"It backs up the judgment of my own group," said Senator Anderson. "Du
Fresne is just about the smartest computerman we have." He eyed Lindsay
speculatively, added, "You don't seem much impressed by your danger,
Zalen."
"How can I be?" Lindsay countered. "After all, Earth is supposed to be
much further advanced than Mars in civilization. And we have had no
political murder on Mars in more than fifty years."
Maria made a despairing gesture. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed. "You _don't_
understand, Zalen. On Mars you have both room and time to settle your
political conflicts. And you don't have computers."
"We have some pretty sharp rows," Lindsay told her. "But we don't have
anyone assassinated." He paused, looked at them both, added, "Do you
have many of them here?"
"Not many," said Anderson. "But there is a growing tendency to go along
with computer verdicts, no matter how extreme."
"And you believe the British computers are giving accurate answers when
they recommend the dumping of millions of pairs of utterly useless
hunting boots on Mars? Or those rubber shower curtains they unloaded on
us two years ago?"
The Senator said, "There is, unfortunately, no question as to the
accuracy of computer answers. The trouble seems to lie in some special
condition, local to Britain, that effects computers."
"But if the British computers are wrong, why doesn't somebody do
something about it?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson said, "If it were that simple, Zalen...." His smile was rueful.
"Unfortunately our English friends--or their rulers at any rate--are
determined that socialism is the only government suitable to their
country. Actually it is nothing of the sort--they can thrive only with a
mercantile capitalism under a nominal constitutional monarchy."
"In that case I still don't see--" Lindsay began.
"Contrary to what you're thinking, their leaders are not villains,"
Anderson told him. "They are men and women obsessed with an ideal that
has hampered them for almost two centuries. And they are incapable of
accepting any conclusion counter to their ideals."
"Even to impoverishing an entire planet?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson shrugged. "A penalty of their insularity," he replied. "The
reason for this little meeting, Zalen, is to explain that not all of us
are in favor of supporting Britain and its absurd production bungling at
the expense of Mars. A few of us are becoming singularly fed up with the
computer neurosis that seems to have this planet in its grip."
Maria leaned forward, her dark eyes brilliant in their intensity. She
said, "Can't you see, Zalen, _that_ is why we are so concerned with your
possible assassination? We fear the whole of Earth is on the lip of a
nervous breakdown. Unless the grip of the computers is broken anything
might happen. And we're counting on you, with your fresh viewpoint and
prestige, to help us."
"I was hoping you might be concerned about _me_," said Lindsay softly.
"After all, I'm the one who is supposed to be killed." He watched a
sudden flush of embarrassment add charming brilliance to the vividness
of the Secretary General's daughter.
"Of course we're concerned," she said defensively. "We're not really
monsters, Zalen."
"What Maria means," said Anderson swiftly, "is that if the worst
_should_ happen it will go a long way toward making Earth entirely
computer-dependent, if du Fresne's prophecy is fulfilled a lot of people
who might go on fighting will simply give up."
"Just what is your stake in this, Senator?" Lindsay asked.
* * * * *
Anderson said, "I could give you a score of 'good' reasons, Zalen. But
my real reason is this--I'm damned if I want to see professional
politicians become rubber-stamps to a computer. When Sylac was first
used officially three decades ago, it looked as if it might be a help.
All we had to do was palm off all unpopular decisions on the machine.
"Elsac, however, has proved to be something else," he went on. "It is
making too damned many of our decisions for us--and thanks to our having
set Sylac up as a master-brain god we can't controvert its judgment.
When President Giovannini gets his new Giac computer working we might as
well shut up shop. And the announcement that Giac is in operation may
come at any time now."
Lindsay studied him, then said, "Your real complaint then, Fernando, is
that the computers deprive you of patronage and power."
"That's about it," said the senator from New Mexico. "We'll be reduced
to the level of the political commissars of the Soviet nations. The
scientists and symbolic logicians who feed and tend the computers will
actually be running the country. _And_ the world."
"And just where do I come into this?" Lindsay asked.
"You, Zalen, are the last representative of the last sizeable and
important human organism that is not dependent upon computer judgment,"
said Anderson. "That's our side of it. From your own side--if you
already distrust computer decisions, as in the case of the British
hunting boots--you surely don't want to see them in full control."
"Hardly," said Lindsay. "But at the same time I have no desire to be
assassinated or to be the cause of an Earth-Mars war."
"Think it over, Zalen," said Anderson. "I need hardly tell you that I am
not speaking for myself alone." He got up, put down his glass, bade
Maria farewell and left the Martian alone with her.
When he had gone Lindsay looked at the girl, who returned his gaze quite
openly for a long moment before her eyes fell away. He said, "Somehow
the senator and you seem an odd combination."
She made no pretense of misunderstanding but said candidly, "Perhaps I
am neurotic in my distrust of computers but I cannot help that. Those of
us who have any true sensitivity unblunted by the psycho-mechanistics of
the era all share this distrust. It is natural, since we are few and
weak, that we should seek what allies we can find among the strong."
"I've always heard that politics makes strange bedfellows," said Lindsay
casually.
It was obvious that he had committed a _faux pas_. Maria's blush
returned and her expression froze. Lindsay cursed himself for a fool.
With the development of all sorts of pneumatic resting devices the word
_bed_ had become not only obsolete but definitely distasteful in
well-bred Tellurian circles. Its use was as decried as was that of the
word _bloody_ in Victorian England.
She said angrily, "I assure you, Mr. Lindsay, that Senator Anderson and
I have never...." Voice and anger faded alike as she apparently realized
that Lindsay had not intended insult.
He let her mix a second drink for both of them. Then, standing close to
her and noting the smooth perfection of her creamy white skin, "I wonder
if your father knows that he is nourishing a subversive in his family."
She said with a trace of impatience, "Oh, poor papa never sees the trees
for the forest."
"You're a damned unhappy girl, aren't you?" he asked her. He didn't need
an answer, but realized she wanted to talk about it.
She said, her eyes shining suspiciously, "You're right, of course, I'm
very unhappy--constricted in behavior by my father's position, unable to
say aloud what I really think, how I really feel. Sometimes I think I
must be living in some Gothic poet's dream of loneliness."
"Contrary to the beliefs of most psychiatrists," said Lindsay,
half-touched, half-appalled by Maria's intensity, "we are all of us
alone."
"Somehow I _knew_ you'd understand!" she exclaimed, without taking her
dark eyes from his. "I'm not allowed to date gladiators, of course.
You're the only man I've ever been with who was not afraid to look as he
is."
"You'd better come to Mars," he suggested, shying away a little from the
high voltage the Secretary General's daughter seemed to be generating.
"I can assure you you'd have a chance to reveal the charms nature gave
you without shame."
She laughed with a sudden change of spirits. "It's at least a half hour
since dinner. Let's take a dip." She tossed back her lustrous dark hair
with a shake of her head and her hands went to the clasp of her halter,
a moment later to that of her shorts. "Come on," she called, extending
her arms to expose her exciting young body before him. "The water will
cool us off."
It didn't work out that way, of course. Lindsay was barely in the
tub-pool before Maria's arms were about his neck, her body close against
his, her lips thrusting upward toward his own. For a moment he felt
panic, said, "Hey! What if somebody comes? Your father--"
"Silly! Nobody will," she replied, laughing softly.
His last rational thought for quite awhile was, _Oh well--I'm hardly in
a position to get the Secretary General's daughter angry._
* * * * *
False dawn was spreading its dim fanlight over the eastern horizon as he
coptered back to his official quarters in the city. Trying to restore
some order to thoughts and emotions thoroughly disrupted by the
unexpected events of the evening, he wondered a little just what he had
got himself into.
Mars, of course, was scarcely a Puritan planet, populated as it was by
the hardiest and most adventurous members of the human race, of all
races. But there had been something almost psychopathic about Maria's
passion. It had been far too intense to have been generated solely
through regard for him.
The girl had made love to him simply to relieve her own inner tensions,
he thought wryly. Lacking a man she could love, walled in by the high
officialdom of her father's lofty position, she had turned to him in the
same way she turned to the anti-computer movement--as a way of feeling
less lonely for a while. Still, it had been sweet--if a little
frightening in retrospect.
And it had been a little decadent too.
With the copter on autopilot he lit a cigarette and forced his thoughts
away from the girl. He wondered if the Governors of Mars were
sufficiently in key with the current feelings of Earthfolk to understand
fully how deep the repercussions from his speech might go. He wondered
if they had considered fully the possibility of interplanetary war.
True, Mars was undoubtedly better equipped to defend itself against such
attack than was Earth. Like the mother planet it had its share of robot
rockets capable of launching a counterattack. And thanks to the
comparative sparseness and decentralization of its population it was far
less vulnerable to attack.
But war between the planets would be destructive of far more than cities
and the people that lived in them. It would mean inevitably a breakdown
of the entire fabric of civilized humanity--a tenuous fabric, true, but
all that existed to maintain man.
And an isolated Mars, even if self-sufficient, would be a sorry
substitute for a red planet that was part of the United Worlds. It would
mean a setback of generations, perhaps centuries.
He began to feel a new understanding of the importance of his mission.
With understanding came something akin to fear lest he should not be
able to accomplish it without disaster. It was going to be his job to
inaugurate some sort of therapy for Earth's illness. It was, in effect,
one man against a planet.
Considering the men and women with whom he had talked that day he was
unable to take the assassination threat too seriously. Somehow these
neurotics and warped zealots, with their allergies and distortion kits,
seemed unlikely to undertake or carry through any such drastic action.
Their very inhibitions would forbid it.
Not that Maria had been exactly inhibited. Damn! The girl refused to
stay out of his thoughts. He recalled what she had told him of her
conspiracy against the computers, of its aims and methods. And again he
smiled wryly to himself.
They were like spoiled children, he thought. A little group of
over-intense young men and women, neurotic, excitable, unstable, meeting
in one another's houses or in expensive cafes, plotting little coups
that never quite came off.
From certain unguarded phrases Maria had dropped during the less
frenetic periods of their evening together, he gathered that their
current aim was actual physical sabotage of Giac, the mightiest of all
computers about to be unveiled, before it went into work.
They didn't even realize, he thought, that sabotage would avail them
nothing in the long run--or the short either. Destruction of the
computers would not cure Earth. It might easily increase the reliance of
Earthfolk upon their cybernetic monsters. What was needed to effect a
cure was destruction of human confidence in and reliance upon these
machines.
And how in hell, he wondered, was he going to manage that?
* * * * *
To a man from level, water-starved Mars the sight of New Orleans still
ablaze with lights at five o'clock in the morning was something of a
miracle. Mars had its share of atomic power-plants, of course, but such
sources had proved almost prohibitively costly as providers of cheap
power.
That was true on Earth too, of course, but Earth had its rivers, its
waterfalls, its ocean tides to help out. More important, it averaged
some fifty million miles closer to the Sun, thus giving it immense
storage supplies of solar heat for power. Without these resources the
thousand-square-mile expanse of intricately criss-crossed artificial
lighting that was the United Worlds capital would have been impossible.
Lindsay wondered how any people possessed of a planet so rich could be
afflicted with such poverty of soul. Or was this very opulence the
cause? His own planet was comparatively poor--yet nervous breakdowns
were few and far between. There the ugly strove for beauty, instead of
the reverse.
He parked the copter on the garage-plat, pressed the button, and watched
it sink slowly out of sight to its concealed hangar. Like all Martian
natives to leave for Earth, he had been warned about the intense heat
and humidity that assailed most of the mother planet, especially in the
UW capital. Yet the night breeze felt pleasantly cool against his face
and its thickness was like the brush of invisible velvet against his
skin. Perhaps, he thought, he was more of an Earthling than three
generations of Martian heredity made likely.
He did miss the incredible brilliance of the Martian night skies. Here
on Earth the stars shone as puny things through the heavy atmosphere.
But, he thought guiltily, he did not have as severe a pang of
homesickness as he ought.
In a state of self-bemusement he rode the elevator down to his suite on
the ninety-first story. And was utterly unprepared for the assault which
all but bore him to the floor as he stepped out into his own foyer.
Since the attack came from behind and his assailant's first move was to
toss a bag over his head, Lindsay had no idea of what the would-be
assassin looked like. For a moment he could only struggle blindly to
retain his balance, expecting every instant to feel the quick searing
heat of a blaster burn through his back.
But no heat came, nor did the chill of a dagger. Instead he felt his
attacker's strong hands encircle his neck in a _judo_ grip.
This was something Lindsay understood. He thrust both his own hands up
and backward, getting inside the assassin's grip and breaking it. His
thumbnails dug into nerve centers and he bent an arm sharply. There was
a gasp of agony and he felt a large body crumple under the pressure.
* * * * *
Lindsay's first impulse was to summon the constabulary. His second,
after examining the face of his would-be slayer, was to drag the man
into the shelter of his apartment, revive him and seek to learn what he
could about the attempt.
To his astonishment he discovered that he knew the man. His assigned
murderer was long, red-headed Pat O'Ryan rated as a top gladiator, a
tennis and squash champion whose reputation was almost as widespread
among sporting fans on Mars as on Earth. Lindsay had remodeled his own
backhand, just the year before, upon that of the man sent to kill him.
He got some whiskey from the serving bar beside the vidar screen, poured
a little of it between the unconscious killer's lips. O'Ryan sputtered
and sat up slowly, blinking. He said, "Get me some gin, will you?"
Lindsay returned the whiskey to its place, got the requested liquor,
offered some neat to the tennis player in a glass. O'Ryan downed it,
shuddered, looked at Lindsay curiously. He said, "What went wrong?
You're supposed to be dead."
Lindsay shrugged and said, "I know some _judo_ too. You weren't quite
fast enough, Pat."
O'Ryan moaned again, reached for the bottle. Then he said, "I remember
now. Thank God you got my right arm--I'm left-handed."
"I know," Lindsay told him laconically.