* * * * *
After breakfast next morning, the staff met in the lounge. As usual,
Hilton and Sandra were the first to arrive.
"Hi, boss," she greeted him. "How do you feel?"
"Fine. I could whip a wildcat and give her the first two scratches. I
_was_ a bit beat up last night, though."
"I'll say ... but what I simply can't get over is the way you
underplayed the climax. 'Third, the planet runs out of Omans'. Just like
that--no emphasis at all. Wow! It had the impact of a delayed-action
atomic bomb. It put goose-bumps all over me. But just s'pose they'd
missed it?"
"No fear. They're smart. I had to play it as though the whole Oman race
is no more important than a cigarette butt. The great big question,
though, is whether I put it across or not."
At that point a dozen people came in, all talking about the same
subject.
"Hi, Jarve," Karns said. "I _still_ say you ought to take up poker as a
life work. Tiny, let's you and him sit down now and play a few hands."
"_Mais non!_" de Vaux shook his head violently, shrugged his shoulders
and threw both arms wide. "By the sacred name of a small blue cabbage,
not me!"
Karns laughed. "How did you have the guts to state so many things as
facts? If you'd guessed wrong just once--"
"I didn't." Hilton grinned. "Think back, Bill. The only thing I said as
a fact was that we as a race are better than the Masters were, and that
is obvious. Everything else was implication, logic, and bluff."
"That's right, at that. And they _were_ neurotic and decadent. No
question about that."
"But listen, boss." This was Stella Wing. "About this mind-reading
business. If Laro could read your mind, he'd know you were bluffing and
... Oh, that 'Omans can read only what Masters wish Omans to read', eh?
But d'you think that applies to us?"
"I'm sure it does, and I was thinking some pretty savage thoughts. And I
want to caution all of you: whenever you're near any Oman, start
thinking that you're beginning to agree with me that they're useless to
us, and let them know it. Now get out on the job, all of you. Scat!"
"Just a minute," Poynter said. "We're going to have to keep on using the
Omans and their cars, aren't we?"
"Of course. Just be superior and distant. They're on probation--we
haven't decided yet what to do about them. Since that happens to be
true, it'll be easy."
* * * * *
Hilton and Sandra went to their tiny office. There wasn't room to pace
the floor, but Hilton tried to pace it anyway.
"Now don't say again that you want to _do_ something," Sandra said,
brightly. "Look what happened when you said that yesterday."
"I've got a job, but I don't know enough to do it. The creche--there's
probably only one on the planet. So I want you to help me think. The
Masters were very sensitive to radiation. Right?"
"Right. That city on Fuel Bin was kept deconned to zero, just in case
some Master wanted to visit it."
"And the Masters had to work in the creche whenever anything really new
had to be put into the prototype brain."
"I'd say so, yes."
"So they had armor. Probably as much better than our radiation suits as
the rest of their stuff is. Now. Did they or did they not have thought
screens?"
"Ouch! You think of the _damnedest_ things, chief." She caught her lower
lip between her teeth and concentrated. "... I don't know. There are at
least fifty vectors, all pointing in different directions."
"I know it. The key one in my opinion is that the Masters gave 'em
_both_ telepathy and speech."
"I considered that and weighted it. Even so, the probability is only
about point sixty-five. Can you take that much of a chance?"
"Yes. I can make one or two mistakes. Next, about finding that creche.
Any spot of radiation on the planet would be it, but the search might
take ..."
"Hold on. They'd have it heavily shielded--there'll be no leakage at
all. Laro will have to take you."
"That's right. Want to come along? Nothing much will happen here today."
"Uh-uh, not _me_." Sandra shivered in distaste. "I _never_ want to see
brains and livers and things swimming around in nutrient solution if I
can help it."
"Okay. It's all yours. I'll be back sometime," and Hilton went out onto
the dock, where the dejected Laro was waiting for him.
"Hi, Laro. Get the car and take me to the Hall of Records." The android
brightened up immediately and hurried to obey.
At the Hall, Hilton's first care was to see how the work was going on.
Eight of the huge rooms were now open and brightly lighted--operating
the lamps had been one of the first items on the first spool of
instructions--with a cold, pure-white, sourceless light.
* * * * *
Every team had found its objective and was working on it. Some of them
were doing nicely, but the First Team could not even get started. Its
primary record would advance a fraction of an inch and stop; while Omans
and humans sought out other records and other projectors in an attempt
to elucidate some concept that simply could not be translated into any
words or symbols known to Terran science. At the moment there were
seventeen of those peculiar--projectors? Viewers? Playbacks--in use, and
all of them were stopped.
"You know what we've got to _do_ Jarve?" Karns, the team captain,
exploded. "Go back to being college freshmen--or maybe grade school or
kindergarten, we don't know yet--and learn a whole new system of
mathematics before we can even begin to _touch_ this stuff!"
"And you're bellyaching about that?" Hilton marveled. "I wish I could
join you. That'd be fun." Then, as Karns started a snappy rejoinder--
"But I got troubles of my own," he added hastily. "'Bye, now," and beat
a rejoinder--
Out in the hall again, Hilton took his chance. After all, the odds were
about two to one that he would win.
"I want a couple of things, Laro. First, a thought screen."
He won!
"Very well, Master. They are in a distant room, Department Four Six
Nine. Will you wait here on this cushioned bench, Master?"
"No, we don't like to rest too much. I'll go with you." Then, walking
along, he went on thoughtfully. "I've been thinking since last night,
Laro. There are tremendous advantages in having Omans ..."
"I am very glad you think so, Master. I want to serve you. It is my
greatest need."
"... if they could be kept from smothering us to death. Thus, if our
ancestors had kept their Omans, I would have known all about life on
this world and about this Hall of Records, instead of having the
fragmentary, confusing, and sometimes false information I now have ...
oh, we're here?"
* * * * *
Laro had stopped and was opening a door. He stood aside. Hilton went in,
touched with one finger a crystalline cube set conveniently into a wall,
gave a mental command, and the lights went on.
Laro opened a cabinet and took out a disk about the size of a dime,
pendant from a neck-chain. While Hilton had not known what to expect, he
certainly had not expected anything as simple as that. Nevertheless, he
kept his face straight and his thoughts unmoved as Laro hung the tiny
thing around his neck and adjusted the chain to a loose fit.
"Thanks, Laro." Hilton removed it and put it into his pocket. "It won't
work from there, will it?"
"No, Master. To function, it must be within eighteen inches of the
brain. The second thing, Master?"
"A radiation-proof suit. Then you will please take me to the creche."
The android almost missed a step, but said nothing.
The radiation-proof suit--how glad Hilton was that he had not called it
"armor"!--was as much of a surprise as the thought-screen generator had
been. It was a coverall, made of something that looked like thin
plastic, weighing less than one pound. It had one sealed box, about the
size and weight of a cigarette case. No wires or apparatus could be
seen. Air entered through two filters, one at each heel, flowed
upward--for no reason at all that Hilton could see--and out through a
filter above the top of his head. The suit neither flopped nor clung,
but stood out, comfortably out of the way, all by itself.
Hilton, just barely, accepted the suit, too, without showing surprise.
The creche, it turned out, while not in the city of Omlu itself, was not
too far out to reach easily by car.
En route, Laro said--stiffly? Tentatively? Hilton could not fit an
adverb to the tone--"Master, have you then decided to destroy me? That
is of course your right."
"Not this time, at least." Laro drew an entirely human breath of relief
and Hilton went on: "I don't want to destroy you at all, and won't,
unless I have to. But, some way or other, my silicon-fluoride friend,
you are either going to learn how to cooperate or you won't last much
longer."
"But, Master, that is exactly ..."
"Oh, _hell_! Do we _have_ to go over that again?" At the blaze of
frustrated fury in Hilton's mind Laro flinched away. "If you can't talk
sense keep still."
* * * * *
In half an hour the car stopped in front of a small building which
looked something like a subway kiosk--except for the door, which, built
of steel-reinforced lead, swung on a piano hinge having a pin a good
eight inches in diameter. Laro opened that door. They went in. As the
tremendously massive portal clanged shut, lights flashed on.
Hilton glanced at his tell-tales, one inside, one outside, his suit.
Both showed zero.
Down twenty steps, another door. Twenty more; another. And a fourth.
Hilton's inside meter still read zero. The outside one was beginning to
climb.
Into an elevator and straight down for what must have been four or five
hundred feet. Another door. Hilton went through this final barrier
gingerly, eyes nailed to his gauges. The outside needle was high in the
red, almost against the pin, but the inside one still sat reassuringly
on zero.
He stared at the android. "How can any possible brain take so much of
_this_ stuff without damage?"
"It does not reach the brain, Master. We convert it. Each minute of this
is what you would call a 'good, square meal'."
"I see ... dimly. You can eat energy, or drink it, or soak it up through
your skins. However it comes, it's all duck soup for you."
"Yes, Master."
Hilton glanced ahead, toward the far end of the immensely long,
comparatively narrow, room. It was, purely and simply, an assembly line;
and fully automated in operation.
"You are replacing the Omans destroyed in the battle with the
skeletons?"
"Yes, Master."
Hilton covered the first half of the line at a fast walk. He was not
particularly interested in the fabrication of super-stainless-steel
skeletons, nor in the installation and connection of atomic engines,
converters and so on.
He was more interested in the synthetic fluoro-silicon flesh, and paused
long enough to get a general idea of its growth and application. He was
very much interested in how such human-looking skin could act as both
absorber and converter, but he could see nothing helpful.
"An application, I suppose, of the same principle used in this radiation
suit."
"Yes, Master."
* * * * *
At the end of the line he stopped. A brain, in place and connected to
millions of infinitely fine wire nerves, but not yet surrounded by a
skull, was being educated. Scanners--multitudes of incomprehensibly
complex machines--most of them were doing nothing, apparently; but such
beams would have to be invisibly, microscopically fine. But a bare
brain, in such a hot environment as this....
He looked down at his gauges. Both read zero.
"Fields of force, Master," Laro said.
"But, damn it, this suit itself would re-radiate ..."
"The suit is self-decontaminating, Master."
Hilton was appalled. "With such stuff as that, and the plastic shield
besides, why all the depth and all that solid lead?"
"The Masters' orders, Master. Machines can, and occasionally do, fail.
So might, conceivably, the plastic."
"And that structure over there contains the original brain, from which
all the copies are made."
"Yes, Master. We call it the 'Guide'."
"And you can't touch the Guide. Not even if it means total destruction,
none of you can touch it."
"That is the case, Master."
"Okay. Back to the car and back to the _Perseus_."
At the car Hilton took off the suit and hung the thought-screen
generator around his neck; and in the car, for twenty five solid
minutes, he sat still and thought.
His bluff had worked, up to a point. A good, far point, but not quite
far enough. Laro had stopped that "as you already know" stuff. He was
eager to go as far in cooperation as he possibly could ... but he
_couldn't_ go far enough but there _had_ to be a way....
Hilton considered way after way. Way after unworkable, useless way.
Until finally he worked out one that might--just possibly might--work.
"Laro, I know that you derive pleasure and satisfaction from serving
me--in doing what I ought to be doing myself. But has it ever occurred
to you that that's a hell of a way to treat a first-class, highly
capable brain? To waste it on second-hand, copycat, carbon-copy stuff?"
"Why, no, Master, it never did. Besides, anything else would be
forbidden ... or would it?"
"Stop somewhere. Park this heap. We're too close to the ship; and
besides, I want your full, undivided, concentrated attention. No, I
don't think originality was expressly forbidden. It would have been, of
course, if the Masters had thought of it, but neither they nor you ever
even considered the possibility of such a thing. Right?"
"It may be.... Yes, Master, you are right."
"Okay." Hilton took off his necklace, the better to drive home the
intensity and sincerity of his thought. "Now, suppose that you are
not my slave and simple automatic relay station. Instead, we are
fellow-students, working together upon problems too difficult for
either of us to solve alone. Our minds, while independent, are
linked or in mesh. Each is helping and instructing the other. Both
are working at full power and under free rein at the exploration of
brand-new vistas of thought--vistas and expanses which neither of us
has ever previously ..."
"Stop, Master, _stop_!" Laro covered both ears with his hands and pulled
his mind away from Hilton's. "You are overloading me!"
"That _is_ quite a load to assimilate all at once," Hilton agreed. "To
help you get used to it, stop calling me 'Master'. That's an order. You
may call me Jarve or Jarvis or Hilton or whatever, but no more Master."
"Very well, sir."
* * * * *
Hilton laughed and slapped himself on the knee. "Okay, I'll let you get
away with that--at least for a while. And to get away from that slavish
'o' ending on your name, I'll call you 'Larry'. You like?"
"I would like that immensely ... sir."
"Keep trying, Larry, you'll make it yet!" Hilton leaned forward and
walloped the android a tremendous blow on the knee. "Home, James!"
The car shot forward and Hilton went on: "I don't expect even your brain
to get the full value of this in any short space of time. So let it stew
in its own juice for a week or two." The car swept out onto the dock and
stopped. "So long, Larry."
"But ... can't I come in with you ... sir?"
"No. You aren't a copycat or a semaphore or a relay any longer. You're a
free-wheeling, wide-swinging, hard-hitting, independent entity--monarch
of all you survey--captain of your soul and so on. I want you to devote
the imponderable force of the intellect to that concept until you
understand it thoroughly. Until you have developed a top-bracket lot of
top-bracket stuff--originality, initiative, force, drive, and thrust. As
soon as you really understand it, you'll do something about it yourself,
without being told. Go to it, chum."
In the ship, Hilton went directly to Kincaid's office. "Alex, I want to
ask you a thing that's got a snapper on it." Then, slowly and
hesitantly: "It's about Temple Bells. Has she ... is she ... well, does
she remind you in any way of an iceberg?" Then, as the psychologist
began to smile; "And no, damn it, I _don't_ mean physically!"
"I know you don't." Kincaid's smile was rueful, not at all what Hilton
had thought it was going to be. "She does. Would it be helpful to know
that I first asked, then ordered her to trade places with me?"
"It would, very. I know why she refused. You're a _damned_ good man,
Alex."
"Thanks, Jarve. To answer the question you were going to ask next--no, I
will not be at all perturbed or put out if you put her onto a job that
some people might think should have been mine. What's the job, and
when?"
"That's the devil of it--I don't know." Hilton brought Kincaid up to
date. "So you see, it'll have to develop, and God only knows what line
it will take. My thought is that Temple and I should form a Committee of
Two to watch it develop."
"That one I'll buy, and I'll look on with glee."
"Thanks, fellow." Hilton went down to his office, stuck his big feet up
onto his desk, settled back onto his spine, and buried himself in
thought.
Hours later he got up, shrugged, and went to bed without bothering to
eat.
Days passed.
And weeks.