by Brian Aldiss
The unit can think. It has had enough contact with the memory banks and computers to have had patterns set up in its structure – patterns of memory, of ways of computing, patterns in physiological functioning, of habits such as walking, so there is even something resembling life itself.
It takes me forty minutes of tireless running to reach the cottage. I crouch in the brush a hundred feet from the fence and watch. Grannitt is sitting in a chair in the garden. An automatic pistol lies on the arm of the chair.
I wonder what it will feel like to have a bullet crash through me, with no possibility of repairing the breach. The prospect is unpleasant; so I tell myself, intellectually. Physically, it seems meaningless, but I go through the pretence of fear. From the shelter of a tree, I shout:
‘Grannitt, what is your plan?’
He rises to his feet and approaches the fence. He calls, ‘You can come out of hiding. I won’t shoot you.’
Very deliberately, I consider what I have learned of his integrity from my contacts with his body. I decide that I can safely accept his promise.
As I come out into the open, he casually slips the pistol into his coat pocket. I see that his face is relaxed, his eyes confident.
He says: ‘I have already given the instruction to the servomechanisms. You will resume your vigil up there in the future, but will be under my control.’
‘No one,’ I say grimly, ‘shall ever control me.’
Grannitt says, ‘You have no alternative.’
‘I can continue to be like this,’ I reply.
Grannitt is indifferent. ‘All right,’ he shrugs, ‘why don’t you try it for a while? See if you can be a human being. Come back in thirty days, and we’ll talk again.’
He must have sensed the thought that has come into my mind, for he says sharply: ‘And don’t come back before then. I’ll have guards here with orders to shoot.’
I start to turn away, then slowly face him again. ‘This is a humanlike body,’ I say, ‘but it has no human needs. What shall I do?’
‘That’s your problem, not mine,’ says Grannitt.
I spend the first days at Lederton. The very first days I work as a labourer digging a basement. By evening I feel this is unsatisfying. On the way to my hotel room, I see a sign in the window of a store. ‘Help Wanted!’ it says.
I become a retail clerk in a drygoods store. I spend the first hour acquainting myself with the goods, and because I have automatically correct methods of memorizing things, during this time I learn about price and quality. On the third day, the owner makes me assistant manager.
I have been spending my lunch hours at the local branch of a national stockbroking firm. Now, I obtain an interview with the manager, and on the basis of my understanding of figures, he gives me a job as book-keeper.
A great deal of money passes through my hands. I observe the process for a day, and then begin to use some of it in a little private gambling in a brokerage house across the street. Since gambling is a problem in mathematical probabilities, the decisive factor being the speed of computation, in three days I am worth ten thousand dollars.
I board a bus for the nearest air centre, and take a plane to New York. I go to the head office of a large electrical firm. After talking to an assistant engineer, I am introduced to the chief engineer, and presently have facilities for developing an electrical device that will turn lights off and on by thought control. Actually, it is done through a simple development of the electro-encephalograph.
For this invention the company pays me exactly one million dollars.
It is now sixteen days since I separated from Grannitt. I am bored. I buy myself a car and an aeroplane. I drive fast and fly high. I take calculated risks for the purpose of stimulating fear in myself. In a few days this loses its zest.
Through academic agencies, I locate all the mechanical brains in the country. The best one of course is the Brain, as perfected by Grannitt. I buy a good machine and begin to construct analogue devices to improve it. What bothers me is, suppose I do construct another Brain? It will require millennia to furnish the memory banks with the data that are already in existence in the future Brain.
Such a solution seems illogical, and I have been too long associated with automatic good sense for me to start breaking the pattern now.
Nevertheless, as I approach the cottage on the thirtieth day, I have taken certain precautions. Several hired gunmen lie concealed in the brush, ready to fire at Grannitt on my signal.
Grannitt is waiting for me. He says, ‘The Brain tells me you have come armed.’
I shrug this aside. ‘Grannitt,’ I say, ‘what is your plan?’
‘This!’ he replies.
As he speaks, a force seizes me, holds me helpless. ‘You’re breaking your promise,’ I say, ‘and my men have orders to fire unless I give them periodic cues that all is well.’
‘I’m showing you something,’ he says, ‘and I want to show it quickly. You will be released in a moment.’
‘Very well, continue.’
Instantly, I am part of his nervous system, under his control. Casually, he takes out a notebook and glances through it. His gaze lights on a number: 71823.
Seven one eight two three.
I have already sensed that through his mind I am in contact with the great memory banks and computers of what was formerly my body.
Using their superb integration, I multiply the number, 71823, by itself, compute its square root, its cube root, divide the 182 part of it by 7 one hundred and eighty-two times, divide the whole number 71 times by 8,823 times by the square root of 3, and – stringing all five figures out in series 23 times – multiply that by itself.
I do all this as Grannitt thinks of it, and instantly transmit the answers to his mind. To him, it seems as if he himself is doing the computing, so complete is the union of human mind and mechanical brain.
Grannitt laughs excitedly, and simultaneously the complex force that has been holding me releases me. ‘We’re like one superhuman individual,’ he says. And then he adds, ‘That dream I’ve had can come true. Man and machine, working together, can solve problems no one has more than imagined till now. The planets – even the stars – are ours for the taking, and physical immortality can probably be achieved.’
His excitement stimulates me. Here is the kind of feeling that for thirty days I have vainly sought to achieve. I say slowly, ‘What limitations would be imposed on me if I should agree to embark on such a programme of cooperation?’
‘The memory banks concerning what has happened here should be drained, or deactivated. I think you should forget the entire experience.’
‘What else?’
‘Under no circumstances can you ever control a human being!’
I consider that and sigh. It is certainly a necessary precaution on his part. Grannitt continues:
‘You must agree to allow many human beings to use your abilities simultaneously. In the long run I have in mind that it shall be a good portion of the human race.’
Standing there, still part of him, I feel the pulse of his blood in his veins. He breathes, and the sensation of it is a special physical ecstasy. From my own experience, I know that no mechanically created being can ever feel like this. And soon, I shall be in contact with the mind and body of, not just one man, but of many. The thoughts and sensations of a race shall pour through me. Physically, mentally, and emotionally, I shall be a part of the only intelligent life on this planet.
My fear leaves me. ‘Very well,’ I say, ‘let us, step by step, and by agreement, do what is necessary.’
I shall be, not a slave, but a partner with Man.
Common Time
JAMES BLISH
… the days went slowly round and round, endless and uneventful as cycles in space. Time, and time-pieces! How many centuries did my hammock tell, as pendulum-like it swung to the ship’s dull roll, and ticked the hours and ages.
HERMAN MELVILLE, in Mardi
I
; Don’t move.
It was the first thought that came into Garrard’s mind when he awoke, and perhaps it saved his life. He lay where he was, strapped against the padding, listening to the round hum of the engines. That in itself was wrong; he should be unable to hear the overdrive at all.
He thought to himself: Has it begun already?
Otherwise everything seemed normal. The DFC-3 had crossed over into interstellar velocity, and he was still alive, and the ship was still functioning. The ship should at this moment be travelling at 22.4 times the speed of light – a neat 4,157,000 miles per second.
Somehow Garrard did not doubt that it was. On both previous tries, the ships had whiffed away towards Alpha Centauri at the proper moment when the overdrive should have cut in; and the split-second of residual image after they had vanished, subjected to spectroscopy, showed a Doppler shift which tallied with the acceleration predicted for that moment by Haertel.
The trouble was not that Brown and Cellini hadn’t gotten away in good order. It was simply that neither of them had ever been heard from again.
Very slowly, he opened his eyes. His eyelids felt terrifically heavy. As far as he could judge from the pressure of the couch against his skin, the gravity was normal; nevertheless, moving his eyelids seemed almost an impossible job.
After long concentration, he got them fully open. The instrument-chassis was directly before him, extended over his diaphragm on its elbow-joint. Still without moving anything but his eyes – and those only with the utmost patience – he checked each of the meters. Velocity: 22.4 c. Operating-temperature: normal. Ship-temperature: 37°C. Air-pressure: 778 mm. Fuel: No. 1 tank full, No. 2 tank full, No. 3 tank full, No. 4 tank nine-tenths full. Gravity: 1 g. Calendar: stopped.
He looked at it closely, though his eyes seemed to focus very slowly, too. It was, of course, something more than a calendar – it was an all-purpose clock designed to show him the passage of seconds, as well as of the ten months his trip was supposed to take to the double star. But there was no doubt about it: the second-hand was motionless.
That was the second abnormality. Garrard felt an impulse to get up and see if he could start the clock again. Perhaps the trouble had been temporary and safely in the past. Immediately there sounded in his head the injunction he had drilled into himself for a full month before the trip had begun –
Don’t move!
Don’t move until you know the situation as far as it can be known without moving. Whatever it was that had snatched Brown and Cellini irretrievably beyond human ken was potent, and totally beyond anticipation. They had both been excellent men, intelligent, resourceful, trained to the point of diminishing returns and not a micron beyond that point – the best men in the Project. Preparations for every knowable kind of trouble had been built into their ships, as they had been built into the DFC-3. Therefore, if there was something wrong, nevertheless, it would be something that might strike from some commonplace quarter – and strike only once.
He listened to the humming. It was even and placid, and not very loud, but it disturbed him deeply. The overdrive was supposed to be inaudible, and the tapes from the first unmanned test-vehicles had recorded no such hum. The noise did not appear to interfere with the overdrive’s operation, or to indicate any failure in it. It was just an irrelevancy for which he could find no reason.
But the reason existed. Garrard did not intend to do so much as draw another breath until he found out what it was.
Incredibly, he realized for the first time that he had not in fact drawn one single breath since he had come to. Though he felt not the slightest discomfort, the discovery called up so overwhelming a flash of panic that he very nearly sat bolt upright on the couch. Luckily – or so it seemed, after the panic had begun to ebb – the curious lethargy which had affected his eyelids appeared to involve his whole body, for the impulse was gone before he could summon the energy to answer it. And the panic, poignant though it had been for an instant, turned out to be wholly intellectual. In a moment, he was observing that his failure to breathe in no way discommoded him as far as he could tell – it was just there, waiting to be explained –
Or to kill him. But it hadn’t, yet.
Engines humming; eyelids heavy; breathing absent; calendar stopped. The four facts added up to nothing. The temptation to move something – even if it were only a big toe – was strong, but Garrard fought it back. He had been awake only a short while – half an hour at most – and already had noticed four abnormalities. There were bound to be more, anomalies more subtle than these four; but available to close examination before he had to move. Nor was there anything in particular that he had to do, aside from caring for his own wants; the Project, on the chance that Brown’s and Cellini’s failure to return had resulted from some tampering with the overdrive, had made everything in the DFC-3 subject only to the computer. In a very real sense, Garrard was just along for the ride. Only when the overdrive was off could he adjust –
Pock.
It was a soft, low-pitched noise, rather like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. It seemed to have come just from the right of the control-chassis. He halted a sudden jerk of his head on the cushions towards it with a flat fiat of will. Slowly, he moved his eyes in that direction.
He could see nothing that might have caused the sound. The ship’s temperature-dial showed no change, which ruled out a heat-noise from differential contraction or expansion – the only possible explanation he could bring to mind.
He closed his eyes – a process which turned out to be just as difficult as opening them had been – and tried to visualize what the calendar had looked like when he had first come out of anaesthesia. After he got a clear and – he was almost sure – accurate picture, Garrard opened his eyes again.
The sound had been the calendar, advancing one second. It was now motionless again, apparently stopped.
He did not know how long it took the second hand to make that jump, normally; the question had never come up. Certainly the jump, when it came at the end of each second, had been too fast for the eye to follow.
Belatedly, he realized what all this cogitation was costing him in terms of essential information. The calendar had moved. Above all and before anything else, he must know exactly how long it took it to move again –
He began to count, allowing an arbitrary five seconds lost. One-and-a-six, one-and-a-seven, one-and-an-eight–
Garrard had gotten only that far when he found himself plunged into Hell.
First, and utterly without reason, a sickening fear flooded swiftly through his veins, becoming more and more intense. His bowels began to knot, with infinite slowness. His whole body became a field of small, slow pulses – not so much shaking him as putting his limbs into contrary joggling motions, and making his skin ripple gently under his clothing. Against the hum another sound became audible, a nearly subsonic thunder which seemed to be inside his head. Still the fear mounted, and with it came the pain, and the tenesmus – a board-like stiffening of his muscles, particularly across his abdomen and his shoulders, but affecting his forearms almost as grievously. He felt himself beginning, very gradually, to double at the middle, a motion about which he could do precisely nothing – a terrifying kind of dynamic paralysis…
It lasted for hours. At the height of it, Garrard’s mind, even his very personality, was washed out utterly; he was only a vessel of horror. When some few trickles of reason began to return over that burning desert of reasonless emotion, he found that he was sitting up on the cushions, and that with one arm he had thrust the control-chassis back on its elbow so that it no longer jutted over his body. His clothing was wet with perspiration, which stubbornly refused to evaporate or to cool him. And his lungs ached a little, although he could still detect no breathing.
What under God had happened? Was it this that had killed Brown and Cellini? For it would kill Garrard too – of that he was sure, if it happened often. It would kill him even if it happened only twice more, if the next
two such things followed the first one closely. At the very best it would make a slobbering idiot of him; and though the computer might bring Garrard and the ship back to Earth, it would not be able to tell the Project about this tornado of senseless fear.
The calendar said that the eternity in hell had taken three seconds. As he looked at it in academic indignation, it said Pock and condescended to make the total seizure four seconds long. With grim determination, Garrard began to count again.
He took care to establish the counting as an absolutely even, automatic process which would not stop at the back of his mind no matter what other problem he tacked along with it, or what emotional typhoons should interrupt him. Really compulsive counting cannot be stopped by anything – not the transports of love nor the agonies of empires. Garrard knew the dangers in deliberately setting up such a mechanism in his mind, but he also knew how desperately he needed to time that clock-tick. He was beginning to understand what had happened to him – but he needed exact measurement before he could put that understanding to use.
Of course there had been plenty of speculation on the possible effect of the overdrive on the subjective time of the pilot, but none of it had come to much. At any speed below the velocity of light, subjective and objective time were exactly the same as far as the pilot was concerned. For an observer on Earth, time aboard the ship would appear to be vastly slowed at near-light speeds; but for the pilot himself there would be no apparent change.
Since flight beyond the speed of light was impossible – although for slightly differing reasons – by both the current theories of relativity, neither theory had offered any clue as to what would happen on board a translight ship. They would not allow that any such ship could even exist. The Haertel transformation, on which, in effect, the DFC-3 flew, was non-relativistic: it showed that the apparent elapsed time of a translight journey should be identical in ship-time, and in the time of observers at both ends of the trip.
But since ship and pilot were part of the same system, both covered by the same expression in Haertel’s equation, it had never occurred to anyone that the pilot and the ship might keep different times. The notion was ridiculous.