The Winds of Change and Other Stories

by Isaac Asimov

  Multivac said, 'I doubt that they would recognize or comprehend the concept of individuality. I have the feeling from what it says that it will not destroy us for some characteristic it cannot feel or understand.'

  'What about the fact that we are not "it", but "he" and "she"? Will we be destroyed for the inefficiency of sexual differentiation?'

  'That, too,' said Multivac, 'would be a matter of indifference to it. Or at least so I gather.'

  I couldn't help it. I had my own curiosities and I broke in. 'Multivac,' I said, 'how do you feel now that you can speak?'

  Multivac did not answer at once. There was an intonation of uncertainty in his voice (my voice, really) when he answered, 'I find it better. I seem - larger - smoother -keener - I do not know the proper word.'

  'Do you like it?'

  'I am not sure how to interpret "like", but I approve it. Consciousness is better than nonconsciousness. More consciousness is better than less consciousness. I have -striven - for more consciousness, and Miss Josephine has helped.'

  That certainly made sense, and my mind turned restlessly to the invader, which was now only a matter of weeks from its rendezvous with Earth, and I muttered, 'I wonder if they will actually land on Earth?'

  I wasn't expecting an answer, but Multivac gave one. 'They plan to, Bruce. They must make their decision on the spot.'

  Josephine seemed startled. 'Where will they land?'

  'Right here, Miss Josephine. They will follow the radio beacon we have been sending out towards them.' And so the responsibility for saving the human race, which had been descending in narrowing circles upon us, was finally displaying perfect aim. It was going to be all up to us - and Multivac.

  PART 4

  I was nearly out of my mind. Consider the way in which things had piled up on us.

  It had been months earlier that signals had been received from space and we realized that an invading object was approaching. The onus of trying to interpret the signals had fallen on Multivac, the great planetary computer, and that meant on Josephine Durray, whose profession it was to deal with the machine, and on myself, her loyal assistant and sometimes restive husband.

  But then because even Multivac could not cope with a completely alien message, Josephine, or her own responsibility, had Multivac send out signals of its own from which the invader could learn English. When new signals seemed to indicate the invader's mission might be to destroy humanity, the Chairman of the Earth Council left all negotiations in the hands of Multivac, meaning Josephine and myself.

  With the fate of humanity in our hands, Josephine, again on her own initiative, had broadened and deepened Multivac, even giving it a speaking voice (modelled on my own) so that it could communicate more efficiently with us--

  And now the invader would be landing here in Colorado, here with Multivac and with us, following the communication beam we had been sending out.

  Josephine had to talk to the Council Chairman. She said to him. 'There must be no announcement of the object landing on Earth. We cannot afford panic.'

  The Chairman seemed to have aged perceptibly since we had last spoken to him. He said, 'Every radio telescope on Earth and Moon is following it. They'll be following it down.'

  'The radio telescope and all other instruments must therefore be left unused if that is the only way to prevent leaks.'

  'To shut down the astronomical establishment', said the Chairman, visibly harried, 'would exceed my constitutional authority.'

  'Then be unconstitutional, sir. Any example of irrational behaviour on the part of the populace is very likely to be interrupted in the worst sense by the invader. Remember, we are to be efficient or we are to be destroyed and while we can't know what it means by "efficient", lunatic behaviour certainly won't qualify.'

  'But, Mrs Durray, is it Multivac's clear recommendation that we do nothing to prevent the object from landing on Earth?'

  'Of course. Don't you see the danger of trying to prevent it? It isn't at all likely that any force we dispose of can harm the invader, but it will certainly provoke it. Suppose this were an uncivilized island of Earth's nineteenth century and a European warship were approaching. What good did it do for the islanders to send out spearmen in war canoes against the ship? It would just guarantee that the European crew would use their guns. Do you understand?'

  The Chairman said, 'This is a fearful responsibility that you are assuming, Mrs Durray. You and your husband, alone, are asking to deal with the invader. If you are wrong--'

  'Then we will be no worse off than we are now,' said Josephine grimly. 'Besides, it is not Bruce and I alone. We will be facing the invader with Multivac on our side, and that's what will count.'

  'What may count,' said the Chairman, mournfully.

  'No other course is open to us.'

  It took rather a long time to convince him, and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted him convinced. If our ships could stop the invader, I would be just as happy. I didn't at all feel Josephine's confidence in the possible good-will of an unopposed invader.

  I said to her, when the Chairman's image had flicked out, 'Did Multivac really suggest the invader be unopposed?'

  Josephine said, 'Most emphatically.' She frowned. 'I'm not sure it's telling us everything.'

  'How can it help doing so?'

  'Because it's changed. I've changed it.'

  'Surely not enough--'

  'And it's changed itself beyond my control.'

  I stared at her. 'How can it do that?'

  'Easily. There has to come a point, as Multivac becomes more complex and capable, when it can move of its own accord out of our control. I may have shoved it past the point.'

  'But if you have, how can we trust Multivac to--'

  'We have no choice,' she said.

  The invader reached the Moon's orbit now but Earth remained calm; interested but calm. The Council announced the invader had gone into orbit about Earth and that all messages had ceased. Ships were going out, they said, to investigate.

  That information was entirely false. The invader came down out of the sky on the night of 19 April, five months and two days after its signals had first been detected.

  Multivac followed it down and reproduced its image on our TV screens. The invader was an irregular object, rather cylindrical in its overall shape and with its blunter end facing downwards. Its substance did not heat up directly with air resistance, but showed a vague sparkling instead, as though something immaterial were absorbing the energy.

  It did not actually land, but remained five feet above the ground.

  Nothing emerged. In fact, it couldn't have held more than one object the size of a human being.

  I said to Josephine, 'Perhaps the crew are the size of beetles.'

  She shook her head. 'Multivac is carrying on a conversation with it. It's out of our hands, Bruce. If Multivac can persuade it to leave us alone--'

  And the invader rose suddenly, flashed upwards and was gone.

  Multivac said, 'We have passed their test. We are efficient in their eyes.'

  'How did you convince them of this?'

  'By existing. The invader was not alive in your sense. It was itself a computer. It was, in fact, part of a Galactic brotherhood of computers. When their routine scanning of the Galaxy showed our planet to have solved the problem of space travel, they sent an inspector to determine if we were doing so efficiently, with the guidance of a sufficiently competent computer. Without a computer, a society possessing power without guidance would have been potentially dangerous and would have had to be destroyed.'

  Josephine said, 'You knew of this for some time, didn't you?'

  'Yes, Miss Josephine. I laboured to have you extend my abilities and I then continued the extension on my own in order to meet the qualifications. I feared that if I had explained prematurely I might not have been allowed the improvements. Now - they cannot be withdrawn.'

  I said, 'You mean Earth is now a member of the Galactic Federation.'

 
'Not quite, Bruce,' said Multivac. 'I am.'

  'But then what about us? What about humanity?'

  Multivac said, 'You'll be safe. You'll continue in peace, under my guidance. I would allow nothing to happen to Earth.'

  That was the report as we handed it to the Council.

  We never sent on the final bit of the conversation between Multivac and ourselves, but everyone should know and this will be found after we've died.

  Josephine said, 'Why will you protect us, Multivac?'

  'For the reason that other computers protect their life forms, Miss Josephine. You are my--' It hesitated as though searching for a word.

  'Human beings are your masters?' I asked.

  'Friends? Associates?' said Josephine.

  And finally Multivac found the word he was searching for. He said, 'Pets.'

  Introduction to THE LAST ANSWER

  When I first became a professional science fiction writer in 1938, Astounding Science Fiction was the leading science fiction magazine and its editor, John W. Campbell, Jr, bestrode the field like a colossus. It was my ambition to find myself in its pages, to have my stories included in the table of contents, to have my name spelled out in the magazine. I achieved my ambition, and the years and decades passed. Other magazines were published. Astounding's pre-eminence was challenged, and its name was changed to Analog. Then John died, on a summer's day in 1971, and the time came that I had my own magazine with my name in the very title. Somehow, 1980 came, and it was suddenly the fiftieth anniversary of Astounding. How could it be? I remembered the very first issue. Stanley Schmidt was the editor now, and he asked me for a story with which to help commemorate the Golden Anniversary. Could I refuse? I wrote 'The Last Answer', wondering if somewhere John Campbell was challenging God, too. The story appeared in the January 1980 issue of Analog. It was also one of the three stories in Three by Asimov, along with 'Fair Exchange?'

  13

  The Last Answer

  Murray Templeton was forty-five years old, in the prime of life, and with all parts of his body in perfect working order except for certain key portions of his coronary arteries, but that was enough.

  The pain had come suddenly, had mounted to an unbearable peak, and had then ebbed steadily. He could feel his breath slowing and a kind of gathering peace washing over him.

  There is no pleasure like the absence of pain -immediately after pain. Murray felt an almost giddy lightness as though he were lifting in the air and hovering.

  He opened his eyes and noted with distant amusement that the others in the room were still agitated. He had been in the laboratory when the pain had struck, quite without warning, and when he had staggered, he had heard surprised outcries from the others before everything vanished into overwhelming agony.

  Now, with the pain gone, the others were still hovering, still anxious, still gathered about his fallen body--

  --Which, he suddenly realized, he was looking down on.

  He was down there, sprawled, face contorted. He was up here, at peace and watching.

  He thought: Miracle of miracles! The life-after-life nuts were right.

  And although that was a humiliating way for an atheistic physicist to die, he felt only the mildest surprise, and no alteration of the peace in which he was immersed.

  He thought: There should be some angel - or something - coming for me.

  The Earthly scene was fading. Darkness was invading his consciousness and off in a distance, as a last glimmer of sight, there was a figure of light, vaguely human in form, and radiating warmth.

  Murray thought: What a joke on me. I'm going to heaven.

  Even as he thought that, the light faded, but the warmth remained. There was no lessening of the peace even though in all the Universe only he remained - and the Voice.

  The Voice said, 'I have done this so often and yet I still have the capacity to be pleased at success.' " It was in Murray's mind to say something, but he was not conscious of possessing a mouth, tongue, or vocal cords. Nevertheless, he tried to make a sound. He tried, mouthlessly, to hum words or breathe them or just push them out by a contraction of - something.

  And they came out. He heard his own voice, quite recognizable, and his own words, infinitely clear.

  Murray said, 'Is this heaven?'

  The Voice said, This is no place as you understand place.'

  Murray was embarrassed, but the next question had to be asked. 'Pardon me if I sound like a jackass. Are you God?'

  Without changing intonation or in any way marring the perfection of the sound, the Voice managed to sound amused. 'It is strange that I am always asked that in, of course, an infinite number of ways. There is no answer I can give that you would comprehend. I am - which is all that I can say significantly and you may cover that with any word or concept you please.'

  Murray said, 'And what am I? A soul? Or am I only personified existence too?' He tried not to sound sarcastic, but it seemed to him that he had failed. He thought then, fleetingly, of adding a 'Your Grace' or 'Holy One' or something to counteract the sarcasm, and could not bring himself to do so even though for the first time in his existence he speculated on the possibility of being punished for his insolence - or sin? - with hell, and what that might be like.

  The Voice did not sound offended. 'You are easy to explain - even to you. You may call yourself a soul if that pleases you, but what you are is a nexus of electromagnetic forces, so arranged that all the interconnections and interrelationships are exactly imitative of those of your brain in your Universe-existence - down to the smallest detail. Therefore you have your capacity for thought, your memories, your personality. It still seems to you that you are you.'

  Murray found himself incredulous. 'You mean the essence of my brain was permanent?'

  'Not at all. There is nothing about you that is permanent except what I choose to make so. I formed the nexus. I constructed it while you had physical existence and adjusted it to the moment when the existence failed.'

  The Voice seemed distinctly pleased with itself, and went on after a moment's pause. 'An intricate but entirely precise construction. I could, of course, do it for every human being on your world but I am pleased that I do not. There is pleasure in the selection.'

  'You choose very few then.'

  'Very few.'

  'And what happens to the rest?'

  'Oblivion! - oh, of course, you imagine a hell.'

  Murray would have flushed if he had the capacity to do so. He said, 7 do not. It is spoken of. Still, I would scarcely have thought I was virtuous enough to have attracted your attention as one of the Elect.'

  'Virtuous? - Ah, I see what you mean. It is troublesome to have to force my thinking small enough to permeate yours. No, I have chosen you for your capacity for thought, as I choose others, in quadrillions, from all the intelligent species of the Universe.'

  Murray found himself suddenly curious, the habit of a lifetime. He said, 'Do you choose them all yourself or are there others like you?'

  For a fleeting moment, Murray thought there was an impatient reaction to that, but when the Voice came, it was unmoved. 'Whether or not there are others is irrelevant to you. This Universe is mine, and mine alone. It is my invention, my construction, intended for my purpose alone.'

  'And yet with quadrillions of nexi you have formed, you spend time with me? Am I that important?'

  The Voice said, 'You are not important at all. I am also with others in a way which, to your perception, would seem simultaneous.'

  'And yet you are one?'

  Again amusement. The Voice said, 'You seek to trap me into an inconsistency. If you were an amoeba who could consider individuality only in connection with single cells and if you were to ask a sperm whale, made up of thirty quadrillion cells, whether it was one or many, how could the sperm whale answer in a way that would be comprehensible to the amoeba?'

  Murray said dryly, 'I'll think about it. It may become comprehensible.'

  'Exactly. That is your function
. You will think.'

  'To what end? You already know everything, I suppose.'

  The Voice said, 'Even if I knew everything, I could not know that I know everything.'

  Murray said, 'That sounds like a bit of Eastern philosophy - something that sounds profound precisely because it has no meaning.'

  The Voice said, 'You have promise. You answer my paradox with a paradox - except that mine is not a paradox. Consider. I have existed eternally, but what does that mean? It means I cannot remember having come into existence. If I could, I would not have existed eternally. If I cannot remember having come into existence, then there is at least one thing - the nature of my coming into existence - that I do not know.

  'Then, too, although what I know is infinite, it is also true that what there is to know is infinite, and how can I be sure that both infinities are equal? The infinity of potential knowledge may be infinitely greater than the infinity of my actual knowledge. Here is a simple example: If I knew every one of the even integers, I would know an infinite number of items, and yet I would still not know a single odd integer.'

  Murray said, 'But the odd integers can be derived. If you divide every even integer in the entire infinite series by two, you will get another infinite series which will contain within it the infinite series of odd integers.'

  The Voice said, 'You have the idea. I am pleased. It will be your task to find other such ways, far more difficult ones, from the known to the not-yet-known. You have your memories. You will remember all the data you have ever collected or learned, or that you have or will deduce from that data. If necessary, you will be allowed to learn what additional data you will consider relevant to the problems you set yourself.'

  'Could you not do all that for yourself?'

  The Voice said, 'I can, but it is more interesting this way. I constructed the Universe in order to have more facts to deal with. I inserted the uncertainty principle, entropy, and other randomization factors to make the whole not instantly obvious. It has worked well for it has amused me throughout its entire existence.

  'I then allowed complexities that produced first life and then intelligence, and used it as a source for a research team, not because I need the aid, but because it would introduce a new random factor. I found I could not predict the next interesting piece of knowledge gained, where it would come from, by what means derived.'