The Nail and the Oracle

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “All of which,” complained Jones to the featureless face of the computer, “doesn’t help me find out why you wouldn’t answer those three guys, though I must say, I’m glad you didn’t.” He went and got the desk chair and put it down front and center before the computer. He sat down and folded his arms and they stared silently at each other.

  At length he said, “If you were a people instead of a thing, how would I handle you? A miserable, stubborn, intelligent snob of a people?”

  Just how do I handle people? he wondered. I do—I know I do. I always seem to think of the right thing to say, or to ask. I’ve already asked ORACLE what’s wrong, and ORACLE says nothing is wrong. The way any miserable, stubborn, intelligent snob would.

  What I do, he told himself, is to empathize. Crawl into their skins, feel with their fingertips, look out through their eyes.

  Look out through their eyes.

  He rose and got the admiral’s query—the one with the admiral’s own identification on it—clipped it to the board, then hunkered down on the floor with his back to the computer and his head blocking the lens.

  He was seeing exactly what the computer saw.

  Clipboard. Query. The small bare chamber, the far wall. The …

  He stopped breathing. After a long astonished moment he said, when he could say anything, and because it was all he could think of to say: “Well, I … be … damned …”

  The admiral was the first in. Jones had had a busy time of it for the ninety minutes following his great discovery, and he was feeling a little out of breath, but at the same time a little louder and quicker than the other guy, as if he had walked into the reading room after a rub-down and a needle-shower.

  “Sit down, Admiral.”

  “Jones, did you—”

  “Please, sir—sit down.”

  “But surely—”

  “I’ve got your answer, Admiral. But there’s something we have to do first.” He made waving gestures. “Bear with me.”

  He wouldn’t have made it, thought Jones, except for the colonel’s well-timed entrance. Boy oh boy, thought Jones, look at ’m, stiff as tongs. You come on the battlefield looking just like a target. On the other hand, that’s how you made your combat reputation, isn’t it? The colonel was two strides into the room before he saw the admiral. He stopped, began an about-face and said over his left epaulet, “I didn’t think—”

  “Sit down, Colonel,” said Jones in a pretty fair imitation of the man’s own brass gullet. It reached the officer’s muscles before it reached his brain and he sat. He turned angrily on the admiral, who said instantly, “This wasn’t my idea,” in a completely insulting way.

  Again the door opened and old living history walked in, his head a little to one side, his eyes ready to see and understand and his famous mouth to smile, but when he saw the tableau, the eyes frosted over and the mouth also said: “I didn’t think—”

  “Sit down, sir,” said Jones, and began spieling as the civilian was about to refuse, and kept on spieling while he changed his mind, lowered himself guardedly onto the edge of a chair and perched his old bones on its front edge as if he intended not to stay.

  “Gentlemen,” Jones began, “I’m happy to tell you that I have succeeded in finding out why ORACLE was unable to perform for you—thanks to certain unexpected cooperation I received.” Nice touch, Jones. Each one of ’em will think he turned the trick, single-handedly. But not for long. “Now I have a plane to catch, and you all have things to do, and I would appreciate it if you would hear me out with as little interruption as possible.” Looking at these bright, eager, angry, sullen faces, Jones let himself realize for the first time why detectives in whodunits assemble all the suspects and make speeches. Why they personally do it—why the author has them do it. It’s because it’s fun.

  “In this package”—he lifted from beside his desk a brown paper parcel a yard long and fifteen inches wide—“is the cause of all the trouble. My company was founded over a half century ago, and one of these has been an appurtenance of everyone of the company’s operations, each of its major devices and installations, all of its larger utility equipment—cranes, trucks, bulldozers, everything. You’ll find them in every company office and in most company cafeterias.” He put the package down flat on his desk and fondled it while he talked. “Now, gentlemen. I’m not going to go into any part of the long argument about whether or not a computer can be conscious of what it’s doing, because we haven’t time and we’re not here to discuss metaphysics. I will, however, remind you of a childhood chant. Remember the one that runs: ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the kingdom was lost—and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.’ ”

  “Mr. Jones,” said the admiral, “I—we—didn’t come here to—”

  “I just said that,” Jones said smoothly, and went right on talking until the admiral just stopped trying. “This”—he rapped the package—“is ORACLE’s horseshoe nail. If it’s no ordinary nail, that’s because ORACLE’s no ordinary computer. It isn’t designed to solve problems in their own context; there are other machines that do that. ORACLE solves problems the way an educated man solves them—by bringing everything he is and has to bear on them. Lacking this one part”—he thumped the package again—“it can then answer your questions, and it accordingly did.” He smiled suddenly. “I don’t think ORACLE was designed this way,” he added musingly. “I think it … became … this way …” He shook himself. “Anyway, I have your answers.”

  Now he could afford to pause, because he had them. At that moment, the only way any of them could have been removed was by dissection and haulage.

  Jones lined up his sights on the colonel and said, “In a way, your question was the most interesting, Colonel. To me professionally, I mean. It shows to what detail ORACLE can go in answering a wide theoretical question. One might even make a case for original creative thinking, though that’s always arguable. Could a totally obedient robot think if you flatly ordered it to think? When does a perfect imitation of a thing become the thing itself?”

  “You’re not going to discuss my question here,” said the colonel as a matter of absolute, incontrovertible fact.

  “Yes I am,” said Jones, and raised his voice. “You listen to me, before you stick that trigger finger of yours inside that tunic. Colonel. I’m in a corny mood right now and so I’ve done a corny thing. Two copies of a detailed report of this whole affair are now in the mail, and, I might add, in a mailbox outside this building. One goes to my boss, who is a very big wheel and a loyal friend, with as many contacts in business and government as there are company machines operating, and that puts him on the damn moon as well as all over the world. The other goes to someone else, and when you find out who that is it’ll be too late, because in two hours he can reach every paper, every wire service, every newscasting organization on earth. Naturally, consistent with the corn, I’ve sent these out sealed with orders to open them if I don’t phone by a certain time—and I assure you it won’t be from here. In other words, you can’t do anything to me and you’d better not delay me. Sit down, Admiral,” he roared.

  “I’m certainly not going to sit here and—”

  “I’m going to finish what I started out to do whether you’re here or not.” Jones waved at the other two. “They’ll be here. You want that?”

  The admiral sat down. The civilian said, in a tolling of mighty sorrow, “Mr. Jones, I had what seemed to be your faithful promise—”

  “There were overriding considerations,” said Jones. “You know what an overriding consideration is, don’t you, sir?” and he held up the unmistakable ORACLE query form. The civilian subsided.

  “Let him finish,” gritted the colonel. “We can—well, let him finish.”

  Jones instantly, like ORACLE, translated: We can take care of him later. He said to the colonel, “Cheer up. Y
ou can always deny everything, like you said.” He fanned through the papers before him and dealt out the colonel’s query. He read it aloud:

  “ ‘IF I ELIMINATE THE PRESIDENT, HOW CAN I ASSURE PERSONAL CONTROL?’ ”

  The colonel’s face could have been shipped out, untreated, and installed on Mount Rushmore. The civilian gasped and put his knuckles in his mouth. The admiral’s slitted eyes went round.

  “The answer,” said Jones, “makes that case for creative thinking I was talking about. ORACLE said: ‘DETONATE ONE BOMB WITHIN UNDERGROUND H.Q. SPEND YOUR SUBSEQUENT TENURE LOOKING FOR OTHERS.’ ”

  Jones put down the paper and spoke past the colonel to the other two. “Get the big picture, gentlemen? ‘UNDERGROUND H.Q.’ could only mean the centralized control for government in the mountains. Whether or not the President—or anyone else—was there at the time is beside the point. If not, he’d find another way easily enough. After that happened, our hero here would take the posture of the national savior, the only man competent to track down a second bomb, which could be anywhere. Imagine the fear, the witchhunts, the cordons, the suspicion, the ‘Emergency’ and ‘For the Duration’ orders and regulations.” Suddenly savage, Jones snarled, “I’ve got just one more thing to say about this warrior and his plans. All his own strength, and the entire muscle behind everything he plans for himself, derives from the finest esprit de corps the world has ever known. I told you I’m in a corny mood, so I’m going to say it just the way it strikes me. That kind of esprit is a bigger thing than obedience or devotion or even faith, it’s a species of love. And there’s not a hell of a lot of that to go around in this world. Butchering the President to make himself a little tin god is a minor crime compared to his willingness to take a quality like that and turn it into a perversion.”

  The civilian, as if unconsciously, hitched his chair a half inch away from the colonel. The admiral trained a firing-squad kind of look at him.

  “Admiral,” said Jones, and the man twitched, “I’d like to call your attention to the colonel’s use of the word ‘eliminate’ in his query. You don’t, you know, you just don’t eliminate a live President.” He let that sink in, and then said, “I mention it because you, too, used it, and it’s a fair conjecture that it means the same thing. Listen: ‘WHAT SINGLE MAN CAN I ELIMINATE TO BECOME PRESIDENT?’ ”

  “There could hardly be any one man,” said the civilian thoughtfully, gaining Jones’ great respect for his composure. Jones said, “ORACLE thinks so. It wrote your name, sir.”

  Slowly the civilian turned to the admiral. “Why, you sleek old son of a bitch,” he enunciated carefully, “I do believe you could have made it.”

  “Purely a hypothetical question,” explained the admiral, but no one paid the least attention.

  “As for you,” said Jones, rather surprised that his voice expressed so much of the regret he felt, “I do believe that you asked your question with a genuine desire to see a world at peace before you passed on. But, sir—it’s like you said when you walked in here just now—and the colonel said it, too: ‘I didn’t think …’ You are sitting next to two certifiable first-degree murderers; no matter what their overriding considerations, that’s what they are. But what you planned is infinitely worse.”

  He read, “ ‘CAN MY SUPPORT OF HENNY BRING PEACE?’ You’ll be pleased to know—oh, you already know; you were just checking, right?—that the answer is Yes. Henny’s position is such right now that your support would bring him in. But—you didn’t think. That demagogue can’t do what he wants to do without a species of thought-policing the like of which the ant-heap experts in China never even dreamed of. Unilateral disarmament and high morality scorched-earth! Why, as a nation we couldn’t do that unless we meant it, and we couldn’t mean it unless every man, woman and child thought alike—and with Henny running things, they would. Peace? Sure we’d have peace! I’d rather take on a Kodiak bear with boxing gloves than take my chances in that kind of a world. These guys,” he said carelessly, “are prepared to murder one or two or a few thousand. You,” said Jones, his voice suddenly shaking with scorn, “are prepared to murder every decent free thing this country ever stood for.”

  Jones rose. “I’m going now. All your answers are in the package there. Up to now it’s been an integral part of ORACLE—it was placed exactly in line with the reader, and has therefore been a part of everything the machine has ever done. My recommendation is that you replace it, or ORACLE will be just another computer, answering questions in terms of themselves. I suggest that you make similar installations in your own environment … and quit asking questions that must be answered in terms of yourselves. Questions which in the larger sense would be unthinkable.”

  The civilian rose, and did something that Jones would always remember as a decent thing. He put out his hand and said, “You are right. I needed this, and you’ve stopped me. What will stop them?”

  Jones took the hand. “They’re stopped. I know, because I asked ORACLE and ORACLE said this was the way to do it.” He smiled briefly and went out. His last glimpse of the office was the rigid backs of the two officers, and the civilian behind his desk, slowly unwrapping the package. He walked down the endless Pentagon corridors, the skin between his shoulder blades tight all the way: ORACLE or no, there might be overriding considerations. But he made it, and got to the first outside phone booth still alive. Marvelously, wonderfully alive.

  He heard Ann’s voice and said, “It’s a real wonderful world, you know that?”

  “Jones, darling! … you certainly have changed your tune. Last time I talked to you it was a horrible place full of evil intentions and smelling like feet.”

  “I just found out for sure three lousy kinds of world it’s not going to be,” Jones said. Ann would not have been what she was to him if she had not been able to divine which questions not to ask. She said, “Well, good,” and he said he was coming home.

  “Oh, darling! You fix that gadget?”

  “Nothing to it,” Jones said. “I just took down the

  THINK

  sign.”

  She said, “I never know when you’re kidding.”

  If All Men Were Brothers,

  Would You Let One Marry Your Sister?

  The Sun went Nova in the Year 33 A.E. “A.E.” means “After the Exodus.” You might say the Exodus was a century and a half or so A.D. if “A.D.” means “After the Drive.” The Drive, to avoid technicalities, was a device somewhat simpler than Woman and considerably more complicated than sex, which caused its vessel to cease to exist here while simultaneously appearing there, bypassing the limitations imposed by the speed of light. One might compose a quite impressive account of astrogation involving the Drive, with all the details of orientation here and there and the somewhat philosophical difficulties of establishing the relationships between them, but this is not that kind of a science fiction story.

  It suits our purposes rather to state that the Sun went Nova with plenty of warning, that the first fifty years A.D. were spent in improving the Drive and exploring with unmanned vehicles which located many planets suitable for human settlement, and that the next hundred years were spent in getting humanity ready to leave. Naturally there developed a number of ideological groups with a most interesting assortment of plans for one Perfect Culture or another, most of which were at bitter odds with all the rest. The Drive, however, had presented Earth with so copious a supply of new worlds, with insignificant subjective distances between them and the parent, that dissidents need not make much of their dissent, but need merely file for another world and they would get it. The comparisons between the various cultural theories are pretty fascinating, but this is not that kind of a science fiction story either. Not quite.

  Anyway, what happened was that, with a margin of a little more than three decades, Terra depopulated itself by its many thousands of ships to its hundreds of worlds (leaving behind, of course, certain die-hards who died, of course, certainly) and the new worlds were established wit
h varying degrees of bravery and a pretty wide representation across the success scale.

  It happened, however (in ways much too recondite to be described in this kind of a science fiction story), that Drive Central on Earth, a computer central, was not only the sole means of keeping track of all the worlds; it was their only means of keeping track with one another; and when this installation added its bright brief speck to the ocean of Nova-glare, there simply was no way for all the worlds to find one another without the arduous process of unmanned Drive-ships and search. It took a long while for any of the new worlds to develop the necessary technology, and an even longer while for it to be productively operational, but at length, on a planet which called itself Terratu (the suffix meaning both “too” and “2”) because it happened to be the third planet of a GO-type sun, there appeared something called the Archives, a sort of index and clearinghouse for all known inhabited worlds, which made this planet the communications central and general dispatcher for trade with them all and their trade with one another—a great convenience for everyone. A side result, of course, was the conviction on Terratu that, being a communications central, it was also central to the universe and therefore should control it, but then, that is the occupational hazard of all conscious entities.

  We are now in a position to determine just what sort of a science fiction story this really is.

  “Charli Bux,” snapped Charli Bux, “to see the Archive Master.”

  “Certainly,” said the pretty girl at the desk, in the cool tones reserved by pretty girls for use on hurried and indignant visitors who are clearly unaware, or uncaring, that the girl is pretty. “Have you an appointment?”

  He seemed like such a nice young man in spite of his hurry and his indignation. The way, however, in which he concealed all his niceness by bringing his narrowed eyes finally to rest on her upturned face, and still showed no signs of appreciating her pretty-girlhood, made her quite as not-pretty as he was not-nice.