"Right." The Kalif held up the report he'd been reading. "SUMBAA's monthly summary report on industrial conditions. There's a prediction I want you to see. Here."
Alb Jilsomo Savbatso walked over to him and took the bound packet of printouts, his eyes settling on the place the Kalif indicated. He read quickly. "Yes, Your Reverence?"
"Industrial riots at Chingarook! Six months from now!" The obsidian eyes found the exarch's, demanding. "How does SUMBAA compute this? Think of all the interacting factors involved! Do such predictions generally come to pass?"
"Your Reverence, I know little-actually nothing-of how SUMBAA or any computer functions. But it's been my experience that SUMBAA's predictions are usually quite accurate."
The Kalif got to his feet. "I'm going to the House of SUMBAA and talk to the director. Gopalasentu, isn't it?"
"Dr. Chisop Gopalasentu. He's worked with SUMBAA for years-twenty-eight years, I believe."
"Umh." The Kalif was thinking how little some people learned in twenty-eight years. Including some with doctor in front of their name. Well, he'd see.
After a call to alert the director, it was a short walk across the beautifully landscaped grounds of the quadrangle to the House of SUMBAA-a building almost tiny by government standards, its low dome and slender circling pillars marble, its walls of some dark brick: glazed, rough-textured, purplish near-black. The new Kalif had been introduced to it earlier that week. Its large central room was the Chamber of SUMBAA, containing SUMBAA's numerous modules interconnecting without symmetry around a large central unit. Adjacent to the chamber were workshops and storage rooms, some of them also large; several modest offices; a conference room; and a comfortable apartment for the director.
The director met them at the entrance. "Your Reverence!" he said bowing. "A rare pleasure."
You hope, thought the Kalif. "It's too soon to know how rare my visits might be," he replied dryly, and held the report out, opened to the prediction that had taken his attention. "Read this."
The director took it and read. When he'd finished, he looked up puzzled at the Kalif. "Sir, it is a prediction. Of labor problems on Saathvoktos. At Chingarook. With a recommended action. The Saathvoktu Industrial Ministry will no doubt follow the recommendation, assuming that the SUMBAA there has come to the same conclusion ours has. But if Your Reverence wishes to send a counter recommendation… That sort of thing is sometimes done."
Tight-lipped with apparent exasperation, the Kalif took the report from the director's hands, then walked past him through the small lobby and down a length of corridor to the door of SUMBAA's Chamber, the director scurrying alongside him. Opening the door, the Kalif stepped inside.
It was quiet, with what felt to him like a living presence. Thoughtfully he looked SUMBAA over. "I'm not interested in the recommendation," he said. "I want to know how SUMBAA made the prediction."
"Sir? You mean you-want to know how-SUMBAA made the prediction?" Clearly the man was dismayed.
The hard, marine-colonel eyes held him thoughtfully for a long moment. "Can you explain it?"
"No, sir."
"Why not?"
"Your Reverence, it is impossible."
"Damn it! That's no answer! Why is it impossible?"
The man was almost shaking. "Sir, SUMBAA is far too complex. The permutations of possible data sources and tracks…"
"You can't call up the data and the computations made in computing this particular prediction?"
The director stood unmoving, lips parted, as if frozen.
"Director Gopalasentu," said Alb Jilsomo gently, "I believe the Kalif is interested simply in knowing how SUMBAA draws his conclusions. Apparently you don't know."
The director's face resembled a child's who'd been found out by a teacher. "No, sir, I don't. SUMBAA is enormously complex. No one knows very much about his operating processes."
The Kalif frowned. "Then how do you maintain and repair it?"
The director was beginning to recover a bit. "SUMBAA does those things for himself, Your Reverence."
"For him, uh, for its self?"
"He informs me when some part or material is needed. With a schematic if necessary. If what he wants is not on the shelf, I have it prepared."
"So you simply install it then."
Again the man averted his face. "Yes, Your Reverence."
"What is it you're not telling me?"
The face snapped up, but the eyes still evaded. "Sometimes I install the part, I or one of my assistants. But more often…"
"Yes?"
The director shrugged. "Rather often, Your Reverence, SUMBAA simply asks for materials. Chemicals, you understand. In fact, certain chemicals are provided him periodically. He then uses them-as he sees fit."
The hard kalifal lips pursed. "Are you telling me that SUMBAA metabolizes them?"
"Possibly. In a manner of speaking, sir." Possibly. In a manner of speaking. The Kalif's eyes withdrew their hard focus, his attention shifting inward for the moment. Then they fixed on the director again. "Does anyone know more about SUMBAA than you do?"
"No, sir. Certainly not about this SUMBAA. There are eleven SUMBAAs, one on each inhabited world, each with its director and staff. Their original designs were the same, but they have evolved over the centuries, altering and enlarging themselves. They've redesigned themselves to a large degree. Thus they probably differ from one another, more or less."
"Umh! Has SUMBAA always been so-independent?"
"Somewhat. But apparently not as much at the beginning."
"Apparently? Then you don't actually know."
"I believe I do, yes. SUMBAA was not nearly so large at the beginning. It was intended that he grow in capacity, abilities, and size. From his own experience. At that time there was a field of study known as quasi-organics, not well developed but felt to have promise for computers. When SUMBAA was built, he was provided with a central processing unit of the usual semi-conductor microchips programmed to begin the progressive, self-directed development of storage and processing capacity of a so-called 'tank' of quasi-organic gel. SUMBAA's reorganization and expansion of the tank seems to have been the heart of his growth, but much of the increase in space has been for various servo-units, some of them mechanical. In time he grew far beyond the designs of his creators."
Grew! Again the Kalif's attention turned inward, as if he communed with himself. "Is it possible for me to, ah, communicate personally with SUMBAA? More freely than through office terminals?"
"Yes, sir, if you'd like. Here in this chamber."
"Good. Do what's necessary for me to do that."
The director turned and walked toward an instrument panel. A few lights glowed there, but nothing seemed to be happening. Quizzically, the Kalif wondered what SUMBAA did when it wasn't in use. Besides receive and store the constant inflow of data, which presumably it did as automatically as a human being received and stored perceptual inflow from its environment. Did SUMBAA nap? Dream? Or was it always computing, perhaps on esoteric questions of its own making? Presumably it at least indexed and collated the inflow.
The director pressed a single key. "SUMBAA," he said, "the Kalif would like to speak with you."
SUMBAA spoke. "Good morning, Chodrisei Biilathkamoro, Your Reverence. I am prepared to reply."
The voice was neutral, genderless but somehow natural. With the director's consistent reference to SUMBAA as he, the Kalif had expected it to sound distinctly male.