Colossus (4 page)

“Certainly, Professor. I am sure we would all be very interested.”

Forbin finally found somewhere to put his hands, stuffing them in the side pockets of his jacket, nautical fashion. He appeared very uncomfortable.

“Colossus is essentially an information-collecting, sorting and evaluating complex, capable of factual decisions and action if necessary. It can evaluate the printed word, speech or visual material. Languages are no difficulty. For warning and test purposes—tests at our end, that is, for there is no teletype inside Colossus to go wrong—we have teletype lines directly to the complex. One is right here, in this office.”

Forbin nodded to Prytzkammer who wheeled forward a dust-sheeted trolley. Forbin removed the sheet, revealing an ordinary teletype machine, rather like an electronic typewriter, with a few extra keys and a large roll of paper mounted at the back of the carriage. The reporters stared at it, mesmerized.

“Now,” said Forbin, “would one of you gentlemen care to name an emotion?”

“Love.” It was Plantain who spoke, his voice devoid of expression.

His Russian colleague frowned. Dugay glanced quizzically at his fellow European.

“Good,” said Forbin. “Love. Now Colossus has a vast knowledge of the subject, but it cannot experience love, nor evaluate emotion. I will confess,” he smiled, “this particular question has not been fed in before, but I’m confident we will get a very lame reply. Still, a question that may be regarded as factual, on the same subject, will produce a very different answer—just because it is a matter of fact, whether it’s about an emotion or not.”

He bent over the teletype and clumsily picked out his message with two fingers. It was just two words:

EXPLAIN LOVE

“I have temporarily stored this message here,” he tapped the gray top of the machine, “so that you might all see the message and observe the speed of the answer.” He tore off the strip with the words on it, passed it to Dugay.

“You, sir, as a Frenchman, represent the nation best able to appreciate the complexity of this question.” Forbin’s smile robbed his words of any offensive overtones.

Dugay took the slip, read it and smiled back.

“It is, as you say, a honee of a question.” He passed the slip to Kyrovitch who looked at it distastefully and quickly passed it to Plantain, who kept it.

“Right, gentlemen,” Forbin continued. He was beginning to enjoy himself. “Watch. I press the feed-in control—thus.” For half a second nothing happened. Even in that short time the tension in the room became so strong as to be practically tangible. Then the machine chattered briefly. The smile on the President’s face had become a fixed mask.

Only Forbin was at ease. Without looking at the answer, he tore off the answer, passed it to Dugay. The Frenchman raised one expressive eyebrow.

“It is certainly a lame answer, Professor.” He reached over Kyrovitch and handed the slip to Plaintain, who obligingly held it up for Camera One. There were just four words.

LOVE IS AN EMOTION

Forbin read the answer on the monitor screen, and smiled at the reporters. “And that is about as good as Colossus can get. But my next question—” once more he bent over the teletype. The President cautiously looked at his watch. Kyrovitch yawned conspicuously.

“I have again held transmission.” Forbin passed his second message to Dugay. “You may think this question cannot be answered accurately. It is—’What is the best written definition of love.’ I can tell you how Colossus will tackle this one. It will look up every reference to love on file, and there must be at least tens of thousands. From these it will select those which, in some way, define love, and there will be thousands of those, and all of them will be sorted for the common factors. This work will be done by several sectors of the machine at once and the answers fed to the central control, where the machine synthesizes an answer based upon its researches. This answer will then be compared against all the definitions of love for the one nearest its synthetic answer. This it will do in any language—an Arabic love poem, a Polynesian fertility rite, some reference in an Icelandic saga. When it has found what it regards as the nearest to its synthetic answer, it will check the original,” Forbin leaned forward, clearly regarding his next sentence as important, “and will type out the reference, not the definition itself. It will supply this if wanted, but remember, that was not the question we are asking. If we want to know the exact words, it would be necessary to Say `Give the best written definition’
etc.
The final point I want to make before pressing the feed-in button is this. The process I have outlined will be carried out by the machine in five to ten seconds.”

Kyrovitch snorted with disbelief. The rest looked even more dazed than before. Forbin turned to the teletype. “Here we go.

He pressed the feed-in control.

Plaintain whispered something to Dugay round the back of the intervening Russian’s neck. Dugay grinned. Kyrovitch simmered gently. The machine began to chatter.

Mazon, who had been studying his watch intently, looked up and almost shouted, triumphantly, “Seven goddam seconds!”

It was quite unlike any press conference ever held. The President was half out of his chair, leaning over the desk. Camera Two tactfully took a shot of Forbin, bending over the teletype.

Forbin tore the strip off the machine, looked up and spoke in a level voice.

“It says—SHAKESPEARE SONNET CXVI.” “Follow that,” muttered Mazon.

Kyrovitch did.

“Mr. President, this is no time for tricks, we of the Socialist Soviet …”

The President secretly agreed with Kyrovitch, and was glad of his interruption to regain control.

“Gentlemen,” he said, cutting in, “I hope this small demonstration illustrates the point which cannot be overemphasized. Colossus knows about emotion, but cannot experience it. It can never act in fear or hate. This is the most vital point for you to remember.”

The President favored Camera Two with a long direct stare.

“No defensive action will ever be undertaken by the United States of North America out of fear, jealousy, greed or hate.” He would have liked to have stopped the conference on that note, but Kyrovitch was not going to let him get away with that one. Swiftly he broke in on the President’s stare.

“You say you feed it information. What sort, and how?” The President was not going to be coy about that one. “Every form of intelligence or information available to our Central Intelligence Agency. Everything, from agents’ reports,” he gave Kyrovitch a wolfish smile all to himself, “to newspapers, TV and radio broadcasts, movements of aircraft, troops, ships, satellites, all statistics on harvests, birth rates, rainfall—anything and everything that we think has the remotest bearing on the problem—plus practically anything else that is going.”

Kyrovitch gave a deep-throated growl. “But how is it fed to the, the thing?”

“I was coming to that.” He didn’t like to sit answering questions from a Commie reporter, or any other reporter, come to that. “Professor Forbin, you are better qualified to answer …”

Forbin nodded and was suddenly conscious of his hands once more. He folded his arms across his chest, but the TV producer’s frown and shaking head sent them plunging back into his pockets.

“Feed-in. Yes. Mostly by land-line. All information is converted to electrical impulses, in just the same way that any transmitter—teletype, TV or radio—converts vision or sound into impulses. They are then fed down the line to Colossus, who then stores them in his—its own way. They are not converted back to pictures, letters or figures.”

“Pictures?” queried Mazon.

“Yes. We pass pictures from newspapers or TV or plans of buildings. Anything that can be expressed on a sheet of paper or a flat surface goes down the pipe. I may say, since Colossus is not secret any more, it watches all the major TV programs—Soviet, American, European and so on. Moving pictures were a little tricky, but it works.”

“It sure is a good thing Colossus hasn’t got emotions,” said Mazon with feeling.

“Perhaps so,” Forbin smiled. “On the nonvisual side it monitors all the main radio transmissions of the world, civil, military and space-wise. It also reads, in its own way, all the newspapers of the world—even the sports pages.”

“Listening to all that has been said,” Plaintain looked at Forbin, “I have an impression that Colossus is quite large—is that so?”

“Yes, the name is appropriate. I can tell you that it is about the size of a small town of, say, seven to ten thousand people.”

“Are we permitted to know where it is?” said Kyrovitch. Mazon gave a snort of derisive laughter. The President thought it was time he was back center stage.

“Why, certainly, Mr. Kyrovitch. It is located inside the Rocky Mountains. The exact spot will be shown on the maps which you will receive later with the official press handouts.” The President felt much better when he was doing the talking. “As a nation we have carried out some pretty large works. Panama Canal, Grand Coulee Dam, the TVA project—and more recently the Space Reflector Stations, the Moon project, the Trans-ocean oil lines to Europe, not to mention the coast-to-coast air-car roads. I may say the effort required to produce the last three projects together would not be enough to build Colossus. It took three years to dig the hole, even using nuclear digging techniques, and there were another three years needed to line the hole with cement, and to prepare the bare shell to receive the equipment. It is by far the biggest single enterprise undertaken by this nation in all its history.”

“You say, Mr. President,” said Kyrovitch, anxious to flatten proceedings as much as possible, “that the armed forces of this country will be reduced by seventy-five per cent—are the rest guarding Colossus?”

Sucker, thought the President, this will teach you not to lead with your chin.

“No, sir. That twenty-five per cent would, I imagine, be used solely to resist subversion. Colossus certainly does not need them. Of course, there are a good many people engaged at the external ends of the feed lines. For example, if Colossus is to read Pravda,” he smiled once more at Kyrovitch, “or Grimm’s Fairy Tales, someone has to present the paper to a scanner. There are practically no other personnel involved. There are no servicing teams—not human ones, anyway. Colossus works alone.”

That shook them, thought the President. It had. Plaintain raised both eyebrows, which was the ultimate in facial expression he ever permitted himself. Dugay’s eyebrows merged into one black line, as he wrestled with the implications. Kyrovitch rumbled quietly to himself, clearly at a loss what to say. Mazon beamed uncertainly, like a first-time father presented with quads. M’taka rubbed his fuzzy white pate and wished he had studied science instead of the humanities. Dugay spoke first.

“But the control, the maintenance …” he stopped, still mentally fumbling.

“Professor,” the President nodded.

“As you may know,” Forbin said, “back before our time electronic equipment was crude and unreliable. They had valves or tubes, which worked after a fashion, but could never be regarded as reliable. Then came transistors, a big advance in many ways—some are still in use— but these too weren’t what we would regard as reliable. Then came the semiconductors, the use of laser beams of coherent light and the development of power cells.” Forbin was aware that the President was squirming slightly in his seat. “But I won’t go on with the technical details; they will be available to those that want them afterward. Enough to say that we have perfected components and circuits, sealed in blocks which are stable in all conditions, impervious to heat, damp, cold, gas or anything else. As a further safeguard, all circuits are duplicated—in some cases, triplicated. Colossus is capable of tracing its own faults and switching in a new circuit if necessary. Our calculation—confirmed, I may add, by Colossus’ own figuring—is that one block circuit in every ten thousand may be expected to fail every four hundred years.”

Kyrovitch bounced to his feet with surprising speed. “Four hundred years!” he roared.

“That’s what the man said, buster!” yelled a red-faced Mazon.

“Gentlemen, gentlemen.” The President raised a pacifying hand for silence. The TV producer reached forward and pulled Kyrovitch gently by the back of his jacket. The President looked at the reporters; the Limey would be the one to take the heat out of the situation.

“What was your question, Mr. Plaintain?” He looked inquiringly at the Englishman, who had not asked one.

“Thank you, Mr. President,” Plaintain said gracefully. “I am indeed amazed at what Professor Forbin has just said. If this is the sort of time scale you have in mind, four hundred years to the first fault, how long is it expected that the machine will last?”

“Well now, that is kind of hard to say, Mr. Plaintain, but we guess around the nine-hundred to twelve-hundred-year mark—maybe a good deal longer. It is one reason why we built it in a mountain. It is a pretty solid and durable roof.” The President smiled, a smile that grew more smug when he saw Prytzkammer hold up a cue board which bore the chalked message “CIA reports 100 per cent TV coverage Eastern Bloc.” He went on. “Of course, the weapon side needs checking and replacement with newer devices, and Colossus will permit the withdrawal of one weapon complex at a time for such work.”

Dugay pounced.

“You say ‘permit’—what exactly does that mean?”

Here we go, thought Forbin, the big handout. The President thought so too, a brief nod to Dugay, then he turned and faced the camera, back in his man-to-man pose.

“That brings us to a point of fundamental importance that I want clearly understood. As you have seen, we make no secret of Colossus, or where it is: nor do we intend to conceal the main points of how it works.” He leaned back in his chair his hands folded comfortably on his belly, the epitome of the reasonable man. “You may say that this lays us wide open to a sudden attack frontally or subversively, which, if successful, would leave us defenseless.” He leaned forward once more, less of the reasonable man, more of the keen efficient super-executive. “We have a defense for Colossus, and it is this—the machine is safe, safer than mere man could ever be”—he tapped the desk with slow emphasis in time with his words—”so long as Colossus and its feed lines are not tampered with in any way. If its power, information or other supply lines, or any missile bases or satellites are sabotaged, or even attacked, a special emergency circuit will switch in, and Colossus will take full offensive action.”