Holding it up against the dome light of the flapple, Stafford made out the punches. Binary system, evidently programming material for the Strategic Acquired-Space Command units which the computer directly controlled.
"It was about to push the panic button and give them an order," the man at the console of the flapple said, over his shoulder. "To all our military units linked to it. Can you read the command?"
Stafford nodded, and returned the tape. He could read it, yes. The computer had formally notified SAC of a Red Alert. It had gone so far as to move H-bomb-carrying squadrons into scramble, and also was requesting that all ICBM missiles on their assorted pads be made ready for launch.
"And also," the man at the controls added, "it was sending out a command to defensive satellites and missile complexes to deploy themselves in response to an imminent H-bomb attack. We blocked all this, however, as you now are able to see. None of this tape got onto the co-ax lines."
After a pause, Stafford said huskily, "Then what data don't you want Genux-B to receive?" He did not understand.
"Feedback," said the man at the controls. Obviously he was the leader of this unit of commandos. "Without feedback the computer does not possess any method of determining that there has been no counterattack by its military arm. In the abeyance it will have to assume that the counterattack has taken place, but that the enemy strike was at least partially successful."
Stafford said, "But there is no enemy. Who's attacking us?"
Silence.
Sweat made Stafford's forehead slick with moisture. "Do you know what would cause a Genux-B to conclude that we're under attack? A million separate factors, all possible known data weighed, compared, analyzed – and then the absolute gestalt. In this case, the gestalt of an imminent attacking enemy. No one thing would have raised the threshold; it was quantitative. A shelter-building program in Asiatic Russia, unusual movements of cargo ships around Cuba, concentrations of rocket freight unloadings in Red Canada…"
"No one," the man at the controls of the flapple said placidly, "no nation or group of persons either on Terra or Luna or Domed Mars is attacking anybody. You can see why we've got to get you over there fast. You have to make it absolutely certain that no orders emanate from Genux-B to SAC. We want Genux-B sealed off so it can't talk to anybody in a position of authority and it can't hear anybody besides us. What we do after that we'll worry about then. 'But the evil of the day -' "
"You assert that in spite of everything available to it, Genux-B can't distinguish an attack on us?" Stafford demanded. "With its manifold data-collecting sweepers?" He thought of something then, that terrified him in a kind of hopeless, retrospective way. "What about our attack on France in '82 and then on little Israel in '89?"
"No one was attacking us then either," the man nearest Stafford said, as he retrieved the tape and again placed it within his briefcase. His voice, somber and morose, was the only sound; no one else stirred or spoke. "Same then as now. Only this time a group of us stopped Genux-B before it could commit us. We pray we've aborted a pointless, needless war."
"Who are you?" Stafford asked. "What's your status in the federal government? And what's your connection with Genux-B?" Agents, he thought, of the Blunk-rattling South African True Association. That still struck him as most likely. Or even zealots from Israel, looking for vengeance – or merely acting out the desire to stop a war: the most humanitarian motivation conceivable.
But, nevertheless, he himself, like Genux-B, was under a loyalty oath to no larger political entity than the North American Prosperity Alliance. He still had the problem of getting away from these men and to his chain-of-command superiors so that he could file a report.
The man at the controls of the flapple said, "Three of us are FBI." He displayed credentials. "And that man there is an eleccom engineer, who, as a matter of fact, helped in the original design of this particular Genux-B."
"That's right," the engineer said. "I personally made it possible for them to jam both the outgoing programming and the incoming data feed. But that's not enough." He turned toward Stafford, his face serene, his eyes large and inviting. He was half-begging, half-ordering, using whatever tone would bring results. "But let's be realistic. Every Genux-B has backup monitoring circuitry that'll begin to inform it any time now that its programming to SAC isn't being acted on, and in addition it's not getting the data it ought to get. As with everything else it sinks its electronic circuits into, it'll begin to introspect. And by that time we have to be doing something better than jamming a take-up reel with a Phillips screwdriver." He paused. "So," he finished more slowly, "that's why we came to you."
Gesturing, Stafford said, "I'm just a repairman. Maintenance and service – not even malfunct analysis. I do only what I'm told."
"Then do what we're telling you," the FBI man closest to him spoke up harshly. "Find out why Genux-B decided to flash a Red Alert, scramble SAC, and begin a 'counterattack.' Find out why it did so in the case of France and Israel. Something made it add up its received data and get that answer. It's not alive! It has no volition. It didn't just feel the urge to do this."
The engineer said, "If we're lucky, this is the last time Genux-B will malreact in this fashion. If we can spot the misfunction this time, we'll perhaps have it pegged for all time. Before it starts showing up in the other seven Genux-B systems around the world."
"And you're certain," Stafford said, "that we're not under attack?" Even if Genux-B had been wrong both times before, it at least theoretically could be right this time.
"If we are about to be attacked," the nearest FBI man said, "we can't make out any indication of it – by human data processing, anyhow. I admit it's logically thinkable that Genux-B could be correct. After all, as he pointed out -"
"You may be in error because the S.A.T.A. has been hostile toward us so long we take it for granted. It's a verity of modern life."
"Oh, it's not the South African True Association," the FBI man said briskly. "In fact, if it were we wouldn't have gotten suspicious. We wouldn't have begun poking around, interviewing survivors from the Israel War and French War and whatever else State's done to follow this up."
"It's Northern California," the engineer said, and grimaced. "Not even all of California; just the part above Pismo Beach."
Stafford stared at them.
"That's right," one of the FBI men said. "Genux-B was in the process of scrambling all SAC bombers and wep-sats for an all-out assault on the area around Sacramento, California."
"You asked it why?" Stafford said, speaking to the engineer.
"Sure. Or rather, strictly speaking, we asked it to spell out in detail what the 'enemy' is up to."
One of the FBI men drawled, "Tell Mr. Stafford what Northern California is up to that makes it a hot-target enemy – that would have meant its destruction by SAC spearhead assaults if we hadn't jammed the damn machinery… and still have it jammed."
"Some individual," the engineer said, "has opened up a penny gum machine route in Castro Valley. You know. He has those bubble-headed dispensers outside supermarkets. The children put in a penny and get a placebo ball of gum and something additional occasionally – a prize such as a ring or a charm. It varies. That's the target."
Incredulous, Stafford said, "You're joking."
"Absolute truth. Man's name is Herb Sousa. He owns sixty-four machines now in operation and plans expansion."
"I mean," Stafford said thickly, "you're joking about Genux-B's response to that datum."
"Its response isn't exactly to that datum per se," the closest of the FBI men said. "For instance, we checked with both the Israeli and French governments. Nobody named Herb Sousa opened up a penny gum machine route in their countries, and that goes for chocolate-covered peanut vending machines or anything else remotely similar to it. And, contrarily, Herb Sousa maintained such a route in Chile and in the U.K. during the past two decades… without Genux-B taking any interest all those years." He added, "He's an elderly man."
"A s
ort of Johnny Apple Gum," the engineer said, and tittered. "Looping the world, sending those gum machines swooping down in front of every gas -"
"The triggering stimulus," the engineer said, as the flapple began to drop toward a vast complex of illuminated public buildings below, "may lie in the ingredients of the merchandise placed in the machines. That's what our experts have come up with; they studied all material available to Genux-B concerning Sousa's gum concessions, and we know that all Genux-B has consists of a long, dry chemical analysis of the food product constituents with which Sousa loads his machines. In fact, Genux-B specifically requested more information on that angle. It kept grinding out 'incomplete ground data' until we got a thorough PF amp;D lab analysis."
"What did the analysis show?" Stafford asked. The flapple had now berthed on the roof of the installations housing the central component of the computer, and, as it was called these days, Mr. C-in-C of the North American Prosperity Alliance.
"As regards foodstuffs," an FBI man near the door said, as he stepped out onto the dimly illuminated landing strip, "nothing but gum base, sugar, corn syrup, softeners, and artificial flavor, all the way down the line. Matter of fact, that's the only way you can make gum. And those dinky little prizes are vacuum-processed thermoplastics. Six hundred to the dollar will buy them from any of a dozen firms here and in Hong Kong and Japan. We even went so far as to trace the prizes down to the specific jobber, his sources, back to the factory, where a man from State actually stood and watched them making the damn little things. No, nothing there. Nothing at all."
"But," the engineer said, half to himself, "when that data had been supplied to Genux-B -"
"Then this," the FBI man said, standing aside so that Stafford could disemflapple. "A Red Alert, the SAC scramble, the missiles up from their silos. Forty minutes away from thermonuclear war – the distance from us of one Phillips head screwdriver wedged in a tape drum of the computer."
To Stafford, the engineer said keenly, "Do you pick up anything odd or conceivably misleading in those data? Because if you do, for God's sake speak up; all we can do this way is to dismantle Genux-B and put it out of action, so that when a genuine threat faces us -"
"I wonder," Stafford said slowly, pondering, "what's meant by 'artificial' color."
III
"It means it won't otherwise look the right color, so a harmless food-coloring dye is added," the engineer said presently.
"But that's the one ingredient," Stafford said, "that isn't listed in a way that tells us what it is – only what it does. And how about flavor?" The FBI men glanced at one another.
"It is a fact," one of them said, "and I recall this because it always makes me sore – it did specify artificial flavor. But heck -"
"Artificial color and flavor," Stafford said, "could mean anything. Anything over and above the color and flavor imparted." He thought: Isn't it prussic acid that turns everything a bright clear green? That, for example, could in all honesty be spelled out on a label as "artificial color." And taste – what really was meant by "artificial taste"? This to him always had a dark, peculiar quality to it, this thought; he decided to shelve it. Time now to go down and take a look at Genux-B, to see what damage had been done to it. – And how much damage, he thought wryly, it still needs. If I've been told the truth; if these men are what they show credentials for, not S.A.T.A. saboteurs or an intelligence cadre of one of several major foreign powers.
From the garrison warrior domain of Northern California, he thought wryly. Or was that absolutely impossible after all? Perhaps something genuine and ominous had burgeoned into life there. And Genux-B had – as designed to do – sniffed it out.
For now, he could not tell.
But perhaps by the time he finished examining the computer he would know. In particular, he wanted to see firsthand the authentic, total collection of data tapes currently being processed from the outside universe into the computer's own inner world. Once he knew that -
I'll turn the thing back on, he said grimly to himself. I'll do the job I was trained for and hired to do.
Obviously, for him it would be easy. He thoroughly knew the schematics of the computer. No one else had been into it replacing defective components and wiring as had he.
This explained why these men had come to him. They were right – at least about that.
"Piece of gum?" one of the FBI agents asked him as they walked to the descy with its phalanx of uniformed guards standing at parade rest before it. The FBI agent, a burly man with a reddish fleshy neck, held out three small brightly colored spheres.
"From one of Sousa's machines?" the engineer asked.
"Sure is." The agent dropped them into Stafford's smock pocket, then grinned. "Harmless? Yes-no-maybe, as the college tests say."
Retrieving one from his pocket, Stafford examined it in the overhead light of the descy. Sphere, he thought. Egg. Fish egg; they're round, as in caviar. Also edible; no law against selling brightly colored eggs. Or are they laid this color?
"Maybe it'll hatch," one of the FBI men said casually. He and his companions had become tense now, as they descended into the high-security portion of the building.
"What do you think would hatch out of it?" Stafford said.
"A bird," the shortest of the FBI men said brusquely. "A tiny red bird bringing good tidings of great joy."
Both Stafford and the engineer glanced at him.
"Don't quote the Bible to me," Stafford said. "I was raised with it. I can quote you back anytime." But it was strange, in view of his own immediate thoughts, almost an occurrence of synchronicity between their minds. It made him feel more somber. God knew, he felt somber enough as it was. Something laying eggs, he thought. Fish, he reflected, release thousands of eggs, all identical; only a very few of them survive. Impossible waste – a terrible, primitive method.
But if eggs were laid and deposited all over the world, in countless public places, even if only a fraction survived – it would be enough. This had been proved. The fish of Terra's waters had done so. If it worked for terran life, it could work for nonterran, too.
The thought did not please him.
"If you wanted to infest Terra," the engineer said, seeing the expression on his face, "and your species, from God knows what planet in what solar system, reproduced the way our cold-blooded creatures here on Terra reproduce -" He continued to eye Stafford. "In other words, if you spawned thousands, even millions of small hard-shelled eggs, and you didn't want them noticed, and they were bright in color as eggs generally are -" he hesitated. "One wonders about incubation. How long. And under what circumstances? Fertilized eggs, to hatch, generally have to be kept warm."
"In a child's body," Stafford said, "it would be very warm."
And the thing, the egg, would – insanely – pass Pure Food amp; Drug standards. There was nothing toxic in an egg. All organic, and very nourishing.
Except, of course, that if this happened to be so, the outer shell of hard colored "candy" would be immune to the action of normal stomach juices. The egg would not dissolve. But it could be chewed up in the mouth, though. Surely it wouldn't survive mastication. It would have to be swallowed like a pill: intact.
With his teeth he bit down on the red ball and cracked it. Retrieving the two hemispheres, he examined the contents.
"Ordinary gum," the engineer said. " 'Gum base, sugar, corn syrup, softeners -' " He grinned tauntingly, and yet in his face a shadow of relief passed briefly across before it was, by an effort of will, removed. "False lead."
"False lead, and I'm glad it is," the shortest of the FBI men said. He stepped from the descy. "Here we are." He stopped in front of the rank of uniformed and armed guards, showed his papers. "We're back," he told the guards.
"The prizes," Stafford said.
"What do you mean?" the engineer glanced at him.
"It's not in the gum. So it has to be in the prizes, the charms and knickknacks. That's all that's left."
"What you're doing,"
the engineer said, "is implicitly maintaining that Genux-B is functioning properly. That it's somehow right; there is a hostile warlike menace to us. One so great it justifies pacification of Northern California by hard first-line weapons. As I see it, isn't it easier simply to operate from the fact that the computer is malfunctioning?"
Stafford, as they walked down the familiar corridors of the vast government building, said, "Genux-B was built to sift a greater amount of data simultaneously than any man or group of men could. It handles more data than we, and it handles them faster. Its response comes in microseconds. If Genux-B, after analyzing all the current data, feels that war is indicated, and we don't agree, then it may merely show that the computer is functioning as it was intended to function. And the more we disagree with it, the better this is proved. If we could perceive, as it does, the need for immediate, aggressive war on the basis of the data available, then we wouldn't require Genux-B. It's precisely in a case like this, where the computer has given out a Red Alert and we see no menace, that the real use of a computer of this class comes into play."
After a pause, one of the FBI men said, as if speaking to himself, "He's right, you know. Absolutely right. The real question is, Do we trust Genux-B more than ourselves? Okay, we built it to analyze faster and more accurately and on a wider scale than we can. If it had been a success, this situation we face now is precisely what could have been predicted. We see no cause for launching an attack; it does." He grinned harshly. "So what do we do? Start Genux-B up again, have it go ahead and program SAC into a war? Or do we neutralize it – in other words, unmake it?" His eyes were cold and alert on Stafford. "A decision one way or the other has to be made by someone. Now. At once. Someone who can make a good educated guess as to which it is, functioning or malfunctioning."
"The President and his cabinet," Stafford offered tensely. "An ultimate decision like this has to be his. He bears the moral responsibility."
"But the decision," the engineer spoke up, "is not a moral question, Stafford. It only looks like it is. Actually the question is only a technical one. Is Genux-B working properly or has it broken down?"