Heine puffed out his narrow chest.
‘The Duke will never surrender.’
Carmen snorted.
‘You can say that twice.’
Another series of explosions shook the gin house. Everyone involuntarily ducked. They seemed nearer this time. Billy shook the plaster out of his long hair and looked hard at the Minstrel Boy.
‘How the hell are we going to come through all this?’
The Minstrel Boy swallowed his drink in one jaundiced gulp-
‘We ain’t.’
‘No chance?’
‘We could score a load of yage from the apothecary and go out laughing.’
More bombs rocked the building. Billy rubbed sweat from the palms of his hands.
‘I can’t take much more of this.’
The Minstrel Boy looked at him. His eyes were bored and hooded.
‘Figure you’re going to have to.’
Olad spat in disgust.
‘You two are cowards and weaklings! How can you talk like this?’
‘We just open our mouths and it comes out.’
‘You are impossible. When the fighting starts we’ll see who the men are.’
The Minstrel Boy slowly turned to face him. His voice became quiet and lazy.
‘Bullshit.’
Olad reddened. His hand moved slowly towards the gun on his hip.
‘You’ll take that back, or I kill you.’
Before the Minstrel Boy could reply, another, different explosion rattled the walls. Flashes of intense white light were visible through the narrow mullioned windows. Carmen jumped to her feet.
‘What the hell is happening now?’
There were two more of the new kind of explosions, and a barrage of white flashes. The people in the bar looked fearfully from one to the other. Heine swallowed hard.
‘Those flashes. They come from the enemy’s strange guns. They must be inside the city.’
Carmen’s eyes widened and she turned pale.
‘The walls couldn’t have fallen so fast! It’s not possible!’
The Minstrel Boy sat very still, calmly regarding his hands.
‘It’s quite possible with the weapons they have.’
Everyone except Heine stared round in disbelief. There were more flashes and explosions. The flashes seemed to be accompanied by a strange, high pitched crackle. The door suddenly burst open, and Carmen screamed. A halberdier of the Ducal Guard stood swaying in the doorway. His eyes had the vacant look of one in shock. His weapons were gone, and his once magnificent red and gold uniform was blackened and charred. His mouth moved in silent convulsions. Finally he was able to speak.
‘They burned away the Goldsmiths’ Gate. The white fire cut through the wall … They’re inside the city. Nothing can stop them!’
He pitched forward on his face. The Minstrel Boy took a deep breath.
‘Now we’ll find out what kind of survivors we are.’
***
After his initial fear and trepidation had passed, CYN 256 was surprised at how quickly he developed an attitude of watchful cunning in his dealings with the Computer. Of course, he still lived with fear, but it was a new, more exhilarating kind of fear. Instead of being afraid of something that might be wrong inside himself, his fear now was that the Computer might detect the change that had taken place in his character.
The turning point had come when, after many work periods spent translating figures with one part of his mind and pondering the problem of the increasing anomalies in the printouts, he had finally come to the conclusion that the errors lay not with him but with the Computer.
The realization had been an intense shock at first. In an instant his lifelong faith had melted away. He had slipped out of the Computer’s all-embracing love and become a renegade. Although the word was not a part of his severely limited vocabulary, he had become a secret outlaw, pitting his meagre resources against the Computer’s infinite power.
CYN 256 quickly developed techniques of deception. During his work, his walks to and from his sleep cubicle and the few waking moments he had to himself, he hid behind a blank, negative appearance that masked the heretic thoughts that were racing through his mind. He knew if the Computer ever detected those thoughts he would either be taken to therapy or have his memory burned out and his thoughts realigned. He began to suspect that the Computer might even possibly kill him.
The excitement of his new state of consciousness was coupled with an intense feeling of frustration. His lack of real, positive knowledge meant that all his efforts had to be a mixture of guesswork and intuition.
The first puzzle he felt he had to solve was whether the anomalies were the product of a fault in the Computer’s makeup, or whether they were being deliberately created for some dark mysterious purpose. He had initially attempted to memorize all the figures that felt wrong, but as they started to come with greater frequency he discovered that this was beyond him.
He had worked out a crude system of categorizing the figures that rolled out on the printout. It appeared that one set referred generally to the stuff output. Another set seemed to cover the intake of raw matter for the manufacturing process. There was also a third set. CYN 256 wasn’t too sure what they were. He worked on the assumption that they were somehow involved in the internal processes of the Computer. He started to call them carrier figures, but he had no real idea of what their function was.
He watched and made mental notes for a dozen work periods and it began to appear that stuff turnover was climbing to a far higher peak than ever before. He did his best to keep all his data and observations catalogued in his mind, but gradually he had to face the fact that this was beyond him. He realized that he had to make some kind of material record.
For another three work periods he totally avoided the problem. He refused even to think about it. His research and observation stopped altogether. He considered abandoning all his plans. The only thing that stopped him was the knowledge that he could never go back to what he had been before. There was no returning to the passive, unthinking contentment of the Computer’s love.
In the last moments before the sleep gas came to take away his awareness, he finally made up his mind. There was nothing to do but go on. He had to face the danger and somehow preserve a record of the figures.
He woke feeling strangely calm. The blast of cold air circulated through his cubicle, and he climbed from his bunk. He was vaguely surprised that it was exactly like the start of any other work period. He took his fresh coverall from the dispenser and pulled it on. He swallowed the pills, and gulped down the beaker full of warm, thick, tasteless liquid. Then the chime sounded, calling him to work, and the door automatically opened. He dropped the beaker and food tray into the disposal vent. He stepped out into the corridor and joined the others of his shift walking calmly to the work section.
He spent the first part of the work period hiding the overpowering feeling of tension and excitement while he waited for his chance. Finally, when it came, he sat paralysed for a few moments. The printout had stopped and a blank length of paper was rolling off the feeder spool. He quickly ripped it off and in one fluid motion hid it inside his clothing. He waited, fearful and breathless, for some kind of retribution. None came. The figures began to appear on the printout again, he bent over his keyboard and went back to work. At the end of the period, he took the scriber from beside his keyboard. Instead of dropping it into the cubicle vent as he normally would, he quickly palmed it and slipped it into his coverall beside the strip of printout paper.
He walked down the corridor back to his sleep cubicle. Every now and then he glanced round at the dull eyed, green clothed figures that plodded along beside him. If only they could know what he had achieved. He had deceived the Computer and survived. The Computer was not infallible. CYN 256 savoured a feeling he had never felt before. It was a sense of power.