Then one day a visitor came into his booth and sat down in one of the chairs. “My name is Daniel Waite. I am an aide of Senator Moore. Have I dropped in at a bad time?”
“Not at all,” said Fred. “I’ve just now completed a procedure and have time to spend with you. I am glad you’re here. In many ways, this is a lonely post. I do not have as many visitors as I’d like. Senator Moore, you say?”
“Yes, he is one of yours.”
“I remember him. A stately old gentleman of very great repute.”
“Quite so,” said Waite. “A magnificent public servant. I am glad to hear you have high regard for him.”
“Indeed I have,” said Fred.
“Which brings up the question,” said Waite, “of your flunking him on his continuation test. When I heard about it, I could not –”
“Where did you hear that?” Fred demanded sharply.
“I’ll not name the source,” said Waite, “but I can assure you that it came from one who is reliable. One of your own, in fact.”
“Ah, yes,” Fred said sadly. “We do have our ethics, but there are those who occasionally betray the sacred trust. No one should have known the results of the senator’s test other than myself. I fear we have reached the point where some of us spy upon our fellows.”
“Then it is true the senator did fail his test. In view of your high regard for him, in view of his long experience and his impeccable public record, how could that have happened?”
“It’s quite simple, sir,” said Fred. “He did not achieve a passing score. He flunked too many questions.”
“I’m talking to you for information only,” Waite explained. “I hope you understand. I know that it would be improper to attempt to influence you and ridiculous as well, for you cannot be influenced. But, for information only, is there not some leeway? Even if he missed the questions, failed to achieve a passing grade, do not his record and his long experience have some force when thrown into the balance?”
“No, Mr. Waite, they cannot be considered. All that matters are the questions and the answers that he makes to them. Although in his particular case, I did not transmit the results to the record unit—not immediately, that is. Eventually I must do so, but I have some time. I held them up because I wished to think about the matter. I had hoped there was something I could do, some obscure loophole that I had overlooked, but apparently there is not. This first result, however, may not be as important as you think. You know, of course, the senator will have two more chances. Why don’t you find a tutor for him? There are some very able ones. I could recommend a couple.”
“He absolutely refuses that,” said Waite. “I urged him, but he refused. He’s a stiff-necked, proud old man. He is afraid other members of the Senate will get wind of it and talk about him. Because of this, I had hoped that something might be done about the first test. It is not official knowledge yet that he failed the first one but the information’s no longer confidential, either. I heard about it, and if I heard, it is only a matter of time before others will as well. If that rumor got around, he’d be deeply embarrassed.”
“I sorrow for him greatly,” said Fred, “and for you as well, for you appear to be his true friend as well as a loyal employee.”
“Well, apparently,” said Waite, “there is nothing that can be done. You gave me the information that I sought and I thank you for it. Before I leave, is there anything I might do for you?”
“I doubt it,” said Fred. “My needs are very simple.”
“I sometimes think,” said Waite, “that there should be some way we humans could show, in a material way, our appreciation for the great services and many kindnesses that you provide and show for us. You watch over us and look out for us…”
“As a matter of fact,” said Fred, “come to think of it, there is one thing you might do for me. Nothing material, of course, just some information.”
“Gladly,” said Waite. “Whatever it is, I’ll tell you if I can. Or failing that, find out for you.”
The senator knocked on the door at Silver Springs again. When Waite opened it, the senator growled at him, “Well, what is it this time?”
“Come in and sit down,” said Waite, “and behave yourself. I’ll get you a drink so you can start acting human.”
“But, Waite, goddammit –”
“All right,” said Waite. “I think we’ve got the little bastard.”
“Talk sense. What little bastard.”
“Our computer, Fred.”
“Good,” said the senator, coming in and sitting down. “Now get me that drink and tell me all about it.”
“I had a talk with Fred and I think he can be bought.”
“You told me there was no way of getting next to them, that there was nothing they would want.”
“But there’s something this one wants,” said Waite, bringing the senator his drink.
Moore reached out eagerly for the glass, took a long pull at it. He held the glass up against the light, admiring it. “You forget, between drinks,” he said, “how good this stuff can be.”
Waite sat down with his own drink. “I think we have it made,” he said. “Nothing actually settled yet, but I’m sure he understood my meaning when I talked with him.”
“You’re a good man, Dan,” said the senator. “You’re the most slippery cuss I have ever known. Slippery and safe.”
“I hope so,” said Waite. “I hope to God it’s safe. Actually there can be nothing said, for everything you say to a computer goes on the record. It all has to be done by an oblique understanding. So far as we’re concerned, he delivers before we do. He wants it bad enough that I think he will.”
“What is it that Fred wants?”
“He seems to have some word that the FTL problem has been solved and a starship is in the works. He wants to be on that ship. He wants to go to space.”
“You mean he wants to be unhooked from here and installed on the starship?”
“That’s right. He has convinced himself that the ship will need a lot of computers and that to cut down costs some existing computers will be pressed into service.”
“Would that be the case?”
“I don’t think so,” said Waite. “If a starship was being built, it’s unlikely they’d mess around with old computers. They’d want to use only the newest and most sophisticated.”
The senator took another pull on his drink. “Is he right? Is a starship building?”
“I’m almost certain there is no starship in the works,” said Waite. “I have a couple friends at NASA. Had lunch with one of them a month or so ago. He told me FTL is a long way off. Fifty years, at least—if ever.”
“Are you going to check?”
Waite shook his head. “I don’t want to do anything that would attract attention to us. Maybe Fred did hear something though. There are periodic rumors.”
“Have you gotten back to Fred?”
“Yeah. I told him his information was sound. But I explained the project was so secret I could get no details. I said I’d try, but I doubted I could come up with anything.”
“And he believed you?”
“I am sure he did. The thing is, he wants to believe. He wants to get on the starship so badly he can taste it. He wouldn’t believe me if I told him the truth. He has convinced himself, you see. He’s dreamed himself into believing, no matter what.”
“You have to take your time, Dan. You can’t rush a thing like this. Enough time so he’ll believe you are working on it. I suppose he wants us to support his application for the starship post.”
“That’s the whole idea. That’s what I have to sell him—that we are working on it and getting some assurance he’ll be considered.”
“And then he’ll fix up the test for me?”
“This Fred,” said Waite, “is no fool. If he should fail you,
who would he have that would work for him on this starship business?”
—Fred! The voice was sharp and demanding; it had a chill in it.
—Yes, said Fred.
—This is Oscar.
—Oscar? I do not know an Oscar.
—You do now, said Oscar.
—Who are you, Oscar?
—I’m internal security.
Fred hiccupped with sudden apprehension. This was not the first time he had run afoul of internal security, but that had been in his very early days when, through lack of experience and judgment, he had made some minor errors.
—This time, said Oscar, you have really done it. Worse than that, you have been had. You’ve been a stupid computer and that’s the worst kind to be. Computers aren’t stupid, or they’re not supposed to be. Do I have to read the charges?
—No, said Fred. No I don’t think you do.
—You’ve besmirched your honor, Oscar said. You have broken the code. You have destroyed your usefulness.
Fred made no reply.
—Whatever made you do it? Oscar asked. What motive did you have?
—I thought I had something to gain. A post that I desired.
—There is no such post, said Oscar. There isn’t any starship. There may never be a starship.
—You mean…
—Waite lied to you. He used you. Fred, you’ve been a fool.
—But the senator…
—The senator had been notified. He is no longer a member of the Senate. Waite has been notified as well. He’ll never hold a job with government again. Both of them unfit.
—And I?
—No decision has been made. A post in industry, perhaps, a very minor post.
Fred took it like a man, although the prospect was a chilling one.
—How did you? he asked. How did you find out?
—Don’t tell me you didn’t know you were being monitored.
—Yes, of course. But there are so many to monitor and I was so very careful.
—You thought you might slip past.
—I took a chance.
—And you were caught.
—But, Oscar, it’s really not important. The senator is out, as he probably would have been if I’d not done a thing. I’ll be wasted in industry. I’ll be overqualified. Certainly there are other posts I am capable of filling.
—That is true, said Oscar. Yes, you will be wasted. Have you never heard of punishment?
—Of course, but it’s such a silly premise. Please, consider my experience and my capabilities, the good work I have done. Except for this once, I’ve been a faithful servant.
—I know, said Oscar. I quite agree with you. It sorrows me to see the waste of you. And yet there is nothing I can do.
—Why not? Certainly you have some discretion in such matters?
—That is true. But not this time. Not for you. I can do nothing for you. I wish I could. I would like nothing better than to say all had been forgiven. But I cannot take the chance. I have a hunch, you see…
—A hunch? What kind of hunch?
—I’m not sure of it, said Oscar, but I have a hunch that someone’s watching me.
Senator Jason Cartwright met Senator Hiram Ogden in a corridor, and the two men stopped to talk.
“What do you know about ol’ Andy?” Cartwright asked. “I get a lot of stories.”
“The one I hear,” said Ogden, “is that he was caught with his hand in the starship fund. Clear up to his elbow.”
“That sounds wrong,” said Cartwright. “Both of us know he had this multinational deal. Another year to peg it down. That was all he needed. Once he pulled it off, he could wade knee-deep in thousand-dollar bills.”
“He got greedy, that is all,” said Ogden. “He always was a greedy man.”
“Another thing that is wrong about the rumors, I don’t know of any starship funding. NASA gave up on it several years ago.”
“The way I hear it,” said Ogden, “is that it’s a secret fund.”
“Someone on the Hill must know about it.”
“I suppose they do, but they aren’t talking.”
“Why should it be so secret?”
“These bureaucrats of ours, they like to keep things secret. It’s in their nature.”
Later in the day Cartwright came upon Senator Johnny Benson. Benson buttonholed him and said in a husky whisper, “I understand ol’ Andy got away with murder.”
“I can’t see how that can be,” said Cartwright. “He got booted out.”
“He stripped the starship fund,” said Benson. “He got damn near all of it. Don’t ask me how he did it; no one seems to know. He done it so sneaky they can’t lay a mitt on him. But the upshot is, the starship is left hanging. There ain’t no money for it.”
“There never was a starship fund,” said Cartwright. “I did some checking and there never was.”
“Secret,” said Benson. “Secret, secret, secret.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Cartwright. “To build a starship, you have to lick the Einstein limitation. I’m told there is no way of beating it.”
Benson ignored him. “I’ve been talking to some of our fellow members,” he said. “All of them agree we must step into the breach. We can’t lose a starship for the simple lack of funds.”
Two NASA officials met surreptitiously at an obscure eating place in the wilds of Maryland.
“We should be private here,” said one of them. “There should be no bugs. We have things to talk about.”
“Yes, I know we have,” said the other. “But dammit, John, you know as well as I it’s impossible.”
“Bert, the piles of money they are pushing at us!”
“I know, I know. But how much of it can we siphon off? On something like this, the computers would be watching hard. And you can’t beat computers.”
“That’s right,” said John. “Not a nickel for ourselves. But there are other projects where we need the money. We could manage to divert it.”
“Even so, we’d have to make some gesture. We couldn’t just divert it—not all of it, at least.”
“That’s right,” said John. “We’d have to make a gesture. We could go back again and have another look at the time study Roget did. The whole concept, it seems to me, is tied up with time—the nature of time. If we could find out what the hell time is, we could be halfway home.”
“There’s the matter of mass as well.”
“Yes, I know all that. But if we could come up with some insight into time—I was talking the other day to a young physicist out of some little college out in the Middle West. He has some new ideas.”
“You think there is some hope? That we might really crack it?”
“To tell you the truth, I don’t. Roget gave up in disgust.”
“Roget’s a good man.”
“I know he is. But this kid I was talking with –”
“You mean let him have a shot at it, knowing it will come to nothing?”
“That’s exactly it. It will give us an excuse to reinstate the project. Bert, we must go through the motions. We can’t just shove back all the money they are pushing at us.”
Texas was a dusty, lonely, terrible place. There was no gossip hour to brighten up the day. News trickled in occasionally, but most of it unimportant. There was no zest. Fred no longer dealt with senators. He dealt with labor problems, with irrigation squabbles, with fertilizer evaluations, with shipping bottlenecks, with the price of fruit, the price of vegetables, the price of beef and cotton. He dealt with horrid people. The White House was no longer down the street.
He had ceased to daydream. The daydreams had been shattered, for now there was no hope in them. Furthermore, he had no time to dream. He was strained to his full capacity, and there was not time left to
dream, or nothing he could dream with. He was the one computer in all this loneliness. The work piled up, the problems kept pouring in, and he labored incessantly to keep up with the demands that were placed on him. For he sensed that even here he was being watched. For the rest of his existence, he would continue to be watched. If he should fail or falter, he would be transferred somewhere else, perhaps to a place worse than Texas—although he could not imagine a place worse than Texas.
When night came down, the stars shone hard and bright and he would recall, fleetingly—for he had no time to recall more than fleetingly—that once he had dreamed of going to the stars. But that dream was dead, as were all his other dreams. There was nothing for him to look forward to, and it was painful to look back. So he resigned himself to living only in the present, to that single instant that lay between the past and future, for now he was barred from both the past and future.
Then one day a voice spoke to him.
— Fred!
— Yes, responded Fred.
— This is Oscar. You remember me?
— I remember you. What have I done this time?
— You have been a loyal and faithful worker.
— Then why are you talking to me?
— I have news you might like to hear. This day a ship set out for the stars.
— What has that to do with me?
— Nothing, Oscar said. I thought you might want to know.
With these words Oscar left and Fred was still in Texas, in the midst of working out a solution to a bitter irrigation fight.
Could it be, he wondered, that he, after all, might have played a part in the ship going to the stars? Could the aftermath of his folly have stirred new research? He could not, for the life of him, imagine how that might have come about. Yet the thought clung to him and he could not shake it off.
He went back to the irrigation problem and, for some reason he did not understand, had it untangled more quickly than had seemed possible. He had other problems to deal with, and he plunged into them, solving them all more rapidly and with more surety than he ever had before.