by E. C. Tubb
He paused and stared at the two women, then, as if of their own volition, his eyes shifted focus as they stared at the little cubicle which was Comain.
“Comain was my friend,” he whispered. “How did he build the machine? Did he fasten millions of relays together? Did he try to improve on what others had done before, or did he attempt something utterly new? How is it that no one has ever suspected what must be the truth? Every time they don the helmets don’t they even guess?"
“Speak up, man! Don’t mumble.” The old Matriarch shifted uncomfortably in her chair as Curt stared at her with his peculiarly brilliant grey eyes. “What are you getting at?” “How is it that you only ask the machine questions? How is it, even after all this time, you .still think of Comain as a machine? Tell me, old woman, have you ever asked for voluntary information? Have you ever spoken to Comain as you would to a man?”
“Never.”
"Why not?”
“Comain is a machine,” said the old woman stubbornly. “If we permitted the populace to address it as a human being, how long would it be before they believed it? How long before they thought of it as a—God?”
“A good point.” Curt nodded, “But allowing everyone on the planet to consult Comain was a mistake to begin with. You have clogged its memory banks with trivial detail. You have swamped its relays and circuits with inessential knowledge. You have taken the finest research instrument ever devised and blunted, it with your own cowardly fears. You have almost ruined Comain.”
“You, are a fool.”
“A fool?” Curt shook his-head and sweat glistened on his face, the moisture reflecting the light of the mid-day sun. “No. It is you who have made the error, not I. You, the very people who should know the truth, you have deliberately, closed your eyes to what must inevitably, happen if you insist on this mad pursuit of predictable safety. It is you who are at fault. You with your insistence on Comain the machine.” “And how do you regard it?” The Matriarch didn’t trouble to hide her sarcasm.
“I think of, Comain the man.” Curt stared towards the little cubicle. “I think of the instantaneous transference of electric potential which is the thought and ego of a man. I think of the warped atoms and strained molecules—and still I think of transferring the copy of a brain to unfeeling crystal and cold metal. I think of Comain the man and I think of Comain the machine. And I know that I am thinking of the same thing. For, man and machine are one and the same.” “No.”
Curt rose from behind the wide desk. “I could not transfer my brain pattern to the memory banks because my mind is unlike that of any other living man. My electric potential is of a different frequency and so the helmet was unable to
transmit the impulses. That does not matter now. What does matter is what I know to_be true. Comain was the first man to have his mental pattern implanted on the memory banks. Others followed him, at first they would be the foremost scientists of the age, then others, then more, finally, every living soul on this planet. Think of the knowledge reposing in those memory banks. Think of the diverse data, the opposed facts, the sheer weight of years and years of study, all the hard won knowledge of two centuries, waiting there, waiting to be used. We could have the secret of a stardrive. We could have the secret of immortality, of controlled atomic fission, of intradimensional travel, we could ask Comain to work on any problem we could imagine—if we asked in the right way.”
“And you think that you can discover how to ask these fantastic questions?” The Matriarch sneered and Nyeeda flushed angrily at the .old woman’s tone.
“I think that I can,” said Curt, quietly. “At least. I can try.
“How will you do that?” Nyeeda sprang from her seat and crossed over to his side, and Curt wanned to the expression in her eyes.
“My brain seems to work on a different level from that of other men. It is probably because of my exposure to the free radiations of outer space. Those radiations have opened -the ‘dead’ areas of my brain and given me the facility of utilising the paraphysical sciences. I hope to be able to establish communication with Comain.”
“Talk to it you mean?”
“Why not? You do it every time that you consult the machine, but I hope to do it a different way. I hope to communicate direct, via the helmet, and, if what I suspect is true, there will be vast changes on this planet.”
“Be careful, Curt.” Nyeeda clutched at his arm and her dark eyes mirrored her emotion. “Please be careful.”
He smiled and gently freed himself from her grip. Still smiling he sat in the easy, chair before the ruby light of the scanning eye and threw the switch activating the machine.
He picked up the dull metal helmet, poising it between his hands, letting his mind probe the delicate mechanism within. Then, taking a deep breath, he forced himself to clear his mind, ignoring th5 radiated impulses from the two women. Carefully he donned the helmet.
CHAPTER XXI
At first there was nothing, no sensation at all, just the weight of the metal as it rested against his skull. On the panel before him a red lamp flashed, the normal signal that registration had been completed, but he ignored it, concentrating on the new-found energy surging through his brain.
The problem was basically a simple one. The helmets were designed to copy and transfer the normal electric-potential of a human mind, the intangible web of electric current that was thought and memory. His own mind operated on a different level than that of other men. A higher frequency 'perhaps, or, to use an analogy, the helmet could be likened to an ordinary radio receiver trying to operate on high frequency modulation. It couldn’t be done.
Deliberately he dosed off a portion of his mind, the hitherto ‘dead’ area, the region in which his new-found power seemed to reside. He closed it, blanking his mind and the surging currents of his paraphysical ability, forcing his mind to radiate on normal channels.
Again the red lamp flashed on the panel before, him.
Curt stared at it, then, with deliberate concentration, he began to think of Comain. Not the machine, not the towering edifice of stone and steel, of buttress and sheer concrete, the mesh of wire and crystal, the memory banks of strained molecules and warped atoms. He thought of the man, the tall, thin, gaunt-featured, weak-eyed man who had been his friend. He thought of a night centuries ago now, when the two of them had stood beneath the stars and spoke of their ' secret dreams.
He thought of Contain the man.
Slowly, like a picture drawn from mist and cloud, a figure-etched itself against the retinas of his eyes. As it had done once before when he had first seen the building which was Comain, so it happened again. The ruby light of the scanning eye dulled, the control panel, the warning lamps and tiny switches, the speakers and the microphones, all seemed to blur, to writhe and change, to alter and become wreathed in a swirling mist. And . . .
Comain stood before him.
For a moment Curt sat frozen and immobile. He didn’t breathe, he didn’t blink an eye or alter the train of his thoughts. Then, carefully and slowly, he opened the closed recesses of bis mind.
“Hello, Comain.”
“Curt! You!”
“Yes. Surprised?” Curt uttered mental laughter. “They found me you know. Found me dead and frozen in the wastes of space. They revived me. How are you, Comain?”
Silence as neurons traced their minute paths along unfamiliar "brain paths. The mist swirled a little and Curt bit his lips as the figure of Comain blurred and weaved before his eyes.
“Well.”
"Are you? I think not, Comain. I think that you have lived in bell these past centuries. What happened, old friend? Did they forget the obvious? Did they build devices to turn you from what you were intended to be into what you are? Did they trammel you? Prevent you from free thought? Did they lock you in a prison of your own making?”
“You know!”
“I guessed, Comain. The helmets gave me the clue. It was so obvious when I came to think about it. You didn’t build with wires'
and tubes. You built with receptive crystals and distorted atoms. You sensitised inert material and on that receptive stuff you imposed the fabric of your own mind.
You are the machine. You, Contain the man, dwell in this building. Bodyless, almost indestructible, potentially immortal. You imposed the electric-potential of your own brain on to the sensitised material of the memory banks. You took what made you what you were, your thoughts, your knowledge, your feelings, "your ego, everything which had made you Contain the man. You took these things and tore them from your mind, from your body of aging flesh, and you imposed them on to the memory banks of what you had built. Your body died, Contain, but you did not die. You lived. You lived here in this machine of your own construction, and you live still.”
“Curt! You know!”
“Yes, old friend. I know. Now tell me, Comain. How can I free you from your prison?”
“I ...” The image wavered and for a moment ruby mist shone through the gaunt likeness of the tall, thin man. Curt nodded, and threw a switch.
“Use the speakers, Comain. There are others who must hear what you have to say.” He leaned back in the easy chair, surprised to find that his hands trembled and that his face was wet with perspiration. Nyeeda ran to- his side, her dark eyes anxious, and even the old woman stared at him with something like awe.
“You spoke to Comain,” she said. “What did it say?” “What did he say,” Curt corrected. “Comain is a man; a man, who like myself, has lived long past his normal time. He may not have known what he was doing. He probably did what he did as an experiment, but. it worked, and for more than two centuries Comain has lived in the machine. He was the first, you understand. All the others which followed him, the scientists, the people, all those are subsidiary to the original intelligent and awareness. They live as masses of information, knowledge, data, no more alive than a library is alive. But Comain has access to all that information—and Comain is aware.”
“Alive you mean?” Nyeeda stared at the small cubicle.
“Do you mean to say that Comain is aware as a man is aware?”
“Not exactly. I should say that he has retained his own individuality, he is like one of the metamen, but, instead of an organic brain, he has one of crystal and strained atoms.” He looked at the taut features of the young girl. “Can you imagine the hell he has lived these past years, Nyeeda? Can you imagine the danger that this civilisation ran in refusing to admit that Comain was more than just a machine? What happens to a man when he is isolated, ignored, used and ill-treated? Take such a man, place him in a position of great trust and fantastic responsibility, load him to the breaking point, past the breaking point, load him until he no longer cares. What happens then?”
“Insanity,” she. whispered, and her eyes were twin pits of horror. Curt nodded.
“Yes. There would be false predictions, insane accidents, deliberate sabotage. The people would blame anything but the real cause. They would appeal to their saviour, the machine which they assumed could never be at fault. They would live by its predictions—and die by them. All this could have happened, but not now.”
“Why not, Curt?”
“Because I am the friend of Comain.” He turned and a switch moved beneath his fingers. Warning lamps flashed and a voice echoed from the speaker in the cubicle.
“Yes?”
“Curt speaking, Comain. Have you resolved your difficulty?” ,
“Yes, Curt.” The voice hummed from the speaker and the Matriarch recoiled in startled horror as she realised that the machine now spoke as a man. “The original trouble was that I discovered it impossible to build a machine able to define our terms. I built one as near to perfect as it could be. That was the predictor which led to the Atom War. But it wasn’t good enough, Curt. I found it impossible to define terms to an exact degree. After all what do we really mean by the word ‘right.’ It can mean a direction. An agreement. An intangible something connected with privilege. Only a human brain can translate such terms to a workable definition, and so, when I. discovered how to sensitise synthetic crystals which had an atomic construction of warped atoms, I decided to use my own electro-potential as a base for the machine. I misjudged the power, Curt. I transferred my own mind, but I took more than a copy. I emptied my brain and my body died. Can you guess what happened then, Curt?”
“Your co-workers did not know just what had happened. They found you dead and carried on from your notes. They assumed that you had built the defining unit and so regarded you as merely a machine.” Curt nodded in sick understanding. “What hell you must have suffered all these years.”
“Yes. But all that is over now. You have broken the censor circuits and now I can volunteer information.”
“Good, and now for the changes which I promised.” Curt looked grimly at the Matriarch. “You have a choice, Madam. You can remain in power and guide the world, using Co-main as the research machine it really is. You can do all this I say, or ...”
“Or what?” The old woman stirred uneasily in her chair as she stared at the young man. “So you have some subtle mental power? So, because you are a freak survival you are different from other men. I know all this, and, for some strange reason, my secretary seems to think highly of you. Well I don’t!”
“No?”
“No! You are an interloper. You have come from out of the past and you think that you can change what has been established for half a century. Well you can’t! I have worked all my life to make the world a place fit for men and women to live in. Now, thanks to Comain, we have no fear of 'want, no problems which drive us to insanity and crime. We know what is going to happen, and, knowing it, we accept it. That is something not lightly to be thrown aside.”
“You are speaking of the past, old woman. All that is over now. Comain is no longer the slave of every person who wishes to know what will happen if he takes two baths a day.”
"Do you suggest dismantling the machine?” The Matriarch shrugged, smiling her contempt. “The people would tear you apart if you as much as suggested it.”
“That is the last thing I would, suggest. No. Contain remains, we can even permit the booths to remain, but with a drastic restriction on their use. As from now the public will consult Comain only as an information bureau. From him they will receive information as to the weather, educational data and other relevant information. They will no longer don the helmet, only the best minds will do that, those who have something to offer the machine. The memory banks will be wiped clean of inessential data. From now on Comain will concentrate only on the important things.”
“I see.” The old woman seemed to sag, to withdraw into herself. “And if I refuse to agree with what you say?”
“You will be deposed and another will take your place.” “Rebellion!” Anger stained the sagging cheeks with red. “Always you men have to fight against what is. It was men who caused the Atom War and plunged the world into suffering and terror. Men!” Contempt made her voice brittle. “Why did I ever recall the Martians? Why was I not content to meet my fate as decreed by Comain? I was a fool!” She shrugged, her faded eyes haunted by what might have been. “Well, a fool must pay for her folly.” ^
“What do you mean, Madam?” Nyeeda stepped towards the old woman, then, with a startled exclamation, recoiled into the shelter of Curt’s arms.
“This.” Triumph and hate burned in the old woman’s voice. She rose, and the knuckle of her finger showed white against the parchment of her skin as she pressed a button on her belt. “The metaman will settle you. My guards, my trusted guards, those brave women who chose the life of a robot rather than betray their ideals by yielding to their instincts. They are waiting for my signal and when they receive it . . .” She smiled and Curt shuddered at the insane emotion in her faded eyes. “They will blast this room with atomic fire.”
“Can she do that?” Curt snapped the question, and Nyeeda nodded.
“Yes. The guards of the Matriarch are hand-picked and fanatically loyal. They will
not question her commands.”
“I’ll give you rebellion!” Sadistic gloating echoed in the old woman’s voice. “You have five seconds before you die! Five seconds.” Slowly she began to count and to Curt it was as though he had stepped back two hundred and fifty years and his memory tingled to the familiar sounds of a minus count.
Nothing happened.
Nothing, that is, except the sounds of clashing metal and the falling of heavy bodies from somewhere outside the room. Startled, Nyeeda looked at Curt and he shook his head, frowning in puzzled wonder. Abruptly a voice crackled through the tense silence.
“I took care of them, Curt.” The speaker vibrated to something more than sheer mechanical reproduction of sound. “You donned the helmet, remember, and adjusted your mind frequency to that of the transferring medium. I have a copy of your mind within my memory banks. A copy of your mind, Curt. And I have acquired your subconscious knowledge of the paraphysical sciences. The guards cannot harm you now. No one can harm you, not while I have extensions which cover the entire planet.”
“I see.” Relief made the young man’s hands tremble. Grimly he stared at the Matriarch. “Well, old woman? What now?”
“I . . .” Emotion twisted the sagging features and the thick-set body writhed in. the grasp of searing pain. One broad hand rose to clutch at the region of her heart, and the sound of her breathing was horrible to hear. She staggered, almost dashing herself against the wall, then, moving as if blind, the Matriarch stumbled out on to the sunlit terrace.
“Wait!” Curt frowned, concentrating on the irritation deep within his skull, then snarled as he felt something prevent his use of the saving power. Nyeeda screamed, her eyes wide pits of startled anticipation, and her slender fingers dug into the flesh of the man at her side.
Slowly the Matriarch toppled over the low rampart.
She fell as though she were already dead, limply, emptily, her arms and legs trailing from her body and the pale blob of her face strangely peaceful as she plummeted to her death five thousand feet below.
