by E. C. Tubb
“Not too bad, but my chest is still sore.”
“Not surprising when you consider that we had to remove half the rib case in order to massage your heart.” Lasser sighed as he slumped into a chair. The old man seemed to have aged in the past ten days, his eyes glowed from their sunken pits and his parchment-like skin had an unhealthy flush. "Well, fit or not, you’ll have to move tomorrow.”
, “So soon?" Curt started again at the wastes of Mars. “Must we? Wouldn’t it be possible for me to see the planet first?” He smiled apologetically at the old man. “Remember, I was only trying to reach the Moon when . . .” He faltered and Carter nodded with quiet understanding.
“I know how you feel, Curt, but you must try to accept what happened. You died on that trip, you know that, but if you let yourself refuse to accept the fact it will cause a psychological trauma which could lead to grave trouble.”
“Thanks,” said Curt, and took a deep breath. “Well then. I died before I could ever reach the Moon and at that time a journey to Mars was just something we dreamed of. Now, when by a miracle I am really here, it seems that I’m never going to see it at all." Can’t you delay the evacuation?"
“No,” snapped Lasser,. and Curt flushed.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have asked,” he said quietly. “I forget, you wouldn’t understand just how I feel about Some things.”
“Don’t misunderstand him, Curt.” Carter rose and stared out of the transparency of the dome. “If Lasser had his way he would never leave here, none of us would, but we have no choice.”
“Because of the supply position?”
“Yes. You know about that?”
“Menson told me. But I can’t understand it all. You’ve been here for over a hundred years and the settlement must have cost billions to establish. I realise that perhaps it can’t pay its way, but to abandon everything just doesn’t make sense. Why don’t they send you enough equipment to make the colony self-supporting?” .<
“Why?” Lasser glared at the young man. “I’ll tell you why. They don’t want us here that’s why. They want us back on Earth, back where they can control us as they control everyone else. Out here we’re too independent and -the Matriarch doesn’t like it.”
“The Matriarch?” Curt frowned and looked at Carter. “I’m afraid that there’s a lot I’ll have to catch up on. When I . . .” He paused again, then almost defiantly uttered the word. “When I died there was no Matriarchy. Do you mean that the women rule now?”
“Yes.” Carter turned from the window with a strange weariness. “The women took over after the Atom War, that must have been about twenty years after your death. One of the Eastern Groups of nations unleashed the fury of atomic weapons. The West succumbed of course, they didn’t have a chance, but it was a useless victory. They had used radioactive dusts and they spread, drifting on the winds and carried by the rains, and the victor suffered as much as the vanquished. They say that over a thousand million people died and for a long time afterwards most of the fertile soil remained a radio-active desert.”
“So it came,” whispered Curt sickly. "We had been afraid of it even in my own time But how did that make the women rulers?”
“For a long time, I think it must have been about fifty years, .men suffered a peculiar form of debility. Boy children were more susceptible to mutational changes than girl children, and the mortality rate was three to one in favour of
the girls. Naturally, with a predominance of women and a race of men who were weak and cursed with a poor physical and mental heritage from the effects of the selective radiations, a Matriarchy was inevitable. The sex balance equalised itself of course, men are no longer weak, but the old forms die hard.”
“It isn’t just that, Carter.” Lasser thrust himself forward as he stared at his assistant. “A Matriarchy isn’t so bad in itself, though women make poor rulers, but it isn’t just habit that keeps them in control.”
‘I know that, but even with what they have we could still overthrow them.”
“Do you want to?” Curt stared at the two men. “Surely that is going a little too far? I realise how you must feel at being forced to leave your homes but is that reason for wishing rebellion?”
“Rebellion?” Lasser smiled, a curious grimace without a trace of humour. “No, Curt, we aren’t talking of armies and guns, of fleets and civil war. We talk of a rebellion of ideals, a lifting of the blanket which is stifling ambition and progress.” He pointed towards the desert. “Look out there. For more than a hundred years we have tried to turn this planet into a place where men could live, and we have failed. Another thing, space travel has been known, really known I -mean, for two hundred years now. The first ship reached the Moon just before the Atom War, and the first observatory was built there fifty years before we reached Mars. Since that time we have advanced no further. We have settled on Mars, touched Venus,- approached Mercury—and that is all.”
“All?” Curt frowned. “But with all that time for progress . . .
“Exactly.” Lasser glared in triumph. “We should have reached Pluto by now, developed a stardrive, thrust ourselves towards the new worlds waiting beyond Pluto and founded colonies of men on Alpha Centauri. We have done none of those things.”
“But why not?”
“Comain.” Lasser spat the word as if it were a curse.
"What!” Curt lunged forward in his chair, then, as his sore chest protested against his movements, winced and leaned back again. “Comain. Can he be still alive? I knew him, we were friends, what has he to do with this?”
“He?” Lasser frowned. “What are you talking about?” “Comain of course. You mentioned him. Is he still alive?” “He? I’m not talking about a man.”
“Then . . .” Curt stared helplessly at the old man, conscious as he had been a thousand times of all he did not know, of the terrible gap which lay between him and these others, a gap of two and a half centuries. Carter turned from where he stared out of the dome and looked at the young man.
“Comain is a machine,” lie explained quietly. “A vast machine which literally controls the destiny of Earth and every living man and woman on it. The Matriarch depends on it for everything, and that is why we must return to Earth.” “A machine!” Curt sagged in his chair. “I had hoped . . .” He shook his head. “Funny. Comain was the last person I spoke to before the automatics fired and the hull split open. I’d been cursing him for his faulty design, I wish that I hadn’t now, it wasn’t really his fault.” He stared at Carter.' “But why, Comain? Why call a machine after a man?”
Carter shrugged. “Probably because of the man who invented it. Legend has it that he lived before the Atom War, and that his machine was the cause of the holocaust. The attacking nations financed him and he and his devils’ machine predicted that they would win the battle. He . . The young man broke off conscious for the first time of what he was saying. “Comain. You said that you knew him. Lasser, did you hear that?” ,
'“I did.” The old man stared hungrily at Curt. “You knew him you say? You knew him?”
“I knew a man named Comain. We grew up together, went to school together, tried for the stars as though we were one.”
“Could it be possible? And yet, why not? It was a miracle that we found you, revived you, and why not yet a third coincidence? You are certain that you knew Comain?”
“Yes.” Curt flushed as he glared at the old man. “I knew him well. He was a clever man and he often spoke of the value of cybernetics. I remember, it may have been just before I left for the Moon, that he spoke of a machine which could assimilate data and extrapolate from it and form a prediction of high probability. It wasn’t a new idea, but he had definite lines on which he proposed working as soon as he could obtain the backing and facilities.” He stared at the tense faces of the two men. “Anyway, is it so important?” “It could be,” said Carter slowly, and he looked at the old man with a strange expression. “I had a vague idea when we found you that in some way you might be
of use to us, but now . . .” He narrowed his eyes in thought and began striding about the domed chamber. “Lasser! Can we get him to Earth unsuspected?”
“I don’t know.” The old man stared at Curt with hooded eyes. “Why?”
“You know how Comain works. Within its memory banks reposes the sum total of all knowledge and information known to Man. More than that, it has checked and registered every living person on Earth and on Mars. Everyone, remember, everyone.”
“So?”
“Its predictions are based on a multiplicity of factors. The age, height, sex, colouration, peculiarities, ESP factor, of everyone. Everyone remember. It has full details of everything known, data to the square of almost infinity. That is why the Matriarch wants us back on Earth. We are too independent here, too liable to do the unpredictable. Comain doesn’t have enough information on us, on Mars, on Space even to form more than a sixty per cent prediction on what we may do. That must affect the predictions on Earth. Remote though we are yet we must affect the probability factor enough to leave a margin of doubt. Once we are op Earth, beneath the auspices of Comain, then the predictions will be almost ninety-nine per cent probable. In other words the
Matriarch will know the result of every action, every decision, every experiment she wishes, and know it before it happens.” “I know all that,” snapped Lasser impatiently. “It is merely a question of simple mathematics. If a man, or a machine, could know everything, then, from that knowledge, it or he could predict what must happen from any interaction.” He snorted with humourless laughter. “It could even predict what must happen in the future, and, so dependent are those fools of Earth on Comain, that they will bring its prophecies to fulfilment merely because they believe that what is predicted must be true, and so will make it so by their own actions.” He stared at Curt. “Can you follow all this?”
“I think so. We had something like it in our own time, and .something like it has always existed. The high priests of primitive tribes did it, and so did the witch doctors of a later era. They would tell a man that he would die, and, because the man believed that what the witch doctor said was truth, he did die.” Curt shrugged. “It was psychology of course, the man really died because he convinced himself that he had to die. The spell never worked unless the subject had faith in the witch doctor.”
“Comain hardly deals in psychology,” said Lasser dryly. “If it predicts that a man will die, then that man will die, and he needn’t even know anything about the prediction at all. Comain deals in hard facts, not dubious mumbo-jumbo.” “Perhaps,” said Curt easily. “But faith, whether in man or machine, can do peculiar things.”
“Yes,” said Carter sombrely. “It is forcing us to evacuate Mars.”
He stared out of the dome again, his eyes clouded as he watched the scurrying figures below, and Curt had the impression of subtle undercurrents and hidden stresses. He shifted uneasily in his chair, wishing that he were wholly well, and within his skull his brain seemed to burn with strange fires.
“Well, Carter? Have you decided what to do with our friend?” Lasser sighed as he relaxed in his chair, a bitter
expression in his sunken eyes. Slowly the young doctor turned from the darkening scene outside.
“Can we get him to Earth without the knowledge of Comain?”
“I suppose so,” snapped Lasser impatiently. “We have all been registered here,, the Matriarch saw to that, and they know just how many of us Will return to Earth. Why?”
“I have an idea,” said Carter slowly. “An insane idea perhaps, but what else have we to try? Listen. Suppose we did get Curt back to Earth without the knowledge of Comain.
• He hasn’t been registered, nothing is known .about him, and yet, by his mere presence, he must affect the actions of others.” He stared at the old man. “Now do you understand?”
“No. I . . .” Lasser paused, and on his thin lips hovered the ghost of a smile. “Yes. By all the Gods of Space, Carter! Will it work?”
“Will what work?” Curt looked at them, frowning, a little uneasy, but they ignored him, too occupied in their -own plans.
“It all depends on whether or not we can get him back without discovery. We can swear the others to secrecy, Wendis and Menson will have to be careful, they must dodge re-registration, we can -tell the others that he died.”
“Yes, that shouldn’t be difficult.” Lasser licked his thin lips with a nervous gesture. “Now. The Matriarch’s ships will land tomorrow. They will have the normal crew, a 'single metaman to each ship. We could hide him in a bale or some-thing and smuggle him out at the other end.” He frowned at Carter. “The whole .thing depends on whether or not Comain 'will check us on arrival, and, if I know the Matriarch, that will' be one of the first things to happen.”
“Why should it be?” Curt half-rose from his chair, ignoring the pain stabbing at his sore chest. “I thought that you’d been registered?”
“We have,” said Carter dryly. "But Lasser is right, the Matriarch will insist on us going before Comain as soon as we land. They will have to integrate our data into the overall pattern or the whole reason for our recall will be rendered invalid.”
“Well? Need you tell of my existence?”
“We can’t hide it once we go before Comain." Carter sounded worried. “The machine can read our minds you know, or rather you don’t know, but it can and that makes it impossible to lie to it.”
“Read your minds?” Curt slumped back in his chair, conscious again of the terrible gap in his knowledge. “How can it do that?”
“Transference of the electro-potential of the neuronic currents in the brain.” The young man smiled briefly at Curt’s blank expression. “Thought is electrical, a fine mesh of differing electric potential, measurable, and varying from individual to individual. Somehow, I don’t pretend to know how, Comain can transfer a copy of that potential to its own memory banks. That means that rt knows everything the .subject knows. The process is painless, almost instantaneous, and, thanks to the Matriarch, unavoidable.”^
“I see." Curt frowned down at His interlaced fingers. “Couldn’t you beat the machine in some way? Use hypnotism for example?”
“Hypnotism?” Carter stared blankly at the young man. “What is that?”
“Don’t you know?” Curt didn’t trouble to hide his surprise. “Do you mean to say that, you’ve never heard of it? You, a medical man?”
“I know what he means,” said Lasser. The old man stared at his assistant and his sunken eyes burned with a strange fire. “Auto-suggestion induced while in a trance-state. You wouldn’t know of it, but a long time ago its use was quite common. I learned how to induce it when a young student, but it can be dangerous and was barred by the medical faculty about a century and a half ago.” He smiled faintly at the man in the chair. “You can understand how the mere fact of it being forbidden tended to make certain young men eager to dabble in it.”
“Yes, but can you do as I suggested?”
“I think so. Wendis and Menson will have to be treated of course. Luckily they are the only ones other than ourselves who know of you. Menson had the good sense not to babble to the radio operator when he reported to Carter what he had found.”
“Then we can do it?” Carter seemed almost consumed with an inner eagerness. “We can smuggle our extra man to Earth without Comain knowing of his existence?”
“I think so.” Lasser nodded and his thin lips writhed in a humourless smile. “We will have to take all precautions of course, use a post-hypnotic suggestion to enable us to remember him after we have passed through Comain, but I think that it can be done.”
“I hope so.” Curt eased his aching chest. “I’d hate for you to forget all about me after we land. From what you tell me things are a lot different from what they were when I left.”
“Yes,” said Carter quietly. “Things are different. A lot different, but they will differ again after you have landed.” He looked at the old man and his laughter rang loud against the
encroaching silence of the night. “Wait until he begins upsetting all their clever little predictions. 'Just wait until we introduce our extra man to the water-tight society of Earth.”
Lasser nodded, his thin features sombre, and his eyes glowing against the pallor of his withered cheeks.
“The extra man,” he murmured softly. “Yes. I like that, a good name to call him, a safe name. An extra man, and with luck, and if we have guessed right, he may win Mars for us. An independent Mars, free of the Matriarch and ol Comain.”
Curt shivered at the naked emotion in the old man’s voice.
CHAPTER X
Sabah Bowman, Matriarch of Earth, stood at a High window and stared down at the concrete perfection of the building which was Comain.
Five thousand feet the building soared, rising like an artificial mountain from the flat plain below. Spired, terraced, sweeping' in subtle curves and arching beauty, rising like, something from an old tale, a fairy palate, a mound in which art and science had met and. blended in enduring steel and stone. And yet this was not Comain.
Far down, buried beneath a shielding layer of rock and soil and running water, protected from high explosive and atomic destruction, from radiation and natural storm, the machine which was Comain rested as it had rested for more than two centuries, An incredible complexity of crystal and wire, of tube and relay, of warped atoms and strained molecules, the swollen fruit of one man’s genius rested, and, as if they were inexhaustible sponges, the ranked tiers of its memory banks absorbed every minute scrap of knowledge available to the minds of men.
Such was Comain.
For a long time the Matriarch stood at the high window and stared down at the terraced building, then, sighing a little, she turned and moved towards the centre of the huge office. A desk rested by the window, a wide thing of superb polish and immaculate workmanship, its surface littered now with sheaves of papers and squat, portable filing cabinets. Against one wall the blank face of a video screen reflected-little shimmers of light from the dying light outside the window, and the smaller, darker screens of several videophones stared like blind eyes towards the wide desk.
