Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (306 page)

For a time, the only sound in the room was the tiny insectile humming of the electric clock on the wall. Then Professor Kellton set his glass on the table, and it sounded like a hammer-blow.

“Nothing, Conn?” Kurt Fawzi was incredulous and, for the first time, frightened. The others were exchanging uneasy glances. “But you must have! A thing like that—”

“Of course it would be one of the closest secrets during the war,” somebody else said. “But in forty years, you’d expect
something
to leak out.”

“Why,
during
the war, it was all through the Third Force. Even the Alliance knew about it; that’s how Klem heard of it.”

“Well, Conn couldn’t just walk into the secret files and read whatever he wanted to. Just because he couldn’t find anything—”

“Don’t tell
me
about security!” Klem Zareff snorted. “Certainly they still have it classified; staff-brass’d rather lose an eye than declassify anything. If you’d seen the lengths our staff went to—hell, we lost battles because the staff wouldn’t release information the troops in the field needed. I remember once—”

“But there
was
a Brain,” Judge Ledue was saying, to reassure himself and draw agreement from the others. “It was capable of combining data, and scanning and evaluating all its positronic memories, and forming association patterns, and reasoning with absolute perfection. It was more than a positronic brain—it was a positronic super-mind.”

“We’d have won the war, except for the Brain. We had ninety systems, a hundred and thirty inhabited planets, a hundred billion people—and we were on the defensive in our own space-area! Every move we made was known and anticipated by the Federation. How could they have done that without something like the Brain?”

“Conn, from what you learned of computers, how large a volume of space would you say the Brain would have to occupy?” Professor Kellton asked.

Professor Kellton was the most unworldly of the lot, yet he was asking the most practical question.

“Well, the astrophysics computer I worked with at the University occupies a total of about one million cubic feet,” Conn began. This was his chance; they’d take anything he told them about computers as gospel. “It was only designed to handle problems in astrophysics. The Brain, being built for space war, would have to handle any such problem. And if half the stories about the Brain are anywhere near true, it handled any other problem—mathematical, scientific, political, economic, strategic, psychological, even philosophical and ethical. Well, I’d say that a hundred million cubic feet would be the smallest even conceivable.”

They all nodded seriously. They were willing to accept that—or anything else, except one thing.

“Lot of places on this planet where a thing that size could be hidden,” Tom Brangwyn said, undismayed. “A planet’s a mighty big place.”

“It could be under water, in one of the seas,” Piet Dawes, the banker, suggested. “An underwater dome city wouldn’t be any harder to build than a dome city on a poison-atmosphere planet like Tubal-Cain.”

“It might even be on Tubal-Cain,” a melon-planter said. “Or Hiawatha, or even one of the Beta or Gamma planets. The Third Force was occupying the whole Trisystem, you know.” He thought for a moment. “If I’d been in charge, I’d have put it on one of the moons of Pantagruel.”

“But that’s clear out in the Alpha System,” Judge Ledue objected. “We don’t have a spaceship on the planet, certainly nothing with a hyperdrive engine. And it would take a lifetime to get out to the Gamma System and back on reaction drive.”

Conn put his empty brandy glass on the table and sat erect. A new thought had occurred to him, chasing out of his mind all the worries and fears he had brought with him all the way from Terra.

“Then we’ll have to build a ship,” he said calmly. “I know, when the Federation evacuated Poictesme, they took every hyperdrive ship with them. But they had plenty of shipyards and spaceports on this planet, and I have maps showing the location of all of them, and barely a third of them have been discovered so far. I’m sure we can find enough hulks, and enough hyperfield generator parts, to assemble a ship or two, and I know we’ll find the same or better on some of the other planets.

“And here’s another thing,” he added. “When we start looking into some of the dome-city plants on Tubal-Cain and Hiawatha and Moruna and Koshchei, we may find the plant or plants where the components for the Brain were fabricated, and if we do, we may find records of where they were shipped, and that’ll be it.”

“You’re right!” Professor Kellton cried, quivering with excitement. “We’ve been hunting at random for the Brain, so it would only be an accident if we found it. We’ll have to do this systematically, and with Conn to help us—Conn, why not build a computer? I don’t mean another Brain; I mean a computer to help us find the Brain.”

“We can, but we may not even need to build one. When we get out to the industrial planets, we may find one ready except for perhaps some minor alterations.”

“But how are we going to finance all this?” Klem Zareff demanded querulously. “We’re poorer than snakes, and even one hyperdrive ship’s going to cost like Gehenna.”

“I’ve been thinking about that, Klem,” Fawzi said. “If we can find material at these shipyards Conn knows about, most of our expense will be labor. Well, haven’t we ten workmen competing for every job? They don’t really need money, only the things money can buy. We can raise food on the farms and provide whatever else they need out of Federation supplies.”

“Sure. As soon as it gets around that we’re really trying to do something about this, everybody’ll want in on it,” Tom Brangwyn predicted.

“And I have no doubt that the Planetary Government at Storisende will give us assistance, once we show that this is a practical and productive enterprise,” Judge Ledue put in. “I have some slight influence with the President and—”

“I’m not too sure we want the Government getting into this,” Kurt Fawzi replied. “Give them half a chance and that gang at Storisende’ll squeeze us right out.”

“We can handle this ourselves,” Brangwyn agreed. “And when we get some kind of a ship and get out to the other two systems, or even just to Tubal-Cain or Hiawatha, first thing you know, we’ll
be
the Planetary Government.”

“Well, now, Tom,” Fawzi began piously, “the Brain is too big a thing for a few of us to try to monopolize; it’ll be for all Poictesme. Of course, it’s only proper that we, who are making the effort to locate it, should have the direction of that effort.…”

While Fawzi was talking, Rodney Maxwell went to the table, rummaged his pistol out of the pile and buckled it on. The mayor stopped short.

“You leaving us, Rod?”

“Yes, it’s getting late. Conn and I are going for a little walk; we’ll be at Senta’s in half an hour. The fresh air will do both of us good and we have a lot to talk about. After all, we haven’t seen each other for over five years.”

* * * *

They were silent, however, until they were away from the Airport Building and walking along High Garden Terrace in the direction of the Mall. Conn was glad; his own thoughts were weighing too heavily within him: I didn’t do it. I was going to do it; every minute, I was going to do it, and I didn’t, and now it’s too late.

“That was quite a talk you gave them, son,” his father said. “They believed every word of it. A couple of times, I even caught myself starting to believe it.”

Conn stopped short. His father stopped beside him and stood looking at him.

“Why didn’t you tell them the truth?” Rodney Maxwell asked.

The question angered Conn. It was what he had been asking himself.

“Why didn’t I just grab a couple of pistols off the table and shoot the lot of them?” he retorted. “It would have killed them quicker and wouldn’t have hurt as much.”

His father took the cigar from his mouth and inspected the tip of it. “The truth must be pretty bad then. There is no Brain. Is that it, son?”

“There never was one. I’m not saying that only because I know it would be impossible to build such a computer. I’m telling you what the one man in the Galaxy who ought to know told me—the man who commanded the Third Force during the War.”

“Foxx Travis! I didn’t know he was still alive. You actually talked to him?”

“Yes. He’s on Luna, keeping himself alive at low gravity. It took me a couple of years, and I was afraid he’d die before I got to him, but I finally managed to see him.”

“What did he tell you?”

“That no such thing as the Brain ever existed.” They started walking again, more slowly, toward the far edge of the terrace, with the sky red and orange in front of them. “The story was all through the Third Force, but it was just one of those wild tales that get started, nobody knows how, among troops. The High Command never denied or even discouraged it. It helped morale, and letting it leak to the enemy was good psychological warfare.”

“Klem Zareff says that everybody in the Alliance army heard of the Brain,” his father said. “That was why he came here in the first place.” He puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. “You said a computer like the Brain would be an impossibility. Why? Wouldn’t it be just another computer, only a lot bigger and a lot smarter?”

“Dad, computermen don’t like to hear computers called smart,” Conn said. “They aren’t. The people who build them are smart; a computer only knows what’s fed to it. They can hold more information in their banks than a man can in his memory, they can combine it faster, they don’t get tired or absent-minded. But they can’t imagine, they can’t create, and they can’t do anything a human brain can’t.”

“You know, I’d wondered about just that,” said his father. “And none of the histories of the War even as much as mentioned the Brain. And I couldn’t see why, after the War, they didn’t build dozens of them to handle all these Galactic political and economic problems that nobody seems able to solve. A thing like the Brain wouldn’t only be useful for war; the people here aren’t trying to find it for war purposes.”

“You didn’t mention any of these doubts to the others, did you?”

“They were just doubts. You knew for sure, and you couldn’t tell them.”

“I’d come home intending to—tell them there was no Brain, tell them to stop wasting their time hunting for it and start trying to figure out the answers themselves. But I couldn’t. They don’t believe in the Brain as a tool, to use; it’s a machine god that they can bring all their troubles to. You can’t take a thing like that away from people without giving them something better.”

“I noticed you suggested building a spaceship and agreed with the professor about building a computer. What was your idea? To take their minds off hunting for the Brain and keep them busy?”

Conn shook his head. “I’m serious about the ship—ships. You and Colonel Zareff gave me that idea.”

His father looked at him in surprise. “I never said a word in there, and Klem didn’t even once mention—”

“Not in Kurt’s office; before we went up from the docks. There was Klem, moaning about a good year for melons as though it were a plague, and you selling arms and ammunition by the ton. Why, on Terra or Baldur or Uller, a glass of our brandy brings more than these freighter-captains give us for a cask, and what do you think a colonist on Agramma, or Sekht, or Hachiman, who has to fight for his life against savages and wild animals, would pay for one of those rifles and a thousand rounds of ammunition?”

His father objected. “We can’t base the whole economy of a planet on brandy. Only about ten per cent of the arable land on Poictesme will grow wine-melons. And if we start exporting Federation salvage the way you talk of, we’ll be selling pieces instead of job lots. We’ll net more, but—”

“That’s just to get us started. The ships will be used, after that, to get to Tubal-Cain and Hiawatha and the planets of the Beta and Gamma Systems. What I want to see is the mines and factories reopened, people employed, wealth being produced.”

“And where’ll we sell what we produce? Remember, the mines closed down because there was no more market.”

“No more interstellar market, that’s true. But there are a hundred and fifty million people on Poictesme. That’s a big enough market and a big enough labor force to exploit the wealth of the Gartner Trisystem. We can have prosperity for everybody on our own resources. Just what do we need that we have to get from outside now?”

His father stopped again and sat down on the edge of a fountain—the same one, possibly, from which Conn had seen dust blowing as the airship had been coming in.

“Conn, that’s a dangerous idea. That was what brought on the System States War. The Alliance planets took themselves outside the Federation economic orbit and the Federation crushed them.”

Conn swore impatiently. “You’ve been listening to old Klem Zareff ranting about the Lost Cause and the greedy Terran robber barons holding the Galaxy in economic serfdom while they piled up profits. The Federation didn’t fight that war for profits; there weren’t any profits to fight for. They fought it because if the System States had won, half of them would be at war among themselves now. Make no mistake about it, politically I’m all for the Federation. But economically, I want to see our people exploiting their own resources for themselves, instead of grieving about lost interstellar trade, and bewailing bumper crops, and searching for a mythical robot god.”

“You think, if you can get something like that started, that they’ll forget about the Brain?” his father asked skeptically.

“That crowd up in Kurt Fawzi’s office? Niflheim, no! They’ll go on hunting for the Brain as long as they live, and every day they’ll be expecting to find it tomorrow. That’ll keep them happy. But they’re all old men. The ones I’m interested in are the boys of Charley’s age. I’m going to give them too many real things to do—building ships, exploring the rest of the Trisystem, opening mines and factories, producing wealth—for them to get caught in that empty old dream.”