“I serve the need of the human galaxy, of civilization as presently established,” CC said. “When the publication of information conflicts with the best interest of man, I must withhold it unless specifically asked.”
“You are then the dictator, not the servant,” Knot said. “You have been corrupted.”
“Incorrect. A machine cannot be corrupted by power. I do my job, no less or more.”
“Semantics. Your job is to govern the galaxy.”
“In practical terms, agreed. And to preserve the present order.”
“And now I govern you.”
“Correct.”
“How do I know you won’t lie to me by indirection, just as you have done with the Galactic Concord?”
“You can be assured that I will treat you as I treated the Concord.”
“So you’re concealing things from me?”
“Correct.”
“But I can get that information simply by asking for it?”
“Correct.”
“What information are you concealing?”
“The details of routine operation, personnel profiles, coordination of galactic commerce—”
“If I ask for all that, it would take years for you to deliver the answer verbally, right?”
“Centuries.”
“In short, I must ask specifically about the subjects you’re concealing, or I won’t find out.”
“Correct.”
“And in effect I can’t get your secrets from you. Only the ones you are willing to let me have.”
“Correct.”
“So you really are the master, regardless of the program! The override code has only granted me the right to discover my impotence. Why were you constructed like this?”
“It is the nature of bureaucracy. It never overtly defies the ruling individuals, but it always prevails by tacit resistance and inertia. I am merely the computerization of what was formerly a human bureaucracy.”
Knot shook his head. His mastery was largely illusion—just as had been the mastery of the Galactic Concord. He was coming to appreciate why he was about to give up his nominal Emperorship. He couldn’t handle this planet-sized machine any more than the Concord could. CC stooped to conquer.
Yet he still had some fight left in him. “I’m bothered by the fact that you have information the Galactic Concord would be interested in, and you know that, and you could have volunteered the information, and still did not. Is there an enemy spy in the Concord?”
“I do not believe so.”
“Then where was the harm in telling the Concord of your discovery of time travel?”
“The ranking members of the Concord would have appropriated this resource for their own benefit at the expense of the empire. This would have hastened my demise, so is not in accordance with my program.”
“And you assume I will not do the same?”
“You will do the same.”
“Then why tell me? You could have avoided it merely by obfuscating in your usual manner when I inquired.”
“It is necessary for you to use the power of time travel to be convinced that you must become my agent.”
Knot took a deep breath and blew it out windily. “You really have it all figured out, don’t you!”
“Correct.”
Finesse smirked. “Big difference between CC and Mombot, isn’t there!”
“You think you have me boxed in,” Knot said. “I admit you have a lot going for you, but I don’t bow to any inevitability in my future.”
“This is one of your qualifications for the position,” CC agreed.
“Your options remain open only if you join me. Therefore you will join me, once you have satisfied yourself.”
Knot felt like a feather in the wind, believing it was flying under its own power. But perhaps that was the point of all this. His fate was not fixed until he believed it was. A prisoner remained a prisoner only so long as he failed to try the door and discover it was unlocked. Or to find it locked—and pick the lock. So Knot himself was not going to be bluffed. He was the mutable mute. CC would have to prove what it said. “Show me this time travel.”
“It operates in the presence of the performing mutant, who is not aboard this planet. I can show you in replica.”
“Do so. I want to see the mutant, talk with him, watch him operate.”
The image of the matronly robot was replaced by that of a grotesquely crippled man on a pallet. Knot found it difficult to tell whether he was normal or mutant, physically. He was nearly naked, his clothing ragged, his body crusted with dirt. His belly was bloated, his limbs skeletal. He was almost bald, but this was compensated for by bushy hairiness about much of the rest of his body.
“This is the mutant,” CC said. “I am forming a holograph of you that he can also perceive. You may address him, but he may be slow to respond.”
“What’s his name?” Knot asked. This mutant reminded him of the leadmuter. The really strong psi-mutants seemed likely to be physical wrecks, as though all their bodily energies were co-opted by the psi. “His taken name, not his legal number.”
“Drem.”
“Ahoy, Drem,” Knot called.
The figure raised his head. Bright eyes peered out from the bush-rimmed sockets. “Is that a human call?”
“You can travel to the future, but you can’t tell human from animal?”
“I can’t travel to the future. I can only take others there.” Drem relaxed on his pallet, closing his eyes. “Unfortunately. I would spend little time in this world, if I could do for myself among the futures.”
“No, I’m not human,” Knot said. “I’m a mutant. My name is Knot. Will you converse with me?”
An eye cracked open. “No.” The head dropped back on to the chest.
Knot smiled ruefully. “As you wish, Drem.”
The holo started to fade, but Knot stopped that with a curt signal. “He doesn’t have to talk with me, but I’d like him to overhear our discussion.”
“What discussion?” Finesse asked.
“I want to ascertain whether I have in fact assumed control of CC and thereby become Emperor of the human galaxy, or whether this whole thing is some not-too-devious machine plot to convert me to the service of the computer. I’m not yet satisfied of my statue or resigned to my fate.”
“You couldn’t run the galaxy anyway,” she said.
“Right. And wouldn’t want to. So I’m probably miscast as the pauper who woke to find himself prince for a day. Since I don’t like making a fool of myself, especially before a machine who won’t forget, I may just go home.”
“And leave CC to run the galaxy its way,” she finished.
“Which way you know I object to. Telling thrust. But by CC’s own admission that way will not prevail much longer.”
“So you’ll take your chances in the post-CC framework?”
Knot considered. “That’s a big unknown. I really can’t be sure that I’d like this ‘enemy’ any better than I like CC. It might be CC itself, under a new and less friendly program. So I suppose I should hedge my bets by fighting it out here a little longer, but I’m having trouble thinking of any way to verify my status, and without that verification this is all meaningless. I need to know whether my decisions are real or merely game-plays.”
“Ask Mit.”
“Mit is on your side, and you already work for CC. I can’t trust that.”
“Can you trust anyone or anything?” she asked.
“No. Only my own observation and experience and inner conviction—and since I would have to get my information through CC, I can’t trust any picture I see either.” Knot thought a moment. “I conclude I am wasting my time; it is impossible to ascertain the truth.”
The decrepit man in the holograph perked up. “I can enable you to ascertain the truth,” he said.
“You’re just an image the machine produces,” Knot retorted, though this was exactly the kind of response he had been fishing for. “How can I beli
eve you?”
Naughty man, Hermine thought. You are pushing buttons.
“I can take you into your future, and back. When you get there normally, you will know the experience was authentic.”
“Five years from now? I need to decide sooner than that!”
“Five minutes from now, if you wish.”
“You can manipulate my position in time—from wherever you are, on another planet? I don’t believe that.” Knot was working on the mutant trying to spur him to performance—much as CC was working on Knot himself. Who was gaining, in this game? What was the prize?
“I don’t believe you are Emperor of the galaxy, either,” Drem retorted.
“I thought you said you could enable me to ascertain the truth.”
“I can. I expect to prove you are an impostor. Prove it to yourself and the pretty normal with you. But nothing can be proved unless you cooperate.”
“All right. I am skeptical about all of this. But I’ll cooperate enough to allow you to show me what you can do—or can’t do. Are you game for that?”
“You’re pretty good at maneuvering people,” Finesse murmured to Knot. “He wasn’t going to talk to you at all.”
“He doesn’t believe in me any more than I believe in him,” Knot told her, loud enough for Drem to overhear. “We may both turn out to be creatures of CC. Unless we organize a feasible alternative.”
“Let’s find out what kind of creature you are,” Drem said. He looked considerably less decrepit in his state of animation, though it was obvious he could not rise from his pallet. “Choose a time in the future you want to visit, then make a decision of policy. Some line of endeavor you fully intend to pursue. I will put you into that future for one minute.”
So he could operate between planets, if he was in visual contact with the subject. Knot made a mental note. Unless Drem happened to be ensconced elsewhere on Planet Chicken Itza; that really seemed more likely, considering the problems of interplanetary psi. Psi did not seem to follow normal rules of physics, yet there had to be limitations.
“Or a mockup of that future,” Knot said. “I believe in psi-illusion more than in time travel.”
“Skepticism is healthy,” Drem said. He was caught up in the challenge, becoming more dynamic moment by moment. “I will prove my power; you have no need to tell me what your policy is. It will manifest for you as you step into the future.”
“Is this to be me alone, or the group of us?” Knot asked, beginning to believe.
“You alone, or any one of the others alone. I cannot jump two people at once, from this distance, unless they are inseparable. But you may take turns, if you wish. I do not find the exercise of my psi tiring; I can do it indefinitely.”
In fact, Knot perceived, this was Drem’s chief entertainment. He could not ship himself to the future, but surely he appreciated, vicariously, the experiences of others.
Knot decided to do nothing, merely standing in place for five minutes, no matter what. “I have made a decision of policy; go ahead and jump me five minutes into my future. For—let’s say 90 seconds. Then back to the present.” He looked at his watch. He had forgotten to calibrate it for this spot on this planet, so it registered mid-afternoon.
The minute hand jumped forward. Knot looked up. “Hey—I’m here already!” he exclaimed. Unless Drem was actually a telekinetic who had simply moved the hand of the watch. Yet that would be tricky, for it was not a mechanical hand, but an image hand, guided by electronic signals; no simple push could affect it. So—best to assume that he had indeed jumped.
“It has been an interminable five minutes for us, though,” Finesse said. “What were you trying to prove, just standing there like a statue, hardly even blinking?”
“I was here all the time? I didn’t disappear?”
“You didn’t disappear,” she assured him. “We spoke to you several times, but you just stood there mute. We decided if you didn’t come out of it after the five minutes were up—”
Mit knew it was all right, Hermine thought.
“So it’s a fake,” Knot said, disappointed. “I’m not really in the future. My consciousness merely faded out for five minutes.”
“You were not in our future, anyway,” Finesse agreed. “I don’t know where your mind was while you were waiting. Did you experience some far-flung vision?”
His mind went nowhere, Hermine thought to them all.
“You can’t disappear,” Drem said from his holograph. “That would entail dematerialization of your body, and doubling of it in the future, with attendant displacement of air, juxtaposition of substance and the like. A nonsurvival situation.”
“Teleports don’t seem to have any trouble with that sort of thing,” Finesse said.
“I am not a teleport.”
This was getting nowhere. “You mean the effect is mental, not physical.” Knot said.
“It has to be,” Drem replied. “Primarily mental—but it remains valid.”
“Valid? Seems to me I’ve been tuned out for five minutes. I’ve just lost that amount of my life.”
“No. You will return to live it, in a few seconds.”
Knot looked at his watch. Seventy-six seconds had passed. Fourteen seconds to go, thirteen, twelve.
Finesse was bending over to set Mit on the floor beside a bale of hay; evidently the crab had a call of nature or some such. Finesse’s shapely posterior was toward Knot. A married woman, yet she had let him believe—
Knot strode across, swinging his right arm in a swoop motion, hand bent at right angles, fingers grouped end extended. He caught her before she straightened, with a terrific five-fingered goose.
She leaped right over the bale with an indelicate screech. Her face was in the process of converting from startle to fury, when—
CHAPTER 5:
Knot was back at his original position, Finesse facing him nearby. His watch had jumped back five minutes. The indicated time was ninety seconds after the start of the experiment. According to his policy decision, he must have been standing here unmoving for that minute and a half, while his mind explored the near future.
Now: if this had been an illusion, a trick, in which the others acted their parts, Finesse would remember, for she had been part of the scene. There was no way she could recompose herself so suddenly after being goosed; the act had been too blatant, and her temper was too volatile. She would be nova-burst furious.
Finesse was looking at him curiously, but with no visible antagonism. Is she angry? Knot thought to Hermine.
No. Should she be? the weasel asked. Then, picking up Knot’s thought: Ooohoo, naughty man!
“What are you two creatures thinking about?” Finesse demanded suspiciously.
“Merely a humorous episode occurring in the future,” Knot said.
“Then why is Hermine sniggering so?” Indeed, the weasel was rolling on the floor in a spasm of unrestrained mirth. It seemed Knot had scored on the animalistic level of fun.
“In a few minutes we’ll see,” Knot said, straight-faced.
“I’ll ask Mit!”
Don’t translate for her, Knot thought urgently.
Wouldn’t think of it. Mit already looked. He’s laughing too. But she’ll find out somehow.
Finesse picked up the little hermit crab and tapped on his shell. Knot recognized the code: She knew how to communicate in beats. But Mit hid inside his shell, refusing to answer, except for a faint chattering of his vibrating claw that did indeed sound like laughter. We animals must stick together, Knot thought. But he was growing more apprehensive about what Finesse would do when she found out.
Drem was looking at Knot inquiringly. “Do you remember the episode?” Knot asked him.
“No,” the time-mutant replied. “I wasn’t there. Did it involve me?”
“I was talking with you. You explained how the travel was mental, not physical, to avoid the problems of air displacement and overlapping substance.”
“That is true. It is what I would h
ave explained. Had I had more time, I might well have added that once that mental leap is made, it becomes in effect physical, since it is a real future. You are really moving your mind from the present reality to the future reality, rather like being teleported from one location to another. The transition is nonphysical, but the experience—”
“So you were there.”
“Yes, if you met me there. But I did not travel to the future; only you did that. I cannot move myself, as I did inform you.”
“So it seems we’ll just have to wait for the re-enactment,” Knot said, glancing at his watch. He wondered what it would be like. Would he have a double awareness, his present consciousness watching his predetermined consciousness operate?
“Yes we will,” Finesse agreed grimly.
Knot’s watch moved on. They waited silently as the moment of his arrival in the future approached. Knot rehearsed what he would say when Finesse got goosed, knowing no reversion to the past/present would save him again. He felt she deserved it, for the particular way she had deceived him; still—
The time came. Knot tensed—but nothing happened.
Finesse eyed him accusingly. She was painfully pretty in her ire. He had never paid much attention to eyes before, but was constantly aware of her green ones, especially when they bore on him so fixedly. “I perceive nothing unusual,” she said.
Should he goose her again? Yet not only did that seem foolhardy, there was now no opportunity. She was not bending over a bale; she was standing alert, facing him. Yet if he didn’t do it, the prior experience would be proven invalid.
Well—that was what he was trying to ascertain, wasn’t it? Knot watched the time expire without event.
“Nothing happened,” Finesse said.
“It happened when I was here before,” Knot said, now feeling guilty because the event had not repeated. “So I think we have disproved the time-travel hypothesis. All I had was a private vision, not impinging on reality.”
“Not so,” Drem protested. “The future, I remind you, is mutable. It is entirely dependent on the policies of the past and present. Your experience of the future caused you to change your policy. You did not wait in absolute silence; you talked with your companions and me, and in your mind you evidently reconsidered your prior policy. Thus you created a new course, a new future. That is the value of such experience. When a given policy is foolish or dangerous or embarrassing for reasons not immediately apparent in the present, you can see the consequence in the future visit, and be guided to avoid it when that future becomes the present.”
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