He looked at Broome inquiringly, realizing that the old man had been buzzing at him anxiously in meaningless words. “General, General, I’ve got to know exactly what happened—”
“Shut up and I’ll tell you,” Conway said. “Wait.”
He walked over to a hand basin at the wall, drew a glass of chemical-tasting water and found the tube of benzedrine pills in his pocket. It wouldn’t help much. He had been living on the stuff too long. But this ought to be the last push—had to be the last—and every extra ounce of stimulus helped. He could let go soon, but not yet.
He gave Broome a concise, thirty-second summary in a falsely brisk voice. The old man stood silent, pinching his lip and gazing at Conway with a blank face, his mind obviously ranging around the abstract regions inside his head.
“Well?” Conway asked. “What do you think? Is it running wild or isn’t it?” He wanted to reach out and shake Broome awake, but he pushed the impulse down. Once already he had forced the issue over Broome’s protest, and he had been wrong. Perhaps fatally wrong. Now he must let the old man think.
“I believe it’s on the job,” Broome said with maddening deliberation. “I was afraid of something like this—uncontrolled reaction. But the program’s built into it and I think it’s operating toward the goal we set it. One thing’s wrong, of course. It ought to communicate better. There shouldn’t be that speech block. We’ll have to find out what it wants and why it can’t tell us.” He paused and blinked up at the corn-box on the wall. “Sub-Five, didn’t they say? What’s in Sub-Five?”
“The library,” Conway said, and they looked at each other in silence for a second. Then Conway sighed another of his deep, collapsing sighs and said, “Well, we’ve got to stop it, somehow, and fast. Ego’s the most important thing we’ve got, but if it tears the whole base up—”
“Not quite the most important,” Broome said. “Have you thought what it may do next? Since the library was its first goal?”
“What? Don’t make me guess.”
“It seems to be hunting information. The next stop after the library might be the computers, don’t you think?”
Conway said, “Good God,” in a flat, exhausted tone. Then he laughed a little without making a sound. He would have to jump into action in the next few moments, and he wasn’t sure he could do it. He’d been a fool, of course, pushing action on the robot too soon. Without precautions. He’d gambled, and maybe he had lost. But he knew he’d still do the same if he had it to do over. The gamble wasn’t lost yet. And what alternative had he?
“Yes,” he said. “The computers. You’re right. If it goes after them we’ll have to smash it.”
“If we can,” Broome said soberly. “It thinks fast.”
Wearily Conway straightened his shoulders, wondering whether the benzedrine was going to take hold this time. He didn’t feel it yet, but he couldn’t wait.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s get going. We know our jobs. Mine’s to immobilize Ego, unless he goes for the computers. Yours—find out what he wants. Get it from him before he smashes himself and us. Come on. We’ve wasted enough time.” He gripped Broome’s thin arm and hurried him toward the door. On the way he touched his lapel switch and said into the receptive hum at his shoulder, “Conway here. I’m on my way in. Where’s the robot?”
The thin little voice of the mike started to say, “Just leaving Sub-Five, sir—through the wall. We—” But then the com-box in the laboratory behind them coughed loudly and shouted out in a metallic bellow, “Robot broke through the wall into Sub-Seventeen!” There was a tinny astonishment in its voice. “Destroying equipment in storage files—” All of this was funneled through the Communications Room, and the echoes of the complaint from Sub-Seventeen could be heard mingling confusedly through the lapel mike. Conway clicked it on and off several times.
“Com Room!” he said into the noisy turmoil. “Find out which way the robot’s heading.”
There was a brief pause, during which the com box behind them roared out its diminishing report of damage. Then, “It’s heading inward, sir,” the mike said thinly. “Toward Sub-Thirty.”
Conway glanced down at Broome, who nodded and shaped a silent word with his lips. “Computers.” Conway set his jaw.
“Start sending up heavy-duty robots to head it off.” he told the mike crisply. “Immobilize the robot if you can but don’t damage him without my orders.” He laid his hand over the lapel mike to deafen it, hearing a small, distant uproar filtering out from under his palm as he urged Broome to a trot down the long corridor where the robot had dwindled to a shining dot such a short time ago. But he was hearing his own last words repeating over and over in undiminishing echoes inside his head, “My orders—my orders—my orders—”
He thought he could go on giving orders—up to a point. Just long enough to get Ego under control. No longer.
“Broome,” he said abruptly, “can the robot take over?” And he held his breath waiting for the answer, wondering what he would do if it was no.
“I never doubted it,” Broome said. Conway let his breath out with a feeling of luxury in the sigh. But Broome went on, “If we can find out why he went wrong, of course. I have an idea, but I don’t see how I can test it—”
“What?”
“Maybe an iteration loop. A closed series of steps that repeat themselves over and over. But I don’t know what’s involved. He says ‘want’ and then blocks completely. I don’t know why. Some compulsion is driving him so powerfully he doesn’t even bother to open doors to get at what it is he wants. I don’t know what. My job’s to find out.”
Conway thought to himself, “Maybe I know what.” But he didn’t explore the thought. It was too chilly in the mind, and yet so simple he wondered why Broome hadn’t thought of it. Or maybe he had…
Ego’s goal was winning the war. But suppose it was not possible to win the war?…
Conway shook his head sharply and put that idea firmly away.
“Okay, you know your job,” he said. “Now about mine —how can we stop him without harming him?” With a small fraction of his mind he noticed that he was personalizing the robot now. Ego had begun to assume an identity.
Broome shook his head unhappily as he trotted beside Conway. “That’s one reason I was afraid to activate him.” Broome was doing it too. “He’s complex, General. I’ve got him pretty well cushioned against normal jolts, but an artificial brain isn’t like a human brain. One little injury means malfunction. And besides, he’s so fast I’m not sure what would stop him even if we didn’t have to worry about damage.”
“There’s a limit to what I can bring up in time, anyhow,” Conway said. “What about ultrasonics? We could cripple him, maybe—”
“Let me think about it. Ultrasonics that close might scramble something.” Broome was panting heavily from their rapid pace.
Conway uncovered the mike. “Com Room? Get a supersonic squad in the computer room corridor fast. But wait orders. If the robot shows up don’t open fire until—”
He broke off abruptly, having overshot the usefulness of the mike without realizing it. He was at the Com Room door and his own voice was crackling at him out of a box hanging low in the greenish gloom over the communications officer’s chair about ten feet away.
He let the door swing shut behind him and was engulfed in noise and darkness. The big glass information panels and the colored circles of the com screens glowed bright and the faces of the men swam dimly in the gloom, high-lights picked out on their cheekbones and foreheads in gold and red, green and faint blue reflected from the instruments they tended. General Conway automatically flashed a tired glance around the boards and screens that told him what was happening on the entire Pacific Front. He saw the radar shadows of the fleet, checked the code board for wind and weather, the status panel for plane assignments. But the information meant nothing. His brain refused to accept the burden. He had only one problem now.