XIX
When Sylvie returned from Storisende, she had Flora with her. Conn'ssister greeted him embarrassedly; Sylvie led both of them out of thecrowd and over to the edge of the excavation.
"Go ahead, Flora," she urged. "Make up with Conn. It won't be anyharder than making up with Wade was."
"How did that happen, by the way?" Conn asked.
"Your girlfriend," Flora said. "She came to the house and practicallyforced me into a car and flew me into Storisende, and then made mekeep quiet and listen while Wade told me the truth."
"I wasn't completely sure what the truth was myself till Wade openedup," Sylvie admitted. "I had a pretty good idea, though."
"I always hated that Merlin thing," Flora burst out. "All those oldmen in Fawzi's office, dreaming about the wonderful things Merlin wasgoing to do, with everything crumbling around them and everybodygetting poorer every year, and doing nothing, nothing! And when youwere coming home, I was expecting you to tell them there was no Merlinand to go to work and do something for themselves. But you didn't, andI couldn't see what you were trying to do. And then when Wade joinedyou and Father, I thought he was either helping you put over some kindof a swindle or else he'd started believing in Merlin himself. Ishould have seen what you were trying to do from the beginning. Atleast, from when you talked them into cleaning the town up and fixingthe escalators and getting the fountains going again."
So the fountains weren't dusty any more.
"How's Mother taking things now?"
Flora looked distressed. "She goes around wringing her hands.Honestly. I never saw anybody doing that outside a soap opera. Halfthe time she thinks you and Father are a pair of unprincipledscoundrels, and the other half she thinks you're going to let Merlindestroy the world."
"I'm beginning to be afraid of something like that myself."
"Huh? But Merlin's just a big fake, isn't it? You're using it to makethese people do something they wouldn't do for themselves, aren'tyou?"
"It started that way. What do you think all this is about?" he asked,gesturing toward the excavation and the two giant mining machinesdigging and blasting and pounding away at the rock.
"Well, to keep Kurt Fawzi and that crowd happy, I suppose. It seemslike an awful waste of time, though."
"I'm afraid it isn't. I'm afraid Merlin, or something just as bad, isdown there. That's why I'm here, instead of on Koshchei. I want tokeep people like Fawzi from doing anything foolish with it when theyfind it."
"But there _can't_ be a Merlin!"
"I'm afraid there is. Not the sort of a Merlin Fawzi expects to find;that thing's too small for that. But there's something down there...."
The question of size bothered him. That drum-shaped superstructurecouldn't even hold the personnel-record machine they had found here,or the computers at the Storisende Stock Exchange. It could have beenan intelligence-evaluator, or an enemy-intentions predictor, but itseemed small even for that. It would be something _like_ a computer;that was as far as he was able to go. And it could be somethingcompletely outside the reach of his imagination.
At the back of his mind, the suspicion grew that Carl Leibert knewexactly what it was. And he became more and more convinced that he hadseen the self-styled preacher before.
Finally, the whole top of the hundred-foot collapsium-coveredstructure was uncovered, and the excavation had been leveled out wideenough to accommodate all the massive paraphernalia of thecollapsium-cutter. They put _The Thing_ onto contragravity again, andbrought her down in place; the work of lifting off the reactor and theconverter and the rest of it, piece by piece, began. Finally,everything was set up.
A dozen and a half of them were gathered in the room that had becometheir meeting-place, after dinner. They were all too tired to startthe cutting that night, and at the same time excited and anxious. Theytalked in disconnected snatches, and then somebody put on one of thetelecast screens. A music program was just ending; there was a briefsilence, and then a commentator appeared, identifying hisnews-service. He spoke rapidly and breathlessly, his professionalgravity cracking all over.
"The hypership _City of Asgard_, from Aton, has just come intotelecast range," he began. "We have received an exclusive InterworldNews Service story, recently brought to Aton on the Pan-FederationSpacelines ship _Magellanic_, from Terra.
"News of revived interest in the Third Force computer, Merlin, havingreached Terra by way of Odin, representatives of Interworld News, towhich this service subscribes, interviewed retired Force-General FoxxTravis, now living, at the advanced age of a hundred and fourteen, onLuna. General Travis, who commanded the Third Fleet-Army Force hereduring the War, categorically denied that there had ever existed anysuper-computer of the sort.
"We bring you, now, a recorded interview with General Travis, made onLuna...."
For an instant, Conn felt the room around him whirling dizzily, andthen he caught hold of himself. Everybody else was shouting in suddenconsternation, and then everybody was hushing everybody else andmaking twice as much noise. The screen flickered; the commentatorvanished, and instead, seated in the deep-cushioned chair, was thethin and frail old man with whom Conn had talked two years before, andthrough an open segment of the dome-roof behind him the full Earthshone, the continents of the Western Hemisphere plainlydistinguishable. A young woman in starchy nurse's white bent forwardsolicitously from beside the chair, handing him a small beaker fromwhich he sipped some stimulant. He looked much as he had when Conn hadtalked to him. But there was something missing....
Oh, yes. The comparative youngster of seventy-some--"Mike Shanlee ...my _aide-de-camp_ on Poictesme ... now he thinks he's my keeper...."He wasn't in evidence, and he should be. Then Conn knew where and whenhe had seen the man who claimed to be a preacher named Carl Leibert.
"There is absolutely no truth in it, gentlemen," Travis was saying."There never was any such computer. I only wish there had been; itwould have shortened the War by years. We did, of course, usecomputers of all sorts, but they were all the conventional types usedby business organizations...."
The rest was lost in a new outburst of shouting: General Travis, inthe screen, continued in dumb-show. The only thing Conn coulddistinguish was Leibert's--Shanlee's--voice, screaming: "Can it be alie? Is there no Great Computer?" Then Kurt Fawzi was pounding on thetop of the desk and bellowing, "Shut up! Listen!"
"Frankly, I'm surprised," Travis was continuing. "Young Maxwell talkedto me, here in this room, a couple of years ago; I told him then thatnothing of the sort existed. If he's back on Poictesme telling peoplethere is, he's lying to them and taking advantage of their credulity.There never was anything called Project Merlin...."
"Hah, who's a liar now?" Klem Zareff shouted. "Dolf, what did yourpeople find in the Library?"
"Why, that's right!" Professor Kellton exclaimed. "My students didfind a dozen references to Project Merlin. He couldn't be ignorant ofanything like that."
"This youth has been lying to us all along!" the old man with thebeard cried, pointing an accusing finger at Conn. "He has createdfalse hopes; he has given us faith in a delusion. Why, he is thewickedest monster in human history!"
"Well, thank you, General Travis," another voice, from thescreen-speaker, was saying. The only calm voice in the room. "That wasa most excellent statement, sir. It should...."
"Conn, you didn't tell us you'd talked to General Travis," MorganGatworth was saying. "Why didn't you?"
"Because I never believed anything he told me. You were in KurtFawzi's office the day I came home; you know how shocked everybody waswhen I told you I hadn't been able to learn anything positive. Whyshould I repeat his lies and discourage everybody that much more? Why,he'd deny there was a Merlin if he was sitting on top of it," Conndeclared. "He wants the credit for winning the War, not for lettingMerlin win it for him."
"I don't blame Conn," Klem Zareff said. "If he'd told us that then,some of us might have believed it."
"And look what we found," Kurt Fawzi added, pointing at
the ceiling."Is that Merlin up there, or isn't it?"
"That little thing!" Shanlee cried scornfully. "How could that beMerlin? I am going to my chamber, to pray for forgiveness for thiswretch."
He turned and started for the door.
"Stop him, Tom!" Conn said, and Tom Brangwyn put himself in front ofthe older man, gripping his right arm. Shanlee tried, briefly, toresist.
"Seems to me you lost faith in Merlin awfully quick," the former townmarshal of Litchfield said. "You knew there was a Merlin all along,and you never wanted us to find it."
Franz Veltrin, who had been "Leibert's" most enthusiastic adherent,had also lost faith suddenly; he was shouting vituperation at theProphet of Merlin.
"Knock it off, Franz; he was only doing his duty," Conn said. "Weren'tyou, General Shanlee?"
It took almost a minute before they stopped yelling for an explanationand allowed him to make one. He caught Klem Zareff's comment: "Must bepretty hot, if they have to send a general to handle it."
"I talked to Travis, yes. He gave me the same story he just repeatedon that interview," Conn said, picking his way carefully between factand fiction. "After I went back to Montevideo, he and this aide of hismust have been afraid I didn't believe it, which I didn't. When I wasready to graduate, I got this offer of an instructorship; that was abribe to keep me on Terra and off Poictesme. When I turned it down andtook the _Mizar_ home, Travis sent Shanlee after me. He must havegrown that beard and that pageboy bob on the way out. I suppose hecontacted Murchison as soon as he landed. Wait a minute."
He went to the communication screen and punched out a combination. Agirl appeared and singsonged: "Barton-Massarra, Investigation andProtection."
"Conn Maxwell here. We gave you some audiovisuals of a man with awhite beard, alias Carl Leibert," he began.
"Just a sec, Mr. Maxwell." She spoke quickly into a handphone. Thescreen flickered, and she was replaced by a hard-faced young man indark clothes.
"Hello, Mr. Maxwell; Joe Massarra. We haven't anything on Leibertyet."
"Are any of the officers of the _Andromeda_ where you can contactthem? Let them see those audiovisual. I'll bet that beard was grownaboard ship coming out from Terra."
Bedlam broke out suddenly. Shanlee, who had been standing passively,his right arm loosely grasped by Tom Brangwyn, came down on Brangwyn'sinstep with the heel of his left foot and hit Brangwyn under the chinwith the heel of his left palm. Wrenching his arm free, he started forthe door. Sylvie Jacquemont snatched a chair and threw it along thefloor; it hit the fleeing man's ankles and brought him down. Half adozen men piled on top of him, and Brangwyn was yelling to them not tochoke him to death till he could answer some questions.
"Hey, what's going on?" the detective-agency man in the screen wasasking. "Need help? We'll start a car right away."
"Everything's under control, thank you."
Massarra hesitated for a moment. "What's the dope on this statementthat was on telecast a few minutes ago?" he asked.
"Travis doesn't want us to find Merlin. What you just heard was one ofhis people, planted here at Force Command. We're going to question himwhen we have time. But there isn't a word of truth in that statementyou just heard on the _Herald-Guardian_ newscast. Merlin exists, andwe've found it. We'll have it opened inside of thirty hours at most."
That was the line he was going to take with everybody. As soon as hehad Massarra off the screen, he was punching the combination of hisfather's private screen at Interplanetary Building. It took fiveinterminable minutes before Rodney Maxwell came on. He could hear KlemZareff shouting orders into one of the inside communicationscreens--general turnout, everything on combat-ready; guards to comeat once to the office.
"How close are you to digging that thing out?" his father asked assoon as he appeared.
"We're down to it; we can start cutting the collapsium any time now."
"Start cutting it ten minutes ago," his father told him. "And don'tleave Force Command till you have it open. How many men and vehiclesdoes Klem have for defense? You'll need all of them in a couple ofhours. Everybody here is stunned, now; they'll come out of it insidean hour, and they'll come out fighting."
"You'd better come out here." He turned, saw Jerry Rivas helping holdShanlee in a chair, and shouted to him: "Jerry! Turn out the workmen.Start cutting the can open right away." He turned back to his father."Klem's just ordered all his force out. Are you coming here?"
"I can't. In about an hour, everything's going up with a bang. I haveto be here to grab a few of the pieces."
"You'll do a lot of good in jail, or on the end of a rope."
"Chance I have to take," his father replied. "I think I'll have acouple of hours. If anybody from the press calls you, what are yougoing to tell them?"
Conn repeated the line he had taken already. His father nodded.
"All right. I'll call you later. If I can. Just keep things going atyour end."
A dozen of Klem Zareff's men were crowding into the room.
"This man's under close arrest," the old soldier was telling them. "Heis very important and very dangerous. Take him out somewhere, searchhim to the skin, take his clothes away from him and give him a robe.He's to be watched every second; make sure he hasn't poison or othersuicide means. He's to be questioned later."
As soon as Rodney Maxwell was off the screen, there was a call-signal.It was one of the news-services, wanting a statement.
"I'll take it," Gatworth said, and then began talking:
"This statement of General Travis's is completely false. There is aMerlin, and we've found it...."
They found something that might be good-enough Merlin for the nextthirty hours. That superstructure was just big enough for the manuallyoperated parts of a computer like Merlin; the input and output, andthe programming machines.
The Cosmic Computer Page 19
