All through the night, a shifting blaze of many-colored light rose and
dimmed the stars above the mesa. They stared in awe, marveling at the
energy that was pouring out of the converters into a tiny spot that
inched its way around the collapsium shielding. It must have been
visible for hundreds of miles; it was, for there was a new flood of
rumors circulating in Storisende and repeated and denied by the
newscasts, now running continuously. Merlin had been found. Merlin had
been blown up by Government troops. Merlin was being transported to
Storisende to be installed as arbiter of the Government. Merlin the
Monster was destroying the planet. Merlin the Devil was unchained.
Conn and Kurt Fawzi and Dolf Kellton and Judge Ledue and Tom Brangwyn
clustered together, talking in whispers. They had told nobody, yet, of
the interview with Shanlee.
"You think it would make all that trouble?" Kellton was asking
anxiously, hoping that the others would convince him that it wouldn't.
"Maybe we had better destroy it," Judge Ledue faltered. "You see what
it's done already; the whole planet's in anarchy. If we let this go
on...."
"We can't decide anything like that, just the five of us," Brangwyn
was insisting. "We'll have to get the others together and see what
they think. We have no right to make any decision like this for them."
"They're no more able to make the decision than we are," Conn said.
"But we've got to; they have a right to know...."
"If you decide to destroy Merlin, you'll have to decide to kill me,
first," Kurt Fawzi said, his voice deadly calm. "You won't do it while
I'm alive."
"But, Kurt," Ledue expostulated. "You know why these people here at
Storisende are rioting? It's because they've lost hope, because
they're afraid and desperate. The Terran Federation is something
everybody feels they have to have, for peace and order and welfare. If
people thought it was breaking up, they'd be desperate, too. They'd do
the same insane things these people here on this planet are doing.
General Shanlee was right. Don't destroy the hope that keeps them
sane."
"We don't need to do that," Kurt Fawzi argued. "We can use Merlin to
solve our own problems; we don't need to tell the whole Federation
what's going to happen in two hundred years."
"It would get out; it couldn't help getting out," Ledue said.
"Let's not try to decide it ourselves," Conn said. "Let's get Merlin
into operation, and run a computation on it."
"You mean, ask Merlin to tell us whether it ought to be destroyed or
not?" Ledue asked incredulously. "Let Merlin put itself on trial, and
sentence itself to destruction?"
"Merlin is a computer; computers deal only in facts. Computers are
machines; they have no sense of self-preservation. If Merlin ought to
be destroyed, Merlin will tell us so."
"You willing to leave it up to Merlin, Kurt?" Tom Brangwyn asked.