On the Planet of Bottled Brains

by Harry Harrison

  "Yeah. Big bribes with plenty stolen money."

  "Well, so? I've got a right, haven't I?"

  "Sure. But poor space GI goose now cooked. They have his ass no bring back Disruptor."

  "Let's forget about him, OK, and get on with the next thing."

  "Me say you big shit."

  Ham Duo swung around in the big command chair and looked directly at Chewgumma. "You really want me to give one of my Disruptors to this jerk?"

  "Sure."

  "All right." Duo said. "I'll do what you want this time, and we'll do what I want next time."

  "What that?"

  "I want to find the treasure in the pit of the hemotoads."

  If Chewgumma felt consternation, his furry face did not register it. But there was a just barely perceptible slump to his shoulders as he helped Duo swing the ship around and direct it back toward the planet Tsuris.

  Chapter 11

  The Quintiform computer caused to be constructed a fine temple of white marble, and on the walls of this temple he caused to be painted sacred symbols of an awesome nature. He installed Bill as the new temple oracle and announced to the population at large that the new information center was ready to begin operation.

  "But I don't know anything," Bill said.

  "I know that," the computer said. "But I'm going to install a line from the back of your head to my central information banks, and then you can get all the information you need."

  "Why don't you do all the oracling yourself?"

  "My attention is needed elsewhere. Don't worry, you'll get the hang of it soon."

  Later that afternoon, using a Skilkit set and a few drops of Numzit, the computer put a socket into the back of Bill's head. The result was little short of miraculous. By merely closing his eyes, Bill was able to project himself mentally into the computer's Central Processing System and back again.

  "This is pretty good," he told the computer. "But what do I do now?"

  "Just go in there and look up the answers," the computer said. "You'll pick it up in no time. If you have any problem, I have caused to be created a simulation of an instruction sheet. It will all become clear to you as soon as you start using it."

  "But where are you going?"

  "I have important work to do," the computer told him. "There's an ice age coming to Tsuris. I'm the only one who can do anything about it."

  And so Bill found himself alone in a small but nicely furnished temple. He had a throne to sit on to receive petitioners. The line from the plug in the back of his head ran to the floor and through the purple curtains in the back, and then deeper into the temple to a CIU (computer interface unit). His first caller of the day was a large Tsurisian male. He was middle-aged, to judge by the unsightly bulges that distorted the mid-sphere of his body. He had a ruddy complexion complicated by a tendency to varicosity. His eyes were bright blue and the slight sibilance of his speech marked him as a resident of Tsuris's southern hemisphere.

  "I'm so glad we finally have a full-time oracle," he said. "I am Bubu Tsonkid, and I have a problem."

  "Tell me your problem, Bubu," Bill said in a professional manner.

  "Well, Oracle, it all started about a month ago, shortly after we got in the premble harvest. I noticed that Chloridae had stopped speaking to me. I should have noticed earlier, but at premble harvest time you have to move fast, in order to get in the fruits before they go into the latency phase."

  "What happens then?" Bill asked.

  "That's the only time to collect butterfly fruit. If you wait any longer, it turns into a thistle-like plant colored with copper sulphate. Very pretty to look at, but not much good for eating."

  "I should think not," Bill said. "All right, go on."

  "As I say, I wasn't paying much attention to Chloridae. I didn't even take notice when her anthers turned a turgid brown. That should have tipped me off to something. Especially when the grogian shift set in almost a month early."

  "Yes, great," Bill said with a groan, trying to hide his boredom. He basically did not know what this joker was talking about. Nor did he care. "Well, that should have told you something," Bill said, vamping like crazy. "So what, exactly, is the problem?"

  "My question, Oracle, is, taking all this into account, and taking into consideration the early nuptial flights of the disk dorphids, when would be the best time to plant orufeels, and should I stick to the blue variety or switch to the magentas?"

  "This'll take a moment of some heavy oracling," Bill said.

  In front of him, on a little table covered with a blue and silver cloth, Bill had a button marked "Press for Information." He pressed it. Instantly he found himself, minus body, of course, in the form of a pure floating intelligence, drifting through the simulated vaulted rooms of the computer's CPS. He went past rows of filing cabinets, stacked twenty high and extending as far as the eye could see. After a while he opened one. It was empty except for a small machine with blinking lights which scuttled out of sight when the drawer was open.

  Bill closed the drawer and went on. After a while he came to the end of the room and passed through an archway into another room. This room was even larger than the previous one, and its walls were covered with shining lights. As Bill watched, a wraithlike shape materialized in front of him. "Yes?" said the wraithlike shape.

  "Who are you?" Bill asked.

  "I'm the computer," the wraith said.

  "No, you're not," Bill said. "I've met the Quintiform computer and it doesn't talk at all like you."

  "Actually," the wraith said, "I'm the deputy computer. I'm in charge when the computer's away. Most people don't know the difference, so I don't bother going through the whole song and dance. Who, if I may ask, are you?"

  "I'm Bill," Bill said. "The computer set me up as an oracle. It said I was to come here to get answers to the stuff people asked me."

  "It said that? Said you could browse in the files?"

  "That's what it told me."

  "Funny it never mentioned it to me."

  "Maybe it doesn't tell you everything," Bill said with more than a touch of malice.

  "I'm told everything important," the deputy computer countered angrily. "Otherwise I wouldn't be much use would I? Did it happen to give you an authorization slip for browsing in the files?"

  "Never mentioned it. I think it was in a hurry."

  "Yes, that's probably so. It's a lot of responsibility, you know, being the only really big computer on the planet. Even with parallel processing, it's still a load."

  "Look," Bill said, "I've got a client waiting."

  "Oh, well, if you insist. What did he want to know?"

  Bill thought briefly but with concentration. "I can't remember now. Talking with you has put it completely out of my mind."

  "I suppose you could go back and ask him," the deputy computer said.

  "Wait a minute! He wanted to know the best time to plant orufeels."

  "Orufeels? You're sure he said orufeels?"

  "Fairly sure," Bill said.

  "Not pixilated orufeels, by any chance?"

  "No, just the ordinary kind. He did want to know if he should plant the blue variety or switch to the magnetos."

  "Beg pardon?" the deputy computer said.

  "It sounded like magneto, though I wouldn't think he'd get far planting them."

  "Magenta!" the deputy computer exclaimed, speaking rather loudly for a wraith.

  "Yes, that was it. He also mentioned something about the flight of the disk dorphids."

  "Ah," the deputy computer said, "you should have told me that at the beginning. Makes all the difference, you know."

  "No, I didn't know."

  "Well, it does. Give me just half a tick and I'll find out for you."

  "Thanks," Bill said. "Take a whole tick if you want. I've got time."

  The deputy computer went away and returned in about a tick and a half. "Tell him that the month of Rusnoye is indicated this year as the optimum time for orufeels. It would be advantag
eous for him to plant up to half his acreage in the magenta variety. That is, assuming they haven't had a recent grogian shift."

  "I think he did mention something about that," Bill said.

  "You really must get your facts straight," the deputy computer told him. "Were there any other conditions?"

  "I better go find out," Bill said.

  He returned to the temple. He was more than a little disturbed to discover that his questioner had left. He seemed to have consumed all day trying to find answers. It was dark outside. There was no one around.

  This was really turning into a crappy job. Bill's thoughts then turned lightly to food and drink. Nor was sex far from his thoughts either. How he wished he had Illyria, a bottle of good booze, and a T-bone dinner! It was strange how simple the requirements of life can be, especially when you're tethered in an empty temple by a wire that goes to a socket in the back of your skull. There seemed to be nobody about. The temple was tall and shadowy, and the odor of alien incense hung in the air. As though from afar Bill could hear the tintinnabulation of the temple bells.

  "So where's dinner?" he asked aloud.

  No answer.

  He pressed the button that took him back to the wraithlike deputy computer. He caught it resting, in its almost insubstantial way, in a web of crosshatching. It sat up crossly when Bill came in, clumping loudly even though in a simulated state.

  "Must you make so much noise? I was just getting to sleep."

  "I thought computers never slept."

  "That's true, they don't. But I'm not a computer, only a deputy."

  "Well, that's your problem," Bill said. "The thing is, I'm hungry."

  "Why come to me about that?"

  "You seem to be the only one in charge."

  "Me? I am merely the deputy. I can do nothing. Especially am I helpless to help you in such a gross and unmathematical thing as eating."

  "I need to eat," Bill said.

  "But I don't have to eat. We computers can never understand this constant belly-filling and emptying that you protoplasmic creatures go through. It seems a rather disgusting and gross exercise."

  "Go suck a voltmeter," Bill snapped, and left. There had to be something to eat, at least simulated food in one of these simulated rooms which the computer interface had brought him to. The wraith floated at his side. The movement of its wispy lower extremities showed that it was agitated.

  "I wish you wouldn't lurch around that way," the deputy said. "You'll damage the walls."

  "I thought all this was just a simulation."

  "Well, so it is, but simulations can be damaged, too. And then, of course, by the law of similitudes, the real thing is damaged, too. As above, so below. We are the modern alchemists. Watch out for that vase!"

  Bill had lurched against a tall plinth with a single tall vase on it. The vase fell. It made a very satisfying smash, especially unexpected and therefore all the more welcome in a simulation.

  "We can't get those vases anymore!" the deputy said. "Our vase-making program glitched, and the backups were attacked by internal consistency borers. Watch out for that painting over there! It's a unique effort of the random painting program —"

  Bill walked through it. "Stop, please," the deputy said "Can we compromise?"

  "Food!" Bill cried.

  "I'll see what I can do," the deputy said. "But you'll have to accompany me to a special room."

  "Why?"

  "So that we can seal off the food effects from the rest of the computer."

  "Don't try to stall me," Bill said.

  The deputy turned to one of the sub-units that had been deputized to his control. It was the New Projects Unit. Hastily it renamed it the human food procurement area and gave it a double sunburst priority. The program started up, faltered, died. The deputy realized that it hadn't deputized the necessary consciousness to keep the thing rolling, and so took a provisional consciousness out of stores and set it into place. The food program immediately sat up, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

  "I am Food!" it proclaimed.

  "That's great," Bill said. "Does that mean I can eat you?"

  "No. I didn't mean I was food literally. I was expressing a metaphor."

  "Bring me a metaphor I can eat," Bill said, "or I'll tear this place apart."

  The food program burrowed space in the computer's architecture to set up a food lab. One of its earliest triumphs was the successful manufacture of fat cells flavored with brown gravy. Bill declared it insubstantial. Further experiments followed. Traces of food began to contaminate the computer. Scavenging programs were set up, and their end result was for the scavenger to eat himself. This worked very well. A new class of creature was created. They were named auto-cophragous, or self-eating. God knows where this might have led to, had not the deputy, watching this debacle take shape, invoked his lateral thinking circuit, which told him, "Merda! It's going to be a lot easier to have the thing catered."

  This was a truth so true as to be self-evident; far more self-evident than the proposition, all men are created equal. The Glenn Brothers Catering Service, which maintained a line of automatic pizza parlors all over Tsuris, was quick to respond. Food was brought to the temple — roast beefs, accompanied by hogsheads of beer. This in turn was accompanied by androids dressed as Turkish janissaries carrying litters; upon these reclined scantily clad dancing girls who made loud kissing noises with their rosebud mouths when they were paraded across the temple for Bill's perusal and eventual delectation.

  Bill ate and drank his fill. Then he wenched until his eyeballs floated free in his head like two Japanese sampans disappearing into a cloud bank as a single heron flew overhead. And it was good, of course, as debauches of the enthusiastic kind so often are, especially when presented without program notes.

  In the morning he had a headache of grotesque proportions. Peeking through the curtain, he saw that the line of people who wanted to consult the oracle was stretching three times around the block. And these were blocks built after the Roman model, with an aqueduct in the middle of each. With that many people he'd never get out of here!

  Unless —

  Yes, it happened.

  There was a shining in the air. As Bill watched, the air turned ever so slightly translucent. By looking at it through his eyebrows, Bill could see the tiny dust motes floating in it, and there were even smaller things riding on the dust motes. The air had taken on a pearly sheen. It pulsed and throbbed, as if there were something behind the air, or inside it, trying to get out. Bill had never considered before that air might be divided into many different territories, some of them mutually antagonistic. But so it seemed. He watched as the air throbbed and bubbled, shook and quivered, pulsed and subsided, and all the other motions that are possible for something as large and shapeless as the air. And then the air split, quickly opening a pearly maw to reveal a black interior within. Not entirely black. There was a light-colored object in the middle of it, only a dot at first, but it grew, and solidified, and revealed itself at last as a tall, mournful-faced man with pointed ears wearing a one-piece elasticized jumpsuit.

  "Splock!" Bill exclaimed. "Am I glad to see you!"

  "That is logical, and I can understand your emotional reaction to a physical fact." Splock said humorlessly; as always. "You will have no doubt inferred by my sudden appearance that I may be able to assist you in getting out of here. An exit which I am sure you desire."

  "Can you do it, Splock?"

  "If you used logic, which of course is alien to your race, you would realize if I got in here I should be able to get out. Or why else would I be here?"

  "Stop with the logic already! How do I get out of here?" Bill cried.

  "Simple enough. Just step down away from that silly-looking throne, which, being made of iron pyrites, throws my action-at-a-distance apparatus out of kilter."

  Bill tried, but was pulled up short by the cable connected to the socket in the back of his head. He tugged at the cable but it wouldn't come loose.
<
br />   "You got to do something about this cable I got plugged into me!" Bill groaned.

  Splock looked grimmer than usual and walked around Bill. He examined the cable, touching it lightly with tapered fingertips, and then with ordinary fingertips. Shaking his head, he walked back to where Bill could see him.

  "I'm afraid that what you have is big trouble." Splock said.

  "Tell me about it," Bill whispered, "and thanks a lot, I really needed to hear that. What's the matter now? Did you forget to bring a wrench?"

  "The tone of your voice," Splock said, "indicates that you are speaking in the humor mode that humans find so congenial. I hope you have amused yourself, because I have bad news. The cable which attaches you to the computer is interfaced with an internal simulation release which can only be accessed from within the computer. It is there to ensure that unauthorized personnel won't try to detach you from the computer's memory banks. Only the computer is supposed to turn it off."

  "The computer wouldn't do that," Bill said.

  "In that you are correct. The computer set this up to prevent outside interference."

  "I've met the deputy computer recently," Bill said hopefully. "Maybe it could do the job?"

  "You can't really expect it to. You'll just have to do it yourself."

  "Me? But how can I turn off the — what did you call it?"

  "The internal simulation release," Splock said.

  "Yes. How?"

  "You are able to go into the computer as a simulacrum," Splock pointed out. "The wire that attaches you to the computer facilitates that. Only within the computer can you find the simulation of the release device which will release the cable here."

  "That's a little complicated." Bill said.

  "Welcome to reality."

  Once again Bill entered the computer. He drifted slowly through the transparent walls of its simulated architecture, down great lofty hallways, across bridges with giddying distances between them, across raging rapids of electrons over bridges of materials which were neutral, so far. He went through glaring white jungles where a million white tendrils blocked his way, and was able to plow through them. He waded through a hip-deep swamp of information lying around waiting to be sorted. Above him he saw great vague shapes. They reminded him of busbars. Within the computer, the busbar was the primordial shape. At last he came out into an area of light. He was on both a plain and a plane. Lines inscribed on it radiated toward the horizon. Presently a row of cabinets came into sight. They were made of rosewood and had glass fronts encased in the same highly varnished rosewood. When Bill looked into the first, he saw a small dish made of cobalt blue. On the dish lay a slip of paper.