* * * * *
Today more than other days Raoul Beardsley felt the burden, the dragging
sense of inevitability. He frowned; he glanced at his watch; he leaned
forward to speak to the copter pilot and then changed his mind. He
settled back, and from idle habit adjusted his chair-scope to the
familiar broad-spoked area of Washington just below.
"I'll _not_ have it happening again today!" he told himself grimly ...
and at once his thoughts quavered off into many tangles of
self-reproach. "Blasted nonsense the way I've been acting. A _machine_,
a damned gutless machine like that! Why do I persist in letting it get
to me?"
He pondered that and found no solace. "Delusion," he snorted. "Hyper
synapse-disorder ... that's how Jeff Arnold would explain _me_. I wish
he'd confine his diagnostics to the Mechanical Division where it
belongs! He's amused, they're all amused at me--but damn it they just
don't know!"
Beardsley's rotund body sagged at the thought. Adjusting the
chair-scope, he fixed his gaze on the broad facade of Crime-Central
Building far across the city; again he felt the burgeoning embarrassment
and foreboding, but he put it down with an effort before it reached the
edge of fear. _Not today_, he thought fiercely. _No, by God, I just
won't permit it to happen._
There. So! He felt much better already. And he had really made good time
this morning. Today of _all_ days he mustn't keep ECAIAC waiting.
[Illustration: Beardsley was the only one _not_ to panic when the
infallible machine broke down.]
Mustn't.... Something triggered in Beardsley, and he was assailed with a
perverse rebellion at the thought.
* * * * *
Must not? But why not? Why shouldn't he just _once_ keep ECAIAC and Jeff
Arnold and his clique stewing in their own tangle of tubes and
electronic juice? And wouldn't _this_, he gloated, be the perfect day
for it! Arnold especially--just once to shatter that young man's
complacent routine....
No. Beardsley savored the thought tastily, and let it trickle away, and
the look of glee on his cherubic face was gone. For too many years his
job as serological "cooerdinator" (Crime-Central) had kept him pinned to
the concomitant routine. Pinned or crucified, it was all the same; in
crime analysis as in everything these days, personal sense of
achievement had been too unsubtly annihilated. Recalling his just
completed task--the Citizen Files and _persona-tapes_ and the endless
annotating--Beardsley felt himself sinking still further into that mire
of futility that encompassed neither excitement nor particular pride.
He brought himself back with a grimace, aware that he was clutching the
briefcase of tapes possessively from long habit. The pilot had touched
the news-stat, and abruptly one of the new "commerciappeals" grated on
Beardsley's senses:
"... we repeat, yes, PROT-O-SUDS is now available in _flake_ or _cake_ or
the new attachable _luxury-spray_. Remember, PROT-O-SUDS has _never_ been
laboratory-tested, it contains _no_ miracle ingredients, _no_ improved
scientific formula, and NO LANOLIN. Then what is the new PROT-O-SUDS? I
tell you frankly, friends, it is nothing but a lot of pure soft soap!
Remember ... we make no fabulous claims for PROT-O-SUDS ... we assume that
you are reasonably clean to start with! And now for your late breakfast
news, PROT-O-SUDS takes you direct to the Central News Bureau for a final
survey on the Carmack murder case...."
Beardsley groaned. New voice in the background, while the screen presented
a slow montage. Cine-runs of the great Carmack himself, including those at
the International Cybernetics Congress a year ago ... survey of the murder
scene, the Carmack mansion ... close-up of ECAIAC ... diagrammatic detail
of ECAIAC ... then dramatically, the grim and imposing figure of George
Mandleco, Minister of Justice.
And then the news-caster's voice: "... certain that final processing
will go forward today. It would be a gross understatement to say that
the Carmack Case has captured the attention of the nation, both
officialdom and public alike! _Never_ in the history of Crime-Central
has there been such an undercurrent of speculation and excitement...."
"Excitement?" murmured Beardsley.
"And now it is heightened, by no less an authority than the Minister of
Justice himself, who brought both plaudits and censure upon himself
today with the outright statement that _deep-rooted political issues_
may well be involved. As you must know by now, it was the murdered man
himself--Amos Carmack--who some years ago carried on the incessant
lobbying that resulted in ECAIAC being accepted _pro bono publico_ by
Crime-Central. What devastating irony! For now it is ECAIAC itself that
must weigh each detail, correlate all factors, probe every motive and
machination leading to the _murder of its creator_...."
"That's not entirely true, you know," muttered Beardsley.
Quick flicker, again a close-up of ECAIAC, and the drama-laden voice:
"ECAIAC! Electronic Analysis Integrator and Computor. And now--an
exclusive! From a very reliable source this reporter has learned that
_three Primes_ are involved...."
"Ha!" grated Beardsley.
"... and they will be broken down in quotient. Two must ultimately be
eliminated--barring, of course, the possible emergence of any minor
factor to status of Prime, which at this stage seems unlikely. It is
estimated that by today or tomorrow at the latest Carmack's murderer
will be brought to justice...."
Beardsley had taken as much as he could of this pseudo-factual mush. He
jerked forward violently, rapped the pilot on the shoulder. "DAMN IT!
WILL YOU SHUT THE DAMN THING OFF!"
* * * * *
He was immediately appalled at his outburst, and by the pilot's startled
glance, but the stat went off immediately.
Beardsley leaned back muttering to himself. Carmack, Carmack! For seven
weeks now he had lived with it intricately and intimately, as the case
shoved everything else right off the news-stat. People took the latest
echoes to bed with them, commuters gobbled it with their breakfast
cereal. Thank God today would see the end, and they could once more have
the hot South Polar crisis with their cereal.
* * * * *
Seven weeks! He clutched the bulging briefcase with a wearisome horror.
Twenty-two persona-tapes from Central File, all neatly processed and
ready for ECAIAC. End result of the endless chart sifts, emphasis (as
always!) on parietosomatic recession, the slow emergence of minor
constants, the inexorable trend toward Price Factor and then
_verification_, _verification_, to each his own, with all the subtle and
shaded values of the Augment Index brought finally to focus on the
relevance-graph _Carmack_.
Sure, thought Beardsley. A thing of augment-indexing and psych-tapes,
quite without possibility of error. Now in the _old_ days of crime
detection--it might have taken them seven months instead of weeks, not
to mention frustration and leg-work and false-leads and sweat, but--
His mouth pulled down bitterly. _Serological Cooerdinator. Glorified
file-clerk is more like it. High-salaried errand-boy._
"Here we are, sir!" The pilot's voice jarred him to reality as the
copter berthed.
Beardsley hurried toward the roof entrance. His faded blue suit, a size
too large, flapped about him, and the outmoded felt hat seemed to sink
to the level of his thick-lensed glasses. The guard greeted him, but
suppressed a smile as the cherubic little man flashed his official pass.
For there was something about Raoul Beardsley that eternally evoked
amusement--an air of vacuous innocence and a remote forlornness. He gave
the appearance of a person who sold shoes during the day, washed his
wife's dishes at night and then solved two or three galacti-gram puzzles
before turning off the light precisely at ten. Few, if any, remembered
that this nervous little man had once been top Inspector of New York
City's Homicide Bureau ... but that was a dozen long years ago. Since
then he had seen the antiquated detective methods of 1960 disappear, and
he had died a little, too, seeing his Homicide Bureau relegated to a
mere subsidiary with the growth of the Cooerdinate and Mechanical
Divisions. His appointment to Chief of Co-oerdinants, Federal, was
automatic and unquestioned; and Beardsley would have been the last to
know, or to care, that he had correlated some eight million miles of
serological data for the entrains of ECAIAC, a perfect record of not a
single unsolved case.
And the penalty was in his eyes, if one cared to look beyond the
thick-lensed glasses. No one ever did. They were remote eyes, a little
bewildered, a little hurt ... a mirror gone dull from times remembered
but irretrievably lost.
* * * * *
Beardsley stepped onto the corridor slidewalk, coasted to the escalator
and rode it down. Still immersed in his thoughts, he pushed into
ECAIAC's room ... _and again it happened_.
So shockingly sudden, there was not even time for remonstrance at
himself. The feeling hit him as always before, straight and unerring, a
surging impact that smashed forward and stopped him in his tracks,
literally paralyzed.
He caught his breath convulsively. How often had he come here? And how
often had this happened, even when he'd sworn he wouldn't let it? There
was something about the sight and sound and feel of ECAIAC that got to
him, that seeped beneath flesh and bone and into his brain and sent his
senses singing. Beardsley managed to gulp, as he observed the shiny
black colossus that filled the entire length of the ninety-foot room; a
dozen techs scurried around it, taking notes, attentive to the flashing
lights in red-and-green and the faint clicking of thousands of relays
that rose in susurration.
But more than that arose. It was something that pervaded the room, not a
pulsing but a _presence_, a sort of snapping intangible intelligence
that reached beyond the audible and sheared at Beardsley's nerve-ends.
And it hadn't been there a moment before. That was the shocking thing.
Beardsley knew that it _knew_! It was sentient, it was alive and aware
and waiting, and it was listening.
As always, it knew that _he_ had entered.
Beardsley gulped again, stood frozen for half a minute. None of the
techs seemed to notice; they had often chided him about it, but he was
used to that now. At last he broke the spell and made his legs move,
feeling cold sweat as he hurried along the length of ECAIAC toward
Arnold's office.
There ... just about there ... by the rheostats, where the four red
lights and the two green made a baleful pattern against the black metal
skin. He felt it stronger than ever this time, something reaching and
sinister aimed solely at him. He skirted the place with a quick goosey
hop, stumbled a little and felt panic, but made it all right to the
office.
Beardsley hated these moments. He was still trembling as he made a
hurried entrance. Sure enough, as if on cue Jeff Arnold glanced up from
his charts and grinned.
"Ah, good morning, Beardsley! Now don't tell me our pet goo--uh--snapped
at you again?"
It was the routine remark, but today Arnold was immediately contrite for
a change. "Sorry," he said, and a certain weariness replaced the grin.
He gestured to the alco-mech. "Can I dial you a drink? Feel in need of
one myself!"
"Eleven-C," said Beardsley, and slumped into the pneumo-chair. Arnold
rose and dialled 11-C, handed him the drink and dialled 9-R for himself.
Sipping it, he moved around the desk.
There was something very strange and preoccupied in his movements,
Beardsley thought, more than a mere tiredness. He had never seen Arnold
this way.
"Yes sir, this is the day!" A muscle twitched in his corded neck; Arnold
eased his long frame into a chair, rubbed thumb and forefinger at his
eyes. "Been up half the night running off clearance tests. Can't afford
to foul up on this one!"
Beardsley tossed off his drink and blinked at the fiery strength of it.
Now why should Arnold say that? When had ECAIAC ever fouled up? He
watched the man across the desk. Jeff Arnold was a vigorous, striking
specimen, handsome in an athletic way, with long stubborn jaw and
unhappy gray eyes beneath his unruly hair; the sort of face that
intrigues women, Beardsley catalogued from past experience. And, he
added, altogether too young a man to be operating a monster like ECAIAC.
* * * * *