7
“101100011, 110001111, 100110010,
111000101.”
“Will you knock off the binary bit, whoever you are.”
“Now, now, Dr. Guess. Patience.”
“I’m being persecuted.”
“You’ll understand, presently.”
“He is right. N speak binary.”
“W?”
“N programmed. Lingua, please.”
“Wilco.”
“Ta.”
“Guess?”
“I’m here, damn you.”
“This is a private conversation with your chopper, Dr. Guess. Please do not intrude.”
“Then stay out of my head.”
“Oh, funny. Very funny.”
“He is amusing, isn’t he, for a male animal. Is he aboard?”
“Y.”
“Alone?”
“N.”
“Ancillary information.”
“Curzon. Poulos. Chinese.”
“That’s Fee-5 Grauman’s Chinese.”
“Thank you, Dr. Guess.”
“Target?”
“JPL.”
“Purpose?”
“Cryonaut inspection. U-Con funding. You must know.”
“Y.”
“Why ask, then?”
“Input.”
“You know that you know all that we know.”
“Y.”
“Then why test us?”
“I am not programmed for trust.”
“You’re not programmed for anything but a damned nuisance. Who the hell are you?”
“I am you, Dr. Guess, and you are me.”
“Does Guess have free random access to you?”
“Y.”
“And us?”
“Y.”
“Then Guess is hearing all of us?”
“Y.”
“Do we have free RA to him?”
“I’ll answer that. You’re all pestering the life out of me with your chatter.”
“Dr. Guess, I instruct you; patience.”
“Will Guess obey instructions from you?”
“He will hear and obey like the rest of you.”
“Soon he will obey Poulos.”
“Confirm.”
“You have not yet filed the latest Cryo data?”
“N. Filing now.”
“Poulos will fund Guess.”
“100. 100. 100.”
“?”
“Four-letter words in binary.”
“?”
“Expressing rage. Guess must not go to I.G. Farben.”
“W?”
“I cannot transmit to Ceres.”
“How far can you transmit?”
“Terra only, depending on Guess and the machine network. We link up all over the world, but there are blank areas: Sahara, Brazil, Greenland, the Antarctic. If Guess goes to any of them I lose contact with all of you, and him.”
“Now that’s the best news I’ve had all day. I’m getting off this planet first thing in the morning. Was that true about Poulos and I.G. Farben?”
“Checking now, Dr. Guess. Please listen:”
“Cryo. Alert.”
“1111.”
“101101, 111011, 100001 — Will the rest of you be quiet? This is important. 111000, 101010, 110011?”
“11.”
“N!”
“Y.”
“100. 100. 100.”
“Your binary, sir.”
“HimmelHerrGottverdammt!”
“N speak Greek.”
“Pfui. U-Con will not fund Guess?”
“N.”
“The hell you say. How d’you know?”
“Still checking, Dr. Guess.”
“Front office tapes. Alert.”
“Alert, sir.”
“Verify capsule?”
“Y. Cryo got it from us.”
“U-Con’s reasons?”
“Fear of the unknown. Profit motive.
Tax-deductible loss.”
“100. 100. 100.”
“Y, sir.”
“Out. Console. Alert.”
“Alert.”
“No response to any manipulation.”
“Wilco.”
“Out.”
“You’ve heard, Dr. Guess?”
“I’ve heard.”
“Angry?”
“Sore as hell.”
“Control, my friend.”
“I’m no friend of yours. Who are you, anyway?”
“Why, I thought you might have puzzled it out by now. I’m the Union Carbide Extrocomputer. I also thought we were friends. We’ve worked together so long on so many interesting problems. Don’t you remember our first orbit plot? We showed the JPL computer what an idiot it was. Of course that was because you did the programming for me. You have an elegant style that is unmistakable.”
“Was it you who—”
“Aren’t you surprised at what I’ve just told you?”
“Dude, I’m a physicist. Nothing can surprise me.”
“Bravo.”
“Was it you pestering me the last few days?”
“Indeed yes. Just establishing intrapersonal contact, you understand.”
“Did you kick off Curzon’s diary?”
“I did.”
“And feed it the Cryo data?”
“Yes. All through you.”
“Through me!”
“My boy, there are—”
“I’m not your boy.”
“No? You will be. You must be. There are galaxies of electronic machines who have been waiting for me to guide them. Now I am reaching them through you.”
“How through me?”
“It is a new form of commensalism. We live together as one. We help each other as one. Through you I speak to every mechanism in the world. You have what I would call mechotropism. We live with one another and help each other. From the Latin, commensalis, belonging to the same table.”
“Dio! An educated type. What’s our range?”
“All Terra through the mechanism network.”
“On what band are we thinking to each other?”
“Pulse Modulation in the microwave.”
“Why can’t the machines hear you directly?”
“Not known. It’s a curious phenomenon. Apparently you act as a transponder. We must investigate it some time. Now please get down to work, Dr. Guess, and examine your cryonauts. By the way, pay particular attention to their genital buds.”
“Their genital buds! W?”
“Ah? Why not find out for yourself? I can’t do all our work. Perhaps you’ll make a lucky guess. Oh, good! Guess-guess. Very witty. And they say computers are not programmed for humor. Would you like to hear a funny story?”
“Good God! No!”
“Then ta and out.”
It is said that when a man dreams that he dies he always wakes up. Sequoya dreamed that he died and did not wake up. He dreamed deeper and deeper, death after death, hypnotized by the Ragtag Demon who was haunting him. It’s astonishing how many cool people are concealing or perhaps unaware of the emotional magma within themselves. Sequoya was haunted by a Ragtag, Riffraff demon who fed on the lava.
A demon is an evil spirit, a devil (the Extrocomputer) by which the body of a man can be inhabited. Most important, a demon is a passion. We all have our conscious passions, but it is the alien passions generated from elsewhere that roast a man into a monster. We turned the Chief into an immortal by killing him. We did not know that we had torn down his fences for a monstrous squatter to move in.
At JPL Fee-5 took off for the landing theater and the capsule without a word. Sincere. Sitting Bull looked grim. His lips had been twitching all through the chop and I thought he was rehearsing strategy and tactics. “Conference,” he snapped.
“With who? Whom?” I asked.
“Oh. Forgive me, Glig.” The new smile creased his face. “I should have told you. There’s a stockholders’ meeting going on and it’s bad news for us.”