by Brian Aldiss
‘I don’t think I’ve much to say to you, Ping Ah,’ Soames replied.
‘The question, Mr Noyes, I made mention of. The secrets going into your computer machine …’
‘I had not forgotten. But from what I hear, you have enough contacts inside and outside the palace not to need me at all.’
‘Contacts I have, yes,’ Ping Ah agreed, still scrutably, ‘but not enough. With delicate art of contacts, saturating point is not reachable. Perhaps I send my daughter tonight to reveal certain things to you, yes?’
Possibly he read on Soames’ face the battle between the desire he undeniably felt for Hwa and the dislike he had for treating her as an article of exchange. He slid away ambiguously, leaving Soames considerably uncomfortable. Soames, indeed, had a habit of being unhappy about himself; he thought again of Sheila Thurston, the one girl he had really lost his soul to. Yet he had swilled about like an old maid in a pig trough and lost her. Now women were being foisted on to him from all sides; although he conceived it his duty as a man to accept them, a nervous fastidiousness kept him away. With Coitala it had been different: her unexpectedness had stormed the barriers of his delicacy.
Now the royal family was making its way to the platform of honour, Timpleton trailing aimlessly in their wake. The platform creaked heavily as they boarded it. M’Grassi Landor was dressed in a Western lounge suit; the Mayor of Umbalathorp, who also climbed aboard the swaying deck, was draped impressively in a red and purple blanket. He was Mayor Wabe, and he spoke first – in Goyese, while three interpreters standing safely on the ground floor below shouted out translations phrase by phrase in Portuguese, French and English. This rendered it difficult for anyone to hear anything.
‘My people,’ the Mayor said expansively, when the clapping and drumming which greeted his attempt to stand upright had subsided, ‘my people, today we become citizens not merely of Africa, but of the world. We have got a computing engine which really … (cheers). Next year, if we are lucky, we will also have some hydrogen bombs which work. (More cheers). In five years, perhaps we will have artificial satellites. (Cheers.) Then we can defend ourselves properly, and perhaps one day … moon! (Cheers and laughter.)
‘This computing Apostle comes from England, where many good things come from and go to. Among my many activities of office, I may tell you I am also a Member for the Preservation of Epping Forest. (Cheers.) You think of England as a land of factories. I … know better. England is like Africa, covered in forest. My English friends here on this platform will tell you just the same. Great forest and lake everywhere, Forest of Dean, Sherwood Forest, St John’s Wood, Pinewood, Elstree, Shepherd’s Bush, also Blackpool, Liverpool and Bayswater. (Prolonged cheers.) Also we now have computing engines like England, binding the two countries. Here is His Majesty, President Landor to say something …’ (Cheers.)
M’Grassi rose slowly, unbuttoning his jacket so that all present should see his magnificent brocade waistcoat.
‘My beloved subjects,’ he said, ‘it is not my custom to speak where I can act. If you know me as a plain, blunt man, it is because I have thought deeply enough to doubt … words. No man utters a sentence without excusing and at the same time condemning himself. This may seem a strange thing to say to you, who are avidly availing yourselves of the best education our schools can offer. (Cheers.) You are trying to learn … All I am trying to imply is that man’s wisdom is not infinite; no, not if you read and remember the contents of every book in the world. For one thing, as soon as you become literate, you lose the precious wisdom of the illiterate which – like innocence once it has gone – can never again be recaptured or imagined. The man who steals his friend’s only blanket may still regret to see that friend shiver, but he does not suffer with him as once he did. The man who has committed adultery may still love his wife, but he cannot love her as he did. The man who secretly ruined our railway may consider himself still our friend, but we regard him differently than we did before he committed this act. (Cheers and howls.)
‘All I am attempting to tell you, my dear subjects, is that the brains of all of us are finite in their capacities. When we take a step forward, we have to relinquish the step behind. When we try … like … down a stream. That is why our two English friends have brought us this computer. It is a mechanical brain, not subject to the weaknesses of our brains of flesh. In its cells lies the capacity to think of everything we cannot. Nothing in Goya can be hidden from it! Not only can it think a thousand times more than any of us, it can also think a thousand times faster! Woe to the man who yesterday thought himself clever or great in magic, for today this thing towers above him as the mountain towers above the lake! (Uneasy cheers.)
‘I now call upon Mr Soames Noyes, the inventor of this wonderful machine, to address a few words to you.’
This last sentence acted like a jab of anaesthetic at the base of Soames’ spine. No warning of this had been granted him – indeed, he suspected that M’Grassi, carried along by his own eloquence, had only just thought of the idea. Prodded violently by Timpleton and Queen Louise, who sat next to him, he found himself on his feet, with the crowds waving before his eyes like a desert islander’s shirt from a palm tree.
‘Er, of course I’m not really the inventor of the Apostle,’ he began. ‘I’m just a, well, an, er, entrepreneur, but we’ll let that go. But one thing I would like to say …’ (‘Speak louder,’ someone in the crowd called, although the three interpreters were bellowing so loudly the noise seemed to numb Soames’ faculties; he wondered if the rubbish he was talking sounded any better in Goyese.) ‘I’d like to say how kind everyone has been, and to take this opportunity … if you’ll bear with me … I ought to, er, explain that unaccustomed as I am … er, my time in Goya and in particular in your lovely capital of …’ (‘Umbalathorp,’ Timpleton growled) ‘Umbalathorp, how very pleasantly and also how very fruitful my time … I mean, it has been given to few Englishmen – few Englishmen have been given such a, er, such an opportunity …’
Suddenly Soames noticed Dumayami in the crowd, surrounded by a few choice cronies. The witch doctor’s eyes glistened like gristle, while a faint, malevolent smile moved over the notches and tattoos of his face. The sight did much to pull Soames together.
‘But perhaps I had better say a few words about the Apostle Mk II,’ he said, and heard Queen Louise give a gusty sigh of relief at his side. ‘This machine we are celebrating this afternoon is wonderful, yes, but it will not perform magic. It is no more than an agent of progress. Its function is chiefly mathematical, though by its ability to differentiate between alternatives it is possible to coax it to answer general questions superficially unrelated to mathematics – questions of probability, for instance. This is something we in England have been trying to make quite clear to you since we were first notified of your desire to possess such a machine.’
‘Is it any good or isn’t it?’ called a voice from the crowd, which had been listening to Soames in stony silence. The speaker was Obendsi, the lawyer.
‘That’s a silly question,’ Soames replied. ‘You must realise that any machine develops in the context of its own civilisation. You do not get ocean liners till you have compasses to guide them with. You do not send up artificial satellites to girdle the earth until you have in your country many thousands of men engaged in rocketry and electronics. Everything has to come in its context. These computers have their origins in punch-card systems which have been in use for a long time, but they come into full being only when many of the complex mathematical problems of a technological culture cannot be handled except by computers. The need for them exists – so they are invented.
‘That explains why the Apostle Mk II is out of context here. It’s like giving a blind man –’ (Soames stopped abruptly. He had been going to say ‘a pair of high-powered binoculars’, and then realised how unflattering this comparison was) ‘– a guide dog which is so powerful it is apt to pull him over,’ he finished weakly and sat down.
In the pu
zzled silence which followed, one or two hand claps sounded like exploding airguns. Not only had they not understood him; many had misunderstood him.
‘Christ, you bollixed that one up proper and no mistake,’ Timpleton said, sotto voce. ‘They’ll start slinging things in a minute. You’re a bloody fool, Soames; why didn’t you stay in jug?’
‘It’s the truth,’ Soames said defensively.
‘Of course it’s the truth. That’s why you’d have done better to sit on your arse and say nothing.’
Through the crowd, now splitting into little groups, Dumayami was thrusting his way. When he got to the platform, he half-turned, so that he was addressing both people and personages. He spoke in his lopped variety of English.
‘We must not spoil festivity with criticism,’ he said, ‘but if a sadness occurs – such as waste of public fund – wise man turns and faces that fact soon as possible.’
Roars of approval greeted this when it was translated. M’Grassi stood up, and the noise died like wind among straw.
‘What do you hint at, man?’ he demanded, glaring down at the witch doctor. ‘Innuendoes are the weak man’s currency. Speak out straight.’
‘I am not weak man,’ Dumayami said, unperturbed. ‘I issue challenge to this Apostle Mark, to see if he can work properly or not. Let him answer a problem and I will answer also, and we shall see who is right. Make a test!’
‘A test!’ cried several throats.
M’Grassi looked at Soames, who immediately gestured a frantic ‘No’, whereupon the President looked away again.
‘We accept your challenge,’ he said in Goyese.
The witch doctor, lifting the hem of his cassock, climbed nimbly on to the platform.
‘Hear then Dumayami’s test,’ he said in a ringing voice. ‘Your son, Princeling Deal Jimpo, Next-for-President, lies in a bed with much injury. Let the Apostle machine say if he will recover.’
‘My God!’ Soames exploded to Timpleton, ‘we can’t tackle anything like that. I tell you, these people don’t understand –’
‘We’ll have to tackle it,’ Timpleton said. ‘It’s just a matter of getting enough factors together to make an accurate prediction.’
‘But don’t you see, Ted –’
‘Spit in it!’ Timpleton stood up and said in a grave, official voice, ‘Thank you, the Apostle will be glad to accept the challenge, Mr Witch Doctor. We will deliver our verdict on the Prince by sunset.’
A mutter of excitement ran through the crowd but Dumayami quelled it.
‘If you need so long, take it,’ he said contemptuously. ‘What poor, slow magic! I can give my prediction now.’
‘Then give it,’ M’Grassi said, ‘so that all may hear.’ The silence was now almost bullet-proof. Dumayami, for the first time, looked uneasy. He fidgeted, while the crowd stared mercilessly at him. Every eye prodded him, until finally he said in a low voice, ‘Prince Jimpo will die before tomorrow’s sun goes down.’
Chapter Thirteen
‘How to load and bless with fruit …’
The perfectionist dreams of, and the humanist dreads, the day when all things may be reduced to equations. Take the case of a sailor floating in mid-ocean after his ship has sunk. Could we know certain vital details about his psychology and physiology – his stamina, health, swimming ability, age, will to live, prospects on land – plus certain external conditions such as state of wind and sea, temperature of water, possibility of predatory fish in the area, proximity of shipping – could we gather together all these many details, it would be comparatively simple to predict precisely the moment at which the sailor will drown. Until our sciences reach this pitch of excellence, it is simpler to throw the man a lifebelt.
Jimpo, as far as the problem confronting the computer was concerned, was now in the place of the sailor. Soames and Timpleton went to the hospital as soon as the meeting at the palace broke up, in order to gather as many imponderables as they could. A helpful doctor, a graduate of Achimota, painstakingly gave them full details of all the injuries Jimpo had sustained and all the treatment he was receiving. This information then had to be sorted, coded, and fed into the big red computer.
It was growing late when they did this; the mosquitoes were singing outside the mosquito screens. The machine hesitated only for a second before sticking out a white tongue of paper at them. Soames and Timpleton snatched at it together. On it were the two words INSUFFICIENT DATA.
Soames groaned.
‘I knew it,’ he said. ‘The problem’s impossible.’
His face hard, Timpleton went over to the keyboard and typed PREDICT ON DATA GIVEN.
After another minute pause, another tongue of paper appeared. On it was typed PATIENT WILL RECOVER.
‘Well, there you are,’ Timpleton said. ‘That’s what we’ll have to stick to. Come on, it’s getting dark; let’s go and take it to the adjudicators.’
‘I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind,’ Soames said. He took out his cigarette case, gave one to L’Panto, who had been helping them, lit one himself, and watched through the door as Timpleton crossed into the gardens. At a table lit by a lantern, Mayor Wabe, who was acting as judge in the trial, sat waiting with Dumayami and a couple of his followers.
Sweat poured down Soames’ forehead, through his eyebrows, into his eyes.
‘Why’s it so hot?’ he asked testily.
‘Rain go, Jack, rain bloody go gone,’ L’Panto said in the simple phrases he had contracted from Timpleton. ‘Switch to dry time. Dry time up, roger now. All bloody thing sun now work OK, chop-chop, strength five. All indicator say rain go, cloud bugger up, dis, u.s., flesh, gone, roger, out. Sunshine testing loud and clear.’
‘You make it sound very convincing,’ Soames replied straightforwardly, mopping his face.
Timpleton had reached the Mayor’s table. He plonked the note on the table and returned without stopping or speaking to the computer room.
‘I’m going to get bloody drunk,’ he announced, picking up his jacket and hanging it over one shoulder with a thumb. ‘Come on, L’Panto, you can help me. More elbow up-down, quick time, plenty glass.’
‘You’ll regret it in the morning,’ Soames said, half-jokingly.
‘So what? My job’s over now. I’m time-expired now, I’m just waiting to shoot off home. This place is a crazy place. Nothing fits.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, anything,’ Timpleton said grumpily. ‘Look, witch doctors and computers, engineers and bullock carts: it’s all looney. This place is like a sort of junk shop, Soames. Hasn’t that struck you? They’ve got real proper pull-chain water closets, but there’s no water in ’em, so a chap comes round each morning with a bucket to empty ’em. It’s screwy, it makes you want to drink! And yesterday I saw a nigger lying on a pile of dirty rushes with a bowler hat hung over his bed. It’s just little things like that –’
‘Wait a minute,’ Soames said. ‘This bowler hat – where was it?’
‘Never mind where it was, that’s not what I’m telling you.’
‘I know, Ted. But whoever drove that renegade engine the other night was reported to be wearing a bowler hat. Now, I’d like to investigate this one you’ve seen. It may be the same one – there can’t be many bowlers in Umbalathorp.’
Timpleton described the position of the hut in which he had sheltered from the rain shower, without showing any great interest in Soames’ theory.
‘It sounds like the hut in which I first met Dumayami,’ Soames said. ‘I wouldn’t mind betting this was all his doing – the engine episode, I mean. If only we could pin it on him … See you later, Ted, eh? Go and get drunk.’
‘Where are you going?’ Ted asked suspiciously.
‘To visit the English colony,’ Soames said.
Soames caught a rickshaw outside the palace gates and was duly pulled up Stranger’s Hill. When he had paid the man and watched him go away, Soames still lingered by a group of trees near the Pickets’ bungalow. A light burning miserably o
n the verandah threw a cold glow out into the darkness. The mission that seemed clear-cut to Soames a few minutes ago had developed a lot of misty corners; his determination was slipping. He told himself he had come to investigate bowler hats, but he knew it was impossible to go to the bungalow without resuming some sort of contact with Grace Picket. Grace had to be faced eventually, but for preference not just yet.
Human relationships are sticky as spider webs. We run into them cheerfully enough, then they stretch a mile rather than break and let us go free. If we poor flies were not also spiders at heart, the matter might be easier.
While Soames hovered in true Noyesian indecision, cursing impatiently once more the fact that his parents had been as opposite in nature as they were in sex, another rickshaw drew up a little further down the road. A figure climbed down, gestured to the driver to wait, and began to walk moth-foot along the road.
‘So – I’m being followed!’ Soames exclaimed, shrinking against a tree trunk. The figure, without noticing him, chose the adjoining tree trunk and peered towards Picket’s bungalow.
‘Nice view,’ Soames said angrily, recognising his neighbour.
‘Oh … oh, sir, such startlements are greatly harming to the constitution,’ Turdilal Ghosti exclaimed, for – in the Victorian novelists’ phrase – it was he. ‘Each and every beat of my poor old bloody heart is missing in surprise, sir, to cause much anguish.’
‘Serves you right,’ Soames said. ‘I don’t suppose you will bother to deny you had come up here to spy on me?’
The yellow goat’s pupils surveyed him widely through the gloom.
‘I, sir? A spy, sir? I make a protest! I am the palace chef, with much long years’ training behind me at Firpo’s, also other reliable restaurants. How I am knowing you are up here creeping in the trees, sir? My innocence is entirely a full hundred per cent.’