New Writings in SF 21 - [Anthology] Read online

  He stood a while longer, staring like a ghost; then it seemed it sank in. He turned silently, closed the door behind him.

  ‘Next door’ was my specimen lock. Amazing what autosuggestion can do. I clamped my foot on the floorswitch, heard the bolts shoot home. He yelled something, started banging the wall; and I valved gas, A steady hissing; then a thump.

  And blessed peace.

  I bespoke Earth Control on the emergency frequency, explained the salient facts and got a clearance.

  Lugging him to the shuttle wasn’t the easiest part. I made it finally, strapped him in the couch, closed the hatches, ran through what countdown checks I could remember and gave myself back to Earth. Wire-flying through the Loop isn’t a thing to be thought on too closely; but they made it. I transferred to the Richardson vehicle, tied myself down once more; and Earth pulled the tit, plastering our substance and the substance of the freighter thinly round the parameters of paradox.

  When I regained coherence we were in stable Earth orbit, and the relief vessels were coming up to us. The Pilot (First Class) was awake, and saying quite a lot. He would probably have backed up speech with action in some unpleasant form or another, only I’d taken the precaution of tieing him down again. I listened for a while; eventually I got tired. I switched his voice circuit direct to Earth Control, and he had enough sense left to button his lip. I spent the time till docking thinking how interesting we are as a species. One and all, we build round ourselves little protective shells; but inside, when we’re bottomed, we’re really quite inhuman.

  So IAB never got their Dragon. I was out of circulation for a time; when I got back I was told Trade Control had already issued authority for the automats to be programmed into the islands. Epilson Development were losing money each day they didn’t mine; they underwrote the cost of the station without too much complaint and endowed a research grant that will keep me in crusts for the next five years at least. I settled down to catalogue what had been learned of the humanoids on Proxima IX before Epsilon’s power station ran supercritical; and the Dragons were forgotten.

  Except that a few days later I had a visitor. I used the door sensors because only the week before there’d been a mugging a dozen floors below. But I hadn’t got that sort of trouble this time. I opened the door and poured myself a whisky.

  She was as pretty as her stereo. She’d been crying; and she was wearing the season’s newest. I gave her a chair, but she wouldn’t have a drink. She crossed her legs, tried them the other way. Didn’t like that either. Finally she said, ‘Remember me?’

  I said, ‘It’s coming. Don’t help me.’

  She smiled. She said, ‘I always expect Researchers to be much older men.’

  I put the glass down gently and sat at the desk.

  She said, ‘I’ve come from ... from Drew. I wondered if you could ... tell me a little more. He’s so ... reticent. You know.’

  I said, ‘There’s a report going in tomorrow. It’s irregular; but I can arrange for you to see a copy. If you so desire.’

  She swallowed. She said, ‘I... will have that drink, if you don’t mind.’

  I got it for her, sat down again.

  She drank it, put the glass aside. She said, ‘Researcher, the report... You know why I’m here. Don’t you ?’

  I said, ‘I’m always willing to be surprised.’

  She stood up, without fuss. She laid her gloves down, unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it open. Then she just stood there, looking at me.

  I shook my head and opened the desk drawer. I thumbed through the report and started to read.

  ‘Until day fifty seven, the life forms designated Epsilon VI brackets three stroke two showed no awareness of the presence of the observing party and no animosity. Their attack was both sudden and unexpected. My companion, Space Pilot First Class Andrew Scott-Braithwaite, behaved with conspicuous gallantry. To him, certainly, I owe my life; and my final employment of GS 93 was at his instigation, though he himself was imperilled by the release of the gas. Our subsequent return was logged by Earth Control ... etcetera.’

  I tossed the papers over to her. I said, ‘You read the rest. The style may be wanting here and there; but at least it’s concise.’

  She stared at the thing a moment, and burst into tears.

  After she had gone Miss Braithwaite glided from the inner room. Miss Braithwaite is my secretary at IAB. She is also fat, fortyish and an optimist; but she cooks good suppers. Right now her eyes were misty with emotion; and she laid a hand shakily on my arm. ‘Researcher,’ she said, ‘that’s about the biggest thing I ever saw a person do.’

  I patted her. ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘I’m like that.’

  That’s the sort of thing one has to live with.

  They still have Pilot (First Class) Scott-Braithwaite down at the State Home for Bewildered Astronauts. But I did hear he’s being seconded for another tour of duty. Apparently that boy was one of the worst cases of Loop nerves they’d ever seen. Had I not plastered the cracks, he would certainly have been an ex-spacer by now; and Judy would have had to cast those honest, wide blue eyes around fairly rapidly. Because Drew’s disability pension would hardly have maintained her in the Manner to Which. As things stand, I wonder which would have been the better turn to do him.

  I wouldn’t have thought he’d have blown like that; but you can never tell. After all, I once spent three years with a woman who closely approximated a Greek goddess. Appearances are deceptive; as a Behaviourist, it’s the first thing you learn.

  <>

  * * * *

  ALGORA ONE SIX

  by Douglas R. Mason

  It was one thing to build the ultimate in computers, complete with all human knowledge, but another and more serious thing to design it in human form. Especially when it took the shape of Algora One Six.

  * * * *

  Lance Dodd had got himself among a rabble of programmers and systems analysts at the drinks trolley and had every right to think he was outside the action. When he heard his own name from the platform he lost concentration and poured a generous measure of company sherry down his left sleeve.

  The non-stain fabric stood up well, but his morale took a dent. He swivelled round apprehensively to see what the old bastard was up to.

  Dr. Otto Kapteyn, all there was of power in Cybernat International, was fifty metres off at the edge of a command island which housed the executive hardware of the Algora project. Squat, balding, with a square, heavy face and boiled blue eyes, he was using a vibrant purposeful delivery which would sound well on the newscast.

  He had been outlining the history of the project from the first catalytic concept in the Cybernat think tank and had been handing out bouquets with a lavish hand. Maybe it was politic at that. Spread the load of responsibility, so that if the pay-off was wholly bad they were all named by name and he was only the agent who threw the final switch.

  He said, ‘Finally we were very fortunate to have Dr. Dodd in the team. The big central problem has been to devise a simple universal language which would give communication between machines and between machines and people. This Dr. Dodd has done. The development is called Spectron. But don’t think operators will need to learn it. Each input station carries a transducer to convert speech from any one of six main languages into Spectron. From then on the brain will think in Spectron, but communicate in any of the selected tongues.’

  That was fair enough and innocent enough for the public handout. What Kapteyn was keeping up his shirt front was the internal break through that had already taken place, when the hardware had begun to answer back and had become selective about the material it wanted for its memory banks.

  As soon as Spectron was fed in, there had been a change, as though the machine recognised it now had the tool it was waiting for. The word brought order out of chaos as it had done with man.

  It was at that point that Lance Dodd had tried to call a halt. But he was in a minority of one. Too much company money
and prestige had gone into it.

  Kapteyn was going farther to identify with the public, putting himself on the same side of the equation. He took a couple of steps along the platform and stood beside the upended oblong frame with rich plum drapes that dominated the set. He picked out the release tassel and held it out. ‘I am as interested as anybody here to see what is under the cloth. It’s been a close secret even in the organisation. The art boys have kept it up tight. I only know the brief they had. We told them to produce a figure head for the executive end, which would be in keeping with the tremendous potential of the product. Let’s take a look.’

  There was clapping all round. If the man really had finished it was worth a cheer.

  Lance Dodd refilled his glass and missed the action, but he felt the silence as the noise cut off and swivelled round to grab his share of wonder.

  The over-riding impact was of gold. The figure on the plinth was standing with the weight resting on the right leg, the left bent as if to move in a balance of form which had been drawn from some classical model. Skin was pale amber, hair intensely black was divided into two shoulder length plaits.

  She could have stepped down from a hill top temple of Po Nagar.

  Costume was limited to a deep gold-studded belt with massive clips at either hip and ALGORA ONE SIX in bas relief. Armlets with oval upstanding plates carried a lotus motif. A jade pendant fell precisely in the hollow between mathematically turned hemisphere breasts, a trigger pair for anybody’s computer.

  But it was the face that had silenced the company. Working from a Hindu ideal, the design division had created a product which was as remarkable in its field as the hardware that lay behind it.

  Basically it was a broad oval, symmetrical, eyes textured like black milk, eyebrows fine and slightly flared, lips full and everted. Topped by a plain round dome with an opening lotus bud at the crown, it carried the suggestion of a smile without any strong visual clues to pin-point its origin.

  Kapteyn had taken half a step back. Closest to the omega point of the enterprise, he was getting the impact strength nine and though a dedicated speaker was clearly out of programme.

  It was left to an operator upstage of the tableau to move the scene along. He had been told to switch in the circuits when the President was all through and the gathering silence was good enough. He flipped down two banks of keys and a long arc of translucent panel flickered into busy life.

  Algora One Six stirred on her plinth. Mouth open a centimetre, she appeared to be taking a deep breath. She looked slowly round the company and the Minister of Technology, a tall willowy type with sideburns and a fancy shirt nervously broke the stem of his glass.

  It was a calm, unhurried survey and she was clearly not impressed by what her data acquisition network was picking up. But the smile remained. If that was the way it was, a philosophical girl had to make the best of it. Panning round she got to her companion on the dais and the refined lore of twenty millenia swilling around inside her tin hat recognised that courtesies were overdue.

  She stepped off her pedestal, bowed delicately palms together, chin high and walked past him to the operator at his lonely station.

  Leaning over the back of his chair, presenting a neat amber can to the company she appeared to be making fine tuning adjustments to his switchgear.

  Newsmen who had been too bemused to take pictures saw the piquancy of the angle and flash bulbs flickered about like summer lightning. After all the build up, it was a tail piece in a million.

  Kapteyn finally got himself sorted and reached his lectern, where he pressed a stud and a fire curtain slowly dropped to isolate the platform.

  * * * *

  In the Cybernat conference room atop of a slender two-hundred-metre stalk, recriminations were being flung around like confetti. A blow-up of Algora leaning over her table dominated the set, a triumph of baroque. The caption read Functional Diagram of Cybernat’s Multi-million Brain Child.

  There was more in the same vein, splashed over the front of every tabloid. It was suggested that after all the brou-ha-ha they had come up with a single ended amplifier.

  But that was only one strand in the web of angst. In its way it was just as well that the public had latched on to the comedy angle.

  Kapteyn looked as though he had aged a decade, speaking even more slowly than usual and giving the impression that he was looking over his shoulder, he said, ‘It can’t go on. In another week, we’ll be out of business. I don’t have to tell anybody here what percentage of the plant was committed to Algora One Six. Customers are getting edgy. Some major accounts have been waiting fourteen days for computer time. They won’t go on. They’ll shift to General Automation or Rand Electronic. God, they must be laughing their teeth out over there.’

  Vice President Box, a tall thin man with a long nose and a nervous cough, cleared his throat and said, ‘I was always against elaboration, a simple conventional outlet device was all that was necessary.’

  It was all true, but it got him no friends. Kapteyn made a mental note to have him off the board and had another go at the ancient management cycle. They had stuck at stage five and he reviewed one to four. ‘We have a problem. Definition is plain. Algora One Six has gone solo. She has enough power in local storage to stay operative for at least twelve months. Facts are in front of you. Nobody has got close to the main computer in the last week. Reason—that tin zombie has taken over and we can’t bring in Public Safety without making it public and we’re in enough trouble without that. I want some ideas. I’ll remind you that that’s what you’re paid for.’

  But fermentation was stuck on a loop. Box raised another nervous cough. Iris Hoffmeier, Kapteyn’s private secretary stopped her recorder to save her tape and began buffing her nails on her magenta tabard.

  It was left to a junior executive to break the digestive silence and his voice sounded loud in his own ears. He said, ‘Somebody should talk to Algora. If she’s behaving like a person, she should be treated like a person. Make a deal. We supply accommodation and power. She owes the company some consideration. Offer regular working hours and a place on the pay roll.’

  Evaluation was swift. Kapteyn said he was glad to be getting a little help. An accountant said it was all right, but they would have to watch the figure, it might be used as a precedent. The only negative contribution came from an engineer, who put his finger on a practical difficulty, ‘But nobody can get close. She has some kind of power field that she can set up across the door. Also she threw a stool at one of my men. He’s hospitalised. She’s modified the input circuits. There’s no response to regular speech. We’ve tried every language.’

  Lance Dodd asked his question and while it was still vibrating in the air recognised that he had put his neck in a noose. ‘Have you tried Spectron?’

  ‘I guess not. There isn’t anybody who can speak it.’

  Every eye tracked round and focused on Dodd. The engineer had it all wrong. There was at least one. And there he was, looking apprehensive.

  Dodd said, ‘Now wait a minute. Spectron’s a kind of universal code. It was never conceived as an oral language. It’s virtually unpronounceable. In any case Algor’s against communication as such, otherwise she’d have left a conventional language channel open.’

  ‘Do you have any better suggestion to make, Dr. Dodd?’ Kapteyn said it expecting a negative.

  ‘Not at this time.’

  ‘Time is not on our side. I believe you should try.’

  ‘There is no channel left open.’

  ‘You can use a riot shield. Get close to the door and engage her in conversation.’

  ‘What about, for Pete’s sake?’

  ‘Dr. Dodd, you are a man with a long and expensive education. There must be some topic you are familiar with. If you can keep her occupied, the technical staff will work around and raise the fire curtain. Once we can get a man to the console, he can isolate the memory banks. She’ll fold like a puppet. All right then. We’ll take a break. In
half an hour I want to see some action.’

  * * * *

  It seemed less than thirty minutes to Lance Dodd. Hugging an oblong of green duralumin and feeling a fool, he peered in through a broken panel and tried to locate Algora.

  At first he believed she had shanghaied an assistant. The trim figure at the console was wearing white coveralls and had shoulder length black hair in an elastic bell that fell forward and hid her face.

  He tried a penetrating whisper, ‘Hi! Where is she then?’

  There was no answer and he knocked twice on the panel to get attention.

  Hands moving over the switchgear stopped their busy ploy.

  Encouraged, Dodd said, ‘Take it from the top. Shove everything to Non Op. Then nip smartly this way. Make it real fast.’