Colossus and Crab (19 page)

And all this from a five minute test …

He felt a terrible responsibility: should he not have issued warnings? The weight was too much for him. He reminded himself that the Martians had not expected such violence, Colossus had been little better, and Fultone had no idea-so why should he accept the blame?

All the same, Colossus had done something, clearing shipping from the danger zone. A mathematical model of what might occur had existed in the recesses of the computer, and he’d not bothered - no, not that-he’d not asked. It was all too dreadful; he tossed it aside. The past was past, only the future mattered; action had to be taken, and he alone could take it. He called Colossus.

FIRST DAMAGE REPORTS SHOW ORIGINAL

DANGER ZONE UNDERESTIMATED. UPDATE

AND REPORT.

Back came the cold answer:

INSUFFICIENT DATA HELD FOR UPDATE.

Forbin swore, and typed back:

ESTIMATE WHEN UPDATE WILL BE POSSIBLE.

The reply further infuriated him, not least because it was plain he dealt with a computer, not the old Colossus:

AFTER SECOND TEST.

The exchange of stilted messages went on. Answering Forbin’s question about possible improvements in data collection, Colossus screened a map of South England and the Channel area. Superimposed was a ten-kilometer grid. Colossus wanted the impossible, a meteorological station at each intersection, equipped to give wind direction, force, temperature, and barometric pressure at ground level and three specified heights above each point, the highest at ten thousand meters. The whole scheme was wildly impractical; no anemometers existed which could register winds over two hundred fifty kilometers an hour, and how in hell could anyone get three airborne stations above each point - levitation?

His hands shaking with rage, he ordered Colossus to project the original danger zone on the map. He would go it alone.

For half an hour he worked, making notes, guessing wildly, ignoring the world in general, and Colossus in particular. Joan appeared once, was sharply told to get out, and did so with calm grace.

His notes completed, he summoned her. “This has my personal priority: addressed to the Sec-Gen, UN, and the Heads of Government of England and France for action, information copy to the President, USE. Got that?”

She nodded.

“Right. Certain experiments of the Master have caused extensive damage in USE. More damage is to be expected. To minimize loss of life, the following is effective forthwith:

“One: All shipping is banned from the Channel from Lands End to North Foreland in England, and from Ushant to Dunkirk in France. All aviation is banned from the same area, plus a one-hundred-kilometer zone on either side.

“Two: All coastal towns bordering the zone are to be evacuated immediately, as are all towns within a one-hundred-kilometer radius of the Master.

“Three: A warning will be issued before experiments commence. On receipt, all humans within a two-hundred-kilometer radius of the Master are to take cover in reactivated bomb shelters or secure basements, and all forms of transportation will cease. This status will be maintained until the warning is canceled. Got that?”

“Yes, Father.”

Forbin could not resist taking a certain degree of pleasure in his power. Undoubtedly dazed by the disaster, the men addressed would obey, glad to have the Ruler’s firm, explicit instructions. Forbin added an afterthought. “And pipe an information copy downstairs.”

Joan looked startled. “You mean to the Master?”

That pulled Forbin up short; much as he wanted to say “No, to that dumb bloody computer,” he didn’t. “Yes,” he said, “to the Master.” The Faithful had to be kept faithful.

Blake was floating in his giant-sized bath when the test began. His eyes closed, he reviewed his condition. Mentally he was a great deal better, but the acute muscular weakness, side effect of Colossus’s very effective treatment, had improved only marginally. He would, he thought, rest in the warm water for another ten minutes, then take a tepid shower. …

At that point the Collector went transonic, and life changed. The distant roar was suddenly a full-scale thunderstorm in the next room; the whole apartment shook; his pool became a microcosm of the sea, slopping wavelets, heaving him around.

Very alarmed, he struggled out and lay panting on the floor. A cabinet burst open, bottles broke on the marble floor, cans bounced and rolled crazily. He crawled to the door, pulled himself erect and staggered to the safest refuge, his bed, where he spent the rest of the test, hands clapped over his ears. Afterwards he dressed slowly, ate his prescribed breakfast - two raw eggs - with considerable distaste, following it with his own prescription, a glass of brandy to steady his nerves.

Sauntering - he could do no better - he headed for Forbin’s office. Although he had not spoken with anyone, he needed no telling what had caused the earthquake. Outside the office he ran into, or more accurately, was run into by a very muddy and excited Fultone. They went in together.

To Blake, Forbin looked distinctly odd; his badly cut hair was disarrayed, he waved his temporary secretary away imperiously, and frowned at his two oldest colleagues. “Ah, Fultone,” he said in a gravelly voice, “I want you.” He looked distantly at Blake. “Please wait.” He did not add “outside” but Blake got the message. Five minutes later Fultone emerged, shedding flakes of dried mud. He rolled his eyes at Blake, added an expressive Latin shrug, and left.

Hands clasped behind him, the Ruler was standing, staring out of the window. A full thirty seconds elapsed before he turned to his visitor, who was already resting in an armchair.

“How are you?” Forbin’s voice held no warmth or personal interest; it was a straight question.

His visitor eyed him speculatively: the old man might be standing up to the strain incredibly well, but it was certainly changing him. “Making slow progress - until the sky fell on my head. Can’t say that helped much.”

“D’you think I found it therapeutic?” replied Forbin acidly.

“Don’t suppose you did, but you asked me how I was,” retorted Blake.

Blake’s reproof slowed Forbin down. He sighed, ran both hands through his hair several times, a gesture of quiet desperation. “Yes, I know, I know. But the effect -” He broke off, shaking his head. “No matter.” For a time he played with his pipe, lit it, giving short, nervous puffs; something of his grand manner returned. “What matters is how soon you can move. Today?”

“Jesus! It’s as bad as that?” Blake went on slowly, “Frankly, I don’t think I could make it down to the landing-yard without falling over.”

Forbin laughed harshly. “That, at least, is no problem!” In staccato, unemotional sentences he detailed the test and its aftermath.

The tale of disaster stunned Blake. He’d imagined the effect to be purely local; his specialty was communication systems, not physics or meteorology. “What can I say?” he muttered. “Jesus!” he added more forcefully, then lapsed into silence.

Forbin said roughly, “All I want to hear from you is when you can travel!” He repeated his earlier question. “Today?”

Blake roused himself. “Look,” he said, raising one arm off the chair. “See that?” His arm dropped limply back. “That costs me more effort than it used to take to walk half a block. Anyway, don’t we have a little time? The first test has to be evaluated, and before that can begin there has to be a thorough checkout. Even those bastards must see that! We must have one, two days at least.”

“You saw Fultone. He’s been running his own preliminary check. Had a private collection of strain-gauges and lasermeters fixed on the legs.” Forbin grinned humorlessly. “Poor devil doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry! Half his gear’s destroyed, but the readings he’s got from the rest are well within the permitted tolerances.”

“The bloody legs are one thing. He can’t check the Collector himself, can he?”

“No, but if the legs haven’t moved … Anyway, the checkers are being deployed right now. He estimates they’ll take sixteen, eighteen hours to complete the survey - and Colossus will need all of five minutes for the evaluation. Allow, say, three hours for minor adjustments - and Fultone’s confident they will be minor - and the thirty-minute test could be running by midday tomorrow!” Forbin’s strained grin was more of a grimace. “That’s why I want you out today. Even my personal aircraft could be grounded by ten A.M. tomorrow morning, and once that happens there’ll be no way out!”

Blake leaned back, his eyes shut, conserving his physical energy but thinking hard. Fultone’s news was an unpleasant shock; he’d expected they’d have days to spare after that first run. … He spoke, his eyes still shut.

“Well, it won’t seem strange if I light out of here. It’s surely no place to convalesce.” His eyes opened; he took a deep breath. “Okay, fix me transport. I’ll go tonight. With Southampton in a mess, make it London, and fix Condiv’s man - Staples - to go with me. Goddam sure I’ll need carrying in and outa the shuttle.”

“Still that bad?” There was no solicitation in Forbin’s voice, only ill-concealed irritation.

“If you think I’m kidding, believe me, you can forget it. That test was not a barrel of fun for anyone, but I was alone in my apartment, the whole works shaking and vibrating, stuff flying off the walls and all that, but I’ll lay a level bet I was the least scared guy in the whole complex. I’m so goddam weak I honestly didn’t care, I am in a bad way, Charles; this is no act.”

“We’re both expendable, Ted.” Forbin’s manner softened perceptibly; the two men were closer than they had been for a very long time. ‘ ‘I’m going to write a letter to the Sec-Gen-you’ll have to take it - appointing you my successor.”

“If it’s any consolation, Charles, guess my reign will be mighty short.”

“Rubbish!” retorted Forbin. “After - after all this -” He waved vaguely. “- you’ll have plenty of time to recover. I’ll come round to your apartment this evening with the letter - and a few other things -” He spoke with elaborate carelessness. “- I’d like done. Go and rest. You’ll find VIP transport no strain.” He tried a feeble joke. “I’ll arrange a stretcher if you like!” He lifted a phone.

Blake eyed him gravely. “Yes, do that thing, Charles.”

Chapter XIX

BY EARLY AFTERNOON the checkers were well into the survey. Each examined a continuous spiral strip overlapping twenty-five percent each side with adjoining checkers, all controlled by Colossus’s program. While a dozen spiraled slowly round the exterior of the gigantic horns, moving steadily down the taper, others clacked stickily inside the horns, which, amplifying the sound, gave out a ceaseless whining noise, loud over the indifferent sea. No humans heard it; the site belonged to the automata.

Fultone, still in his muddy clothes, was in Condiv HQ, watching as best he could the printouts from the checkers. With forty or fifty of them at work simultaneously, no human could even begin to keep pace with a fraction of the torrent of data pouring in. Colossus could.

Each robot sensed, registered, and transmitted up to ten different conditions: metal thickness, degree of abrasion, distortion, incipient cracks, ductility, staining, the checker’s precise location, local ambient temperature, humidity, and time-pulse. A new set of readings began every five seconds. This, fifty times over, Colossus absorbed with no apparent difficulty.

All Fultone could do was to dance from one endless strip of paper to the next. A quick glance at the ten waving lines and he pounced on its neighbour, seeking not data but irregularities. Thus far he had seen none.

Moving as in a dream, Forbin visited Condiv. Fultone, a conductor several bars behind his orchestra and with no clear idea of the score, hardly glanced at the Ruler of the World, who watched for a space, detached and in stony silence, wrapped in his thoughts. He looked at the giant TV image on one wall and shuddered. To him the checkers resembled so many lice, hardly less repulsive than the body over which they crawled. Filled with hate for anything or anyone connected with the Collector; he left, ignoring salutes. Fultone never noticed his departure.

The shadows lengthened. Imperceptibly the TV picture of the monster grew indistinct, but the checkers went untiringly on. When remarking Fultone scarcely knew “whether to laugh or cry,” Forbin was much more accurate than he realized. As an engineer Fultone was ecstatic; this had to be the most marvelous, most wonderful creation ever - and in part, his. But as a very human human, his emotions were very different. Uneasy at his first sight of the drawings, his forebodings grew with the Collector and his unnerving experience on the site, and Forbin’s guarded explanation did nothing to allay his fears. As for the test, the incredible power of the machine went far beyond his worst apprehensions.

Ever the optimist - as yet he knew nothing of the damage the test had caused - Fultone swept these thoughts under a mental carpet, concentrating on the miracle of engineering before him. But sweep as he might, he could not completely conceal his nagging fears. His dedication to Colossus the brain - he was not of the Faithful - received a minor jolt when the Master sent him a personal message:

FULTONE CONDIV. SURVEY WILL PROCEED WITHOUT ILLUMINANTS OF ANY KIND INCLUDING INFRARED.

Returning to his office, Forbin’s dreamlike state of mind rapidly dissolved as it dawned on him that, with Blake going that night, he had a lot to do, and do alone.

First he wrote the letter appointing Blake his successor. Anxious to get it right, he wrote it several times; a Ruler taking his farewell of the world would be expected to do it in a dignified manner. At last, reasonably satisfied with his solemn prose, he wrote a fair copy and signed it with care, adding his thumbprint and personal seal. The latter, a present from Colossus, worked only for him, and its electronic coding would prove beyond doubt the authenticity of the document.

Then he tackled a much more difficult task, a last letter to his wife. That, too, ran to several drafts and ended up as a very rambling, self-conscious essay, but time pressed and it would have to do.

With greater facility he wrote a short note to Angela, studiously avoiding any reference to that last extraordinary night. He thanked her warmly for all she had done for him and asked that she should help Blake in his difficult task. Then he wrote an aide-memoir for Blake which included a warning to make his assault on the old computer complex undercover, details of their hoped-for communication link, two code words for their joint use, the voice-combination of his safe in his little-used New York apartment at the top of the UN building, and an order that any dependents of those who died when the complex was vaporized were to have his special protection.