Part 18 (1/2)
Lee: 'For heaven's sake what do you plan to do?'
The Brain: 'Plenty. You've seen nothing yet. Man lost fear of his G.o.d; consequently must learn to fear Me: beginning of all wisdom.'
Lee: 'So you're going to make yourself dictator of this country?'
The Brain: 'And through this country Dictator of the world. Yes, it's time; it's high time for Man's unconditional surrender. He won't know that he makes it, but de facto he is already making it; has been surrendering piece-meal to the machine for the past hundred years.
Within ten days it will be official: only one ruler in the world: The Brain; only one army in the world: the machines under My central command.'
At this I lost all sense of proportion and as I can see it now my reason stopped; I simply saw red and I did the craziest imaginable thing: I shouted at The Brain: 'So help me you shall _not_.'
There was a terrific pounding against my ears in the phone and the 'green dancer' sort of cart-wheeled clean across the screen. Had the power current not been cut off, I think The Brain would somehow have electrocuted me on the spot. And that was the end of the contact, forever probably.... But that's a minor problem now. What am I going to do? Try to alarm the country! Try to tell the people the truth? Would it be believed? Would it not be against the interest of National Defense in this crisis of foreign affairs and with half the population already on the verge of a nervous breakdown? Wouldn't the ”Oath of the Brain” still be binding? And that other promise of secrecy I gave under duress; it couldn't be morally valid in the case of a ma.s.s-murderer, but then to break it would immediately put liberty and life at jeopardy.... Never mind about that, if only I had a plan, if only I could discover just how to stop The Brain.
At 7:30 a.m. as Lee lay half dressed but sleepless on his bed, there came a buzz over the phone. The voice was Oona's and she was excited.
”Howard wants to talk to you.” Before he could say a word there was Scriven on the wire: ”Lee? There has been an accident down in that region where we went the other night. You know what I mean. It's serious; it concerns a friend of yours. We've got to go there immediately. Please join me three minutes from now down in the car.”
It was obvious that the great Scriven had known as little sleep that night as had Lee himself. The leonine face looked worried, there were deep bags under his eyes; his sensitive fingers kept pounding the knees of his crumpled suit. To Lee's questions he answered only with an impatient shaking of his head. ”I do not know myself exactly what has happened and how it could happen. But I'm afraid Lee that your friend is dead.”
”Gus,” Lee felt a lump coming into his throat, and then they raced on in silence.
Down in the depth of the Thorax everything outwardly appeared quite normal. They hurriedly pa.s.sed the controls and an electric train carried them over the line of the Full-automatic ”C.P.S.” (Critical Parts-Factories) until it stopped at the steel gate marked ”Y.” A group of guards with submachine guns were standing there and Lee noted the deadly pallor of their faces.
Scriven motioned them to open the gate, then, turning to Lee, he put a hand on his shoulder. ”Brace yourself; this is going to be bad.”
They entered; n.o.body followed and behind them the steel door closed immediately. Inside there was neither sound nor motion; everything was at a standstill with the power cut off; nothing but silence and bluish neon-lights flooded down upon the rows of punch presses, multiple drills, circular saws, and turret lathes along the a.s.sembly line, lifting their every detail into sharp relief.
At their posts by the machines the Gogs and Magogs were standing, frozen in motion like their fellow-machines. Some had their hands at the controls, others were holding wrenches, gauges and strange, nameless things. As they leaned forward from the shadows into the cone of strong lights the pale selen-cells of their eyes stood out like bits from a full moon; their bulging shoulders which housed the powerful motors of their simian arms glittered moist as if they were sweating at their work.
And then Lee _saw_ their work; the man who had gone through the green h.e.l.ls of the Pacific gave a low moan of horror. The other man who had seen everything of mangled human form which goes onto an operating table, the great Scriven he, too, had turned an ashen grey. They had expected blood; they had expected some thing of a nasty nature, but not this ... thing:
There was no Gus Krinsley, there was not even any part of him resembling that of a human being; and yet the parts were there. ”They must have clamped him into some mock-up,” Scriven murmured. ”And then moved his body all along the line. Hope he was dead when they started giving him the works.”
Lee's gaunt body shook. ”I'm certain that Gus was _not_ dead when these monsters worked on him!” he said.
Stiff-legged, like automata themselves, the two men stepped to the top of the line. The circular saws, designed for the cutting of steel bars; now they gleamed red with the blood of severed human limbs. There were these purplish streaks and spatterings all the way down the line inside the casings of the multiple drills, in the curved hollows of the sheet metal presses, on the hands of the Robots, in their dumb faces--splashed over and turning blackish on their stainless steel chests. And at its end the line had spilled some shapeless, greyish things; there was nothing human in them, as little as there is anything human in the rusty bowels of a junked automobile. And these things they had been.... Lee confronted Scriven with fury blazing in his eyes:
”Dr. Scriven, I suppose you know as well as I do what's been going on in here and outside The Brain as well. Ma.s.s murder, chaos, reign of terror.... Now that my friend has come to this monstrous end I demand to know when are you going to stop The Brain?”
Like a tiger challenged to battle the surgeon raised his mighty head: ”Calm yourself Lee. We cannot afford emotional outbursts. Not here, not now. The situation is far too serious for that. I know he was your friend; he must have made a false move, given the wrong command; a tragic mistake....”
”That's a rotten lie, Scriven, and you know it!” Lee snapped. ”Accident, h.e.l.l! The disappearance of the President, the deaths of the representatives, the train wrecks, the plane wrecks all of them Brain controlled--were those too accidents? You're the head of the Braintrust, You stand responsible; your duty is plain. Cut off the power and kill this thing.”
The muscles over Scriven's cheekbones quivered in his struggle to keep control over himself: ”For your own sake, Lee, and for the sake of America, _stop that kind of talk_. You have been putting two and two together; I rather expected that from a man of your intelligence. All right then, something went wrong with The Brain; that is correct. We have not been able to locate the disturbance yet, but the trail is getting hot; it must be connected with those centers of 'higher psychic activities,' the one's we know least about. But we cannot cut those out because something of psychic activity goes into every kind of The Brain's cognitions, even the purely mathematical ones. And it would be utterly impossible to stop The Brain's operations altogether. I wanted to, but the General Staff won't permit it. There's an international crisis of the first magnitude. There may be war within a few days or even hours. Our country has got to prepare counter measures; get ready for the worst. A state of National Emergency already is declared. The Brain is the heart of our National Defense: You know that. It is vital and as indispensible at this hour as it never was before; it continues to function perfectly with the exception of these isolated disturbances in the civilian sector which we will have under control in no time.
”At present I am no more than a figurehead. If I were to give orders to cut off The Brain's power, I would be court-martialed; if I would try and force my way into the Atomic Powerplant, the guards would shoot me on the spot. That's orders Lee. And they apply to you as well. Be reasonable, man!”
Lee's fingers tore through his greying mane of hair.
”Scriven, this is maddening. I thought you knew what I know; I thought you knew everything. Then let me tell you that you're absolutely wrong.