his voice, he concluded his polemic.

  "That's why we must have pep, gentlemen. Pep. Now--how do you spell it?"

  "P! E! P!" roared the department heads.

  The meeting was over. The department heads filed out.

  * * * * *

  Colihan's secretary placed the morning mail on his desk. There was a stack of memos at least an inch thick, and the Personnel Manager moaned at the sight of it.

  "Production report doesn't look too good," said Miss Blanche, crisply. "Bet we get a flood of aptitude cards from Morgan today. Grimswitch has sent over a couple. That makes eleven from him this month. He really has his problems."

  Colihan grunted. He deserves them, he thought.

  "How did the meeting go?"

  "Huh?" Colihan looked up. "Oh, fine, fine. Boss was in good voice, as usual."

  "I think there's an envelope from him in the stack."

  "What?" Colihan hoped that his concern wasn't visible. He riffled through the papers hurriedly, and came up with a neat white envelope engraved with the words: OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT.

  Miss Blanche watched him, frankly curious. "That will be all," he told her curtly.

  When she had left, he ripped the envelope open and read the contents. It was in Moss's own cramped handwriting, and it was a request for a three o'clock "man-to-man" talk.

  Oh, Lord, he thought. Now it's going to happen.

  * * * * *

  President Moss was eating an apple.

  He ate so greedily that the juice spilled over his chin.

  Sitting behind his massive oak desk, chair tilted back, apple juice dappling his whiskers, he looked so small and unformidable, that Colihan took heart.

  "Well, Ralph--how goes it?"

  He called me Ralph, thought Colihan cheerfully. He's not such a bad old guy.

  "Don't grow apples like they used to," the President said. "This hydroponic stuff can't touch the fruit we used to pick. Say, did you ever climb a real apple tree and knock 'em off the branches?"

  Colihan blinked. "No, sir."

  "Greatest thrill in the world. My father had an orchard in Kennebunkport. Apples by the million. Green apples. Sweet apples. Delicious. Spy. Baldwin." He sighed. "Something's gone out of our way of life, Ralph."

  Why, he's just an old dear, thought Colihan. He looked at the boss with new sympathy.

  "Funny thing about apples. My father used to keep 'em in barrels down in the basement. He used to say to me, 'Andrew,' he'd say, 'don't never put a sour apple in one of these barrels. 'Cause just one sour apple can spoil the whole derned lot.'" The boss looked at Colihan and took a big noisy bite.

  Colihan smiled inanely. Was Moss making some kind of point?

  "Well, we can't sit around all day and reminisce, eh, Ralph? Much as I enjoy it. But we got a business to run, don't we?"

  "Yes, sir," said the Personnel Manager.

  "Mighty big business, too. How's your side of it, Ralph? Old Personnelovac hummin' along nicely?"

  "Yes, sir," said Colihan, wondering if he should voice his fears about the Brain.

&nbs
p; "Marvelous machine, that. Most marvelous of 'em all, if you ask me. Sizes up a man beautifully. And best of all, it's one hundred percent honest. That's a mighty important quality, Ralph."

  * * * * *

  Colihan was getting worried. The boss's conversation was just a little too folksy for his liking.

  "Yes, sir, a mighty fine quality. My father used to say: 'Andrew, an honest man can always look you in the eyes.'"

  Colihan stared uncomprehendingly. He realized that Moss had stopped talking, so he looked him squarely in the eyes and said: "He must have been a fine man, your father."

  "He was honest," said Moss. "I'll say that for him. He was honest as they come. Did you ever hear of Dimaggio?"

  "It sounds familiar--"

  "It should. Dimaggio was a legendary figure. He took a lantern and went out into the world looking for an honest man. And do you know something? He couldn't find one. You know, Ralph, sometimes I feel like Dimaggio."

  Colihan gulped.

  "And do you know why? Because sometimes I see a thing like this--" the boss's hand reached into the desk and came out with a thick bundle of pink cards--"and I wonder if there's an honest man left in the world."

  * * * * *

  He put the cards in front of Colihan.

  "Now, sir," said Moss. "Let's talk a little business. These cards are all pink. That means dismissal, right? That's twenty-four people fired in the last month, is that correct?"

  "Yes, sir," said Colihan unhappily.

  "And how many cards went through the Personnelovac this month?"

  "Forty."

  "So that's twenty-four out of forty. A batting average of--" The boss's brow puckered. "Well. Never mind. But that's quite an unusual record, wouldn't you say so?"

  "Yes, sir, but--"

  "So unusual that it would call for immediate ACTION, wouldn't it?" The President's face was now stormy.