A Touch of Infinity (10 page)

The first reaction was inevitable and predictable. The Russians lashed out at the United States, holding that since the United States, by their lights, had committed every sin in the book in the name of God, they would hardly stop short at fouling up radio and television transmission. The United States blamed the Chinese, and the Chinese blamed the Vatican. The Arabs blamed the Jews, and the French blamed Billy Graham, and the English blamed the Russians, and the Vatican held its peace and began a series of discreet inquiries.

The first two weeks of the daily pronouncement were almost entirely devoted to accusation. Every group, body, organization, sect, nation that had access to power was accused, while the radio engineers labored to find the source of the signal. The accusations gradually perished in the worldwide newspaper, television, and radio debate on the subject, and the source of the signal was not found. The public discussions during those first two weeks are a matter of public record; the private ones are not, which makes the following excerpts of some historical interest:

THE KREMLIN

REZNOV:
“I am not a radio engineer. Comrade Grinowski is a radio engineer. If I were Comrade Grinowski, I would go back to school for ten years. It is preferable to ten years in Siberia.”

GRINOWSKI:
“Comrade Reznov speaks, I am sure, as an expert radio engineer.”

BOLOV:
“Insolence, Comrade Grinowski, is no substitute for competence. Comrade Reznov is a Marxist, which allows him to penetrate to the heart of the matter.”

GRINOWSKI:
“You are also a Marxist, Comrade Bolov, and you are also Commissar of Communications. Why haven't you penetrated to the heart of the matter?”

REZNOV:
“Enough of this bickering. You have every resource of Soviet science at your disposal, Comrade Grinowski. This is not merely a matter of jamming our signals; it is an attack upon our basic philosophy.”

GRINOWSKI:
“We have used every resource of Soviet science.”

REZNOV:
“And what have you come up with?”

GRINOWSKI:
“Nothing. We don't know where the signals originate.”

REZNOV:
“Then what do you suggest, Comrade Bolov—in the light of Comrade Grinowski's statement?”

BOLOV:
“You can shoot Comrade Grinowski or you can invite in the Metropolitan or both. The Metropolitan is waiting outside.”

REZNOV:
“Who asked the Metropolitan here?”

GRINOWSKI:
(
with a small smile
) “I did.”

THE WHITE HOUSE

THE PRESIDENT:
“Where's Billy? I told him we start at two o'clock. Where is he?”

THE SECRETARY OF STATE:
“I called him myself. We might hear from Professor Foster of MIT meanwhile.”

THE PRESIDENT:
“I want Billy to hear what Professor Foster has to say.”

PROFESSOR FOSTER:
“I have a very short statement. I have several copies. I can give a copy to Billy or I can read it again.”

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL:
“I say CBS is at the bottom of the whole matter. CIA agrees with me.”

THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSIONER:
“CBS is not at the bottom of it. I think we ought to hear from Professor Foster. He has been working with our best people.”

THE PRESIDENT:
“Why in hell isn't Billy here?”

THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE:
“We might as well hear it from Professor Foster. If his statement is short, he can read it again for Billy.”

THE PRESIDENT:
“All right. But he reads it again for Billy.”

(
The door opens. Enter Billy.
)

BILLY:
“Greetings, everyone. God bless you all.”

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL:
“Are you sure you speak for Him?”

THE PRESIDENT:
“Professor Foster has a statement. He has been meeting for the past week with my ad hoc committee of scientists. Would you read your statement, Professor?”

PROFESSOR FOSTER:
“Here is our statement. In spite of all our efforts, we cannot ascertain the source of the signal.”

THE PRESIDENT:
“Is that all?”

PROFESSOR FOSTER:
“Yes, sir. That's all.”

THE ATTORNEY GENERAL:
“Well, damn it to hell, sir, you must know where the signal comes from. Does it come from outer space? From the earth? From Russia?”

PROFESSOR FOSTER:
“I stand by my statement.”

THE PRESIDENT:
“Well, here we are, faced with a show cause order. Billy, I don't expect anything from the Russians or the Chinese. Can we show cause?”

BILLY:
“I have been thinking about that.”

THE PRESIDENT:
“Yes or no?”

(
Silence.
)

JERUSALEM

THE PRIME MINISTER:
“At the suggestion of Professor Goldberg, I have invited Rabbi Cohen to this meeting.”

THE FOREIGN MINISTER:
“Why? To complicate this hoax?”

THE PRIME MINISTER:
“Suppose we hear from Professor Goldberg.”

PROFESSOR GOLDBERG:
“Not only have we been working on it day and night, but we have been in touch with the Americans. As in our case, they can find no source for the signal. I think we ought to hear from Rabbi Cohen.”

THE PRIME MINISTER:
“What the Gentiles will do, Rabbi, is their problem. Ours is more personal, since when you come right down to it, our people have been faced with this problem before. We are presented with a show cause order. Can we show cause?”

RABBI COHEN:
(
sadly
) “I am afraid not.”

WHITEHALL

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE:
“I've put four of our best men on it. We're running them north of the Afghan border.”

THE PRIME MINISTER:
“What do you hear from them?”

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE:
“We've lost touch with them.”

THE PRIME MINISTER:
“I think you ought to get in touch with the Archbishop.”

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE:
“I'll put one of my best men on it.”

(
Thoughtful silence.
)

THE VATICAN

FIRST CARDINAL:
“I can't believe it. After two thousand years of effort.”

SECOND CARDINAL:
“Backbreaking effort.”

FIRST CARDINAL:
“No word of appreciation. Just show cause.”

SECOND CARDINAL:
“Have you spoken to the legal department?”

FIRST CARDINAL:
“Oh, yes—yes indeed. He's within His rights, you know.”

The above excerpts are just a sampling of what went on in the upper circles of every government on earth. Both the Vatican and Israel, due to the singular nature of their antecedents, attempted to probe for a time limit, and at least four times they were given the use of the broadcasting facilities of the Voice of America, both medium wave and short wave; but their frantic pleas of “How much time do we have?” were simply ignored. Day after day the resonant and majestic voice, same hour, same minute, called upon the people of the earth to show cause.

By the third week, Russia and China and their client countries joined in a public statement, denouncing the voice as a tasteless bourgeois prank, directed at the moral integrity of the peace-loving nations; and while they admitted that the source of the signal was not yet apparent, they stated that it was only a matter of time before they pinned it down. But Moscow's efforts to jam the voice continued to result in failure, and China finally accused Moscow of being a part of the Western conspiracy to foist their primitive and anthropomorphic concept of a Biblical God upon the civilized world.

Meanwhile, the various sectors of the human race reacted in the entire spectrum of reaction, from hooting disdain to indifference to anger and to riot and panic; and the President of the United States had a long and earnest talk in his study with his friend, Billy. Knowing only the results of this talk, one has to deduce its content, but one can safely presume that it went somewhat in this fashion:

“I've read your bill of particulars, Billy. It's not very convincing,” the President said.

“No? Well, I didn't think too highly of it myself.”

“I think you could have done better.”

“Oh? Perhaps. Perhaps not. I never liked show cause orders—I was never wholly convinced that they are constitutional.”

“They're constitutional,” the President assured him. “I had a long talk with the Chief Justice about this. He says it's quite constitutional.”

“I meant in a general sense. We must not become too parochial about this.”

“One falls into the habit,” the President confessed. “You must admit that we've always been on God's side.”

“The question is—is He on our side?”

“You're not losing faith, Billy?”

“It's just the problem of making a case for us.”

“He must be on our side,” the President insisted. “Take the very fact of show cause. Our country has pioneered the legal field in the use of show cause orders. We were putting an end to subversive strikes with show cause orders before the rest of the world even thought of the device. And as far as a case for us—where else in the world has a nation provided as free and abundant a life as the American way?”

“I'm not sure that's to the point.”

“Billy, I've never seen you like this before. I would have said you're the most confident man on earth. Do you want me to take this out of your hands and give it to the Attorney General? He has a damn good legal staff, and if they put their heads together, they'll come up with something that will hold up in court.”

“That's not it. He asks a question point-blank. It's a moment of truth.”

“We've had our moments of truth before, and we've lived through them.”

“This one's different.”

“Why?”

Billy looked at the President, and the President looked at Billy, and after a long, long moment of silence, the President nodded.

“Hopeless?”

“I thought of something,” Billy said.

“What? I'll put every resource of the country at your disposal.”

“When you come right down to it,” Billy said, “it's the showing cause that breaks our back. It's one thing to preach in the big stadium at Houston; but when you say your piece at the United Nations, for example, it doesn't hold water.”

“The hell it doesn't.”

“Well, with England and Guatemala, but where's the plain majority we had ten years ago?”

“We're no worse than any other country and a damn sight better than the Reds.”

“That's the crux of it,” Billy said.

“You said you thought of something.”

“I did. Let's take that big computer you have down at Houston. Suppose we start programming it. We'll throw everything into it, the good and the bad—get the best men in the field to program it, and keep throwing facts into it—say for a week or ten days.”

“We don't know how much time we have.”

“We have to presume that He knows what we're doing. And so long as He knows that we're working on the show cause order, He'll wait.”

“Isn't that a calculated risk, Billy?”

“I'd say it's more of an educated guess. Good heavens, He's got all the time in the world. He invented it.”

“Then why don't we bring IBM into it? They can throw together a set of computers that will make the thing down in Texas—that's where the big one is—look like a kiddy toy.”

“If the government will foot the bill. I'm not sure that the IBM folk will see it just our way.”

More or less in that fashion the IBM project came into being. Since they had a free hand to call on their own computer centers as well as what they had set up for the Department of Defense, it was no more than two weeks before they began the programming. Day and night, facts were fed into the giant complex of computers, day after day, not by a single person but by over three hundred computer experts; and precisely thirty-three days after they began, the job was done. The computer complex was the repository of all the facts available concerning the current role of the human species on the planet Earth.

It was three o'clock in the morning when the last fact was fed into the humming machine. At Central Control, a sleepless President and his Cabinet and some two dozen local luminaries and representatives of foreign countries waited. Billy waited with them. And the world waited.

“Well, Billy?” the President asked.

“We've given it the problem and the facts. Now we want the answer.” He turned to the Chief Engineer of IBM. “It's your move now.”

The Chief Engineer nodded and touched a button. The gigantic complex of computers came alive and hummed and throbbed and blinked and flashed, took a full sixty seconds to digest the information that had been fed to it, and then took ten seconds more to imprint the information on a piece of tape.

No one moved.

The President looked at Billy.

“It's up to you, sir,” Billy said.

The President moved slowly toward the machine, tore off the six inches of tape that protruded from it, read it, then turned to Billy and handed it to him silently.

On the tape was printed: “Harvey Titterson.”

“Harvey Titterson,” Billy said.

The Attorney General came over and took the tape from Billy. “Harvey Titterson,” he repeated.

“Harvey Titterson,” the President said. “A billion dollars into the biggest computer project the world ever saw, and what do we have?”

“Harvey Titterson,” said the Secretary of State.