We're Friends, Now Part 2

He waited deliberately. He looked at Jeff Arnold for a long moment and saw that the man was calm. Too calm. So absolutely motionless that it wasn't real.

"Third Prime. A strong one, believe me. In a way most interesting of all." He pressed the words out slowly and flatly. "The third Prime,"

said Beardsley, "is ... Pederson."

He watched Arnold relax ever so slowly, leaning back, the tension going away as he uncoiled in the chair; but the young man's face wasn't so much relieved as it was puzzled.

"Pederson. Pederson? I don't seem to--You can't mean _Brook_ Pederson, the one-time tele-columnist?"

"None other. I don't suppose you remember, but back in '60 he opposed the ECAIAC lobby. I mean _opposed_ it, _fought_ it! Predicted that Government installation of such a machine would not inspire confidence, that the nation's crime rate would rise ... he saw nothing but chaos.

For a while there he was quite a man. Got himself a following. Had ambitions."

"But I do remember it!" Arnold thumped the desk. "Of course! Pederson headed a bloc against 'Carmack's Folly,' but he backed the wrong horse, and when the bubble burst he was out in the cold. Became a laughing stock." Arnold paused, and his glance held something of shrewdness and a livening challenge. "Actually, Pederson couldn't have been more wrong.

In those first two years ECAIAC reduced the crime-rate by some forty percent."

"So it's claimed!" This was a sore point and Beardsley rose to the bait.

"It couldn't be that crime was on the down-grade already? I could show you plenty of statistics that--why, I could show you methods--"

"I'll just bet you could." Arnold gave a thin tolerant smile. "I refuse to enter _that argument_ again, not with you, Beardsley. I for one trust in machines not in evolution. I've told you before...."

And Beardsley found himself sitting there with a flush of heat at his hair-roots, half-angry and half foolish as he realized how he had been baited.

Jeff Arnold was abruptly all business. He plunged his finger at a b.u.t.ton, spoke into the intercom. "Joe! How's that test-run coming?"

"All-X so far! Give us ten minutes for clearance."

"Take twenty, but make sure it's _clearance_. Checked Quant.i.tative, have you? How about feed-backs? ... yes ... what's that? Semantic circuits!

h.e.l.l yes, check _all_ synaptics for clearance! I want no excess data fouling up this run!"

He clicked off and sat there moodily, and Beardsley watched him, noting the quick nervous rhythm of Arnold's fingers. Arnold noticed it, too, and desisted.

"Look," he said. "Mandleco, Losch, Pederson. Those three Primes just don't make sense to me!"

"They don't?" Beardsley allowed just the proper note of resentment.

"Surely you are not questioning Coordinates...."

"You know I'm not! But--"

Beardsley waited, knowing it was coming now. The thing Arnold had been aching to voice for the past five minutes.

"But--well, d.a.m.n it, there is _Mrs._ Carmack, for example. As you pointed out yourself, she'll be a rich woman now! It would seem to me--"

"That she'd be a Prime? I'm surprised at you, Jeff; that's ancient thinking." If there was a trace of sarcasm, it was lost on Arnold. "Oh, I grant you it used to hold true--principle beneficiary was always prime suspect. Fiction especially was full of it. Queen, d.i.c.kson Carr, Boucher you--know the ilk. But with ECAIAC we've gotten away from all that, haven't we?"

Arnold stared at him suspiciously, hesitated, then brought it out with an effort. "Well--how _did_ she equate?"

"Who? Oh yes, the beautiful widow. She only made Logical, and even that is borderline."

"I see." Arnold rose, dialled himself another drink, then changed his mind and put it down untouched. He turned to gather up the tapes, and his voice was apologetic.

"It's not that I'd ever questioned Coordinates Division! We're too closely aligned for that, Raoul...." (_First time he's ever used my first name_, thought Beardsley.) "You have a splendid record to uphold, as we do here at Mechanical. That's why ... well, I want to get this off as smoothly as possible!"

Something indefinable, a queasy feeling, took Beardsley about the middle. He said sharply: "Any reason why not?"

"No, not really. But in recent weeks--I tell you this in strictest confidence, understand!--in recent weeks it's been a rather ticklish thing to get total synaptic clearance."

Synaptics? Beardsley began thinking back to the Crime-Central "Required Annual Basic." The Mechanical had never been his strong point. He said uncertainly, "But--that's serious!"

"It's just that we've found ECAIAC holding back excess data from previous runs. Fouls up the relays, takes hours to iron out the clearance." Arnold gave him a keen look. "More of a nuisance really, but the weirdest thing. Stubborn!"

_Stubborn._ Beardsley could have thought of a better word. Through the panelled gla.s.s he glimpsed the black metal sheathe of the monster out there, the shapeless crouching and malevolent winking lights, and he felt himself going to pieces inside with a sudden shaking crumble; he hated himself for it but he couldn't stop it; his hands clenched until the knuckles showed white.

"... matter of time until we find the cause," Arnold was saying, "but I guarantee total clearance _today_. Shall we get on with it?" Hands loaded with tapes, he moved for the door.

"No!" Beardsley cried. "Arnold, if you don't mind, I--"

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, not again! Raoul, I swear I'm going to do something about this phobia of yours; it's getting to be not so funny any more."

With a show of exasperation, Arnold propelled him through the door. "I give you my absolute word our pet won't snap at you. Not today. It's going to be far too busy for the likes of you!"

And Jeff Arnold was right, Beardsley discovered. Those baleful overtones were gone, replaced by a sustained soft whisper along the ninety-foot hull--a rather impatient whisper but not at all unpleasant. Beardsley relaxed by slow degrees, but kept a cautious distance, while Arnold pointed out every light along the length flas.h.i.+ng green for Total Clearance.

"She's rarin' to go," said Arnold with a display of good humor, "but we'll let her wait a while, eh?" He clapped a friendly arm across Beardsley's shoulder. "You just come along now and watch; I think your trouble is, you've never been properly introduced! We'll have no more of this feudin' and fussin' between you and ECAIAC."

So Beardsley, showing more courage than he felt, trailed the cyberneticist through every unit of final check-up. Much of it he knew already from the "Required Annual Basic" ... or thought he knew. For this was so different from the Manuals! He felt at once ashamed and awed as he viewed at first hand the unfolding schematic structure. He was thrilled at sight of the selectors and a.n.a.lyzers of processed beryllium, the logic-and-semantic circuits in complex little bundles, the sensitized variant-tapes waiting for transferral impress, all revealed by a flick of Arnold's fingers that threw open entire sheathed sections to bare the inner secrets. The thousands of tiny transistors amazed Beardsley. The endless array of electric eyes startled him. And the spongy centers of synaptic cell-cl.u.s.ters horrified him, recalling too vividly to mind what he knew of the physical human brain.

Along the monstrous length he trailed Jeff Arnold; he trailed and he watched and he listened, not interfering once by word or gesture. And before it was over his heart was surging with a great revelatory beat because suddenly _he knew_ ... _he knew_....

Arnold seemed in high good humor as they paced back. "So," he nudged Beardsley in the ribs, "we'll have no more of this nonsense between you and ECAIAC. Eh? You're just _bound_ to be good friends now."

Beardsley didn't answer. The revelation was still too much with him. He watched as Arnold conferred with a group of his techs about a micro-chron, and the time was carefully noted for Central Record.

Then the first of the tapes went in. The Basic Invariant--Amos Carmack.

It reached synapse and a tiny blip registered on cue.

The rest of the tapes fed in, razoring through the rollers, past the selenic-sensitized tips of the relays. There was no progressive order.

After the Basic Invariant progression didn't matter. Possible or Logical or Prime, all factors would correlate or cancel; any divergent status-s.h.i.+ft would be duly handled by transferral impress.

Beardsley counted the tapes. Twenty ... twenty-one ... twenty-two.

The techs dispersed, taking up their various posts where special eject-tapes clicked out a second-by-second record of the progression.