He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office before, once or twice, with his
father; he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel conviviality
and rambling conversation. None of the lights were bright, and the
walls were almost invisible in the shadows. As they entered, Tom
Brangwyn went to the long table and took off his belt and holster,
laying it down. One by one, the others unbuckled their weapons and
added them to the pile. Klem Zareff's cane went on the table with his
pistol; there was a sword inside it.
That was something else he was seeing with new eyes. He hadn't started
carrying a gun when he had left for Terra, and he was wondering, now,
why any of them bothered to. Why, there wouldn't be a shooting a year
in Litchfield, if you didn't count the Tramptowners, and they stayed
south of the docks and off the top level.
Or perhaps that was just it. Litchfield was peaceful because
everybody was prepared to keep it that way. It certainly wasn't
because of anything the Planetary Government did to maintain order.
Now Brangwyn was setting out glasses, filling a pitcher from a keg in
the corner of the room. The last time Conn had been here, they'd given
him a glass of wine, and he'd felt very grown-up because they didn't
water it for him.
"Well, gentlemen," Kurt Fawzi was saying, "let's have a toast to our
returned friend and new associate. Conn, we're all anxious to hear
what you've found out, but even if you didn't learn anything, we're
still happy to have you back with us. Gentlemen; to our friend and
neighbor. Welcome home, Conn!"
"Well, it's wonderful to be back, Mr. Fawzi," he began.
"Here, none of this mister foolishness; you're one of us, now, Conn.
And drink up, everybody. We have plenty of brandy, if we don't have
anything else."
"You can say that again, Kurt." That was one of the distillery people;
he'd remember the name in a moment. "When this new crop gets pressed
and fermented...."
"I don't know where in Gehenna I'm going to vat mine till it
ferments," Klem Zareff said.
"Or why," another planter added. "Lorenzo, what are you going to be
paying for wine?"
Lorenzo Menardes; that was the name. The distiller said he was
worrying about what he'd be able to get for brandy.
"Oh, please," Fawzi interrupted. "Not today; not when our boy's home
and is going to tell us how we can solve all our problems."
"Yes, Conn." That was Morgan Gatworth, the lawyer. "You did find out
where Merlin is, didn't you?"
That set them all off. He was still holding his drink; he downed it in
one gulp, barely tasting it, and handed the glass to Tom Brangwyn for
a refill, and caught a frown on his father's face. One did not gulp
drinks in Kurt Fawzi's office.
Well, neither did one blast everybody's hopes with half a dozen words,
and that was what he was trying to force himself to do. He wanted to
blurt out the one quick sentence and get it over with, but the words
wouldn't come out of his throat. He lowered the second drink by half;
the brandy was beginning to warm him and dissolve the cold lump in his
stomach. Have to go easy, though. He wasn't used to this kind of
drinking, and he wanted to stay sober enough to talk sense until he'd
told them what he had to.
"I hope," he said, "that you don't expect me to show you the cross on
the map, where the computer is buried."
All the eyes around him began to look troubled. Most of them had been
expecting precisely that. His father was watching him anxiously.
"But it's still here on Poictesme, isn't it?" one of the melon
planters asked. "They didn't take it away with them?"
"Most of you gentlemen," he said, "contributed to sending me to school
on Terra, to study cybernetics and computer theory. It wouldn't do us
any good to find Merlin if none of us could operate it. Well, I've
done that. I can use any known type of computer, and train assistants.
After I graduated, I was offered a junior instructorship to computer
physics at the University."
"You didn't mention that, son," his father said.
"The letter would have come on the same ship I did. Besides, I didn't
think it was very important."
"I think it is." There was a catch in old Dolf Kellton's voice. "One
of my boys from the Academy offered a place on the faculty of the
University of Montevideo, on Terra!" He finished his drink and held
out his glass for more, something he almost never did.
"Conn means," Kurt Fawzi explained, "that it had nothing to do with
Merlin."
All right; now tell them the truth.
"I was also to find out anything I could about a secret giant computer
used during the War by the Third Fleet-Army Force, code-named Merlin.
I went over all the records available to the public; I used your
letter, Professor, and the head of our Modern History department
secured me access to non-public material, some of it still classified.
For one thing, I have locations and maps and plans of every Federation
installation built here between 842 and 854, the whole period of the
War." He turned to his father. "There are incredible things still
undiscovered; most of the important installations were built in
duplicate, sometimes triplicate, as a precaution against space attack.
I know where all of them are."
"Space attack!" Klem Zareff was indignant. "There never was a time we
could have attacked Poictesme. Even if we'd had the ships, we were
fighting a purely defensive war. Aggression was no part of our
policy--"
He interrupted: "Excuse me, Colonel. The point I was trying to make is
that, with all I was able to learn, I could find nothing, not one
single word, about any giant strategic planning computer called
Merlin, or any Merlin Project."
There! He'd gotten that out. Now go on and tell them about the old man
in the dome-house on Luna. The room was silent, except for the small
insectile hum of the electric clock. Then somebody set a glass on the
table, and it sounded like a hammer blow.
"Nothing, Conn?"
Kurt Fawzi was incredulous. Judge Ledue's hand shook as though palsied
as he tried to relight his cigar. Dolf Kellton was looking at the
drink in his hand as though he had no idea what it was. The others
found their voices, one by one.
"Of course, it was the most closely guarded secret ..."
"But after forty years ..."
"Hah, don't tell me about security!" Colonel Zareff barked. "You
should have seen the lengths our staff went to. I remember, once, on
Mephistopheles ..."
"But there _was_ a computer code-named Merlin," Judge Ledue was
insisting, to convince himself more than anybody else. "Its
memory-bank contained all human knowledge. It was capable of scanning
all its data instantaneously, and combining, and forming associations,
and reasoning with absolute accuracy, and extrapolating to produce new
facts, and predicting future events, and ..."
And if you'd asked such a computer, "Is there a God?" it would have
simply answered, "Present."
"We'd have won the War, except for Merlin," Zareff was declaring.
"Conn, from what you've learned of computers generally, how big would
Merlin have to be?" old Professor Kellton asked.
"Well, the astrophysics computer at the University occupied a volume
of a hundred thousand cubic feet. For all Merlin was supposed to do,
I'd say something of the order of three million to five million.
"Well, it's a cinch they didn't haul that away with them," Lester
Dawes, the banker, said.
"Oh, lots of places on Poictesme where they could have hid a thing
like that," Tom Brangwyn said. "You know, a planet's a mighty big
place."
"It doesn't have to be on Poictesme, even," Morgan Gatworth pointed
out. "It could be anywhere in the Trisystem."
"You know where I'd have put it?" Lorenzo Menardes asked. "On one of
the moons of Pantagruel."
"But that's in the Gamma System, three light years away," Kurt Fawzi
objected. "There isn't a hypership on this planet, and it would take
half a lifetime to get there on normal-space drive."
Conn was lifting his glass to his lips. He set it down again and rose
to his feet.
"Then," he said, "we will build a hypership. On Koshchei there are
shipyards and hyperdrive engines and everything we will need. We only
need one normal-space interplanetary ship to get out there, and we're
in business."
"Well, I don't know we need one," Judge Ledue said. "That was only an
idea of Lorenzo's. I think Merlin's right here on Poictesme."
"We don't know it is," Conn replied. "And we don't know we won't need
a ship. Merlin may be on Koshchei; that's where the components would
be fabricated, and the Armed Forces weren't hauling anything any
farther than they had to. Koshchei's only two and a half minutes away
by radio; that's practically in the next room. Look; here's how they
could have done it."
He went on talking, about remote controls and radio transmission and
positronic brains and neutrino-circuits. They believed it all, even
the little they understood. They would believe anything he told them
about Merlin--except the truth.
"But this will take money," Lester Dawes said. "And after that
infernal deluge of unsecured paper currency thirty years ago ..."
"I have no doubt," Judge Ledue began, "that the Planetary Government
at Storisende would give assistance. I have some slight influence with
President Vyckhoven ..."
"Huh-_uh_!" That was one of Klem Zareff's fellow planters. "We don't
want Jake Vyckhoven or any of this First-Families-of-Storisende
oligarchy in this at all. That's the gang that bankrupted the
Government with doles and work relief, and everybody else with
worthless printing-press money after the War, and they've been
squatting in a circle deploring things ever since. Some of these days
Blackie Perales and his pirates'll sack Storisende, for all they'd be
able to do to stop him."
"We get a ship out to Koshchei, and the next thing you know we'll be
the Planetary Government," Tom Brangwyn said.
Rodney Maxwell finished the brandy in his glass and set it on the
table, then went to the pile of belts and holsters and began rummaging
for his own. Kurt Fawzi looked up in surprise.
"Rod, you're not leaving are you?" he asked.
"Yes. It's only half an hour till time for dinner, and I think Conn
and I ought to have a little fresh air. Besides, you know, we haven't
seen each other for six years." He buckled on the heavy automatic and
settled the belt over his hips. "You didn't have a gun, did you,
Conn?" he asked. "Well, let's go."