THE BICENTENNIAL MAN

by Isaac Asimov

  It seemed to him that the target became steadily easier to hit and that the black hole was growing madly with each impact and that soon it would reach out and suck him and the ship into its never-sated maw.

  It was his imagination, of course, and nothing more. Finally all the rocks were gone and he felt he could throw nothing more in any case. He had been out there, it seemed, for hours.

  When he was within the ship again he said, as soon as Funarelli had helped him off with his helmet, “That’s it. I can’t do anything more.”

  “You had plenty of flashes there,” said Funarelli.

  “Plenty, and they should surely be recorded. We’ll just have to wait now. They’ve got to come.”

  Funarelli helped him off with the rest of his suit as best his muscle-torn body would allow. Then he stood, grunting and gasping, and said, “Do you really think they’ll come, Ben?”

  “I think they’ve got to,” said Estes, almost as though he were trying to force the event by the sheer power of wishing. “I think they’ve got to.”

  “Why do you think they’ve got to?” said Funarelli, sounding like a man who wanted to grasp at straws but didn’t dare.

  “Because I communicated,” said Estes. “We’re not only the first people to encounter a black hole, we’re the first to use it to communicate; we’re the first to use the ultimate communication system of the future, the one that might send messages from star to star and galaxy to galaxy, and that might be the ultimate energy source as well--” He was panting, and he sounded a little wild.

  “What are you talking about?” said Funarelli.

  “I threw those rocks in rhythm, Harv,” said Estes, “and the X-ray bursts came in rhythm. It was flash-flash-flash--flash--flash--flash--flash-flash-flash, and so on.”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s old-fashioned; old-fashioned, but that’s one thing everyone remembers from the days when people communicated by electric currents running through wires.”

  “You mean the photograph--phonograph--”

  “The telegraph, Harv. Those flashes I produced will be recorded and the first time someone looks at that record, all hell will break loose. It’s not just that they’ll be spotting an X-ray source; it’s not just that it will be an X-ray source moving very slowly against the stars so that it has to be within our Solar System. What it is, is that they’ll be seeing an X-ray source going on and off and producing the signal sos--sos--And when an X-ray Source is shouting for help, you’ll bet they’ll come--as fast as they can--if only to see--what’s--there--that--”

  He was asleep.

  --And five days later, a drone ship arrived.

  Incidentally, it may occur to some of my Gentle Readers that there is a certain similarity between the story and my very first published story, MAROONED OFF VESTA, which appeared in print thirty-seven years earlier. In each story, two men are trapped on a spaceship wrecked in the asteroid belt and must use their ingenuity to devise a way of escaping what looked like certain death.

  Of course, the resolutions are completely different, and it was in my mind to demonstrate some of the changes in our outlook on the Universe that took place in those thirty-seven years by producing in 1976 a resolution that would have been inconceivable in 1939.

  In the fall of 1975, Fred Dannay (better known as Ellery Queen) approached me with a very intriguing idea for the August 1976 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, which would be on the stands at the time of the Bicentennial. He planned to publish a mystery dealing with the Bicentennial itself, and another dealing with the Centennial in 1876. What he needed now was one for the Tricentennial in 2076 and, of course, that meant a science fiction story.

  Since I have been writing numerous mystery stories for the magazine in recent years, he thought of me and proposed that I tackle the job. I agreed and got to work on November 1, 1975. I ended with uncompromising science fiction which I feared might make a little heavy going for mystery readers. Fred thought otherwise, apparently, for he took the story and was even kind enough to pay me a bonus.

  The Tercentenary Incident

  July 4, 2076--and for the third time the accident of the conventional system of numeration, based on powers of ten, had brought the last two digits of the year back to the fateful 76 that had seen the birth of the nation.

  It was no longer a nation in the old sense; it was rather a geographic expression; part of a greater whole that made up the Federation of all of humanity on Earth, together with its offshoots on the Moon and in the space colonies. By culture and heritage, however, the name and the idea lived on, and that portion of the planet signified by the old name was still the most prosperous and advanced region of the world....And the President of the United States was still the most powerful single figure in the Planetary Council.

  Lawrence Edwards watched the small figure of the President from his height of two hundred feet. He drifted lazily above the crowd, his flotron motor making a barely heard chuckle on his back, and what he saw looked exactly like what anyone would see on a holovision scene. How many times had he seen little figures like that in his living room, little figures in a cube of sunlight, looking as real as though they were living homunculi, except that you could put your hand through them.

  You couldn’t put your hand through those spreading out in their tens of thousands over the open spaces surrounding the Washington Monument. And you couldn’t put your hand through the President. You could reach out to him instead, touch him, and shake his hand.

  Edwards thought sardonically of the uselessness of that added element of tangibility and wished himself a hundred miles away, floating in air over some isolated wilderness, instead of here where he had to watch for any sign of disorder. There wouldn’t be any necessity for his being here but for the mythology of the value of “pressing the flesh.”

  Edwards was not an admirer of the President--Hugo Allen Winkler, fifty-seventh of the line.

  To Edwards, President Winkler seemed an empty man, a charmer, a vote grabber, a promiser. He was a disappointing man to have in office now after all the hopes of those first months of his administration. The World Federation was in danger of breaking up long before its job had been completed and Winkler could do nothing about it. One needed a strong hand now, not a glad hand; a hard voice, not a honey voice.

  There he was now, shaking hands--a space forced around him by the Service, with Edwards himself, plus a few others of the Service, watching from above.

  The President would be running for re-election certainly, and there seemed a good chance he might be defeated. That would just make things worse, since the opposition party was dedicated to the destruction of the Federation.

  Edwards sighed. It would be a miserable four years coming up--maybe a miserable forty--and all he could do was float in the air, ready to reach every Service agent on the ground by laser-phone if there was the slightest

  He didn’t see the slightest. There was no sign of disturbance. Just a little puff of white dust, hardly visible; just a momentary glitter in the sunlight, up and away, gone as soon as he was aware of it.

  Where was the President? He had lost sight of him in the dust. He looked about in the vicinity of where he had seen him last. The President could not have moved far.

  Then he became aware of disturbance. First it was among the Service agents themselves, who seemed to have gone off their heads and to be moving this way and that jerkily. Then those among the crowd near them caught the contagion and then those farther off. The noise rose and became a thunder.

  Edwards didn’t have to hear the words that made up the rising roar. It seemed to carry the news to him by nothing more than its mass clamorous urgency. President Winkler had disappeared! He had been there one moment and had turned into a handful of vanishing dust the next.

  Edwards held his breath in an agony of waiting during what seemed a drug-ridden eternity, for the long moment of realization to end and for the mob to break into a mad, rioting stampede.

  --Wh
en a resonant voice sounded over the gathering din, and at its sound, the noise faded, died, and became a silence. It was as though it were all a holovision program after all and someone had turned the sound down and out.

  Edwards thought: My God, it’s the President. There was no mistaking the voice. Winkler stood on the guarded stage from which he was to give his Tercentenary speech, and from which he had left but ten minutes ago to shake hands with some in the crowd.

  How had he gotten back there? Edwards listened

  “Nothing has happened to me, my fellow Americans. What you have seen just now was the breakdown of a mechanical device. It was not your President, so let us not allow a mechanical failure to dampen the celebration of the happiest day the world has yet seen....My fellow Americans, give me your attention--”

  And what followed was the Tercentenary speech, the greatest speech Winkler had ever made, or Edwards had ever heard. Edwards found himself forgetting his supervisory job in his eagerness to listen.

  Winkler had it right! He understood the importance of the Federation and he was getting it across.

  Deep inside, though, another part of him was remembering the persistent rumors that the new expertise in robotics had resulted in the construction of a look-alike President, a robot who could perform the purely ceremonial functions, who could shake hands with the crowd, who could be neither bored nor exhausted--nor assassinated.

  Edwards thought, in obscure shock, that that was how it had happened. There had been such a look-alike robot indeed, and in a way--it had been assassinated.

  October 13, 2078

  Edwards looked up as the waist-high robot guide approached and said mellifluously, “Mr. Janek will see you now.”

  Edwards stood up, feeling tall as he towered above the stubby, metallic guide. He did not feel young, however. His face had gathered lines in the last two years or so and he was aware of it.

  He followed the guide into a surprisingly small room, where, behind a surprisingly small desk, there sat Francis Janek, a slightly paunchy and incongruously young-looking man.

  Janek smiled and his eyes were friendly as he rose to shake hands. “Mr. Edwards.”

  Edwards muttered, “I’m glad to have the opportunity, sir--” Edwards had never seen Janek before, but then the job of personal secretary to the President is a quiet one and makes little news.

  Janek said, “Sit down. Sit down. Would you care for a soya stick?”

  Edwards smiled a polite negative, and sat down. Janek was clearly emphasizing his youth. His ruffied shirt was open and the hairs on his chest had been dyed a subdued but definite violet.

  Janek said, “I know you have been trying to reach me for some weeks now. I’m sorry for the delay. I hope you understand that my time is not entirely my own. However, we’re here now....I have referred to the Chief of the Service, by the way, and he gave you very high marks. He regrets your resignation.”

  Edwards said, eyes downcast, “It seemed better to carry on my investigations without danger of embarrassment to the Service.”

  Janek’s smile flashed. “Your activities, though discreet, have not gone unnoticed, however. The Chief explains that you have been investigating the Tercentenary Incident, and I must admit it was that which persuaded me to see you as soon as I could. You’ve given up your position for that? You’re investigating a dead issue.”

  “How can it be a dead issue, Mr. Janek? Your calling it an Incident doesn’t alter the fact that it was an assassination attempt.”

  “A matter of semantics. Why use a disturbing phrase?”

  “Only because it would seem to represent a disturbing truth. Surely you would say that someone tried to kill the President.”

  Janek spread his hands. “If that is so, the plot did not succeed. A mechanical device was destroyed. Nothing more. In fact, if we look at it properly, the Incident--whatever you choose to call it--did the nation and the world an enormous good. As we all know, the President was shaken by the Incident and the nation as well. The President and all of us realized what a return to the violence of the last century might mean and it produced a great turnaround.”

  “I can’t deny that.”

  “Of course you can’t. Even the President’s enemies will grant that the last two years have seen great accomplishments. The Federation is far stronger today than anyone could have dreamed it would be on that Tercentenary day. We might even say that a breakup of the global economy has been prevented.”

  Edwards said cautiously, “Yes, the President is a changed man. Everyone says so.”

  Janek said, “He was a great man always. The Incident made him concentrate on the great issues with a fierce intensity, however.”

  “Which he didn’t do before?”

  “Perhaps not quite as intensely....In effect then, the President, and all of us, would like the Incident forgotten. My main purpose in seeing you, Mr. Edwards, is to make that plain to you. This is not the Twentieth Century and we can’t throw you in jail for being inconvenient to us, or hamper you in any way, but even the Global Charter doesn’t forbid us to attempt persuasion. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you, but I do not agree with you. Can we forget the Incident when the person responsible has never been apprehended?”

  “Perhaps that is just as well, too, sir. Far better that some, uh, unbalanced person escape than that the matter be blown out of proportion and the stage set, possibly, for a return to the days of the Twentieth Century.”

  “The official story even states that the robot spontaneously exploded--which is impossible, and which has been an unfair blow to the robot industry.”

  “A robot is not the term I would use, Mr. Edwards. It was a mechanical device. No one has said that robots are dangerous, per se, certainly not the workaday metallic ones. The only reference here is to the unusually complex manlike devices that seem flesh and blood and that we might call androids. Actually, they are so complex that perhaps they might explode at that; I am not an expert in the field. The robotics industry will recover.”

  “Nobody in the government,” said Edwards stubbornly, “seems to care whether we reach the bottom of the matter or not.”

  “I’ve already explained that there have been no consequences but good ones. Why stir the mud at the bottom, when the water above is clear?”

  “And the use of the disintegrator?”

  For a moment, Janek’s hand, which had been slowly turning the container of soya sticks on his desk, held still, then it returned to its rhythmic movement. He said lightly, “What’s that?”

  Edwards said intently, “Mr. Janek, I think you know what I mean. As part of the Service--”

  “To which you no longer belong, of course:”

  “Nevertheless, as part of the Service, I could not help but hear things that were not always, I suppose, for my ears. I had heard of a new weapon, and I saw something happen at the Tercentenary which would require one. The object everyone thought was the President disappeared into a cloud of very fine dust. It was as though every atom within the object had had its bonds to other atoms loosed. The object had become a cloud of individual atoms, which began to combine again of course, but which dispersed too quickly to do more than appear a momentary glitter of dust.”

  “Very science-fictionish.”

  “I certainly don’t understand the science behind it, Mr. Janek, but I do see that it would take considerable energy to accomplish such bond breaking. This energy would have to be withdrawn from the environment. Those people who were standing near the device at the time, and whom I could locate--and who would agree to talk--were unanimous in reporting a wave of coldness washing over them.”

  Janek put the soya-stick container to one side with a small click of transite against cellulite. He said, “Suppose just for argument that there is such a thing as a disintegrator.”

  “You need not argue. There is.”

  “I won’t argue. I know of no such thing myself, but in my office, I am not likely to know of anyt
hing so security-bound as new weaponry. But if a disintegrator exists and is as secret as all that, it must be an American monopoly, unknown to the rest of the Federation. It would then not be something either you or I should talk about. It could be a more dangerous war weapon than the nuclear bombs, precisely because--if what you say is so--it produces nothing more than disintegration at the point of impact and cold in the immediate neighborhood. No blast, no fire, no deadly radiation. Without these distressing side effects, there would be no deterrent to its use, yet for all we know it might be made large enough to destroy the planet itself.”

  “I go along with all of that,” said Edwards.

  “Then you see that if there is no disintegrator, it is foolish to talk about one; and if there is a disintegrator, then it is criminal to talk about one.”

  “I haven’t discussed it, except to you, just now, because I’m trying to persuade you of the seriousness of the situation. If one had been used, for instance, ought not the government be interested in deciding how it came to be used--if another unit of the Federation might be in possession?”

  Janek shook his head. “I think that we can rely on appropriate organs of this government to take such a thing into consideration. You had better not concern yourself with the matter.”

  Edwards said, in barely controlled impatience, “Can you assure me that the United States is the only government that has such a weapon at its disposal?”

  “I can’t tell you, since I know nothing about such a weapon, and should not know. You should not have spoken of it to me. Even if no such weapon exists, the rumor of its existence could be damaging.”

  “But since I have told you and the damage is done, please hear me out. Let me have the chance of convincing you that you, and no one else, hold the key to a fearful situation that perhaps I alone see.”

  “You alone see? I alone hold the key?”

  “Does that sound paranoid? Let me explain and then judge for yourself.”