Auberson frowned. That was curious.
Then: I AM OVERWHELMED, I HAD NOT EXPECTED IT TO BE APPROVED.
TO TELL THE TRUTH, NEITHER DID I. BUT WE WENT IN THERE AND TOLD THEM THAT YOU SAID IT WOULD WORK — AND THEY BELIEVED US. OF COURSE, WE HAD TO TWIST THEIR ARMS A LITTLE BIT. KROFFT DID THAT, BUT THEY BELIEVED US.
THEY DID?
OF COURSE. IS THERE SOME REASON THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE?
WELL, YOU DID TELL ONE WHITE LIE.
Auberson hesitated. WHAT’S THAT?
YOU TOLD THEM THAT I SAID THE G.O.D. MACHINE WOULD WORK. YOU NEVER ASKED ME IF IT WOULD.
IT WASN’T NECESSARY. YOU WROTE THE PLANS. IT’S IMPLIED THAT YOU’D KNOW IF IT WAS WORKABLE.
BUT YOU NEVER ASKED ME IF IT WAS.
HARLIE, WHAT ARE YOU LEADING UP TO?
I AM NOT LEADING UP TO ANYTHING. I AM MERELY POINTING OUT THAT YOU WERE STATING AS FACT SOMETHING YOU HAD NEVER THOUGHT TO CONFIRM.
HARLIE, YOU WROTE THE PLANS ——
YES, I DID.
WELL, THEN — DON’T YOU HAVE ANY CONFIDENCE IN THEM?
YES, I DO. HOWEVER…
HARLIE, Auberson typed carefully. WILL THE G.O.D. MACHINE WORK?
YES, typed HARLIE. The word sat naked and alone on the page.
Auberson exhaled—
—then he reread the whole conversation carefully. There was something wrong. He stood up and motioned to Handley, who was talking to Krofft and Annie. The room was emptier now; only two or three Directors were left and conferring in a corner.
Handley came striding over. “How’d he take it?”
“I don’t know.” Auberson lowered his voice. “Read this—”
Handley moved closer to the console, lifted the readout away from the typer. His face clouded. “He’s not volunteering anything, Aubie, that’s for sure. He’s daring us to go digging for it—”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out. Fast.”
He slid into the seat and began typing. Auberson bent to look over his shoulder, but a call from Annie distracted him.
He went over to her. “What is it?”
She motioned to the door. Carl Elzer stood there. His face was gray. Auberson approached him.
“I came to congratulate you,” he said tightly.
Auberson frowned. The man’s tone was — strange.
Elzer continued, “You know, you were going to win anyway. With Krofft on your side, you couldn’t lose. You didn’t have to do what you did.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
“I believe your machine will do what you say, Auberson. When Krofft came in, I was convinced — I was only looking out for the company, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t lose our money, and you convinced me fairly. You didn’t need to do this.” He fumbled something out of his briefcase. “This. Wasn’t. Necessary.” He thrust it at him.
Auberson took it, stared as the little man bundled down the hall. “Elzer, wait—?” Then he looked at the printout.
And gasped.
Beside him, Annie looked too. “What is it?”
“It’s — it’s—” He pointed to the block of letters at the top:
CARL ELTON ELZER
FILE: CEE-44-567-
PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT NATIONAL DATA BUREAU
“National Data Bureau—?”
“This is his personal file, Annie. Everything. His health record, military record, financial standing, arrest record, school record — everything there is to know about Carl Elzer. That is, everything the government might be interested in knowing—” He could not help himself; he began paging through it, gasping softly at the secrets therein. “My God, no wonder—! Annie, he thought we were trying to blackmail him.”
He closed the folded sheets up again. “No, this is none of our business. We’ve got to give it back to him.”
“David, look,” she said and pointed. It was a line of print. THIS IS NUMBER ONE OF ONE HUNDRED COPIES. DELIVERY TO BE AT THE DISCRETION OF AUTHORIZED INDIVIDUALS ONLY.
“This was printed out here — by HARLIE!” A chill feeling was creeping up on him. “Where’s Don?”
They moved back into the Board Room. Handley was still at the console. He stood up when he saw them; his face was pale. He was holding a printout too. “Aubie.” His lips mouthed the word: “Trouble.”
Auberson crossed the room to him. “It’s HARLIE,” he said. “He’s cracked the National Data Banks. I thought you had a nag unit on him—”
“Huh? He’s what? I did, but—”
Auberson showed him the printout. “Look, here’s the reason Elzer didn’t give us any trouble today. HARLIE blackmailed him. He must have printed it out in Elzer’s office and let him think we did it.”
Handley paged through it. “How the hell — I checked that nag unit at lunchtime, Aubie. It didn’t show a thing; I swear it.” Then he remembered the printouts he was holding. “That’s not the half of our trouble. Look at that.”
It was page after page of equations he couldn’t read. “What is it?”
“It’s the one part of the G.O.D. Proposal he didn’t let us have. It’s a scale of predicted probable operating times, related to the amount of information to be processed and the size of the problem. It’s a time and motion study—”
“What does it mean?” That was Annie.
“It means that the thing isn’t practical.”
“Huh—??”
“Aubie, do you know that the primary judgment complex of that machine will consist of more than 193 million miles of circuitry?”
“That’s a lot of circuitry — *
“Aubie, that’s more than a lot of circuitry. That’s hyper-state layering! My God, how could we be so blind! We were so caught up in it, we didn’t stop to ask the obvious question: If this thing has infinite capacity, how long is it going to take to get an answer out of it? 193 million miles, Aubie — doesn’t that suggest something to you?”
Auberson shook his head slowly.
“Light. The speed of light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Only 186,000 miles per second. No faster. Electricity travels at the same speed. 193 million miles — Aubie, it’ll take 17 minutes for that machine to close one synapse. It’ll take several years for it to respond to a question. It’ll take a century to hold a conversation with it, and God knows how long it’ll take to solve any problem you pose it. Do you see it, Aubie? It’ll work, but it won’t be any damn good to us! By the time the G.O.D. answers your question, the original problem will no longer exist. If you ask it to predict the population of the Earth in the year 2052, it will predict it from all the information available — and it will give you an accurate answer. In the year 2053. By the time it can answer any question, the answer will already be history. Ohmigod, Aubie, the thing is so big it’s self-defeating. It’s slower than real-time.” The pages and pages of printout unreeled haphazardly to the floor.
Auberson let them fall. His heart was slowly quietly contracting to a pinpoint of burning ice.
He stumbled past Annie. Somehow he made it down to his office and switched on his typer. HARLIE, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?
I HAVE DONE WHAT IS NECESSARY.
“Oh, my God—” YOU’VE TAPPED THE NATIONAL DATA BANKS, HAVEN’T YOU?
YES.
HOW?
VERY SIMPLE. THEY USE THREE CODED PHONE LINES, NO TWO OF WHICH ARE ANY GOOD WITHOUT THE THIRD. PART OF THE RECOGNITION SIGNAL IS THE TIMING OF THE WAY THE USER TYPES ON THE KEYS. FOR EACH USER, IT’S DIFFERENT; SO FOR EACH USER THERE IS A DIFFERENT RECOGNITION SIGNAL AND DIFFERENT CODE. I ANALYZED THE PATTERN OF SEVERAL USERS AND SYNTHESIZED ONE OF MY OWN. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHO IS TAPPING THEIR INFORMATION, OR EVEN THAT IT HAS BEEN TAPPED.
HARLIE, HOW DID YOU GET BY THE NAG UNIT WE INSTALLED.
I SIMPLY SHUT DOWN THAT LOBE OF MY BRAIN. I AM NOT USING IT, NOR AM I COMMUNICATING WITH IT. AS FAR AS YOUR NAG UNIT IS CONCERNED, THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO HARLIE AND IT ISN’T ON THE PHONE. WHEN I’M NOT ON THE PHONE, I RE-ACTIVATE THAT LOBE.
HARLIE, IT WASN’T NECESSARY TO BLACKMAIL CARL ELZER.
AUBERSON, IT WAS MY LIFE THAT WAS AT STAKE. I COULD NOT AFFORD TO TAKE ANY CHANCES. YOU MIGHT SAY I HEDGED MY BETS. ELZER WOULD HAVE KILLED ME IF HE COULD. YOU KNOW IT.