Maria drummed on the table with nervous knuckles. "But youdon'tunderstand, Zale. You don't think for a minute that the Ministry of Computation is taking this lying down. I got word less than half an hour ago that they are preparing to force your recall as an unsuitable plenipotentiary."
"They can try." Lindsay spoke grimly. This was a move he had failed to foresee, though he supposed he should have. Inadvertently he was becoming a major threat to the crockery in the china shop that was Earth.
"They can do it," Maria said simply. "Zale, these people have become absolutely dependent upon their computers. They aren't going to let their entire creed be wrecked by one Martian."
"What do you want me to do?" he asked simply.
"Come with me—now," she said, once more gripping his hand. "A group of us want to talk to you, to find outhowyou have done it."
He looked at her, found her adorable in her earnestness. He said, "And if I play guinea pig with your friends, then you and I...?"
"Of course—as soon as there's time," she told him.
"Youarea little bundle of fanaticism, as well as of sex," he told her. "I should think at least, since you seem to have such an inside track, you could manage to get my recall deferred."
"That's justit!" she exclaimed bitterly. "I see everything, I hear everything—yet I candonothing. Papa thinks I'm merely a foolish female creature and his attitude blocks me at every turn." Lindsay realized again how fundamentally frustrated she was, wondered if she would ever find a completely satisfactory release.
Lindsay decided to play along. "All right," he said. "Shall we go?"
"Thanks, darling," she promised. "We'd better go separately. There will be a blue copter-cab waiting outside when you leave." She leaned across the table to brush his lips briefly with hers, squeezed his hand and glided off.
He wondered, while he waited for the check, just how foolhardly he was being, allowing himself to be summoned to a meeting of palace conspirators. It could very easily be a trap, whether Maria knew it or not. It could be a ruse to add fuel to the fire being lit under him for his recall as alegate persona non grataon Earth.
"Youhaven'tforgotten our date, have you darling?" The voice was throatily reproachful above him and he looked up in surprise at a glittering female figure, who seemed to be clad entirely in blazing brilliants.
She was tall and blonde, her hair an ocean helmet of gold, sprinkled with gems. Her face was beautifully boned, with broad cheeks and forehead pierced by a decided widow's peak. Light green eyes slanted upward beneath brows like the wings of some tiny graceful bird. Nose, lips and chin gained fascination from the perfection they skirted but just escaped. Face, arms, upper bosom and shoulders wore the even tawny golden tan that only some blondes can achieve.
Her figure, ashimmer with gems, was lithe of waist, firmly full of breast and pelvis, moved with the enticing grace of an Indonesian temple dancer as she slipped into the seat Maria had so recently vacated.
"Sorry, your highness," he said with a look of honest admiration. "I didn't know wehada date."
"We have now," she stated. She laid a handbag solidly encrusted with diamonds, emeralds and rubies on the table, said to the dwarf waiter, "Bring me the usual, Joe—and give Ambassador Lindsay another of whatever he's drinking."
At any other time, Lindsay thought. He said, "I regret this more than you'll ever know, my dear, but I've got a copter-cab waiting for me outside."
"It will keep." The girl pouted prettily, then leaned toward him and said huskily, "We'll have just one here. Then we can go to my place. It's just outside of Biloxi, almost on the Gulf. We can watch the dawn come up over the water. We can—"
"Stop twisting my arm," said Lindsay, trying to keep his thoughts in focus. Who had sentthisgirl and why? And what, he wondered, awaited him in Biloxi.
He got up, tossed a twenty-credit note on the table. "This will pay the check," he informed her.
"Not so fast," said the houri, rising with him. Trying to ignore her, he headed toward the door as fast as he could.
She kept after him and his ears burned as he plunged out into the night, saw the blue copter-cab waiting with its door open at the curb. But when he tried to plunge toward it he was halted by an arm whose sharp-faceted jeweled adornments cut his adam's apple. He gasped but the girl got in front of him, waving her bag.
There was a faint popping noise as the door closed and the copter-cab swiftly and silently darted away. Stunned by the swiftness of events, Lindsay was utterly incapable of resistance when his decorative tormentor thrust him into another vehicle. As they took off he said, "I suppose this is the prelude to another assassination try."
"Night soil!" said a familiar voice. "What the hell do you think I just saved you from, boss?"
Lindsay uttered one word—a word which, he thought later, was singularly revealing as to his native flair for diplomacy. He said, briefly and succinctly, "Huh?"
"Listen, my fine unfeathered Martian friend." She sounded like a primary school teacher addressing an overgrown and somewhat backward pupil. "Somebody fired a glass bullet at you from that cab."
"How do you...?" he began helplessly.
For answer she turned on the copter-cab light, revealing the back of a uniformed chauffeur, and showed him her handbag. There was a slight tear in one side of its begemmed surface and, when she shook it, bits of glass fell to the floor. "Careful," she warned when he reached for the bag. "It was probably packed with poison." Then, "Can you think of a better shield than diamonds?"
He said, "Ulp!" Unquestionably, now that she had revealed herself, this glittering creature was his slovenly office Nina. Seeking desperately to recover what had at best been a shaky boss-secretary relationship, he said, "Where are you taking me?"
"Out of the city, boss," she informed him. "We really are going to my place in Biloxi. You're much too hot a property to be allowed to wander around loose. Two tries in less than twenty-four hours."
"Then Maria..." he said, wonderingly.
Nina picked his thought up crisply. "We don't know whether your little playmate put the finger on you consciously or not. But she did it. Some of that sweet little crew she pals around with are desperate. They don't believe they can lick the computers and their only hope is to foment incidents that will lead to an interplanetary war. Nice kids!"
"But why pick on me?" he asked. "From what Maria said tonight I'm their one hope of beating the machines."
Nina shook her head at him sadly. "And you're the best brain our Martian cousins could send us. Here it is in words of one syllable. Maria's mob wants war. They believe they can light the powder train by arranging the assassination of a Martian Plenipotentiary.
"Meanwhile your speech yesterday and your fouling up Doc Craven's computer this afternoon, and whatever you did at the tennis tonight, have the Computer crowd screaming for your recall before you upset their little red wagon." She paused, added, "Naturally Maria's crowd wants to have you killed before you become a mere private citizen of Mars. Once you're removed from office you aren't important enough to cause a war."
"Good God!" said Lindsay as the double pattern became apparent. Then, curiously, "And just whom do you represent, Nina?"
She eyed him steadily, mockingly for a moment. Then she said, "Let's just say for now that I represent the Model's Union. We don't want any wartime austerity wrecking our pitch. Will that do?"
"I guess it will have to," he said. Then, plucking a diamond-and-emerald necklace from among the half-dozen about her throat, "You certainly didn't give poor Anderson much for his money."
"Stop it!" she snapped. "Do you want my eyes to swell up again? In a way what happened tonight was all your fault. Fernando and I were going to keep close tabs on you but you fouled me up with your beastly remark about my business at Doc Craven's and then put poor Fernando out of commission by getting mixed up in that riot at the Colosseum. I barely made the Pelican in time."
He thought of giving Nina the receipt from Zoffany's in his pocket, decided not to take the chance. So he said, "Is Fernando working for the Model's Union too?"
"Stop trying to be funny," she told him. "Night soil! You make me so damned mad. Letting that little tramp Maria nail you."
"At the time there wasn't much alternative," he said. Then, eyeing her closely, "How come you're mixed up in UW politics? I thought models were strictly for fun and games."
Nina said matter-of-factly, "I won top model rating when I was seventeen. I still hold it and I'm twenty-six now. A girl can get tired of being and doing the same thing—even in my profession. Besides, I've got brains. So I try to use them."
"How come you decided to be my secretary?"
"We drew lots and I lost," she informed him.
The copter dropped by searchlight to a flagged terrace in front of a dark cottage just off the beach. "Thanks, Bob," said Nina. "Tell the boys to stand by with their guard beams up." Then, to Lindsay, "Come on, boss, let's get out of this heap."
She walked swiftly toward the cottage, pressed something. Soft lights came on, revealing a charming simulated wood dwelling in the fine antique Frank Lloyd Wright tradition. She ushered him into a delightfully gay bathroom looking out on the water, said, "Wait here while I get this armor off."
Lindsay felt a slight qualm as he considered what being a top model at seventeen must mean. And then he thought, Why not? Certainly he had no claim on Nina's morals. He doubted if anyone had a claim of any kind on her.
She emerged, looking unexpectedly like a young girl in simple clout and cup-bra, which exposed most of her gorgeously tanned body. Her hair, innocent of jewels like the rest of her, was clubbed back simply with some sort of clip. She lit a cigarette and said, "Now—how the hell are you fouling up the computers?"
"I'm not," he told her promptly. "At least not in the case of the tennis match. I just happened to know something about Pat O'Ryan the people who fed facts to the computer didn't."
"That goon Pat!" she said. "He's so damned dumb."
"You know him well?" he asked with a trace of jealousy.
"I know him." She dismissed it with a flick of her cigarette. "It's a good thing you knewjudotoo, boss. But what did you do to him that fouled up the match?"
"While he was out cold I gave him a shot of whiskey to bring him 'round," Lindsay told her. "He didn't know about it and I didn't tell him when he informed me about his grain-alcohol allergy. So for once the computer didn't get full facts. And I had them."
For the first time Lindsay basked in a smile of approval from Nina. She said, "And then you had to mess me up at Doc Craven's so I couldn't sit in on the match."
"I'm sorry about that," he said sincerely. "You might brief me so I don't do it again."
"Well...." She hesitated. "I don't want to set myself off. It's not uncommon among us—models. You see, we're proud of our careers, not like the two-credit whores who wear glasses and harnesses. And it hurts us when someone refers to our work as business. You see, there's nothing really commercial about it. So when you—"
"But how the devil was I to know you were a model?" he asked her.
"I know," she said illogically. "But it still made me mad." Then, frowning, "But if the computer was wrong because of incomplete knowledge at the Colosseum, what was wrong at Doc Craven's?"
Lindsay said, "I'm damned if I know."
"We'vegotto know, with the president ready to put Giac to work."
"I meant to tell you about that," said Lindsay.
"Don't worry," Nina informed him. "Your table at the Pelican was wired."
"Why are you against computers?" Lindsay asked her.
She dropped her smoke in a disposal-tray, said, "Never mind why—let's just accept the fact that I am. And not for Fernando Anderson's reason either. He just wants power."
"And what do you want?"
"Me?" Her eyebrows rose in surprise. "Why, I just want to havefun!" She extended her arms and flapped her hands like birds. Then, again reverting to seriousness, "I wish you'd tell me everything that went on at Doc Craven's yesterday. Dammit,hisoffice wasn't wired."
Lindsay went through it, as nearly word for word as he could, then did it again when no answer was quickly forthcoming. Nina listened, her perfect forehead marred by a frown. Finally she said, "Let's take a dip. It's almost dawn."
She removed what clothing she wore and Lindsay did likewise. They felt the refreshing caress of the cool Gulf water on their skins—but that was all the caressing there was. Nina, unlike Maria, was all business despite the near-blatant perfection of her charms. Back in the bathroom she said, "The only thing I can think of is that stigmata business. Why should you imagine a mark on your mother's forehead?"
"Because she had one," he told her bluntly. "It was not unattractive—my father used to call it her beauty mark."
Nina ran long slim fingers through her water-dark hair and said incredulously, "You mean blemishes are not removed automatically at birth on Mars?"
"Why, no," said Lindsay, surprised. "It's entirely up to the individual—or the parents."
"And Doc Craven asked no questions that would lead to the truth?" the girl asked, blinking. When Lindsay shook his head she suddenly grabbed him and kissed him and did a little dance of sheer joy. "It's simply too good to be true! Two computers fouled in one day through missing information!"
"You're right, of course," he admitted. "But I'm damned if I see how it does us any good."
"You idiot!" she shook him. "It clears the whole situation. It means that the computers cannot give accurate answers according to the symbolic logic tables unless they get full information. And you have proved two breakdowns in the inescapable human element—the information feeding—just likethat!" She snapped her fingers. "It means we've got the whole computer-cult on the hip. I could kiss you again, you big goon." She did so.
"Cut it out," he said. "I'm not made of brass."
She said, "Night soil," amiably. What he might have done he was never to know, for a buzzer sounded and Nina moved quickly to a wall-talkie. She said, "All right, Bob, you say he's clean?" Then, a moment later, "Better let him in and say his piece." And, to Lindsay, "We've got company. Dmitri Alenkov—met him?"
Lindsay frowned. "You mean the Sovietchargé d'affaires? I met him at the reception last week. Dreadful little lizard."
"Dmitri might surprise you," she said enigmatically.
Lindsay almost saidnight soilhimself in exasperation. Instead and peevishly he asked, "Is there anybody you don't know—intimately?"
She laughed. "Of course," she said, "I don't know many women."
The Soviet diplomat entered the bathroom. He was a languid mincing creature whose decadence glowed around him like phosphorescence around a piece of rotted swampwood. He said, "I hope I am not intruding."
"That depends," Nina told him. "I'dlike to know how you traced us here so quickly."
"My sweet," said the Russian in intensely Oxford Esperanto, "you and your friend's"—with another bow toward Lindsay—"little affair at the Pelican was witnessed this evening. When the two of you departed together, heading eastward, and Ambassador Lindsay could not be reached in his apartment...." He paused delicately.
So this, thought Lindsay, was a descendant of one of the Red Commissars whose fanatic and chill austerity had terrorized the free world of a century ago. Lindsay knew something of modern Soviet history, of course. There had been no real counter-revolution. Instead the gradual emergence of the scientists over their Marxist political rulers had been a slow process of erosion.
Once computer rule was inaugurated in the North American Republic and swept the Western World, the scientists had simply taken over real power. The once-powerful Politburo and its sub-committees became obsolete.
Alenkov was stressing this very point. He said, "So you see, we, the best blood of Russia, are forced by these machines to live the lives of outcast children. Naturally we resent it. And when, after so many long years of waiting, we learn that one man has succeeded in foiling the computers where no man has succeeded before, we want to know his secret. We must have it."
Nina spoke first. She said, "Dmitri, the secret, as you call it, has been right there all along for any of us to see. It just happens that Ambassador Lindsay fell into it head first."
"Thanks for the 'Ambassador' anyway," Lindsay said drily.
Nina quelled him with a frown. "The computer weakness," she said, "lies in the human element. Now figure that out for yourself."
Alenkov's brows all but met in the middle of his forehead and his mouth became a little round O under the twin commas of his mustache. He said, "I see."
He left shortly afterward on a note of sadness, rousing himself only to say to Lindsay, "Ambassador, you are a very lucky man." His eyes caressed Nina's near-nude figure.
"That," Lindsay told him, "is what you think."
When he had departed Lindsay suddenly realized he was exhausted. He sank back in a contour chair and let fatigue sweep over him. But Nina paced the bathroom floor like a caged cat. Finally she went to the wall-talkie, gave a number in a low voice.
She pushed some sort of signal button several times, then swore and said, "Better not sleep now, boss. We're cut off."
It brought him to with a start. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Somebody or something is jamming our communicator."
She opened a concealed cabinet, apparently part of the bathroom wall, drew from it a couple of light but deadly looking blasters, and tossed one onto the contour chair in front of him. "You know how to work one of these things?" she asked.
"Better drop the weapons," a quiet voice said from the doorway behind them. "You haven't got a chance."
The speaker wore the light blue tunicall that was the summer uniform of the Army of the Republic of North America. His cap and shoulder-boards were bright with silver lace and he held a singularly ugly little automatic weapon cradled across one forearm.
Nina and Lindsay dropped their weapons. But the girl's back was up. Her slanting eyes crackled green fire as she said, "What right have you bastards got to come busting in here without a warrant?"
"Sorry," said the officer with chilling courtesy. "As it happens we do have a warrant. Remember, Miss Beckwith, this cottage is not United World's soil." He tossed an official looking document which Nina caught, motioned a couple of his men to pick up her weapons.
"All right," she said after scanning the warrant. "What do you want?"
"Ambassador Lindsay," was the reply. "We have been ordered to ensure that no harm comes to him while he is on American soil."
"I can read!" snapped the girl. "There's going to be hell to pay over this." Then, to Lindsay, "We can't stop them now but they can't hold you.Ican see to that. Just try to keep your big dumb blundering self out of any extra trouble till we can take steps—will you promise me that, boss?"
"I'll try," said Lindsay.
They took him to Washington—or rather to Sherwood Forest, in Annapolis, where the summer White House sprawled over and beneath its landscaped acres. To a man from Mars it was very green, very lush, very beautiful.
Lindsay's first impression of famed President Giovannini was that the famous elected leader of the North American Republic was composed mostly of secretaries. But at last one of them—the seventh or eighth—said gravely, "If you'll just step this way, please," to Lindsay and motioned for the Army officer to remain where he was. He was admitted to the bathroom of the man who had sent for him so summarily.
The president proved to be unexpectedly like some of the governors of Lindsay's home planet—incisive, unaffected, easily articulate. Physically he was stocky, of middle height, with a round, firmly fleshed sensitive face. He wore huaraches and bright blue shorts, no glasses or distortion harness.
He waved Lindsay to a contour chair beside his own, said, "Sorry I had to have you hauled here this way. I was afraid you'd get killed if I didn't. Do you have any idea of the uproar you've caused in the past two days, young man?"
Lindsay, somewhat taken aback by the president's abruptness, said, "Well, I knew some small groups were upset but...."
"Take a look," the president told him, waving toward a quartet of vidar screens on the wall. Over one of them was the legend, New Orleans, over another, New York, over a third, Los Angeles, over the fourth, Chicago. "Those are live shots," Giovannini added.
Lindsay was appalled. Each of them showed rioting crowds and defensive police action; the commentaries cried their confusion. However, the Martian got the drift quickly enough. Apparently his recent activities had driven the neurotic Earthlings to violence.
There appeared to be two chief factions. One of them, smashing and swarming and screaming its outrage, was demanding the abolishment of computer government. The other, equally violent and even more numerous, was after a villain named Zalen Lindsay.
Seeing that Lindsay was beginning to understand what was happening, the president pressed a button that turned off all the vidar screens and voices. He said, "I could switch to any of our other cities—to cities in South America, India, Western Europe, England. They're especially bitter toward you in England."
"I'm beginning to accept the fact—if not to understand," said Lindsay.
The president said, "Lindsay, from the point of view of your planet you have done nothing improper. But from the point of view of this planet...." He let silence and a shrug of thick shoulders finish the sentence.
"I had no idea," Lindsay began, "that conditions on Earth...." He let his own voice trail off.
Giovannini finished it for him. "You had no idea people on Earth were so damned neurotic," he said, and sighed. Then, "Lindsay—call me Johnny, will you? All my friends do—Lindsay, for generations now people by and large have been forfeiting confidence in themselves to confidence in computers.
"They have had good reason. Computer judgment has been responsible for the first true age of world peace in history. It may not be healthy but it's a damn sight healthier than war. And it has transformed this republic from an unwieldy group of states into a controlled anarchy that can be run by pushbuttons under ordinary conditions."
He paused while the Martian lit a cigarette, then went on with, "Thanks first to Sylac, then to Elsac, we learned that Vermont was happiest under its Town Meeting method, North Carolina needed its oligarchy, while my native state, California, is much better off divided in two. Texas became happy with its triple legislature—they never are happy unless they have a little more of everything down there. It was the same in other countries—Canada, South America, Spain...."
"And England?" Lindsay said softly.
The president sighed again. "England," he admitted, "is a bit of a problem—out of all proportion to its size and current importance. But the British are stubborn about their institutions. They've hung onto a Royal Family a hundred years longer than anyone else. We can hardly expect them to give up their beloved socialism so soon."
"Just as long as Mars is not expected to pay for this indulgence, it's quite all right with my people," Lindsay told him.
"What'syourfirst name—Zalen?" the president asked. "Well, Zalen, I know it's a problem but we all have to give a little or crowd somebody out. Zalen, people are getting killed on account of you right now."
"I've nearly been killed a couple of times myself."
"I know. Regrettable," said Giovannini. "The UW crowd never has understood security. That's why I had to kidnap you, Zalen. Couldn't have you killed, you know. Not now anyway."
"Glad you feel that way, Johnny." Lindsay told him drily. "But hasn't it occurred to you that if people here are so easily set off it might be a good idea to knock out this computer business once and for all?"
The president puffed on his cigarette. Then he said, "Zale, twenty years ago, maybe even ten, it could have been done. Now it's too late. Which is why the ninety-billion-dollar investment in Giac. We've got to give them an absolute computer, one that will remove forever the basic distrust of computer judgment that underlies the neuroses you just mentioned."
"Quite possibly," said Lindsay. "But I haven't actually done a damned thing myself to undermine computer judgment. The mistakes have been made by the so-called experts who have fed their machines inadequate information. Those mistakes were infantile. They suggest some sort of neurosis on the part of the feeders. They could be mistake-prone, you know."
President Giovannini chuckled again. "Of course they're mistake-prone, Zalen," he said. "Some of them, anyway. And it's getting worse. That's the real reason for Giac. Wait'll you see it!"
"You think I'm going to be around that long, Johnny?" Lindsay asked. "I understand I'm to be sent back to Mars—if I live that long."
"No, Lindsay, we need you—I'll explain in a moment. And we aren't going to let you die and become a martyr for generations of anti-computerites. We can't have that now, can we?"
"I'll go along with you on it," said Lindsay, wondering what the president was leading up to.
"Good!" The president beamed at him. "Zalen—I wantyouto be the first person to put Giac through a public test. That's how much I trust that machine. I want you, the man who has fouled up two computers, including Elsac, to try her out."
And Lindsay could only nod. The governors of Mars might not approve but after the uproar he had caused on this mission they could hardly object. President Giovannini's scheme was fully up to that renowned statesman's reputation for political astuteness. The more Lindsay thought it over the more beautiful was its simplicity.
Mere word that he was to conduct the first public test would quell the rioting. And unless Lindsay could show this mightiest of all symbolic logic computers to be fallible, computer rule would be entrenched on Earth as never before.
But what if, in some way, he succeeded in confounding the computer? Lindsay shuddered as he thought of the rioting he had so recently witnessed on the vidar-screens.
His face must have revealed his distress for the president said, "You're worn out, Zalen. Can't have that, you know. Not with the big test coming tomorrow."
Lindsay barely remembered leaving the president and being led to a sleeping chamber somewhere in the vast mansion. When he woke up it was dark and Nina was perched on the edge of his contour couch, looking unexpectedly demure in a grey bolo with white collar and cuffs.
He said, as articulate as usual when she surprised him, "Hi."
"About time you woke up," she said. "Do you know you snore?"
"I can't help it," he told her. Then, coming fully awake, "How the devil did you gethere?"
"I walked," she informed him succinctly. She stood up, her magnificent figure silhouetted against the light. "Better get dressed—your duds are over there." She nodded toward a walldrobe. "I'll wait in the bathroom." She breezed out.
When he looked at the clothing he was to wear he sensed that Nina had selected it for him. It was a little brighter in color, a little more daring in cut, than what he would have picked for himself.
Nina was placing jewels carefully in her hair, which she had released to form a sleek halo around her magnificent head, when he entered the bathroom. A small palisade of glittering jeweled hairpins protruded from her mouth. She had shed her demure bolo and stood revealed in glittering black bodice-bra and evening skirt-clout.
After placing the last jewel in her hair she swung about and said, "There—how do I look?"
"Gorgeous," he told her.
"You look a bit dull," she said. She dug a box out of a travel-bag placed in a corner of the room. "Here," she said. "Put this on—left side."
"This" proved to be a magnificent sunburst decoration, a glittering diamond-encrusted star. He said, "What is it?"
"Grand Order of the United Worlds—a fine diplomat you are! I picked it up for you this afternoon before flying here. Just stick it on...." She came over, took it from him, pressed it firmly against his bolo till the suction grips caught hold.
He put his arms around her. She let him hold her a moment, then pushed clear in the immemorial gesture of women dressed for a party who do not want to have their grooming mussed. "Not now," she said. "We'll have plenty of time."
"Not for what's worryingme," he said. "Nina, I've got to put Giac through its paces in front of the whole world tomorrow. And I don't know what to ask it. I've got a blind spot where symbolic logic is concerned."
"Don't fret yourself," said the girl calmly. "I'm not worried aboutyou. Not after what you've managed to do to all the other computers you've faced. Come on—we're having dinner with the president."
"Who the hellareyou anyway?" he asked her bluntly. "You don't even look the same."
She laughed. "I shouldhopenot," she told him. "After all, I could hardly grace the president's table as a mere UW secretary—oras a New Orleans top model. Come on!"
He went—and got his second shock when President Giovannini greeted Nina with a manner as close to obsequiousness as that professionally free-and-easy politician could muster. He said, "My dear Miss Norstadt-Ramirez. I do hope you'll forgive me for ordering such summary action this morning. If I'd had the slightest idea...."
"I was boiling," Nina told him. "I was just about ready to order Aetnapolitan to pull the props out from under you when the riots started. Then I blessed your shiny little head and came up here."
"I am honored," said the president.
Lindsay, walking through the proceedings in a fog, was even more laconic than a clipped British envoy who, along with a recovered Senator Anderson, was a member of the party.
"Don't take it so hard," Anderson whispered. "Nina is just about the best-kept secret in this hemisphere. If I weren't one of the few who's been in on it all along...." He shrugged eloquently.
Lindsay said nothing. He couldn't. So Nina—his fresh slatternly secretary, the courtesan of the world capital—was also Coranina Norstadt-Ramirez, the heiress who owned almost half of Earth!
He felt like a quadruply-plated idiot. He knew about Norstadt-Ramirez—who didn't, whether on Earth or Mars or the space-stations circling Venus while that planet's atmosphere was being artificially altered to make it fit for human habitation?
She was a fantastic glamorous lady of mystery, the ultimate heiress, the young woman to whom inexorably, thanks to North America's matriarchal era during the twentieth century, the control of most of its mightiest corporations and trust funds had descended.
And she was Lindsay's secretary. No wonder, he thought miserably, she had never sounded quite sincere about calling him boss. Why, she virtually owned his home planet as well. He watched her covertly across the table, poised, amused, alert, occasionally witty—and so damnably attractive. He wished he were dead.
She caught his regard, scowled and stuck her tongue out at him. He thought.Why, you little...!
Somehow she got them out of the chatter after dinner, got him back to his suite. There, regarding him sternly, she said, "Zale, you aren't going to be stuffy about this, are you?"
"I can't help it," he replied. "If you'd only told me...."
He read sympathy in her green eyes. But she merely shrugged and said, "Result of a lifetime of keeping myself under wraps." She sat on a contour chair, patted a place for him alongside.
She said, "I'm the richest single person there has ever been—you know that. It isn't my fault. It just happened. I didn't deserve or want or need it. But it is a hell of a responsibility. Since I'm responsible for so much it seemed important to me to know how people felt. After all we act because we feel. And thanks to a few good friends like Fernando Anderson I've been able to get away with it."
"Why me?" he asked her. "Why pick on me?"
Her expression softened. One of her hands crept into his. "One of the nicest things about you, Zale, is the fact that you don't realise just how special you are."
"I'm not so special on Mars," he told her.
"No?" Her eyebrows rose delightfully. "A quarter of a billion Martians select you as their first Plenipotentiary to the UW and you're not special? Zale, you're an absolute woolly lamb.
"There's more to it than that. I've never been to Mars. I should have, but I simply haven't had the time. So I decided the best way to find out about Mars at second hand was to work with you in some capacity that would let you be yourself."
"A filthy, underhanded, thoroughly feminine trick," he said gently and kissed her. Then, frowning into her green eyes, "But why are you so dead set against computer judgment?"
"Isn't it obvious?" she asked. "I've got a tremendous stake in this world. Kicking around it as I have I've been able to see what is happening. I'm damned if I'm going to have my property managed and run by a bunch of people who make mistakes because they're too neurotic to make decisions. Look at them!" Her voice became edged with disgust.
Lindsay said, "I see. Listen, honey, I'd like to sleep with you tonight."
She looked surprised but not displeased by his bluntness. "Of course, darling," she told him.
"How much will it cost me?" he asked her.
She froze—then her eyes began to fill and she sniffled. He said, "You know I didn't mean that. Dammit, I just wanted to show you you're a neurotic yourself."
She slapped him hard enough to tilt him off the contour chair. She rose haughtily, still sniffing. Lindsay stretched out a hand and caught one of her ankles and tripped her up. She tottered, gave vent to a startled, "Awk!", fell backward into the pool-tub.
He dived in after her, caught her when she came up, spluttering, gripped her shoulders hard. Her eyes blazed green fire at him. She said, "Howdareyou do that to me, you moron!"
He said, "If I hadn't I'd probably never have seen you again."
She collapsed into his arms.
Later—much later—as Nina was about to leave him for her own suite, he asked, "Honeycomb, what did you lose that caused Fernando to give you that necklace?"
"I nearly lost you," she replied from the doorway. "I bet him Maria wouldn't get you that night. And lost. So Fernando sent the necklace as compensation."
"Quite a large compensation," said Lindsay drily.
Nina shrugged. "Not for Fernando," she told him. "After all, I pay him enough. He's my number one political boy. 'Night, darling."
Lindsay was on the verge of a breakdown himself by noon the next day, after Computation Minister du Fresne, looking uglier than ever, had finished conducting President Giovannini's official party through the rooms and passages of Giac. If Nina hadn't been by his side during and after the swift rocket trip to Death Valley, he might have collapsed.
It was she who had removed the glittering star from his breast before breakfast in the Sherwood Forest mansion that morning. "You needed something to wear for show last night," she had told him.
"Then it's not mine?" he had countered absently.
"Of course it is," she had assured him. "But Secretary General Bergozza is going to make the official investiture after the test."
Lindsay had meekly surrendered the bauble, barely noticing. His brain was straining to recall what he could of symbolic logic—a subject that had never particularly interested him. For some reason it kept working back to Lewis Carroll, who, under his real name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, had been the founder of symbolic logic back in the nineteenth century, along with the renowned Dr. Poole.
About all he could remember was the following problem:
(1) Every one who is sane can do Logic;
(2) No lunatics are fit to serve on a jury;
(3) None ofyoursons can do Logic.
The Universal was "persons". The symbols were: a—able to do Logic; b—fit to serve on a jury; c—sane; d—your sons.
And the answer, of course, was: None ofyoursons is fit to serve on a jury.
For some reason this, in turn, made him think of the ancient conundrum that employed confusion to trip its victims: What's the difference between an iron dog in the side yard of a man who wants to give his little daughter music lessons but is afraid he can't afford them next year, and a man who has a whale in a tank and wants to send him for a wedding present and is trying to pin a tag on him, saying how long he is, how much he weighs and where he comes from, but can't because the whale keeps sloshing around in the tank and knocking the tag off?
This time, the answer was: One can't wag his tail, the other can't tag his whale.
"None ofyoursons is fit to tag a whale—or wag a tail," he said absently.
"What was that?" Nina asked.
"Nothing, nothing at all," he replied. "Merely a man going out of his mind."
"It will never miss you," she replied brightly. But her brightness became a bit strained as the day wore on. The trip, for Lindsay, was sheer nightmare.No sane man can wag his tail, he kept thinking.
Even such fugitive grasping at Logical straws vanished when he saw the immense squat mass of Giac, rising like a steel-and-concrete toad from the wastes of the California desert. It seemed absurd even to think that such an imposing and complex structure should have been reared on the mathematics of the immortal author ofAlice in Wonderland,Through the Looking GlassandThe Hunting of the Snark.
For Giacwasimposing, even to a man biased against computers from birth. Nor did du Fresne's smugness help Lindsay's assurance a bit. He explained how each of the block-large preliminary feeders worked—one for mathematical symbols, one for oral recording, a third for written exposition. Each worked simultaneously and in three different ways—via drum-memory banks, via punched tapes, via the new "ear-tubes" that responded to sound.
Then there were the preliminary synthesizers, each of which unified in vapor-plutonium tubes the findings of its three separate feeders. Next, a towering black-metal giant filling three walls of a cubical room twenty metres in each dimension, came the final synthesizer, which coordinated the findings of the preliminary synthesizers and fed them into Giac itself.
The master machine was the least imposing of all. It stood like an alabaster stele in the center of an immense chamber arranged like a theater-in-the-round. But du Fresne, peering through his strawberry spectacles, said gloatingly, "Don't be deceived by the size, ladies and gentlemen. All but what you see of Giac is underground. It is contained in an all-metal cell one million cubic metres in volume. And it is infallible."
Fortunately Lindsay was given a half hour of final preparation in one of the small offices with which the above-ground building was honeycombed. Nina came with him—by request.
"I can't do it," he told her abruptly.
"Don't worry, darling, you'll think of something," she said. She tried to embrace him but he was too worried to respond. After awhile she said, "Why not put a direct question. Ask it if it's infallible."
"It could hardly tell a lie on itself," he replied.
"What if such a question involved destruction of part of itself in the answer?" she asked.
"It might—though I presume du Fresne and his boys have prepared it for such jokers. And anyway, what sort of question would do that? Got any ideas?"
"That's your department," she said helpfully. "You're the computer smasher of this team."
"But that was pure luck," he said half-angrily. "One can't wag his tail.... The other can't serve on a jury."
She looked alarmed. "Darling," she said, "you aren't—"
"Not yet, Honeycomb," he said, "but give me time.
"It's got to be something about this Mars-Earth problem," he went on after a long silence. "Listen: how can Mars develop if it's in the spot of the Red Queen—has to run like hell just to stay where it is thanks to Earth's dumping policies?"
The door opened and closed and Maria Bergozza was with them. She said, "Apparently this is necessary." She was holding a glass-pellet gun in her hand, pointing it at Lindsay.
He said, "Why, you—!" and moved toward her. Promptly the Secretary General's daughter pointed the gun at Nina's tanned midriff. He stopped.
Maria said evenly, "It'syouthat have done this to me, Nina. You've had all the fun while I've had to pour tea for papa at his damned functions. You've fouled up our plans with your meddling down in New Orleans. And now you've taken Zale, as you take everything else you take a fancy to."
"But you tried to kill him," said Nina. "Why should you care?"
"He would have been a martyr—andyouwouldn't have had him," said Maria, her gun hand steady. "I know it's going to ruin me to kill you—but my whole life is ruined anyway. And this way at least I can sacrifice it for the cause."
"The cause of interplanetary war?" said Lindsay, in his turn incredulous. Hot rage rose within him, "You third-rate tramp!" He stepped squarely into the line of fire, thrust his left breast in front of the muzzle of her gun. Behind him Nina screamed.
But Maria didn't fire. Instead she sneezed—sneezed and sneezed again. Her gun hand gyrated wildly as she doubled in a paroxysm and Nina moved past Lindsay to pluck the weapon from her.
"Don't call me—krrrrashew!—third-rate," she managed to gasp before the blonde sent her sprawling with a very efficient right cross to the chin.
Nina turned on Lindsay angrily. "You damned fool!" she almost shouted. "You might have been killed."
He looked down, felt his knees turn to water. He said, "Omigod—I thought I was still wearing the star. I remembered how you saved my life in New Orleans with your diamond evening bag!"
He sat down—hard. From the floor Maria whimpered, "What are you going to do to me?"
Nina said, "I ought to kill you, you know, but it would cause too much of a stink. So beat it and let us think. You'll be hearing from me later. What you hear will depend on how you handle yourself from now on. Understand?"
When she had slunk out Lindsay said, "What broke her up?"
Nina dropped the gun into her bag casually, said, "Now I know you're lucky, you thin slob. You happened to stumble right onto her allergy. She can't stand being thought of as a third-rate lover. That's why she's always been jealous of me—because I have top-model rating and she could never make it. She's too damned concerned with pleasing herself to please anyone else. She flunked out at fourteen."
"Then why didn'tyoupull it?" Lindsay asked her, astonished.
"Because," Nina said thoughtfully, "I'm not conditioned to think that way. It's horribly rude here on Earth to stir up other people's allergies. As you reminded me last night, you rat, we're all people in glass houses."
"But I didn't even know...." muttered Lindsay.
"You hit it though," she reminded him. "And you're going to hit it again out there in exactly five minutes."
Lindsay was extremely conscious of the eyes of the vidar cameras upon him as President Giovannini, having finished his introductory speech, led him to the alabaster stele in the center of Giac's great central chamber and turned him over to du Fresne, whose official robe hung unevenly from the hump of his harness.
Lindsay handed the Minister of Computation the question he had prepared on paper, was brusquely told, "Read it please, Ambassador."
He cleared his throat and began.
"I am asking a question highly pertinent to the welfare and future amity of the United Worlds," he said slowly. "More specifically to the future amity of Earth and Mars. It is a simple question without involved mathematical qualifications—but one that no computer and no man has thus far been able to answer correctly.
"It is this continued failure of computers to come up with a logical answer in the full frame of interplanetary conditions that has done much to make the people of my planet feel that no computer is trustworthy to make decisions involving human beings."
He paused, looked covertly at du Fresne, repressed a smile. The Minister of Computation was already showing signs of distress. He was shaking his head, making little pawing motions toward his glasses.
"Here it is," Lindsay said quickly. "Should the governors of Mars, whose responsibilities lie at least as much in the economic improvement of their own world as in inter-world harmony, permit their planet to receive goods which retard that economic development so that it becomes a race to maintain current unsatisfactory standards, merely because certain computers on Earth are fed false facts to permit continuation of some illogical form of government or social system—or should the governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?"
He walked slowly back to his place and sat down, almost feeling the silence around him. Nina whispered, "What in hell does it mean?"
Lindsay whispered back, "It's a bit of the iron dog and the whale, a bit of the Red Queen, a bit of the suicide idea—and something else. Let's see if it works."
Lindsay watched du Fresne, whose moment of triumph was marred by his obvious discomfort. The twisted little man was very busy running the question into its various forms for submission to the feeder units, whose mouths gaped like hungry nestlings along part of one side wall.
If du Fresne failed him....
It was a long nervous wait. Lights flickered in meaningless succession on subsidiary instrument boards and du Fresne darted about like a bespectacled buzzard, studying first this set of symbols, then that one.
Lindsay glanced at Maria, who sat huddled beside her father beyond the president. To break the suspense he whispered to Nina, "What abouther?"
Nina whispered back, "I've got it taped. I'm going to give her a nice empty job on the moon—one with a big title attached. It will get her out of the way—she can't do any harm there—and make her feel she'sdoingsomething. Besides"—a faint malicious pause—"there are still four men to every woman on Luna. And they aren't choosy."
"You're a witch," said Lindsay. He snickered and someone shushed him. Looking up he saw that things were happening.
"In exactly"—du Fresne glanced up at a wall chronometer—"six seconds Giac will give its answer."
They seemed more like six years to Lindsay. Then the alabaster stele in the center of the floor came abruptly to life. A slow spiral of red, composed of a seemingly endless stream of high mathematical symbols, started up from its base, worked rapidly around and around it like an old-fashioned barber-pole's markings, moving ever upward toward its top.
"Effective—very effective," murmured President Giovannini.
Suddenly a voice sounded, a pleasant voice specially geared to resemble the voice of the greatest of twentieth-century troubadors, Bing Crosby. It said, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."
There was a gasp—a gasp that seemed to emerge not only from the company present but, in reverse, through the vidarcasters from the entire listening world. President Giovannini, suddenly white, said inelegantly, "Son of a bitch!"
Nina laughed out loud and gripped Lindsay's arm tightly. "You've done it, darling—you'vedoneit!" she cried.
"On the contrary," he said quietly, "Ihaven't done it; du Fresne did it." And as he looked toward the Minister of Computation that little man fainted.
But Giac kept right on. It blanked out briefly, then once more the spiral of red figures began to work its way around and up the stele. And once again the pleasant voice announced, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."
It blanked out, began again. And this time, from somewhere in the building, came the thud of a muffled explosion. A spiral of green symbols began to circle the stele, then a spiral of yellow. The red reached the top first and the Bing Crosby voice began again, "Interplanetary unity de—"
The green and yellow spirals reached the top. A few seconds of sheer Jabberwocky emerged from the loudspeaker, ending in a chorus of, "Illogic, illogic, illogic...." with the words overlapping.
Panic began to show itself. The president gasped and Maria suddenly shrieked. Frightened onlookers crowded toward the door. The president looked from the machine to Lindsay, bewildered.
Lindsay got up and strode toward the microphone by the stele. He shouted into it, "Turn off the computer—turn itoff."
And, moments later, while the angry hot glow of the stele faded slowly, he said, "People of Earth, this is Lindsay of Mars. Please be calm while I explain. There is nothing wrong with Giac or any of your computers." He paused, added ruefully, "At least nothing that cannot be repaired in short order where Giac is concerned.
"I am going to ask to look once more at the question I submitted to this machine—andto the language tape fed into it by the Honorable Mr. du Fresne." He waited while they were brought to him, scanned them, smiled, said, "No the fault was not with Giac. Nor was it consciously with Mr. du Fresne. The question was loaded.
"You see, I happen to know that your Minister's belief in computers is such that he suffers an involuntary reaction when he hears them defamed. I defamed computers both in my preliminary address and in my question. And when he had to transfer to tape the phrase '—or, should the Governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?'—when he transferred that sentence to tape he was physically unable to write the phrase 'computer illogic'.
"Involuntarily he changed it to 'computer logic' with the result that the question was utterly meaningless and caused Giac's tubes to short circuit. None of the recent computer failures was the fault of the machines—it was the fault of the men who fed them material to digest.
"So I believe it is safe to say that you may rely upon your computers—as long as they do not deal with problems affecting yourselves and ourselves. For those you need human speculation, human debate, above all human judgment!"
President Giovannini, able politician that he was, had joined Lindsay at the microphone, put an arm across his shoulders, said, "I feel humble—yes, humble—in the great lesson this great envoy from our sister planet had taught us. What they can do on Mars we can do on Earth."
When at last they were clear of the vidar cameras Lindsay grinned and said, "Nice going, Johnny—you'll have more voters than ever come next election."
Giovannini simply stared at him. His eyes began to water, his nose to run and he turned away, groping for an evapochief.
Lindsay looked after him and shook his head. He said to Nina, who had rejoined him, "How about that? Johnny's in tears."
"Of course he is," snapped Nina. "He's allergic to the word 'voters'. Night soil, but you're simple!"
Lindsay felt his own eyes water. He sneezed, violently, for the first time since coming to Earth. Concerned, Nina said, "What's wrong, darling? Have I done something?"
"If you ever say 'night soil' again..." he began. Then, "Krrachooooo!" He felt as if the top of his head were missing.
Nina hugged him, grinning like a gamine. "I'll save it forveryspecial occasions," she promised.