The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

by Robert A. Heinlein

  She was slow in answering. “Richard, you had trouble believing that I am more than twice your age.”

  “You convinced me. I don’t understand it, but I’ve had to accept it.”

  “You’re going to find other things I must tell you much harder to accept. Much!”

  “Then I probably won’t accept them. Hazel-Gwen honey, I’m a hard case. I don’t believe in table-tapping, astrology, virgin birth—”

  “Virgin birth isn’t difficult.”

  “I mean, in the theological sense; I’m not talking about genetics laboratories.—virgin birth, numerology, a literal hell, magic, witchcraft, and campaign promises. You tell me something that runs contrary to horse sense; I’ll be at least as hard to sell as I was about your ancient years. You’ll need the Galactic Overlord as a confirming witness.”

  “Okay. Slip this one on for size. From one standpoint I’m even more ancient than you suspect. More than two centuries.”

  “Hold it. You won’t be two hundred until Christmas Day 2263. A good many years yet, as you pointed out.”

  “True. I didn’t tell you about these extra years even though I lived through them…because I lived them at right angles.”

  I answered, “Dear, the sound track suddenly went silent.”

  “But, Richard, that one’s easy to believe. Where did I drop my pants?”

  “Through most of the Solar System, according to your memoirs.”

  “That ain’t the half of it, mister. Both inside and outside the System and even outside this universe…and, brother, have I been transgressed against! I mean, where did I drop them today?”

  “At the foot of the bed, I think. Hon, why do you bother to wear panties when you take them off so frequently?”

  “Because. Only sluts run around without drawers…and I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  “I didn’t say a word.”

  “I could hear what you were thinking.”

  “And I don’t believe in telepathy, either.”

  “You don’t, eh? My grandson Dr. Lowell Stone aka Buster used to cheat at chess by reading my mind. Thank God he lost the ability when he was about ten.”

  “Noted,” I answered, “as hearsay concerning a highly improbable event from a reporter whose veracity has not been established. Reliability of alleged datum is therefore not higher than C-Five by military intelligence scaling.”

  “You’ll pay for that!”

  “Scale it yourself,” I told her. “You’ve served in military intelligence. CIA, wasn’t it?”

  “Who sez?”

  “You sez. Through several unfinished remarks.”

  “It was not the CIA and I’ve never been in McLean in my life and I was fully disguised while I was there and it wasn’t me; it was the Galactic Overlord.”

  “And I’m Captain John Sterling.”

  Gwen-Hazel looked wide-eyed. “Gee, Captain, can I have your autograph? Better gimme two; I can trade two of yours for one of Rosie the Robot. Richard, will we be going near the main post office?”

  “Have to. I’ve got to set up a mail drop for Father Schultz. Why, dear?”

  “If we can swing past Macy’s, I’ll get Naomi’s clothes and wig packed, and then I’ll mail them. They’ve been grinding on my conscience.”

  “On your what?”

  “On the bookkeeping system I use in place of one. Richard, you remind me more and more of my third husband. He was a fine figure of a man, just as you are. He took great care of himself and died in perfect health.”

  “What did he die of?”

  “Of a Tuesday, as I remember. Or was it a Wednesday? Anyway, I was not there—I was a long way off, curled up with a good buck. We never did learn what did him in. Apparently he fainted in his bath and his head went under water. What are you mumbling, Richard? ‘Charlotte’ who?”

  “Nothing, nothing at all. Hazel… I do not carry life insurance.”

  “Then we must be extra careful to keep you alive. Stop taking baths!”

  “If I do, in three or four weeks you’ll regret it.”

  “Oh, I’ll stop, too; it will balance out. Richard, will we have time today to go out to the Authority Complex?”

  “Perhaps. Why?”

  “To find Adam Selene.”

  “Is he buried there?”

  “That is something I must try to find out. Richard, is your believer in good shape?”

  “It’s overstrained. Several years at right angles indeed! Want to buy a space warp?”

  “Thank you; I have one. In my purse. Those extra years are just a matter of geometry, my husband. If you are wedded to the conventional picture of space-time with just one time axis, then of course you find it hard to understand. But there are at least three time axes just as there are at least three space axes…and I lived those extra years on other axes. All clear?”

  “Utterly clear, my love. As self-evident as transcendentalism.”

  “I knew you would understand. The case of Adam Selene is more difficult. When I was twelve I heard him speak many times; he was the inspiring leader who held our Revolution together. Then he was killed—or so it was reported. It was not until years later that Mama Wyoh told me, as deepest secret, that Adam was not a man. Not a human being at all. Another sort of entity.”

  I most carefully said nothing.

  Gwen-Hazel said, “Well? Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “Oh, sure. Not human. An alien. Green skin and one meter high and its flying saucer landed in Mare Crisium just outside Loonie City. Where was the Galactic Overlord?”

  “You can’t upset me talking that way, Richard, because I know just how such an impossible story affects one. I had the same sort of doubts when Mama Wyoh told me. Except that I had to believe her because Mama Wyoh would never lie to me. But Adam was not an alien, Richard; he was a child of mankind. But not a human child. Adam Selene was a computer. Or a complex of programs in a computer. But it was a self-programming computer, so it comes to the same thing. Well, sir?”

  I took my time answering. “I like flying saucers better.”

  “Oh, fiddle! I’m tempted to turn you in on Marcy Choy-Mu.”

  “The smartest thing you could do.”

  “No, I’ll keep you; I’m used to your foibles. But I may keep you in a cage.”

  “Hazel. Listen carefully. Computers do not think. They calculate with great speed in accordance with rules built into them. Since we ourselves calculate by using our brains to think, this designed—in capacity to calculate gives computers the appearance of thinking. But they do not think. They operate the way they do because they must; they were built that way. You can add ‘animism’ to the list of nonsense notions to which I do not subscribe.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way, Richard, because this job will be touchy and difficult. I need your healthy skepticism to keep me straight.”

  “I’m going to have to write that down and examine it carefully.”

  “Do that, Richard. Now here is what happened back in 2075 and -6: One of my adoptive fathers, Manuel Garcia, was the technician who took care of the big computer of the Authority. This one computer ran almost everything…handled all the utilities of this city and of most of the other warrens—except Kong—bossed the first catapult, ran the tubes, handled banking, printed the Lunatic—did practically everything. The Authority found it cheaper to expand the functions of this one big computer than to spread computers all through Luna.”

  “Neither efficient nor safe.”

  “Probably, but that’s what they did. Luna was a prison then; it did not have to be either efficient or safe. There was no high tech industry here and in those days we had to accept whatever was handed us. As may be, dear, this one master computer got bigger and bigger…and woke up.”

  (It did, eh? Sheer fantasy, my sweet…and a cliché that has been used by every fantasy writer in history. Even Roger Bacon’s Brass Head was one version of it. Frankenstein’s monster is another. Then a spate of
stories in later years and still they come. And all of them nonsense.) But what I said was: “Go ahead, dear. Then what?”

  “Richard, you don’t believe me.”

  “I thought we settled that. You said that you needed my healthy skepticism.”

  “I do! So use it. Criticize! Don’t just sit there with that smug look on your face. This computer had been operating by voice for years—accepting spoken programs, answering with synthesized speech or printout or both.”

  “Built-in functions. Techniques two centuries old.”

  “Why did your face shut down when I said it ‘woke up’?”

  “Because that’s nonsense, my love. Waking and sleeping are functions of living beings. A machine, no matter how powerful and flexible, does not wake up or go to sleep. It is power on or power off; that’s all.”

  “All right, let me rephrase it. This computer became self-aware and acquired free will.”

  “Interesting. If true. I don’t have to believe it. I don’t.”

  “Richard, I refuse to become exasperated. You are simply young and ignorant and that’s not your fault.”

  “Yes, Grandmaw. I’m young and you’re ignorant. Slippery bottom.”

  “Take your lecherous hands off me and listen. What accounts for self-awareness in a man?”

  “Huh? I have no need to account for it; I experience it.”

  “True. But it is not a trivial question, sir. Let’s treat it like a boundary problem. Are you self-aware? Am I?”

  “Well, I am, monkey face. I’m not sure about you.”

  “The same, vice versa.”

  “That’s fun, too.”

  “Richard, let’s stick to the subject. Is the sperm in a male body self-aware?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Or the ova in a female?”

  “That’s your question to answer, beautiful; I’ve never been female.”

  “And you are dodging questions just to tease me. A spermatozoon is not self-aware and neither is an ovum—and never mind silly remarks; that’s one boundary. I, an adult human zygote, am self-aware. And you are, too, however dimly this is true for males. Second boundary. Very well, Richard; at what point from the freshly fertilized ovum to the mature zygote now named ‘Richard’ did self-awareness enter the picture? Answer me. Don’t dodge it and, please, no silly remarks.”

  I still thought it was a silly question but I tried to give it a serious answer. “Very well. I have always been self-aware.”

  “A serious answer. Please!”

  “Gwen-Hazel, that answer is as serious as I can make it. So far as I know I have lived forever and have been self-aware the whole time. All this talk about things that went on before 2133—the alleged year of my alleged birth—is just hearsay and not very convincing. I go along with the gag to keep from annoying people or getting funny looks. And when I hear astronomers talk about the world being created in a big bang eight or sixteen or thirty billion years before I was born—if I was born; I don’t recall it—that’s a horse laugh. If I was not alive sixteen billion years ago, then there was nothing at all. Not even empty space. Nothing. Zero with no rim around it. The universe in which I exist cannot exist without me in it. So it’s silly to talk about the date I became self-aware; time started when I did, it stops when I do. All clear? Or shall I draw you a diagram?”

  “All clear on most points, Richard. But you are wrong about the date. Time did not start in 2133. It started in 2063. Unless one or the other of us is a golem.”

  Every time I have a go at solipsism something like this happens. “Honey, you’re cute. But you are a figment of my imagination. Ouch! I told you to stop that.”

  “You have a lively imagination, darling. Thanks for thinking me up. Do you want another proof? Up to now I’ve just been playing—shall I now break one of your bones? Just a small one. You pick it.”

  “Listen, figment. You break one of my bones and you’ll regret it for the next billion years.”

  “Merely a logical demonstration, Richard. No malice in it.”

  “And once I set the bone—”

  “Oh, I’ll set it, dear.”

  “Not on your life! Once I have it set, I’ll phone Xia and ask her to come over and marry me and protect me from small figments with violent habits.”

  “You’re going to divorce me?” Again she was suddenly all big eyes.

  “Hell, no! Just bust you down to junior wife and put Xia in charge. But you can’t leave. Permission denied. You’re serving a life sentence, whether it’s straight ahead or at right angles. I’m going to get a club and beat you until you give up your evil ways.”

  “All right. As long as I don’t have to go away.”

  “Ouch! And don’t bite. That’s rude.”

  “Richard, if I am just a figment of your imagination, then any biting I do is your idea, done by you to yourself for some murky masochistic purpose. If that is not true, then I must be self-aware…not your figment.”

  “Either/or logic never proves anything. But you’re a delightful figment, dear. I’m glad I thought of you.”

  “Thank you, sir. Sweetheart, here is a key question. If you will answer it seriously, I’ll stop biting.”

  “Forever?”

  “Uh—”

  “Don’t strain yourself, figment. If you have a serious question, I’ll try to give it a serious answer.”

  “Yes, sir. What accounts for self-awareness in a man and what is there about this condition or process or whatever that makes awareness impossible for a machine? Specifically for a computer. In particular the giant computer that administered this planet in 2076. The Holmes IV.”

  I resisted the temptation to give a flip answer. Self-awareness? I know that one school of psychologists insists that awareness, if it exists, is present just as a passenger, no effect on behavior.

  This sort of nonsense should be lumped with transubstantiation. If true, it can’t be proved.

  I am aware of my own self-awareness…and that is as far as any honest solipsist should go. “Gwen-Hazel, I don’t know.”

  “Good! We’re making progress.”

  “We are?”

  “Yes, Richard. The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it—once you can honestly say, ‘I don’t know,’ then it becomes possible to get at the truth.”

  “Hon, you are not only the cutest little figment I’ve ever imagined, you are also the smartest.”

  “Knock it off, buster. Listen to this theory. And think of it as a working hypothesis, not as God-given truth. It was dreamed up by my adoptive father. Papa Mannie, to account for the observed fact that this computer had come to life. Maybe it explains something, maybe it doesn’t—Mama Wyoh said that Papa Mannie was never sure. Now attend me—A fertilized human ovum divides…and divides again. And again. And again and again and again. Somewhere along there—I don’t know where—this collection of millions of living cells becomes aware of itself and the world around it.”

  She went on: “A fertilized egg is not aware but a baby is. After Papa Mannie discovered that his computer was self-aware, he noted that this computer, which had been expanded outrageously as more jobs were assigned to it, had reached a point of complication where it had more interconnections in it than has a human brain.

  “Papa Mannie made a great theoretical leap: When the number of interconnections in a computer become of the same close order as the number of interconnections in a human brain that computer can wake up and become aware of itself…and probably will. He wasn’t sure that it always happened, but he became convinced that it could happen and for that reason: the high number of interconnections.

  “Richard, Papa Mannie never went any farther with it. He was not a theoretical scientist; he was a repair technician. But the way his computer was behaving bothered him; he had to tr
y to figure out why it was acting so oddly. This theory resulted. But you need not pay attention to it; Papa Mannie never tested it.”

  “Hazel, what was this odd behavior?”

  “Oh. Mama Wyoh told me that the first thing Manuel noticed was that Mike—the computer, I mean—Mike had acquired a sense of humor.”

  “Oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes. Mama Wyoh told me that, to Mike—or Michelle—or Adam Selene—he used all three names; he was a trinity—to Mike, the entire Luna Revolution, in which thousands died here and hundreds of thousands died on Earth, was a joke. It was just one great big practical joke thought up by a computer with supergenius brain power and a childish sense of humor.” Hazel grimaced, then grinned. “Just a great, big, overgrown, lovable kid who should have been kicked.”

  “You make it sound like a pleasure. Kicking him.”

  “Do I? Perhaps I should not. After all, a computer could not possibly do right or wrong, or experience good or evil in the human sense; it would have no background for it—no rearing, if you please. Mama Wyoh told me that Mike’s human behavior was by imitation—he had endless role models; he read everything, including fiction. But his only real emotion, all his own, was deep loneliness and a great longing for companionship. That’s what our revolution was to Mike: companionship…play…a game that won him attention from Prof and Wyoh and especially Mannie. Richard, if a machine can have emotions, that computer loved my Papa Mannie. Well, sir?”

  I was tempted to say nonsense or something even less polite. “Hazel, you are demanding bald truth from me—and it will hurt your feelings. It sounds like fiction to me. If not your fiction, then that of your foster mother, Wyoming Knott.” I added, “Sweetheart, are we going out to attend to our chores? Or are we going to spend all day talking about a theory on which neither of us has any evidence?”

  “I’m dressed and ready to go, dear. Just one little bit more and I’ll shut up. You find this story unbelievable.”

  “Yes, I do.” I said it as flatly as possible.

  “What part of it is unbelievable?”

  “All of it.”

  “Truly? Or is the sticking point the idea that a computer can be self-aware? If you accept that, does the rest of it become easier to swallow?”