Part 11 (1/2)
”Yes. I was hoping to ask you about the Engine.”
Gracewell looked somewhat rea.s.sured. ”Hah,” he said. ”You want work? It'll be months before we can rebuild. Months. All in disarray.”
”It was a sort of difference engine, wasn't it?”
The cab rattled down a street of red-brick houses, at the end of which a great traffic light stood idle and unlit.
”Yes,” Gracewell conceded. ”More or less. More precisely, no. But yes.”
”With men instead of mechanical parts.”
”Yes.” Gracewell sighed. ”More precisely in addition to.”
He pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at a cut on his lip. He gave Arthur a long look, and seemed to reach a decision. ”Ahem. Hah. Now, a difference engine is a toy, Shaw-a mere adding machine. More precisely, it operates by repeated addition. Crank the handle, and it adds; that's all it does. Thus it can generate tables. Nothing you or I couldn't do, though less p.r.o.ne to distraction and error. Now! An a.n.a.lytical engine is a more interesting notion. A hundred variables, a thousand variables-a thinking machine of universal purpose, subject to instruction, capable of all of the functions of mathematics and logic. The equal in reasoning to a man. His superior for precision, reliability, and complexity of calculation. Moreover, men are expensive, unreliable, and nosy.” He glared at Arthur, then dabbed fresh blood from his lip. ”Ow. I think I've a tooth loose.”
”Hmm,” Arthur agreed, gently rubbing his swollen knuckles.
”Still, though man is inferior in some respects, there's more to life than mathematics, more to the mind than logic. No merely mechanical engine can ever perform all the functions of which a man is capable.”
The driver shouted at someone in traffic.
”An engine,” Gracewell said, ”of which each critical variable is a man, who can therefore perform not only simple operations of addition and multiplication and division, but can also apply to his task the vital forces. The whole much greater than the sum of its parts, capable of resolving psychic operations too vast for one mind.”
He paused dramatically.
”Babbage proposed a thinking machine. What I've made is a perceiving machine.”
”It's a-some sort of an occult engine, then.”
”A Vital Engine, if you must give it a name. This is science, Mr Shaw, the modern science. You look sceptical.”
”And the headaches and-”
”Never enough men, that was the problem. Too many faltered. The Work made unusual demands on the spirit. Uncharted territory, calculating the revolutions of the spheres. It called for intuition, perception, what Atwood's lot call clairvoyance. So we recruited fortune-tellers, mediums, poets, that sort of person. At first, at least. When we ran out we found insurance clerks worked adequately. Atwood says the Sight can't be taught, but I believe that you can drum anything into a man's head if he's hungry enough.”
”It was Mr Atwood who recommended me to you.”
”Oh yes. I recall. Oh h.e.l.l!”
”Excuse me?”
”Loose. The tooth. No question.”
They listened in silence to the noise of traffic for a while. ”Why were we all barefoot?”
”Good G.o.d, Shaw, is that what you hunted me down to ask?”
”No. But I always wondered.”
”Because,” Gracewell sighed, ”the variables were barefoot on one of the earliest successful tests. Coincidence? Probably. One never knows what might make the difference. It's so delicate, and we're under such time pressure. This is an entirely new science, Shaw.”
”But what is it for?”
”I'm not at liberty to say. Suffice to say that it is of tremendous importance.”
”May I guess? I've had a great deal of time to think, since the fire.”
”I hardly see how I can stop you from guessing, Mr Shaw.”
”Well, then-first, whatever you were doing, someone was paying for it, and paying a quite extraordinary amount of money. I don't doubt that whoever invested those sums expected a profit. Second, it involved numbers. Third, you maintained secrecy. Fourth, you have rivals who will stop at nothing to steal or stop your work. Fifth, you tell me that the work had to do with telepathy and clairvoyance-I don't know that I believe that, but I don't know that I don't, and at the very least I believe you believe it. Sixth, it made nothing physical. It seems to me that your work must have something to do with money itself-with speculation. What if you had built, or believed you had built, an engine that could predict and calculate risks-let's say, the weather; storms off the Cape of Good Hope, perhaps, or bad harvests in the Azores. Warehouse fires in Bradford. What'll the Bank of England do next, before the bankers themselves know. Now, that would make a fine profit, and would have to be kept quite secret-you could hardly make a profit on predictions if everyone knew of them. And suppose your backers are a consortium of financiers: those outside the circle would have reason to fear and oppose them. Am I on the right track?”
”Hmm,” Gracewell said. ”I can see why you throve in journalism.”
They were stuck in traffic. There was new road being laid down somewhere; the smell of hot tarmacadam was overpowering.
”Blackfriars,” Gracewell shouted.
Arthur said, ”What's in Blackfriars?”
”Nothing. But by the time we've been there and back those men should be long gone.”
”Who were those men?”
”I don't know. Pale fellows, weren't they? Bad habits, I expect.”
A flick of the whip, and the cab was off again. Gracewell pulled a packet of tobacco from his pocket.
”You dropped your pipe,” Arthur said. ”I'm afraid I stepped on it.”
”Oh, h.e.l.l. Well, I've answered your questions, as far as I intend to. What else do you want from me, Mr Shaw?”
”I saved you from those men, Mr Gracewell-I think you owe me more answers.”
”I a.s.sure you, I was quite capable of defending myself.” Gracewell put the tobacco back into his pocket, took out his watch, and started to wind it. ”But that's not to say we don't need man-power. We're going to rebuild it, of course. The Engine.”
”We? You, and Atwood, and the Europa Company?”
”Hmm? Oh. You saw that, did you? Where else have you been poking around, I wonder? Anyway, we shall rebuild. Again. I suppose you never saw the first Engine. We built it near the West India Docks. Underground, for the most part. For safety, we thought! b.l.o.o.d.y thing flooded, of course. In the storm. Next time, who knows what they might do? Bomb us, perhaps, like a lot of b.l.o.o.d.y whatchamacallems, nihilists. Hmmph. Anyway. So you've been reading about a.n.a.lytical engines, have you?”
”Yes. I read your monograph.”
”Oh yes?”
”I read about your, ah, your vision of the Intelligences from M-”