The Star (9 page)

‘It was a considerable time before he realised the aims and objects of Project Clausewitz, and when he did he was quite disturbed. This may have made him feel even less friendly towards his scientific staff, for despite anything I may have said the General was not entirely a fool. He was intelligent enough to understand that, if the Project succeeded, there might be more ex-generals around than even the combined boards of management of American industry could comfortably absorb.

‘But let’s leave the General for a minute and have a look at the scientists. There were about fifty of them, as well as a couple of hundred technicians. They’d all been carefully screened by the F.B.I., so probably not more than half a dozen were active members of the Communist party. Though there was a lot of talk of sabotage later, for once in a while the comrades were completely innocent. Besides, what happened certainly wasn’t sabotage in any generally accepted meaning of the word….

‘The man who had really designed the computer was a quiet little mathematical genius who had been swept out of college into the Kentucky hills and the world of Security and Priorities before he’d really realised what had happened. He wasn’t called Dr Milquetoast, but he should have been and that’s what I’ll christen him.

‘To complete our cast of characters, I’d better say something about Karl. At this stage in the business, Karl was only half-built. Like all big computers, most of him consisted of vast banks of memory units which could receive and store information until it was needed. The creative part of Karl’s brain—the analysers and integrators—took this information and operated on it, to produce answers to the questions he was asked. Given all the relevant facts, Karl would produce the right answers. The problem, of course, was to see that Karl
did
have all the facts—he couldn’t be expected to get the right results from inaccurate or insufficient information.

‘It was Dr Milquetoast’s responsibility to design Karl’s brain. Yes, I know that’s a crudely anthropomorphic way of looking at it, but no one can deny that these big computers have personalities. It’s hard to put it more accurately without getting technical, so I’ll simply say that little Milquetoast had to create the extremely complex circuits that enabled Karl to think in the way he was supposed to do.

‘So here are our three protagonists—General Smith, pining for the days of Custer; Dr Milquetoast, lost in the fascinating scientific intricacies of his job; and Karl, fifty tons of electronic gear, not yet animated by the currents that would soon be coursing through him.

‘Soon—but not soon enough for General Smith. Let’s not be too hard on the General: someone had probably put the pressure on him, when it became obvious that the Project was falling behind schedule. He called Dr Milquetoast into his office.

‘The interview lasted more than thirty minutes, and the Doctor said less than thirty words. Most of the time the General was making pointed remarks about production times, deadlines and bottlenecks. He seemed to be under the impression that building Karl differed in no important particular from the assembly of the current model Ford: it was just a question of putting the bits together. Dr Milquetoast was not the sort of man to explain the error, even if the General had given him the opportunity. He left, smarting under a considerable sense of injustice.

‘A week later, it was obvious that the creation of Karl was falling still further behind schedule. Milquetoast was doing his best, and there was no one who could do better. Problems of a complexity totally beyond the General’s comprehension had to be met and mastered. They
were
mastered, but it took time, and time was in short supply.

‘At his first interview, the General had tried to be as nice as he could, and had succeeded in being merely rude. This time, he tried to be rude, with results that I leave to your imagination. He practically insinuated that Milquetoast and his colleagues, by falling behind their deadlines, were guilty of un-American inactivity.

‘From this moment onwards, two things started to happen. Relations between the Army and the scientists grew steadily worse; and Dr Milquetoast, for the first time, began to give serious thought to the wider implications of his work. He had always been too busy, too engaged upon the immediate problems of his task, to consider his social responsibilities. He was still too busy now, but that didn’t stop him pausing for reflection. “Here am I,” he told himself, ‘one of the best pure mathematicians in the world—and what am I doing? What’s happened to my thesis on Diophantine equations? When am I going to have another smack at the prime-number theorem? In short, when am I going to do some
real
work again?”

‘He could have resigned, but that didn’t occur to him. In any case, far down beneath that mild and diffident exterior was a stubborn streak. Dr Milquetoast continued to work, even more energetically than before. The construction of Karl proceeded slowly but steadily: the final connections in his myriad-celled brain was soldered; the thousands of circuits were checked and tested by the mechanics.

‘And one circuit, indistinguishably interwoven among its multitude of companions and leading to a set of memory cells apparently identical with all the others, was tested by Dr Milquetoast alone, for no one else knew that it existed.

‘The great day came. To Kentucky, by devious routes, came very important personages. A whole constellation of multi-starred generals arrived from the Pentagon. Even the Navy had been invited.

‘Proudly, General Smith led the visitors from cavern to cavern, from memory banks to selector networks to matrix analysers to input tables—and finally to the rows of electric typewriters on which Karl would print the results of his deliberations. The General knew his way around quite well: at least, he got most of the names right. He even managed to give the impression, to those who knew no better, that he was largely responsible for Karl.

‘“Now,” said the General cheerfully. “Let’s give him some work to do. Anyone like to set him a few sums?”

‘At the word “sums” the mathematicians winced, but the General was unaware of his
faux pas
. The assembled brass thought for a while: then someone said daringly, “What’s nine multiplied by itself twenty times?”

‘One of the technicians, with an audible sniff, punched a few keys. There was a rattle of gunfire from an electric typewriter, and before anyone could blink twice the answer had appeared—all twenty digits of it.’

(I’ve looked it up since: for anyone who wants to know, it’s:

12157665459056928801

But let’s get back to Harry and his tale.)

‘For the next fifteen minutes Karl was bombarded with similar trivialities. The visitors were impressed, though there was no reason to suppose that they’d have spotted it if all the answers had been completely wrong.

‘The General gave a modest cough. Simple arithmetic was as far as he could go, and Karl had barely begun to warm up. “I’ll now hand you over,” he said, “to Captain Winkler.”

‘Captain Winkler was an intense young Harvard graduate whom the General distrusted, rightly suspecting him to be more a scientist than a military man. But he was the only officer who really understood what Karl was supposed to do, or could explain exactly how he set about doing it. He looked, the General thought grumpily, like a damned schoolmaster as he started to lecture the visitors.

‘The tactical problem that had been set up was a complicated one, but the answer was already known to everybody except Karl. It was a battle that had been fought and finished almost a century before, and when Captain Winkler concluded his introduction, a general from Boston whispered to his aide, “I’ll bet some damn Southerner has fixed it so that Lee wins this time.” Everyone had to admit, however, that the problem was an excellent way of testing Karl’s capabilities.

‘The punched tapes disappeared into the capacious memory units: patterns of lights flickered and flashed across the registers; mysterious things happened in all directions.

‘“This problem,” said Captain Winkler primly, “will take about five minutes to evaluate.”

‘As if in deliberate contradiction, one of the typewriters promptly started to chatter. A strip of paper shot out of the feed, and Captain Winkler, looking rather puzzled at Karl’s unexpected alacrity, read the message. His lower jaw immediately dropped six inches, and he stood staring at the paper as if unable to believe his eyes.

‘“What is it, man?” barked the General.

‘Captain Winkler swallowed hard, but appeared to have lost the power of speech. With a snort of impatience, the General snatched the paper from him. Then it was his turn to stand paralysed, but unlike his subordinate he also turned a most beautiful red. For a moment he looked like some tropical fish strangling out of water: then, not without a slight scuffle, the enigmatic message was captured by the five-star general who out-ranked everybody in the room.

‘His reaction was totally different. He promptly doubled up with laughter.

‘The minor officers were left in a state of infuriating suspense for quite ten minutes. But finally the news filtered down through colonels to captains to lieutenants, until at last there wasn’t a G.I. in the establishment who did not know the wonderful news.

‘Karl had told General Smith that he was a pompous baboon. That was all.

‘Even though everybody agreed with Karl, the matter could hardly be allowed to rest there. Something, obviously, had gone wrong. Something—or someone—had diverted Karl’s attention from the Battle of Gettysburg.

‘“Where,” roared General Smith, finally recovering his voice, “is Dr Milquetoast?”

‘He was no longer present. He had slipped quietly out of the room, having witnessed his great moment. Retribution would come later, of course, but it was worth it.

‘The frantic technicians cleared the circuits and started running tests. They gave Karl an elaborate series of multiplications and divisions to perform—the computer’s equivalent of “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.” Everything seemed to be functioning perfectly. So they put in a very simple tactical problem, which a lieutenant, j.g. could solve in his sleep.

‘Said Karl: “Go jump in a lake, General.”

‘It was then that General Smith realised that he was confronted with something outside the scope of Standard Operating Procedure. He was faced with mechanical mutiny, no less.

‘It took several hours of tests to discover exactly what had happened. Somewhere tucked away in Karl’s capacious memory units was a superb collection of insults, lovingly assembled by Dr Milquetoast. He had punched on tape, or recorded in patterns of electrical impulses, everything he would like to have said to the General himself. But that was not all he had done: that would have been too easy, not worthy of his genius. He had also installed what could only be called a censor circuit—he had given Karl the power of discrimination. Before solving it, Karl examined every problem fed to him. If it was concerned with pure mathematics, he co-operated and dealt with it properly. But if it was a military problem—out came one of the insults. After twenty minutes, he had not repeated himself once, and the WACs had already had to be sent out of the room.

‘It must be confessed that after a while the technicians were almost as interested in discovering what indignity Karl would next heap upon General Smith as they were in finding the fault in the circuits. He had begun with mere insults and surprising genealogical surmises, but had swiftly passed on to detailed instructions the mildest of which would have been highly prejudicial to the General’s dignity, while the more imaginative would have seriously imperiled his physical integrity. The fact that all these messages, as they emerged from the typewriters, were immediately classified
TOP SECRET
was small consolation to the recipient. He knew with a glum certainty that this would be the worse-kept secret of the Cold War, and that it was time he looked round for a civilian occupation.

‘And there, gentlemen,’ concluded Purvis, ‘the situation remains. The engineers are still trying to unravel the circuits that Dr Milquetoast installed, and no doubt it’s only a matter of time before they succeed. But meanwhile Karl remains an unyielding pacifist. He’s perfectly happy playing with the theory of numbers, computing tables of powers, and handling arithmetical problems generally. Do you remember the famous toast. “Here’s to pure mathematics—may it never be of any use to anybody”? Karl would have seconded that….

‘As soon as anyone attempts to slip a fast one across him, he goes on strike. And because he’s got such a wonderful memory, he can’t be fooled. He has half the great battles of the world stored up in his circuits, and can recognise at once any variations on them. Though attempts were made to disguise tactical exercises as problems in mathematics, he could spot the subterfuge right away. And out would come another billet-doux for the General.

‘As for Dr Milquetoast, no one could do much about him because he promptly had a nervous breakdown. It was suspiciously well timed, but he could certainly claim to have earned it. When last heard of he was teaching matrix algebra at a theological college in Denver. He swears he’s forgotten everything that had ever happened while he was working on Karl. Maybe he was even telling the truth….’

There was a sudden shout from the back of the room.

‘I’ve won!’ cried Charles Willis. ‘Come and see!’

We all crowded under the dartboard. It seemed true enough. Charlie had established a zigzag but continuous track from one side of the checkerboard to the other, despite the obstacles the machine had tried to put in his way.

‘Show us how you did it,’ said Eric Rodgers.

Charlie looked embarrassed.

‘I’ve forgotten,’ he said. ‘I didn’t make a note of all the moves.’

A sarcastic voice broke in from the background.

‘But
I
did,’ said John Christopher. ‘You were cheating—you made two moves at once.’

After that, I’m sorry to say, there was some disorder, and Drew had to threaten violence before peace was restored. I don’t know who really won the squabble, and I don’t think it matters. For I’m inclined to agree with what Purvis remarked as he picked up the robot checkerboard and examined its wiring.