The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories (22 page)

“But tape tension on the take-up reels—” Stafford began.

“In this case, it failed to be automatic. You see, we jammed the reel so it wouldn’t accept any more tape. Before that we tried cutting the tape, but as I guess you know it rethreads itself automatically. And we tried erasing the tape, but if the erase circuit comes on it starts an alarm going in Washington, D.C., and we didn’t want to get all those high-level people involved. But they—the computer designers—overlooked the take-up reel tension because that’s such a simple clutch arrangement. It can’t go wrong.”

Trying to button his collar, Stafford said, “In other words, there’re data you don’t want it to receive.” He felt lucid now; at least he had more or less wakened up. “What kind of data?” He thought with chill foreboding that he knew. Data were coming in which would cause the big government-owned computer to declare a Red Alert. Of course, this crippling of Genux-B would have to occur before a hostile attack by the South African True Association manifested itself in real but minute individual symptoms which the computer, with its vast intake of seemingly unrelated data, would take note of—notice and add together into a meaningful pattern.

Stafford thought bitterly, How many times we were warned about this! They would have to wipe out our Genux-B prior to its successful deploying of the SAC retaliatory satellites and bombers. And this was that event; these men, undercover extensions in North America of S.A.T.A., had rousted him to complete their job of making the computer inoperable.

But—data might already have been received, might already have been transferred to the receptor circuits for processing and analysis. They had started to work too late; possibly by one day, possibly only by a few seconds. At least some of the meaningful data had gotten onto the tapes, and so
he
had to be called in. They couldn’t finish their job alone.

The United States, then, would presently undergo a series of terror-weapon satellites bursting above it—as meantime the network of defensive machinery waited for a command from the cardinal computer. Waited in vain, since Genux-B knew of no trace harbingers of military assault—would still not ever really know until a direct hit on the national capital put an end to it and its emasculated faculties.

No wonder they had jammed the take-up reel.

“The war’s begun,” he said quietly to the four men with flashlights.

Now that he had turned on the bedroom lamps, he could make them out. Ordinary men with an assigned task; these were not fanatics but functionaries. They could have worked equally well for any government, perhaps even the near-psychotic Chinese People’s. “The war has
already
broken out,” he guessed aloud, “and it’s essential that Genux-B not know—so it can neither defend us nor strike back. You want to see it get only data which indicate we’re at peace.” He—and no doubt they—recalled how swiftly in the two previous Interventions of Honor, one against Israel, one against France, Genux-B had reacted. Not one trained professional observer had seen the signs—or had seen to what the signs led, anyhow. As with Josef Stalin in 1941. The old tyrant had been shown evidence that the Third Reich intended to attack the U.S.S.R., but he simply would not or could not believe. Any more than the Reich had believed that France and Britain, in 1939, would honor their pact with Poland.

In a compact group, the men with flashlights led him from the bedroom of his conapt, into the outer hall and to the escy which led to the roof field. As they emerged, the air smelled of mud and dampness. He inhaled, shivered, and involuntarily gazed up at the sky. One star moved: landing light on a flapple, which now set down a few feet from the five of them.

As they sat within the flapple—rising swiftly from the roof and heading toward Utah to the west—one of the gray functionaries with Sneek gun, flashlight, and briefcase said to Stafford, “Your theory is good, especially considering that we woke you out of a sound sleep.”

“But,” a companion put in, “it’s wrong. Show him the punched tape we hauled out.”

Opening his briefcase, the man nearest Stafford brought out a wad of plastic tape, handed it mutely to Stafford.

Holding it up against the dome light of the flapple, Stafford made out the punches. Binary system, evidently programming material for the Strategic Acquired-Space Command units which the computer directly controlled.

“It was about to push the panic button and give them an order,” the man at the console of the flapple said, over his shoulder. “To all our military units linked to it. Can you read the command?”

Stafford nodded, and returned the tape. He could read it, yes. The computer had formally notified SAC of a Red Alert. It had gone so far as to move H-bomb-carrying squadrons into scramble, and also was requesting that all ICBM missiles on their assorted pads be made ready for launch.

“And also,” the man at the controls added, “it was sending out a command to defensive satellites and missile complexes to deploy themselves in response to an imminent H-bomb attack. We blocked all this, however, as you now are able to see. None of this tape got onto the co-ax lines.”

After a pause, Stafford said huskily, “Then what data don’t you want Genux-B to receive?” He did not understand.

“Feedback,” said the man at the controls. Obviously he was the leader of this unit of commandos. “Without feedback the computer does not possess any method of determining that there has been no counterattack by its military arm. In the abeyance it will have to assume that the counterattack has taken place, but that the enemy strike was at least partially successful.”

Stafford said, “But there is no enemy. Who’s attacking us?”

Silence.

Sweat made Stafford’s forehead slick with moisture. “Do you know what would cause a Genux-B to conclude that we’re under attack? A million separate factors, all possible known data weighed, compared, analyzed—and then the absolute gestalt. In this case, the gestalt of an imminent attacking enemy. No one thing would have raised the threshold; it was quantitative. A shelter-building program in Asiatic Russia, unusual movements of cargo ships around Cuba, concentrations of rocket freight unloadings in Red Canada…”

“No one,” the man at the controls of the flapple said placidly, “no nation or group of persons either on Terra or Luna or Domed Mars is attacking anybody. You can see why we’ve got to get you over there fast. You have to make it absolutely certain that no orders emanate from Genux-B to SAC. We want Genux-B sealed off so it can’t talk to anybody in a position of authority and it can’t hear anybody besides us. What we do after that we’ll worry about then. ‘But the evil of the day—’ ”

“You assert that in spite of everything available to it, Genux-B can’t distinguish an attack on us?” Stafford demanded. “With its manifold data-collecting sweepers?” He thought of something then, that terrified him in a kind of hopeless, retrospective way. “What about our attack on France in ‘82 and then on little Israel in ‘89?”

“No one was attacking us then either,” the man nearest Stafford said, as he retrieved the tape and again placed it within his briefcase. His voice, somber and morose, was the only sound; no one else stirred or spoke. “Same then as now. Only this time a group of us stopped Genux-B before it could commit us. We pray we’ve aborted a pointless, needless war.”

“Who are you?” Stafford asked. “What’s your status in the federal government? And what’s your connection with Genux-B?” Agents, he thought, of the Blunk-rattling South African True Association. That still struck him as most likely. Or even zealots from Israel, looking for vengeance—or merely acting out the desire to stop a war: the most humanitarian motivation conceivable.

But, nevertheless, he himself, like Genux-B, was under a loyalty oath to no larger political entity than the North American Prosperity Alliance. He still had the problem of getting away from these men and to his chain-of-command superiors so that he could file a report.

The man at the controls of the flapple said, “Three of us are FBI.” He displayed credentials. “And that man there is an eleccom engineer, who, as a matter of fact, helped in the original design of this particular Genux-B.”

“That’s right,” the engineer said. “I personally made it possible for them to jam both the outgoing programming and the incoming data feed. But that’s not enough.” He turned toward Stafford, his face serene, his eyes large and inviting. He was half-begging, half-ordering, using whatever tone would bring results. “But let’s be realistic. Every Genux-B has backup monitoring circuitry that’ll begin to inform it any time now that its programming to SAC isn’t being acted on, and in addition it’s not getting the data it ought to get. As with everything else it sinks its electronic circuits into, it’ll begin to introspect. And by that time we have to be doing something better than jamming a take-up reel with a Phillips screwdriver.” He paused. “So,” he finished more slowly, “that’s why we came to you.”

Gesturing, Stafford said, “I’m just a repairman. Maintenance and service—not even malfunct analysis. I do only what I’m told.”

“Then do what we’re telling you,” the FBI man closest to him spoke up harshly. “Find out
why
Genux-B decided to flash a Red Alert, scramble SAC, and begin a ‘counterattack.’ Find out why it did so in the case of France and Israel. Something made it add up its received data and get that answer. It’s not alive! It has no volition. It didn’t just
feel
the urge to do this.”

The engineer said, “If we’re lucky, this is the last time Genux-B will malreact in this fashion. If we can spot the misfunction this time, we’ll perhaps have it pegged for all time. Before it starts showing up in the other seven Genux-B systems around the world.”

“And you’re certain,” Stafford said, “that we’re
not
under attack?” Even if Genux-B had been wrong both times before, it at least theoretically could be right this time.

“If we are about to be attacked,” the nearest FBI man said, “we can’t make out any indication of it—by human data processing, anyhow. I admit it’s logically thinkable that Genux-B could be correct. After all, as he pointed out—”

“You may be in error because the S.A.T.A. has been hostile toward us so long we take it for granted. It’s a verity of modern life.”

“Oh, it’s not the South African True Association,” the FBI man said briskly. “In fact, if it were we wouldn’t have gotten suspicious. We wouldn’t have begun poking around, interviewing survivors from the Israel War and French War and whatever else State’s done to follow this up.”

“It’s Northern California,” the engineer said, and grimaced. “Not even all of California; just the part above Pismo Beach.”

Stafford stared at them.

“That’s right,” one of the FBI men said. “Genux-B was in the process of scrambling all SAC bombers and wep-sats for an all-out assault on the area around Sacramento, California.”

“You asked it why?” Stafford said, speaking to the engineer.

“Sure. Or rather, strictly speaking, we asked it to spell out in detail what the ‘enemy’ is up to.”

One of the FBI men drawled, “Tell Mr. Stafford what Northern California is up to that makes it a hot-target enemy—that would have meant its destruction by SAC spearhead assaults if we hadn’t jammed the damn machinery… and still have it jammed.”

“Some individual,” the engineer said, “has opened up a penny gum machine route in Castro Valley. You know. He has those bubble-headed dispensers outside supermarkets. The children put in a penny and get a placebo ball of gum and something additional occasionally—a prize such as a ring or a charm. It varies. That’s the target.”

Incredulous, Stafford said, “You’re joking.”

“Absolute truth. Man’s name is Herb Sousa. He owns sixty-four machines now in operation and plans expansion.”

“I mean,” Stafford said thickly, “you’re joking about Genux-B’s response to that datum.”

“Its response isn’t exactly to that datum per se,” the closest of the FBI men said. “For instance, we checked with both the Israeli and French governments. Nobody named Herb Sousa opened up a penny gum machine route in their countries, and that goes for chocolate-covered peanut vending machines or anything else remotely similar to it. And, contrarily, Herb Sousa maintained such a route in Chile and in the U.K. during the past two decades… without Genux-B taking any interest all those years.” He added, “He’s an elderly man.”

“A sort of Johnny Apple Gum,” the engineer said, and tittered. “Looping the world, sending those gum machines swooping down in front of every gas—”

“The triggering stimulus,” the engineer said, as the flapple began to drop toward a vast complex of illuminated public buildings below, “may lie in the ingredients of the merchandise placed in the machines. That’s what our experts have come up with; they studied all material available to Genux-B concerning Sousa’s gum concessions, and we know that all Genux-B has consists of a long, dry chemical analysis of the food product constituents with which Sousa loads his machines. In fact, Genux-B specifically
requested
more information on that angle. It kept grinding out ‘incomplete ground data’ until we got a thorough PF&D lab analysis.”

“What did the analysis show?” Stafford asked. The flapple had now berthed on the roof of the installations housing the central component of the computer, and, as it was called these days, Mr. C-in-C of the North American Prosperity Alliance.

“As regards foodstuffs,” an FBI man near the door said, as he stepped out onto the dimly illuminated landing strip, “nothing but gum base, sugar, corn syrup, softeners, and artificial flavor, all the way down the line. Matter of fact, that’s the only way you
can
make gum. And those dinky little prizes are vacuum-processed thermoplastics. Six hundred to the dollar will buy them from any of a dozen firms here and in Hong Kong and Japan. We even went so far as to trace the prizes down to the specific jobber, his sources, back to the factory, where a man from State actually stood and watched them making the damn little things. No, nothing there. Nothing at all.”