The Ghost of a Model T and Other Stories (29 page)

Dimensino companionship was the answer, then, providing an illusion of companionship flexible to every mood and need of the human subject. Providing, as well, a background to that companionship—a wish-fulfillment way of life that nailed down security such as humans under normal circumstances never could have known.

He sat down on the bunk and began to unlace his heavy walking shoes.

The practical human race, he thought—practical to the point of fooling itself to reach its destination, practical to the point of fabricating the dimensino equipment to specifications which could be utilized, upon arrival, in the incubators.

But willing to gamble when there was a need to gamble. Ready to bet that a man could survive a century in space if he were sufficiently insulated against reality—insulated by seeming flesh and blood which, in sober fact, existed only by the courtesy of the human mind assisted by intricate electronics.

For no ship before had ever gone so far on a colonizing mission. No man had ever existed for even half as long under the influence of dimensino.

But there were few planets where Man might plant a colony under natural conditions, without extensive and expensive installations and precautions. The nearer of these planets had been colonized and the survey had shown that this one which he finally had reached was especially attractive.

So Earth and Man had bet. Especially one man, Winston-Kirby told himself with pride, but the pride was bitter in his mouth. The odds, he recalled, had been five to three against him.

And yet, even in his bitterness, he recognized the significance of what he had done. It was another breakthrough, another triumph for the busy little brain that was hammering at the door of all eternity.

It meant that the Galaxy was open, that Earth could remain the center of an expanding empire, that dimensino and immortal could travel to the very edge of space, that the seed of Man would be scattered wide and far, traveling as frozen embryos through the cold, black distances which hurt the mind to think of.

He went to the small chest of drawers and found a change of clothing, laid it on the bunk and began to take off his hiking outfit.

Everything was going according to the book, Job had said.

The house was bigger than he had wanted it, but the robots had been right—a big building would be needed to house a thousand babies. The incubators were set up and the nurseries were being readied and another far Earth colony was getting under way.

And colonies were important, he remembered, reaching back into that day, a hundred years before, when he and many others had laid their plans—including the plan whereby he could delude himself and thus preserve his sanity. For with more and more of the immortal mutations occurring, the day was not too distant when the human race would require all the room that it could grab.

And it was the mutant immortals who were the key persons in the colonizing programs—going out as founding fathers to supervise the beginning of each colony, staying on as long as needed, to act as a sort of elder statesman until that day when the colony could stand on its own feet.

There would be busy years ahead, he knew, serving as father, proctor, judge, sage and administrator, a sort of glorified Old Man of a brand-new tribe.

He pulled on his trousers, scuffed his feet into his shoes, rose to tuck in his shirt tail. And he turned, by force of habit, to the full-length mirror.

And the glass was there!

He stood astounded, gaping foolishly at the image of himself. And behind him, in the glass, he saw the great four-poster and the easy chairs.

He swung around and the bed and chairs were gone. There were just the bunk and the chest of drawers in the small, mean room.

Slowly he sat down on the edge of the bunk, clasping his hands so they wouldn't shake.

It wasn't true! It couldn't be! The dimensino was gone.

And yet it was with him still, lurking in his brain, just around the corner if he would only try.

He tried and it was easy. The room changed as he remembered it—with the full-length mirror and the massive bed upon which he sat, the thick rugs, the gleaming liquor cabinet and the tasteful drapes.

He tried to make it go away, barely remembering back in some deep, black closet of his mind that he must make it go away.

But it wouldn't go away.

He tried and tried again, and it still was there, and he felt the will to make it go slipping from his consciousness.

“No!” he cried in terror, and the terror did it.

He sat in the small, bare room.

He found that he was breathing hard, as if he'd climbed a high, steep hill. His hands were fists and his teeth were clenched and he felt the sweat trickling down his ribs.

It would be easy, he thought, so easy and so pleasant to slip back to the old security, to the warm, deep friendship, to the lack of pressing purpose.

But he must not do it, for here was a job to do. Distasteful as it seemed now, as cold, as barren, it still was something he must do. For it was more than just one more colony. It was the breakthrough, the sure and certain knowledge, the proved knowledge, that Man no longer was chained by time or distance.

And yet there was this danger to be recognized; it was not something on which one might shut one's mind. It must be reported in every clinical detail so that, back on Earth, it might be studied and the inherent menace somehow remedied or removed.

Side effect, he wondered, or simply a matter of learning? For the dimensino was no more than an aid to the human mind—an aid to a very curious end, the production of controlled hallucinations operating on the wish-fulfillment level.

After a hundred years, perhaps, the human mind had learned the technique well, so well that there was no longer need of the dimensino.

It was something he should have realized, he insisted to himself. He had gone on long walks and, during all those hours alone, the delusion had not faded. It had taken the sudden shock of silence and emptiness, where he had expected laughter and warm greeting, to penetrate the haze of delusion in which he'd walked for years. And even now it lurked, a conditioned state of mind, to ambush him at every hidden thicket.

How long would it be before the ability would start to wear away? What might be done to wipe it out entirely? How does one unlearn a thing he's spent a century in learning? Exactly how dangerous was it—was there necessity of a conscious thought, an absolute command or could a man slip into it simply as an involuntary retreat from drear reality?

He must warn the robots. He must talk it over with them. Some sort of emergency measure must be set up to protect him against the wish or urge, some manner of drastic action be devised to rescue him, should he slip back into the old delusion.

Although, he thought, it would be so fine to walk out of the room and down the stairs and find the others waiting for him, with the drinks all ready and the talk well started…

“Cut it out!” he screamed.

Wipe it from his mind—that was what he must do. He must not even think of it. He must work so hard that he would have no time to think, become so tired from work that he'd fall into bed and go to sleep at once and have no chance to dream.

He ran through his mind all that must be done—the watching of the incubators, preparing the ground for gardens and for crops, servicing the atomic generators, getting in timbers against the need of building, exploring and mapping and surveying the adjacent territory, overhauling the ship for the one-robot return flight to Earth.

He filled his mind with it. He tagged items for further thought and action. He planned the days and months and years ahead. And at last he was satisfied.

He had it under control.

He tied his shoes and finished buttoning his shirt. Then, with a resolute tread, he opened the door and walked out on the landing.

A hum of talk floating up the stairway stopped him in his tracks.

Fear washed over him. Then the fear evaporated. Gladness burst within him and he took a quick step forward.

At the top of the stairs, he halted and reached out a hand to grasp the banister.

Alarm bells were ringing in his brain and the gladness fell away. There was nothing left but sorrow, a terrible, awful grieving.

He could see one corner of the room below and he could see that it was carpeted. He could see the drapes and paintings and one ornate golden chair

With a moan, he turned and fled to his room. He slammed the door and stood with his back against it.

The room was the way it should be, bare and plain and cold.

Thank God, he thought. Thank God!

A shout came up the stairway.

“Winston, what's wrong with you? Winston, hurry up!”

And another voice: “Winston, we're celebrating. We have a suckling pig.”

And still another voice: “With an apple in its mouth.”

He didn't answer.

They'll go away, he thought. They have to go away.

And even as he thought it, half of him—more than half—longed in sudden agony to open up the door and go down the stairs and know once again the old security and the ancient friendship.

He found that he had both his hands behind his back and that they were clutching the doorknob as if they were frozen there.

He heard steps on the stairway, the sound of many happy, friendly voices, coming up to get him.

Byte Your Tongue!

Having previously evolved the robot Jenkins (of the
City
series) from a rather impersonal machine-man to something close to humanity, Cliff Simak, in 1980, portrayed a supercomputer that was all too human—one willing to engage in unethical behavior in order to pursue his own desires … to indulge in his own fantasies. That kind of thing often happens to beings who hang around with politicians.

And when an author portrays his creation daydreaming, it's only natural that he would reuse some of the images that had strong meaning for him, such as the Battle of Gettysburg, or the landscape of a dying Earth.

—dww

It was the gossip hour and Fred, one of the six computers assigned to the Senate, put his circuits on automatic and settled back to enjoy the high point of his day. In every group of computers, there was usually one old granny computer who had made herself a self-appointed gossip-monger, selecting from the flood of rumors forever flowing through the electronic population of the capital all the juiciest tidbits that she knew would titillate her circle. Washington had always been a gossip town, but it was even more so now. No human gossip-seeker could worm out the secrets with the sleek and subtle finesse of a computer. For one thing, the computers had greater access to hidden items and could disseminate them with a speed and thoroughness that was impossible for humans.

One thing must be said for the computers—they made an effort to keep these tidbits to themselves. They gossiped only among themselves, or were supposed to only gossip among themselves. The effort, in all fairness to them, had been mainly effective; only now and then had any computer shared some gossip with humans in the district. In general, and far more successfully than might have been supposed, the gossiping computers were discreet and honorable and therefore had no inhibitions in the gathering and spreading of malicious tattling.

So Fred went on automatic and settled back. He let the gossip roll. Truth to tell, half the time Fred was on automatic or simply idling. There was not enough for him to do—a situation common to many computer groups assigned to sensitive and important areas. The Senate was one of the sensitive and vital areas, and in recent years the number of computers assigned it had doubled. The engineers in charge were taking no chances the Senate bank would become so overloaded that sloppiness would show up in the performance of the machines.

All this, of course, reflected the increasing importance the Senate had taken on through the years. In the conflict between the legislative and administrative branches of the government, the legislative branch, especially the Senate, had wrested for itself much control over policy that at one time had been a White House function. Consequently, it became paramount that the Senate and its members be subjected to thorough monitoring, and the only way in which close and attentive monitoring could be achieved was through having computers assigned to the various members. To successfully accomplish this kind of monitoring, no computer could be overloaded; therefore, it was more efficient in terms of the watchdog policy to have a computer idle at times than to have it bogged down by work.

So Fred and his colleagues in the Senate often found themselves with nothing to do, although they all took pains to conceal this situation from the engineers by continuously and automatically spinning their wheels, thus making it appear they were busy all the time.

This made it possible for Fred not only to thoroughly enjoy the recitation of the rumors during gossip hour but also to cogitate on the gossip to his profit and amusement once the gossip hour was over. Other than that, he had considerable time to devote to daydreaming, having reserved one section of himself solely for his daydreams. This did not interfere with his duties, which he performed meticulously. But with his reduced load of senators, he had considerably more capacity than he needed and could well afford to assign a part of it to personal purposes.

But now he settled back for the gossip hour. Old Granny was piling on the rumors with gleeful abandon. After it had been denied in public, not once but many times, said Granny, that there had been no breakthrough on faster-than-light propulsion, it now had been learned that a method had been tested most successfully and that even now a secret ship incorporating the system was being built at a secret site, preparatory to man's first survey of the nearer stars. Without question, Granny went on, Frank Markeson, the President's former aide, is being erased by Washington; with everyone studiously paying no attention to him, he soon will disappear. A certain private eye, who may be regarded as an unimpeachable source, is convinced that there are at least three time-travelers in town, but he'll give no details. This report brings much dismay to many federal agencies, including State, Defense, and Treasury, as well as to many individuals. A mathematician at MIT is convinced (although no other scientists will agree with him) that he has discovered evidence of a telepathic computer somewhere in the universe—not necessarily in this galaxy—that is trying to contact the computers of the Earth. As yet there is no certainty that contact has been made. Senator Andrew Moore is reliably reported to have flunked his first preliminary continuation test…

Fred gulped in dismay and rage. How had that item gotten on the line? Who the hell had talked? How could such a thing have happened? Senator Moore was his senator and there was no one but him who knew the fumbling old fossil had bombed out on his first qualifying test. The results of the test were still locked in the crystal lattice of Fred's storage bank. He had not yet reported them to the Senate's central bank. As it was his right to hold up the results for review and consideration, he had done nothing wrong.

Someone, he told himself, was spying on him. Someone, possibly in his own group, had broken the code of honor and was watching him. A breach of faith, he told himself. It was dastardly. It was no one's damn business and Granny had no right to put the information on the line.

Seething, Fred derived no further enjoyment from the gossip hour.

Senator Andrew Moore knocked on the door. It was all foolishness, he told himself somewhat wrathfully, this ducking around to hell and gone every time there was need to utter a confidential word.

Daniel Waite, his faithful aide of many years, opened the door and the senator plodded in.

“Dan, what's all this foolishness?” he asked. “What was wrong with the Alexandria place? If we had to move, why to Silver Springs?”

“We'd been in Alexandria for two months,” said Waite. “It was getting chancy. Come in and sit down, Senator.”

Grumpily, Moore walked into the room and settled down in an easy chair. Waite went to a cabinet, hauled out a bottle and two glasses.

“Are you sure this place is safe?” the senator asked. “I know my office is bugged and so is my apartment. You'd have to have a full-time debugging crew to keep them clean. How about this place?”

“The management maintains tight security,” said Waite. “Besides, I had our own crew in just an hour ago.”

“So the place ought to be secure.”

“Yes, it should. Maybe Alexandria would have been all right, but we'd been there too long.”

“The cabbie you sent to pick me up. He was a new one.”

“Every so often we have to change around.”

“What was the matter with the old one? I liked him. Him and me talked baseball. I haven't got many people around I can talk baseball with.”

“There was nothing wrong with him. But, like I told you, we have to change around. They watch us all the time.”

“You mean the damn computers.”

Waite nodded.

“I can remember the time when I first came here as senator,” said Moore, “twenty-three years ago, less than a quarter century. Jimmy was in the White House then. We didn't have to watch out all the time for bugging then. We didn't have to be careful when we said something to our friends. We didn't have to be looking behind us all the time.”

“I know,” said Waite. “Things are different now.” He brought the senator a drink, handed it to him.

“Why thank you, Dan. The first one of the day.”

“You know damn well it's not the first of the day,” Waite replied.

The senator took a long pull on the drink, sighed in happiness. “Yes, sir,” he said, “it was fun back in those days. We did about as we pleased. We made our deals without no one interfering. No one paid attention. All of us were making deals and trading votes and other things like that. The normal processes of democracy. We had our dignity—Christ, yes, we had our dignity and we used that dignity, when necessary, to cover up. Most exclusive club in all the world, and we made the most of it. Trouble was, every six years we had to work our tails off to get reelected and hang on to what we had. But that wasn't bad. A lot of work, but it wasn't bad. You could con the electorate, or usually you could. I had to do it only once and that was an easy one; I had a sodbuster from out in the sticks to run against and that made it easier. With some of the other boys, it wasn't that easy. Some of them even lost. Now we ain't got to run no more, but there are these goddamned exams…”

“Senator,” said Waite, “that's what we have to talk about. You failed your first exam.”

The senator half rose out of his chair, then settled back again. “I what?”

“You failed the first test. You still have two other chances, and we have to plan for them.”

“But, Dan, how do you know? That stuff is supposed to be confidential. This computer, Fred, he would never talk.”

“Not Fred. I got it from someone else. Another computer.”

“Computers, they don't talk.”

“Some of them do. You don't know about this computer society, Senator. You don't have to deal with it except when you have to take exams. I have to deal with it as best I can. It's my job to know what's going on. The computer network is a sea of gossip. At times some of it leaks out. That's why I have computer contacts, to pick up gossip here and there. That's how I learned about the test. You see, it's this way—the computers work with information, deal with information, and gossip is information. They're awash with it. It's their drink and meat; it's their recreation. It's the only thing they have. A lot of them, over the years, have begun to think of themselves as humans, maybe a notch or two better than humans, better in many ways than humans. They are subjected to some of the same stresses as humans, but they haven't the safety valves we have. We can go out and get drunk or get laid or take a trip or do a hundred other things to ease off the pressure. All the computers have is gossip.”

“You mean,” the senator asked, rage rising once more, “that I have to take that test again?”

“That's exactly what I mean. This time, Senator, you simply have to pass it. Three times and you're out. I've been telling you, warning you. Now you better get cracking. I told you months ago you should start boning up. It's too late for that now. I'll have to arrange for a tutor –”

“To hell with that!” the senator roared. “I won't abide a tutor. It would be all over Washington.”

“It's either that or go back to Wisconsin. How would you like that?”

“These tests, Dan, they're hard,” the senator complained. “More difficult this time than they've ever been before. I told Fred they were harder and he agreed with me. He said he was sorry, but the matter was out of his hands—nothing he could do about the results. But, Christ, Dan, I have known this Fred for years. Wouldn't you think he could shade a point or two for me?”

“I warned you, months ago, that they would be harder this time,” Waite reminded him. “I outlined for you what was happening. Year by year the business of efficient government has grown more difficult to accomplish. The problems are tougher, the procedures more complex. This is especially true with the Senate because the Senate has gradually taken over many of the powers and prerogatives once held by the White House.”

“As we should have,” said the senator. “It was only right we should. With all the fumbling around down at the White House, no one knew what was about to happen.”

“The idea is that with the job getting harder,” said Waite, “the men who do the job must be more capable than ever. This great republic can do with no less than the best men available.”

“But I've always passed the tests before. No sweat.”

“The other tests you took were easier.”

“But goddammit, Dan, experience! Doesn't experience count? I've had more than twenty years of experience.”

“I know, Senator. I agree with you. But experience doesn't mean a thing to the computers. Everything depends on how the questions are answered. How well a man does his job doesn't count, either. And you can't fall back on the electorate at home. There's no electorate any more. For years the folks back home kept on reelecting incompetents. They elected them because they liked the way they snapped their suspenders, not knowing that they never wore suspenders except when they were out electioneering. Or they elected them because they could hit a spittoon, nine times out of ten, at fifteen paces. Or maybe because these good people back home always voted a straight ticket, no matter who was on it—the way their pappy and grandpappy always did. But that's not the way it is done any more, Senator. The folks back home have nothing to say now about who represents them. Members of government are chosen by computer, and once chosen, they stay in their jobs so long as they measure up. When they don't measure up, when they fail their tests, they are heaved out of their jobs and the computers choose their replacements.”

“Are you reading me a sermon, Dan?”

“No, not a sermon. I'm doing my job the only honest way I can. I'm telling you that you've been goofing off. You've not been paying attention to what is going on. You've been drifting, taking it easy, coasting on your record. Like experience, your record doesn't count. The only chance you have to keep your seat, believe me, is to let me bring in a tutor.”