by Various
The door opened and closed and Maria Bergozza was with them. She said, "Apparently this is necessary." She was holding a glass-pellet gun in her hand, pointing it at Lindsay.
He said, "Why, you--!" and moved toward her. Promptly the Secretary General's daughter pointed the gun at Nina's tanned midriff. He stopped.
Maria said evenly, "It's you that have done this to me, Nina. You've had all the fun while I've had to pour tea for papa at his damned functions. You've fouled up our plans with your meddling down in New Orleans. And now you've taken Zale, as you take everything else you take a fancy to."
"But you tried to kill him," said Nina. "Why should you care?"
"He would have been a martyr--and you wouldn't have had him," said Maria, her gun hand steady. "I know it's going to ruin me to kill you--but my whole life is ruined anyway. And this way at least I can sacrifice it for the cause."
"The cause of interplanetary war?" said Lindsay, in his turn incredulous. Hot rage rose within him, "You third-rate tramp!" He stepped squarely into the line of fire, thrust his left breast in front of the muzzle of her gun. Behind him Nina screamed.
But Maria didn't fire. Instead she sneezed--sneezed and sneezed again. Her gun hand gyrated wildly as she doubled in a paroxysm and Nina moved past Lindsay to pluck the weapon from her.
"Don't call me--krrrrashew!--third-rate," she managed to gasp before the blonde sent her sprawling with a very efficient right cross to the chin.
Nina turned on Lindsay angrily. "You damned fool!" she almost shouted. "You might have been killed."
He looked down, felt his knees turn to water. He said, "Omigod--I thought I was still wearing the star. I remembered how you saved my life in New Orleans with your diamond evening bag!"
He sat down--hard. From the floor Maria whimpered, "What are you going to do to me?"
Nina said, "I ought to kill you, you know, but it would cause too much of a stink. So beat it and let us think. You'll be hearing from me later. What you hear will depend on how you handle yourself from now on. Understand?"
When she had slunk out Lindsay said, "What broke her up?"
Nina dropped the gun into her bag casually, said, "Now I know you're lucky, you thin slob. You happened to stumble right onto her allergy. She can't stand being thought of as a third-rate lover. That's why she's always been jealous of me--because I have top-model rating and she could never make it. She's too damned concerned with pleasing herself to please anyone else. She flunked out at fourteen."
"Then why didn't you pull it?" Lindsay asked her, astonished.
"Because," Nina said thoughtfully, "I'm not conditioned to think that way. It's horribly rude here on Earth to stir up other people's allergies. As you reminded me last night, you rat, we're all people in glass houses."
"But I didn't even know...." muttered Lindsay.
"You hit it though," she reminded him. "And you're going to hit it again out there in exactly five minutes."
* * * * *
Lindsay was extremely conscious of the eyes of the vidar cameras upon him as President Giovannini, having finished his introductory speech, led him to the alabaster stele in the center of Giac's great central chamber and turned him over to du Fresne, whose official robe hung unevenly from the hump of his harness.
Lindsay handed the Minister of Computation the question he had prepared on paper, was brusquely told, "Read it please, Ambassador."
He cleared his throat and began.
"I am asking a question highly pertinent to the welfare and future amity of the United Worlds," he said slowly. "More specifically to the future amity of Earth and Mars. It is a simple question without involved mathematical qualifications--but one that no computer and no man has thus far been able to answer correctly.
"It is this continued failure of computers to come up with a logical answer in the full frame of interplanetary conditions that has done much to make the people of my planet feel that no computer is trustworthy to make decisions involving human beings."
He paused, looked covertly at du Fresne, repressed a smile. The Minister of Computation was already showing signs of distress. He was shaking his head, making little pawing motions toward his glasses.
"Here it is," Lindsay said quickly. "Should the governors of Mars, whose responsibilities lie at least as much in the economic improvement of their own world as in inter-world harmony, permit their planet to receive goods which retard that economic development so that it becomes a race to maintain current unsatisfactory standards, merely because certain computers on Earth are fed false facts to permit continuation of some illogical form of government or social system--or should the governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?"
He walked slowly back to his place and sat down, almost feeling the silence around him. Nina whispered, "What in hell does it mean?"
Lindsay whispered back, "It's a bit of the iron dog and the whale, a bit of the Red Queen, a bit of the suicide idea--and something else. Let's see if it works."
Lindsay watched du Fresne, whose moment of triumph was marred by his obvious discomfort. The twisted little man was very busy running the question into its various forms for submission to the feeder units, whose mouths gaped like hungry nestlings along part of one side wall.
If du Fresne failed him....
It was a long nervous wait. Lights flickered in meaningless succession on subsidiary instrument boards and du Fresne darted about like a bespectacled buzzard, studying first this set of symbols, then that one.
Lindsay glanced at Maria, who sat huddled beside her father beyond the president. To break the suspense he whispered to Nina, "What about her?"
Nina whispered back, "I've got it taped. I'm going to give her a nice empty job on the moon--one with a big title attached. It will get her out of the way--she can't do any harm there--and make her feel she's doing something. Besides"--a faint malicious pause--"there are still four men to every woman on Luna. And they aren't choosy."
"You're a witch," said Lindsay. He snickered and someone shushed him. Looking up he saw that things were happening.
"In exactly"--du Fresne glanced up at a wall chronometer--"six seconds Giac will give its answer."
They seemed more like six years to Lindsay. Then the alabaster stele in the center of the floor came abruptly to life. A slow spiral of red, composed of a seemingly endless stream of high mathematical symbols, started up from its base, worked rapidly around and around it like an old-fashioned barber-pole's markings, moving ever upward toward its top.
"Effective--very effective," murmured President Giovannini.
Suddenly a voice sounded, a pleasant voice specially geared to resemble the voice of the greatest of twentieth-century troubadors, Bing Crosby. It said, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."
There was a gasp--a gasp that seemed to emerge not only from the company present but, in reverse, through the vidarcasters from the entire listening world. President Giovannini, suddenly white, said inelegantly, "Son of a bitch!"
Nina laughed out loud and gripped Lindsay's arm tightly. "You've done it, darling--you've done it!" she cried.
"On the contrary," he said quietly, "I haven't done it; du Fresne did it." And as he looked toward the Minister of Computation that little man fainted.
* * * * *
But Giac kept right on. It blanked out briefly, then once more the spiral of red figures began to work its way around and up the stele. And once again the pleasant voice announced, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."
It blanked out, began again. And this time, from somewhere in the building, came the thud of a muffled explosion. A spiral of green symbols began to circle the stele, then a spiral of yellow. The red reached the top first and the Bing Crosby voice began again, "Interplanetary unity de--"
The green and yellow spirals reached the top. A few seconds of sheer Jabberwocky emerged from the loudspeaker, ending in a chorus of, "Illogi
c, illogic, illogic...." with the words overlapping.
Panic began to show itself. The president gasped and Maria suddenly shrieked. Frightened onlookers crowded toward the door. The president looked from the machine to Lindsay, bewildered.
Lindsay got up and strode toward the microphone by the stele. He shouted into it, "Turn off the computer--turn it off."
And, moments later, while the angry hot glow of the stele faded slowly, he said, "People of Earth, this is Lindsay of Mars. Please be calm while I explain. There is nothing wrong with Giac or any of your computers." He paused, added ruefully, "At least nothing that cannot be repaired in short order where Giac is concerned.
"I am going to ask to look once more at the question I submitted to this machine--and to the language tape fed into it by the Honorable Mr. du Fresne." He waited while they were brought to him, scanned them, smiled, said, "No the fault was not with Giac. Nor was it consciously with Mr. du Fresne. The question was loaded.
"You see, I happen to know that your Minister's belief in computers is such that he suffers an involuntary reaction when he hears them defamed. I defamed computers both in my preliminary address and in my question. And when he had to transfer to tape the phrase '--or, should the Governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?'--when he transferred that sentence to tape he was physically unable to write the phrase 'computer illogic'.
"Involuntarily he changed it to 'computer logic' with the result that the question was utterly meaningless and caused Giac's tubes to short circuit. None of the recent computer failures was the fault of the machines--it was the fault of the men who fed them material to digest.
"So I believe it is safe to say that you may rely upon your computers--as long as they do not deal with problems affecting yourselves and ourselves. For those you need human speculation, human debate, above all human judgment!"
President Giovannini, able politician that he was, had joined Lindsay at the microphone, put an arm across his shoulders, said, "I feel humble--yes, humble--in the great lesson this great envoy from our sister planet had taught us. What they can do on Mars we can do on Earth."
When at last they were clear of the vidar cameras Lindsay grinned and said, "Nice going, Johnny--you'll have more voters than ever come next election."
Giovannini simply stared at him. His eyes began to water, his nose to run and he turned away, groping for an evapochief.
Lindsay looked after him and shook his head. He said to Nina, who had rejoined him, "How about that? Johnny's in tears."
"Of course he is," snapped Nina. "He's allergic to the word 'voters'. Night soil, but you're simple!"
Lindsay felt his own eyes water. He sneezed, violently, for the first time since coming to Earth. Concerned, Nina said, "What's wrong, darling? Have I done something?"
"If you ever say 'night soil' again..." he began. Then, "Krrachooooo!" He felt as if the top of his head were missing.
Nina hugged him, grinning like a gamine. "I'll save it for very special occasions," she promised.
* * *
Contents
THE FINAL FIGURE
by Sam Merwin, Jr.
The General had an unpleasant vision as he watched this model in operation....
Was it a wild talent that MacReedy had, or was it just prophetic genius that led him to figure out new, improved ordnance weapons and make models of them—before the armed forces had them? Whichever it was, MacReedy was both valuable and dangerous—and when the general saw MacReedy's final figure, the weapons following the mobile rocket A-missile launcher....
The General was in mufti. He stood briefly within the entrance of Models and Miniatures, Inc., feeling a mild envy of the civilians who brushed past him, coming and going. They looked so easy, so relaxed, so casual in posture and dress. He was wistfully aware of the West Point ramrod that was his spine, the razor-edged bandbox neatness of his banker's grey suit, the Herbert Hoover four-squareness of his homburg, the stiff-symmetry of his dark-blue fore-in-hand.
He found compensation in visualizing some of these casual civilians in uniform—then shuddered, and moved on into the shop, poise and assurance restored.
Save for the display-counters and wall-cases, the shop was softly lighted. And although it was well filled with customers and lookers of all ages there was about it the hushed quality of a library—or a chapel. Even the children talked softly as they pointed at and discussed this 100-gauge English locomotive or that working jet-model of a Vought-Chance Cutlass. They were well-aware of being in sight of wish and dream-fulfillment.
He moved slowly toward the rear of the shop, past the glass counters that displayed gaily-painted models of carriages, coaches and early automobiles; past the fire-engines in red and gold; past the railroads; past the planes and past the tiny ships—from Phoenician galleys and Viking vessels with gaudily-decorative sails and shields to the latest bizarre-decked atomic aircraft carrier.
He stood in front of the miniature soldiers and, for a happy moment, recaptured the glamour of parades and gay uniforms that had beckoned him into a career whose color and band-music had long since been worn off by the nerve-wracking tragedy of battle and the endless ulcerating paper-work of peace.
Busman's holiday, he thought. Sailors in a rowboat in Central Park. And he was glad he had not worn his uniform.
Each miniature-soldier manufacturer had a glass shelf to his own wares, labeled with a white-cardboard rectangle upon which his name had been neatly brushed with India ink. Here were the comparatively rude Britains, mass-produced, work-horses of toy armies throughout the Western World since before his own boyhood.
Here were the heavy and magnificent Courtleys, specializing in medieval knights and men-at-arms, beautifully caparisoned in all the colors of the rainbow. Here were the Barker Napoleonics, the one-inch Staddens, the incredible half-inch Emery Penninsulars—each a costly little work of art that defied the enlarging of a magnifying glass. Here were Comets in khaki and grey, perfect models of the guns, tanks and trucks of America, England and Soviet Russia.
To his left along the counter a chunky blond citizen, with wide cheekbones and a faint Slavic accent, was discussing a sale with the clerk. The general was only subconsciously aware of him as he moved in that direction, marveling a little at the painstaking craftsmanship, the endless hours of eye-destroying labor that had produced such microscopic perfection—as well as at some of the follies with which men had attired themselves in the name of martial glory.
He recalled having read of an order, issued at the time of the Mexican War, that the collars of all officers in the United States Army should rise to the tips of the ears. It was scarcely surprising, he thought, that the Seminoles—clad virtually in nothing at all—should have been able to stalemate an army thus uniformed in the steaming swamps of Florida.
"They're great, aren't they?"
The voice came from a lower level, and the General looked down to meet the excited blue eyes of a curly-haired male moppet who could scarcely have been more than twelve. There was an aura of friendliness about the leather-jacketed-and-corduroyed youngster, a sharing of manifest interest, that pierced the hide of the old soldier.
He smiled back and said, "Quite wonderful," and was briefly afraid his words had been too condescending. But the quick answering smile on the youngster's face revealed that he had said the right thing.
He followed the lad's rapt gaze to a shelf he had not yet studied. The name on its cardboard label read MacReedy and as soon as he saw the tiny figures it supported, his interest became focused upon it to the exclusion of all other shelves and their fascinating displays.
MacReedy was very evidently a specialist. His subject was American soldiery, with its chief emphasis on artillery—from early Colonial times to the present. As one of the highest-ranking officers in the Ordnance Department of the United States Army, the General's critical interest was aroused.
Here wer
e the demi-culverins of the Manhattan Dutch, the brass field-pieces and mortars of the French wars and the Revolution, the light horse artillery cannon of the Mexican and Civil Wars, along with pear-shaped Dahlgren and Parrot siege-guns, each piece with its crew of aimers, loaders, rammers and ammunition bearers.
Here were the crowbar-like dynamite guns that protected New York and Boston and Baltimore against threatened British invasion during the Newfoundland fisheries disputes, back in the 1880's; and the complex disappearing cannon that followed them. Here was the old standard three-inch fieldpiece on which the General had cut his own eyeteeth; here the French 75 and 155, long and short, and the mammoth railway guns of World War One. Here was even a model of the postwar American 75—the ill-fated cannon that had proved so accurate on the firing-range, and so utterly useless after a half-mile over a bumpy road.
Here were the weapons of World War Two, from M-7 105 self-propelled howitzer to the 240-millimetre tractor-borne cannon. And here were more recent weapons, the 120-millimetre radar-aimed anti-aircraft cannon; its newer automatic 75-millimetre cousin; the new 90-millimetre turret-mount for the Walker Bulldog, the 105-gpf in the turret of its new heavy tank.
The General felt a stir of alarm. There had been a leak somewhere; release on this model was not scheduled for another month. He would have to report it, of course. Then he shrugged, inwardly. Leak or not there was small cause for alarm; They must long-since have managed to scrounge test-run photographs, if not copies of the blueprints themselves.
Still, a leak was bad business with the country so precariously balanced in a combustible world-situation. He looked at the next weapon, the last in the line.
And froze....
Here was the XT-101, with its rear-mounted turret and twin dual-purpose automatic 75-millimetre cannon. Here was a weapon, complete, that had not been completed in actuality—there was trouble with the turret, of course, there always was....
It couldn't be—but it was. The General discovered that his mouth had slackened in surprise; he closed it firmly. He eyed the turret of the miniature, noted how the automatic range-finding devices, that were causing trouble at Aberdeen, were incorporated into the turret itself, in a neat armored sheath.
