The Nail and the Oracle (24 page)

Usually.

Jones sat at the desk, switched on the light and took out the admiral’s lighter. It was a square one, with two parts which telescoped apart to get to the tank. The tight little roll of paper was there, sure enough, with the typescript not seriously blurred by lighter fluid. He smoothed it out, retrieved the other two, unfolded them, stacked them all neatly; and then, feeling very like Christmas morning, said gaily to the unresponsive ORACLE:

“Now!”

Seconds later, he was breathing hard. A flood of profanity welled upward within him—and dissipated itself as totally inadequate.

Wagging his head helplessly, he brought the three papers to the typewriter and wrote them out on fresh paper, staying within the guidelines printed there, and adding the correct code symbols for the admiral, the colonel and the civilian. These symbols had been assigned by ORACLE itself, and were cross-checked against the
personnel records it carried in its memory banks. It was the only way in which it was possible to ask a question including that towering monosyllable “I.”

Jones clipped the first paper in place, held his breath and pushed the button.

There was a small flare of light from the hood surrounding the lens as the computer automatically brought the available light to optimum. A relay clicked softly as the writer was activated. A white tongue of paper protruded. Jones tore it off. It was blank.

He grunted, then replaced the paper with the second, then the third. It seemed that on one of them there was a half-second delay in the writer relay, but it was insignificant: the paper remained blank.

“Stick your tongue out at me, will you?” he muttered at the computer, which silently gazed back at him with its blank single eye. He went back to the typewriter and copied one of the questions, but with his own code identification symbols. It read:

He clipped the paper in place and pushed the button. The relay clicked, the writer rattled and the paper protruded. He tore it off. It read (complete with quotes):

“A wise guy,” Jones growled. He returned to the typewriter and again copied one of the queries with his own code:

Wryly, ORACLE answered:

It actually took Jones a couple of seconds to absorb that one, and then he uttered an almost hysterical bray of laughter.

The third question he asked, under his own identification, was:

The answer was a flat NO, and Jones did not laugh one bit. “And you don’t find anything funny about it either,” he congratulated the computer, and actually physically shuddered.

For Henny—the Honorable Oswaldus Deeming Henny—was an automatic nightmare to the likes of Jones. His weatherbeaten saint’s face, his shoulder-length white hair (oh, what genius of a public-relations man put him onto that?), his diapason voice, but most of all, his “Plan for Peace” ’ had more than once brought Jones up out of a sound sleep into a cold sweat. Now, there was once a man who entranced a certain segment of the population with a slogan about the royalty in every man, but he could not have taken over the country, because a slogan is not a political philosophy. And there was another who was capable of turning vast numbers of his countrymen—for a while—against one another and toward him for protection: and he could not have taken over the country, because the manipulation of fear is not an economic philosophy. This Henny, however, was the man who had both, and more besides. His appearance alone gave him more non-thinking, vote-bearing adherents than Rudolph Valentino plus Albert Schweitzer. His advocacy of absolute isolation brought in the right wing, his demand for unilateral disarmament brought in the left wing, his credo that science could, with a third of munitions-size budgets, replace foreign trade through research, invention and ersatz, brought in the tech segment, and his dead certainty of lowering taxes had a thick hook in everyone else. Even the most battle-struck of the war-wanters found themselves shoulder to shoulder with the peace-at-any-price extremists, because of the high moral tone of his disarmament plan, which was to turn our weapons on ourselves and present any aggressor with nothing but slag and cinders—the ultimate deterrent. It was the most marvelous blend of big bang and beneficence, able to cut chance and
challenge together with openhanded Gandhiism, with an answer for everyone and a better life for all.

“All of which,” complained Jones to the featureless face of the computer, “doesn’t help me find out why you wouldn’t answer those three guys, though I must say, I’m glad you didn’t.” He went and got the desk chair and put it down front and center before the computer. He sat down and folded his arms and they stared silently at each other.

At length he said, “If you were a people instead of a thing, how would I handle you? A miserable, stubborn, intelligent snob of a people?”

Just how do I handle people? he wondered. I do—I know I do. I always seem to think of the right thing to say, or to ask. I’ve already asked ORACLE what’s wrong, and ORACLE says nothing is wrong. The way any miserable, stubborn, intelligent snob would.

What I do, he told himself, is to empathize. Crawl into their skins, feel with their fingertips, look out through their eyes.

Look out through their eyes.

He rose and got the admiral’s query—the one with the admiral’s own identification on it—clipped it to the board, then hunkered down on the floor with his back to the computer and his head blocking the lens.

He was seeing exactly what the computer saw.

Clipboard. Query. The small bare chamber, the far wall. The …

He stopped breathing. After a long astonished moment he said, when he could say anything, and because it was all he could think of to say: “Well, I … be … damned …”

The admiral was the first in. Jones had had a busy time of it for the ninety minutes following his great discovery, and he was feeling a little out of breath, but at the same time a little louder and quicker than the other guy, as if he had walked into the reading room after a rub-down and a needle-shower.

“Sit down, Admiral.”

“Jones, did you—”

“Please, sir—sit down.”

“But surely—”

“I’ve got your answer, Admiral. But there’s something we have to do first.” He made waving gestures. “Bear with me.”

He wouldn’t have made it, thought Jones, except for the colonel’s well-timed entrance. Boy oh boy, thought Jones, look at ’m, stiff as tongs. You come on the battlefield looking just like a target. On the other hand, that’s how you made your combat reputation, isn’t it? The colonel was two strides into the room before he saw the admiral. He stopped, began an about-face and said over his left epaulet, “I didn’t think—”

“Sit down, Colonel,” said Jones in a pretty fair imitation of the man’s own brass gullet. It reached the officer’s muscles before it reached his brain and he sat. He turned angrily on the admiral, who said instantly, “This wasn’t my idea,” in a completely insulting way.

Again the door opened and old living history walked in, his head a little to one side, his eyes ready to see and understand and his famous mouth to smile, but when he saw the tableau, the eyes frosted over and the mouth also said: “I didn’t think—”

“Sit down, sir,” said Jones, and began spieling as the civilian was about to refuse, and kept on spieling while he changed his mind, lowered himself guardedly onto the edge of a chair and perched his old bones on its front edge as if he intended not to stay.

“Gentlemen,” Jones began, “I’m happy to tell you that I have succeeded in finding out why ORACLE was unable to perform for you—thanks to certain unexpected cooperation I received.” Nice touch, Jones. Each one of ’em will think he turned the trick, single-handedly. But not for long. “Now I have a plane to catch, and you all have things to do, and I would appreciate it if you would hear me out with as little interruption as possible.” Looking at these bright, eager, angry, sullen faces, Jones let himself realize for the first time why detectives in whodunits assemble all the suspects and make speeches. Why they
personally
do it—why the author has them do it. It’s because it’s fun.

“In this package”—he lifted from beside his desk a brown paper parcel a yard long and fifteen inches wide—“is the cause of all the trouble. My company was founded over a half century ago, and one
of these has been an appurtenance of everyone of the company’s operations, each of its major devices and installations, all of its larger utility equipment—cranes, trucks, bulldozers, everything. You’ll find them in every company office and in most company cafeterias.” He put the package down flat on his desk and fondled it while he talked. “Now, gentlemen. I’m not going to go into any part of the long argument about whether or not a computer can be conscious of what it’s doing, because we haven’t time and we’re not here to discuss metaphysics. I will, however, remind you of a childhood chant. Remember the one that runs: ‘For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for want of a horse the message was lost; for want of the message the battle was lost; for want of the battle the kingdom was lost—and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.’ ”

“Mr. Jones,” said the admiral, “I—we—didn’t come here to—”

“I just said that,” Jones said smoothly, and went right on talking until the admiral just stopped trying. “This”—he rapped the package—“is ORACLE’s horseshoe nail. If it’s no ordinary nail, that’s because ORACLE’s no ordinary computer. It isn’t designed to solve problems in their own context; there are other machines that do that. ORACLE solves problems the way an educated man solves them—by bringing everything he is and has to bear on them. Lacking this one part”—he thumped the package again—“it can then answer your questions, and it accordingly did.” He smiled suddenly. “I don’t think ORACLE was designed this way,” he added musingly. “I think it … became … this way …” He shook himself. “Anyway, I have your answers.”

Now he could afford to pause, because he had them. At that moment, the only way any of them could have been removed was by dissection and haulage.

Jones lined up his sights on the colonel and said, “In a way, your question was the most interesting, Colonel. To me professionally, I mean. It shows to what detail ORACLE can go in answering a wide theoretical question. One might even make a case for original creative thinking, though that’s always arguable. Could a totally obedient robot think if you flatly ordered it to think? When does a perfect imitation of a thing become the thing itself?”

“You’re not going to discuss my question here,” said the colonel as a matter of absolute, incontrovertible fact.

“Yes I am,” said Jones, and raised his voice. “You listen to me, before you stick that trigger finger of yours inside that tunic. Colonel. I’m in a corny mood right now and so I’ve done a corny thing. Two copies of a detailed report of this whole affair are now in the mail, and, I might add, in a mailbox outside this building. One goes to my boss, who is a very big wheel and a loyal friend, with as many contacts in business and government as there are company machines operating, and that puts him on the damn moon as well as all over the world. The other goes to someone else, and when you find out who that is it’ll be too late, because in two hours he can reach every paper, every wire service, every newscasting organization on earth. Naturally, consistent with the corn, I’ve sent these out sealed with orders to open them if I don’t phone by a certain time—and I assure you it won’t be from here. In other words, you can’t do anything to me and you’d better not delay me.
Sit down, Admiral
,” he roared.

“I’m certainly not going to sit here and—”

“I’m going to finish what I started out to do whether you’re here or not.” Jones waved at the other two. “They’ll be here. You want that?”

The admiral sat down. The civilian said, in a tolling of mighty sorrow, “Mr. Jones, I had what seemed to be your faithful promise—”

“There were overriding considerations,” said Jones. “You know what an overriding consideration is, don’t you, sir?” and he held up the unmistakable ORACLE query form. The civilian subsided.

“Let him finish,” gritted the colonel. “We can—well, let him finish.”

Jones instantly, like ORACLE, translated:
We can take care of him later
. He said to the colonel, “Cheer up. You can always deny everything, like you said.” He fanned through the papers before him and dealt out the colonel’s query. He read it aloud:

“ ‘IF I ELIMINATE THE PRESIDENT, HOW CAN I ASSURE PERSONAL CONTROL?’ ”

The colonel’s face could have been shipped out, untreated, and installed on Mount Rushmore. The civilian gasped and put his knuckles
in his mouth. The admiral’s slitted eyes went round.

“The answer,” said Jones, “makes that case for creative thinking I was talking about. ORACLE said: ‘DETONATE ONE BOMB WITHIN UNDERGROUND H.Q. SPEND YOUR SUBSEQUENT TENURE LOOKING FOR OTHERS.’ ”

Jones put down the paper and spoke past the colonel to the other two. “Get the big picture, gentlemen? ‘UNDERGROUND H.Q.’ could only mean the centralized control for government in the mountains. Whether or not the President—or anyone else—was there at the time is beside the point. If not, he’d find another way easily enough. After that happened, our hero here would take the posture of the national savior, the only man competent to track down a second bomb, which could be anywhere. Imagine the fear, the witchhunts, the cordons, the suspicion, the ‘Emergency’ and ‘For the Duration’ orders and regulations.” Suddenly savage, Jones snarled, “I’ve got just one more thing to say about this warrior and his plans. All his own strength, and the entire muscle behind everything he plans for himself, derives from the finest
esprit de corps
the world has ever known. I told you I’m in a corny mood, so I’m going to say it just the way it strikes me. That kind of
esprit
is a bigger thing than obedience or devotion or even faith, it’s a species of love. And there’s not a hell of a lot of that to go around in this world. Butchering the President to make himself a little tin god is a minor crime compared to his willingness to take a quality like that and turn it into a perversion.”