Colossus (9 page)

“Sounds fair,” said the President. “Any objections?” There were none.

“OK, Professor. Build in a parameter on those lines, and fix the facilities asked for.” He got up. “That is all, gentlemen, good morning.”

Forbin, after getting permission to use the President’s teletype, sent Fisher to tell Cleo to feed in the new parameter at noon precisely. Then he turned to the teletype, and pecked away at the keys:

TRANSMITTER FACILITIES WILL BE ARRANGED FOR TWENTY HUNDRED GMT ACKNOWLEDGE THIS MESSAGE

Immediately Colossus replied.

MESSAGE ACKNOWLEDGED

Forbin waited, but there was nothing more, and he gave a sigh of relief. He stood thinking, his lips compressed, came to a decision, and typed again.

THE OTHER MECHANISM WILL NOT BE ACTIVATED UNTIL TWENTYONE HUNDRED GMT

The answer came flashing back.

THIS IS KNOWN.

This shook Forbin. Apart from the Ambassador’s conversation with the President, there had been no contact with the USSR on the subject. No news had been released to the public by either country. He decided to probe a little.

HOW IS ACTIVATION TIME KNOWN

He hardly had time to get his fingers off the keys before Colossus replied.

ANALYSIS USSR CIRCUITS 106—119 BRAVO—274—276—632 BETWEEN 0024 AND 0417 GMT TODAY

Forbin stared at the paper, frowning. Then his expression changed and he smiled faintly. Grauber and his CIA cohorts would love that.

In the outer office Forbin found Grauber waiting for him. The Head of CIA advanced and shook the Professor warmly by the hand.

“Thanks, Professor, for your help a while back.” He jerked his head towards the closed doors of the sanctum. “He wouldn’t have taken that explanation from me—even if I could have given it.” He continued to pump the Professor’s hand.

“Think nothing of it.” Forbin gently disengaged his hand. “It was true anyway. Here is another little present from Colossus—no, don’t bother to read it now, there’s a favor I would like to ask.”

“Delighted, Professor, anything.”

“I’m arranging the transmitter facilities for Colossus, starting at 2000 GMT—that is, five hours from now. I’d be grateful if you plugged a line from your monitor to my control; I want to hear what sort of noise goes out.”

“Sure, Professor—anything else?”

“My CPO—Colossus Programming Office—is continuously manned, and if the machine appears to you to be giving too much away, call on the direct line. You will get either Fisher, Cleo Markham or myself. Any of us three can give an on-the-spot answer as far as Colossus is concerned. We’ll also have a crack at the stuff we get on the line from you, and stop the transmitter if we don’t like it. At all times CIA and CPO have got to be close.”

“Fine. I’ll see you get all the cooperation going. About the intelligence on Guardian known already to Colossus—when can we get digging on that?”

“You work out your questions and teletype them to me here, and I’ll ask them. You have to be careful about the phrasing of messages—Colossus deals in the exact meaning of words, and only gives what you ask for, which is not always what you want. Like the ancients and their prayers to the gods.”

“Brother, I hope you don’t get to dealing with some of the questions politicians dream up,” said Grauber fervently. “Half the time, I don’t think they are even honest with themselves.”

“With experience, Colossus may be able to handle even their double-talk,” Forbin smiled.

“You mean it’s learning all the time?”

Forbin said flatly, “Colossus is a lot cleverer than anyone outside the Project realizes, and is getting cleverer every minute.”

Grauber’s reply was half-jovial. “I get the impression we’re on the way to getting ourselves a new boss—one who really knows his own mind. And I find the whole thing goddam frightening.”

“Welcome to the club,” Forbin said, with a short laugh. But, running over the conversation later, Grauber was not at all sure that Forbin was being funny.

Chapter 8

Forbin and Fisher were back in the CPO with a few minutes to spare. Cleo Markham viewed Forbin’s return with hardly concealed relief; she got up and walked to him, anxious to touch him without consciously knowing it.

“All set, Charles,” she said. “CIA have been through, and they’re ready to roll.”

Forbin took her arm and steered her to a chair. “Thanks, Cleo. How about our private listening-post?”

“I’ve got a high-speed receiver hooked to another teletype in the watch room.”

Forbin nodded his approval and turned his attention to the duty watch, still doing their best to discover the source of Colossus’ initiative. “You boys have anything to report?” There was a disconsolate shaking of heads.

“From the little I’ve done on it,” Cleo put in, “I’m sure the change lies in the comparator area. But how it was done—” she threw up her hands in a gesture of hopelessness.

Forbin showed no surprise. “Well, boys, keep hammering at that FLASH. Come on, Jack, let’s get to the watch room.” He led the way along the corridor.

To an outsider the watch room would have been a disappointment. There was little to show that this was the first and main link between humans and the greatest brain in the world. There were three teletypes, one linked directly to Colossus, the second connected to the CIA listening-post guarding the Colossus radio transmitter, and the third in reserve as a spare. Apart from the three machines there was a very ordinary plugboard giving access to the terminals inside Colossus, a tape-perforator, and a bench with three plastic chairs. That was all.

Forbin looked at the clock; one minute to go. He put a friendly hand on the watchman’s shoulder. “Armsorg, make this please: TRANSMITTER ON ACKNOWLEDGE.”

Armsorg nodded, and his fingers flickered rapidly over the keyboard. Almost as he typed the last letter, Colossus was flashing back the acknowledgement.

Forbin transferred his attention to the second teletype, linked to the radio transmitter, now under Colossus’ control. Fisher and Cleo were already there, watching. The last ten seconds to the zero time passed. Without moving his head, Forbin glanced at the clock. Fifteen seconds passed. Nothing happened.

Fisher coughed nervously, checked his watch against the clock, found nothing wrong, and coughed again. Armsorg, seated before the direct link with Colossus, took out a nail-file and got to work on his nails with an air of unconcern and detachment which drew Forbin’s admiration but did not convince him in the least. Thirty seconds passed. Still nothing. The silence grew almost noisy.

Forbin was the first to break it. “Well, what do you know? Cleo, check with CIA.”

Before Cleo could reach the phone, CIA were on the line of their own accord.

“All Alfa OK with their equipment, but nothing received.” Forbin took his pipe out and turned to Fisher. “What d’you think, Jack?”

Fisher stopped pulling his eyebrows out. “I would say Colossus is waiting for Guardian to be activated. It can hardly have gotten shy.”

Forbin turned to Armsorg. “Since Colossus remains silent, I guess he will stay that way until Guardian is moving. I’m going back to the CPO—call me if, when, anything comes up. Come on, Cleo, Jack, back to the grind.”

“You want me to go on with the FLASH problem?”

“Yep. It’s the only lead we have. Cleo, perhaps you’ll lend a hand again. I’m going to talk to Prytzkammer and see how the President has been making out with the Russians.”

As far as Forbin could discover from a distracted PPA, the Soviet Premier had been very cagey, and had agreed to nothing except that he would examine the position. The President, Forbin gathered, had not been overjoyed with this chilly answer, and Prytzkammer had caught the backlash.

Forbin commiserated with him. “Never mind, I’ve an idea they’ll come across before they’re much older.”

Forbin sat back and stared blankly at the backs of the FLASH team. He did not expect for one moment they would produce the answer, but it was only prudent to try. And Fisher might just come up with something. He sighed, and looked at the clock. As if he had triggered some secret circuit, the intercom from the watch room called.

“Watch room—CPO—Colossus up!”

Without appearing to hurry, Forbin was on his way before anyone else moved. Cleo was close behind him.

Forbin went straight to the transmitter teletype. The machine was hammering out one word:

COLOSSUS COLOSSUS COLOSSUS

Armsorg said, “Came up dead on the quarter of the hour. A five-second pause between transmissions.”

Forbin nodded. “I expect this will go on for at least an hour, maybe longer.” He half smiled at Cleo. “The wide world knows now. Every intelligence monitoring station wherever will be logging that one. There’ll be more direction-finding equipment locked on Colossus than hairs on a hound’s back.”

“Have you any idea what will be sent?”

“Nope.” Forbin shrugged, breathed deeply. “Any female intuition?”

“That’s unkind!” she smiled. “On purely scientific grounds I’d say Colossus will lead off with mathematics. It’s a computer’s natural language.”

“Very probably. I’ve been thinking Colossus would open with some universal truth—but what then?”

Cleo had no answer to that and changed the subject. “I expect you are going to sit this one out—how about some coffee?”

“Good idea, Cleo. While you’re back there, tell the CPO team what the score is here, will you?”

When Cleo left, he was filling his pipe. When she returned with the coffee he was still filling his pipe, watching the endless repetition of the teletype. The clock moved steadily to the hour, past the hour—and still the brain deep in the Rockies kept churning out its identity. Armsorg and Cleo had drunk their coffee, Forbin’s was untouched. It was five minutes past the hour when the CIA telephoned.

“Forbin? Grauber here. Thought you would like to know—the USSR has just announced the existence of Guardian, and that it is now in operation.”

“Bet there was no press conference.”

“You guessed it. Just a plain, factual statement read by the duty announcer, then back to the Kirov for the second act of Swan Lake.”

“Any reaction to Colossus?”

“Nothing we can be certain about, although I imagine quite a number of monitoring stations are getting a bit worked up. How long will your brainchild keep it up?”

“I think Colossus will change his tune at a quarter past the hour. You won’t have long to wait.”

“We’ll be ready. Oh, and one other thing,” Grauber said. “We’ve got hold of one or two spicy bits about Guardian. It’s very similar to Colossus in layout, but we think it isn’t concentrated all in one place. There’s a heavily defended establishment in the Crimea which has had us puzzled for quite a time—but, thanks to your tip-off about Olyania, we’ve tied the two together.”

“I think you’ll be surprised how much more we can give you,” observed Forbin.

“I know it.” Grauber’s tone became less businesslike, more confidential. “I’ve an idea that I’m going to be the last head of this ant-heap, and maybe the first boss of a small group running a few agents on the side, but with our main work feeding Colossus and then milking it for the dope we want—which, anyway, looks like being a lot less in the future. We’re the first agency you’ve put the skids under, but we won’t be the last.”

“As I said before, Grauber, you’re the first non-Project member of the club.”

Forbin rang off, smiled at Cleo. “It seems Guardian is pretty close to Colossus, and I detected a delicate hint that maybe there has been a leak from this end.”

“Did he say so?”

“Not in so many words. It was more what he didn’t say … perhaps it’s my imagination.”

“I’m quite sure it is,” said Cleo firmly. “Isn’t it just as possible the Soviets just came up with the same idea?”

“Sure—but the President, if he hears, is bound to regard that answer as ridiculous. He’s eager to blast someone over Guardian. He still doesn’t seem to have taken in the bigger implications of Colossus—he just seems mesmerized by the existence of Guardian and CIA’s failure. Grauber’s a different …”

Subconsciously they had become accustomed to the rhythm of the teletype—eight letters, five seconds pause, eight letters, five seconds pause. Forbin stopped speaking as he realized the rhythm had gone, that a new rhythm was being established. Forbin and Cleo pounced on the teletype. Armsorg dutifully stayed with the other, silent link to Colossus, but soon the expressions on his seniors’ faces were too much for him, and he joined the huddle over the machine.

“For crying out loud—” Armsorg stifled the rest of his remark.

It certainly was surprising. The first line, the very first transmission—for all the world to hear—from the multibillion-dollar brain, pride of the USNA, read:

1x2=2 2x2=4 3x2=6 4x2=8 5x2=10

Forbin muttered something to himself. Armsorg, seeing anger battling with amazement in the Director’s face, hastily withdrew to his seat, burying his face in a handkerchief, apparently afflicted with an acute attack of coughing. Cleo recovered first.

“I’d expected math, but I didn’t think Colossus would have quite such a low opinion of the opposition.”

Forbin said nothing, but watched the hammering keys with compressed lips, a frown on his face. The machine clattered on, neatly typing out all the multiplication tables up to ten. There was a short pause, then Colossus repeated them.

“God! I can’t watch!” There was a tight, strangled quality about Forbin’s voice. “We’re going to get hell for this.”

“I’m not so sure, Charles. Give Colossus time—it’ll get more interesting as it goes on.”

“I hope it’s soon!”

For over an hour Colossus did simple arithmetic. Multiplication was followed by division and subtraction. Each section was repeated once, and always the simplest numbers were used—1 divides 2 twice …

After the first ten minutes CIA’s duty officer called. He was, unfortunately, of a humorous turn of mind.

“CIA duty officer here. We’re having a little trouble processing this Colossus traffic. It’s tough going for our smalltime computers—one has blown a fuse and another just lit up and says `Tilt’—”

Armsorg was prepared to injure himself laughing at the Colossus output, but he was not sharing it with outsiders. “Stay with it, buster. I hear a lot of you guys never made better than high school, so don’t miss this chance!” He slammed the phone down, cutting off the distant cackle of laughter.