The focus shifted to the open door and then Peccary and Staghorn could
see into the classroom. This one was in slightly better order than
the others and was occupied by two people. In front sat Miss Terry,
obviously the teacher, and at one of the desks sat Paul. He seemed to
be the entire class. At Miss Terry's urging he was coming to his feet,
his face still stained with tears. He held his book a few inches from
his nose and stared over the top of it sullenly.
"Go ahead, Paul," said Miss Terry, sweetly stubborn. "I'm waiting."
Paul looked at his book and read from it in a monotone, enunciating
each word carefully as though it had no relationship to the other
words. "I am a human being and as long as I obey the six rules I shall
live forever."
"Very good, Paul. Now read the six rules."
Paul sniffled loudly and commenced reading again. "Rule one: I must
never go near fire or my clothing may catch aflame and burn me up. Rule
two: I must keep away from deep water or I may fall in and drown. Rule
three: I must stay away from high places or I may fall and dash my
brains out." He paused to sniffle and wipe his nose on his sleeve, then
sighed and continued dismally. "Rule four: I must never play with sharp
things or I may cut myself and bleed to death. Rule five: I must never
ride horses or I may fall off and break my neck." Paul paused, lowering
his book.
"And the sixth rule?" said Miss Terry. "Go ahead and read the sixth
rule."
Reluctantly Paul lifted his book. "Rule six: Starting when I'm
twenty-one I must take Dr. Peccary's Y Hormone once a week to keep me
young and healthy forever."
"Excellent, Paul!" said Miss Terry. "And which rule were you breaking
just now on the playground?"
"I was breaking Rule Three," Paul said, then quoted sadly, "I must stay
away from high places or I may fall and dash my brains out."
* * * * *
Dr. Peccary was on his feet stomping around in front of the computer.
"Sheer idiocy," he muttered. "He doesn't have any brains to dash out!
I'll admit that a computer with sufficient information about the state
of the world might be able to make accurate predictions of events a few
months or possibly a year into the future--but not one hundred years!
In that long an interval even the most trivial error could distort
every circuit in the machine." He jabbed a finger toward the screen
where Paul was seated at his desk again. "And that's what that picture
is--a distortion. I'm not going to let it influence me one bit in what
I intend to--" He broke off because of what was happening on the screen.
From somewhere outside the school building came the wail of a
deep-throated alarm. Both Miss Terry and Paul were on their feet and by
their expressions, terrified.
"The Atavars!" Paul cried, his entire body shaking.
"To the basement, Paul!" Miss Terry's face was blanched as she grasped
Paul's hand and headed toward the door. But halfway there, both came to
a halt, breathless and staring.
A powerful bearded man strode into the classroom.
Paul and Miss Terry fell back as he advanced. He was a man of about
fifty, his bushy hair shot with gray, his eyes cold and blue. He was
followed by two younger men who studied Paul and Miss Terry with
interest. All three wore rough work clothing.
The bearded man pointed at Paul. "There's the boy," he said quietly.
"Take him."
Paul let out a shriek of terror and fled into a corner as the two men
advanced. He clawed futilely as they laid hands on him. "For God's
sake, shut up," one of the men said with more disgust than anger. He
pinioned Paul's arms while the other man bound them together with a
strip of cloth.
Miss Terry meanwhile had collapsed into her chair. One of Paul's
captors glanced at her and spoke to the bearded man. "What about her?"
The bearded man stepped close to Miss Terry and put a hand on her
shoulder. She recoiled as from a snake. "How old are you?" he asked.
Miss Terry made some inarticulate squeaks and the man spoke more
sharply. "When were you born?"
"Two thousand four," she managed to stutter.
The bearded man considered this and shook his head. "Over fifty. By
that time they're hopeless. Leave her and bring the boy."
Miss Terry let out an agonized wail of protest and fainted across her
desk. One of the men slung Paul over his shoulder and the bearded
leader led the group from the room.
* * * * *
"Amazing," murmured Staghorn. "Absolutely amazing. One never knows what
to expect."
"Pure gibberish," said Peccary, then betrayed his interest by saying,
"Can you follow them?"
"I'm trying to." Staghorn worked at the geographic adjustment and
finally got the screen focused on the corridor again. It was deserted.
The bearded man and his companions had already departed. Staghorn
touched the controls again, the screen flickered and once more the
little park came into focus. But now it, too, was deserted. None of
the ragged men and women were in sight, neither in the park nor on the
street beyond. Staghorn twisted the focus in all directions without
discovering anyone.
"That whistle we heard was obviously some kind of alarm," he said.
"Everyone must be in hiding--from the Atavars, whoever they are. I
strongly suspect that bearded fellow of being one."
"You might as well shut it off, Staghorn," Dr. Peccary said coldly.
"It's too much nonsense for any sane man to swallow. And unless that
machine can provide a full and satisfactory explanation as to why my Y
Hormone will bring about the conditions depicted on that screen, I see
no reason to keep the hormone off the market."
Staghorn turned from the controls to study his companion. "The only
possible way that Humanac could give us the entire background of events
leading up to what we've just seen would be to set the time control
to the present and then leave the machine running until it arrived at
this same period again. That would take a hundred years, and I'm not
going to sit here that long. What's more, I'm not going to touch your Y
Hormone even if you do put it on the market."
"There'll be plenty who will!"
"That's what Humanac says, yes."
Dr. Peccary gestured despairingly. After all, he did have a conscience.
"I simply don't believe my hormone can be responsible!"
"I'll remind you that your picture was on the classroom wall and that
the sixth rule read by that boy indicated that he was supposed to start
using your hormone when he reached the age of twenty-one. That would be
about the age to stop growing older."
"That boy is nothing but a mathematical probability!"
* * * * *
"That's all you and I are," Staghorn said owlishly. "Mathematical
probabilities. Despite Omar, nothing exactly like either of us has ever
existed before or will exist again."
"But damn it, Staghorn...." Dr. Peccary sat down, his face in his
hands. "It's worth millions! I've invested years of work and all
the money I could scrape together. I don't see anything wrong in a
scientist's profiting by his discoveries. And to keep it off the
market just because that insane computer says that a hundred years
from now--" He broke off, glaring at Humanac's screen which was still
focused on the deserted park. "It simply doesn't make sense! The
machine doesn't give any reasons for anything. If there were a way
I could talk directly to some of those mathematical probabilities,
question them, ask them what it's all about...." He was on his feet,
striding back and forth before the computer again.
"Perhaps there is a way," Staghorn said quietly.
"Eh?"
"I said that it may be possible for you to talk with them."
"How?"
"By making your mind a temporary part of the computer."
Peccary studied the huge machine apprehensively--its ranks of memory
units, its chambers of flickering tubes, the labyrinth of circuits.
"How would you go about it?"
"I put you in the transmitter," Staghorn said. He stepped away from
the console and slid back a panel to reveal a niche with a seat in
it. Above the seat was a sort of helmet that resembled a hair drier
in a beauty parlor, except that it was studded with hundreds of tiny
magnets and transistors. Staghorn indicated the helmet. "This picks up
and amplifies brain waves. I've used it to record the cephalic wave
pattern of about a hundred men and women. The recordings are built
into the computer, enabling Humanac to assign a mathematical evaluation
to the influence of human emotion in making historic decisions. In your
case, instead of making a recording of your brain waves, I'd feed the
impulses directly into Humanac's memory units."
"And what would happen then?"
"I'm not altogether sure," said Staghorn, and it seemed to Peccary that
Staghorn was finding a definite relish in his uncertainty. "I've never
tried the experiment before."
"I might get electrocuted?"
"No. There's no danger of that happening. The current that activates
the transmitter comes from your own brain, and as you know, such
electrical impulses are extremely feeble. That isn't what worries me."
"Well then, what does?"
"In some ways Humanac behaves peculiarly like a living organism. For
example, there's one prediction it can never make. Several times I've
fed into it the hypothetical information that the two opposing factions
of the world have declared war. Naturally everyone would like to know
about the outcome of such a war." Staghorn paused, gazing lovingly at
his majestic creation.
"And what happens?" Dr. Peccary said impatiently.
"Nothing. That's just it. The moment I turn Humanac into the future
to get a prediction, the screen goes dead. Do you know why it goes
dead?" Staghorn looked at Peccary with a pleased smile and didn't wait
for Peccary to cue him. "It goes dead because, if war were declared,
Humanac would be the first target for enemy bombs. When it predicts a
future event, it has to take all factors into consideration. If one of
those factors is its own destruction, it can predict nothing beyond
that moment."
* * * * *
Peccary repeated this sentence in his mind while he slowly digested its
meaning. What it seemed to mean was that, although Staghorn and Peccary
thought of Humanac as only a complicated machine, Humanac's opinion of
itself was altogether otherwise. It could foresee its own death.
"I often wonder," mused Staghorn, "about those people we see wandering
around on Humanac's screen. To us they're only images made by a
stream of electrons hitting the end of a cathode ray tube. Their space
and time is an illusion. All the same, Humanac comprises an entire
system--a system modeled as accurately as possible on our own. It's
just possible that the boy we saw, Paul, was experiencing a real
terror."
Dr. Peccary examined Staghorn in amazement. He had often suspected that
Staghorn's genius was tinged with madness. "You're not suggesting that
those ... those images are conscious?"
"Ah! What is consciousness?"
"I didn't come here to get into a metaphysical argument."
"No, but it's only fair for me to suggest the possible emotional
hazzards involved in hooking you up to Humanac. Because you have to
admit that _you'll_ be conscious during the experiment."
"Certainly. But I'll be sitting right there." Peccary pointed to the
seat in the transmitter unit.
"In a sense, yes. Very well, take your seat."