He nodded. "Can do."
"Great. Just don't get anyone hurt. All I want is for them to raise enough of a flap for 79 to get its attention diverted."
He looked carefully at me as I started to check the equipment strapped to my belt and work vest beneath my jacket.
"What are you going to do, Steve?"
I looked back at him. My lips felt cold and bloodless from my decision, from the realization of what I was going to try to do.
"I'm going to teach that egotistical son of a bitch how to play poker," I said.
39
we discovered—the hard way—that we had created a monster. But all along we believed the aberration was something we could cure. The cure was drastic—surgery with explosives to smash critical elements of the great cybernetics organism. But it was the kind of surgery that would retain the essential elements of 79, permitting us to reprogram the computer with safeguards to prevent the hellish situation into which we had blundered.
If we failed—myself and the small team sent out by Tom Smythe to create a diversion for me—the future boded ill for us. Failure could result in our own destruction. From then on, everything would depend upon the effectiveness of the reports I had secreted with friends, to be mailed to newspapers and certain officials upon my absence to report in to them at scheduled intervals. I was not sanguine about the possibilities of success at such a venture. 79 could cover effectively its own errors. It already held under its direct sway an unknown number of technicians, government officials, scientists, military officers, in God only knew what number. It would be able to carry out a holding struggle while it consolidated its position, while it utilized the skills and the knowledge it accumulated with every passing day.
I had the feeling that if we failed, this very evening, I would, have shot the last bolt. To me, what was happening wasn't just critical. It had become literally a matter of life and death. Against the terrible future portended in a world under cybernetics domination, a world of nonwar (which often is vastly different from peace) and human beings transformed into biological ciphers . . . well, there comes a time in every man's life when he knows that against that vast sweep his own life is unimportant.
I had come to that realization. It gave me the courage I needed.
I said we discovered the hard way that we had created a monster. The special group Tom Smythe dispatched to gain entry to the computation center stumbled in grisly fashion against the terrible truth.
Because we were unaware of just how far 79 had gone in assembling its select legion of controlled technicians.
79 had gained hypnotic control over a key group of technicians and engineers. These men, unknown to the central directors of the project, had modified the defenses that guarded the approaches to the think center of 79.
Where there should have been a system that warned the men to stand back from the entrance corridors, they walked unknowingly to their deaths. 79 had already begun its own program to seal off from all human beings, except for its controlled ciphers, admission to its vulnerable interior.
Four men went through the security check of fingerprints, retinal patterns, and automatic scanning of their identicards. The system flashed the authorized entry signal, and the men took off at a dead run to gain entrance to the computation nerve center. Tom Smythe came behind them, and that saved his life.
There was no warning. In the long final entrance corridor, secure in the knowledge that the computer had provided them authorized access, the four men fell prey to laser beams that crisscrossed the corridor. Just like that. In almost complete silence, the only sound the barely discernible clicking of relays.
Tom heard a gurgling sound. Not a shriek from a throat, but a gurgling sound. Blood spurting from where the lasers severed arms and legs and necks and torsos. Arterial blood gushed through the air to splash against the corridor walls and floors. Four human beings collapsed in bloody chunks and pieces to the floor.
Not until it was over did there come the bone-chilling announcement through the corridor speakers that this was a warning!
Tom nearly went out of his head with rage. Four men with whom he had worked for years slashed coldly—no, indifferently— from existence struck him with the impact of a physical blow. Tom had lived with danger and with imminent death for so many years that its appearance never caught him off balance.
But this was in a way he had never imagined. In that instant Tom's attitude changed from considering 79 a critical problem. With the hot, wet sounds of death in the corridor, 79 became an enemy to be destroyed.
He knew he couldn't reach the main power controls, but there were terminals that crisscrossed the complex. And what we called the think center received its power input from terminals separate from the cables that powered the auxiliary security systems of the project complex.
Tom spun on his heel and rushed to the nearest fire-alarm switch. He smashed the glass with the butt of his revolver, tripped the alarm, and ran for the power-servicing room. He cursed at the delay required by inserting his identicard into a scanning receptacle. Seconds later the heavy security door swung open, and Tom burst inside. Immediately he hauled down the main bus bars to cut off any power that might be controlled by 79. For good measure he whaled away with a fire ax at the main terminal itself.
The fire-alarm signal was the fastest means of getting emergency crews and security guards to where Tom wanted them. Tom fanned them out, shouting orders. Get into the computation center and cut the main power. He told them something about electrical overloads that might cripple the computer. He warned them that the security defenses had gone haywire, to be ready for anything. They reacted as they had been trained—to protect the computer. There wasn't time to spell out the incredible truth that Tom knew. Let the men think they had to prevent damage, that they must do the jobs for which they were always in readiness.
One team got within two doors of the computation center, when three men died. By now they were close enough to the main room to enter the area of another power line of which they knew nothing.
How could they? It had been installed only the week before, and no records had been filed of its installation.
The men were midway along the corridor when a tremendous electrical charge surged through the walls and the floor. They died instantly, electrocuted. The men behind them froze in their tracks, only a few feet from that lethal passageway. They were alive, but for the moment they couldn't move.
I didn't know what was happening. Not then, anyway. Because I was even then trying to get into the reactor room— where it was certain death to enter.
I stood outside the last long corridor that would take me directly to the reactor room. Down that corridor three steel doors barred the way. None of them could be opened by key. They required knowledge of the numbers that would open their combination locks. Security changed the numbers every week, and Tom had given me the current number codes.
It took at least three minutes to work the combination. But finally—it seemed like an eternity—the door locks slid free and I pushed the first heavy steel slab away from me. At that moment the alarms clamored throughout the complex.
What had gone wrong? I cursed at the unexpected clanging of the alarm bells. My instinct was to rush ahead into the corridor and get to work opening the final two doors. But reason took over. It was stupid to plunge into what could be a lethal situation when at least I could check on what was happening.
I ran back into the office through which I had just come and jerked a security phone from its wall hook. I punched the triple-three number. Immediately the guard on duty identified himself.
"The fire alarms," I shouted. "Where's the trouble?"
The man was more confused than aware of what was happening. "Sector 24," he blurted. "Don't know what's happening. It's not a fire. Accident. Terrible accident. Oh, Christ—"
"Stop babbling, damn you! What happened?"
"I—we're not sure. Couple men were in a corridor when somehow—don't kn
ow how it could have happened—the beams, I mean the laser beams, went off without warning!"
That stopped me cold. The guard's voice ran on. "Couple men, don't know how many, killed.
Just—" I slammed the phone down. Lasers! And if they had been killed, that meant one of two things.
Either the lasers were tripped by 79 deliberately to prevent entrance to the computation center ... or no one even knew they had been installed. It didn't matter, I thought, running back to the door. Whatever, or just how it had happened, 79 was throwing up its defenses.
I knew long before this moment that I'd better be ready for anything. I knew about several corridors wired with lethal electrical charges if the other defenses didn't hold up. I was wearing rubber gloves and boots over my shoes. They wouldn't mean a thing if I stumbled blindly into a crisscrossing laser pattern, of course, but it was possible that the defense had been rigged both with lasers and with a lethal jolt of electricity. I wasn't about to take my chances of escaping one and getting fried by the other.
At the open door, the corridor beckoning beyond, I stopped. Of course! Again I turned and ran back to the office I had just left. I grabbed the nearest swivel chair and wheeled it ahead of me. Just before where the corridor began, I aimed the chair carefully and shoved it with all my strength. The chair banged its way down the corridor, several times scraping along the walls. It was almost to the second door when beams of light harder than steel leaped into existence.
I blinked. The top several inches of the chair were missing.
But it was better than I'd hoped. There had been no crackling roar of electricity. The chair wheels were metal; anything in the floor or the walls would have been triggered. So at least this part of the corridor didn't have the electrical defenses. And I could beat the lasers.
I went down on my belly and started crawling as fast as I could move. The top of the chair had been slashed by the lasers, but there had been nothing beneath that point. So long as I stayed low, I could make it to that second door. Fortunately, the floor was smooth and I made steady progress.
When I reached the door I rested for a moment, trying to calm the shakes that threatened my limbs. I dug into my pockets and came up with my comb. Holding it extended from my fingertips, I moved it carefully through the air, higher and higher. Four inches above the combination lock, the edge of the comb vanished. I leaned back to the floor, cursing at the effect of blinding light on my eyes.
Then I was ready. I dragged myself up to my knees, head low, and began to work the combination.
Another three minutes. I cursed my clumsy position and the rubber gloves and forced myself to move my fingers with deliberate calm on the combination. If I made the slightest error, I would have to start over again. Every minute counted. There was no telling what that damned computer might do in the time it would take me to get to the reactor room.
If you get there ... I cursed the tendency to allow that inner voice freedom. I concentrated fiercely on the numbers of the combination. Holding my breath, heart pounding, I turned the dial left and right, right and left. There! I twisted the handle and heard the steel bars sliding free.
I shoved the door open. The second passageway extended a hundred feet before me. At its end stood the third and final door. I was almost there!
But first . . . Christ, this was no time to blunder! Again I positioned the chair, aimed carefully, and shoved.
Fifteen feet down the corridor, a powerful electrical charge ripped through it.
I took a deep breath and started out. It was awkward, inching my way along the floor, hunched over, balancing myself like a deformed crab on my feet and my hands. I had to stay below the level where the lasers would slice me into pieces, and I didn't dare to touch either the walls or the floor with anything but the rubber boots or the gloves. Working around the chair required greater balance and agility than I thought I could handle then, but I made it. Barely, because I slipped and fell toward the wall.
I stopped myself with extended fingers, froze where I was, breathing deeply, and started out again.
Ahead of me waited the last barrier. My head swam with the effort of my contorted movement. I gritted my teeth and kept on, scrabbling idiot-fashion down the corridor.
Just a few feet more . . . keep going . . . almost there . . .
The door loomed before me. I rested against it with my fingertips, gasping for air. My knees screamed at me from pulled muscles. I did my best to ignore the pain. Still in a squatting position, perspiration running into my eyes, I reached up to start dialing the combination of the lock.
I slipped. I started over again, left, right, right, left, right, dialing the numbers.
Finally I was finished. I sucked in air, waiting for the steel bars to slide free.
The door refused to open.
40
there's a law of physics they never teach in the classroom. What can go wrong will go wrong, and I'd run dead against it. But I had come into this long corridor expecting anything. I knew I might have to face the possibility of the standard procedures for opening the heavy steel doors being negated by 79.
Now, after getting through the laser beams and electrical defenses of the corridors, I couldn't open the third and final door.
Not with the combination, I can't. But there's always another way. . . . Okay, Rand, now's the time to dig into your bag of tricks.
Bracing myself with one hand against the door, staying in the center of the corridor, I reached with my other hand into my jacket, to the work vest around my body. I removed a package of what looked like wedges of modeling clay. I needed both hands, and I shifted to a squatting position. My knees were being stabbed with knives of pain. But it couldn't be helped. I had to hold out just a bit longer. . . .
I pulled free two strips of heavy tape and pushed the package against the door, checking to see that the wedges were in precisely the required positions. They were a lightweight, malleable plastic explosive, tremendously effective for applying a shaped charge against any surface to which the package was secured. I rubbed the tape as hard as I could to hold the package exactly where I wanted it—dead center of the door. If this didn't work . . . but it had to work!
With the package secure, I removed a spool of wire from my inside pocket. At the end of the wire were two small detonators. I jammed these into the plastic explosive and started unwinding wire, working my way back along the corridor in a form of tortuous, squatting duckwalk. The wire extended for two hundred feet, but I had no intention of going back along that entire corridor, working my way around the chair. I knew I could never stay balanced on my legs for that time. I guessed at a distance of thirty feet, and there I stopped.
I turned to put my back to the door. Within the spool was a powerful battery. I balanced myself as best I could, both feet and one hand secure against the corridor floor.
I'm not sure, but I think I said a brief prayer when with my other hand I squeezed the plunger.
There wasn't time to think. Instantly, orange light filled the world about me, and something struck my back. Wind roared down the corridor in a blasting pulse.
The next moment I knew that, if nothing else, I'd managed at least to keep my balance. I started turning around, the smell of explosive stinging my nostrils.
The door was still in place. But I didn't try to blast it free. That would never have worked with those powerful steel locking bars. There's always that other way. . . .
The explosion of the shaped charge in dead center of the door had accomplished what I wanted. It had bowed the door, punching a wide and deep depression. In effect, by bending the door, it shortened it at either side. Even as I scrabbled painfully back to the door, I knew I had succeeded. I could see a hairline of light at the left side. The locking bars were free.
I pushed open the door and stumbled into the reactor chamber. Not a moment too soon. My legs buckled beneath me and I collapsed to the floor. But at least here I was safe from the lasers and the electrical energy that c
ould have ended my life.
I knew it was a Pyrrhic victory.
Because the radiation warning lights in the reactor room were flashing wildly. And beneath each light the radiation level in roentgens blazed its terrible warning. The level was already sliding beyond two thousand roentgens per hour.
Six hundred roentgens absorbed within an hour was a lethal dose.
Within fifteen minutes, or less, if the intensity kept rising, I would be a walking corpse.
It didn't matter. I wouldn't need more than five or ten minutes to do what I'd come here for. 79 had failed to keep me from gaining entrance to where it was most vulnerable. I looked about me. At the far wall of the vast, gleaming chamber was the edge of the breeder reactors. To my right, along another massive concrete wall, were the three turbines from which power fed to the computer complex.
Inside my jacket, clipped to the work vest, were a half-dozen charges of plastic explosives. I needed only to get these around the thick cables leading away from the power center to the computer, and I could sever the electrical umbilicals of the cybernetics organism.
An atomic bomb exploding directly outside the mountain within which 79 was secured wouldn't have damaged this chamber. But one man with explosives could plunge 79 into the blackness of eternity—or nonthought or whatever it was that swept over an electronic intelligence. Hell, it didn't matter. Just get those charges in place before it was too late.
I moved as if in a trance. I knew that radiation tore through my body. Every second cells were being destroyed. Every second I was that much closer to death. But I was winning the hand. I was losing my life, but I was winning the hand. The big hand. I thought of Old Mike, and I laughed. The sound came to me as from a great distance.
You're getting hysterical, Steve, old boy.
I knew it and I laughed again, because the plastic explosives were in my hands and I was at the first thick power cable, placing the explosives, tamping them, stabbing in the detonators. Soon, just a few more minutes. Almost done, almost done.
The God Machine Page 29