Nina dropped the gun into her bag casually, said, "Now I know you're
lucky, you thin slob. You happened to stumble right onto her allergy.
She can't stand being thought of as a third-rate lover. That's why she's
always been jealous of me--because I have top-model rating and she could
never make it. She's too damned concerned with pleasing herself to
please anyone else. She flunked out at fourteen."
"Then why didn't _you_ pull it?" Lindsay asked her, astonished.
"Because," Nina said thoughtfully, "I'm not conditioned to think that
way. It's horribly rude here on Earth to stir up other people's
allergies. As you reminded me last night, you rat, we're all people in
glass houses."
"But I didn't even know...." muttered Lindsay.
"You hit it though," she reminded him. "And you're going to hit it again
out there in exactly five minutes."
* * * * *
Lindsay was extremely conscious of the eyes of the vidar cameras upon
him as President Giovannini, having finished his introductory speech,
led him to the alabaster stele in the center of Giac's great central
chamber and turned him over to du Fresne, whose official robe hung
unevenly from the hump of his harness.
Lindsay handed the Minister of Computation the question he had prepared
on paper, was brusquely told, "Read it please, Ambassador."
He cleared his throat and began.
"I am asking a question highly pertinent to the welfare and future amity
of the United Worlds," he said slowly. "More specifically to the future
amity of Earth and Mars. It is a simple question without involved
mathematical qualifications--but one that no computer and no man has
thus far been able to answer correctly.
"It is this continued failure of computers to come up with a logical
answer in the full frame of interplanetary conditions that has done much
to make the people of my planet feel that no computer is trustworthy to
make decisions involving human beings."
He paused, looked covertly at du Fresne, repressed a smile. The Minister
of Computation was already showing signs of distress. He was shaking his
head, making little pawing motions toward his glasses.
"Here it is," Lindsay said quickly. "Should the governors of Mars, whose
responsibilities lie at least as much in the economic improvement of
their own world as in inter-world harmony, permit their planet to
receive goods which retard that economic development so that it becomes
a race to maintain current unsatisfactory standards, merely because
certain computers on Earth are fed false facts to permit continuation of
some illogical form of government or social system--or should the
governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer
illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent
planet?"
He walked slowly back to his place and sat down, almost feeling the
silence around him. Nina whispered, "What in hell does it mean?"
Lindsay whispered back, "It's a bit of the iron dog and the whale, a bit
of the Red Queen, a bit of the suicide idea--and something else. Let's
see if it works."
Lindsay watched du Fresne, whose moment of triumph was marred by his
obvious discomfort. The twisted little man was very busy running the
question into its various forms for submission to the feeder units,
whose mouths gaped like hungry nestlings along part of one side wall.
If du Fresne failed him....
It was a long nervous wait. Lights flickered in meaningless succession
on subsidiary instrument boards and du Fresne darted about like a
bespectacled buzzard, studying first this set of symbols, then that one.
Lindsay glanced at Maria, who sat huddled beside her father beyond the
president. To break the suspense he whispered to Nina, "What about
_her_?"
Nina whispered back, "I've got it taped. I'm going to give her a nice
empty job on the moon--one with a big title attached. It will get her
out of the way--she can't do any harm there--and make her feel she's
_doing_ something. Besides"--a faint malicious pause--"there are still
four men to every woman on Luna. And they aren't choosy."
"You're a witch," said Lindsay. He snickered and someone shushed him.
Looking up he saw that things were happening.
"In exactly"--du Fresne glanced up at a wall chronometer--"six seconds
Giac will give its answer."
They seemed more like six years to Lindsay. Then the alabaster stele in
the center of the floor came abruptly to life. A slow spiral of red,
composed of a seemingly endless stream of high mathematical symbols,
started up from its base, worked rapidly around and around it like an
old-fashioned barber-pole's markings, moving ever upward toward its top.
"Effective--very effective," murmured President Giovannini.
Suddenly a voice sounded, a pleasant voice specially geared to resemble
the voice of the greatest of twentieth-century troubadors, Bing Crosby.
It said, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."
There was a gasp--a gasp that seemed to emerge not only from the company
present but, in reverse, through the vidarcasters from the entire
listening world. President Giovannini, suddenly white, said inelegantly,
"Son of a bitch!"
Nina laughed out loud and gripped Lindsay's arm tightly. "You've done
it, darling--you've _done_ it!" she cried.
"On the contrary," he said quietly, "_I_ haven't done it; du Fresne did
it." And as he looked toward the Minister of Computation that little man
fainted.
* * * * *
But Giac kept right on. It blanked out briefly, then once more the
spiral of red figures began to work its way around and up the stele. And
once again the pleasant voice announced, "Interplanetary unity depends
upon computer illogic."
It blanked out, began again. And this time, from somewhere in the
building, came the thud of a muffled explosion. A spiral of green
symbols began to circle the stele, then a spiral of yellow. The red
reached the top first and the Bing Crosby voice began again,
"Interplanetary unity de--"
The green and yellow spirals reached the top. A few seconds of sheer
Jabberwocky emerged from the loudspeaker, ending in a chorus of,
"Illogic, illogic, illogic...." with the words overlapping.
Panic began to show itself. The president gasped and Maria suddenly
shrieked. Frightened onlookers crowded toward the door. The president
looked from the machine to Lindsay, bewildered.
Lindsay got up and strode toward the microphone by the stele. He shouted
into it, "Turn off the computer--turn it _off_."
And, moments later, while the angry hot glow of the stele faded slowly,
he said, "People of Earth, this is Lindsay of Mars. Please be calm while
I explain. There is nothing wrong with Giac or any of your computers."
He paused, added ruefully, "At least nothing that cannot be repaired in
short order where Giac is concerned.
"I am going to ask to look once more at the question I submitted to this
machine--_and_ to the language tape fed into it by the Honorable Mr. du
Fresne." He waited while they were brought to him, scanned them, smiled,
said, "No the fault was not with Giac. Nor was it consciously with Mr.
du Fresne. The question was loaded.
"You see, I happen to know that your Minister's belief in computers is
such that he suffers an involuntary reaction when he hears them defamed.
I defamed computers both in my preliminary address and in my question.
And when he had to transfer to tape the phrase '--or, should the
Governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer
illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent
planet?'--when he transferred that sentence to tape he was physically
unable to write the phrase 'computer illogic'.
"Involuntarily he changed it to 'computer logic' with the result that
the question was utterly meaningless and caused Giac's tubes to short
circuit. None of the recent computer failures was the fault of the
machines--it was the fault of the men who fed them material to digest.
"So I believe it is safe to say that you may rely upon your
computers--as long as they do not deal with problems affecting
yourselves and ourselves. For those you need human speculation, human
debate, above all human judgment!"
President Giovannini, able politician that he was, had joined Lindsay at
the microphone, put an arm across his shoulders, said, "I feel
humble--yes, humble--in the great lesson this great envoy from our
sister planet had taught us. What they can do on Mars we can do on
Earth."
When at last they were clear of the vidar cameras Lindsay grinned and
said, "Nice going, Johnny--you'll have more voters than ever come next
election."
Giovannini simply stared at him. His eyes began to water, his nose to
run and he turned away, groping for an evapochief.
Lindsay looked after him and shook his head. He said to Nina, who had
rejoined him, "How about that? Johnny's in tears."
"Of course he is," snapped Nina. "He's allergic to the word 'voters'.
Night soil, but you're simple!"
Lindsay felt his own eyes water. He sneezed, violently, for the first
time since coming to Earth. Concerned, Nina said, "What's wrong,
darling? Have I done something?"
"If you ever say 'night soil' again..." he began. Then,
"Krra_chooooo_!" He felt as if the top of his head were missing.
Nina hugged him, grinning like a gamine. "I'll save it for _very_
special occasions," she promised.