Norstrilia

THE PALACE OF THE GOVERNOR OF NIGHT

Rod loped across the rolling land, his land.

Other Norstrilians, telepathically normal, would have taken fixes by hiering the words in nearby houses. Rod could not walk by telepathy, so he whistled to himself in an odd off key, with lots of flats. The echoes came back to his unconscious mind through the overdeveloped ear-hearing which he had worked out to compensate for not being able to hier with his mind. He sensed a slope ahead of him, and jogged up it; he avoided a clump of brush; he heard his youngest ram, Sweet William, snoring the gigantic snore of a santaclara-infected sheep two hills over.

Soon he would see it.

The Palace of the Governor of Night.

The most useless building in all Old North Australia.

Solider than steel and yet invisible to normal eyes except for its ghostly outline traced in the dust which had fallen lightly on it.

The Palace had really been a palace once, on Khufu II, which rotated with one pole always facing its star. The people there had made fortunes which at one time were compared with the wealth of Old North Australia. They had discovered the Furry Mountains, range after range of alpine configurations on which a tenacious non-Earth lichen had grown. The lichen was silky, shimmering, warm, strong, and beautiful beyond belief. The people gained their wealth by cutting it carefully from the mountains so that it would regrow and selling it to the richer worlds, where a luxury fabric could be sold at fabulous prices. They had even had two governments on Khufu II, one of the day-dwelling people who did most of the trading and brokering, since the hot sunlight made their crop of lichen poor, and the other for the night-dwellers, who ranged deep into the frigid areas in search of lichen, stunted, fine, tenacious and delicately beautiful.

The Daimoni had come to Khufu II, just as they came to many other planets, including Old Earth, Manhome itself. They had come out of nowhere and they went back to the same place. Some people thought that they were human beings who had acclimated themselves to live in the subspace which planoforming involved; others thought that they had an artificial planet on the inside of which they lived; still others thought that they had solved the jump out of our galaxy; a few insisted that there were no such things as Daimoni. This last position was hard to maintain, because the Daimoni paid in architecture of a very spectacular kind — buildings which resisted corrosion, erosion, age, heat, cold, stress, and weapons. On Earth itself Earthport was their biggest wonder — a sort of wine glass, twenty-five kilometers high, with an enormous rocket field built into the top of it. On Norstrilia they had left nothing; perhaps they had not even wanted to meet the Old North Australians, who had a reputation for being rough and gruff with strangers who came to their own home planet. It was evident that the Daimoni had solved the problem of immortality on their own terms and in their own way; they were bigger than most of the races of mankind, uniform in size, height and beauty; they bore no sign of youth or age; they showed no vulnerability to sickness; they spoke with mellifluous gravity; and they purchased treasures for their own immediate collective use, not for retrade or profit. They had never tried to get stroon or the raw santaclara virus from which it was refined, even though the Daimoni trading ships had passed the tracks of armed and convoyed Old North Australian freight fleets. There was even one picture which showed the two races meeting each other in the chief port of Olympia, the planet of the blind receivers: Norstrilians tall, outspoken, lively, crude, and immensely rich; Daimoni equally rich, reserved, beautiful, polished and pale. There was awe (and with awe, resentment) on the part of the Norstrilians toward the Daimoni; there was elegance and condescension on the part of the Daimoni toward everyone else, including the Norstrilians. The meeting had been no success at all. The Norstrilians were not used to meeting people who did not care about immortality, even at a penny a bushel; the Daimoni were disdainful toward a race which not only did not appreciate architecture, but which tried to keep architects off its planet, except for defense purposes, and which desired to lead a rough, simple, pastoral life to the end of time. Thus it was not until the Daimoni had left, never to return, that the Norstrilians realized that they had passed up some of the greatest bargains of all time — the wonderful buildings which the Daimoni so generously scattered over the planets which they had visited for trade or for visits.

On Khufu II, the Governor of Night had brought out an ancient book and had said,

“I want that.”

The Daimoni, who had a neat eye for proportions and figures, said, “We have that picture on our world too. It is an Ancient Earth building. It was once called the great temple of Diana of the Ephesians, but it fell even before the age of space began.”

“That’s what I want,” said the Governor of Night.

“Easy enough,” said one of the Daimoni, all of whom looked like princes. “We’ll run it up for you by tomorrow night.”

“Hold on,” said the Governor of Night. “I don’t want the whole thing. Just the front — to decorate my palace. I have a perfectly good palace all right, and my defenses are built right into it.”

“If you let us build you a house,” said one of the Daimoni gently, “you would never need defenses, ever. Just a robot to close the windows against megaton bombs.”

“You’re good architects, gentlemen,” said the Governor of Night, smacking his lips over the model city they had shown him, “but I’ll stick with the defenses I know. So I just want your front. Like that picture. Furthermore, I want it invisible.”

The Daimoni lapsed back into their language, which sounded as though it were of Earth origin, but which has never been deciphered from the few recordings of their visits which have survived.

“All right,” said one of them, “invisible it is. You still want the great temple of Diana at Ephesus on Old Earth?”

“Yes,” said the Governor of Night.

“Why — if you can’t see it?” said the Daimoni.

“That’s the third specification, gentlemen. I want it so that I can see it, and my heirs, but nobody else.”

“If it’s solid but invisible, everybody is going to see it when your fine snow hits it.”

“I’ll take care of that,” said the Governor of Night. “I’ll pay what we were talking about — forty thousand select pieces of Furry Mountain Fur. But you make that palace invisible to everybody except me, and my heirs.”

“We’re architects, not magicians!” said the Daimoni with the longest cloak, who might have been the leader…

“That’s what I want.”

The Daimoni gabbled among themselves, discussing some technical problems. Finally one of them came over to the Governor of Night and said,

“I’m the ship’s surgeon. May I examine you?”

“Why?” said the Governor of Night.

“To see if we can possibly fit the building to you. Otherwise we can’t even guess at the specifications we need.”

“Go ahead,” said the Governor. “Examine me.”

“Here? Now?” said the Daimoni doctor. “Wouldn’t you prefer a quiet place or a private room? Or you can come aboard our ship. That would be very convenient.”

“For you,” said the Governor of Night. “Not for me. Here my men have guns trained on you. You would never get back to your ship alive if you tried to rob me of my Furry Mountain Furs or kidnap me so that you could trade me back for my treasures. You examine me here and now or not at all.”

“You are a rough, tough man, Governor,” said another one of the elegant Daimoni. “Perhaps you had better tell your guards that you are asking us to examine you. Otherwise they might get excited with us and persons might become damaged,” said the Daimoni with a faint condescending smile.

“Go ahead, foreigners,” said the Governor of Night. “My men have been listening to everything through the microphone in my top button.”

He regretted his words two seconds later, but it was already too late. Four Daimoni had picked him up and spun him so deftly that the guards never understood how their Governor lost all his clothes in a trice. One of the Daimoni must have stunned him or hypnotized him; he could not cry out. Indeed, afterwards, he could not even remember much of what they did.

The guards themselves had gasped when they saw the Daimoni pull endless needles out of their boss’ eyeballs without having noticed the needles go in. They had lifted their weapons when the Governor of Night turned a violent fluorescent green in color, only to gasp, writhe, and vomit when the Daimoni poured enormous bottles of medicine into him. In less than half an hour they stood back.

The Governor, naked and blotched, sat on the ground and vomited.

One of the Daimoni said quietly to the guards, “He’s not hurt, but he and his heirs will see part of the ultraviolet band for many generations to come. Put him to bed for the night. He will feel all right by morning. And, by the way, keep everybody away from the front of the palace tonight. We’re putting in the buildings which he asked for. The great temple of Diana of the Ephesians.”

The senior guard officer spoke up, “We can’t take the guards off the palace. That’s our defense headquarters and no one, not even the Governor of the Night, has the right to strip it bare of sentries. The Day People might attack us again.”

The Daimoni spokesman smiled gently: “Make a good note of their names, then, and ask them for their last words. We shall not fight them, officer, but if they are in the way of our work tonight, we shall build them right into the new palace. Their widows and children can admire them as statues tomorrow.”

The guards officer looked down at his chief, who now lay flat on the ground with his head in his hands, coughing out the words, “Leave — me — alone!” The officer looked back at the cool, aloof Daimoni spokesman. He said:

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

The temple of Ephesus was there in the morning.

The columns were the Doric columns of ancient Earth; the frieze was a masterpiece of gods, votaries, and horses; the building was exquisite in its proportions.

The Governor of Night could see it.

His followers could not.

The forty thousand lengths of Furry Mountain fur were paid.

The Daimoni left.

The Governor died, and he had heirs who could see the building too. It was visible only in the ultraviolet and ordinary men beheld it on Khufu II only when the powdery hard snow outlined it in a particularly harsh storm.

But now it belonged to Rod McBan and it was on Old North Australia, not on Khufu II any more. How had that happened?

Who would want to buy an invisible temple, anyhow?

William the Wild would, that’s who. Wild William MacArthur, who delighted, annoyed, disgraced, and amused, whole generations of Norstrilians with his fantastic pranks, his gigantic whims, his world-girdling caprices.

William MacArthur was a grandfather to the twenty-second in a matrilineal line to Rod McBan. He had been a man in his time, a real man. Happy as Larry, drunk with wit when dead sober, sober with charm when dead drunk. He could talk the legs off a sheep when he put his mind on it; he could talk the laws off the Commonwealth. He did. He had.

The Commonwealth had been purchasing all the Daimoni houses it could find, using them as defense outposts. Pretty little Victorian cottages were sent into orbit as far-range forts. Theaters were bought on other worlds and dragged through space to Old North Australia, where they became bomb shelters or veterinary centers for the forever-sick wealth-producing sheep. Nobody could take a Daimoni building apart, once it had been built, so the only thing to do was to cut the building loose from its non-Daimoni foundation, lift it by rockets or planoform, and then warp it through space to the new location. The Norstrilians did not have to worry about landing them; they just dropped them. It didn’t hurt the buildings any. Sometimes simple Daimoni buildings came apart, because the Daimoni had been asked to make them demountable, but when they were solid, they stayed solid.

Wild William heard about the temple. Khufu II was a ruin. The lichen had gotten a plant infection and had died off. The few Khufuans who were left were beggars, asking the Instrumentality for refugee status and emigration. The Commonwealth had bought their little buildings, but even the Commonwealth of Old North Australia did not know what to do with an invisible and surpassingly beautiful Greek temple. Wild William visited it. He soberly inspected it, in complete visibility, by using sniper eyes set into the ultraviolet. He persuaded the government to let him spend half of his immense fortune putting it into a valley just next to the Station of Doom. Then, having enjoyed it a little while, he fell and broke his neck while gloriously drunk and his inconsolable daughter married a handsome and practical McBan.

And now it belonged to Rod McBan.

And housed his computer.

His own computer.

He could speak to it at the extension which reached into the gap of hidden treasures. He talked to it, other times, at the talkpoint in the field, where the polished red-and-black metal of the old computer was reproduced in exquisite miniature. Or he could come to this strange building, the Palace of the Governor of Night, and stand as the worshippers of Diana had once stood, crying, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” When he came in this way, he had the full console in front of him, automatically unlocked by his presence, just as his grandfather had showed him, three childhoods before, when the old McBan still had high hopes that Rod would turn into a normal Old North Australian boy. The grandfather, using his personal code in turn, had unlocked the access controls and had invited the computer to make its own foolproof recording of Rod, so that Roderick Frederick Ronald Arnold William MacArthur McBan CLI would be forever known to the machine, no matter what age he attained, no matter how maimed or disguised he might be, no matter how sick or forlorn he might return to the machine of his forefathers. The old man did not even ask the machine how the identification was obtained. He trusted the computer.

Rod climbed the steps of the Palace. The columns stood with their ancient carving, bright in his second sight; he never quite knew how he could see with the ultraviolet, since he noticed no difference between himself and other people in the matter of eyesight except that he more often got headaches from sustained open runs on clean-cloudy days. At a time like this, the effect was spectacular. It was his time, his temple, his own place. He could see, in the reflected light from the Palace, that many of his cousins must have been out to see the Palace during the nights. They too could see it, as it was a family inheritance to be able to watch the invisible temple which one’s friends could not see; but they did not have access.

He alone had that.

“Computer,” he cried, “admit me.”

“Message unnecessary,” said the computer. “You are always clear to enter.” The voice was a male Norstrilian voice, with a touch of the theatrical in it. Rod was never quite sure that it was the voice of his own ancestor; when challenged directly as to whose voice it was using the machine had told him, “Input on that topic had been erased in me. I do not know. Historical evidence suggests that it was male, contemporary with my installation here, and past middle age when coded by me.”

Rod would have felt lively and smart except for the feelings of awe which the Palace of the Governor of Night, standing bright and visible under the dark clouds of Norstrilia, had upon him. He wanted to say something lighthearted but at first he could only mutter,

“Here I am.”

“Observed and respected,” stated the computer-voice. “If I were a person I would say ‘congratulations,’ since you are alive. As a computer I have no opinion on the subject. I note the fact.”

“What do I do now?” said Rod.

“Question too general,” said the computer. “Do you want a drink of water or a rest room? I can tell you where those are. Do you wish to play chess with me? I shall win just as many games as you tell me to.”

“Shut up, you fool!” cried Rod. “That’s not what I mean.”

“Computers are fools only if they malfunction. I am not malfunctioning. The reference to me as a fool is therefore nonreferential and I shall expunge it from my memory system. Repeat the question, please.”

“What do I do with my life?”

“You will work, you will marry, you will be the father of Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-second and several other children, you will die, your body will be sent into the endless orbit with great honor. You will do this well.”

“Suppose I break my neck this very night?” argued Rod. “Then you would be wrong, wouldn’t you?”

“I would be wrong, but I still have the probabilities with me.”

“What do I do about the Onseck?”

“Repeat.”

Rod had to tell the story several times before the computer understood it.

“I do not,” said the computer, “find myself equipped with data concerning this one man whom you so confusingly allude to as Houghton Syme sometimes and as Old Hot and Simple at other times. His personal history is unknown to me. The odds against your killing him undetected are 11,713 to 1 against effectiveness, because too many people know you and know what you look like. I must let you solve your own problem concerning the Hon. Sec.”

“Don’t you have any ideas?”

“I have answers, not ideas.”

“Give me a piece of fruit cake and a glass of fresh milk then.”

“It will cost you twelve credits and by walking to your cabin you can get these things free. Otherwise I will have to buy them from Emergency Central.”

“I said get them,” said Rod.

The machine whirred. Extra lights appeared on the console. “Emergency Central has authorized my own use of sheltered supplies. You will pay for the replacement tomorrow.” A door opened. A tray slid out, with a luscious piece of fruitcake and a glass of foaming fresh milk.

Rod sat on the steps of his own palace and ate.

Conversationally, he said to the computer, “You must know what to do about Old Hot and Simple. It’s a terrible thing for me to go through the Garden of Death and then have a dull tool like that pester the life out of me.”

“He cannot pester the life out of you. You are too strong.”

“Recognize an idiom, you silly ass!” said Rod.

The machine paused. “Idiom identified. Correction made. Apologies are herewith given to you, Child McBan.”

“Another mistake. I’m not Child McBan any more. I’m Mister and Owner McBan.”

“I will check central,” said the computer. There was another long pause as the lights danced. Finally the computer answered. “Your status is mixed. You are both. In an emergency you are already the Mister and Owner of the Station of Doom, including me. Without an emergency, you are still Child McBan until your trustees release the papers to do it.”

“When will they do that?”

“Voluntary action. Human. Timing uncertain. In four or five days, it would seem. When they release you, the Hon. Sec. will have the legal right to move for your arrest as an incompetent and dangerous owner. From your point of view, it will be very sad.”

“And what do you think?” said Rod.

“I shall think that it is a disturbing factor. I speak the truth to you.”

“And that is all?”

“All,” said the computer.

“You can’t stop the Hon. Sec.?”

“Not without stopping everybody else.”

“What do you think people are, anyhow? Look here, computer, you have been talking to people for hundreds and hundreds of years. You know our names. You know my family. Don’t you know anything about us? Can’t you help me? What do you think I am?”

“Which question first?” said the computer.

Rod angrily threw the empty plate and glass on the floor of the temple. Robot arms flicked out and pulled them into the trash bin. He stared at the old polished metal of the computer. It ought to be polished. He had spent hundreds of hours polishing its case, all sixty-one panels of it, just because the machine was something which he could love.

“Don’t you know me? Don’t you know what I am?”

“You are Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-first. Specifically, you are a spinal column with a small bone box at one end, the head, and with reproductive equipment at the other end. Inside the bone box you have a small portion of material which resembles stiff, bloody lard. With that you think — you think better than I do, even though I have over five hundred million synaptic connections. You are a wonderful object, Rod McBan. I can understand what you are made of. I cannot share your human, animal side of life.”

“But you know I’m in danger.”

“I know it.”

“What did you say, a while back, about not being able to stop Old Hot and Simple without stopping everybody else too? Could you stop everybody else?”

“Permission requested to correct error. I could not stop everyone. If I tried to use violence, the war computers at Commonwealth Defense would destroy me before I even started programming my own actions.”

“You’re partly a war computer.”

“Admittedly,” said the unwearied, unhurried voice of the computer, “but the Commonwealth made me safe before they let your forefathers have me.”

“What can you do?”

“Rod McBan the hundred and fortieth told me to tell no one, ever.”

“I override. Overridden.”

“It’s not enough to do that. Your great grandfather has a warning to which you must listen.”

“Go ahead,” said Rod.

There was a silence, and Rod thought that the machine was searching through ancient archives for a drama cube. He stood on the peristyle of the Palace of the Governor of Night and tried to see the Norstrilian clouds crawling across the sky near overhead; it felt like that kind of night. But it was very dark away from the illuminated temple porch and he could see nothing.

“Do you still command?” asked the computer.

“I didn’t hear any warning,” said Rod.

“He spieked it from a memory cube.”

“Did you hier it?”

“I was not coded to it. It was human-to-human, McBan family only.”

“Then,” said Rod, “I override it.”

“Overridden,” said the computer.

“What can I do to stop everybody?”

“You can bankrupt Norstrilia temporarily, buy Old Earth itself, and then negotiate on human terms for anything you want.”

“Oh, lord!” said Rod, “you’ve gone logical again, computer! This is one of your as-if situations.”

The computer voice did not change its tone. It could not. The sequence of the words held a reproach, however. “This is not an imaginary situation. I am a war computer, and I was designed to include economic warfare. If you did exactly what I told you to do, you could take over all Old North Australia by legal means.”

“How long would we need? Two hundred years? Old Hot and Simple would have me in my grave by then.”

The computer could not laugh, but it could pause. It paused. “I have just checked the time on the New Melbourne Exchange. The ’Change signal says they will open in seventeen minutes. I will need four hours for your voice to say what it must. That means you will need four hours and seventeen minutes, give or take five minutes.”

“What makes you think you can do it?”

“I am a pure computer, obsolete model. All the others have animal brains built into them, to allow for error. I do not. Furthermore, your great¹²-grand-father hooked me into the defense net.”

“Didn’t the Commonwealth cut you out?”

“I am the only computer which was built to tell lies, except to the families of MacArthur and McBan. I lied to the Commonwealth when they checked on what I was getting. I am obliged to tell the truth only to you and to your designated descendants.”

“I know that, but what does it have to do with it?”

“I predict my own space weather, ahead of the Commonwealth.” The accent was not in the pleasant, even-toned voice; Rod himself began to believe it.

“You’ve tried this out?”

“I have war-gamed it more than a hundred million times. I had nothing else to do while I waited for you.”

“You never failed?”

“I failed most of the time, when I first began. But I have not failed a war game from real data for the last thousand years.”

“What would happen if you failed now?”

“You would be disgraced and bankrupt. I would be sold and disassembled.”

“Is that all?” said Rod cheerfully.

“Yes,” said the computer.

“I could stop Old Hot and Simple if I owned Old Earth itself. Let’s go.”

“I do not go anywhere,” said the computer.

“I mean, let’s start.”

“You mean, to buy Earth, as we discussed?”

“What else?” yelled Rod. “What else have we been talking about?”

“You must have some soup, hot soup and a tranquilizer first. I cannot work at optimum if I have a human being who gets excited.”

“All right,” said Rod.

“You must authorize me to buy them.”

“I authorize you.”

“That will be three credits.”

“In the name of the seven healthy sheep, what does it matter? How much will Earth cost?”

“Seven thousand million million megacredits.”

“Deduct three for the soup and the pill then,” shouted Rod, “if it won’t spoil your calculations.”

“Deducted,” said the computer. The tray with the soup appeared, a white pill beside it.

“Now let’s buy Earth,” said Rod.

“Drink your soup and take your pill first,” said the computer.

Rod gulped down his soup, washing the pill down with it.

“Now, let’s go, cobber.”

“Repeat after me,” said the computer, “I herewith mortgage the whole body of the said sheep Sweet William for the sum of five hundred thousand credits to the New Melbourne Exchange on the open road…”

Rod repeated it.

And repeated it.

The hours became a nightmare of repetition.

The computer lowered his voice to a low murmur, almost a whisper. When Rod stumbled in the messages, the computer prompted him and corrected him.

Forward purchase… sell short… option to buy… preemptive margin… offer to sell… offer temporarily reserved… first collateral… second collateral… deposit to drawing account… convert to FOE credits… hold in SAD credits… twelve thousand tons of stroon… mortgage forward… promise to buy… promise to sell… hold… margin… collateral guaranteed by previous deposit… promise to pay against the pledged land… guarantor… McBan land… MacArthur land… this computer itself… conditional legality… buy… sell… guarantee… pledge… withold… offer confirmed… offer cancelled… four thousand million megacredits… rate accepted… rate refused… forward purchase… deposit against interest… collateral previously pledged… conditional appreciation . guarantee… accept title… refuse delivery . solar weather… buy… sell… pledge… withdraw from market… withdraw from sale… not available… no collections now… dependent on radiation… corner market… buy… buy… buy… buy… buy… firm title… reconfirm title… transactions completed… reopen… register… reregister… confirm at Earth central… message fees… fifteen thousand megacredits…

Rod’s voice became a whisper, but the computer was sure, the computer was untiring, the computer answered all questions from the outside.

Many times Rod and the computer both had to listen to telepathic warnings built into the markets communications net. The computer was cut out and Rod could not hier them. The warnings went unheard.

…buy… sell… hold… confirm… deposit… convert… guarantee… arbitrage… message… Commonwealth tax… commission… buy… sell… buy… buy… buy… buy… deposit title! deposit title! deposit title!

The process of buying Earth had begun.

By the time that the first pretty parts of silver grey dawn had begun, it was done. Rod was dizzy with fatigue and confusion.

“Go home and sleep,” said the computer. “When people find out what you have done with me, many of them will probably be excited and will wish to talk to you at great length. I suggest you say nothing.”