Then there was smoke. It came from a spot at the Power’s side, where was the engine to which he touched the sigils he had made, to imbue them with the power of mystery. And then—
I was blinded. There was a flare of monstrous, bluish light, like a lightning stroke from Heaven. After, there was a ball of fierce yellow flame which gave off a cloud of black smoke. There was a monstrous, outraged bellow of thunder.
Then there was nothing save the priest standing there, his face ashen, his eyes resolute, his eyebrows singed, chanting exorcisms in a shaking voice.
I have come to Venice. My script is filled with sigils with which I can work wonders. No man can work such wonders as I can. But I use them not. I labor daily, nightly, hourly, minute by minute, trying to find the key to the cipher which will yield the wisdom the Power possessed and desired to give to men. Ah, Johannus! I have those sighs and I can work wonders, but when I have used them they will be gone and shall be powerless! I had such a chance at wisdom as never man possessed before, and it is gone! Yet I shall spend years—aye!—All the rest of my life, seeking the true meaning of what the Power spoke! I am the only man in all the world who ever spoke daily, for weeks on end, with a Prince of the Powers of Darkness, and was accepted by him as a friend to such a degree as to encompass his own destruction. It must be true that I have wisdom written down! But how shall I find instructions for mystery in such metaphors as—to choose a fragment by chance—“plates of two dissimilar metals, immersed in an acid, generate a force for which men have not yet a name, yet which is the basis of true civilization. Such plates—”
I grow mad with disappointment, Johannus! Why did he not speak clearly? Yet I will find out the secret.
(Memorandum from Professor McFarland, Physics Department, Haverford University, to Professor Charles, Latin, the same faculty:
Dear Professor Charles:
My reaction is, Damnation! Where is the rest of this stuff?
McFarland.)
A Logic Named Joe
IT WAS ON the the third day of August that Joe come off the assembly line, and on the fifth Laurine come into town, and that afternoon I saved civilization. That’s what I figure, anyhow. Laurine is a blonde that I was crazy about once—and crazy is the word—and Joe is a logic that I have stored away down in the cellar right now. I had to pay for him because I said I busted him, and sometimes I think about turning him on and sometimes I think about taking an axe to him. Sooner or later I’m gonna do one or the other. I kinda hope it’s the axe. I could use a couple million dollars—sure!—an’ Joe’d tell me how to get or make them. He can do plenty! But so far I’ve been scared to take a chance. After all, I figure I really saved a civilization by turning him off.
The way Laurine fits in is that she makes cold shivers run up an’ down my spine when I think about her. You see, I’ve got a wife which I acquired after I had parted from Laurine with much romantic despair. She is a reasonable good wife, and I have some kids which are hellcats but I value ’em. If I have sense enough to leave well enough alone, sooner or later I will retire on a pension an’ Social Security and spend the rest of my life fishin’ contented an’ lying about what a great guy I used to be. But there’s Joe. I’m worried about Joe.
I’m a maintenance man for the Logics Company. My job is servicing logics, and I admit modestly that I am pretty good. I was servicing televisions before that guy Carson invented his trick circuit that will select any of ’steenteen million other circuits—in theory there ain’t no limit—and before the Logics Company hooked it into the tank-and-integrator set-up they were usin’ ’em as business-machine service. They added a vision screen for speed—an’ they found out they’d make logics. They were surprised an’ pleased. They’re still findin’ out what logics will do, but everybody’s got them.
I got Joe, after Laurine nearly got me. You know the logics setup. You got a logic in your house. It looks like a vision receiver used to, only it’s got keys instead of dials and you punch the keys for what you wanna get. It’s hooked in to the tank, which has the Carson Circuit all fixed up with relays. Say you punch “Station SNAFU” on your logic. Relays in the tank take over and whatever vision-program SNAFU is telecastin’ comes on your logic’s screen. Or you punch “Sally Hancock’s Phone” and the screen blinks an’ sputters an’ you’re hooked up with the logic in her house an’ if somebody answers you got a vision-phone connection. But besides that, if you punch for the weather forecast or who won today’s race at Hialeah or who was mistress of the White House durin’ Garfield’s administration or what is PDQ and R sellin’ for today, that comes on the screen too. The relays in the tank do it. The tank is a big building full of all the facts in creation an’ all the recorded telecasts whatever was made—an’ it’s hooked in with all the other tanks all over the country—an’ anything you wanna know or see or hear, you punch for it and you get it. Very convenient. Also it does math for you, an’ keeps books, an’ acts as consulting chemist, physicist, astronomer, ’nd tealeaf reader, with a “Advice to Lovelorn” thrown in. The only thing it won’t do is tell you exactly what your wife meant when she said, “Oh, you think so, do you?” in that peculiar kinda voice. Logics don’t work good on women. Only on things that make sense.
Logics are all right, though. They changed civilization, the highbrows tell us. All on accounta the Carson Circuit. And Joe should have been a perfectly normal logic, keeping some family or other from wearin’ out its brains doin’ the kids’ homework for them. But somethin’ went wrong in the assembly line. It was somethin’ so small that precision gauges didn’t measure it, but it made Joe a individual. Maybe he didn’t know it at first. Or maybe, bein’ logical, he figured out that if he was to show he was different from other logics they’d scrap him. Which woulda been a brilliant idea. But anyhow, he come off the assembly line, an’ he went through the regular tests without anybody screamin’ shrilly on findin’ out what he was. And he went right on out and was dully installed in the home of Mr. Thaddeus Konlanovitch at 119 East Seventh Street, second floor front. So far, everything was serene.
The installation happened late Saturday night. Sunday morning the Korlanovitch kids turned him on an’ seen the Kiddie Shows. Around noon their parents peeled ’em away from him an’ piled ’em in the car. Then they come back in the house for the lunch they’d forgot an’ one of the kids sneaked back an’ they found him punchin’ keys for the Kiddie Shows of the week before. They dragged him out and went off. But they left Joe turned on.
That was noon. Nothin’ happened until two in the afternoon. It was the calm before the storm. Laurine wasn’t in town yet, but she was comin’. I picture Joe sittin’ there all by himself, buzzing meditative. Maybe he run Kiddie Shows in the empty apartment for awhile. But I think he went kinda remote-control exploring in the tank. There ain’t any fact that can be said to be a fact that ain’t on a data plate in some tank somewhere—unless it’s one the technicians are diggin’ out an’ puttin’ on a data plate now. Joe had plenty of material to work on. An’ he must started workin’ right off the bat.
Joe ain’t vicious, you understand. He ain’t like one of these ambitious robots you read about that make up their minds the human race is inefficient and has got to be wiped out an’ replaced by thinkin’ machines. Joe’s just got ambition. If you were a machine, you’d wanna work right, wouldn’t you? That’s Joe. He wants to work right. An’ he’s a logic. An’ logics can do a lotta things that ain’t been found out yet. So Joe, discoverin’ the fact, begun to feel restless. He selects some things us dumb humans ain’t thought of yet, an’ begins to arrange so logics will be called on to do ’em.