XVI
The voyage back to Koshchei had been a week-long nightmare. When shehad been the pride and budget-wrecker of Transcontinent & OverseasAirline, the _Harriet Barne_ had accommodated two hundred first-classand five hundred lower-deck passengers, but the conversion to aspaceship had drastically reduced her capacity. The three hundred menand women who had been recruited for the Koshchei colony had beencrammed into her with brutal disregard for comfort, privacy oranything else except the ability of the air-recyclers to keep thembreathing. When Captain Nichols set her down at the administrationbuilding at Port Carpenter, a few had had to be carried off, but theywere all alive, which made the trip an unqualified success.
The dozen leaders of the expedition were congratulating themselves onthat in one of the executive offices after the first dinner at PortCarpenter. Rodney Maxwell, in Storisende, had joined them inscreen-image; he was mostly listening, and sometimes contributing aremark apropos of something the rest of them had said five minutesago.
"Our hypership," Conn was saying, "is going to have to be itemtwo on the agenda. The first thing we need is a ship for thePoictesme-Koshchei run. By this time next year, we ought to have athousand to fifteen hundred people here at the least. We can't haulthem all on that flying sardine can."
"We'll need supplies, too. What was left here won't last forever,"Nichols added.
"And you're going to have to run this at a profit," Luther Chen-Wong,who had come along for first hand experience and to help withadministrative work, added. "You have a big payroll to meet, andyou'll have to keep the stockholders happy. People like JethroSastraman and some of these Storisende bankers aren't going to besatisfied with promises and long-term prospects; they'll wantdividends."
"We'll have to get claims staked on something besides Port Carpenter,too. Those ships that are building at Storisende will be finishedbefore long," Jerry Rivas said. "If we don't get some more thingsclaimed, the first thing you know, we'll own Port Carpenter andnothing else."
"Well, let's see what we can find in the way of a big airboat, or asmall ship," Conn said. "Jerry, you can pick a party for exploring.Just zigzag around the planet and transmit in locations and views ofwhatever you find, and we'll send it on to Storisende."
"And don't pick anybody for your exploring party that can't be sparedfrom anything here," Jacquemont added. "We don't want to have to chaseyou halfway around the world to bring back the only specialist insomething yesterday at the latest."
"Are you going to come along, Conn?" Rivas asked.
"Oh, Lord, no! I'm going to be doing fifteen things at once here."
All the computer work. Finding materials to make astrogationalequipment and robo-pilots. Studying hyperspace theory--fortunately,there was an excellent library here--and setting up classes, andteaching school. And keeping in touch with his father, on Poictesme.It was making him nervous not to know what sort of foolishness theolder and wiser heads might be getting into.
The next morning, they began organizing work-gangs and setting upcommittees. Three men, two girls and about twenty robots got anopen-pit iron mine started; as soon as the steel mill was ready, orestarted coming in. Anse Dawes had a gang looking for something theycould build a 350-foot interplanetary ship out of; Jacquemont and MackVibart were getting plans and specifications and making lists ofneeded materials. Conn gathered a dozen men and women and startedclasses in computer theory and practice; at the same time, he andCharley Gatworth were teaching themselves and each other hyperspatialastrogation, which was the art of tossing a ship into someeverythingless noplace outside normal space-time, and then pulling herout again by her bootstraps at some other place in the normalcontinuum, light-years away.
Roughly, it compared to shooting hummingbirds on the wing,blindfolded, with a not particularly accurate pistol, from amile-a-minute merry-go-round.
That was something you could only do with a computer. A human, with aslide rule, a pencil and pad, could figure it out, of course--if hehad fifty-odd thousand years to do it. A good computer did it inthirty seconds. That was one difference between people and computers.The other difference was that the desirability of making a hyperspacejump would never occur to a computer, unless somebody pushed a buttonand taped in instructions.
They found a three-hundred-foot globular skeleton, probably thenucleus of a big hyperspace ship, and decided that was big enough forwhat they wanted. The entire colony got to work on it. Photoprintedplans and specifications poured out as Jacquemont and a couple ofdraftsmen got them up. Steel came out of the steel mill at one endwhile ore came in at the other. A swarm of big contragravity machines,some robotic and some human-operated, clustered around the skeletalhull like hornets building a nest.
Trisystem & Interstellar Spacelines was chartered; the lawyersreported having to overcome a little more resistance than usual fromthe Government about that. And the bill to nationalize Merlin, whichhad died in committee, was resuscitated and was being debated hotly onthe floor of Parliament. The Administration was now supporting it.
"Are they completely crazy?" Conn wanted to know, when he heard aboutthat. "They pass that bill and nobody's going to look for Merlin ifthey know the Government will snatch it as soon as they find it."
"That is precisely Jake Vyckhoven's idea," his father replied. "I toldyou he was afraid of Merlin. He's getting more afraid of it everyday."
He had reason to. There was a growing sentiment in favor of turningthe entire Government over to the computer as soon as it was found. Tohis horror, Conn heard himself named as chairman of a committee thatshould be set up to operate it. The moderates, who had merely wantedMerlin used in an advisory capacity, were dropping out; the agitationwas coming from extremists who wanted Merlin to be the wholeGovernment, and now the extremists were developing an extreme wing oftheir own, who called themselves Cybernarchists and started wearingcolored-shirt uniforms and greeting each other with an archaicstiff-arm salute, and the words, "Hail Merlin!"
And the followers of the gospel-shouter on the west coast were nowcropping up all over the mainland, and on the continent of Acaire tothe north, and another cult, non-religious, was convinced that Merlinwas a living machine, with conscious intelligence of its own andawesome psi-powers, a sort of super-Golem, which, if found andawakened, would enslave the whole Galaxy. Fortunately, these two hatedeach other as venomously as both did the Cybernarchists, and spentmost of their energies attacking each other's meetings. Thenews-services were beginning to publish casualty lists, some heavyenough for outpost fighting between a couple of regular armies.
One thing, it helped the employment situation. Everybody was hiringmercenaries.
"But what," Conn asked, "are the sane people doing?"
"You ought to know," his father told him. "I suspect that you have allof them on Koshchei now."
The sane people, if that was what they were, were being busy. Theywere putting a set of Abbott lift-and-drive engines together, andConn's computer class was estimating the mass of the finished ship andthe amount of energy needed to overcome gravitation and give itconstant acceleration from Koshchei to Poictesme. They were learning,by trial and error, largely error, how to build a set of pseudogravengines. And they were putting together a hundred and one otherthings, all of which was good training for the time they'd be ready tostart work on _Ouroboros II_.
Jerry Rivas had found a contragravity craft which seemed to have beenused by some top official for business and inspection trips, hadgathered a crew of non-specialists who weren't urgently needed at PortCarpenter, and set out to circumnavigate the planet. It worked justthe reverse of expectation. He found a big uranium mine, with anisotope-separation plant and a battery of plutonium-breeders; thatmeant that Mohammed Matsui and half a dozen other nuclear-power peoplehad to get into another boat and speed after him to see what he hadreally found. As soon as they landed, Rivas took off again to discovera copper mine and a complex of smelters and processing plants. Thattook a few more experts, or reasonable facsimiles, away from PortCar
penter. And then he found a whole city that manufactured nothingbut computers and robo-controls and things like that.
Conn loaded his whole computer-theory class onto a freight-scow andtook them there. By the time he landed, his father was screening himfrom Storisende.
"When are you going to get the ship finished?" he was asking. "KurtFawzi's pestering the daylights out of me. He wants that equipment youpromised him."
"We're working on it. What's happened, has Carl Leibert had anotherrevelation?"
"I don't know about that. Kurt's sure Merlin is directly under ForceCommand. And speaking about Leibert, Klem Zareff's been after me abouthim. You know I've contracted for the full-time and exclusive servicesof this Barton-Massarra detective agency. Well, Klem wants me to putthem to work investigating Leibert."
"Yes, I know; Leibert's a Terran Federation spy. Why do you need thefull-time services of the biggest private detective agency onPoictesme?"
"There have been some odd things happening. People have been trying tobribe and intimidate some of my office help. I have found microphonesand screen-pickups planted around. I caught one of our clerks tryingto make copies of voice-tapes. I think it's some of these otherMerlin-chasing companies, trying to find out how close we are to it.Klem Zareff is recruiting more guards. But how soon are you going toget that ship built?"
"We're working on it. That's all I know, now."
He went back to work getting a classroom ready for his students. Ifhe'd accepted that instructorship at Montevideo, he wouldn't be a fullprofessor now, but none of the rest of this would be happening,either.
That night, he had the dream about starting the big machine and notbeing able to stop it again.
There was street-fighting in Storisende between the Cybernarchists andGovernment troops. There was a pitched battle in the west between theArmageddonists (Merlin-is-Satan) and the Human Supremacy League(Merlin-is-the-Golem), with heavy losses and claims of victory on bothsides. President Vyckhoven proclaimed planet-wide martial law, andthen discovered that he had nothing to enforce it with.
Luther Chen-Wong screened him from Port Carpenter. His voice wasalmost inaudibly low at first.
"Conn, I just had a call from Jerry and Clyde. I think we can knockoff work on that ship we're building now. We won't need it."
"Have they found a ship?" If they had, it would be the first oneanybody had found. "Where?"
"They haven't found _a_ ship, Conn; they've found all of them. All theships in the Alpha System except the _Harriet Barne_ and the twothey're building at Storisende. The place is marked on the map asSickle Mountain Naval Observatory. It's just a bitty little dot, butthe map was made before the evacuation started. It's where most of thetroops in the system were embarked on hyperships, I think. Wait till Ishow you the views."
Conn put on another screen; the first view was from an altitude offive miles. He didn't need Luther's voice to identify Sickle Mountain;a long curve, with a spur at right angles to one end, the name musthave suggested itself to whoever saw it first. The observatory hadbeen built where the handle of the sickle joined the blade; as theship from which the view had been taken had approached, the detailsgrew plainer. At the same time, it became evident that the plaininside the curve of the sickle was powdered with tiny sparkles, liketinsel dust on red-brown velvet.
"Great Ghu, are those all ships?"
"That's right. Look at this one, now."
The view changed. The aircraft was down, now, below the crest of themountain, circling slowly above the plain. Hundreds, no, over athousand, of them; two- and three-and five-hundred-footers, and hereand there a thousand-footer that could have been converted into ahypership if anybody had wanted to take the trouble. The view changedagain; this time from an aircar dropped from the ship, he supposed; itwas down almost to the tops of the ships, and he could read names andhome ports: _Pixie_, Chloris; _Helen O'Loy_, Anaitis. They were fromJurgen. _Sky-Rover_, Port Saunders; she was from Horvendile. Shipsfrom Storisende, and Yellowmarsh on Janicot, and....
"Now we know where they all went."
It was logical, of course. Most of the hyperships used in theevacuation had been built here. It had been less trouble to lead thetroops and the civilian workers from Poictesme and the other planetsonto small normal-space ships and bring them here than to take the bigships away on short interplanetary runs to the other planets.
"Have you screened my father yet?"
"Yes. This is going to knock the bottom out of the companies that arebuilding those ships at Storisende, I'm afraid."
"Their tough luck."
"It could be everybody's tough luck. Both those companies have beenissuing stock, and there's been a lot of speculation in it. Thismarket's so inflated now that a puncture at one place might blow thewhole thing out."
He knew that. He shrugged. "Father will have to think of something.Tell him I'll screen him from Sickle Mountain."
Then he went back to his classroom.
"All right, class dismissed," he said. "You have twenty minutes to getyour bags packed. We're going to work for real, now."
Airboats and airships flocked to Sickle Mountain; some of themhastened back to Port Carpenter for loads of food, for there was nonein the storehouses at the embarkation camp. They inspected ship aftership, and chose two three-hundred-footers. They sent airships andfreight-scows to the dozen-odd cities and industrial centers that hadbeen already explored, to gather cargo, as far as possible the itemsin shortest supply on Poictesme.
"Don't worry about a market smash," his father told him. "We have thattaken care of. Trisystem Investments has just bought up a lot of stockin both of those companies, and we've set up agreements withthem--informally, of course; we'll have to get them voted on by ourown companies--to sell them ships from Koshchei. In return, thecompany that's building the ship out of four air-freighters will go toJanicot, and the company that's building a ship out of the oldLeitzenring Building will go to Jurgen, and they'll both stay offKoshchei. Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong will probably be defendingantitrust suits till the end of time. The Planetary Government hasstopped liking us, you know."
"Then we'll have to get one that will like us. There'll be an electionabout this time next year, won't there?"
His father nodded. "To use one of your expressions, we're working onit. How soon can you get your ships in?"
"Well be loaded and ready to lift off in a week. Another week for thetrip."
"Well, don't forget that equipment you promised Kurt Fawzi."
"We'll have that on. Jerry Rivas is gathering it up now."
"How are you fixed for arms on Koshchei?"
"Arms? Why, there are some. There was a pretty big force of SpaceMarines on duty here, and they left everything they couldn't carry intheir hands. Why? The Armageddonists and the Cybernarchists and HumanSupremacy bought all you had on hand?"
"They're buying, but I wasn't thinking of that. I was thinking thatyour crews might need something to argue their way off the ships atStorisende with. Things are getting just slightly rugged here, now."
The Cosmic Computer Page 16
