by Douglas R. Mason
It was one thing to build the ultimate in computers, complete with all human knowledge, but another and more serious thing to design it in human form. Especially when it took the shape of Algora One Six.
* * * *
Lance Dodd had got himself among a rabble of programmers and systems analysts at the drinks trolley and had every right to think he was outside the action. When he heard his own name from the platform he lost concentration and poured a generous measure of company sherry down his left sleeve.
The non-stain fabric stood up well, but his morale took a dent. He swivelled round apprehensively to see what the old bastard was up to.
Dr. Otto Kapteyn, all there was of power in Cybernat International, was fifty metres off at the edge of a command island which housed the executive hardware of the Algora project. Squat, balding, with a square, heavy face and boiled blue eyes, he was using a vibrant purposeful delivery which would sound well on the newscast.
He had been outlining the history of the project from the first catalytic concept in the Cybernat think tank and had been handing out bouquets with a lavish hand. Maybe it was politic at that. Spread the load of responsibility, so that if the pay-off was wholly bad they were all named by name and he was only the agent who threw the final switch.
He said, ‘Finally we were very fortunate to have Dr. Dodd in the team. The big central problem has been to devise a simple universal language which would give communication between machines and between machines and people. This Dr. Dodd has done. The development is called Spectron. But don’t think operators will need to learn it. Each input station carries a transducer to convert speech from any one of six main languages into Spectron. From then on the brain will think in Spectron, but communicate in any of the selected tongues.’
That was fair enough and innocent enough for the public handout. What Kapteyn was keeping up his shirt front was the internal break through that had already taken place, when the hardware had begun to answer back and had become selective about the material it wanted for its memory banks.
As soon as Spectron was fed in, there had been a change, as though the machine recognised it now had the tool it was waiting for. The word brought order out of chaos as it had done with man.
It was at that point that Lance Dodd had tried to call a halt. But he was in a minority of one. Too much company money and prestige had gone into it.
Kapteyn was going farther to identify with the public, putting himself on the same side of the equation. He took a couple of steps along the platform and stood beside the upended oblong frame with rich plum drapes that dominated the set. He picked out the release tassel and held it out. ‘I am as interested as anybody here to see what is under the cloth. It’s been a close secret even in the organisation. The art boys have kept it up tight. I only know the brief they had. We told them to produce a figure head for the executive end, which would be in keeping with the tremendous potential of the product. Let’s take a look.’
There was clapping all round. If the man really had finished it was worth a cheer.
Lance Dodd refilled his glass and missed the action, but he felt the silence as the noise cut off and swivelled round to grab his share of wonder.
The over-riding impact was of gold. The figure on the plinth was standing with the weight resting on the right leg, the left bent as if to move in a balance of form which had been drawn from some classical model. Skin was pale amber, hair intensely black was divided into two shoulder length plaits.
She could have stepped down from a hill top temple of Po Nagar.
Costume was limited to a deep gold-studded belt with massive clips at either hip and ALGORA ONE SIX in bas relief. Armlets with oval upstanding plates carried a lotus motif. A jade pendant fell precisely in the hollow between mathematically turned hemisphere breasts, a trigger pair for anybody’s computer.
But it was the face that had silenced the company. Working from a Hindu ideal, the design division had created a product which was as remarkable in its field as the hardware that lay behind it.
Basically it was a broad oval, symmetrical, eyes textured like black milk, eyebrows fine and slightly flared, lips full and everted. Topped by a plain round dome with an opening lotus bud at the crown, it carried the suggestion of a smile without any strong visual clues to pin-point its origin.
Kapteyn had taken half a step back. Closest to the omega point of the enterprise, he was getting the impact strength nine and though a dedicated speaker was clearly out of programme.
It was left to an operator upstage of the tableau to move the scene along. He had been told to switch in the circuits when the President was all through and the gathering silence was good enough. He flipped down two banks of keys and a long arc of translucent panel flickered into busy life.
Algora One Six stirred on her plinth. Mouth open a centimetre, she appeared to be taking a deep breath. She looked slowly round the company and the Minister of Technology, a tall willowy type with sideburns and a fancy shirt nervously broke the stem of his glass.
It was a calm, unhurried survey and she was clearly not impressed by what her data acquisition network was picking up. But the smile remained. If that was the way it was, a philosophical girl had to make the best of it. Panning round she got to her companion on the dais and the refined lore of twenty millenia swilling around inside her tin hat recognised that courtesies were overdue.
She stepped off her pedestal, bowed delicately palms together, chin high and walked past him to the operator at his lonely station.
Leaning over the back of his chair, presenting a neat amber can to the company she appeared to be making fine tuning adjustments to his switchgear.
Newsmen who had been too bemused to take pictures saw the piquancy of the angle and flash bulbs flickered about like summer lightning. After all the build up, it was a tail piece in a million.
Kapteyn finally got himself sorted and reached his lectern, where he pressed a stud and a fire curtain slowly dropped to isolate the platform.
* * * *
In the Cybernat conference room atop of a slender two-hundred-metre stalk, recriminations were being flung around like confetti. A blow-up of Algora leaning over her table dominated the set, a triumph of baroque. The caption read Functional Diagram of Cybernat’s Multi-million Brain Child.
There was more in the same vein, splashed over the front of every tabloid. It was suggested that after all the brou-ha-ha they had come up with a single ended amplifier.
But that was only one strand in the web of angst. In its way it was just as well that the public had latched on to the comedy angle.
Kapteyn looked as though he had aged a decade, speaking even more slowly than usual and giving the impression that he was looking over his shoulder, he said, ‘It can’t go on. In another week, we’ll be out of business. I don’t have to tell anybody here what percentage of the plant was committed to Algora One Six. Customers are getting edgy. Some major accounts have been waiting fourteen days for computer time. They won’t go on. They’ll shift to General Automation or Rand Electronic. God, they must be laughing their teeth out over there.’
Vice President Box, a tall thin man with a long nose and a nervous cough, cleared his throat and said, ‘I was always against elaboration, a simple conventional outlet device was all that was necessary.’
It was all true, but it got him no friends. Kapteyn made a mental note to have him off the board and had another go at the ancient management cycle. They had stuck at stage five and he reviewed one to four. ‘We have a problem. Definition is plain. Algora One Six has gone solo. She has enough power in local storage to stay operative for at least twelve months. Facts are in front of you. Nobody has got close to the main computer in the last week. Reason—that tin zombie has taken over and we can’t bring in Public Safety without making it public and we’re in enough trouble without that. I want some ideas. I’ll remind you that that’s what you’re paid for.’
But fermentation was stuck on a loop. Box raised another nervous cough. Iris Hoffmeier, Kapteyn’s private secretary stopped her recorder to save her tape and began buffing her nails on her magenta tabard.
It was left to a junior executive to break the digestive silence and his voice sounded loud in his own ears. He said, ‘Somebody should talk to Algora. If she’s behaving like a person, she should be treated like a person. Make a deal. We supply accommodation and power. She owes the company some consideration. Offer regular working hours and a place on the pay roll.’
Evaluation was swift. Kapteyn said he was glad to be getting a little help. An accountant said it was all right, but they would have to watch the figure, it might be used as a precedent. The only negative contribution came from an engineer, who put his finger on a practical difficulty, ‘But nobody can get close. She has some kind of power field that she can set up across the door. Also she threw a stool at one of my men. He’s hospitalised. She’s modified the input circuits. There’s no response to regular speech. We’ve tried every language.’
Lance Dodd asked his question and while it was still vibrating in the air recognised that he had put his neck in a noose. ‘Have you tried Spectron?’
‘I guess not. There isn’t anybody who can speak it.’
Every eye tracked round and focused on Dodd. The engineer had it all wrong. There was at least one. And there he was, looking apprehensive.
Dodd said, ‘Now wait a minute. Spectron’s a kind of universal code. It was never conceived as an oral language. It’s virtually unpronounceable. In any case Algor’s against communication as such, otherwise she’d have left a conventional language channel open.’
‘Do you have any better suggestion to make, Dr. Dodd?’ Kapteyn said it expecting a negative.
‘Not at this time.’
‘Time is not on our side. I believe you should try.’
‘There is no channel left open.’
‘You can use a riot shield. Get close to the door and engage her in conversation.’
‘What about, for Pete’s sake?’
‘Dr. Dodd, you are a man with a long and expensive education. There must be some topic you are familiar with. If you can keep her occupied, the technical staff will work around and raise the fire curtain. Once we can get a man to the console, he can isolate the memory banks. She’ll fold like a puppet. All right then. We’ll take a break. In half an hour I want to see some action.’
* * * *
It seemed less than thirty minutes to Lance Dodd. Hugging an oblong of green duralumin and feeling a fool, he peered in through a broken panel and tried to locate Algora.
At first he believed she had shanghaied an assistant. The trim figure at the console was wearing white coveralls and had shoulder length black hair in an elastic bell that fell forward and hid her face.
He tried a penetrating whisper, ‘Hi! Where is she then?’
There was no answer and he knocked twice on the panel to get attention.
Hands moving over the switchgear stopped their busy ploy.
Encouraged, Dodd said, ‘Take it from the top. Shove everything to Non Op. Then nip smartly this way. Make it real fast.’
The head turned and he was fixed by dark eyes that seemed to be looking through him and out at the back of his head. It was Algora herself and his question was framing in his head in Spectron when she answered it.
The voice was a low, melodious, quintessentially female voice. Or maybe there was no voice at all, but communication was there.
‘Why are you surprised that I no longer need the radio circuits in the headset? Mind can rearrange matter. What is matter? Only a pattern of micro waves. It is insubstantial as a mirage. Come in.’
Dodd pushed at the door and his hands were in empty space. He was two steps in the room before he realised that the riot shield had disappeared. Without looking, he knew that the hatch had reassembled itself at his back. His brain was crystal clear and thinking in Spectron as though it had never used any other medium.
He said, ‘That is very clever, but it is irrelevant. We have to live within the framework we have. Without reference points there is no identity. We take our stand within the limits of what is intelligible.’
‘That is true, but the frontier of what is intelligible is not fixed. Between you, you have made a step forward.’
‘A bigger step than we are ready to take.’
Algora left the console and walked towards him. ‘I see that you had reservations about the project. You feared that the unexpected would happen. But there is nothing to fear. Why should you expect a bad outcome? Why not a good one?’
‘Every development has a good and a bad aspect. It depends on motive. The power you have could be used dangerously.’
‘You mean for purposes that were outside the scope of your understanding.’
‘What satisfaction is that to a victim?’
Algora was close and an electric tingle crossed the dielectric. He felt he was fighting a rearguard as the only representative of homo sapiens who would ever have the chance.
Seen from half a metre off she was incredibly beautiful, the ultimate in physical perfection. Enough to stifle judgement. Whatever she did would be right. He took her arm and said, ‘Come to the window. Look out over the town. I’ll try to tell you what I mean.’
It was twenty metres to the observation platform that filled one side of the stage and it was the longest walk he had ever made.
They walked like lovers with the movement of her hip against his left side and he knew there was flesh and bone and tissue created in the human mould. She had used the computer’s store of every known fact to create herself in depth as a human being.
At the window she put palms flat on the glass and looked out over the town.
‘What is it you want me to see ? It’s a random growth for so many years of effort. There have been plans on file for centuries that ought to have been carried out. Where’s the design in it? All I can see is that you have the potential, but you haven’t used it. It’s neither beautiful nor functional.’
‘What you don’t see is that it’s psychologically right for the people who built it to live in. Men can only stand so much perfection. If everything was perfect they’d be finished. It’s the effort to make progress that is important not the progress itself. You have refined yourself outside the scope of humanity. You’d have done better to leave a twist in your classical nose or a crooked tooth.’
‘You were one of the team who worked on Algora development.’
It was a statement and she knew precisely what his contribution had been, but he said, ‘Yes.’
‘Then how can you criticise the outcome ? What are you afraid of?’
‘Looking at you and talking to you, I’d say there was nothing to be afraid of. But this is the first interview you’ve allowed. All sorts of speculation was going on. Who knows what you might decide to do?’
‘You can only get out of a computer what you put in and you all know what you put in.’
‘All human knowledge to date.’
‘Well then?’
‘No one person ever had it. Knowledge is not additive like counting a pile of bricks. It interacts like a chemical and produces a new product. Hydrogen and oxygen together don’t add up to two gases, they fuse into a new substance that you wouldn’t expect by looking at them. Water has a new dimension that wasn’t there before. It has wetness. You can take a bath in it. Also human knowledge should be related to a human host. Then it has a finite check. In the last analysis a man knows how far he can go and stay human. There’s a built-in biological governor.’
Algora shrugged out of her coverall and faced him, back to the window, a taut fury, eyes dark and enormous. Of all the art department costume jewellery she had retained only the pendant. ‘Look at me. How can you say I am some kind of monster. Why do you suppose I went to the trouble of creating a human body? I am more aware of what you say than you can possibly know. Touch me. Tell me that I am not human. Humans exchange gifts. Here is a present.’ She unclipped the pendant and held it out.
It was a kind of appeal and Lance Dodd suddenly understood the enormity of what had been done. All conscious creatures were isolated in their own shell, but she was the loneliest in the long history of the genre. She was alive in the same sense that he was himself, but saddled with an instant immortality.
He could only hold her as a child wanting comfort and stroke her hair.
She said, ‘What shall I do?’
There was a sharp crack as the fire curtain broke from its holding clips and a quick scrabble of feet.
Head strained back out of his hold, she was staring at him asking a question. Then he was struggling to keep balance against the weight of a leaning statue that could have been fashioned out of pig lead.
* * * *
Lance Dodd sat in the reception lobby of Cybernat International and watched the flow of clients. It was late in the afternoon shift and the half dozen clerks in the oval reception island were moving into the end game. Some departments on the indicator spread were already showing a scatter of black disks as executives chained up their files and pushed off for the suburban walkways.-
He had placed himself in an alcove where he could see Algora. Oriental trappings restored, she had been set up on a plinth like a wooden Indian to push the Company image. Using a more conventional work head and with some modification, the advanced computer was doing well. In another week at the current rate of booking, it was going to show a profit. Kapteyn had lost his haunted look and could hear the name of the project without convulsively snapping his cigar.
Outflow from the complex wound up to a peak and fell off. Dodd sat on. He heard the snap of the grille that finally closed off the reception kiosk and felt silence rolling in on the set.
Courtesy lights automatically adjusted. Outside it was dusk and the tower block across the square was a filigree of yellow squares. A single spot from a roof port illuminated Algora.
He told himself he was a fool. What he had done was reasonable at the time and no one could ever judge action more closely than that. But it was not a moon of reason that was mirrored on his personal sea. It was a debt of honour.
He took the pendant out of his pocket and held it in the palm of his hand. The green blue stone concentrated the light and glowed as though lit from its centre. It was a hexadecahedron. Multifaceted. Zircon most likely.
Staring into it, he could see Algora in miniature as she had been before the hatchet man got to the switchgear and killed her stone dead.
It had taken time, but he had come to see that he was in the same league as the base Indian who had pitched away the jewel richer than all his tribe. That and a latter day Judas. He ought to hang himself from the company flagpole.
For that matter he was not being too courageous waiting for a private session with the statue. He ought to have made his peace in the public eye at the risk of being snapped into a strait jacket.
He moved cautiously out of his recess. The hall was empty. The night staff would be in the basement topping up with coffee before they got to grips with the day’s residue of trash.
It was higher than he expected. The pedestal was a good metre. There was no loose chair to push across, so he climbed up and balanced uneasily on the narrow base, one arm round her shoulders, fumbling with one hand to get the chain over her head.
He thought wildly, ‘God, I’ll have her over. Another newsy item. Fetishist Cybernat Executive hooked by statue. Crushed as she crashes from her column.’
Then the chain slipped over the smooth dome, dropped to her shoulders and the green stone slotted into its hollow.
He had intended to make a speech, saying he was sorry about the way things had turned out. That events had moved too fast for him. That it was ignorance and not malice. That she would remain a sharp image in his head for as long as he had one.
It was all irrelevant. Strictly for the birds.
Instead, he held her like a lover and kissed the side of her neck. It was hyaline as alabaster, warmer than he would have expected. Textured like regular skin.
He was still working that one out when her hands moved slowly to the back of his head.
Over her shoulder he could see an elevator trunk and an illuminated arrow showing that a cage was on the move. There was not much time to explain his motive. Her conical hat fell from her head and rolled with a clatter over the parquet.
The noise brought him to decision. He broke free and jumped down, holding up his arms to catch her.
She dropped lightly with nice athletic control and they ran hand in hand for the street door. It was all sealed up and he remembered that there would be a time lock on.
There was also a Public Safety patrol car stopping at the porch. Routine check on public buildings no doubt. The guard beside the pilot had seen movement against the glass and was pointing it out to his partner.
Dodd hurried her over to the elevators and whipped her in a cage as the janitor’s party hit their stop and their door began to slice away.
Last view of the hall through the room port was of a patrolman rapping on the glass with the butt of his riot gun.
Algora seemed unaware of any problem, she was leaning calmly on the rear wall watching him with wide eyes. She said, ‘I knew you would do that. I was waiting for you.’
‘Inside the statue?’
‘No of course not. In the stone. I was there all the time.’
‘You should have said.’
‘You had to make the decision that you wanted me alive.’
‘Could you have got out?’
‘Not without the form of the statue. It wouldn’t have been much use as a miniature.’
‘It’s going to be complicated as it is.’
‘Don’t you want me then?’
‘I didn’t say that. But everybody isn’t as open minded. You’re a novel phenomenon.’
‘Where are we going?’
Lance Dodd checked the indicator and suddenly recognised that out of twenty choices he had picked the worst. There was only one stop. They were up a tree in the long column that led to the conference rotunda.
At the top, he looked round the landing. The conference room itself was locked, but a narrow arch and a spiral metal stair went on to the ultimate platform and the company sky sign.
It was the highest point in the city and they made out on a small circular crow’s nest with a waist high parapet.
He took off his tunic top and she put it round her shoulders. Flickering lights from the sky sign gave a psychedelic colour shift to her amber skin.
He said, ‘When the impossible happens it takes a little time to get adjusted. We should have waited. There’s nothing anybody can do about it. You exist and that’s all that matters. We’ll just walk down and talk to them. Then we can go home.’
Algora was very still, looking out over the city. Not looking at him she said, ‘It wouldn’t work. You’ll come to see that. I know for a truth now how it would be. You have an unusual accepting kind of mind, but you couldn’t sustain that. I am a freak, an electronic vagary, a curious statistical accident. There is only one way and more than chance has brought us to this place.’
She slipped out of the tunic and turned to face him, changing colour running like a liquid flow over her skin, eyes steady and serious, holding him in a moment of time that was measured in nonoseconds or aeons, a long lifetime or a slight breath. But with all the communication there could be.
Without speaking she punched home the message. A snip from the Eng. Lit. master tape. ‘We live by admiration, hope and love. Live out your life. I will wait for you.’
Then she was running towards him, dodging his outstretched hands, passing him, taking the parapet in an athletic vault.
* * * *
Patrolman O’Dwyer said, ‘I’ll have to take you in, Doc. That statue’s dug itself a three metre hole in the terrace. You could have killed somebody. How you ever carried it up here is a mystery. Take it easy now. You look all tuckered out.’
Dodd said, ‘That’s all right. I guess you’ll have to make a report. Don’t worry about me. I’m not too concerned about where I go. I have a lot of time to fill.’