Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction 11th Part 6

by Isaac Asimov

The celebration had a long way to go and even in the silent depths of Multivac's underground chambers, it hung in the air.

If nothing else, there was the mere fact of isolation and silence-for the first time in a decade, technicians were not scurrying about the vitals of the giant computer, the soft lights did not wink out their erratic patterns, the flow of information in and out had halted.

It would not be halted long, of course, for the needs of peace would be pressing. Yet now, for a day, perhaps for a week, even Multivac might celebrate the great victory, and rest.

Lamar Swift, Executive Director of the Solar Federation, took off the military cap he was wearing and looked down the long and empty main corridor of the enormous com-puter. He sat down rather wearily in one of the technician's swing-stools and his uniform, in which he had never been comfortable, took on a heavy and wrinkled appearance.He said, "I'll miss it all, in a grisly fashion. It's hard to remember when we weren't at war with Deneb, and it seems against nature now to be at peace and to look at the stars without anxiety."

The two men with Swift were both younger than he. Neither was as gray, neither looked quite as tired.

John Henderson, thin-lipped and finding it hard to control the relief he felt in the midst of triumph, said, "They're destroyed! They're destroyed! It's what I keep saying to my-self over and over and I still can't believe it. We all talked so much, over so many years, about the menace hanging over Earth and all its worlds, over every human being, and all the time it was true, every word of it. And now we're alive and it's the Denebians who are shattered and des-troyed. They'll be no menace now, ever again."

"Thanks to Multivac," said Swift, with a quiet glance at the imperturbable Jablonsky, who through all the war had been Chief Interpreter of science's oracle. "Right, Max?"

Jablonsky shrugged. Automatically, he reached for a cig-arette and decided against it. He alone, of all the thousands who had lived in the tunnels within Multivac, had been al-lowed to smoke, but toward the end he had made definite efforts to avoid making use of the privilege.

He said, "Well, that's what they say." His broad thumb moved in the direction of his right shoulder, aiming upward.

"Jealous, Max?"

"Because they're shouting for Multivac? Because Multivac is the big hero in this war?" Jablonsky's craggy face took on an air of contempt. "What's that to me? Let Multivac be the machine that won the war, if it pleases them."

Henderson looked at the other two out of the corners of his eyes. In this short interlude that the three had instinctively sought out in the one peaceful corner of a metropolis gone mad; in this entr'acte between the dangers of war and the difficulties of peace, when, for one moment, they might all find surcease, he was conscious only of his weight of guilt.

Suddenly, it was as though that weight were too great to be borne longer.

It had to be thrown off, along with the war-now!

Henderson said, "Multivac had nothing to do with vic-tory. It's just a machine."

"A big one," said Swift.

"Then just a big machine. No better than the data fed it." For a moment, he stopped, suddenly unnerved at what he was saying.

Jablonsky looked at him, his thick fingers once again fumbling for a cigarette and once again drawing back. "You should know. You supplied the data. Or is it just that you're taking the credit?""No," said Henderson, angrily. "There is no credit. What do you know of the data Multivac had to use, predigested from a hundred subsidiary computers here on Earth, on the Moon, on Mars, even on t.i.tan? With t.i.tan always delayed and always that feeling that its figures would introduce an unexpected bias."

"It would drive anyone mad," said Swift, with gentle sympathy.

Henderson shook his head. "It wasn't just that. I admit that eight years ago when I replaced Lepont as Chief Programmer, I was nervous. But there was an exhilaration about things in those days. The war was still long range; an ad-venture without real danger. We hadn't reached the point where manned vessels had had to take over and where inter-stellar warps could swallow up a planet clean, if aimed cor-rectly. But then, when the real difficulties began-"

Angrily-he could finally permit anger-he said, "You know nothing about it."

"Well," said Swift. "Tell us. The war is over. We've won."

"Yes." Henderson nodded his head. He had to remember that. Earth had won, so all had been for the best. "Well, the data became meaningless."

"Meaningless? You mean that literally?" said Jablonsky.

"Literally. What would you expect? The trouble with you two was that you weren't out in the thick of it. Max, you never left Multivac, and you, Mr. Director, never left the Mansion except on state visits where you saw exactly what they wanted you to see."

"I was not as unaware of that," said Swift, "as you may have thought."

"Do you know," said Henderson, "to what extent data concerning our production capacity, our resource potential, our trained manpower-everything of importance to the war effort, in fact-had become unreliable and untrustworthy during the last half of the war? Group leaders, both civilian and military, were intent on projecting their own improved image, so to speak, so they obscured the bad and magnified the good.

Whatever the machines might do, the men who programmed them and interpreted the results had their own skins to think of and compet.i.tors to stab. There was no way of stopping that. I tried, and failed."

"Of course," said Swift, in quiet consolation. "I can see that you would."

This time Jablonsky decided to light his cigarette. "Yet I presume you provided Multivac with data in your programming? You said nothing to us about unreliability."

"How could I tell you? And if I did, how could you af-ford to believe me?"

demanded Henderson. "Our entire war effort was geared to Multivac. It was the one great weapon on our side for the Denebians had nothing like it.What else kept up morale in the face of doom but the a.s.surance that Multivac would always predict and circ.u.mvent any Denebian move, and would always direct and prevent the circ.u.m-vention of our moves? Great s.p.a.ce, after our Spy-warp was blasted out of hypers.p.a.ce we lacked any reliable Denebian data to feed Multivac, and we didn't dare make that public."

"True enough," said Swift.

"Well, then," said Henderson, "if I told you the data was unreliable, what could you have done but replace me and refuse to believe me? I couldn't allow that."

"What did you do?" said Jablonsky.

"Since the war is won, I'll tell you what I did. I corrected the data."

"How?" asked Swift.

"Intuition, I presume. I juggled them till they looked right. At first, I hardly dared. I changed a bit here and there to correct what were obvious impossibilities. When the sky didn't collapse about us, I got braver. Toward the end, I scarcely cared. I just wrote out the necessary data as it was needed. I even had Multivac Annex prepare data for me according to a private programming pattern I had devised for the purpose."

"Random figures?" said Jablonsky.

"Not at all. I introduced a number of necessary biases."

Jablonsky smiled, quite unexpectedly, his dark eyes spark-ling behind the crinkling of the lower lids. "Three times a report was brought me about unauthorized uses of the An-nex, and I let it go each time. If it had mattered, I would have followed it up and spotted you, John, and found out what you were doing. But, of course, nothing about Multivac mattered in those days, so you got away with it."

"What do you mean, nothing mattered?" asked Hender-son, suspiciously.

"Nothing did. I suppose if I had told you this at the time, it would have spared you your agony, but then if you had told me what you were doing, it would have spared me mine. What made you think Multivac was in working order, what-ever the data you supplied it?"

"Not in working order?" said Swift.

"Not really. Not reliably. After all, where were my tech-nicians in the last years of the war? I'll tell you-they were out feeding computers on a thousand different s.p.a.ce devices. They were gone! I had to make do with kids I couldn't trust and veterans who were out of date. Besides, do you think I could trust the solid-state components coming out of Cyogenics in the last years? Cyogenics wasn't any better placed as far as personnel was concerned than I was. To me, it didn't matter whether the data beingsupplied Multivac were reliable or not. The results weren't reliable. That much I knew."

"What did you do?" asked Henderson.

"I did what you did, John, I introduced the b.u.g.g.e.r factor. I adjusted matters in accordance with intuition-and that's how the machine won the war."

Swift leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out before him. "Such revelations. It turns out then that the material handed me to guide me in my decision-making capacity was a man-made interpretation of man-made data. Isn't that right?"

"It looks so," said Jablonsky.

"Then I perceive I was correct in not placing too much reliance upon it,"

said Swift.

"You didn't?" Jablonsky, despite what he had just said, managed to look professionally insulted.

"I'm afraid I didn't. Multivac might seem to say, Strike here, not there; Do this, not that; Wait, don't act. But I could never be certain that what Multivac seemed to say, it really did say; or what it really said, it really meant. I could never be certain."

"But the final report was always plain enough, sir," said Jablonsky.

"To those who did not have to make the decision, per-haps. Not to me. The horror of the responsibility of such decisions was unbearable and even Multivac was not suffi-cient to remove the weight. But the important point is I was justified in doubting, and there is tremendous relief in that."

Caught up in the conspiracy of mutual confession, Jablon-sky put t.i.tles aside, "What was it you did then, Lamar? After all, you did make decisions.

How?"

"Well, it's time to be getting back, perhaps, but-I'll tell you first. Why not?

I did make use of a computer, Max, but an older one than Multivac-much older."

He groped in his pocket and brought out a scattering of small change-old-fashioned coins dating to the first years before the metal shortage had produced a credit system tied to a computer-complex.

Swift smiled rather sheepishly. "I still need these to make money seem substantial to me. An old man finds it hard to abandon the habits of youth." He dropped the coins back into his pocket.

He held the last coin between his fingers, staring at it absently. "Multivac is not the first computer, friends, nor the best-known, nor the one that can most efficiently lift the load of decision from the shoulders of theexecutive. A machine did win the war, John; at least, a very simple computing device did, one that I used every time I had a particularly hard decision to make."

With a faint smile of reminiscence, he flipped the coin he held. It glinted in the air as it spun and came down in Swift's outstretched palm. His hand closed over it and brought it down on the back of his left hand. His right hand remained in place, hiding the coin.

"Heads or tails, gentlemen?"

________________________________.

A story which may well explain everything for you ... un-less, of course, you are one of those types who are inclined to go around putting piranhas in the water cooler...

GO FOR BAROQUE.

by Jody Scott

The patient was a small man with wiry white hair and a white mustache.

Dr. Brant nodded across the desk at him, and the patient smiled. It was a peculiar smile. A radiant but eerie smile. It bespoke security, which was obsolete. It looked copied from certain smiles Brant had seen on cherubs in old paintings. So what kind of complex might this indicate? Brant smiled right back. "Good morning," he said pleasantly. "You are Mr. Yog Farouche."

"I'm glad to meet myself," Mr. Farouche said, letting his left hand shake his right.

Well, well. Interesting deviation.

"Odd name," Brant said. "What nationality?"

"Plutonian."

"Plutonian?"

"From Pluto."

"Pluto?"

"Ninth from the sun."

"Ah," Brant said. "Pluto. Yes indeedy." He shuffled some papers on his desk. He cleared his throat. "Well, Mr. Farouche; the report from the state hospital says you're much too difficult a case for their staff, yet you are an intelligent and peaceable man. I mention this because it's the oddest referral I've ever seen. Wouldn't you say so?"

"Give me two minutes to run through all the referrals you've ever seen,"Farouche said, closing his eyes.

The psychiatrist was about to say something, but he shut it off. The patient's expression ... very strange ... not quite definable...

"Yes," said Farouche.

"Yes, what?"

Farouche looked pained. "If you'd do me the courtesy-" Then he smiled again. "But I'm expecting too much. Your question was loaded to find out how paranoiac I am. Let me answer: that word isn't even in my vocabulary."

"But you've just used it."

"If you're going to stick on logic well never get anyplace."

Brant settled back in his swivel chair. Okay. So this bird was intelligent, peaceable, difficult. The usual patient was pretty dull, which made life boring for Dr. Brant; Mr. Far-ouche offered a pleasant change of pace. "All right, you tell me. Suppose you start with a rundown of your past life. Make it as long or short as you like ... Sit down in the easy-chair, and relax."

Farouche sighed and obediently sat down. He let his eyes wander over the little room. There were three doors, one to the ward, through which he had come, one to the lab, and one to the reception room. It was a warm sunny morning and the smell of fresh-clipped gra.s.s blew in through the open window...

Gradually his eyes clouded, half closed, looking inward, and Brant took the opportunity to study him. A man of about sixty, in the usual tan trousers and tan open-collar shirt. His eyes were a deep amber, his skin as smooth and pale as new parchment. Looked healthy. Must have done a good amount of outside work. Ruffled hair, thick and pure white, lots of it. His eyes had that childlike look that Brant had seen often; innocent eyes, not deep, but not shallow either-very curi-ous. Not psychotic. Not by Brant's yardstick. That was obvi-ous right away.

"As a child," Farouche said at last, "I was too simple and beautiful to live ... So I died.

"...Now don't leap to conclusions. I mean this in the mystical sense.

Mystical-you don't like it? Too many bad connotations to that word. Mother used to say, 'Don't play near the aqueduct' ... No, strike that out; that was earlier. Ill tell you about whip-whiskered Uncle Sigh (he was Cy, really, but I called him Sigh, for obvious reasons). He used to say to me 'Yoggsy, if you keep on like this, there will be no face in the mirror when you look.'

Such a horrible warn-ing! I was like an ice child-he drinks warm milk and melts; he doesn't, and starves ... Anyway, we lived in Penury, a well-known subsection of Chicago. As a child I was needed at home for certain dramatic scenes. I'm sure this sounds like the regular run of dull cases, eh? But I can't tell you; I've got to show you. Do you mind?"Before Brant could open his mouth the little man had vaulted across the desk and perched himself on the psychia-trist's knee and begun to weep, loudly, violently, heart-brokenly. Then just as suddenly he was back in his chair across the desk. He seemed perfectly calm now. "Rejected! Rejected by my very own mother," he said dreamily. "Not that she knew it; she thought she loved me; they all do, but they nearly all love only some two-dimensional figurine of their own scrawny invention ... Anyway, I made up for all that. I began to develop certain powers, such as-"

Instantly he was down on all fours creeping around the floor under the desk. He began to gather up coins from hidden nooks; a dime, two nickels, a handful of dirt-crusted pennies. "Here. You've lost these over the last three years," he said, handing up the change.