The Cosmic Computer

by H. Beam Piper

  II

  He had been in Kurt Fawzi's office before, once or twice, with hisfather; he remembered it as a dim, quiet place of genteel convivialityand rambling conversation. None of the lights were bright, and thewalls were almost invisible in the shadows. As they entered, TomBrangwyn went to the long table and took off his belt and holster,laying it down. One by one, the others unbuckled their weapons andadded them to the pile. Klem Zareff's cane went on the table with hispistol; there was a sword inside it.

  That was something else he was seeing with new eyes. He hadn't startedcarrying a gun when he had left for Terra, and he was wondering, now,why any of them bothered to. Why, there wouldn't be a shooting a yearin Litchfield, if you didn't count the Tramptowners, and they stayedsouth of the docks and off the top level.

  Or perhaps that was just it. Litchfield was peaceful becauseeverybody was prepared to keep it that way. It certainly wasn'tbecause of anything the Planetary Government did to maintain order.

  Now Brangwyn was setting out glasses, filling a pitcher from a keg inthe corner of the room. The last time Conn had been here, they'd givenhim a glass of wine, and he'd felt very grown-up because they didn'twater it for him.

  "Well, gentlemen," Kurt Fawzi was saying, "let's have a toast to ourreturned friend and new associate. Conn, we're all anxious to hearwhat you've found out, but even if you didn't learn anything, we'restill happy to have you back with us. Gentlemen; to our friend andneighbor. Welcome home, Conn!"

  "Well, it's wonderful to be back, Mr. Fawzi," he began.

  "Here, none of this mister foolishness; you're one of us, now, Conn.And drink up, everybody. We have plenty of brandy, if we don't haveanything else."

  "You can say that again, Kurt." That was one of the distillery people;he'd remember the name in a moment. "When this new crop gets pressedand fermented...."

  "I don't know where in Gehenna I'm going to vat mine till itferments," Klem Zareff said.

  "Or why," another planter added. "Lorenzo, what are you going to bepaying for wine?"

  Lorenzo Menardes; that was the name. The distiller said he wasworrying about what he'd be able to get for brandy.

  "Oh, please," Fawzi interrupted. "Not today; not when our boy's homeand is going to tell us how we can solve all our problems."

  "Yes, Conn." That was Morgan Gatworth, the lawyer. "You did find outwhere Merlin is, didn't you?"

  That set them all off. He was still holding his drink; he downed it inone gulp, barely tasting it, and handed the glass to Tom Brangwyn fora refill, and caught a frown on his father's face. One did not gulpdrinks in Kurt Fawzi's office.

  Well, neither did one blast everybody's hopes with half a dozen words,and that was what he was trying to force himself to do. He wanted toblurt out the one quick sentence and get it over with, but the wordswouldn't come out of his throat. He lowered the second drink by half;the brandy was beginning to warm him and dissolve the cold lump in hisstomach. Have to go easy, though. He wasn't used to this kind ofdrinking, and he wanted to stay sober enough to talk sense until he'dtold them what he had to.

  "I hope," he said, "that you don't expect me to show you the cross onthe map, where the computer is buried."

  All the eyes around him began to look troubled. Most of them had beenexpecting precisely that. His father was watching him anxiously.

  "But it's still here on Poictesme, isn't it?" one of the melonplanters asked. "They didn't take it away with them?"

  "Most of you gentlemen," he said, "contributed to sending me to schoolon Terra, to study cybernetics and computer theory. It wouldn't do usany good to find Merlin if none of us could operate it. Well, I'vedone that. I can use any known type of computer, and train assistants.After I graduated, I was offered a junior instructorship to computerphysics at the University."

  "You didn't mention that, son," his father said.

  "The letter would have come on the same ship I did. Besides, I didn'tthink it was very important."

  "I think it is." There was a catch in old Dolf Kellton's voice. "Oneof my boys from the Academy offered a place on the faculty of theUniversity of Montevideo, on Terra!" He finished his drink and heldout his glass for more, something he almost never did.

  "Conn means," Kurt Fawzi explained, "that it had nothing to do withMerlin."

  All right; now tell them the truth.

  "I was also to find out anything I could about a secret giant computerused during the War by the Third Fleet-Army Force, code-named Merlin.I went over all the records available to the public; I used yourletter, Professor, and the head of our Modern History departmentsecured me access to non-public material, some of it still classified.For one thing, I have locations and maps and plans of every Federationinstallation built here between 842 and 854, the whole period of theWar." He turned to his father. "There are incredible things stillundiscovered; most of the important installations were built induplicate, sometimes triplicate, as a precaution against space attack.I know where all of them are."

  "Space attack!" Klem Zareff was indignant. "There never was a time wecould have attacked Poictesme. Even if we'd had the ships, we werefighting a purely defensive war. Aggression was no part of ourpolicy--"

  He interrupted: "Excuse me, Colonel. The point I was trying to make isthat, with all I was able to learn, I could find nothing, not onesingle word, about any giant strategic planning computer calledMerlin, or any Merlin Project."

  There! He'd gotten that out. Now go on and tell them about the old manin the dome-house on Luna. The room was silent, except for the smallinsectile hum of the electric clock. Then somebody set a glass on thetable, and it sounded like a hammer blow.

  "Nothing, Conn?"

  Kurt Fawzi was incredulous. Judge Ledue's hand shook as though palsiedas he tried to relight his cigar. Dolf Kellton was looking at thedrink in his hand as though he had no idea what it was. The othersfound their voices, one by one.

  "Of course, it was the most closely guarded secret ..."

  "But after forty years ..."

  "Hah, don't tell me about security!" Colonel Zareff barked. "Youshould have seen the lengths our staff went to. I remember, once, onMephistopheles ..."

  "But there _was_ a computer code-named Merlin," Judge Ledue wasinsisting, to convince himself more than anybody else. "Itsmemory-bank contained all human knowledge. It was capable of scanningall its data instantaneously, and combining, and forming associations,and reasoning with absolute accuracy, and extrapolating to produce newfacts, and predicting future events, and ..."

  And if you'd asked such a computer, "Is there a God?" it would havesimply answered, "Present."

  "We'd have won the War, except for Merlin," Zareff was declaring.

  "Conn, from what you've learned of computers generally, how big wouldMerlin have to be?" old Professor Kellton asked.

  "Well, the astrophysics computer at the University occupied a volumeof a hundred thousand cubic feet. For all Merlin was supposed to do,I'd say something of the order of three million to five million.

  "Well, it's a cinch they didn't haul that away with them," LesterDawes, the banker, said.

  "Oh, lots of places on Poictesme where they could have hid a thinglike that," Tom Brangwyn said. "You know, a planet's a mighty bigplace."

  "It doesn't have to be on Poictesme, even," Morgan Gatworth pointedout. "It could be anywhere in the Trisystem."

  "You know where I'd have put it?" Lorenzo Menardes asked. "On one ofthe moons of Pantagruel."

  "But that's in the Gamma System, three light years away," Kurt Fawziobjected. "There isn't a hypership on this planet, and it would takehalf a lifetime to get there on normal-space drive."

  Conn was lifting his glass to his lips. He set it down again and roseto his feet.

  "Then," he said, "we will build a hypership. On Koshchei there areshipyards and hyperdrive engines and everything we will need. We onlyneed one normal-space interplanetary ship to get out there, and we'rein business."

  "Well, I don't know we need one," Judge Ledue
said. "That was only anidea of Lorenzo's. I think Merlin's right here on Poictesme."

  "We don't know it is," Conn replied. "And we don't know we won't needa ship. Merlin may be on Koshchei; that's where the components wouldbe fabricated, and the Armed Forces weren't hauling anything anyfarther than they had to. Koshchei's only two and a half minutes awayby radio; that's practically in the next room. Look; here's how theycould have done it."

  He went on talking, about remote controls and radio transmission andpositronic brains and neutrino-circuits. They believed it all, eventhe little they understood. They would believe anything he told themabout Merlin--except the truth.

  "But this will take money," Lester Dawes said. "And after thatinfernal deluge of unsecured paper currency thirty years ago ..."

  "I have no doubt," Judge Ledue began, "that the Planetary Governmentat Storisende would give assistance. I have some slight influence withPresident Vyckhoven ..."

  "Huh-_uh_!" That was one of Klem Zareff's fellow planters. "We don'twant Jake Vyckhoven or any of this First-Families-of-Storisendeoligarchy in this at all. That's the gang that bankrupted theGovernment with doles and work relief, and everybody else withworthless printing-press money after the War, and they've beensquatting in a circle deploring things ever since. Some of these daysBlackie Perales and his pirates'll sack Storisende, for all they'd beable to do to stop him."

  "We get a ship out to Koshchei, and the next thing you know we'll bethe Planetary Government," Tom Brangwyn said.

  Rodney Maxwell finished the brandy in his glass and set it on thetable, then went to the pile of belts and holsters and began rummagingfor his own. Kurt Fawzi looked up in surprise.

  "Rod, you're not leaving are you?" he asked.

  "Yes. It's only half an hour till time for dinner, and I think Connand I ought to have a little fresh air. Besides, you know, we haven'tseen each other for six years." He buckled on the heavy automatic andsettled the belt over his hips. "You didn't have a gun, did you,Conn?" he asked. "Well, let's go."