“I think I shall ask a God Machine,” she said.
Gabriel, whose thoughts — such as they were — had been in various elsewheres, looked at her in bewilderment. “A God Machine? What were we talking about?”
“We weren’t. I was thinking.”
“Then what were you thinking about?”
“P 939. Eustace. Us. The world. People. Responsibility. But mostly P 939.”
“Ah, yes. P 939.”
She grinned. “It’s a stone cold, cast iron, twenty-four carat certainty that you have it now, He frowned, shook his head, then smiled. “Yes, then there were two. You got it from Eustace, I suppose?”
“Not in that sense. Actually,” she giggled, “I received it by injection.”
“Is it exactly the same bug the animals have?”
“No, but a close relation. Eustace tailored a breed specially for humans.”
“I see.” Gabriel was silent for a while. “These MicroWar people that Eustace worked for -
surely they know all about it.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Eustace wouldn’t tell them. Palace politics, and all that excreta. Eustace said they’d given him an impossible project as a way of getting him out of the way. So, his sense of humour being what it was, he made a success of the project and wouldn’t tell anybody. He took himself off to the Sussex downs, got his little zoo and lab organized and — as far as MicroWar was concerned — he went into retreat.”
“I like your Eustace.”
“So did I. Sometimes.”
Gabriel thought for a while. He was very tired. Thinking was an effort. Eventually, he arrived at the obvious conclusion. “So it amounts to this: Eustace cooked it, you and I have it, and nobody else knows.”
“Sweetie, that is the state of play. Hence the God Machine. This thing is bigger than both of us.”
Gabriel pulled a face. “I wish my promiscuous phase was coming faster. What happens after that?”
“Eustace didn’t prove it with humans. That is what makes me think the Circle Line gambit was a bit odd. Surely, when he had shot me full of the bug, curiosity would have kept him alive… With lions and suchlike, the prommy phase lasts about ten days. Then comes phase two — compulsive eating. That lasts about a month. After that, hypersensitivity and splendid tranquillity.” She kissed him severally. “I hope you don’t regret the night’s work, darling.
Eustace didn’t say if it was a good thing for book sculpture.”
Gabriel did his best to ignore the kisses. “Are you religious, Camilla?”
“I don’t know. It isn’t something I have ever really paused to consider.”
“Then why the God Machine?”
“Well, one can’t just consult people, can one? An opinion survey wouldn’t work.” She giggled. “Scusa, madam. I represent a new venereal disease which inhibits aggression, and I would be very glad to have your reaction… No, Gabriel. Talk to a stranger about something like this, and pretty soon the procs waft you away on air. Then the grill — T-bone special. Then MicroWar; and in the end Insect Race will probably put you away for life.”
Gabriel considered the prospect gloomily. “I have a friend who says the God Machines are rigged.”
“Rigged for what?”
“Rigged to provide information to interested parties. Romaprot is the largest industrial concern in the western world. It has more data about more people than all the intelligence networks put together. Wouldn’t it be reasonable to sell information that was useful?”
Camilla smiled. “You are forgetting one thing. Millions and millions of people use the God Machines. It would take a vast army just to plough through all those boring secrets. And then it would take thousands of experts to decide what was useful and what wasn’t… No, Gabriel, it couldn’t be done.”
“It could — by computer.”
She was silent for a moment or two. Then she shook her head. “Not on. Too dangerous.
Romaprot’s prosperity is founded on the idea of complete privacy and complete impartiality.
People trust the God Machines. After all, that is how it is supposed to be between us and God.
If Romaprot lost that selling point, nobody would ever go to confession, would they?”
“I still don’t think we should say anything about P 939 to a God Machine.”
“Darling, they are only computers linked to other computers.”
“Then why consult one?”
“Because they know a lot more than we do. Because if you feed them the data, they can predict results that would never occur to us… Do you know if P 939 is basically a good thing or a bad thing?”
“No.”
“Neither do I. But a God Machine will. And then it will tell us what to do about the bug.”
“Let’s compromise. If you insist on consulting a God Machine, don’t give it any information by which we could be traced. Don’t mention MicroWar or research or anything. Just ask it general questions, like what would happen if there was a contagious disease that knocked out aggression.”
“All right, we’ll do it that way. Satisfied?”
“I suppose so… I wish I could think more clearly.”
“Don’t. There really isn’t any hurry about anything.” Camilla yawned and stretched. Then she turned towards Gabriel and began to caress his shoulders. Then she wriggled until she lay on top of him and began to nibble his ear.
Gabriel noted his own reaction with amazement and alarm. “Why don’t we calm down a little and go and have a bath?” he suggested without much hope.
CHAPTER SIX
The brothers Karamazov, being identical twins, were unique in the spy business. Nobody knew they were identical twins. Nobody, in fact, knew that there was more than one Karamazov. Being economical though at the same time liking the good things in life, they shared a single room at the Dorchester Hotel during their London jaunt.
The room had been taken in the name of Peter Ilyich Karamazov. Sometimes letters arrived for Mr. Peter Karamazov as well as Mr. Ilyich Karamazov; but since the Dorchester knew of only one Karamazov, all such mail found its way into pigeon-hole 504 and thus, eventually, to room 504. The settee was quite as comfortable as the bed; but, democratically, the brothers took turns.
Their uniqueness in the field of intelligence had been assured some thirty years before when their father, Alexander, and their mother, Tanya, had divorced in Paris. Alexander went to the U.S.A. with Peter and Tanya went to the U.S.S.R. with Ilyich.
Both father and mother, who had been small-time agents — chiefly unsuccessful — and who had lived dangerously less because of counter-intelligence activities than because of malnutrition, worked hard at the Master Plan.
The Master Plan had been Alexander’s — generated, no doubt, by the frequent application of cheap brandy to an empty stomach. If young Peter and young Ilyich could be groomed for future subversive stardom in, respectively, Washington and Moscow, the old age of their parents would be exceedingly bright.
Oddly, the plan worked up to a point. Peter, as a Russian-speaking, naturalized American with a good grasp of politics, was recruited by a blank-faced anonymous employee of the Committee for International Understanding almost before he had forged the seal and signature on his Master’s Degree in Creative Brainwashing. Ilyich, as an American-speaking Russian, a member of the Karl Marx Mental Health League and a young man who had demonstrated outstanding loyalty by denouncing the political instability of his mother, was accepted for training by the Socialists for Inspirational Undertakings.
Although Ilyich had arranged for mother to be phased out in Siberia while Peter financed father on a crash-course in degenerative alcoholism in New York, the Master Plan proceeded with only slight modification.