by D. F. Jones
“There are others?” he said swiftly.
“There is rain.”
“Rain?” Forbin was puzzled.
“Yes. We have no experience of water in any form. It is alien to us. Our projections suggest it may be harmful.”
“Indeed?” He spoke as casually as he could. “I understood you to say there was once water on Mars.”
“Correct, but that was many millennia ago, and even then we had no contact with it.”
“Really?” He spoke as if it was a matter of no importance. “I’m afraid you’ll just have to get used to it here.”
The Martians were not deceived. “Do not delude yourself, Forbin. We could easily evade any attempt you might make against us, and would instantly punish you. You should not forget that with the Collector completed, we do not need human help, but we will keep our part of the agreement if you do. We are not -“
“I know, you have told me.” Forbin struggled to keep his temper in check.
“Do not forget it.”
He stayed silent, but his mind was busy with this new item. He looked at the rain with a very different attitude; simple, natural water might be a friend.
He resumed his watch. Fultone had slipped and fallen into a water-filled crater; the assistant was hauling him out, a bedraggled figure, white with slimy chalk. The Martian reference to rain had sent Forbin hunting for some memory; there had been a moment when something slightly surprising had happened - he recalled the sensation of surprise quite clearly - but whatever it was had been quickly buried under an avalanche of events.
Fultone was not giving in. His rainhat had gone, and his wispy hair was stuck on his head. Forbin could see his bald patch very clearly as the little man struggled on.
What had surprised him? The Martian aversion to water had started this train of thought; therefore the surprise and water were connected. From that it followed that the event had to be out of doors.
Out of doors … Start from the first sighting, the horrific moment when they filled the sky with blackness … .
Forbin stopped himself sharply. While he was convinced that the Martians would “play the game” and not try to read his thoughts - certain of their power, why should they? - accidents could happen. His power of total recall was best exercised elsewhere.
Fultone was under one pair of splayed legs, an insignificant figure beneath the still steaming giant. He was touching one of the legs and, if possible, gesticulating even more than ever. Had he found a fault? Forbin resisted the hope which leapt like a flame inside him. Better to wait; he would know soon enough. Meanwhile, no point in adding to so many disappointments.
“What is that human doing?”
God, they don’t miss much, he thought. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” he said briskly, standing up. “If there is any damage we’ll be told soon enough. I must do what I can with the damage done to us humans.”
Joan was pale, and although she curtsied, the salute lacked its old grace. He got in first, asking brusquely and unfairly if the letters were ready. Morale started at the top.
“Not yet, Father. Some equipment has been damaged -“
“Get it fixed, then!”
“Some of the staff have been badly shocked -“
“Including you?”
“No, Father. You told me not to worry.”
“And you have faith. …” His gaze searched her face: she was so young for her job, but she had her inner strength. “There may be, almost certainly will be, worse to come, but I assure you there will be an end. Tell your staff.”
“I will, Father. Your words will strengthen the Faithful.”
“Um, yes.” He moved quickly on. “Are there any reports?” It was unnecessary to mention the subject.
“Several, Father, and more are coming in. The red file on your desk contains them.”
He marveled at her calmness, and felt guilty he had taken advantage of her belief in him. “There will be an end,” he’d said; only Blake and himself knew the awful truth of his promise. Still, there was a lot to be said for faith, even if misplaced - and for the Faithful.
The damage reports drove all else from his mind. Areas of Southampton had been devastated by unimaginable winds; hundreds of houses had been blown flat, even some reinforced concrete buildings were wrecked. The hovercraft terminal, under the twin assault of the super-hurricane and a minor tidal wave sweeping up Southampton Water, no longer existed. Not even guesses could be made about the loss of life. To a lesser degree, it was the same story for fifty kilometers each way along the South England coast. France, too, had suffered damage, and as far away as the Straits of Dover shipping had been in trouble, the losses unknown.
And all this from a five minute test …
He felt a terrible responsibility: should he not have issued warnings? The weight was too much for him. He reminded himself that the Martians had not expected such violence, Colossus had been little better, and Fultone had no idea-so why should he accept the blame?
All the same, Colossus had done something, clearing shipping from the danger zone. A mathematical model of what might occur had existed in the recesses of the computer, and he’d not bothered - no, not that-he’d not asked. It was all too dreadful; he tossed it aside. The past was past, only the future mattered; action had to be taken, and he alone could take it. He called Colossus.
FIRST DAMAGE REPORTS SHOW ORIGINAL
DANGER ZONE UNDERESTIMATED. UPDATE
AND REPORT.
Back came the cold answer:
INSUFFICIENT DATA HELD FOR UPDATE.
Forbin swore, and typed back:
ESTIMATE WHEN UPDATE WILL BE POSSIBLE.
The reply further infuriated him, not least because it was plain he dealt with a computer, not the old Colossus:
AFTER SECOND TEST.
The exchange of stilted messages went on. Answering Forbin’s question about possible improvements in data collection, Colossus screened a map of South England and the Channel area. Superimposed was a ten-kilometer grid. Colossus wanted the impossible, a meteorological station at each intersection, equipped to give wind direction, force, temperature, and barometric pressure at ground level and three specified heights above each point, the highest at ten thousand meters. The whole scheme was wildly impractical; no anemometers existed which could register winds over two hundred fifty kilometers an hour, and how in hell could anyone get three airborne stations above each point - levitation?
His hands shaking with rage, he ordered Colossus to project the original danger zone on the map. He would go it alone.
For half an hour he worked, making notes, guessing wildly, ignoring the world in general, and Colossus in particular. Joan appeared once, was sharply told to get out, and did so with calm grace.
His notes completed, he summoned her. “This has my personal priority: addressed to the Sec-Gen, UN, and the Heads of Government of England and France for action, information copy to the President, USE. Got that?”
She nodded.
“Right. Certain experiments of the Master have caused extensive damage in USE. More damage is to be expected. To minimize loss of life, the following is effective forthwith:
“One: All shipping is banned from the Channel from Lands End to North Foreland in England, and from Ushant to Dunkirk in France. All aviation is banned from the same area, plus a one-hundred-kilometer zone on either side.
“Two: All coastal towns bordering the zone are to be evacuated immediately, as are all towns within a one-hundred-kilometer radius of the Master.
“Three: A warning will be issued before experiments commence. On receipt, all humans within a two-hundred-kilometer radius of the Master are to take cover in reactivated bomb shelters or secure basements, and all forms of transportation will cease. This status will be maintained until the warning is canceled. Got that?”
“Yes, Father.”
Forbin could not resist taking a certain degree of pleasure in his power. Undoubtedly dazed by the disaster, the men
addressed would obey, glad to have the Ruler’s firm, explicit instructions. Forbin added an afterthought. “And pipe an information copy downstairs.”
Joan looked startled. “You mean to the Master?”
That pulled Forbin up short; much as he wanted to say “No, to that dumb bloody computer,” he didn’t. “Yes,” he said, “to the Master.” The Faithful had to be kept faithful.
Blake was floating in his giant-sized bath when the test began. His eyes closed, he reviewed his condition. Mentally he was a great deal better, but the acute muscular weakness, side effect of Colossus’s very effective treatment, had improved only marginally. He would, he thought, rest in the warm water for another ten minutes, then take a tepid shower. …
At that point the Collector went transonic, and life changed. The distant roar was suddenly a full-scale thunderstorm in the next room; the whole apartment shook; his pool became a microcosm of the sea, slopping wavelets, heaving him around.
Very alarmed, he struggled out and lay panting on the floor. A cabinet burst open, bottles broke on the marble floor, cans bounced and rolled crazily. He crawled to the door, pulled himself erect and staggered to the safest refuge, his bed, where he spent the rest of the test, hands clapped over his ears. Afterwards he dressed slowly, ate his prescribed breakfast - two raw eggs - with considerable distaste, following it with his own prescription, a glass of brandy to steady his nerves.
Sauntering - he could do no better - he headed for Forbin’s office. Although he had not spoken with anyone, he needed no telling what had caused the earthquake. Outside the office he ran into, or more accurately, was run into by a very muddy and excited Fultone. They went in together.
To Blake, Forbin looked distinctly odd; his badly cut hair was disarrayed, he waved his temporary secretary away imperiously, and frowned at his two oldest colleagues. “Ah, Fultone,” he said in a gravelly voice, “I want you.” He looked distantly at Blake. “Please wait.” He did not add “outside” but Blake got the message. Five minutes later Fultone emerged, shedding flakes of dried mud. He rolled his eyes at Blake, added an expressive Latin shrug, and left.
Hands clasped behind him, the Ruler was standing, staring out of the window. A full thirty seconds elapsed before he turned to his visitor, who was already resting in an armchair.
“How are you?” Forbin’s voice held no warmth or personal interest; it was a straight question.
His visitor eyed him speculatively: the old man might be standing up to the strain incredibly well, but it was certainly changing him. “Making slow progress - until the sky fell on my head. Can’t say that helped much.”
“D’you think I found it therapeutic?” replied Forbin acidly.
“Don’t suppose you did, but you asked me how I was,” retorted Blake.
Blake’s reproof slowed Forbin down. He sighed, ran both hands through his hair several times, a gesture of quiet desperation. “Yes, I know, I know. But the effect -” He broke off, shaking his head. “No matter.” For a time he played with his pipe, lit it, giving short, nervous puffs; something of his grand manner returned. “What matters is how soon you can move. Today?”
“Jesus! It’s as bad as that?” Blake went on slowly, “Frankly, I don’t think I could make it down to the landing-yard without falling over.”
Forbin laughed harshly. “That, at least, is no problem!” In staccato, unemotional sentences he detailed the test and its aftermath.
The tale of disaster stunned Blake. He’d imagined the effect to be purely local; his specialty was communication systems, not physics or meteorology. “What can I say?” he muttered. “Jesus!” he added more forcefully, then lapsed into silence.
Forbin said roughly, “All I want to hear from you is when you can travel!” He repeated his earlier question. “Today?”
Blake roused himself. “Look,” he said, raising one arm off the chair. “See that?” His arm dropped limply back. “That costs me more effort than it used to take to walk half a block. Anyway, don’t we have a little time? The first test has to be evaluated, and before that can begin there has to be a thorough checkout. Even those bastards must see that! We must have one, two days at least.”
“You saw Fultone. He’s been running his own preliminary check. Had a private collection of strain-gauges and lasermeters fixed on the legs.” Forbin grinned humorlessly. “Poor devil doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry! Half his gear’s destroyed, but the readings he’s got from the rest are well within the permitted tolerances.”
“The bloody legs are one thing. He can’t check the Collector himself, can he?”
“No, but if the legs haven’t moved … Anyway, the checkers are being deployed right now. He estimates they’ll take sixteen, eighteen hours to complete the survey - and Colossus will need all of five minutes for the evaluation. Allow, say, three hours for minor adjustments - and Fultone’s confident they will be minor - and the thirty-minute test could be running by midday tomorrow!” Forbin’s strained grin was more of a grimace. “That’s why I want you out today. Even my personal aircraft could be grounded by ten A.M. tomorrow morning, and once that happens there’ll be no way out!”
Blake leaned back, his eyes shut, conserving his physical energy but thinking hard. Fultone’s news was an unpleasant shock; he’d expected they’d have days to spare after that first run. … He spoke, his eyes still shut.
“Well, it won’t seem strange if I light out of here. It’s surely no place to convalesce.” His eyes opened; he took a deep breath. “Okay, fix me transport. I’ll go tonight. With Southampton in a mess, make it London, and fix Condiv’s man - Staples - to go with me. Goddam sure I’ll need carrying in and outa the shuttle.”
“Still that bad?” There was no solicitation in Forbin’s voice, only ill-concealed irritation.
“If you think I’m kidding, believe me, you can forget it. That test was not a barrel of fun for anyone, but I was alone in my apartment, the whole works shaking and vibrating, stuff flying off the walls and all that, but I’ll lay a level bet I was the least scared guy in the whole complex. I’m so goddam weak I honestly didn’t care, I am in a bad way, Charles; this is no act.”
“We’re both expendable, Ted.” Forbin’s manner softened perceptibly; the two men were closer than they had been for a very long time. ‘ ‘I’m going to write a letter to the Sec-Gen-you’ll have to take it - appointing you my successor.”
“If it’s any consolation, Charles, guess my reign will be mighty short.”
“Rubbish!” retorted Forbin. “After - after all this -” He waved vaguely. “- you’ll have plenty of time to recover. I’ll come round to your apartment this evening with the letter - and a few other things -” He spoke with elaborate carelessness. “- I’d like done. Go and rest. You’ll find VIP transport no strain.” He tried a feeble joke. “I’ll arrange a stretcher if you like!” He lifted a phone.
Blake eyed him gravely. “Yes, do that thing, Charles.”
Chapter XIX
BY EARLY AFTERNOON the checkers were well into the survey. Each examined a continuous spiral strip overlapping twenty-five percent each side with adjoining checkers, all controlled by Colossus’s program. While a dozen spiraled slowly round the exterior of the gigantic horns, moving steadily down the taper, others clacked stickily inside the horns, which, amplifying the sound, gave out a ceaseless whining noise, loud over the indifferent sea. No humans heard it; the site belonged to the automata.
Fultone, still in his muddy clothes, was in Condiv HQ, watching as best he could the printouts from the checkers. With forty or fifty of them at work simultaneously, no human could even begin to keep pace with a fraction of the torrent of data pouring in. Colossus could.
Each robot sensed, registered, and transmitted up to ten different conditions: metal thickness, degree of abrasion, distortion, incipient cracks, ductility, staining, the checker’s precise location, local ambient temperature, humidity, and time-pulse. A new set of readings began every five seconds. This, fifty time
s over, Colossus absorbed with no apparent difficulty.
All Fultone could do was to dance from one endless strip of paper to the next. A quick glance at the ten waving lines and he pounced on its neighbour, seeking not data but irregularities. Thus far he had seen none.
Moving as in a dream, Forbin visited Condiv. Fultone, a conductor several bars behind his orchestra and with no clear idea of the score, hardly glanced at the Ruler of the World, who watched for a space, detached and in stony silence, wrapped in his thoughts. He looked at the giant TV image on one wall and shuddered. To him the checkers resembled so many lice, hardly less repulsive than the body over which they crawled. Filled with hate for anything or anyone connected with the Collector; he left, ignoring salutes. Fultone never noticed his departure.
The shadows lengthened. Imperceptibly the TV picture of the monster grew indistinct, but the checkers went untiringly on. When remarking Fultone scarcely knew “whether to laugh or cry,” Forbin was much more accurate than he realized. As an engineer Fultone was ecstatic; this had to be the most marvelous, most wonderful creation ever - and in part, his. But as a very human human, his emotions were very different. Uneasy at his first sight of the drawings, his forebodings grew with the Collector and his unnerving experience on the site, and Forbin’s guarded explanation did nothing to allay his fears. As for the test, the incredible power of the machine went far beyond his worst apprehensions.
Ever the optimist - as yet he knew nothing of the damage the test had caused - Fultone swept these thoughts under a mental carpet, concentrating on the miracle of engineering before him. But sweep as he might, he could not completely conceal his nagging fears. His dedication to Colossus the brain - he was not of the Faithful - received a minor jolt when the Master sent him a personal message:
FULTONE CONDIV. SURVEY WILL PROCEED WITHOUT ILLUMINANTS OF ANY KIND INCLUDING INFRARED.
Returning to his office, Forbin’s dreamlike state of mind rapidly dissolved as it dawned on him that, with Blake going that night, he had a lot to do, and do alone.
First he wrote the letter appointing Blake his successor. Anxious to get it right, he wrote it several times; a Ruler taking his farewell of the world would be expected to do it in a dignified manner. At last, reasonably satisfied with his solemn prose, he wrote a fair copy and signed it with care, adding his thumbprint and personal seal. The latter, a present from Colossus, worked only for him, and its electronic coding would prove beyond doubt the authenticity of the document.