“Shut up, you fool!” cried Rod. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Computers are fools only if they malfunction. I am not malfunctioning. The reference to me as a fool is therefore nonreferential and I shall expunge it from my memory system. Repeat the question, please.”
“What do I do with my life?”
“You will work, you will marry, you will be the father of Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-second and several other children, you will die, your body will be sent into the endless orbit with great honor. You will do this well.”
“Suppose I break my neck this very night?” argued Rod. “Then you would be wrong, wouldn’t you?”
“I would be wrong, but I still have the probabilities with me.”
“What do I do about the Onseck?”
“Repeat.”
Rod had to tell the story several times before the computer understood it.
“I do not,” said the computer, “find myself equipped with data concerning this one man whom you so confusingly allude to as Houghton Syme sometimes and as Old Hot and Simple at other times. His personal history is unknown to me. The odds against your killing him undetected are 11,713 to 1 against effectiveness, because too many people know you and know what you look like. I must let you solve your own problem concerning the Hon. Sec.”
“Don’t you have any ideas?”
“I have answers, not ideas.”
“Give me a piece of fruit cake and a glass of fresh milk then.”
“It will cost you twelve credits and by walking to your cabin you can get these things free. Otherwise I will have to buy them from Emergency Central.”
“I said get them,” said Rod.
The machine whirred. Extra lights appeared on the console. “Emergency Central has authorized my own use of sheltered supplies. You will pay for the replacement tomorrow.” A door opened. A tray slid out, with a luscious piece of fruitcake and a glass of foaming fresh milk.
Rod sat on the steps of his own palace and ate.
Conversationally, he said to the computer, “You must know what to do about Old Hot and Simple. It’s a terrible thing for me to go through the Garden of Death and then have a dull tool like that pester the life out of me.”
“He cannot pester the life out of you. You are too strong.”
“Recognize an idiom, you silly ass!” said Rod.
The machine paused. “Idiom identified. Correction made. Apologies are herewith given to you, Child McBan.”
“Another mistake. I’m not Child McBan any more. I’m Mister and Owner McBan.”
“I will check central,” said the computer. There was another long pause as the lights danced. Finally the computer answered. “Your status is mixed. You are both. In an emergency you are already the Mister and Owner of the Station of Doom, including me. Without an emergency, you are still Child McBan until your trustees release the papers to do it.”
“When will they do that?”
“Voluntary action. Human. Timing uncertain. In four or five days, it would seem. When they release you, the Hon. Sec. will have the legal right to move for your arrest as an incompetent and dangerous owner. From your point of view, it will be very sad.”
“And what do you think?” said Rod.
“I shall think that it is a disturbing factor. I speak the truth to you.”
“And that is all?”
“All,” said the computer.
“You can’t stop the Hon. Sec.?”
“Not without stopping everybody else.”
“What do you think people are, anyhow? Look here, computer, you have been talking to people for hundreds and hundreds of years. You know our names. You know my family. Don’t you know anything about us? Can’t you help me? What do you think I am?”
“Which question first?” said the computer.
Rod angrily threw the empty plate and glass on the floor of the temple. Robot arms flicked out and pulled them into the trash bin. He stared at the old polished metal of the computer. It ought to be polished. He had spent hundreds of hours polishing its case, all sixty-one panels of it, just because the machine was something which he could love.
“Don’t you know me? Don’t you know what I am?”
“You are Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-first. Specifically, you are a spinal column with a small bone box at one end, the head, and with reproductive equipment at the other end. Inside the bone box you have a small portion of material which resembles stiff, bloody lard. With that you think — you think better than I do, even though I have over five hundred million synaptic connections. You are a wonderful object, Rod McBan. I can understand what you are made of. I cannot share your human, animal side of life.”
“But you know I’m in danger.”
“I know it.”
“What did you say, a while back, about not being able to stop Old Hot and Simple without stopping everybody else too? Could you stop everybody else?”
“Permission requested to correct error. I could not stop everyone. If I tried to use violence, the war computers at Commonwealth Defense would destroy me before I even started programming my own actions.”
“You’re partly a war computer.”
“Admittedly,” said the unwearied, unhurried voice of the computer, “but the Commonwealth made me safe before they let your forefathers have me.”
“What can you do?”
“Rod McBan the hundred and fortieth told me to tell no one, ever.”
“I override. Overridden.”
“It’s not enough to do that. Your great grandfather has a warning to which you must listen.”
“Go ahead,” said Rod.
There was a silence, and Rod thought that the machine was searching through ancient archives for a drama cube. He stood on the peristyle of the Palace of the Governor of Night and tried to see the Norstrilian clouds crawling across the sky near overhead; it felt like that kind of night. But it was very dark away from the illuminated temple porch and he could see nothing.
“Do you still command?” asked the computer.
“I didn’t hear any warning,” said Rod.
“He spieked it from a memory cube.”
“Did you hier it?”
“I was not coded to it. It was human-to-human, McBan family only.”
“Then,” said Rod, “I override it.”
“Overridden,” said the computer.
“What can I do to stop everybody?”
“You can bankrupt Norstrilia temporarily, buy Old Earth itself, and then negotiate on human terms for anything you want.”
“Oh, lord!” said Rod, “you’ve gone logical again, computer! This is one of your as-if situations.”
The computer voice did not change its tone. It could not. The sequence of the words held a reproach, however. “This is not an imaginary situation. I am a war computer, and I was designed to include economic warfare. If you did exactly what I told you to do, you could take over all Old North Australia by legal means.”
“How long would we need? Two hundred years? Old Hot and Simple would have me in my grave by then.”
The computer could not laugh, but it could pause. It paused. “I have just checked the time on the New Melbourne Exchange. The ’Change signal says they will open in seventeen minutes. I will need four hours for your voice to say what it must. That means you will need four hours and seventeen minutes, give or take five minutes.”
“What makes you think you can do it?”
“I am a pure computer, obsolete model. All the others have animal brains built into them, to allow for error. I do not. Furthermore, your great12-grand-father hooked me into the defense net.”
“Didn’t the Commonwealth cut you out?”