"But if the British computers are wrong, why doesn"t somebody do something about it?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson said, "If it were that simple, Zalen...." His smile was rueful.
"Unfortunately our English friends--or their rulers at any rate--are determined that socialism is the only government suitable to their country. Actually it is nothing of the sort--they can thrive only with a mercantile capitalism under a nominal const.i.tutional monarchy."
"In that case I still don"t see--" Lindsay began.
"Contrary to what you"re thinking, their leaders are not villains,"
Anderson told him. "They are men and women obsessed with an ideal that has hampered them for almost two centuries. And they are incapable of accepting any conclusion counter to their ideals."
"Even to impoverishing an entire planet?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson shrugged. "A penalty of their insularity," he replied. "The reason for this little meeting, Zalen, is to explain that not all of us are in favor of supporting Britain and its absurd production bungling at the expense of Mars. A few of us are becoming singularly fed up with the computer neurosis that seems to have this planet in its grip."
Maria leaned forward, her dark eyes brilliant in their intensity. She said, "Can"t you see, Zalen, _that_ is why we are so concerned with your possible a.s.sa.s.sination? We fear the whole of Earth is on the lip of a nervous breakdown. Unless the grip of the computers is broken anything might happen. And we"re counting on you, with your fresh viewpoint and prestige, to help us."
"I was hoping you might be concerned about _me_," said Lindsay softly.
"After all, I"m the one who is supposed to be killed." He watched a sudden flush of embarra.s.sment add charming brilliance to the vividness of the Secretary General"s daughter.
"Of course we"re concerned," she said defensively. "We"re not really monsters, Zalen."
"What Maria means," said Anderson swiftly, "is that if the worst _should_ happen it will go a long way toward making Earth entirely computer-dependent, if du Fresne"s prophecy is fulfilled a lot of people who might go on fighting will simply give up."
"Just what is your stake in this, Senator?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson said, "I could give you a score of "good" reasons, Zalen. But my real reason is this--I"m d.a.m.ned if I want to see professional politicians become rubber-stamps to a computer. When Sylac was first used officially three decades ago, it looked as if it might be a help.
All we had to do was palm off all unpopular decisions on the machine.
"Elsac, however, has proved to be something else," he went on. "It is making too d.a.m.ned many of our decisions for us--and thanks to our having set Sylac up as a master-brain G.o.d we can"t controvert its judgment.
When President Giovannini gets his new Giac computer working we might as well shut up shop. And the announcement that Giac is in operation may come at any time now."
Lindsay studied him, then said, "Your real complaint then, Fernando, is that the computers deprive you of patronage and power."
"That"s about it," said the senator from New Mexico. "We"ll be reduced to the level of the political commissars of the Soviet nations. The scientists and symbolic logicians who feed and tend the computers will actually be running the country. _And_ the world."
"And just where do I come into this?" Lindsay asked.
"You, Zalen, are the last representative of the last sizeable and important human organism that is not dependent upon computer judgment,"
said Anderson. "That"s our side of it. From your own side--if you already distrust computer decisions, as in the case of the British hunting boots--you surely don"t want to see them in full control."
"Hardly," said Lindsay. "But at the same time I have no desire to be a.s.sa.s.sinated or to be the cause of an Earth-Mars war."
"Think it over, Zalen," said Anderson. "I need hardly tell you that I am not speaking for myself alone." He got up, put down his gla.s.s, bade Maria farewell and left the Martian alone with her.
When he had gone Lindsay looked at the girl, who returned his gaze quite openly for a long moment before her eyes fell away. He said, "Somehow the senator and you seem an odd combination."
She made no pretense of misunderstanding but said candidly, "Perhaps I am neurotic in my distrust of computers but I cannot help that. Those of us who have any true sensitivity unblunted by the psycho-mechanistics of the era all share this distrust. It is natural, since we are few and weak, that we should seek what allies we can find among the strong."
"I"ve always heard that politics makes strange bedfellows," said Lindsay casually.
It was obvious that he had committed a _faux pas_. Maria"s blush returned and her expression froze. Lindsay cursed himself for a fool.
With the development of all sorts of pneumatic resting devices the word _bed_ had become not only obsolete but definitely distasteful in well-bred Tellurian circles. Its use was as decried as was that of the word _b.l.o.o.d.y_ in Victorian England.
She said angrily, "I a.s.sure you, Mr. Lindsay, that Senator Anderson and I have never...." Voice and anger faded alike as she apparently realized that Lindsay had not intended insult.
He let her mix a second drink for both of them. Then, standing close to her and noting the smooth perfection of her creamy white skin, "I wonder if your father knows that he is nourishing a subversive in his family."
She said with a trace of impatience, "Oh, poor papa never sees the trees for the forest."
"You"re a d.a.m.ned unhappy girl, aren"t you?" he asked her. He didn"t need an answer, but realized she wanted to talk about it.
She said, her eyes shining suspiciously, "You"re right, of course, I"m very unhappy--constricted in behavior by my father"s position, unable to say aloud what I really think, how I really feel. Sometimes I think I must be living in some Gothic poet"s dream of loneliness."
"Contrary to the beliefs of most psychiatrists," said Lindsay, half-touched, half-appalled by Maria"s intensity, "we are all of us alone."
"Somehow I _knew_ you"d understand!" she exclaimed, without taking her dark eyes from his. "I"m not allowed to date gladiators, of course.
You"re the only man I"ve ever been with who was not afraid to look as he is."
"You"d better come to Mars," he suggested, shying away a little from the high voltage the Secretary General"s daughter seemed to be generating.
"I can a.s.sure you you"d have a chance to reveal the charms nature gave you without shame."
She laughed with a sudden change of spirits. "It"s at least a half hour since dinner. Let"s take a dip." She tossed back her l.u.s.trous dark hair with a shake of her head and her hands went to the clasp of her halter, a moment later to that of her shorts. "Come on," she called, extending her arms to expose her exciting young body before him. "The water will cool us off."
It didn"t work out that way, of course. Lindsay was barely in the tub-pool before Maria"s arms were about his neck, her body close against his, her lips thrusting upward toward his own. For a moment he felt panic, said, "Hey! What if somebody comes? Your father--"
"Silly! n.o.body will," she replied, laughing softly.
His last rational thought for quite awhile was, _Oh well--I"m hardly in a position to get the Secretary General"s daughter angry._
False dawn was spreading its dim fanlight over the eastern horizon as he coptered back to his official quarters in the city. Trying to restore some order to thoughts and emotions thoroughly disrupted by the unexpected events of the evening, he wondered a little just what he had got himself into.
Mars, of course, was scarcely a Puritan planet, populated as it was by the hardiest and most adventurous members of the human race, of all races. But there had been something almost psychopathic about Maria"s pa.s.sion. It had been far too intense to have been generated solely through regard for him.
The girl had made love to him simply to relieve her own inner tensions, he thought wryly. Lacking a man she could love, walled in by the high officialdom of her father"s lofty position, she had turned to him in the same way she turned to the anti-computer movement--as a way of feeling less lonely for a while. Still, it had been sweet--if a little frightening in retrospect.
And it had been a little decadent too.
With the copter on autopilot he lit a cigarette and forced his thoughts away from the girl. He wondered if the Governors of Mars were sufficiently in key with the current feelings of Earthfolk to understand fully how deep the repercussions from his speech might go. He wondered if they had considered fully the possibility of interplanetary war.
True, Mars was undoubtedly better equipped to defend itself against such attack than was Earth. Like the mother planet it had its share of robot rockets capable of launching a counterattack. And thanks to the comparative spa.r.s.eness and decentralization of its population it was far less vulnerable to attack.
But war between the planets would be destructive of far more than cities and the people that lived in them. It would mean inevitably a breakdown of the entire fabric of civilized humanity--a tenuous fabric, true, but all that existed to maintain man.
And an isolated Mars, even if self-sufficient, would be a sorry subst.i.tute for a red planet that was part of the United Worlds. It would mean a setback of generations, perhaps centuries.