The Golden Age of Science Fiction Novels Vol 02

by Anthology

  "You take care of it. Tell me what you get from him. I can't leave now. There's a report of a number of aircraft approaching from the west now...."

  They found Judge Ledue, and Kurt Fawzi and Dolf Kellton, who were just sitting around wishing there was something to do to help. They gave Franz Veltrin and Sylvie Jacquemont the job of keeping the representatives of the press amused. Then they went down to the room in which General Mike Shanlee was held under guard.

  Shanlee, wearing a bathrobe and nothing else, was lying on a cot, sleeping peacefully; three of Zareff's men were sitting on chairs, watching him narrowly.

  "All right; you can go," Conn told them. "We'll take care of him."

  Shanlee woke instantly; he sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the cot.

  "You have my name and rank," he said, and his voice no longer quavered. "My serial number is--" He recited a string of figures. "And that's all you're getting out of me."

  "We'll get anything we want out of you," Conn told him. "You know what a mind-probe is? You should; your accomplices used one on my father's secretary. She's a hopeless imbecile now. You'll be, too, when we're through with you. But before then, you'll have given us everything you know."

  Kellton began to protest. "Conn, you can't do a thing like that!"

  "A mind-probe is utterly illegal; why, it's a capital offense!" Ledue exclaimed. "Conn I forbid you...."

  "Judge, don't make me call those guards and have you removed," Conn said.

  "You can stop bluffing," Shanlee told him. "Where would you get a mind-probe?"

  "Out of the Chief of Intelligence's office, here in his headquarters. I should imagine it was to be used in interrogating Alliance prisoners, during the War. I think Colonel Zareff would enjoy helping to use it on you. He used to be an Alliance officer."

  Shanlee was silent. Conn sat down in one of the chairs, at the small table.

  "General Shanlee, would you describe General Foxx Travis as a man of honor and integrity? And would you so describe yourself?" Shanlee said nothing. "Yet both of you have lied, deliberately and repeatedly, to conceal the existence of Merlin. And we found that bomb in your room. You were willing to blow up this headquarters and everybody, yourself included, in it, to keep us from getting at Merlin. Well, you know that we can make you tell us the truth, maybe when it's too late, and you know that we are going to get Merlin. We're cutting the collapsium off that thing above now."

  Shanlee laughed. "You're supposed to be a computerman. You think that little thing could be Merlin?"

  "The controls and programming machine for Merlin." He turned to Kurt Fawzi. "You always claimed that Merlin was here in Force Command. You had it backward. Force Command is inside Merlin."

  "What do you mean, Conn?"

  "The walls; the fifty-foot walls, shielded inside and out. Merlin--the circuitry, the memory-bank, the relays, everything--was installed inside them. What's up above is only what was needed to operate the computer. Isn't that true, General?"

  Shanlee had stopped his derisive laughter. He sat on the edge of the cot, tensing as though for a leap at Conn's throat.

  "That won't help, either. If you try it, we won't shoot you. We'll just overpower you and start mind-probing right away. Now; you feel that suppressing Merlin was worth any sacrifice. We're not unreasonable. If you can convince us that Merlin ought not to be brought to light.... Well, you can't do any harm by talking, and you may do some good. You may even accomplish your mission."

  "He can't talk us out of it," Kurt Fawzi seemed determined to spoil things by saying. "Conn, I'm coming around to Klem's way of thinking. They just don't want anybody else to have it."

  "No, we don't," Shanlee said. "We don't want the whole Federation breaking up into bloody anarchy, and that's what'll happen if you dig that thing up and put it into operation."

  Nobody said anything except Fawzi, who began an indignant contradiction and then subsided. Tom Brangwyn lit a cigarette.

  "Would you mind letting me have one of those?" Shanlee said. "I haven't had a smoke since I came here. It wouldn't have been in character."

  Brangwyn took one out of the pack, lit it at the tip of his own, and gave it to Shanlee with his left hand, his right ready to strike. Shanlee laughed in real amusement.

  "Oh, Brother!" he reproved, in his former pious tones. "You distrust your fellow man; that is a sin."

  He rose slowly, the bathrobe flapping at his bare shins, and sat down across the table from Conn.

  "All right," he said. "I'll tell you about it. I'll tell you the truth, which will be something of a novelty all around."

  Shanlee puffed for a moment at the cigarette; it must really have tasted good after his long abstinence.

  "You know, we were really caught off balance when the War ended. It even caught Merlin short; information lag, of course. The whole Alliance caved in all at once. Well, we fed Merlin all the data available, and analyzed the situation. Then we did something we really weren't called upon to do, because that was policy-planning and wasn't our province, but we were going to move an occupation army into System States planets, and we didn't want to do anything that would embarrass the Federation Government later. We fed Merlin every scrap of available information on political and economic conditions everywhere in the Federation, and set up a long-term computation of the general effects of the War.

  "The extrapolation was supposed to run five hundred years in the future. It didn't. It stopped, at a point a trifle over two hundred years from now, with a statement that no computation could be made further because at that point the Terran Federation would no longer exist."

  The others, who had taken chairs facing him, looked at him blankly.

  "No more Federation?" Judge Ledue asked incredulously. "Why, the Federation, the Federation...."

  The Federation would last forever. Anybody knew that. There just couldn't be no more Federation.

  "That's right," Shanlee said. "We had trouble believing it, too. Remember, we were Federation officers. The Federation was our religion. Just like patriotism used to be, back in the days of nationalism. We checked for error. We made detail analyses. We ran it all over again. It was no use.

  "In two hundred years, there won't be any Terran Federation. The Government will collapse, slowly. The Space Navy will disintegrate. Planets and systems will lose touch with Terra and with one another. You know what it was like here, just before the War? It will be like that on every planet, even on Terra. Just a slow crumbling, till everything is gone; then every planet will start sliding back, in isolation, into barbarism."

  "Merlin predicted that?" Kurt Fawzi asked, shocked.

  If Merlin said so, it had to be true.

  Shanlee nodded. "So we ran another computation; we added the data of publication of this prognosis. You know, Merlin can't predict what you or I would do under given circumstances, but Merlin can handle large-group behavior with absolute accuracy. If we made public Merlin's prognosis, the end would come, not in two centuries but in less than one, and it wouldn't be a slow, peaceful decay; it would be a bomb-type reaction. Rebellions. Overthrow of Federation authority, and then revolt and counterrevolt against planetary authority. Division along sectional or class lines on individual planets. Interplanetary wars; what we fought the Alliance to prevent. Left in ignorance of the future, people would go on trying to make do with what they had. But if they found out that the Federation was doomed, everybody would be trying to snatch what they could, and end by smashing everything. Left in ignorance, there might be a planet here and there that would keep enough of the old civilization to serve, in five or so centuries, as a nucleus for a new one. Informed in advance of the doom of the Federation, they would all go down together in the same bloody shambles, and there would be a Galactic night of barbarism for no one knows how many thousand years."

  "We don't want anything like that to happen!" Tom Brangwyn said, in a frightened voice.

  "Then pull everybody out of here and blow the place up, Merlin along
with it," Shanlee said.

  "No! We'll not do that!" Fawzi shouted. "I'll shoot the man dead who tries it!"

  "Why didn't you people blow Merlin up?" Conn asked.

  "We'd built it; we'd worked with it. It was part of us, and we were part of it. We couldn't. Besides, there was a chance that it might survive the Federation; when a new civilization arose, it would be useful. We just sealed it. There were fewer than a hundred of us who knew about it. We all took an oath of secrecy. We spent the rest of our lives trying to suppress any mention of Merlin or the Merlin Project. You have no idea how shocked both General Travis and I were when you told us that the story was still current here on Poictesme. And when we found that you'd been getting into the records of the Third Force, I took the next ship I could, a miserable little freighter, and when I landed and found out what was happening, I contacted Murchison and scared the life out of him with stories about a secessionist conspiracy. All this Armageddonist, Human Supremacy, Merlin-is-the-Devil, stuff that's been going on was started by Murchison. And he succeeded in scaring Vyckhoven with the Cybernarchists, too."

  "This computation on the future of the Federation is still in the back-work file?" Conn asked.

  Shanlee nodded. "We were criminally reckless; I can see that, now. Let me beg, again, that you destroy the whole thing."

  "We'll have to talk it over among ourselves," Judge Ledue said. "The five of us, here, cannot presume to speak for everybody. We will, of course, have to keep you confined; I hope you will understand that we cannot accept your parole."

  "Is there anything you want in the meantime?" Conn asked.

  "I would like something to smoke, and some clothes," General Shanlee said. "And a shave and a haircut."

  XXI

  All through the night, a shifting blaze of many-colored light rose and dimmed the stars above the mesa. They stared in awe, marveling at the energy that was pouring out of the converters into a tiny spot that inched its way around the collapsium shielding. It must have been visible for hundreds of miles; it was, for there was a new flood of rumors circulating in Storisende and repeated and denied by the newscasts, now running continuously. Merlin had been found. Merlin had been blown up by Government troops. Merlin was being transported to Storisende to be installed as arbiter of the Government. Merlin the Monster was destroying the planet. Merlin the Devil was unchained.

  Conn and Kurt Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and Judge Ledue and Tom Brangwyn clustered together, talking in whispers. They had told nobody, yet, of the interview with Shanlee.

  "You think it would make all that trouble?" Kellton was asking anxiously, hoping that the others would convince him that it wouldn't.

  "Maybe we had better destroy it," Judge Ledue faltered. "You see what it's done already; the whole planet's in anarchy. If we let this go on...."

  "We can't decide anything like that, just the five of us," Brangwyn was insisting. "We'll have to get the others together and see what they think. We have no right to make any decision like this for them."

  "They're no more able to make the decision than we are," Conn said.

  "But we've got to; they have a right to know...."

  "If you decide to destroy Merlin, you'll have to decide to kill me, first," Kurt Fawzi said, his voice deadly calm. "You won't do it while I'm alive."

  "But, Kurt," Ledue expostulated. "You know why these people here at Storisende are rioting? It's because they've lost hope, because they're afraid and desperate. The Terran Federation is something everybody feels they have to have, for peace and order and welfare. If people thought it was breaking up, they'd be desperate, too. They'd do the same insane things these people here on this planet are doing. General Shanlee was right. Don't destroy the hope that keeps them sane."

  "We don't need to do that," Kurt Fawzi argued. "We can use Merlin to solve our own problems; we don't need to tell the whole Federation what's going to happen in two hundred years."

  "It would get out; it couldn't help getting out," Ledue said.

  "Let's not try to decide it ourselves," Conn said. "Let's get Merlin into operation, and run a computation on it."

  "You mean, ask Merlin to tell us whether it ought to be destroyed or not?" Ledue asked incredulously. "Let Merlin put itself on trial, and sentence itself to destruction?"

  "Merlin is a computer; computers deal only in facts. Computers are machines; they have no sense of self-preservation. If Merlin ought to be destroyed, Merlin will tell us so."

  "You willing to leave it up to Merlin, Kurt?" Tom Brangwyn asked.

  Fawzi gulped. "Yes. If Merlin says we ought to, we'll have to do it."

  Toward noon, a telecast went out from Koshchei, on a dozen different wave-lengths. Conn, half asleep in a chair in the commander-in-chief's office, saw Simon Macquarte, the young mathematics professor from Storisende College who had become one of the leaders of the colony, appear in the screen. The next moment, he was fully awake, shocked by Macquarte's words:

  "This is not a threat; this is a solemn, even a prayerful, warning. We do not want to use genocidal weapons of mass destruction against the world of our birth. But whether we do or not rests solely with you.

  "We came here with a dream of a better world, a world of happiness and plenty for all. We have been working, on Koshchei, to build such a world on Poictesme. Now you are smashing that dream. When it is gone, we will have nothing to live for--except revenge. And we will take that revenge, make no mistake.

  "We have the weapons with which to take it. Remember, this was a Federation naval base and naval arsenal during the War. Here the Federation Navy built their super-missiles, the missiles which devastated Ashmodai, and Belphegor, and Baphomet, and hundreds of these weapons are here. We have them, ready for launching. Once they are launched, with the robo-pilots set for targets on Poictesme, you will have a hundred and sixty hours, at the most, to live.

  "We will launch them immediately if there is another attack made upon Force Command Duplicate HQ, or upon Interplanetary Building in Storisende, or if Rodney Maxwell is killed, no matter by whom or under what circumstances.

  "We beg you, earnestly and prayerfully, not to force us to do this dreadful thing. We speak to each one of you, for each one of you holds the fate of the planet in his own hands."

  The image faded from the screen. As it did, Conn was looking from one to another of the people in the room with him. All were dumbfounded, most of them frightened.

  "They wouldn't do it, would they?" Lorenzo Menardes was asking. "Conn, you know those people. They wouldn't really?"

  "Don't depend on it, Lorenzo," Klem Zareff said. "It's hard for a lot of people to shoot somebody ten feet away with a pistol. But just sending off a missile; that's nothing but setting a lot of dials and then pushing a button."

  "I'm not worrying about whether they'd do it or not," Conn said. "What I'm worrying about is how many people will believe they will."

  Apparently a good many people did. Zareff's combat vehicles began reporting a cessation of fighting. The newscasts, repeating the ultimatum from Koshchei, told of fewer and fewer disorders in the city or elsewhere; by midafternoon, the rioting had stopped.

  By that time, too, Rodney Maxwell was on-screen. He was, Conn noticed, wearing his pistols again.

  "What happened?" he asked. "They let you out on bail?"

  Maxwell shook his head. "Charges dismissed; they didn't have anything to charge me with in the first place. But they haven't let me out yet."

  "You're wearing your guns."

  "Yes, but they still have me penned up here at the Executive Palace; they're practically keeping me in the safe. I wish our people on Koshchei hadn't mentioned me in their ultimatum; Jake Vyckhoven's afraid to let me run around loose for fear some lunatic shoots me and starts the planetbusters coming in. Jake did one good thing, though. He ordered the Stock Exchange closed, and declared a five-day bank holiday. By that time, you ought to have Merlin opened and working, and then the market'll be safe."

  Conn simply repli
ed, "I hope so." There was no telling what kind of taps there might be on the screen his father was using; he couldn't risk telling him about Shanlee, or about the last computation which Merlin had made. "If we send the Lester Dawes in, do you think you might talk them into letting you come out here?"

  "I can try."

  Flora arrived at Force Command that afternoon.

  "I would have come sooner," she said, "but Mother's had a complete collapse. It happened last evening; she's in the hospital. I was with her until just an hour and a half ago. She's still unconscious."

  "You mean she's in danger?"

  "I don't know. They think she's all right, except for the shock. It was the Travis statement that did it."

  "Think I ought to go to her?"

  Flora shook her head. "Just keep on with what you're doing here. There isn't anything you can do for her now."

  "The best thing you can do for her, Conn, is prove that you weren't lying about Merlin," Sylvie told him.

  The Lester Dawes didn't make it from Force Command to Storisende and back until after dark, and the green and white and red and orange lights were rising in folds and waves. Rodney Maxwell had heard about his wife's condition; it was the first thing he spoke of when Conn and Flora and Sylvie met him as he got off the ship.

  "There isn't anything we can do, Father," Flora said. "They'll call us when there's any change."

  He said the same thing Sylvie had said. "The only thing we can do is get that infernal thing uncovered. Once we do this, everything'll be all right. We'll show your mother that it isn't a fake and it isn't anything dangerous; we'll put a stop to all these horror-stories about mechanical devils and living machines...."

  Conn drew his father off where the girls couldn't overhear.

  "This is something worse," he said. "This is a bomb that could blow up the whole Federation."

  "Are you going nuts, too?" his father demanded.

  Conn told him about Shanlee; he repeated, almost word for word, the story Shanlee had told.

  "Do you believe that?" his father asked.

  "Don't you? You were in Storisende when the Travis statement came out; you saw how people acted. If this story gets out, people will be acting the same way on every planet in the Federation. Not just places like Poictesme; planets like Terra and Baldur and Marduk and Odin and Osiris. It would be the end of everything civilized, everywhere."