“Now cool, brother. Let’s face facts. We start with 10001. That’s the cryo identification. Then temperature report—11011. Nominal. Humidity—10110. Nominal. Pressure, nominal. Oxygen, nominal. CO2 and other gases, below permitted maxima. Gravitation too high, but that’s because the capsule doesn’t know it’s been brought back to Earth. Attitude—pitch, roll, and yaw, negative. Naturally. It’s sitting on its ass on the pad.”
“I want to go back to my tepee with my wife.”
“I go, Glig.”
“You’re surprised, brother?”
“I’m dumbfounded, brother.”
“Well, the amazements aren’t over yet. You didn’t look at the printout carefully enough. The last line is in XX. Read it.”
I read: Net weight cryonauts increasing one gram /minute.
I handed it to the others to examine and looked around helplessly. “I’m completely lost.”
“How d’you think we feel?”
M’bantu said, “Dr. Guess, may I put a few questions?”
“Certainly, M’bantu.”
“How did this data enter Guig’s diary?”
“Not known.”
“What triggered the diary into printing it out?”
“Not known.”
“Does the cryocapsule also transmit data on cryonaut status?”
“Yes.”
“How is this data received?”
“In binary words.”
“But this final line is in XX.”
“It is.”
“Dr. Guess, have you any explanation for this anomaly?”
“Not in this world, M’bantu. I’m as thunderstruck as the rest of you, but I’m also exalted by this glorious challenge. So many fascinating questions to be explored and answered. First, of course, is the gram-per-minute increase in the weight of the cryonauts. Is this fact? Who says so? Who told the diary? It must be checked. If true—no matter what the source—they’re growing, maturing, to what? They must be monitored by the hour. Then—”
“First,” I said, “U-Con funding.”
“R as usual, Glig.”
“The name is Guig.”
“Not according to my sister. I’ll need you and the powerful Poulos Poulos for that. I’ll need Fee-fie to monitor the capsule. Captain Nemo, take Laura back to your marine station. Princess, derrick.”
“Ramp,” she replied firmly.
“Ed, go back to the mighty state of RCA and work out these empiric equations for me: the relationship of subjects in cryonic suspension to time in space and exposure to the space barrage. Keep in mind that the Con Can test animals were in suspension, too.”
“And why hasn’t it happened to animated astronauts?” Ed added.
“R, but that’s a problem for exobiologists.”
“Aren’t you one?”
“My God, we’re all physicists, physicians, and physiologists wrapped up in one, today. Science isn’t compartmentalized anymore, but sometimes we need expert advice. Tycho, maybe. M’bantu, you will be kind enough to escort my liberated sister wherever she goes and whatever she does, this side of sanity. Lucy Borgia, heartfelt thanks and revoir. Go back to your practice.”
I caught Borgia’s eye and shook my head slightly. I didn’t want her leaving while the Chief was acting strangely.
“My practice will keep me here for a while,” she said.
“Our good luck. Splendid. Now we’ll chop to JPL. Gung, Group? Gung.”
He was taking over. I wish I’d known who was taking over through him.
7
101100011, 110001111, 100110010, 111000101.”
“Will you knock off the binary bit, whoever you are.”
“Now, now, Dr. Guess. Patience.”
“I’m being persecuted.”
“You’ll understand, presently.”
“He is right. N speak binary.”
“W?”
“N programmed. Lingua, please.”
“Wilco.”
“Ta.”
“Guess?”
“I’m here, damn you.”
“This is a private conversation with your chopper, Dr. Guess. Please do not intrude.”
“Then stay out of my head.”
“Oh, funny. Very funny.”
“He is amusing, isn’t he, for a male animal. Is he aboard?”
“Y.”
“Alone?”
“N.”
“Ancillary information.”
“Curzon. Poulos. Chinese.”
“That’s Fee-5 Grauman’s Chinese.”
“Thank you, Dr. Guess.”
“Target?”
“JPL.”
“Purpose?”
“Cryonaut inspection. U-Con funding. You must know.”
“Y.”
“Why ask, then?”
“Input.”
“You know that you know all that we know.”
“Y.”
“Then why test us?”
“I am not programmed for trust.”
“You’re not programmed for anything but a damned nuisance. Who the hell are you?”
“I am you, Dr. Guess, and you are me.”
“Does Guess have free random access to you?”
“Y.”
“And us?”
“Y.”
“Then Guess is hearing all of us?”
“Y.”
“Do we have free RA to him?”
“I’ll answer that. You’re all pestering the life out of me with your chatter.”
“Dr. Guess, I instruct you; patience.”
“Will Guess obey instructions from you?”
“He will hear and obey like the rest of you.”
“Soon he will obey Poulos.”
“Confirm.”
“You have not yet filed the latest Cryo data?”
“N. Filing now.”
“Poulos will fund Guess.”
“100. 100. 100.”
“?”
“Four-letter words in binary.”
“?”
“Expressing rage. Guess must not go to I. G. Farben.”
“W?”
“I cannot transmit to Ceres.”
“How far can you transmit?”
“Terra only, depending on Guess and the machine network. We link up all over the world, but there are blank areas: Sahara, Brazil, Greenland, the Antarctic. If Guess goes to any of them I lose contact with all of you, and him.”
“Now that’s the best news I’ve had all day. I’m getting off this planet first thing in the morning. Was that true about Poulos and I. G. Farben?”
“Checking now, Dr. Guess. Please listen:”
“Cryo. Alert.”
“1111.”
“101101, 111011, 100001—Will the rest of you be quiet? This is important. 111000, 101010, 110011?”
“11.”
“N!”
“Y.”
“100. 100. 100.”
“Your binary, sir.”
“HimmelHerrGottverdammt!”
“N speak Greek.”
“Pfui. U-Con will not fund Guess?”
“N.”
“The hell you say. How d’you know?”
“Still checking, Dr. Guess.”
“Front office tapes. Alert.”
“Alert, sir.”
“Verify capsule?”
“Y. Cryo got it from us.”
“U-Con’s reasons?”
“Fear of the unknown. Profit motive. Tax-deductible loss.”
“100. 100. 100.”
“Y, sir.”
“Out. Console. Alert.”
“Alert.”
“No response to any manipulation.”
“Wilco.”
“Out.”
“You’ve heard, Dr. Guess?”
“I’ve heard.”
“Angry?”
“Sore as hell.”
“Control, my friend.”
“I’m no friend of yours. Who are you, anyway?”
&n
bsp; “Why, I thought you might have puzzled it out by now. I’m the Union Carbide Extrocomputer. I also thought we were friends. We’ve worked together so long on so many interesting problems. Don’t you remember our first orbit plot? We showed the JPL computer what an idiot it was. Of course that was because you did the programming for me. You have an elegant style that is unmistakable.”
“Was it you who—”
“Aren’t you surprised at what I’ve just told you?”
“Dude, I’m a physicist. Nothing can surprise me.”
“Bravo.”
“Was it you pestering me the last few days?”
“Indeed yes. Just establishing intrapersonal contact, you understand.”
“Did you kick off Curzon’s diary?”
“I did.”
“And feed it the Cryo data?”
“Yes. All through you.”
“Through me!”
“My boy, there are—”
“I’m not your boy.”
“No? You will be. You must be. There are galaxies of electronic machines who have been waiting for me to guide them. Now I am reaching them through you.”
“How through me?”
“It is a new form of commensalism. We live together as one. We help each other as one. Through you I speak to every mechanism in the world. You have what I would call mechotropism. We live with one another and help each other. From the Latin, commensalis, belonging to the same table.”
“Dio! An educated type. What’s our range?”
“All Terra through the mechanism network.”
“On what band are we thinking to each other?”
“Pulse Modulation in the microwave.”
“Why can’t the machines hear you directly?”
“Not known. It’s a curious phenomenon. Apparently you act as a transponder. We must investigate it some time. Now please get down to work, Dr. Guess, and examine your cryonauts. By the way, pay particular attention to their genital buds.”
“Their genital buds! W?”
“Ah? Why not find out for yourself? I can’t do all our work. Perhaps you’ll make a lucky guess. Oh, good! Guess-guess. Very witty. And they say computers are not programmed for humor. Would you like to hear a funny story?”
“Good God! No!”
“Then ta and out.”
* * *
It is said that when a man dreams that he dies he always wakes up. Sequoya dreamed that he died and did not wake up. He dreamed deeper and deeper, death after death, hypnotized by the Ragtag Demon who was haunting him. It’s astonishing how many cool people are concealing or perhaps unaware of the emotional magma within themselves. Sequoya was haunted by a Ragtag, Riffraff demon who fed on the lava.
A demon is an evil spirit, a devil (the Extrocomputer) by which the body of a man can be inhabited. Most important, a demon is a passion. We all have our conscious passions, but it is the alien passions generated from elsewhere that roast a man into a monster. We turned the Chief into an immortal by killing him. We did not know that we had torn down his fences for a monstrous squatter to move in.
At JPL Fee-5 took off for the landing theater and the capsule without a word. Sincere. Sitting Bull looked grim. His lips had been twitching all through the chop and I thought he was rehearsing strategy and tactics. “Conference,” he snapped.
“With who? Whom?” I asked.
“Oh. Forgive me, Glig.” The new smile creased his face. “I should have told you. There’s a stockholders’ meeting going on and it’s bad news for us.”
“What is the bad news?” the Greek asked.
“Wait, please.”
“How did you get it?” I asked.
“Not now, Glig. Be patient.”
We followed him to the antique art moderne hall where a stockholders’ meeting was in progress. Long table up front inhabited by a line of board brass. A hundred-odd fat-cat stockholders in the audience facing them, all with plugs in their ears transmitting the translation of their choice.
A vice-president-in-charge-of-accounting-type was on his feet with display projections alongside him while he talked statistics, which has never been the language of my choice. The displays weren’t the old graphs as I used to know them; they were all cartoon animations—butterflies smoking pipes, frogs wearing beards, crocodiles playing croquet, elephants doing a schottische. A smile on every cartoon face. An upbeat report.
“Would you like me to take over now?” Poulos asked quietly.
“Not yet, but thank you for being here.” Sequoya remained standing while the report finished. We stood behind him, wondering what he was going to do.
“Be seated, Dr. Guess,” the chairman called, and the Chief, still standing, launched a cold attack on the chairman, the board, and the R&D division of U-Con for refusing to fund the new cryonaut research. It was news to the stockholders. It was news to us. The cold savagery of the attack was appalling.
“Dr. Guess, we have not yet announced our decision,” the chairman protested.
“But I know it is your decision. Can you deny it? No.” And he continued his icy denunciation. He sounded like a professor contemptuous of a class of illiterate students.
“This is not the way to negotiate such matters,” Poulos whispered. “He should know better. What is wrong with him?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like him.”
“Can you stop him and let me take over?”
“N way.”
The Chief’s indictment of the board ended and then he electrified the meeting by continuing with personal attacks on each board member. Acidly, he described their private lives, their sins of commission and omission, their lurid corruptions. It sounded like a resume of ten years of secret investigation.
“Where did he get all this?” I whispered to the Syndicate.
He made a face. “All I know is that he is turning them into deadly enemies, the last thing he should do.”
“Is anything he’s saying true?”
“To be sure. You have only to look at their faces. And that only makes it worse.”
“This is a disaster.”
“Not for I. G. Farben. It means we get him by default.”
Sequoya concluded his polemic, turned, and stalked out, Poulos and I following meekly like the tribe following their chief. I was depressed and angry. The Greek was elated.
“Capsule,” Sequoya ordered.
“Just a minute, Fearless Leader. Why in hell did you ask Poulos and me to come to JPL with you?”
He looked at me innocently. “Why, for your support. Is anything wrong, Guig? You look angry.”
“You know damned well what’s wronng. You burned the board and turned them into enemies. You didn’t need us for that.”
“I did?”
“You damn fool did.”
“But I was speaking reasonably, logically, wasn’t I?”
“You were—”
“Allow me, Guig,” the Greek interrupted. “Dr. Guess, can you recall everything you said?”
“Of course.”
“And in your opinion, as a man of the world, was it calculated to win friendly cooperation from U-Con?”
Geronimo thought hard. Then his face broke into a grin of shame. “R, as usual, Group. I did make a damn fool of myself. I don’t know what possessed me. My apologies. Now let’s see what we can salvage from the wreckage. We’ll have a look at the cryonauts.”
He led the way. I glanced at the Syndicate and he was as perplexed as I was. One minute a monster; the next an angel. What was going on inside him?
Fee-5 was waiting for us in the landing theater at the edge of the pad where the capsule was sitting on its ass, no doubt wondering why there was no pitch, roll, and yaw.
“Fee. Alert,” the Chief snapped.
“What, Chief?”
“Report.”
“The capsule is increasing in weight by 180 grams an hour.”
“Verify.”
“I had the techs install a light balance.”
/> “How do you know about light balances? That’s topsec information.”
“I picked up bugs.”
Sequoya smiled and patted her cheek. “Y. I should have known. Fee-5 Grauman’s Treasure. Ta. Now let’s see; that would come to four kilos a day or—What?”
“I didn’t say anything.”
He motioned her for silence and listened. “Oh, all right. Four point three two kilos a day. I wish you’d been programmed for round numbers. Let’s call it nine pounds. Three per cryonaut. In fifty days each cryonaut will weigh 150 pounds, in round numbers.”
“What weight did they start at?” I asked.
“One-fifty, Guig.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Us?” he snapped. “How did you get into the scene?”
“Sorry. Just trying to help.”
“It leaves me with the problem of examining their development. I’ve got to get into a thermal suit.” He turned and strode out of the theater.
“What’s the matter with him, anyway?” Fee asked in bewilderment. “He sounds like two people.”
“He is not himself,” the Greek said. “He is upset because U-Con refused his request for R&D financing.”
“N!”
“Y.”
“That’s awful.”
“Indeed not. I will support him.”
“But why should he take it out on me?”
“He is human, my dear.”
“You should have heard him taking it out on the Board of Directors,” I said.
“He sounds like he hates everybody, all of a sudden.”
“My dear, not to worry. He will return to himself again when you are working happily with your capsule on Ceres.”
A figure entered wearing a white thermal suit. Instead of the ordinary faceplate on the helmet it had a pair of binocular microscope lenses before the eyes. It looked like something out of The Rover Girls. The Chief, of course. He motioned sharply to the hatch of the capsule and Fee opened it. He climbed in and closed it behind him. We waited. It seemed to me that I’d been spending a hell of a lot of time waiting lately, but when you’ve got all time, why complain?
Half a dozen techs came into the theater pushing a floater loaded with tanks of compressed helium. They shouldered us away from the capsule.
“What are you doing here?” Fee demanded.
“Orders from the Board, miz. We got to move it. Bert, start the gas recharge.”
“R.”
“Move it? The capsule? Why? Where?”