“Paul Rudak!” shouted one of the draggers, “Our burden is heavy! Where are thy strong arms?”
“O thoughtless ones!” exclaimed Rudak. “My strong arms are carrying the hind leg! Tappi, where did you put it?”
“In the grass! Look in the grass, Paul!”
“Let me carry the hind leg,” said Evgeny. “I broke it off, so I should be the one to carry it.”
“Go ahead,” Rudak conceded cheerfully. “I’ll help the others.”
In two bounds he caught up to the “thoughtless ones,” pushed them aside, crawled under the tortoise, grunted, and lifted it on his back. “Catch me if you can!” he thundered in a strained voice, and he started to run at a gallop toward the settlement.
The thoughtless ones rushed after him, whooping. Evgeny grabbed the hind leg, balanced it across the back of his neck like a yoke, and started jogging after them. The leg was serrated, and fairly heavy.
“I’m taking bets for the hind leg,” proclaimed Pavel Rudak from the doorway of the laboratory. “I’ll even bet my own hind leg that our correspondent is tormented by thirst!”
Evgeny, who was sitting by the laboratory wall, sighed quietly, and fanned himself with somebody’s straw hat. His neck burned. “You win,” he moaned.
“Where are the thoughtless servants? How dare they abandon such an honored guest? It’s an affront to the entire European Information Center!”
“Your thoughtless servants are worshiping the hind leg in the building across the way,” answered Evgeny, getting up. “They asked me to wait here for a little while. They said you would be back in a minute. That was just half an hour ago.”
“Disgraceful!” Rudak said with some embarrassment. “Let’s go, Comrade Slavin. I’ll try to make amends for their crimes. I’ll slake your thirst and throw open unto you the hatches of the coolers.”
“Get to it!”
Rudak took him by the arm and brought him at an angle across the street, to a tidy white cottage. It was clean and cool there. Rudak sat him down at the table, placed in front of him a glass, a decanter, and a bucket of ice, and set about playing host. “There’s no delivery line here,” he boomed. “We do the cooking ourselves. In cyberkitchens.”
“A UKM-207?” asked Evgeny.
“No, I have an American system.”
Evgeny did not eat. He drank and watched Rudak eating. Rudak cleaned his plate, emptied his jug, and admonished, “You don’t have to look at me that way. That’s yesterday’s supper, today’s breakfast, and today’s dinner.”
Evgeny stealthily emptied the very last out of the jugs and thought, And today’s supper.
“You’re in luck, correspondent,” Rudak continued. “Things really are interesting around here nowadays. They will be even more interesting tomorrow, when Professor Lomba, the director of the CODD project, gets back.”
“I’ve seen Professor Lomba,” said Evgeny.
Rudak stopped eating and quickly asked, “When?”
“Early this morning, in Gibson. He was consulting an acquaintance of mine. Only I didn’t know he was the director of the CODD project.”
Rudak lowered his eyes and once again set to eating. “What did you think of him?” he inquired after a moment.
“How should I put it…?” said Evgeny. “He seemed gloomy more than anything.”
“Mmm, yes,” drawled Rudak. He pushed the plate away. “This evening will be very interesting.” He sighed. “Well, Comrade Slavin, please ask your questions.”
Evgeny hurriedly loaded the dictaphone. “First of all,” he said, “what is the Great CODD?”
“One moment.” Rudak leaned against the back of his armchair and put his hands behind his head. “First I must ask you something. What sort of education have you had?”
“I graduated from the medical institute, the institute of journalism, and the training courses for a spaceflight surgeon.”
“And all that was a century and a half ago,” Rudak elaborated. “And nothing else?”
“I’ve traveled over the whole Planet as a correspondent, an old newshound. My field of scientific interest is comparative linguistics.”
“So,” said Rudak. “And you haven’t heard anything about Komatsuwara’s seven principles?”
“Nothing.”
“Nor, of course, about the algebra of information fields?”
“No.”
“Nor about the fundamental theorem of information dissipation?”
Evgeny kept silent. Rudak thought a moment and said, “All right. The court understands everything. We will do all we can. Just listen very carefully, and if I get carried away, grab me by the hind leg.”
This is what Evgeny understood: The Collector of Dispersed Data was intended primarily for the collection of dispersed data. This, to be sure, was clear enough from the name. “Dispersed data” meant traces of all events and phenomena dispersed in space and time. Komatsuwara’s first principle (the only one he could understand) stated that nothing in nature, and even more in society, ever disappeared without a trace—everything left evidence. The overwhelming majority of these traces were to be found in the form of extremely dispersed data. In the last analysis, they had the form of energy of one sort or another, and the collection problem was much complicated by the fact that over millions of years the original forms underwent repeated changes. In other words, the traces were laid one upon another, mixed up, and often were erased by traces of subsequent events and phenomena. It was theoretically possible to find and restore any trace—the trace left by the collision of a quantum of light with a molecule in the hide of a brontosaurus, or the trace of a brontosaurus tooth on a tree fern. The Great CODD had been built for the searching out, the sorting, and the comparing of these traces, and for their transformation into the original forms of data—for instance, into images.
Evgeny picked up only an extremely murky impression of how the Great CODD worked. First he imagined billions upon billions of cybernetic protozoan microinformants, which would wander in clouds throughout the whole world, climbing to the very stars, collecting dispersed traces of the distant past and dragging them to some immense mechanical memory storehouse. Then his imagination sketched for him a web of wires embracing the whole Planet, stretching between gigantic towers which were scattered in hundreds over islands and continents from pole to pole. In short, he didn’t understand a thing, but did not ask again: he decided that sometime he would listen to the dictaphone tape a few times at leisure, with the corresponding books before his eyes, and then he would understand it all. But then, when Rudak began to discuss the results of his work, Evgeny forgot even about the monsters.
“We have managed to get some very interesting pictures and even entire episodes,” Rudak said. “Of course, the overwhelming majority of materials are waste—hundreds and thousands of frames superimposed one upon another, and the data filter simply breaks down when it attempts to separate them. But still we’ve been able to see something. We have witnessed the flash of a supernova near the sun one hundred million years ago. We have seen the struggles of dinosaurs and episodes of the Battle of Poitiers, the starships of alien visitors to Earth, and something else strange, incomprehensible, to which we so far have nothing corresponding or even analogous.”
“Would it be possible to have a look?” Evgeny asked with a quiver.
“Of course. But let’s return to this afternoon’s topic.”
The Great CODD was not only a collector of dispersed data. It was an unusually complicated and highly independent logical-analytical computer. Its levels held, besides billions of memory cells and logic elements, besides every possible information transformer and filter, its own workships, which it controlled itself. It could even build onto itself, creating new elements and models, and developing its own data. This opened up wide possibilities for its use beyond its primary purpose. At present, for example, it was carrying out all calculations for the Australian economic sphere, was being used to solve many problems in general cybernetics, a
nd was performing functions of precise diagnostics, having for this purpose branches in all the major cities of the Planet and on some off-planet bases. Besides all this, the Great CODD undertook “fortune telling.”
The Congolese Auguste Lomba, the present director for the CODD project and one-time student of Komatsuwara, had programmed several problems related to the prediction of the behavior of a living organism. CODD had coped with problems of invertebrate behavior determination fairly easily, and two years before, Lomba had programmed and fed to the machine a problem of extraordinary complexity.
“The problem received the title of ‘Buridan’s sheep.’ The biological code was taken from a young merino sheep, by the Casparo-Karpov method, at a moment when the sheep was between two feeding troughs full of mixed fodder. This code, along with additional data about sheep in general, was fed into CODD. The machine was required: a) to predict which trough the merino would choose, and b) to give the psychophysiological basis for this choice.”
“But what about free will?” Evgeny asked.
“That’s exactly what we want to find out about,” answered Rudak. “Perhaps it just doesn’t exist.” He was silent for a bit. “In the control experiment the sheep chose the right trough. Actually, the problem came down to the question of why. For two years the machine just thought. Then it began building models. Effector machines often solve problems through models. Like the time CODD solved a problem about earthworms—it built such a superb model that we swiped CODD’s idea and started building subterrenes. Amazing devices.”
Rudak fell into thought. Evgeny started fidgeting impatiently in his chair.
“Are you uncomfortable?” inquired Rudak.
“Not at all, it’s just that it was quite fascinating.”
“Ah, you found it fascinating too? Now then, how can I put it without breaking the spell?”
He’s covering something up, Evgeny thought. He said, “I must have seen one of those models you’re talking about. A sort of pole with a mirror. Only it could hardly be a model of a sheep. Not even one of Buridan’s.”
“That’s the point,” Rudak said with a sigh. “No one believes that it’s a model of a sheep. Papa Lomba, for instance, wouldn’t believe it. He gathered all the materials on the programming and went off to the center to verify them.” Rudak sighed again. “He’s due back this evening.”
“And what exactly is the problem?” asked Evgeny.
“The problem is that CODD is making poles on wheels and seven-legged beetles. And sometimes those sort of flat disks that don’t have legs, don’t have arms, but do have gyroscopes. And no one can see what that has to do with sheep.”
“And actually,” Evgeny said pensively, “why should a sheep have that many legs?”
Rudak looked at him suspiciously. “Precisely—why?” he said with unnatural enthusiasm.
They looked at each other silently for some time. He’s covering something up. Oh, that beard is a slippery one! Evgeny thought.
Gracefully, and without the help of his arms, Rudak stood up using only one leg. “And now let’s go, Comrade Slavin, and I’ll introduce you to the manager of the film library.”
“One more question,” Evgeny said while reloading the dictaphone. “Where is your Great CODD located?”
“You’re sitting on it. It’s underground, twenty-eight levels, six hectares. The brain, the workshops, the energy generators, everything. And now stand up and let’s go.”
CODD’s film library was at the other end of the settlement, in a low studio. On the roof of the building gleamed the gridded panels of a stereocinerama projector. Immediately beyond the studio began the savanna.
The studio smelled of ozone and sour milk. The manager of the film library sat at a table and studied through a binocular microscope a splendid photo of the hind-leg joint. The librarian was a pretty Tahitian woman of about twenty-five.
“Hello, girl,” Rudak rumbled tenderly.
The librarian tore herself away from the microscope, and a smile blossomed. “Hello, Paul,” she said.
“This is Comrade Slavin, correspondent for the European Center,” said Rudak. “Treat him with respect. Show him frames two-sixty-seven, three-fifteen, and seven-five-one-two.”
“If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, of course,” Evgeny put in gallantly.
The librarian looked very much like Sheila. “With pleasure,” said the librarian. “But is Comrade Slavin mentally prepared?”
“Uh… how about it, Comrade Slavin, are you prepared?”
“Completely,” Evgeny answered with certainty.
“Then I’ll leave you,” said Rudak. “The monsters await me.” He turned the doorknob and left. They could hear him shouting to the whole settlement, “Akitada! Did the equipment come?” The answer was not audible.
The librarian sighed and said, “Take a folding chair, Comrade Slavin, and let’s go.”
Evgeny went out, and sat down by the studio wall. The librarian efficiently estimated the height of the sun, calculated something, her lips moving and returned to the studio. “Frame two-sixty-seven,” she announced through the open window.
The sunlight disappeared. Evgeny saw a dark-violet night sky with bright, unfamiliar stars. Low strips of clouds stretched over the horizon, and the dark silhouettes of strange trees, something like palms and something like giant sprouts of cauliflower, slowly appeared. Reflections of the stars trembled in black water. Then, over the clouds, a white patch began to glow. It burned brighter and brighter; weird shadows crept along the black oily surface, and suddenly from beyond the horizon a blinding white, pulsating luminary exploded and rushed in jerks across the sky, extinguishing the stars. A gray mist began rushing between the trunks of the strange trees, irridescent sparks flashed, and then everything disappeared. Once again the sunlit savanna lay in front of Evgeny.
“After that, there’s solid static,” said the librarian. “What was it?” asked Evgeny. He expected something big. “The rising of a supernova. More than a hundred million years ago. It gave rise to the dinosaurs. Frame three-fifteen coming up. This is our pride and joy. Fifty million years later.”
Once again the savanna disappeared. Evgeny saw a gray water-covered plain. Everywhere the pulpy stalks of some sort of vegetation stuck up out of the water. A long gray animal shuffled over the plain, knee-deep in water. Evgeny could not at first make out where the animal’s head was. A wet cylindrical-shaped trunk plastered with green grass tapered evenly at both ends and merged into a long flexible neck and tail. Then Evgeny examined the tiny flat head with its lipless toadlike mouth. There was something of the chicken about the habits of the monster—with every step it ducked its head into the water, and immediately jerked it up again, quickly grinding some sort of greenery in its teeth.
“Diplodocus,” said the librarian. “Twenty-four meters long.” Then Evgeny caught sight of another monster. It was crawling alongside the first one with a snakelike motion, leaving a stripe of muddied water behind it. At one point it barely turned aside from the pillar-shaped feet of the diplodocus, and for a minute Evgeny saw an enormous, pale, tooth-filled mouth. Something’s going to happen, he thought. It was much more interesting than the flash of a supernova. The diplodocus, evidently, had no suspicion of the presence of its toothy companion, or else it simply did not consider it worthy of any attention. But the other beast, maneuvering adroitly under the diplodocus’s legs, approached closer to its head, then jumped out of the water in a jerk, instantly bit off the head, and dived,
Evgeny closed his mouth, his teeth chattering. The picture was unusually bright and distinct. The diplodocus stopped for a second, raised its decapitated neck high and… walked on, just as evenly dipping the bleeding stump into the turbid water. Only after several paces did its front legs buckle. The hind legs continued walking, and the enormous tail waved unconcernedly from side to side. The neck shot upward to the sky one last time, and then helplessly flopped down into the water. The front part of the body began to collapse
on its side, but the hind part continued to move forward. Then the hind legs collapsed too, and instantly dozens of snarling toothy mouths surfaced in the turbid foaming water and darted forward.
“Wow!” said Evgeny, wiping away sweat. “What a sight!”
“A typical scene of predatory dinosaurs hunting a large diplodocus,” the librarian said in a businesslike tone. “They ate each other all the time. Almost all the data which we receive from that epoch is uninterrupted predation. But how did you like the quality of the image, Comrade Slavin?”
“Excellent quality,” said Evgeny. “Except for some reason it’s always blinking.”
Above the tops of the acacias, a pot-bellied six-engined craft thundered by. The librarian ran out of the studio. “The equipment!” she shouted. “Let’s go, Comrade Slavin—that’s the equipment coming in.”
“But please!” yelped Evgeny. “What about the rest? You promised to show me another one!”
“You don’t want to see it, believe me,” the librarian said with conviction. She hurriedly folded up the chair. “I don’t know what got into Paul’s head. Number seven-five-one-two is the slaughter in Constantinople. Fifteenth century. The image quality is excellent, but it’s such an unpleasant scene. Really, Comrade Slavin, you don’t want to see it. Let’s go watch Paul catch the monsters instead.”
The enormous six-rotored helicopter had landed near the place where Evgeny had left his pterocar, and the unloading of equipment was in full swing. Platforms on high wheels, loaded with dull yellow boxes, rolled out of the opened holds. They took the boxes to the foot of one of the acacias, where in the space between two mighty roots the indefatigable Rudak supervised their assembly. His stentorian voice rang out far across the evening savanna.
The film librarian excused herself and ran off somewhere. Evgeny began walking in uncertain circles around Rudak. Curiosity was getting the better of him. The platforms on high wheels rolled up, unloaded, and departed, and the “servants of CODD”-guys and girls-put the yellow boxes in place and screwed them together, and soon the contours of an enormous angular construction had taken form under the acacia. Rudak rushed off somewhere into its bowels, humming, whistling, and emitting booming shouts. It was noisy and cheerful.