by James Gunn
Kirk took Johannsen’s big hand. “Chairman of the action committee. Does that mean you’re in charge here?”
“This is a democracy, Captain Kirk,” Johannsen said. “We are not a starship with its demands for quick decisions and chains of command. We have no leaders, only chairmen to call the meetings and preside over orderly discussions.”
“I know a leader,” Kirk said, “when I see one.”
Johannsen smiled and turned to Linda. “Have you eaten breakfast?”
“You know the kind of freeze-dried and frozen rations we get aboard the Nautilus,” Linda said. “But we’ve eaten.”
“I’m afraid we can’t offer you much better,” Johannsen said to Kirk. “But can we get you anything?”
“Perhaps some of your Timshel coffee,” Kirk said. “That was one thing the Nautilus lacked.”
Johannsen looked embarrassed. “I’m afraid we ran out of coffee a year ago. Conditions being what they are, we haven’t been able to replenish our stocks. But we have a substitute one of our chemists has put together.”
Kirk restrained a shudder. “Thanks,” he said, “but I think I’ll pass for now.”
Johannsen turned to Linda again. “Everything went smoothly?” he asked.
“Just as you laid it out,” she said. “Marouk played his part as you said he would.”
[115] “You mean Kemal,” Kirk said, “is a member of your group?”
“Marouk is the mystery piece on the board,” Johannsen said. “In the end he may turn out to be black or white.”
“Or mottled,” Linda said.
“All we know is,” Johannsen said, “he cooperates with us in discreet ways, and perhaps with other dissident groups if there are any, and at the same time cooperates with the Joy Machine in public ways. And now—the Federation. No doubt he cooperated with you, too.”
“For a while,” Kirk said. “Until this.” He held up his right wrist to expose the payday bracelet.
“I wish we could do something about that,” Johannsen said. “But when we have tried to remove one for analysis—on volunteers, you understand, who managed to break free from their addiction—the bracelet self-destructed and the volunteer died. In agony.
“Come, let us talk rebellion.”
They settled in chairs near the potbellied stove. Even here, after the first flush of warmth replaced the arctic daggers of the wind, the cold could be felt seeping through the walls to chill the back while the front toasted. Occasionally, then, one of them would rise to warm the back or put hands out to the radiating waves from the stove. The others in the room went about their business, or settled down to read or talk among themselves, or wandered by to listen for a moment to the conversation before continuing on.
Johannsen nodded toward the doors on the right-hand side of the hut. “Do you need to use the facilities? We’re unisex here, and we don’t stand on ceremony. That’s the result of being primarily a research operation, or what is left of one.”
Kirk shook his head, but he was happy to discover [116] that his guess was correct. He held up his left wrist again. “You may not be able to do anything about this, but isn’t there a danger that the Joy Machine is spying on everything we do and say?”
“That seems unlikely,” Johannsen said. He was seated on Kirk’s right, Linda on his left. “It has had opportunities to eliminate us before, if it could do so. In any case, we have to take the risk.”
“The Enterprise,” Kirk said, “is a new factor. We can’t discount the possibility that the Joy Machine was staying its hand to use this group as a way of trapping the Federation and its agents. And we must consider it likely that Marouk was cooperating in this project as a way of planting a spy—and a tracer—in your midst.”
“Nevertheless,” Johannsen said, “the Enterprise is crucial to our plans.”
“Let us,” Kirk said, “be brutally frank. What chance does your little band of people have against the worldwide resources of the Joy Machine?”
Linda said, “If I remember my history correctly, the Russian Revolution was started by a handful of Bolsheviks, the French Revolution by a small group of dissident aristocrats, and the Kartha IV Revolution by five starving farmers.”
“And if I remember my history correctly,” Kirk said, “those revolutions were fueled by massive public oppression and discontent. On Timshel you have massive acceptance and apathy. Who are you going to get to rise in your support?”
Johannsen nodded. “That’s true. But there are two major differences to the situations you and Linda describe: the first is that we are not talking masses; there are only one million people on Timshel and only one hundred thousand in Timshel City; the second is that the entire system rests on a small point. Damage that and the rest tumbles.”
“It sounds easy,” Kirk said, “when you say it. But [117] that small point may not be so small anymore; Marouk believes that the Machine itself may be computers connected in a series, like nodes in a root or segments in a worm, rather than a single calculator. If that is true, any part is infinitely replaceable. And with two million eyes reporting to the Machine and the entire technological apparatus controlled by it, even approaching that small point may be impossible.”
“We have to try,” Linda said. Her gaze turned inward. “You haven’t had family and friends and loved ones changed before your eyes into creatures strange and frightening and obsessed.”
“I know what it is like,” Kirk said. “But have you thought what might happen to them if their link with the Joy Machine was broken?”
“We’ve thought about it,” Johannsen said. “We all have family members caught in the Joy Machine’s web. And we realize that their bracelets might self-destruct and that they might die—horribly. Or even if they survived, they might never be the same.”
“And they might never forgive us,” Linda said.
“Like the wireheads,” Kirk said.
“What?” Johannsen asked.
“Another historical parallel.”
“We have to take the chance,” Johannsen said.
“I said to Marouk that I’d rather see his daughters dead than happy in the arms of the Joy Machine,” Kirk said, “and he called that a peculiarly human paradox. Better dead than happy. When you think about it, that is an odd choice.”
“We get hung up on words,” Johannsen said. “Happiness. Death. Happiness can be a kind of death—death of the spirit, death of the will, death of the individual, death of the species. Species evolve through discontent, either brought on by pressures from the environment or generated from within.”
“I may agree with you,” Kirk said. “But—” He [118] spread his hands to indicate the handful of people in the hut, in the small community. “—this small band?”
“ ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers,’ ” Johannsen said.
“You know your Shakespeare,” Kirk said, “but King Harry, at least, had an army of thousands, and a secret weapon of English longbowmen.”
“We have our secret weapons,” Linda said.
Behind the hut something massive cracked and shifted. Kirk looked up in alarm.
“Don’t worry about that,” Johannsen said. “That’s our friendly neighborhood glacier turning over in its bed.”
Kirk settled back in his chair. “Okay, tell me about your plans to take out the Joy Machine.”
“One of our secret weapons,” Linda said, “is the nature of our group. We’re all scientists, of one kind or another, and we’ve been working on this—some of us—for two years.”
“We’ve formed ourselves into strategy groups and action groups,” Johannsen said. “As chairman of the action group, I am also an ex officio member of the others. We have come up with some strategies, some of them pretty far-fetched, as we will readily admit. Some of them seem practical enough that we began work on them.”
“Give me the ones you’re working on,” Kirk said.
“Automated spacecraft are still returning from the gas giants, the asteroi
ds, and the moons with raw materials and manufactured objects,” Johannsen said. “If we could seize control of one of them and cause it to crash on the World Government building—”
“You would have to match a makeshift program against something established and long-tested, and human reflexes against computer speed,” Kirk said. “The chances of success are next to none.”
[119] “You have the resources on the Enterprise to raise those odds considerably,” Linda said.
“The Enterprise would have to emerge into normal space and make itself vulnerable to planet-based resources,” Kirk said. “And the resources available aboard a ship are small compared to those an entire planet can muster. In any case, the Federation would never authorize an operation that might wipe out an entire city—and all your friends and relatives, I expect.” And, Kirk told himself, Spock, McCoy, Uhura, the Marouk family, and Dannie.
“We’re going to try to change your mind,” Johannsen said. “If not about this plan, at least about the participation of the Enterprise.”
“You should know that the Prime Directive prohibits interference in the normal development of any society,” Kirk said.
“I also know that the Prime Directive has been violated upon occasion,” Johannsen said. “How can you say, for instance, that the Joy Machine is a normal development?”
“Go on with your proposals,” Kirk said. He did not call them “preposterous proposals,” but he knew they understood what he meant.
“We’ve been identifying guerrilla action to take out various aspects of the Machine’s operation,” Johannsen said. “Like the sabotage of the power grid that set up your rescue.”
“Or abduction, depending on your viewpoint,” Kirk said. “Guerrilla groups can exist only with the support of dissident citizens. Inevitably there are casualties, and you don’t have enough people to sustain any such action for long.”
“I’ve been working on a computer virus,” Linda said.
“Now, that could be effective,” Kirk said, looking intrigued.
“I know the Joy Machine better than anyone, next to De Kreef, of course, and Marouk,” Linda [120] continued. She seemed pleased that Kirk was receptive to her approach. “I helped De Kreef write the original program. I didn’t know what I was working on, of course. De Kreef kept the critical parts for himself.”
“And just what would your virus do?” Kirk asked.
“Actually, there are two,” Linda said. “One would disable the execute function of the Joy Machine’s program; the Machine could think and plan, but it couldn’t act. It would, in effect, be isolated in its own universe.”
“And what about the other?” Kirk asked.
“It would rewrite the Joy Machine’s basic directive.”
“What is that?”
“No one but De Kreef knows, and he is incapable of telling us. Perhaps he no longer remembers. I searched his files before I fled. But he must have destroyed any evidence after it was installed.”
“It acts as if its operating mandate is to spread joy to every human,” Johannsen said.
“But it must have a value system ranked hierarchically,” Linda said, “so that it knows the order in which it must act: first this, then that, or if not this, then that, or if not this or that, then this other—”
“I get the idea,” Kirk said.
“One hierarchical structure, for instance, is first work, then payday,” Linda said. “Another must be ‘If a citizen does not wear a bracelet, he must be persuaded to do so.’ ”
“Or forced,” Kirk said.
“That doesn’t seem to be the Joy Machine’s doing,” Linda said. “It seems to have a prohibition against harming people.”
“At least directly,” Johannsen said. “Sometimes it seems to be able to rationalize an action that is for the long-term good of the individual, as it perceives it through the lens of its prime directive, even though its immediate actions work violence, as long as the violence is indirect.”
[121] “It can even set into motion processes that might endanger human lives if humans can avoid the danger through common vigilance or ordinary action,” Linda said. “We believe it is able to rationalize those as accidents.”
“And what would your computer virus do?” Kirk asked.
“Replace the operating mandate,” Linda said.
“With what?”
“The value of human freedom,” Linda said.
They stood for a while in front of the stove, warming their backs and rubbing their hands, before they sat down once more. “The Joy Machine behaves as if it had independent volition,” Kirk said.
“How do you know?” Linda asked.
“I had a talk with it, and it seemed to have no mechanical limitations.”
“The Turing test,” Linda said.
“What’s that?”
“If it responds in ways indistinguishable from those provided by a sentient being, it must be sentient,” Linda said. “But it isn’t the same thing. Sentient beings can’t be reprogrammed.”
“The Joy Machine seems to be doing a good job of it,” Kirk replied wryly.
“It only looks like it,” Linda said. “Actually, it is taking advantage of human hardwiring.”
“By now the Joy Machine,” Kirk said, “may have augmented its own programming, converting its software into hardware. If that is the case, your virus would have nothing to work on.”
“We can only hope that is not the case,” Linda said.
“How do you hope to deliver it?” Kirk asked.
“That’s a bigger problem than the virus itself,” Linda said.
“Although information flows continually into the Joy Machine,” Johannsen said, “there are no terminals, no stations, no direct programming links.”
[122] “De Kreef must have destroyed those too,” Linda said. “Once he was finished.”
“Or the Joy Machine,” Kirk suggested. “Like pulling up the drawbridge.”
“But we have a plan,” Johannsen said.
“The Joy Machine receives feedback from the bracelets,” Linda said.
“So,” Kirk supplied, “you intend to program a fake bracelet with the virus.”
Linda shook her head. “The Joy Machine wouldn’t access a phony bracelet. We are inserting the virus into a virus—coding the computer virus into the genetic material of an influenza virus so that when the Joy Machine provides a payday to a selected volunteer the information the influenza virus contains will be transmitted to the Joy Machine.”
“That’s my job,” Kirk said, and held out his arm.
Linda and Johannsen looked at Kirk’s left wrist.
Johannsen put up his hands in dismay. “No!” he protested. “It was supposed to be me. ...”
“I’m the only one already fitted with a bracelet,” Kirk pointed out.
“Besides,” Kirk added, “you’re scientists. This is what I do for a living.”
Linda looked thoughtful. “You are the only one already equipped,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense to lose someone else. And as you may have been informed, Timshel natives develop a natural immunity against bacterial and viral infections. That may not have had a chance to work on you yet.”
“The downside,” Kirk said, “is that I can’t be sure how I would respond to the Joy Machine’s payday.”
“No one can, Linda said gently.
“We think we would be strong,” Johanssen said. “We think we could sample paradise and walk away. But we have seen almost every other person surrender to its insidious appeal.”
“I’m afraid,” Kirk said. “I admit that. But I’ll take the chance.”
[123] Johannsen studied Kirk’s face for a moment and said, “Okay. We accept your offer and I thank you.” Then he continued: “We have other plans. Our physicists have prepared an atomic bomb from a spare power plant. It’s not sophisticated, and we can’t get the deuterium or the tritium to make a thermonuclear device, but what we have is capable of taking out Timshel City.”
“How would you deliver it?” Kirk asked.
“The Nautilus would carry it to Timshel City harbor and explode the device as soon as it surfaced.”
“That’s out of the question,” Kirk said. “That would wreak more destruction than the returning spaceships.”
“It is,” Johannsen said sorrowfully, “a last resort. But only you can keep us from using it.”
“How?”
“By violating the Prime Directive and assisting our final plan with the capabilities of the Enterprise,” Johannsen said.
“I can’t do that,” Kirk said.
Behind the hut the glacier groaned and stirred. Linda and Johannsen ignored it. Sometimes, Kirk thought, people can be too close to a problem.
[subspace carrier wave transmission]
computers = instructions>
>humans = birth
computers = construction<
computers = additions>
>humans = flesh
computers = metal<
Chapter Nine
Best-Laid Plans
THE DISCUSSION OF the revolution against joy broke for lunch. Chunks of fish were thawed, cans were opened, and freeze-dried food was reconstituted, and the lot was mixed with some fresh vegetables from the greenhouse into something between a stew and a casserole. The stomach-tickling odors of cooking filled the hut. The man and woman responsible for the repast might have been master chefs, Kirk thought, because the result was unexpectedly delicious. Or maybe it was the deprivation of the long undersea voyage and its bland microwaved dishes.
They sat down at the tables, some thirty of them; those with duties during the period were relieved by others to eat in a second shift. The occasion was convivial, and Kirk learned the names and faces and specialties of all of them, including Jawaharlal Srinivasan, who had transformed a power unit into a nuclear bomb, and Miriam Achebe, who had coded the computer virus into a strain of influenza. They were an impressive group, he had to admit, and their commitment to personal freedom was almost an [126] obsession. If scientific miracles were possible, they could work them.
