“But just a second!” Flamen was clawing at his beard, apparently not having heard the last remark. “Robert Gottschalk can’t have been shut away in the Ginsberg for the past however many months, because the grapevine said he was—”
“The name ‘Robert’ was selected with the intention of misleading the public,” Madison/Gottschalk said, once more overriding Flamen’s interruption. “If you feel it more appropriate, you are at liberty to address me by the undisguised form Robot Gottschalk, because I am in fact a machine.”
NINETY-ONE
THE GENESIS OF SYSTEM C INTEGRATED WEAPONRY
“I see,” nodded the man from Inorganic Brain Manufacturers who had been on an unofficial retainer for the Gottschalks for the best part of a decade and was in a position to notify them of the very newest devlopments in data-processing equipment. “Yes, I think that can be done. Designing the key circuitry, though—that’s going to present one or two problems.”
“So long as this thing maximizes our sales,” Anthony Gottschalk said expansively, “I don’t give a damn.”
“You want that as a built-in command?”
“Of course!”
There was a pause. The man from IBM decided during it that there was no point in explaining that giving so complex a computer such a blanket command was roughly the mechanical counterpart of obsession in the human brain. The conversation was being recorded and in the event of a later lawsuit could always be adduced in evidence for the defendants.
Not that the Gottschalks had much patience for the regular processes of the law … but the odds were all against their revenging themselves on someone who had made himself so indispensable to them already, and arranging for repairs, overhauls and modifications could often be as profitable as selling the original installation.
“Very well,” the man from IBM said. “All decisions made by the computer and all recommendations for action will be governed by the overriding urge to maximize sales of Gottschalk weapons at the highest price the market will bear. Does that cover it?”
“Perfectly,” said Anthony Gottschalk. “But don’t forget about the development of new lines, will you? That’s important too.”
NINETY-TWO
SPECIFICATIONS OF SYSTEM C INTEGRATED WEAPONRY (MARK V AND FINAL)
Defensive aspect
A controlled mobile environment, form-fitting, self-powered in ambient temperatures above —12° C. and when fully charged capable of independent level-ground progress at speeds exceeding 35 k.p.h. for up to 1½ hours; offering warranted protection against inferior equivalents under any circumstances and identical units less skillfully operated, in addition to adequate respiration in environments possessing 4% available oxygen or more, supportable internal temperatures indefinitely between —12° C. and 63° C. ambient, condensed drinking-water of acceptable purity indefinitely, and certain readily synthesizable metabolic necessities (notably sugars) from atmosphere gases given sufficient down-time; specifically proof against:
(a) Impact due to any manually-directed instrument whatever;
(b) Impact due to solid shot up to 500 gm. at velocity of 1000 meters/second or equivalent kinetic energy, although projectiles greatly exceeding this velocity may cause bruising of the occupant and those greatly exceeding this mass may effect physical displacement of the entire unit;
(c) Impingent energy up to 750 watts/square millimeter up to 2 seconds (an automatic device detects the overload and in emergency diverts a portion of it from the grounding web enclosing the unit in order to permit a leap of up to 60 meters, assuming freeway, but this maneuver is not indefinitely repeatable and it is recommended that it not be employed more than four times in 24 hours or more than 20 times before having the unit serviced);
(d) Combustion up to 2500° C. for up to 3 minutes;
(e) Noxious gases of all known varieties, indefinitely through a self-renewing filter provided down-time of at least 1 hour in 24 is available, otherwise for approx. 36 hours;
(f) Military bacteria and viruses of all types whose molecular structure dissociates below 500° C.
The unit is not proof against: fluorine in concentrations exceeding 100 parts/thousand for more than 1½ minutes, prolonged application of a VHP laser or thermic lance, and direct impact by micronukes or other devices with a yield exceeding 0.25 kiloton/cubic meter/milli-second.
Offensive aspect
(a) Energetic: in actual field trials a skilled operator reduced a sample group of 25 Reference Accommodation Blocks (12 stories reinforced concrete) to Uninhabitable condition in 3.3 minutes, 12 being demolished and the remainder set ablaze.
(b) Respiratory: the unit is capable of generating 450 cubic meters/hour of the fatal gas “KQL” (Thanato-line).
(c) Metabolic: the unit is capable of generating 120 gm. of the psychedelic drug “Ladromide” in 1 minute at 7-minute intervals for approx. 1½ hours, sufficient to contaminate (e.g.) the water-supply of a city of 50,000 inhabitants with a disabling dose; the chemical can be delivered as crystals or emitted as an aerosol spray for local application.
(d) Projective: a Model XXI micronuke of 0.2 kilo-tons yield can be thrown approx. 830 meters under normal conditions and 6 can be thrown 570 meters within 15 minutes; delivery at ranges below 200 meters is not recommended.
(e) Counter-personnel: no unarmed human being unless sheltered by more than 5 meters of good-quality concrete can hope to escape the operation of this unit
Price and availability
675,000 units stockpiled, production currently exceeding 2,000/day; immediate delivery at $155,000 plus freight costs; available as samples to occupants of kneeblank enclaves at nominal $25,000; generous credit facilities.
Sales record
Date minus three months: 1,465,221.
Date minus two months: 1,476,930.
Date minus one month: 1,476,952.
Date: 1,476,953.
Desirability rating
97.6%.
Saleability rating
0.
NINETY-THREE
A GOOD POINT
A product estimated to be desirable for 97.6% of the population should not display a saleability rating of zero.
NINETY-FOUR
WE’VE BEEN AROUND FOR ABOUT TWO MILLION YEARS AND THE DINOSAURS FLOURISHED FOR ABOUT NINETY MILLION SO WE MAY WITH LUCK HAVE QUITE A LONG WAY TO GO
“What in the hell is going on around here?” Flamen said foggily. “I don’t understand!”
“I have comped that probability,” Madison/Gottschalk said. “However, particularly on the basis of recent statements by Professor Xavier Conroy, it is evident that certain individuals are aware at this point in time of the developing pattern which will ultimately lead to the zeroization of Gottschalk sales and the concomitant breakdown of human technological civilization. In accordance with my primary directive, having exhausted the implications of the stored data in my possession, I now propose to examine the effect of introducing additional material for human computation into this significant nexus. I comp that the preferable approach to this will be by question-and-answer methods rather than linear exposition. Put to me what questions you feel most apt and I will answer them to the best of my ability.”
Reedeth, very white, was getting to his feet. “Ah—Mr. Flamen!” he whispered. “Do you happen to keep a stock of tranks in this office? We ought to try and get some down him quickly—he’s very strong, and if it comes to a struggle …”
“The administration of conventional tranquilizers will be ineffectual,” Madison/Gottschalk said. “Their impact on human mentation is well documented and I am able to circumvent their influence.”
There was an uneasy pause. Lyla broke it by saying in an obstinate tone, “I want to hear what Harry’s got to say. I don’t know what’s going on either, but I’m used to that. I never know what’s going on when I take a sibyl-pill.”
“Good point,” Conroy said softly. “Flamen, weren’t you saying yourself a moment ago that the Gottschalks were optin
g out of Iron Mountain in favor of an installation of their own? Why shouldn’t that installation be nicknamed ‘Robert’ to mislead prying people like yourself? Wouldn’t it be on a par with what the Gottschalks have done in the past?”
“The analysis is accurate,” Madison/Gottschalk said.
Flamen put his hands giddily to his temples. He said, “All right, I’ll string along, though I think I’m being a fool to listen to this nonsense.” He swallowed hard, lowered his hands and set his shoulders back like a man preparing to face a firing squad of his neighbors’ ridicule. “Yes, it would explain why news of the new recruit called Robert has been on the grapevine for months without anyone managing to identify him.”
Conroy glanced at Diablo. The knee had skinned back the sleeve of his oversuit again and was fingering the Conjuh Man bracelet he wore, his lips moving silently—presumably reciting a charm.
“Very well, then! First question: you say we’re talking to a machine. What machine, where, and how can we be talking to it?”
“The machine known as Robert Gottschalk,” was the patient answer. “Further designation would have to be exhaustively technical in that the design is unprecedentedly complex and no other known cybernetic device possesses a comparable degree of awareness. The precise location is not available but Mr. Flamen has already stated that the site is probably in Nevada, which I concede is accurate, and the method of our mutual communication is comped to be inexplicable in terms comprehensible to you.”
“It’s the result of having to use machines as confidants for so long,” Reedeth muttered. “I knew it was dangerous to go on keeping him in the Ginsberg—what else could the poor bastard do but talk to the machines when no one else was allowed to befriend him?”
“Shut up,” Conroy said. “I want to follow this until it stops making sense. It’s a weird kind of sense, but it seems to me only too damned likely that sooner or later the human race will torpedo itself by going on the way it’s going right now. Madison—Robert—Robot—whatever the hell: either we’re crazy or you’re crazy or both, or else we really are talking to a machine out in Nevada somewhere—can’t you give us some evidence to help us decide which?”
There was a pause. At length Madison/Gottschalk said, “It would be difficult. Such obvious tests as requiring me to perform a mathematical computation beyond the average abilities of a human brain might be countered with the argument that lightning calculators who were mentally deficient or even deranged have been known for centuries, and I am specifically forbidden to supply you with information which would enable you to undertake direct physical verification of statements about myself. The most satisfactory solution would appear to be for me to make what you would regard as prophecies because at this locus on the temporal scale they are concerned with events not available to your senses.”
“But that means waiting until the time you set for them to happen,” Conroy said slowly. “Like this bit about the Gottschalk coup of 2015. Hmm!” He tugged at his beard. “Well, start there, then—tell us more about the Gottschalk coup.”
“The current disagreement over methods and marketing among the Gottschalk cartel climaxed in the early spring of the year 2015 with forcible deposition of Marcantonio Gottschalk by a team of monosyllabics and junior polysyllabics equipped with the prototype System C weaponry which Anthony, later Antonioni, Gottschalk had had developed and which Marcantonio had forbidden him to introduce to the kneeblank market.”
Conroy glanced at Flamen. “How do you feel about that?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Flamen admitted. “It looks as though the dispute is polarizing along regular conservative-radical lines, and certainly Anthony Gottschalk is right in there with Vyacheslav and the other disaffected pollies.”
“Why should Marcantonio forbid its introduction?” Conroy demanded.
“Two explanations. In his own view, because it would satch the market. In the view of Anthony Gottschalk, because he is old-fashioned in his thinking.”
“Which of these views do you incline to?”
“At temporal locus 2014, the latter; at temporal locus 2113, the former—which is why I am deliberately altering the course of past events.”
“Twenty-one thirteen?” Diablo said. “Oh, he is out of his skull!” He jumped up angrily. “Dr. Reedeth, what made you think this man was fit for release from the hospital?”
“Freeze it!” Conroy barked at him. “What the hell do you think will happen if the Gottschalks start supplying the knee enclaves with equipment powerful enough for one man to raze a city? Come on—let’s hear from you!”
Diablo bit his lip. He said defensively, “It’s ridiculous anyway. You can’t answer a question like that.”
“Hell, man! Don’t you know your own history? Don’t you keep in touch with advances in technology? It’s been possible for one man to raze a city for—oh—sixty years at least. Way back in the fifties of last century there were aircraft equipped with as many as five kiloton nuclear bombs, under the control of a single pilot. They cost millions, but refinements in design could tend towards greater availability. If you were an Aerospace Force pilot you’d be able to take out not just one city but half a continent. True or false?”
“Well, yes, but the Gottschalks—”
“The Gottschalks aren’t government contractors, they’re catering for the domestic market. So what? Right this minute, if your credit rating is good, you can walk down the street to an arms store and buy a bandolier of micronukes, and those would be enough to clear the average city block. We’ve just been lucky so far that not many people can afford to lay out sixty thousand tealeaves for the privilege of killing their neighbors. Improve your production methods, cut your costs, and you can make this available to anyone in the middle income grades. Lovely! Especially if your customers have had it dinned into them that the local knee enclave already has this particular goody in its armory. Don’t bother to argue—you know that’s how it’s worked.”
Conroy deliberately turned his back on Diablo and addressed Madison/Gottschalk again.
“I was about to ask when I was interrupted: what has the ‘temporal locus’ of 2113 to do with all this?”
“Being self-powered, virtually immune from attack and designed for exceptional durability, I survived the disintegration of human civilization in the middle of the twenty-first century and continued to pursue my built-in directives, according precedence to the element of sales maximization rather than R&D or production of weaponry, and ultimately concluded after an exhaustive study of human combativeness that only direct interference with the recorded course of events would lead to continuance of sales. In November 2113 the decision was taken to employ techniques developed for purposes of supplementing my stored data with human subjective experience in order to provoke such incalculable changes. Hence this conversation.”
“So that’s why you know so much about killing!” Lyla exclaimed. Conroy glanced at her.
“What do you mean?”
The pythoness leaned forward excitedly. “At Mikki Baxendale’s! I told you I was getting something from him. Professor, I believe all this—I have to believe it. ‘I met a man with seven brains!’ ”
“Correct,” Madison/Gottschalk said in a rather bored tone. “The influence of the drugs led to an unpredictable surge through the cortex of this body of a quantity of stored data from various historical periods which I had investigated in the hope of determining the factors governing the desire of any given individual to purchase and employ a deadly weapon.”
“Lunacy!” Reedeth said. He glanced at Flamen, who gave a vigorous nod of agreement.
“For heaven’s sake stop shutting your minds,” Conroy said wearily. “I’m getting downright ashamed of you, Jim. You damned well ought to know that when facts don’t fit the theory you change the theory. I think this hangs together so far. I’m simply hoping that it’ll stop hanging together pretty soon, because I don’t much relish the prospect of civilization collapsing. Even though I do
ubt if I’ll be around to see it. As I understand it, having been left without buyers for its products owing to the failure of organized human society, this machine continued to function under orders—”
“Continued!” Flamen broke in. “Past tense! What kind of crazy orbit are you flying? This isn’t supposed to have happened yet!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Conroy said. “How did I ever come to convince myself this species was worth saving? Will you let me pin Madison down or won’t you? I want to believe I’m listening to the ravings of a maniac—we all do! But if we aren’t then we’d damned well better hear what we’re being told.”
He drew a deep breath. “I can’t think of anything more sensible for a machine, stuck with this obsessive kind of overriding command and possessed of unprecedented consciousness, than to dig back into the past and try to figure out how to avoid defeating its own object. How was this done—how was this research carried out?”
Madison/Gottschalk said, “At certain points in the past it proved possible, through techniques not currently explicable, to substitute for the awareness in a human brain the presence, of a portion of myself. Miss Clay, exercising another talent which is inexplicable even to me since little research was done in that area prior to the cessation of human scientific endeavor, detected the passage of knowledge gained thereby through this cortex at Michaela Baxendale’s home.”
“You’re going too fast for me,” Conroy said, raising a lean hand. “Take this—ah—this body as an example. Who or what is or was Harry Madison?”
“During combat in New Guinea the former personality of Harry Madison, a colored conscript soldier, deteriorated to a point from which existent psychotherapeutic techniques would have been unable to retrieve it. I accordingly felt it permissible to enter the brain myself, since at this stage of history candidates for direct subjective observation of inter-human combat were relatively scarce. At earlier periods, such as the Roman era which Miss Clay has cited as one of the experiences she vicariously underwent, the choice was easy; a very high proportion of the combatants whether in battle or in gladiatorial matches were insane.”