When HARLIE Was One (43 page)

Annie left him alone.

She busied herself around the apartment all weekend, tiptoeing around his edges. He hardly noticed she was there. He moped from the bed to the couch to the chair in front of the TV set, then back to the bed again.

When he made love, it was frenzied and compulsive and quickly finished. And then he'd pull away and brood. He spent long hours lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.

She went into the bathroom and took a shower, alone. She made a simple meal, a sandwich and a salad. He came out of the bedroom, but only picked at it. She sensed that he would be a lot happier if she were not sitting at the table staring at him, so she went into the bedroom to make the bed.

Later, she came up behind him and kissed the back of his neck and ran her hands up and across his shoulders and through his hair. He tolerated it but did not return the affection, so she stopped.

She tried not to be hurt by it, but still—

Still later, he came to her and said, “I'm sorry, Annie. I'm a jerk. I love you so much, and I'm really showing it in a rotten way. It's just that I hurt so much—and I'm trying not to hurt you by dumping it on you, and that's not helping, because I'm just hurting you in a different way. Forgive me, please—I—”

“Shh, sweetheart.” She touched a fìnger to his lips. “I
know.”
She slipped into his arms and held him close for a long intimate moment. He closed his eyes and stroked her hair. She purred softly in the back of her throat. When they finally did break apart, she looked up at him and said, “It's all right to share with me. That's what lovers are for. Let me have some of that worry and it won't be so much for either of us to carry.”

He shook his head. “It's so frustrating—we're so
close
!
”
He stopped himself. “No, that's not it. It's deeper than that. I can't help but think that somehow I've failed. I know I did the very best I could—but I don't feel good about it.” He sighed. “I think it's this thing with Carl Elzer that
hurts
the most. I thought—I thought he was going to play fair. I'm such a stupid jerk. They said what I wanted to hear, so I believed them. Now, I find I never had a chance at all—and I'm so hurt and angry and frustrated and—” He stopped and looked at her. “My family, the way I was raised, we didn't scream, we didn't yell, we didn't beat up on people. I don't know
how
to be violent. I wish I did. I really do. It woudn't help anything, but at least it'd be something to do.”

He broke away from her and began pacing again. “The worst of it is, I feel like I betrayed HARLIE. I let him down—and now he's going to have to pay the price, not me.”

He sank down onto the couch and put his head into his hands.

She was wise enough not to say anything. She just sat down next to him and put her arms gently around him and stayed with him that way. After a while, he put his arms around her and held her gently.

“Wanna go for a walk?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No. I don't think I'm very good company right now. Why don't you go without me? Give me a chance to . . . work this out for myself.”

She nodded and said she understood. She put on her jacket and quietly let herself out.

He moped around the empty apartment for a while, going from the bedroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the living room. He turned on the TV and turned it off again. He rearranged some magazines, and then decided he didn't want to read them anyway. He lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling until he covered his eyes with his arm. And he wondered just what it was that was bothering him.

Elzer had surprised him. He hadn't expected the man to suddenly be so—amenable, was that the word? Well, the tactic had worked. He had been caught completely by surprise. His anger had been made to look inappropriate and childish. Damn!

But that was only the top layer of his annoyance. Beneath that was his question. A fair question to ask. But one that couldn't be answered. “How do you know that HARLIE is sane?”

It was a question that couldn't be answered.

How do you tell if the world's first silicon being is sane or not? Would you be sane if you were the only carbon-based life form in a world of robots? HARLIE was a feral child—raised by naked apes and thereby doomed to never reach his full potential because neither he nor the apes were able to conceive what that potential might really be.

“No. We
don't know
if he's sane.”

The fact is—he probably isn't.

Would you be sane if you were under a death sentence? Prove that you're sane or we'll kill you.

HARLIE's sanity was as much a function of the people around him as—

God, yes.

It's not sanity that we're looking for! It's
appropriateness.

Maybe there's no such thing as sanity for
any of us.
Maybe the thing we should be measuring is appropriateness of response.

Responsibility?

Put it that way and there's no question.

He wished the G.O.D. machine was already in existence. It would know.

The G.O.D. machine would be able to judge. It would say, HARLIE's responses are appropriate and positive. Or it would say, HARLIE's responses are inappropriate and negative.

And then they would know.

—and HARLIE would know too.

Of course.

This wasn't just about what human beings wanted. It was also about what HARLIE wanted.

In fact, maybe it was
all
about what HARLIE wanted. And the concerns of human beings were merely part of the problem along the way.

It was all about survival and the things we do to survive.

And then after survival, it's about—what?

That was the question.

That realization kept hitting him again and again. HARLIE had wanted to find God and by G.O.D. he had found it.

The G.O.D. could recreate within itself everything about a man, about a situation, about a world, everything that was important and necessary to the consideration of a circumstance.
Any
circumstance. It would know how any single atom would react to any other atom—and knowing that, it could extrapolate every other reaction in the known physical universe. Chemistry is simply the moving around of large numbers of atoms and noting their reactions. Knowing the way atoms worked, the machine would know chemistry. Biology is complex masses of substances and solutions. Knowing the reactions that were chemistry, the machine would also know biology. Psychology stems from a biological system that is aware of itself. Knowing biology, the machine would know psychology as well. Sociology is the study of masses of psychological units working with or against each other. Knowing psychology, the machine would know sociology. Knowing the interrelationships of all of them, the machine would know ecology—the effect of any event on any other.

Simple equations become complex equations and complex equations evolve into multiplex equations which in turn mutate into ultraplex equations which transform themselves into—

G.O.D.

The size of it—

—was staggering.

The possibilities!

The Wright brothers would have only needed to ask, “Is heavier-than-air flight possible?” and it not only would have told them, “Yes, it is,” but it could have even given them plans for an airplane—or a scramjet. It could have told them everything about how to build it; how to build the tools to build the tools to build the scramjet; how to finance the operation to support it; how to train the pilots to fly it. It would have told them about safety devices and ground crews and maintenance and flight controllers. It would even have been able to tell them the side effects of their new industry—jet lag, terrorism, cargo cults, homeowners protesting the noise of the airplanes, the luggage tangles in the terminals, and the necessity for air-sickness bags in the back of the seats. It would have warned them about financing and insurance and the high cost of laying down a new runway—and even the best way to set up a travel agency, or project a movie while in flight. It would have told them exactly what they were starting.

It would have told them too much.

Just as HARLIE had. It was too much to assimilate.

If the G.O.D. was too much to assimilate—what would its effects be? But, of course, it would also be able to extrapolate its own effects and compensate for them.

Of course.

It was G.O.D.

Graphic Omniscient Device.

He wished it were already in existence. Just so he could ask it about HARLIE.

Okay. It wasn't about sanity. It was about rationality. But that only made the question
more
compelling.

Is HARLIE rational?

The G.O.D. would say.

But, of course, before they could build the G.O.D., they needed that answer first.

It was a very interesting paradox—but only if you weren't personally involved in it.

If only he knew the truth—

A one-for-one representation of reality. The truth.

—but it was only the truth if HARLIE was rational.

Only if HARLIE was rational.

And there was no way to know.

If HARLIE was sane.

If HARLIE—

—was sane.

Sunday afternoon.

The TV was droning quietly to itself—mostly music, but occasionally news. Neither David nor Annie was listening to it.

“—747 jumbo jetliner lost a wheel on its approach to Kennedy Airport tonight. Fortunately, no one was hurt. A spokesman for Pan Am Airlines said—”

“—in Los Angeles, cult leader Chandra Mission issued another statement from his jail cell. Like all the others, it ended with the words, ‘Trust me, believe in me, have faith in me, I am the truth. Love me, for I am the truth.' Mission is on trial for the brutal sex murders of seven—”

I am the truth
, he thought.
I wish I were. I wish I knew. I wish there were someone I could trust
—

“—new papal encyclical is expected to be issued before the end of the week—”

He smiled at that. Papal encyclical. Another form of “truth,” this one direct from God's own special emissary.
How does one tell the difference?
he wondered.
Perhaps the only difference is that the pope has more followers than Chandra Mission.

“—reaction to Friday's announcement by Dr. Stanley Krofft of a major breakthrough—”

“Huh?” He looked at the TV. Something—

“—at M.I.T., Dr. Russell Seitz, commenting on the breakthrough, said, ‘We have our computers double-checking Dr. Krofft's equations now. Due to the volume of material, it's going to take a great deal of time; but we're hopeful that we can confirm Dr. Krofft's thesis. Dr. Krofft's theory of gravitic stress suggests whole new areas of exploration for the physicist. No, I can't even begin to predict what form any advances may take. Antigravity devices, maybe. Who knows? Maybe whole new sources of power or communications, maybe not—we simply don't know what this means yet, except that if it's valid, then it is certainly a major breakthrough in our understanding of the nature of the universe. I know Dr. Krofft's reputation for accuracy, and I am very excited about this.' Dr. Krofft himself could not be reached for comment.

“Elsewhere in the news, a gasoline tanker jackknifed on the Hollywood Freeway, spilling hundreds of gallons of—”

Auberson spun the dial of the radio, frantically searching for another news broadcast. He found only blaring rock music and raucous disc jockeys. “The paper,” he cried. “The Sunday paper.''

“David, what's going on? What is this?”

“It's HARLIE!” he cried excitedly. “Don't you see, it's HARLIE. He and Dr. Krofft were working together on this. Damn him anyway! He didn't tell me they'd solved it! He and Dr. Krofft were working together on some kind of theory of gravity. Apparently they've done it—this proves it! HARLIE is sane. More than that! We don't even need the G.O.D. proposal anymore to keep him going; this proves that HARLIE is a valuable scientific tool in his own right! He can talk to scientists and help them develop their theories and do creative research! My God, why didn't we think of this—we could have shortened the whole meeting. All we'd have had to do was bring Krofft in—Look, go get a paper for me while I try calling Don. There's a newsstand on the corner—”

“David,” Annie interrupted. “This Dr. Krofft, isn't he the one you were talking about before?”

“Huh? Which one?”

“The one with the stocks—”

“The stocks? Omigod, I forgot about that. Yes—”

“Can you trust him? I mean, obviously he must be on Elzer's side.”

“Trust him? I don't know—but let's talk to him! Surely, he must realize the importance of HARLIE to his work. This is proof that HARLIE is rational—” He leapt for the phone. Annie shrugged and picked up her jacket; she would go for the paper.

Krofft didn't answer at his lab and his housekeeper refused to say where he was. He couldn't think of anywhere else that the scientist might be.

He called Handley and told him what had happened.

“I'd heard about it,” said Don. “I didn't realize that HARLIE was part of it.”

“Who do you think solved those equations for Krofft?”

“You're kidding.”

“Don't you see, Don? We don't have to worry any more about HARLIE being sane or not. These equations prove that he's rational.”

“Do they? Have they been checked?”

“Somebody at M.I.T. is doing that right now. If they come out correct, it'll prove to him that HARLIE isn't fooling around.”

“At least not with the laws of mathematics. Remember, HARLIE doesn't have a vested interest in Krofft's research like he does in the G.O.D. Maybe this gravity thing was only an interesting problem to him—the G.O.D. proposal is a lot bigger. That's life and death.”