7. CYCLOPS

The foyer of the House of Cyclops — once the OSU Artificial Intelligence Laboratory — was a striking reminder of a more elegant era. The gold carpet was freshly vacuumed and only slightly frayed. Bright fluorescents shone on fine furniture in the paneled lobby, where peasants and officials from villages as far as forty miles away nervously twisted rolled-up petitions as they waited for their brief interviews with the great machine.

When the townsmen and farmers saw Gordon enter, all of them stood up. A few of the more daring approached and earnestly shook his hand in calloused, work-roughened clasps. The hope and wonder were intense in their eyes, in their low, respectful tones. Gordon froze his mind behind a smile and nodded pleasantly, wishing he and Aage could wait somewhere else.

At last, the pretty receptionist smiled and motioned them through the doors at the end of the foyer. As Gordon and his guide passed down the long hallway to the interview chamber, two men approached from the other end. One was a Servant of Cyclops, wearing the familiar black-trimmed white coat. The other — a citizen dressed in a faded but carefully tended prewar suit — frowned over a long sheet of computer printout.

“I’m still not sure I understand, Dr. Grober. Is Cyclops sayin’ we dig the well near the north hollow or not? His answer isn’t any too clear, if you ask me.”

“Now Herb, you tell your people it isn’t Cyclops’s job to figure everything down to the last detail. He can narrow down the choices, but he can’t make the final decisions for you.”

The farmer tugged at his overtight collar. “Sure, everybody knows that. But we’ve gotten straighter answers from him in th’ past. Why can’t he be clearer this time?”

“Well for one thing, Herb, it’s been over twenty years since the geological maps in Cyclops’s memory banks were updated. Then you’re also certainly aware that Cyclops was designed to talk to high-level experts, right? So of course a lot of his explanations will go over our heads… sometimes even we few scientists who survived.”

“Yes, b-but…” At that moment the citizen glanced up and saw Gordon approaching. He moved as if to remove the hat he was not wearing, then wiped his palm on his pants leg and nervously extended it.

“Herb Kalo of Sciotown, Mr. Inspector. This is indeed an honor, sir.”

Gordon muttered pleasantries as he shook the man’s hand, feeling more than ever like a politician.

“Yes sir, Mr. Inspector. An honor! I sure hope your plans include coming up our way and setting up a post office. If they do, I can promise you a wingding like you’ve never—”

“Now Herb,” the older technician interrupted. “Mr. Krantz is here for a meeting with Cyclops.” He looked at his digital watch pointedly.

Kalo blushed and nodded. “Remember that invite, Mr. Krantz. We’ll take good care of you…” He seemed almost to bow as he backed down the hall toward the foyer. The others didn’t appear to notice, but for a moment Gordon’s cheeks felt as if they were on fire.

“They’re waiting for you, sir,” the senior tech told him, and led the way down the long corridor.

Gordon’s life in the wilderness had made his ears more sensitive than these townsmen perhaps realized. So when he heard a mutter of argument ahead — as he and his guides approached the open door of the conference room — Gordon purposely slowed down, as if to brush a few specks of lint from his uniform.

“How do we even know those documents he showed us were real!” someone up ahead was asking. “Sure they had seals all over them, but they still looked pretty crude. And that story about laser satellites is pretty damn pat, if you ask me.”

“Perhaps. But it also explains why we’ve heard nothing in fifteen years!” another voice replied. “And if he were faking, how do you explain those letters that courier brought? Elias Murphy over in Albany heard from his long-lost sister, and George Seavers has left his farm in Greenbury to go see his wife in Curtin, after all these years thinking she was dead!”

“I don’t see where it matters,” a third voice said softly. “The people believe, and that’s what counts…”

Peter Aage hurried ahead and cleared his throat at the doorway. As Gordon followed, four white-coated men and two women rose from a polished oak table in the softly lit conference room. All except Peter were clearly well past middle age.

Gordon shook hands all around, grateful that he had met them all earlier; for it would have been impossible to remember introductions under these circumstances. He tried to be polite, but his gaze kept drifting to the broad sheet of thick glass that split the meeting room in two.

The table ended abruptly at that division. And although the conference room’s lighting was low, the chamber beyond was even darker. A single spotlight shone on a shimmering, opalescent face — like a pearl, or a moon in the night.

Behind the single, gleaming, gray camera lens was a dark cylinder on which two banks of little flashing lights rippled in a complex pattern that seemed to repeat over and over again. Something in the repetitious waves touched Gordon inside… He couldn’t pin down exactly how. It was hard to tear his gaze away from the rows of winking pinpoints.

The machine was swaddled in a soft cloud of thick vapor. And although the glass was thick, Gordon felt a faint sense of cold coming from the far end of the room.

The First Servant, Dr. Edward Taigher, took Gordon by the arm and faced the glass eye.

“Cyclops,” he said. “I’d like you to meet Mr. Gordon Krantz. He has presented credentials showing him to be a United States government postal inspector, and representative of the restored republic.

“Mr. Krantz, may I present Cyclops.”

Gordon looked at the pearly lens — at the flashing lights and the drifting fog — and had to quash the feeling of being like a small child who had seriously overreached himself in his lies.

“It is very good to meet you, Gordon. Please, be seated.”

The gentle voice had a perfect human timbre. It came from a speaker set on the end of the oak table. Gordon sat in a padded chair Peter Aage offered. There was a pause. Then Cyclops spoke again.

“The tidings you bring are joyous, Gordon. After all these years caring for the people of the lower Willamette Valley, it seems almost too good to be true.”

Another brief hiatus, then, “It has been rewarding, working with my friends who insist on calling themselves my ‘Servants.’ But it has also been lonely and hard, imagining the rest of the world to lie in ruins.

“Please tell me, Gordon. Do any of my brothers still survive in the East?”

He had to blink. Finding his voice, Gordon shook his head. “No, Cyclops. I’m very sorry. None of the other great machines made it through the destruction. I’m afraid you are the last of your species left alive.”

Though he regretted having to give it the news, he hoped it was a good omen to be able to start out by telling the truth.

Cyclops was silent for a long moment. Surely it was only his imagination when Gordon thought he heard a faint sigh, almost like a sob.

During the pause, the tiny parity lights below the camera lens went on flashing, as if signaling over and over again in some hidden language. Gordon knew he had to keep talking, or lose himself in that hypnotic pattern. “Uh, in fact, Cyclops, most of the big computers died in the first seconds of the war — you know, the electromagnetic pulses. I can’t help being curious how you yourself survived it.”

Like Gordon, the machine seemed to shake aside a sad contemplation in order to answer.

“That is a good question. It turns out that my survival was a fortunate accident of timing. You see the war broke out on Visitor’s Day, here at OSU. When the pulses flew, I happened to be in my Faraday cage for a public demonstration. So you see…”