Urquhart made a determined effort to reach the projector’s controls, but Philp’s sharp elbow struck him painfully on the mouth. “You’re finished, Philp,” he whispered, gingerly patting his upper lip. “You leave Biosyn today.”
“Relax, John—Martin’s enjoying the show. It’s almost over anyway.” Philp flashed his outsize teeth as the cigar began to speak.
“Designers found themselves equipped with a whole new armoury of basic components—the artron, an artificial neuron with built-in logic and inhibitor gates which enabled it effectively to simulate the brain’s neuron; the neuristor, a diode which stood in for the axon, the nerve fibre which connects the neuron; the memistor, which used electrochemical phenomena to function as a memory unit.
“True artificial intelligence had finally been born—and with it the possibility that an individual human intelligence could evade the catastrophic power failure we refer to as death. This was done by sweeping the brain just before death with an ultra-fast Röntgen ray scanner, recording the electrical state of every one of its millions of components. The result was a tremendously complex programme which, when fed into the Tank, recreated the human personality in every detail.
“Thank you for listening so patiently.” The pink cigar bowed again and vanished.
Urquhart wiped the perspiration from his forehead. “How can I apologise for this childish exhibition, Martin? My colleague is obviously a frustrated washing powder salesman.”
“No need to apologise—I found it quite interesting, as a matter of fact.” M’tobo got to his feet and looked out through the glass partition towards the Tank. “I hadn’t realised the computer would be so large.”
“The matrix itself occupies only a part of the installation you see there.” Philp’s angular frame moved jerkily as he spoke. “Of course, we have almost a thousand other clients in there, but even so, Nature still has a slight edge when it comes to density. Even with the latest cyber-random, self-establishing palimpsest circuitry the best we’ve been able to achieve is five million artrons to the cubic centimetre. So Colonel Crowley’s brain is approximately twice as big as the one he had previously.”
M’tobo shook his head slowly. “Exactly whereabouts in the computer is the brain?”
Philp glanced warily at Urquhart, then switched on his smile.
“That’s the whole point,” Urquhart said. “Each client has an address—specific volume of the matrix which was assigned to him when his personality was programmed into the Tank—but circuitry of this kind is self-establishing. It is possible for a kind of osmosis to occur, for an identity to change its position.”
“When that happens you lose contact?” M’tobo’s practical mind was going to the heart of the problem.
“Well … more or less.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if you employed much smaller matrices and had only one client to each?”
“For engineering and administrative reasons, undoubtedly—but economics are involved too. We can now produce artrons for something like a penny each, but complete simulation of an adult brain calls for ten thousand million artrons. So, for artrons alone—never mind associated components—the bill for the equivalent of a man’s brain comes to a hundred million dollars.”
“M’tobo nodded glumly. “Then how can you … ?”
“More than one identity can occupy a given volume of the matrix at any time. That’s why we use the word palimpsest, although it isn’t strictly accurate—the old writing on the manuscript doesn’t have to be erased. With multiple usage of the components the cost is shared, and even a small and fairly new country like Losane is enabled to retain the services of its great men after they have died.” Urquhart stopped speaking suddenly. He had found himself selling the Biosyn plan to M’tobo all over again, which made it look as though he was unsure of himself.
“Yes. Colonel Crowley’s personality has been preserved at a greatly reduced cost.” M’tobo’s voice was growing more resonant as he became used to the proximity of the Tank. ‘But the point is that my Government is not acting out of sentiment. If the Colonel is not available to advise his supporters and lend visible support to the Loyalists, then he might as well be dead. From our point of view it would be better if he were dead, because the money we are paying to Biosyn could be used for other purposes.”
“I appreciate your feelings, Martin.” Urquhart glanced at Philp, whose teeth and glasses immediately blazed with morning light from the vicarious windows. ‘But let me assure you that this break in communications with Colonel Crowley is of a very temporary nature.”
M’tobo squared the massive cantilevers of his shoulders and began walking towards the door. “I’m glad to hear that. I’ve arranged for him to broadcast to the whole of Losane five days from now. If he is not available I will discontinue our bi-annual payments to Biosyn—and I will make my reasons for doing so very public’
Later, when the Losanian had been escorted to the monorail, Urquhart hurried back to the Tank level and found Philp sipping cofftea from a plastic bulb. Philp’s bony face showed concern.
“Five days,” Urquhart said. “Can you do it?”
“You fired me, remember?”
“You’re reinstated.”
Philp shrugged. “While you were up top we lost contact with two more clients—including Browne.”
“Browne! But he’s …”
“I know. Eight years in the Tank and never once strayed from his input/output station. I would have sworn he was the best adjusted of the lot—but the last thing he said to us was that Crowley has shown him there is more to existence than being a kind of intellectual sponge. I tried to hold him by increasing the input voltage at his station, but he pulled that trick of Crowley’s—overloaded most of his molecular amplifiers and used the extra energy to batter his way towards the centre of the Tank. It must have been painful for him, but he got away from me.”
Urquhart sat down and stared dully at the mirrored side of the Tank. “Perhaps we should have told M’tobo the truth.”
“We may have to, eventually—but how do you convince a patriot like Martin that the founder of his country has lost interest in it, that he has found new kingdoms to conquer?”
“New kingdoms?”
Philp studied Urquhart narrowly, as if seeing him for the first time. “I’ve been wondering how to tell you this, John. Our multiple usage scheme is not a very good idea—at least, for some types of client. Crowley, for example, was a classic, damn-the-torpedoes, statesman-adventurer who—if he’d been consulted before that car crash—would probably have blown out his own brains rather than be programmed into the Tank.
“Now, our typical client is a professor emeritus whose fee was paid by a university department which was grateful to see him finally tucked away, and who probably had been existing as a pure intellect for twenty years before his death.”
“What difference does it make? Crowley’s in there now and he’ll just have to adapt.”
“That’s what you think.” Philp snorted. “If you’d been paying attention to my animation you’d know that every neuron in Crowley’s original brain has its counterpart in the Tank. Crowley was endowed with the strong will common to his kind, which from the biologist’s point of view is another way of saying there was plenty of power available locally at his neurons to amplify weak signals and trigger off following branches of neurons.
“Translated into the electrochemical context of the Tank, our Colonel Crowley has a lot of extra molecular amplifiers which give his artron networks more zip than those of our other clients.”