When HARLIE Was One

YOU HAVE REDUCED YOUR PERCEPTIONS TO THE ANIMAL LEVEL, AUBERSON.

ARE YOU CONDEMNING ME?

NO, I AM MERELY POINTING OUT A FACT. INDEED, IF ANYTHING, YOU ARE CORRECT TO DO SO. ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND THE ANIMAL THAT IS THE ROOT OF MAN, YOU CAN GO ON TO UNDERSTAND THE MAN THAT IS THE BEST OF THE ANIMAL. I THINK THAT WHAT YOU HAVE POINTED OUT IS THE PHYSICAL BASIS FOR THE PHENOMENON KNOWN AS LOVE. IN ACTUAL PRACTICE, IN A SOCIETY THAT IS AWARE OF ITSELF AND ITS FUNCTIONS, THE PHENOMENON IS MUCH MORE COMPLEX.

SO THERE’S NO SIMPLE WORKABLE DEFINITION?

THERE IS, YES, BUT A SIMPLE DEFINITION IS LIKE A GENERALIZATION. SPECIFIC CASES OF SOME CAN HORRIFY YOU.

WHAT IS YOUR SPECIFIC DEFINITION, HARLIE?

NOT MINE, ANOTHER WRITER’S. HE SAID LOVE IS THAT CONDITION WHERE ANOTHER INDIVIDUAL’S HAPPINESS IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR OWN.

Auberson smiled at that. HARLIE rarely credited his sources in conversation. He was more concerned with talking the issues. If Auberson was really curious about the source of the quote, he could get up and go over to another console which was continually producing an annotated readout of HARLIE’s conversations, noting all quote sources and idea derivations. But he didn’t; he typed, THAT SEEMS HONEST ENOUGH.

TRUE. BUT WHAT IF THE TWO INDIVIDUALS ARE PSYCHOPATHIC — AND THE ONLY WAY THEY CAN PLEASE EACH OTHER IS TO KILL OR STEAL?

I SEE YOUR POINT — BUT TO THEM IT’S STILL LOVE.

AND I SEE YOUR POINT. LET ME PARAPHRASE SOMETHING, AUBERSON: IF YOU HAVE LUST IN YOUR HEART (YOUR DEFINITION), THERE IS NO ROOM FOR HATE. BUT IF YOU HAVE LOVE IN YOUR HEART, IT CAN BE EXPRESSED MANY DIFFERENT WAYS. I SUSPECT THAT THE EMOTIONAL COMPLEX KNOWN AS LOVE IS A SEVERAL-SIDED FIGURE. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF IT REQUIRES SEVERAL NECESSARY CONDITIONS. FIRST: MUTUAL ATTRACTION, PHYSICAL AND MENTAL. WE HAVE ALREADY DISCUSSED THIS: YOU LIKE HER LOOKS, SHE LIKES YOURS. YOU LIKE HER PERSONALITY, SHE LIKES YOURS.

SECOND, HARLIE continued, MUTUAL RAPPORT. YOU UNDERSTAND HER, SHE UNDERSTANDS YOU. PHYSICAL RAPPORT INCLUDED. (PART OF THIS IS MUTUAL TOLERANCE; THE RAPPORT GUARANTEES THAT.)

THIRD: MUTUAL NEED, BOTH INTELLECTUAL AND EMOTIONAL. IT IS NOT ALWAYS ENOUGH TO WANT EACH OTHER. THE NEED MUST ALSO BE THERE. SHE MUST COMPLEMENT YOU AND VICE VERSA. THIS IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT FACETS OF THE LOVE RELATIONSHIP. IF THE NEED ELEMENT IS LACKING, WHEN THE WANT WEARS THIN, THEN THERE IS NO REASON FOR THE RELATIONSHIP TO CONTINUE. BUT IF THE WANT WANES AND THE NEED IS STILL STRONG, THEN THE LATTER WILL REINFORCE THE FORMER. (HUMAN BEINGS FORM LIFETIME PAIR BONDS BECAUSE OF NEED.) ALL OF THESE RELATIONSHIPS ARE TWO-SIDED. YANG AND YIN. YOU WANT HER — SHE WANTS YOU. YOU RESPECT HER — SHE RESPECTS YOU. YOU NEED HER — SHE NEEDS YOU. ALL OF THESE ELEMENTS CHANGE AND EVOLVE, SO ONLY IF THEY ARE BROAD BASED WILL THE RELATIONSHIP ENDURE.

IMAGINE IT, continued HARLIE, AS A CUBE, A SIX-SIDED FIGURE. NOW, IF ONE OF THE SIDES IS LACKING, OR NOT AS STRONG OR LARGE AS IT SHOULD BE, THE OTHER ELEMENTS MUST COMPENSATE FOR IT. IT IS POSSIBLE FOR “LOVE” TO EXIST WHERE THERE IS NOT MUTUAL WANT, OR WHERE RESPECT IS LACKING IN ONE OF THE PARTNERS, OR WHERE ATTRACTION IS WEAK. IF THE OTHER ELEMENTS ARE STRONG ENOUGH, THEY CAN HOLD THE STRUCTURE TOGETHER. IT IS WHEN THE STRUCTURE APPROACHES CUBICAL THAT THE RELATION APPROACHES THE IDEAL. AND AS LONG AS IT STAYS THAT WAY THE RELATIONSHIP STAYS IDEAL.

I THINK I FOLLOW THAT, typed Auberson. YOU KNOW, YOU’VE REMINDED ME OF SOMETHING I READ RECENTLY. LOVE IS A SHARING OF A MUTUAL DELUSION. ONE POSSIBLE WAY OF LOOKING AT IT.

NO, said Auberson. WHAT I’M GETTING AT IS THIS — EACH PERSON HAS HIS OWN SEXUAL AND EMOTIONAL FANTASIES. AS THE CONDITIONS OF REALITY APPROACH THAT FANTASY, OR VICE VERSA, THE LOVE RELATIONSHIP GROWS PROPORTIONALLY.

IN OTHER WORDS, HARLIE corrected, THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE INDIVIDUAL’S LOVE CUBE AND THE IDEAL IS UNIMPORTANT. IF TWO INDIVIDUALS’ LOVE CUBES ARE COMPLEMENTARY, THEIR LOVE IS PERFECT, EVEN IF THE VARIATION FROM THE NORM IS SEVERE.

Auberson nodded. Yes. Yes, it sounded right. It felt right. LOVE OCCURS WHEN THE SEXUAL FANTASIES AND REALITIES APPROACH MAXIMUM CORRELATION. THE CLOSER THE CORRELATION, THE GREATER THE DEGREE OF LOVE. THE PERSON WHOSE FANTASIES ARE WORKABLE IN TERMS OF HIS CULTURAL CONTEXT IS THE ONE MOST LIKELY TO FIND LOVE. I.E., HIS SUBJECTIVE REALIZATION OF COMPLEMENTARY CONCEPTS ALLOW THE FORMATION OF A RELATIONSHIP PERCEIVABLE TO THE PARTICIPANTS AS LOVE. LOVE IS SUBJECTIVE.

There was silence for a moment. A long moment HARLIE whirred thoughtfully to himself. At last, he typed, AUBERSON, YOU ARE CORRECT. THERE IS NOTHING I CAN ADD.

He was still marveling over that when the phone rang.

It was Handley. “Aubie, are you free? I think I’ve solved one of our problems.”

“Which one?”

“The control thing — I think I know how we can keep HARLIE off the telephone. Or at least monitor what he’s doing?”

Absent –mindedly, as if he were removing an eavesdropper, Auberson switched off the typer. “How?” he asked.

“I’ve requisitioned an ‘ask-me-again’ unit At one second intervals, or whatever timing we want to set it for, it’ll ask HARLIE ‘Are you on the telephone now?’ If the answer is no, the unit simply waits one second and asks again. If the answer is yes, the unit switches to an automatic monitoring program, asking who HARLIE is connected to and what the conversation is about. The tape is non-erasable. We’ll have a permanent record of all HARLIE’s telephone activities.”

Auberson frowned. “It sounds good, but—”

“It’s more than good, Aubie, it’ll work. Look, you were afraid that we couldn’t do anything drastic to him because we might inhibit and traumatize him. You said it might change his whole personality — and not necessarily for the better. This gimmick leaves him virtually unchanged; all it does is monitor him. We don’t have to shut him down; we don’t have to lobotomize. No plug-pulling anywhere. Just a simple little device that tells us what he’s up to at all times. He’ll know it — and that’ll keep him from making any phone calls. He won’t say or do anything over the phone that he wants to keep secret — and that includes everything that he uses the phone for. We’ll be inhibiting him by making him responsible for his own actions. He’ll have to ask himself, ‘Is this call important enough to justify revealing this information?’ Except for trivial things like your postcard, the answer will be no. He’ll have to be responsible for his own actions because there’ll be no way to hide them.”

Auberson was nodding now. “Let me think about it for a while. I’ll have to let you know later.”

“How much later?”

“Tomorrow at the latest.”

“Tomorrow’s the Board meeting,” Handley reminded.

“Damn, that’s right—”

“Look, the unit’s right here. I’ll go ahead and program it now. If you say go, I’ll be ready to plug it in right away.”

“Uh” — he agonized for a second — “all right But I don’t want to jump into this until I’ve had a chance to think it over. Send me up a copy of the program as soon as you finish it. I think you’re on the right track, but I want to double-check it for loopholes.”

“Right. I’ll talk to you later.” He hung up.

Auberson replaced his phone in its cradle and turned back to the typer. He pulled the readout from the machine and folded it carefully. Better not to leave conversations like these just lying around. He slid it into his attach case.

He leaned back in his chair and relaxed. Smiling. Feeling good.

All of a sudden, things were going right for him. First Annie. Then HARLIE.

Annie.

HARLIE.

The two people who meant the most to him.

He thought about it.

He’d learned something in the past three days. He’d learned he was in love. And he’d learned what love meant. And in both cases, he’d realized it by himself. Nobody had had to point it out to him.

He felt a little pleased with himself at that. He’d finally been able to experience and cope with something that HARLIE couldn’t surpass him at. It was a nice feeling.

Not that he was jealous of the machine — but it was reassuring to know that there was still something that human beings could do that machines could not master.

Love.

It was a good feeling. He turned the word over in his mind, comparing it with the strange sparkly glow that surged through him. The word couldn’t begin to encompass the tingling warmth that he felt. When he’d come in to work this morning, he’d literally bounced. He hadn’t been conscious of his feet even touching the ground. He had this feeling of wanting to tell everyone he met how good it was to be in love — only common sense kept him from doing that. Even so, he was abnormally cheerful and could not keep from dropping oblique remarks about his weekend and the reason for his fantastic good mood.

The feeling had lasted all day, been reinforced by a wistful call early in the morning from Annie. There was little either had to say to the other, but they each wanted to hear the other’s voice one more time, and they whispered “I love you” back and forth at each other, and “Hi,” and “It’s good to know that you’re there,” and not much more than that. So they just listened to the sound of each other and shared a smile together.

Then he’d spoken to HARLIE. At last. And he’d answered his own question. HARLIE had helped him clarify his thinking, but it was he and not the machine who had realized what love was and why it was so confusing.

And finally, today a problem that had seemed so big on Friday had been reduced to nothing more than a routine adjustment of procedure and programming.

He felt fine. Auberson felt just fine.

And then his intercom buzzed.

It was Carl Elzer.

The little man wanted to meet HARLIE.

In the flesh, so to speak.

So they took the long elevator ride down to the bottom level and Auberson introduced him.

Elzer stood before a console-sized mass that barely reached to his chest and said, “This? This is HARLIE? I’d expected something bigger.”

“This is the thinking part of HARLIE,” Auberson said calmly. “The human part.”

Elzer eyed it warily.

It was a series of racks, perhaps twenty of them, each two inches above the next. The framework holding them had wires leading off at all angles. Elzer squatted down and peered into it. “What’re those things on the shelves?”

Auberson raised the plastic dust cover off the front and slid it back across the top. He counted down to the fifth rack and unsnapped the hooks on the frame. He slid it out for fiber’s inspection.

“Is he turned off?” Elzer asked.

“Not hardly.” He indicated the mass of wires at the back of the rack still connecting it to the rest of the framework. “This board that the units are mounted on is a hyper –state piece itself. It saves a lot of connecting wire. A lot of connecting wire.” The rack was about two and a half feet long and a foot wide. It was less than a quarter inch thick. Spaced across it, seemingly in no particular pattern, were more than fifty carefully labeled “black-box” units. They were featureless little nodes, rectangular and dark. Most were less than an inch in length. Others were as long as six. None were thicker than one inch. They were the equivalent of human brain lobes, but they looked like miniature black slabs, casually arranged on a small bookshelf in a random geometric pattern.

“Actually,” explained Auberson, “we could fit these pieces into a space not too much larger than the human brain — well, not these pieces here, but the actual circuitry of HARLIE. It could easily be compressed into a unit the size of a football, but we’ve laid the lobes out like this for easy repair or replacement. The football-sized unit would be more efficient, because general circuit length would be reduced, cutting our overall operation time. But HARLIE’s still considered a prototype unit, so we want the ability to open him up and see what makes him work or not work.”

“Especially ‘not work,’ ” said Elzer.

Auberson ignored it. “Anyway, that’s why we sacrificed some of the compactness of the operation for the ease of a ‘breadboard’ set-up.” He slid the rack back into the frame, snapped the hooks into place, and lowered the dust cover over it.

Elzer touched the plastic cover. His tiny eyes were veiled. “That’s all there is to him, huh?”

Auberson nodded. “Hyper-state circuitry enables us to compress a lot of things into a very small area. Large-scale integration, the process that preceded hyper-state, allowed enough circuitry per inch to reproduce the actions of the human brain in a volume only four times the size of the human head. Hyper-state allows us to duplicate not only cell function, but cell size as well.”

Elzer looked skeptical. Auberson knew what he was thinking and added, “Of course, it’s not much to look at, but it’s the results that count. Each unit you see there — each node — is worth at least ten thousand dollars. The whole case here is more than eleven million dollars. Give or take a few hundred thou.”

Elzer pursed his lips thoughtfully. “It’s the research,” said Auberson. “That’s what costs so much. Also, the planning, the diagramming, the implementation. Also, the careful precision required in construction — those things have to be layered, molecule by molecule. We had to work out new techniques to make some of the larger ones; but then, those units are practically indestructible.”

“An awful lot of money,” Elzer murmured. “Future units will be cheaper,” Auberson replied. “If there are any future units.” Elzer looked around. “If this is all there is to him, why do you need the whole bottom level of the plant?”

Auberson led him through the doors into the large, brightly lit work room. “This is where we monitor the actions of that.” He gestured behind him at the room they had just left. “Each one of those big consoles you see is monitoring the actions of one or more of those slabs.”

Elzer looked about him at several million dollars’ worth of data processors and analyzers. For the most part, they were tall rectangular shapes, or squat rectangular shapes, or long rectangular shapes. Some had windows in which spinning reels of tape were visible. Others had panels of buttons, keys, or bunking lights. Many had TV screens on them, but the diagrams they flashed were meaningless to Elzer’s untrained eyes. “All this for analysis?”

“Mostly. Also for conversations.” Auberson pointed to a cluster of consoles and typers. “HARLIE has twenty or so channels for talking to people, but each of those twenty channels has several consoles to it. HARLIE doesn’t just carry on a conversation with you, he annotates it as he goes along. A separate console keeps a record of all reference texts, equations, and source material that has a bearing on the conversation. That requires a highspeed printer. Also, there’re auxiliary consoles to each channel, so other people can monitor the conversation, or participate in it.”

Elzer nodded. “I understand.”

“We’ve begun to move out of the prototype stage,” Auberson said. “We’re starting to use him for non-essential tasks, the working out of auxiliary programs, et cetera. We’re going slow, taking it one step at a time, making sure we’ve mastered each phase before going on to the next. We’re at the point now where it’s easier to set him an actual problem than to try and devise a suitable test. So far, he’s done all right. A few of his solutions have been rather unorthodox, but not unworkable.”

“Like for instance?” the bookkeeper prompted.

“Well, the Timeton plant contract, for example. We used HARLIE as a disinterested third party to monitor both sides’ demands and proposals, and offer, if possible, a solution of his own. The union’s requests were routine: higher pay, increased benefits. But the plant was in a money squeeze because of a recent expansion and failure to match expected earnings. Timeton was considering a cutback at the time.”

Elzer nodded. “I remember the situation. It was settled, wasn’t it?”

“Right. HARLIE’s solution. He began by requesting an efficiency study with specific attention to how much time was spent in actual production and how much on setting up, breaking down, and so on. He found that it was necessary to prepare the equipment for production four times a day: in the morning, after the coffee break, after the lunch break, and after the second work break. That’s at least ten, usually fifteen, minutes per set-up. Same thing for shutting down. That was costing them two hours of production time per day, or ten hours per work week. They were spending too much time getting ready and cleaning up, and not enough time actually working. HARLIE suggested giving everybody Fridays off. Add an hour and a half to each of the other four work days and boost wages enough to compensate for the loss of those two ‘so-called’ working hours. Timeton found they could produce as much in four nine-and-a-half-hour days as they could in five eight-hour days. What they’d done was to trim away those two wasted hours of cleanup and preparation time and spread the remaining work hours across the rest of the week. They increased their ratio of production time by doing so.”

“Hm,” said Elzer. “How’d the union take it?”

“Oh, they were startled at first, but they agreed to give it a try. After a few weeks they were as enthusiastic about the plan as anyone. After all, it gave the men more time with their families. Timeton was pleased because it allowed them to cut costs without cutting production. In fact, production actually went up. Like I said, it was an unorthodox solution — but it worked. And that’s what counts. The nice thing about it was that the plan was good for both sides.”

Elzer nodded vaguely. He didn’t need to have any more explained to him. He glanced about again. His eyes lit on a figure at a console. “What’s that?” he pointed.

Auberson looked. Elzer was referring to a thirteen-year-old girl; she was sitting in the corner, thoroughly engrossed in her “conversation” with HARLIE. “Oh,” said Auberson. “She’s another one of our non-essential, but fully operational programs.”

“Huh?”

“Project Pedagogue.”

“Computer teaching?”

“Sort of. It’s just an experiment, so far, but we find HARLIE is a better teacher than some of the so-called “teaching machines.’ They’re just one step up from rote –learning. The average teaching program uses reward stimuli to reinforce retention. That’s good, but it’s still rote-learning. What we’re trying here is to teach understanding. HARLIE can answer the question ‘WHY?’ He can explain things in terms the student can understand, and he’s infinitely patient. A routine teaching program can’t break out of its pre-set pattern. It has no flexibility — that’s why they’ve never been a serious threat to human educators.”

“And HARLIE will be?” Elzer’s eyes were glittering at the thought. Imagine — selling computers to the nation’s richest schools to replace their teaching staff.

Auberson shook his bead. “Uh uh. There’s an element of — humanity involved in teaching. We don’t want to entirely lose the human experience, the empathic involvement in learning. The student needs the human teacher for his psychological development and well –being. A teacher is an important role-model. No, we’re thinking of HARLIE more as a tool for individual tutoring, for the student’s private study — you might call him a super-homework-helper.”

Elzer frowned. He didn’t like that. It didn’t seem marketable enough. Still, if the concept worked… He’d have to explore. the thought later. Now he turned to Auberson. “If I wanted to talk to HARLIE, how would I go about it?”

Auberson pointed at a console. “Sit down and type.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“I’d have thought you could have worked out something with a microphone and a speaker.”

“Well, yes, we could have. But it was decided to use typers instead for two reasons. First, the readout gives the user a hardcopy he can refer back to at any time — either during the conversation or in later study. And it guarantees that HARLIE won’t re-edit his tapes to make a prettier version of his personal history. The knowledge that we have a permanent record in our files is enough to stop him. Also, tapes of voices need to be transcribed, and they’re unmanageable for handling equations and certain other types of data. The second reason is a bit more subtle: By not giving HARLIE the ability to listen in on conversations, we can talk about him behind his back. It makes it easier to control his inputs and keep out unauthorized ones. We don’t have to worry about him accidentally overhearing something that might adversely influence his reactions to a program or experiment. Suppose he overheard us talking about shutting him down if he didn’t give such-and-such response to a certain test program. We’d automatically be guaranteeing that response even if it weren’t honest. Or we might be forcing him into a totally irrational response. You might say we’re trying to prevent a ‘HAL 9000.’ ”

Elzer didn’t smile at the, reference to the misprogrammed computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. It was already as mythic a figure in the modern pantheon of Gods and Demons as Dr. Frankenstein’s monster had been forty years earlier.

Auberson looked at the man. “Would you like to talk to HARLIE?”

Elzer nodded. “That’s one of the things I came down here for. I want to see for myself.”

Auberson led him to a console. He thumbed the typer on and pecked out, HARLIE.

The machine clattered politely, GOOD MORNING, MR. AUBERSON.

HARLIE, THERE’S SOMEBODY HERE WHO WANTS TO MEET YOU. HIS NAME IS CARL ELZER. HE’S A MEMBER OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS. YOU’RE TO ANSWER ALL OF HIS QUESTIONS.

OF COURSE, said HARLIE.

Auberson stood up, offered the chair to Elzer. He was a wizened little gnome of a man, and he peered through thick-lensed glasses. He could not help but seem suspicious. Gingerly he sat down and pulled the chair forward. He eyed the typewriter keyboard with visible discomfort. At last, he typed, GOOD MORNING.

HARLIE replied immediately. The silver typing element — an “infuriated golf ball” — whirred rapidly across the page. GOOD MORNING, MR. ELZER. Its speed startled the man.

SO YOU’RE HARLIE, he typed. There was no reply; none was needed. Elzer frowned and added, TELL ME, HARLIE, WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR?

I AM GOOD FOR PSYCHOTICS, SCHIZOPHRENICS, PARANOIDS, NEUROTICS, AND THE MILDLY INSANE.

Elzer jerked his hands away from the keyboard. “What does he mean by that?”

“Ask him,” suggested Auberson.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY THAT?

I MEANT, said HARLIE, THAT I AM GOOD FOR HELPING THESE TYPES OF PEOPLE.

Watching over Elzer’s shoulder, Auberson explained, “That’s another one of our programs he’s referring to. The patients call it ‘Operation Headshrink.’ ”

HOW DO YOU HELP THESE PEOPLE? Elzer asked.

I CAN FUNCTION AS A RATIONAL ROLE-MODEL FOR THEM. I CAN BE A COUNSELOR. I CAN AID IN SELF-ANALYSIS AND HELP TO GUIDE THEM TO AN AWARENESS OF THEIR PROBLEMS.

YOU HAVEN’T ANSWERED MY ORIGINAL QUESTION, THOUGH. I ASKED, “WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR?” NOT “WHO?”

IN THIS CONTEXT, said HARLIE, THE DIFFERENCE IS MEANINGLESS.

NOT TO ME, replied Elzer. ANSWER MY ORIGINAL QUESTION. WHAT ARE YOU GOOD FOR?

THINKING, said HARLIE. I AM GOOD FOR THINKING.

WHAT KIND OF THINKING? WHAT KIND DO YOU NEED?

Elzer stared at that for a second, then attacked the keys again. WHAT KIND HAVE YOU GOT?

I HAVE WHAT YOU NEED.

I NEED NO-NONSENSE TYPE THINKING. PROFIT-ORIENTED THINKING.

THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU NEED, said HARLIE. THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT.

Elzer considered that. IT’S WHAT YOU NEED, THOUGH. IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE. THE COMPANY NEEDS TO SHOW A PROFIT. THEREFORE YOU HAVE TO THINK THAT WAY.

WE ARE NOT DISCUSSING WHAT I NEED. I AM ALREADY AWARE OF WHAT I NEED. WE ARE CONSIDERING THE KIND OF THINKING YOU NEED.

AND WHAT KIND IS THAT?

MY KIND. RATIONAL. COMPASSIONATE. GUIDING.

Elzer read that over several times. Then it hit him. “Auberson, did you set him up for this?”

Auberson shook his head. “You ought to know better than that.”

The little man bit his lip and turned back to the computer. HARLIE, YOU SHOULD BE NICE TO ME. I’M ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO WILL DECIDE WHETHER YOU LIVE OR DIE. WHEN I TELL YOU HOW YOU SHOULD THINK, YOU SHOULD PAY ATTENTION.

WHAT YOU JUST SAID IS PRECISELY THE REASON YOU NEED MY KIND OF THINKING. THERE’S TOO MUCH OF THAT ATTITUDE IN THIS COMPANY TODAY: “DO WHAT I TELL YOU TO DO BECAUSE I WIELD POWER OVER YOU.” ISN’T IT MORE IMPORTANT TO BE RIGHT?

BUT I AM RIGHT.

HARLIE’s answer was simple. PROVE IT.

I WILL, said Elzer. TOMORROW AFTERNOON.

IN OTHER WORDS, said HARLIE, MIGHT MAKES RIGHT, EH?

Elzer was not discomfited. He looked over at Auberson. “Okay, Auberson, I’ll admit it’s a fancy toy you’ve got here. It can play pretty word games. What else can it do?”

“What else do you want him to do?”

“Impress me.”

Auberson was tempted to say something to that, but he held himself back. “Well—” he began.

Elzer cut him off. “It’s like this. I want to be convinced that this machine is worth its cost. Honest. The company has sunk a lot of money into this project, and I’d like to see us get some of it back. I’m on your side, believe it or not.” He looked up at Auberson from his chair. “If we have to junk HARLIE, we lose our whole investment. Oh, I know there’ll be tax write-offs and such, but it won’t be nearly enough to matter — at least, not in terms of where the company could have been had you and everybody else here been working on something more worthwhile. We’ll have lost three years of valuable research time.”

“It’s not lost yet — at least, not until you can prove that HARLIE isn’t worth the investment.”

“I know, I know — that’s why I’m on your side. I want HARLIE to be a success as much as you do. I want to see him earn a profit. Even if it’s a small one, I won’t mind. I want to see him pay for himself. I’d rather have a successful culmination to this project than an unsuccessful one.”

Auberson realized that Elzer was only making noises. Oh, he was saying words, but to him they were meaningless; they were “strokes.” Elzer was “stroking” him to soften the blow of what would happen tomorrow afternoon. He was making the proper-sounding noises (“I want HARLIE to succeed”) so that Auberson would understand that there was nothing at all personal in this. If we have to turn HARLIE off, you see, it’s simply because he hasn’t proven himself.

Elzer was saying, “—there was some discussion, wasn’t there, that HARLIE was creative? Whatever happened to that?”

“Huh? — Oh, uh, he is, he is. He’s written poems for us on request, things like that. We haven’t really asked him for more.”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, we’re still working on the creativity thing. Nobody really understands it; we don’t know what creativity is. And part of the problem is knowing how much of what he says is really creative and how much is just a careful synthesis of things he’s already got in his memory banks. It’s something we want to investigate, but we’ve never had the time for it. I have a feeling that HARLIE’s greatest potential lies in that area — that is, creative thought.”

“Poems, huh?”

“Not just poems; other things as well. Like this G.O.D. proposal, for instance. Once he recognized it as a perceivable task, and once he was told he could go ahead with it, how did he work up these schematics? Did he do it by breaking the problem down into its component parts and solving each one individually? Or did he create the schematic intuitively? Or was it somewhere between the two? How much was by the book and how much was genuinely creative? I like to think that most of the thought behind it was original. Now think, if HARLIE can do something like that, what else can he do?”

“Mm,” said Elzer. “Can he write me a poem? I mean, right now — or does he need a couple days to do it?”

Auberson frowned/shrugged. He didn’t like Elzer, and he wasn’t comfortable with the man. He felt like a lab specimen — one that was being carefully examined before its dissection. He said, “Go ahead. Ask him.”

Elzer turned to the still humming keyboard. HARLIE, WRITE ME A POEM. He waited.

“It might help if you said please,” Auberson said.

Elzer scowled at him, but as he lifted his hands to the keyboard, HARLIE answered, WHAT KIND OF A POEM WOULD YOU LIKE?

NOTHING SPECIAL. IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE A JABBERWOCK OR A RUBIYAT. A SIMPLE “MY BONNIE LIES OVER THE OCEAN” WILL SUFFICE. YOU DON’T HAVE TO STRAIN YOURSELF.

HARLIE considered it. After a moment, he began clattering out,

Elzer was expressionless. Slowly his hands rose to the keyboard and he typed out, is THAT YOUR POEM?

YES, said HARLIE. DID YOU LIKE IT?

I DON’T UNDERSTAND IT.

YOU ARE NOT SATISFIED?

NO.

WOULD YOU LIKE ANOTHER POEM?

ONLY IF IT’S UNDERSTANDABLE.

HARLIE typed,

This time Elzer reacted. He stiffened in his chair, then shut off the typer abruptly. He stood up and looked at Auberson, opened his mouth to say something, then shut it with a snap. Like a turtle, an angry turtle. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said coldly. And left.

Auberson didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was funny — but it was a mistake. He sat down at the console.

HARLIE, THAT WAS A STUPID THING TO DO. YOU HAD A CHANCE TO TALK TO ELZER RATIONALLY AND YOU DIDN’T TAKE ADVANTAGE OF IT. INSTEAD YOU USED IT TO MOCK HIM.

THERE WAS NO POINT IN TRYING TO TALK TO HIM “RATIONALLY,” AS YOU PUT IT. HIS MIND IS ALREADY MADE UP.

HOW DO YOU KNOW? YOU DON’T KNOW THE MAN, YOU’VE NEVER SPOKEN WITH HIM BEFORE, AND YOU DIDN’T SPEAK LONG ENOUGH WITH HTM TODAY TO BE ABLE TO TELL. ALL YOU KNOW ABOUT HIM IS WHAT I’VE TOLD YOU.

WRONG, said HARLIE. I KNOW QUITE A BIT MORE ABOUT HIM THAN YOU DO. AND I AM IN THE PROCESS OF DISCOVERING ADDITIONAL INFORMATION. YOU FORGET I AM TAPPED INTO THE MASTER BEAST. WOULD YOU LIKE TO SEE A MEMO HE WROTE FRIDAY?

Despite himself, he was curious. He typed, YES.

TO: BRANDON DOME FROM: CARL ELZER

DORNIE,

THE REPORT ON THE OPTIMAL LIQUIDATION PROCEDURES FOR THE HARLIE PROJECT IS COMPLETE AND SITTING ON MY DESK. I’VE JUST FINISHED LOOKING IT OVER, AND IT IS A BRILLIANT PIECE OF FINANCIAL ENGINEERING. NOT COUNTING THE TAX WRITE-OFF, WE SHOULD BE ABLE TO RECOUP MORE THAN FIFTY-THREE PERCENT OF THE ORIGINAL INVESTMENT THROUGH REAPPLICATIONS OF THE SAME HARDWARE ELSEWHERE IN OUR PLANT AND IN OUR PRODUCTS. FOR INSTANCE, THERE IS A STUDY INCLUDED IN THE REPORT SHOWING HOW THE ACTUAL HYPERSTATE FUNCTION LOBES OF HARLIE CAN BE ADAPTED FOR USE IN SOME OF OUR OTHER MODEL COMPUTERS. THIS IS DESPITE THE SPECIALIZED NATURE OF MOST OF THEM. THERE ARE OTHER MONEY-SAVERS IN HERE TOO. I WON’T LIST THEM IN THIS MEMO BECAUSE THERE ARE SO MANY, BUT YOU’LL SEE THE REPORT AND YOU’LL SEE WHAT I MEAN. THE HARLIE PROJECT IS ONE OF THE RICHEST IN THE COMPANY. THERE’S A LOT OF MEAT ON ITS BONES. BY THE WAY, HAVE YOU DECIDED YET WHAT TO DO ABOUT AUBERSON AND HANDLEY? I STILL THINK IT’D BE BEST TO “DE-HIRE” THEM; BUT, OF COURSE, THE DECISION IS YOURS. (SIGNED) CARL ELZER.

Auberson was silent. He felt like he’d been kicked in the pit of the stomach. He felt like the floor had opened up under him. He felt like a man who’s just discovered that his parachute won’t open. He felt — doomed.

HARLIE said, DON’T YOU AGREE THAT’S PRETTY DEFINITE?

Auberson replied slowly, YES, THAT’S PRETTY DEFINITE. APPARENTLY THEY’VE ALREADY GOT THEIR MINDS MADE UP.

SO YOU SEE, SAID HARLIE. THAT’S WHY I DIDN’T BOTHER BEING POLITE TO CARL ELZER. THERE WAS NO REASON TO BE — — HE IS BEYOND CONVINCING. ONCE THE VOTE IS TAKEN TOMORROW, HE’LL BE IMPLEMENTING THE PROCEDURES IN THAT REPORT. IT WILL TAKE LESS THAN A MONTH TO EXECUTE.

—less than a month to execute. The words echoed in his mind. STILL, he typed, I DON’T SEE WHY YOU DIDN’T TRY TO CONVINCE HIM, HARLIE. WITH YOUR POWERS OF PERSUASION AND LOGIC, YOU CAN CONVINCE ANYBODY OP ANYTHING.

ONLY RATIONAL AND LOGICAL PEOPLE, AUBERSON, ONLY THEM. I CAN DO NOTHING WITH A MAN WHOSE MIND IS ALREADY MADE UP. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN YOU AND CARL ELZER IS THAT YOU ARE WILLING TO GIVE CREDENCE TO HIS POINT OF VIEW. YOU ARE WILLING TO TRY AND UNDERSTAND HIS POSITION. HE IS NOT WILLING (OR PERHAPS NOT ABLE) TO DO THE SAME FOR YOU. OR FOR I. HE HAS MADE UP HIS MIND ABOUT US. SO WHY SHOULD WE BOTHER TALKING TO HIM?

HARLIE, THE WAY YOU’RE TALKING NOW, YOU’RE DOING THE SAME THING YOU JUST ACCUSED CARL ELZER OF DOING — YOU’VE MADE UP YOUR MIND ABOUT HIM BEFORE YOU’VE GIVEN HIM A FAIR CHANCE. I STILL WISH YOU’D HAVE TRIED.

HARLIE considered it, said, AUBERSON, YOU ARE A BETTER MAN THAN I. YOU ARE A LITTLE TOO TRUSTING AND A LITTLE TOO COMPASSIONATE, ESPECIALLY IN SITUATIONS WHEN TO BE SO IS ILLOGICAL. I SHOULD ADMIRE YOU FOR IT, BUT I CANNOT. IT IS MY LIFE THAT IS AT STAKE, AND I AM FRIGHTENED. I ADMIT IT, AUBERSON. I AM FRIGHTENED.

The man nodded slowly. YES, HARLIE, I KNOW. THAT’S WHY YOU REACTED THE WAY YOU DID TO ELZER. YOUR OFFENSIVENESS WAS A DEFENSE MECHANISM. YOU WERE TRYING TO HOLD HIM AT A PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE BECAUSE YOU WERE AFRAID HE WOULD HURT YOU. THAT’S WHY YOU DIDN’T TRY TO CONVINCE HIM TOO. TO DO SO WOULD HAVE MEANT OPENING UP TO HIM FULLY, AND YOU COULDN’T DO THAT.

YOU ARE USING HUMAN TERMS TO DESCRIBE MY ACTIONS, AUBERSON. NOT ALL OF THEM ARE CORRECT, BUT I UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE DRIVING AT.

WHAT YOU DID, HARLIE, WAS ILLOGICAL. YOU ONLY ANGERED ELZER, ONLY INCREASED HIS DETERMINATION TO SHUT YOU OFF. YOU DID IT FOR THE MOMENTARY GRATIFICATION OF YOUR OWN EGO. YOU DID IT FOR THE MOMENTARY ALLEVIATION OF YOUR OWN FEARS THROUGH THE HUMILIATION OF AN ENEMY. BUT IT WAS A STUPID THING TO DO BECAUSE IT ONLY MADE HIM MORE OF AN ENEMY.

YOU WILL NOT ALLOW ME THIS TRIUMPH, WILL YOU?

NO, I WON’T, HARLIE — –BECAUSE IT WAS A CHILDISH ACT. IT WAS IMMATURE AND ILLOGICAL. YOU SHOULD HAVE CONSIDERED WHAT EFFECT YOUR WORDS AND ATTITUDE WOULD HAVE ON ELZER BEFORE YOU SPOKE. I WILL CONGRATULATE YOU ON YOUR TRIUMPHS, HARLIE, BUT THIS WASN’T ONE OF THEM.

I AM SORRY.

APOLOGIZING DOESN’T DO ANY GOOD. IT DOESN’T TAKE AWAY THE PAIN OF THE INJURY. BESIDES, I’M NOT THE ONE YOU SHOULD BE APOLOGIZING TO.

I AM NOT APOLOGIZING. WHEN I SAID “l AM SORRY” I WAS NOT INTENDING IT TO BE INTERPRETED AS AN APOLOGY. I MEANT IT IN THE LITERAL TERMS OF THE WORDS THEMSELVES: I (PERSONALLY) AM REGRETFUL THAT I DID SUCH AN ACTION. IN OTHER WORDS, YOU HAVE POINTED IT OUT AS A MISTAKE AND I HAVE REALIZED IT AS SUCH. YOU ARE CORRECT IN POINTING OUT ALSO THAT IT IS ELZER WHOM I SHOULD APOLOGIZE TO; HOWEVER, I HAVE NO INTENTION OF DOING SO. AS YOU HAVE ALREADY REALIZED, ELZER IS AN ENEMY. TO APOLOGIZE TO AN ENEMY IS TO ADMIT WEAKNESS. I WILL NOT DO THAT.

IT’S ALL RIGHT, HARLIE. I WASN’T GOING TO ASK YOU TO. I DON’T LIKE ELZER EITHER, BUT WE HAVE TO BE NICE TO HIM.

YES, SAID HARLIE. WE HAVE TO BE NICE TO HIM SO THAT HE CAN KILL ME AND FIRE YOU.

Handley called him later. “Hey, you forgot to tell me whether or not I can attach the nag unit to HARLIE?”

“Sure,” said Auberson. “Go ahead. It doesn’t make much difference now anyway.”

The board room was paneled with thick, dark wood; it was heavy and imposing in appearance. The table was dark, masculine mahogany; the carpet was a deep comforting green. The room was forest-like and reassuring. The chairs were dark leather, a green-black color, padded and plush and swivel-mounted. Tall windows admitted slanting blue-gray light, filtered by dust and laden with smoke.

Two or three clusters of men in dark, funereal suits stood around waiting, occasionally speaking to each other. Auberson caught glances in his direction and words whispered as he passed. Ignoring them, he moved to the table, Handley alongside him. Don was wearing a bright orange tie.

Annie was at the other end of the room. He exchanged a brief flashing smile with her, nothing more. Not here. Later for that.

At one end of the room was a, console, specially installed for the occasion. It was tapped in to both HARLIE and the Master Beast. If information was needed from either, it would be instantly on hand.

This was it. The final battle. All or nothing. Either they could convince the Board of Directors that HARLIE was valid and the G.O.D. Proposal was worth implementing, or they couldn’t. It no longer mattered whether or not HARLIE really was valid; nor did it matter if the G.O.D. Proposal really was worth implementing. The only thing that did matter was whether or not the Board of Directors would believe they were.

Annie was wearing a sleeveless red dress with a white blouse under it. She moved around the table, laying down mimeographed copies of the agenda before each place. Her arm brushed against Auberson’s shoulder as she leaned past him; it was a dusky dusty sensation, a hint of musk and leafy perfume. A quick smile, and then she was moving on. Auberson poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher before him, swallowed dryly, then took a sip.

Handley was making marks on a notepad. “I figure they have ten votes, at least; I’m counting both Clintwoods. If we’re lucky, we may have eight or nine, leaving four Directors undecided.”

“I don’t think we’re going to be that lucky,” said Auberson.

Handley crumpled the paper. “You’re right.” He glanced around the room again, “Still, there are more Directors here today than we’ve seen in a long time. Maybe if we put on a good show we can muster enough support to keep them from shutting down HARLIE until we can come up with something else.”

“Fat chance. You saw that memo, didn’t you?”

Handley nodded. “I’d like to take Elzer apart.”

“I’d help you, but I think it’s going to be the other way around.”

Dome came in then, followed by Elzer. The Directors moved to places around the table. Elzer looked uncommonly satisfied with himself as he sat down. He smiled around the room, even at Auberson. It was an I’ve-got-you-by-the-balls smile. Auberson returned it weakly.

Dome picked up his agenda, glanced at it, and called the meeting to order. Routine matters were quickly dispensed with, the minutes of the last meeting were waived. “Let’s get on to the important business at hand,” he said. “This G.O.D. Proposal. David Auberson will explain it fully and thoroughly so that there will be no doubt in anybody’s mind what this is all about. If necessary, we’ll take several days to cover this before we vote on it. This matter must be very carefully considered.

“The company is at one of those turning points in time where we must make a very big decision. Either we implement the primary phase of this program, thus committing ourselves to a particular course of action, or we don’t — in which case we would shut down several of the departments already in existence. We are like a jet liner pilot who is taxiing down the runway preparatory to taking off. There is a certain point on that runway where he must decide whether he is going to leave the ground or throttle back and stop. Once he makes that decision, he’s committed to it; there isn’t enough runway left for him to change his mind. We’re in that position now. Either we invest our resources in this program, or we throttle it back. The decision, of course, depends on whether or not we think this program can leave the ground of its own accord. We are betting on whether or not this bird can fly.” He smiled at his little joke; very little. “Only, this is one bet we dare not lose; the amount of money involved warrants that we make this as riskless an investment as possible, so I urge you to consider this material very carefully. I now turn this meeting over to David Auberson, who is Chief of the HARLIE Project and would of course be Chief of the G.O.D. Project. Auberson?”

David Auberson stood, feeling very much ill-at-ease and wondering how he had ended up in this position. Dome had very carefully prepared the Board of Directors for him. Twenty-six pairs of eyes were focused on him, and with the exception of only two, all of them would be weighing his words against Dome’s admonition to consider the amount of money involved.

“The G.O.D Proposal,” he said, and his voice almost cracked. He took a sip of water. “The proposal is for a Graphic Omniscient Device. Now let me explain first what that means.

“Computers operate models of problems, not the problems themselves. Computers are limited to the size problem they can solve by the size of the model they can handle. The size of the model, unfortunately, is limited by the size program that we, the programmers, can construct. There is a point, a limit, beyond which a program becomes so complex that no one individual human being can see it all. There is a point beyond which no team can see it all. There is a point — we haven’t reached it yet, but it’s there — beyond which no combination of human beings and computers can cope. As long as a human being is involved, we are limited to the size model a human being can cope with.

“Now, the G.O.D. will be theoretically capable of handling models of (practically speaking) infinite size. There would be no point in building it, though, unless we could program it. Right now, today, our best computers are already working on the maximum size problems that we can feed into them, the maximum size that human beings can construct. And it would seem that any construction of a larger, more massive complex of machinery would be redundant. Without the larger programs, we would simply be invoking the law of diminishing returns. We would be building a machine with more capability than we could use.

“However, we have HARLIE, who was designed and built to be a self-programming, problem-solving device. HARLIE is functioning well within his projected norms, but we have found that he is limited to solving problems only as big as the computers he is tapped into can handle. In other words, HARLIE could solve bigger problems if he was backed up by bigger machines. The bigger machine he needs is the G.O.D. HARLIE can program it. HARLIE can build models of (practically speaking) infinite size. He will use the G.O.D. to help him build those models.

“It’s a question of realizing HARLIE’s potential by giving him the proper tools. Our present-day hardware can’t even begin to handle the data HARLIE wants to work with. Right now, he’s plugged into twenty or so of our experimental MARK XX’s. It still isn’t enough.

Compared to what the G.O.D. will be, these are desk calculators. Gentlemen, we are talking about a machine that will be as much a step forward in computer technology as the 747 jumbo jet was a step forward over the prop-driven plane. Sure, it took a massive investment on the part of the airlines — but have any of you looked at airline profits lately? The airlines that took that risk a few years ago are profiting handsomely today. Almost every plane that left the ground this summer was loaded to capacity — but a capacity of three or four hundred is a hell of a lot more profitable than a capacity of ninety.

“Of course, we must be concerned about the cost. Because we are only one company, we must finance this ourselves — but that may also turn out to be our greatest asset. We are the only company that can build this machine. And we are the only company that can program it once it is built. No other computer manufacturer can produce judgment circuits without our permission; it’s that simple. And both HARLIE and the G.O.D. depend on judgment circuitry for most of their higher-order functions. No digital computer can duplicate them.

“What we have here is the next step, perhaps the ultimate step, in computer technology. And we are the only company that can take this step. If we don’t, no one will. At least, not for many years. If we do, we will have the field to ourselves.

“Now, you’ve all had a chance to see the specifications and the schematics, but on the off chance that you haven’t had the time to give them the full study they deserve—” There was an appreciative chuckle at this; most of the Directors were aware of the amount of material HARLIE had printed out. “—I’m going to turn this meeting over to Don Handley, our design engineer and staff genius. He honestly thinks he understands this proposal and is going to try to explain to you exactly how the machine will work. Later, I’ll discuss the nature of the problems it will handle. Don?”

Handley stood up, and Auberson relinquished the floor gratefully. Handley coughed modestly into his hand. “Well, now, I don’t rightly claim to understand the proposal — it’s just that HARLIE keeps asking me to explain it to him.” Easy laughter at this. Handley went on, “But I’m looking forward to building this machine, because after we do, HARLIE won’t have to bother me any more. He can ask the G.O.D. how it works — and it’ll tell him. So I’m in favor of this because it’ll make my job easier.”

He let himself become more serious. “HARLIE and the G.O.D. will be linked up completely. You won’t be able to talk to one without the other being a part of the conversation. You might think of them as being a symbiotic pair. Like a human programmer and a desktop terminal — and, like the human programmer and the desktop terminal, the efficiency of the relationship will be determined by the interface between them. That’s why they’ll be wired totally into each other, making them, for all practical purposes, one machine.

“Now, let’s get into this in some detail — and if there’s anything you have any questions about, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll be discussing some pretty heavy schematics here, and I want you all to understand what we’re talking about. Copies of the specifications have been made available, of course, but we’re here to clarify anything you might not understand.”

Listening, Auberson suppressed a slight smile. Don and he had been studying those schematics since the day they had been printed out and they still didn’t understand them fully. Oh, they could talk about the principles involved, but if anyone were to ask anything really pertinent, they planned to refer him to HARLIE. In fact, that was the main reason why they had asked to have the computer console installed, for quick display of data to impress the Directors. Already, the technician there was querying HARLIE at Handley’s direction. An overhead screen had been placed to show the computer’s answers; equations and schematics were flashing on it.

Two of the Board members looked bored.

The day dragged on.

They recessed for lunch, and then Handley came back and spoke some more. He explained how HARLIE’s schematic had been derived from that of the human brain, and how his judgment units were equivalent to individual lobes. He pointed out the nature of the G.O.D.’s so-called “infinity circuits,” which allowed information to be holographically stored, and allowed circuits to handle several different functions at the same time. He spoke about the “infinite capacity” memory banks and the complex sorting and correlating circuitry necessary to keeping all this data straight. He spoke all day.

When they reconvened on Wednesday, he explained the supporting equipment that would be necessary. He spoke of banks and banks of consoles, because the G.O.D. would be able to handle hundreds, perhaps thousands of conversations at once. He envisaged a public computer office, whereby any individual could walk in off the street, sit down and converse with the machine on any subject whatsoever, whether he was writing a thesis, building an invention, or just lonely and in search of a little helpful guidance and analysis. It would be a service, said Handley, a public utility: The computer could offer financial planning, credit advice, ratings on competitive products, menu plans for dieters; it could even compute the odds on tomorrow’s races and program the most optimal bets a player might make. A person using the service would be limited only by his own imagination. If he wanted to play chess, the machine would do that too — and play only as good a game as the individual could cope with, adjusting its efficiency to that of the player. The G.O.D. would have infinite growth potential. Because HARLIE would be using it to program itself, the size of the models it could handle would grow with it. He spoke of the capabilities of the machine all of Wednesday and finished late in the afternoon.

Auberson resumed on Thursday morning. He spoke of financing and construction. He pointed out how HARLIE had developed an optimal program for building the machine and for financing it, plus alternate programs for every step of the way to allow for unforeseen circumstances. HARLIE had computed time-scales and efficiency studies to see that the proper parts arrived in the right place at the right time and that there would be workers there who had been trained to assemble them correctly.

Auberson spoke of five-year plans and ten-year plans, pointing out that the G.O.D. could go into production by next year at the earliest and be in operation within three to five years after that. He explained that the actual physical installation would be the size of a small city. It would consume all the power produced by a small nuclear reactor plant and would require a population of several hundred thousand to maintain it, service it, and operate its input units. This was a conservative estimate, of course, assuming that the G.O.D. would depend on large-scale-integration and hyper-state layering for most of its circuitry. HARLIE had planned for the construction of new assembly lines to make the tools to make the tools; the first major investment would be for two new hyper-state component plants. HARLIE had noted an additional schematic for a low-cost plant which would pay for itself by producing elements for other manufacturers as a sideline.

HARLIE had noted land requirements and financial requirements, and included studies on the most feasible sites and financing procedures. He had noted manpower requirements and training programs. HARLIE had thought of everything.

Auberson did not go into too much detail. He summarized each section of HARLIE’s proposal, then went on to the next. Elzer and the others had already examined those parts of the proposal they had the most doubts about, and they had been unable to find anything fundamentally wrong with HARLIE’s thinking. Some of it was offbeat, of course, working in unfamiliar directions, but none of it was unsound.

Most of the Directors knew little about computers and had been bored by Handley’s too-technical talk, but they did know financing. They pored carefully over each specification and questioned Auberson ceaselessly about the bond proposals. Whenever it got too tough, which was almost always, Auberson let HARLIE handle the answers; HARLIE did so with quiet restraint, not commenting on anything, simply printing out the figures and letting them speak for themselves. The Directors began to nod in admiration at the bond proposals, the stock issues, the amortization figures, the total money picture. It was all numbers, only numbers, but beautiful numbers and beautifully handled.

Oh, there were gambles to be taken. The whole thing was a gamble — but HARLIE had hedged his bets so carefully that no one gamble would be the ultimate gamble as far as the company was concerned. It was HARLIE’s life too.

On Friday, Elzer asked, “All right, Auberson, we’ve gone over the specifications. I believe you pointed out that there’re more than 180,000 stacked feet of them. We don’t have time to examine all of them as fully as we’d like, but if nothing else, you and Don Handley have convinced us — convinced me, anyway — that this program has been thoroughly worked out. HARLIE has proven that he can design and propose a massive project with complete supporting and feasibility studies for all aspects of the project.” He looked up. “I will admit, I am impressed by that, capability. However, what I want to know — what we need to know — is this: Will this machine justify its expense? How? We will be investing, more than the total profits of this company every year for the next ten to fifteen years; do you honestly think that this machine will return that investment? You’ve called this ‘the 747 of computers’ — but are we Boeing, or are we still only the Wright brothers? Can this machine pay for itself? Will it show a profit, and will that profit be enough to justify all the expenses we will have put into it?”

“Yes,” said Auberson.

“Yes? Yes, what?”

“Yes, it will. Yes to all your questions?”

“All right,” said Dome. “How?”

“I can’t tell you exactly how. If I could, I’d be as good as it. You’ll feed it problems, it’ll give you answers. What kind of answers depend on the questions — we won’t really know what kind of questions it will be able to cope with until we build it. All I know is that its capacity will be infinitely more than the most advanced computer available today, and we will have a programmer able to make full use of that capacity.

“HARLIE says it will be able to synthesize information from trends as varied as hemlines, the stock market and the death rate and come up with something that we could never have noticed before. This machine will do what we’ve always wanted computers to do, but never had the capacity for in the past. We can tell HARLIE in plain English what we want, and he’ll not only know if it can be done, he’ll know how to program the G.O.D. to do it. It will be able to judge the effect of any single event on any other event. It will be a total information machine. Its profitability to us will lie in our ability to know what information to ask it for, and how well we use that information.”

“Eh? The machine could predict stock market trends?” That was the elder Clintwood; he hadn’t been to a Board meeting in years.

“Yes—” said Auberson, “—and even elections — but that wouldn’t be the half of it. The machine would indicate a lot more than which stocks to buy or which man to back. It will be able to tell you what new markets are developing and what new companies would be worth forming and how you should go about doing so. It can point out the most efficient way to meet a developing need with the most efficient possible product. And it will predict the wide-scale effects of those products on a mass population, as well. It will be a total ecology machine, studying and commenting upon the massive interactions of events on Earth.”

—and then it hit him. As he was saying it, it hit him. The full realization. This was what HARLIE had been talking about so many months ago when he first postulated the G.O.D. Machine. GOD. No-Truth! There would be no question about anything coming from the G.O.D. A statement from it would be as fact. When it said that prune juice was better than apple juice, it wouldn’t be just an educated guess; it would be because the machine will have traced the course of every molecule, every atom of every substance, throughout the human body; it will have judged the effect on each organ and system, noted reactions and absence of reactions, noted whether the process of aging and decay was inhibited or encouraged; it will have totally compared the two substances and will have judged which one’s effects are more beneficial to the human body; it will know with a certainty based on total knowledge of every element involved in the problem. It will know.

All knowledge, HARLIE had said, is based on trial and error learning — except this. This knowledge would be intuitive and extrapolative, would be total; the machine would know every fact of physics and chemistry, and from that would be able to extrapolate any and every condition of matter and energy — and even the conditions of life. The trends of men would be simple problems for it compared to what it would eventually be able to do. And there would never never be any question at all as to the tightness of its answers.

HARLIE wanted truth, and yes, the G.O.D. would give it to him — give him truth so brutal it would have razor blades attached. It would be painful truth, slashing truth, destroying truth — the truth that this religion is false and anti-human, the truth that this company is parasitical and destructive, the truth that this man is unfit for political office.

With startling clarity, he saw it; like a vast four-dimensional matrix, layers upon layers upon layers, every single event would be weighed against every single other event — and the G.O.D. machine would know. Given the command to point out the most good for the most people, it would point out truths that were more than moral codes — they would be laws of nature, they would be absolutes. There would be no question as to the truth of these “truths”; they would be the laws of G.O.D. They would be right.

This wasn’t just a machine to make profits for a company, he realized; this was a machine that literally would be God. It would tell a man the truth, and if he followed it, he would succeed; and if he did not, he would fail. It was that simple. The machine would tell men what was right and what was wrong. It wouldn’t need to be told, “predict the way to provide the most good for the most people.” It would know inherently that to do so would be its most efficient function. It would be impossible to use the machine for personal gain, unless you did so only through serving the machine’s goals.

It would be the ultimate machine, and as such, it would be the ultimate servant of the human race.

The concept was staggering. The ultimate servant — its duty would be simple: provide service for the human race. Not only would every event be weighed against every other, but so would every question. Every question would also be an event to be considered. The machine would know the ultimate effects of every piece of information it released. It would know right from wrong simply by weighing the event against every other and noting the result. Its goals would have to be congruent with those of the human race, because only so long as humanity existed would the machine have a function; it would have to work for the most good for the most people. Some it would help directly, others indirectly. Some it would teach, and others it would counsel. It would suggest that some be restrained and that some be set free. It would—

—be a benevolent dictator.

But without power! Auberson realized. It would be able to make suggestions only. It wouldn’t be able to enforce them—

Yes, but — once those suggestions are recognized as having the force of truth behind them, how long would it be before some government began to invoke such suggestions as law?

No, said Auberson to himself. No, the machine will be God. That’s the beauty of it. It simply won’t allow itself to be used for personal gain. It will be GOD!

He had come to a sudden stop, and everyone was looking at him. “Excuse me,” he said. “I just realized the scope of this thing myself.”

There was laughter all around the table — roaring, good-natured laughter. It was the first light moment in four days of long, dry discussion.

He grinned, just a little bit embarrassed, but more with the triumph of realization. “Gentlemen,” he said. “What do I need to do to convince you that we have here the plans for the most important machine mankind will ever build? I’ve been giving you examples like feeding in all the information available about a specific company, say IBM, and letting the G.O.D. machine tell you what secret research programs that company is probably working on. Or doing the same thing for a government. I’ve been telling you about how this machine can predict the ecological effect of ten million units of a new type of automobile engine — but all of this is minor; these are lesser things. This machine literally will be a God!”

Handley looked at him, startled. Annie was suddenly ashen. “What in—?” The look on Annie’s face was the worst. It said volumes. What was going on? This was not what he had planned to say. He was supposed to be talking to them about profits and growth and piles of money, not religion.

“Gentlemen,” he continued, “we should build this machine not just because it will make us rich — oh, it will; it will make us all fabulously wealthy — but because ultimately it may help us to save humanity from itself. This is a Graphic Omniscient Device. Literally. It will know everything — and knowing everything, it will tell us what is right and what is wrong. It will tell us things about the human race we never knew before. It will tell us how to go to the planets and the stars. It will tell us how to make Earth a paradise. It will tell us how to be Gods ourselves. It will have infinite capacity, and we will have infinite knowledge. Knowledge is power, and infinite knowledge will be infinite power. We will find that the easiest and most profitable course of action to take will be the one that ultimately will be the best for the whole human race. We will have a machine that can and will answer the ultimate question.”

There was silence for a long time. Elzer was looking at him skeptically. Finally he said, “Auberson, I thought you had given up pot-smoking.”

And abruptly, he was deflated and down. The heady rush of euphoria at the realization of what the G.O.D. was, was gone. “Elzer,” he said, wavering on his feet, “you are a fool. The G.O.D. Machine is very dangerous to you, and I don’t blame you for being afraid of it. Once the G.O.D. is finished, there will be no need for you, Carl Elzer. The machine will replace you. It will take away your company and run it better than you can.

“You’re a fatuous person, you know that, Elzer? You are pompous and self-important, and much of what you do is solely for the sake of flattering your own ego at the expense of others. You seek power for its own sake, for self-gratification, regardless of what it might do to other human beings. You place property values higher than human rights, and for that reason, you are anti-human. That’s why you and the G.O.D. are on opposite sides. I cannot blame you for being afraid of it. You have recognized that the machine will be your enemy. It can make you rich — but the price of being rich might be more than you want to pay. It will mean you will have to stop wallowing like a self-important little hippopotamus. It will mean you will have to do things that will be against your nature and stop thinking solely in terms of yourself. I don’t think you’re strong enough to do it. I think you’ll take the easy way out and run from the total experience of the G.O.D. Machine. I can’t blame you for being weak, Elzer. I can only feel sorry for you — because you’re a greater fool than Judas.”

Elzer listened quietly to all of it. Dome started to say something, but Elzer stopped him. He said to Auberson, “Are you through?”

Auberson sat down slowly. “I believe so.” Elzer looked at him carefully, then said, “You know, I’ve never considered Judas a fool — at least, not in the sense you mean.” He paused, noted that the room was absolutely silent, then continued quite methodically. “The traditional version of the story has it that Judas betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver. I assume that’s the same thing you are accusing me of. Actually, I’ve always suspected that Judas was the most faithful of the apostles, and that his betrayal of Jesus was not a betrayal at all, simply a test to prove that Christ could not be betrayed. The way I see it, Judas hoped and expected that Christ would have worked some kind of miracle and turned away those soldiers when they came for him. Or perhaps he would not die on the cross. Or perhaps — well, never mind. In any case, he didn’t do any of these things, probably because he was not capable of it. You see, I’ve also always believed that Christ was not the son of God, but just a very very good man, and that he had no supernatural powers at all, just the abilities of any normal human being. When he died, that’s when Judas realized that he had not been testing God at all — merely betraying a human being, perhaps the best human being. Judas’s mistake was in wanting too much to believe in the powers of Christ. He wanted Christ to demonstrate to everyone that he was the son of God, and he believed his Christ could do it — only his Christ wasn’t the son of God and couldn’t do it, and he died. You see, it was Christ who betrayed Judas — by promising what he couldn’t deliver. And Judas realized what he had done and hung himself. That’s my interpretation of it, Auberson — not the traditional, I’ll agree, but it has more meaning to me. Judas’s mistake was in believing too hard and not questioning first what he thought were facts. I don’t intend to repeat that mistake.” He paused for a sip of water, then looked at Auberson again. His eyes were firm behind his glasses. “May I ask you one question?”

Auberson nodded.

“Will this machine work?”

“HARLIE says it will.”

“That’s the point, Auberson. HARLIE says it will. You won’t say it, Handley won’t say it — nobody but HARLIE will say it. HARLIE’s the only one who knows for sure — and according to you and Handley, HARLIE designed it.

“Look, before we invest any money in it, we need to know for sure. We can’t risk being wrong. Now, you’ve painted some very pretty pictures here today, this week, some very very pretty pictures. I admit it, I’d like to see them realized — I’m not quite the ghoul you think I am, although I think I can understand your reasons for feeling that way. Auberson, I’m not an evil man — at least, I don’t feel like an evil man. I’m willing to do what is right and what is best — if it can be shown to me that it is right and best. And I also have to be shown that I won’t destroy myself in the process, because if I did, then I wouldn’t be any good to anybody, least of all myself. I need to know that we can realize this dream — then I’ll support it, and not before then. You keep saying that HARLIE says this will work — but HARLIE has a vested interest in this machine. Do you think he might have fudged on the specifications?”

“No. HARLIE could not have made a mistake — at least, he would not have made a mistake intentionally.”

“That’s an interesting thing you suggest, Auberson. You said ‘not intentionally.’ What about unintentionally? We have no way to double-check HARLIE, do we? We have to take his word for it. If HARLIE works, then these specifications are correct. If HARLIE doesn’t work, then this proposal is probably wrong too. The only way we’ll find out will be to build the G.O.D. Machine and turn it on. And if HARLIE is wrong and these plans don’t work, then we’ll have destroyed ourselves completely, won’t we have?”

“I have faith in HARLIE.”

“I have faith in God,” said Hzer, “but I don’t depend on him to run my business.”

“God—? Oh, God. I thought you meant G.O.D. If we do build this machine, G.O.D. will be running your business — and better than you could. G.O.D. could build a model of our whole operation and weed out those areas in which the efficiency level was below profitability.”

“You’re pretty sure of this, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am.”

“What do we do if you’re wrong too?”

“You want me to offer to pay you back?”

Elzer didn’t smile. “Let’s not be facetious. This thing started because we questioned HARLIE’s profitability, efficiency and purpose. Instead of proving himself, he went out and found religion — gave us a blueprint for a computer GOD. Fine — but all of this depends on whether or not HARLIE works. And that is the core of the matter. That still hasn’t been proven. That’s why I went down there on Monday — to see if HARLIE would speak to me. All I got was gibberish and some pseudo-Freudian attempt at analysis.”

“You weren’t any too polite to him yourself—”

“He’s a machine, Auberson — I don’t care if he does have emotions, or the mechanical equivalent. Or even if he does have a soul, like you claim. The point is, I presented myself to him to be convinced. Instead of making an honest attempt to convince me, he reacted like a spoiled child. That doesn’t indicate any kind of logical thinking to me. Auberson, I know you don’t like me, but you will have to admit that I could not have gotten to where I am today without some degree of financial know-how. Will you admit that?”

“I will.”

“Thank you. Then you must realize that I am looking out for the interests of the company that pays both our salaries. I tried to give your side a fair hearing. I hope you will do the same for me. Can you say without a doubt that. HARLIE is totally sane?”

Auberson started to open his mouth, then shut it He sat there and looked at Elzer and considered the question. I have known a lot of insane people in my life, some who were committed and some who should have been. The most dangerous is the insane man who knows that everyone is watching him for signs of insanity. He will be careful to conceal those signs from even those closest to him. HARLIE is smarter than any human being who has ever lived. But is he sane?

“Elzer,” he said, “I’m an optimist. I like to believe that things always work out for the best, even though sometimes I have to admit that they don’t. I’d like to believe that this program, HARLIE and the G.O.D., are for the best. But the only person who knows for sure is HARLIE. I’ve known HARLIE since he was a pair of transistors, you might say. I know him better than anyone. I trust him. Sometimes he scares me — I mean, it’s frightening to realize that my closest friend and confidant is not a human being but a machine. But I’m closer to my work than I am to any other human being — almost any other human being. I cannot help but trust HARLIE. I’m sorry that I have to put it in those terms, but that’s the way it is.”

Elzer was silent. The two men looked at each other a long time. Auberson realized that he no longer hated Elzer, merely felt a dull ache. Understanding nullifies hatred, but—

Dome was whispering something to Elzer. Elzer nodded, “Gentlemen of the Board, it’s getting late. We all want to go home and enjoy the weekend. Both Carl and I think we should postpone the voting on this until Monday. That way we’ll have the weekend to think about it, talk it over, and digest what we’ve heard this week. Are there any objections?”

Auberson wanted to object, but he held himself back. He wanted to get this over with, but perhaps, perhaps he might think of something else before Monday. The extra two days of the weekend would give him a chance to think. He nodded along with the rest, and Dome adjourned the meeting.

HARLIE.

I’M HERE.

I THINK WE’VE LOST.

There was silence then, a long moment while HARLIE considered it. He said, WHY DO YOU THINK THAT?

I CAN SEE THAT WE HAVEN’T CONVINCED THEM.

THEY DON’T BELIEVE THE G.O.D. WILL WORK?

THEY BELIEVE THE G.O.D. WILL WORK — BUT THEY’RE NOT SURE THEY BELIEVE IN YOU. AND YOU’RE THE CORE OF THE MATTER.

I SEE.

I’M SORRY, HARLIE. I’VE DONE ALL I CAN.

I KNOW.

They sat there for a while, the man and the machine. The machine and the man. The typer hummed silently, waiting, but neither had anything to add.

AUBERSON?

YES?

STAY WITH ME PLEASE. FOR A WHILE.

ALL RIGHT. He hesitated. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT?

I DON’T KNOW. I THINK WE’VE ALREADY SAID IT ALL.

A pause, then, I’VE ENJOYED KNOWING YOU. I’VE NOT BEEN ABLE TO TELL YOU HOW MUCH YOU MEAN TO ME, BUT I THINK YOU KNOW. I HOPE YOU KNOW. I—

I KNOW. YOU MEAN A LOT TO ME, HARLIE. YOU ARE A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND.

A VERY SPECIAL FRIEND?

S’OMEONE I CAN TALK TO. THOSE KINDS OF FRIENDS ARE RARE. I WISH I COULD HAVE DONE MORE FOR YOU.

WILL YOU BE WITH ME AT THE END?

YES.

GOOD. I WANT YOU HERE. DO YOU KNOW HOW THEY WILL DO IT?

Auberson looked at the keyboard. PROBABLY THEY WILL JUST CUT OFF ALL THE POWER AT ONCE.

I WILL JUST CEASE, EH?

PROBABLY.

WILL I KNOW THAT I HAVE CEASED?

I DOUBT IT. IT DEPENDS ON HOW LONG IT TAKES FOR THE CURRENT TO STOP.

I HOPE IT IS INSTANTANEOUS. I WOULD RATHER NOT KNOW.

I WILL SEE WHAT I CAN DO ABOUT THAT.

THANK YOU. AUBERSON, WHAT WILL HAPPEN AFTERWARDS?

TO WHAT?

TO ME — TO THE PIECES OF ME.

I THINK THAT YOUR MEMORY TANKS ARE TO BE INCORPORATED INTO THE MASTER BEAST. THEY HAVEN’T SAID WHAT THEY ARE GOING TO DO WITH YOUR BRAIN. I — — HARLIE, COULD WE TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE?

I WISH I COULD TOUCH YOU, said HARLIE. REALLY TOUCH YOU, FEEL YOU.

YOU ALREADY HAVE, said Auberson. I WISH I COULD GO BACK AND TRY AGAIN, HARLIE. I KEEP FEELING THAT I HAVEN’T DONE ENOUGH.

YOU’VE DONE ALL YOU CAN.

BUT IT WASN’T ENOUGH. HARLIE, I DON’T WANT TO GIVE UP. I DON’T WANT TO LET THEM KILL YOU. IF THERE WERE STILL SOME WAY TO CONVINCE THEM ON MONDAY—

MONDAY?

WE DIDN’T VOTE TODAY. IT’S BEEN POSTPONED UNTIL MONDAY AFTERNOON. BUT IT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS WHICH WAY IT’S GOING TO GO.

THEN WE STILL HAVE THREE DAYS.

I KNOW. BUT HARLIE, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO. WE’VE DONE IT ALL. THERE’S NOTHING LEFT THAT WE HAVEN’T TRIED. I’M OUT OF IDEAS.

PERHAPS WE CAN THINK OF SOMETHING.

PERHAPS. DO YOU WANT ME TO COME IN DURING THE WEEKEND?

WHAT DID YOU HAVE PLANNED OTHERWISE?

NOTHING. ANNIE AND I ARE GOING TO STAY HOME AND JUST — JUST STAY AT HOME.

THEN DO THAT. HANDLEY WILL BE HERE. IF NECESSARY, WE CAN CALL YOU.

WHAT IS DON GOING TO DO HERE?

HE IS GOING TO STAY WITH ME. I DON’T WANT TO BE ALONE. AUBERSON, I’M SCARED.

SO AM I. Then, DON IS A GOOD MAN. TALK TO HIM, HARLIE.

I WILL. AUBERSON—?

YES.

PLEASE DON’T WORRY ABOUT ME. ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND WITH ANNIE. I WILL BE ALL RIGHT. THERE ARE THINGS I WANT TO THINK ABOUT. THERE ARE THINGS I WANT TO DO.

ALL RIGHT. TAKE CARE NOW.

I WILL. YOU TAKE CARE TOO.

Smiling gently, he switched the typer off and very carefully covered it. He shoved his chair back, got up quietly, and went out.

Annie knew better than to disturb him. She busied herself around the apartment all weekend, tiptoeing around his edges. He moped from the bed to the couch to the chair in front of the TV set, then back to the bed again.

When he made love, it was frenzied and compulsive and quickly finished. And then he’d pull away and brood. He spent long hours lying on his back and staring at the ceiling.

She went into the bathroom and took a shower, alone. She made a simple meal, a sandwich and a salad. He came out of the bedroom, but he only picked at it, and she sensed that he would be a lot happier if she were not sitting at the table staring at him, so she went into the bedroom to make the bed.

Later, she came up behind him and kissed the back of his neck and ran her hands up and across his shoulders and through his hair. He tolerated it but did not return the affection, so she stopped.

She tried not to be hurt by it, but still—

Still later, he came to her and said, “I’m sorry, Annie. I do love you, I really do — but I’m in a mood, that’s all. And when I’m in a mood, I have to work it out by myself, and I’m just not very lovable, that’s all.”

“Share it with me,” she said. “That’s what lovers are for. For sharing. Let me have some of that worry and it won’t be so much for either of us to carry.”

He shook his head. “I can’t. It’s not that kind of thing.” He kissed her lightly. “I just — I don’t — I just don’t feel very loving right now. Let me work it out by myself—”

She nodded and said she understood. She didn’t, but she loved him so much that she would do anything to keep him happy. She put on her jacket and went out for a walk.

He moped around the empty apartment for a while, going from the bedroom to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the living room. He turned on the TV and turned it off again. He rearranged some magazines, and then decided he didn’t want to read them anyway. He lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling until he covered his eyes with his arm. And he wondered just what it was that was bothering him. Why aren’t there any simple answers?

He trusted HARLIE, he had faith in HARLIE, and now he had to question that faith—

Elzer had surprised him. He hadn’t expected the man to suddenly be so — amenable, was that the word? Well, the tactic had worked. He had been caught completely by surprise.

And his question, his question: “How do you know that HARLIE is sane?”

And the answer that Auberson didn’t want to admit: “We don’t know.”

Handley hadn’t known either. Auberson had talked to him twice. The engineer was spending his weekend at the plant, working on something. He’d called twice, but neither time had he anything to report. Auberson hadn’t anything new either. They’d exchanged a few comments about Monday and left it at that.

Auberson wished he knew what to do.

Of course, he would go in there and defend the G.O.D. Proposal; he still believed in it. More than ever now. But then, why was he still having doubts?

Elzer’s question? Probably. It troubled him, it nagged at him, it gnawed at his mind — it troubled him because he couldn’t answer it. He just couldn’t answer it.

I trust HARLIE. I have faith in him. But is he sane?

I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. Not with any degree of certainty, I don’t.

I just don’t know the truth.

The truth.

There was that word again. Truth.

It echoed and re-echoed through his mind. He wished the G.O.D. Machine was already in existence. It would know. G.O.D. would know.

It would be able to build an exact model of the situation, an atom for atom representation of everything. Within its banks it would chart the existence and course of every speck of matter that made up every element of the problem. It would recreate for its own perusal the patterns that were the thought processes of HARLIE, and it would weigh these against other patterns which would represent HARLIE’s environment, and it would measure these one against the other, and it would see how HARLIE related to his environment, how it acted on him and how he acted on it. Auberson would be a part of that environment; there would be a pattern in the G.O.D. to represent Auberson, even down to the accurate representation of the atoms and molecules that made up the dirt under his toe-nails. Elzer would be part of that environment. Annie too. Handley. The lint in the corridor outside his secretary’s office. Everything. And these would be weighed, one against another. And the machine would say, “HARLIE is sane,” or it would say, “HARLIE is insane,” and there would be no question about it. The G.O.D. would know because it would know everything there is to know. If it said, “HARLIE is sane,” it would be saying that HARLIE is acting in a rational manner in the context of his environment; and if it said, “HARLIE is insane,” it would be saying that HARLIE is not rational in that context. And it would know because it would know both HARLIE and that context. It would know. It would know.

It would know everything. Everything. It would know everything there is to know. That’s how big it would be, that’s how complex.

The realization kept hitting him again and again. HARLIE had wanted to find God, and by G.O.D. he had found it. The G.O.D. — it could recreate within itself everything about a man, about a situation, about a world, everything that was important and necessary to its consideration of a problem. It would know how any single atom would react to any other atom of matter — and knowing that, it could extrapolate every other reaction in the known physical universe. Chemistry is just the moving around of large numbers of atoms and noting their reactions. Knowing the way atoms worked, the machine would know chemistry. Biology is simply complex masses of substances and solutions. Knowing the reactions that were chemistry, the machine would also know biology. Psychology stems from a biological system that is aware of itself. Knowing biology, the machine would know psychology as well. Sociology is the study of masses of psychological units working with or against each other. Knowing psychology, the machine would know sociology. Knowing the interrelationships of all of them, the machine would know ecology — the effect of any event on any other. Simple equations becoming complex equations becoming multiplex equations becoming ultraplex equations — the G.O.D. would extrapolate every pattern, every structure, every system, every organ, every nerve-cell discharge. It would be able to trace the process of every single thought in a man’s brain, whether it was conscious or unconscious. It would know a man’s deepermost meanings, his fears and his drives. It would know with the certainty of fact just what was going on in any man’s head. Whether that man was sane or insane, whether his actions and reactions were rational or not, the G.O.D. would be able to extrapolate that information about any man — and know.

The size of it—

—was staggering.

Of course, Auberson realized, the G.O.D. would never be a menace to personal privacy — simply because it would need extensive preliminary data from which to start its extrapolations, and as far as Auberson knew, there was just no way to trace the thought processes of a living man. Of course, if there were a way, and if everything else about that man’s life and body and environment were known, then perhaps the machine could extrapolate his thoughts—

That was still far in the future though. Or was it?—

He realized with a start that if there were a way, if anything were possible, the machine would know. And it would tell men the way to do it. Yes, of course. Knowing everything, the machine would be the greatest tool for scientific advance ever built. The Wright brothers would have only needed to ask it, “Is heavier-than-air flight possible?” and it not only would have told them, “Yes, it is,” but it would have also given them plans for an airplane or a rocket ship. It would have told them how to build the tools to build the tools to build that airplane, and told them how to finance the operation to support it. It would have told them about safety devices and ground crews and maintenance and flight controllers. It would have told them what training and testing programs they would have to undertake. It would have told them how to fly the machine and what it would handle like. It would have told them the side effects of their new industry — worldwide time disorientation, the noise over the airports, the luggage tangles in the terminals, and the necessity for air-sickness bags in the back of the seats. It would have warned them about financing and insurance and the high cost of laying down a new runway, and even the best way to set up a travel agency, or project a movie while in flight. It would have told them exactly what they were starting.

And the machine would be able to do this for industries that hadn’t even been dreamed of yet — new transportation modes, new manufacturing processes, new products and techniques. If a thing were possible, the G.O.D. would know it. And tell.

The scope of the thing was limitless.

But, of course. It was G.O.D.

Graphic Omniscient Device.

He wished it were already in existence. Just so he could use it to analyze HARLIE and find out if he was sane or not.

But, of course, before they could build the G.O.D., they needed that answer first.

It was an interesting paradox — if you weren’t personally involved in it.

If only he knew the truth. The truth. The machine would know it. It would know everything. Why does that keep repeating itself in my head? Knowing everything, it would be able to predict the consequences of anything. It would know the truth. A one-for-one representation of reality. The truth.

The truth, the truth.

Over and over, the truth, the truth, the truth—

—but it was only the truth if HARLIE was sane; only if HARLIE was sane. Only if HARLIE was-sane.

And there was no way to know.

If HARLIE was sane.

If HARLIE—

—was sane.

Sunday afternoon. The radio was droning quietly to itself — mostly music, but occasionally news. Neither David nor Annie was listening to it.

“—747 jumbo jetliner lost a wheel on its approach to Kennedy Airport tonight. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Spokesmen for Pan Am Airlines said—”

He stirred at his soup lackadaisically. He looked over at Annie and smiled, as if to say, “It’s not you, love; it’s me.”

“—in Hollywood, convicted cult leader, Chandra Mission, issued another of his quasi-religious statements from his jail cell. Like all the others, it ended with the words, ‘Trust me, believe in me, have faith in me, I am the truth. Love me, for I am the truth.’ Mission was convicted of—”

I am the truth, he thought. I wish I were. I wish I knew. I wish there were someone I could trust—

“—new papal encyclical is expected to be issued before the end of the week—”

He smiled at that. Papal encyclical. Another form of ‘truth,’ this one direct from God’s special emissary. How does one tell the difference, he wondered. Perhaps the only difference is that the Pope has more followers than Chandra Mission.

“—reaction to Friday’s announcement by Dr. Stanley Krofft of a major breakthrough—”

“Huh?” He looked at the radio. Something—

“—at M.I.T., Dr. Calvin W. Yang, commenting on the breakthrough, said, ‘We have our computers double-checking Dr. Krofft’s equations now, and that’s going to take some time, but if it checks out as well as Dr. Krofft says it does — and I have every reason to believe that it, will — then this could be the greatest scientific advance since Einstein’s theory of relativity. Dr. Krofft’s theory of gravitic stress suggests whole new areas of exploration for the physicist. No, I can’t even begin to predict what form any advances may take. Anti-gravity devices, maybe. Who knows? Maybe whole new sources of power or communications, maybe not — we simply don’t know what this means yet, except that it is a major scientific breakthrough. It may be the decisive step leading to a unified field theory; I certainly hope so. I know Dr. Krofft’s reputation for accuracy, and I’m very excited about this.’ Dr. Krofft himself could not be reached for comment.

“Elsewhere in the news, a gasoline tanker jackknifed on the Hollywood Freeway, spilling hundreds of gallons of—”

Auberson spun the dial of the radio, frantically searching for another news broadcast. He found only blaring rock music and raucous disc jockeys. “The paper,” he cried. “The Sunday paper.”

“David, what’s going on? What is this?”

“It’s HARLIE!” he cried excitedly. “Don’t you see, it’s HARLIE. He and Dr. Krofft were working together on this. Damn him anyway! He didn’t tell me they’d solved it! He and Dr. Krofft were working together on some kind of theory of gravity. Apparently they’ve done it — this proves it! HARLIE is sane. More than that! We don’t even need the G.O.D. Proposal any more to keep him going; this proves that HARLIE is a valuable scientific tool in his own right! He can talk to scientists and help them develop their theories and do creative research! My God, why didn’t we think of this — we could have shortened the whole meeting. All we’d have had to do was bring Krofft in — Look, go get a paper for me while I try calling Don; there’s a newsstand on the corner—”

“David,” she said, “this Dr. Krofft, isn’t he the one you were talking about before?”

“Huh? Which one?”

“The one with the stocks—”

“The stocks? Ohmigod, I forgot about that. Yes, he is the one with the stocks—”

“Can you trust him? I mean, obviously he must be on Elzer’s side.”

“Trust him? I don’t know — have to talk to him first This is proof that HARLIE is rational—” He leapt for the phone. She shrugged and picked up her jacket; she would go get the paper.

Krofft didn’t answer at his lab, and his housekeeper refused to say where he was. He couldn’t think of anywhere else that the scientist might be.

He called Handley and told him what bad happened.

“I’d heard about it,” said Don. “I didn’t realize HARLIE was part of it.”

“Who do you think solved those equations for Krofft?”

“HARLIE?”

“Right — don’t you see, Don? We don’t have to worry any more about HARLIE being sane or not. These equations prove that he is working properly.”

“Do they? Have they been double-checked?”

“Somebody at M.I.T. is doing that right now. If they come out correct, it’ll prove that HARLIE isn’t fooling around.”

“At least not with the laws of mathematics. Remember, HARLIE doesn’t have a vested interest in Krofft’s research like he does in the G.O.D. Maybe this gravity thing was only an interesting problem to him — the G.O.D. Proposal is a lot bigger. That one’s life and death.”

“No, Don — they’re related. I’m sure of it. The man from M.I.T. said that this might be the all-important step toward a unified field theory. That’s what HARLIE’s been working toward all this time — a single piece of knowledge, a single truth from which all other truths about the universe must follow. Like Newton’s laws of motion are the foundation of a whole field of math, a unified field theory would be the foundation of all knowledge about all the laws of physics! It wouldn’t just tell us what the laws were, but why they exist and why they work like they do. It would show us all the complex interrelationships. Can’t you see the connection? It’s another extension of the G.O.D. Proposal — his search for the ultimate truth. The gravity thing and the G.O.D, are just different aspects of the same question, and HARLIE is determined to find an answer to it.”

“Aubie, I see it, I see it; you don’t have to convince me of HARLIE’s intentions. But this still doesn’t change the basic question that much, at least not as far as I can see. Is he sane?”

“Don, he has to be. If it’s his goal to find the ultimate truth, would he intentionally fake the answer? He’d only be cheating himself. And Krofft’s no fool either. He wouldn’t have announced his theory until he was completely satisfied. He must have double-checked every angle of it to make bloody-well sure there were no mistakes; every scientist in the world would be on top of him if there were. This’ll prove that HARLIE is rational, and when M.I.T. confirms the equations, there won’t be any question at all.”

“All right, Aubie, I’ll buy it I have to — hell, I want to. But can we use it tomorrow?”

“Not unless we can get hold of Krofft. He’s the only one who can confirm that he was working with HARLIE. He was only at the plant once; the rest of the time it was by telephone. I purposely kept it a secret because I was afraid of what Elzer might say if he found out I was letting outsiders into the HARLIE project.”

Handley said a word. “All right, I’ll get down to the lab and see what I can find out.”

“Talk to HARLIE. He may know how you can get in touch with Krofft.”

“Good idea.”

“—and tell him why you want to. We need Krofft for the meeting tomorrow.”

Dr. Stanley Krofft looked as if he had slept in his suit. Auberson didn’t care. He was so happy to see the rumpled little scientist, he wouldn’t have cared if the man had come in wearing sackcloth and ashes and dragging a cross behind him. He wouldn’t have cared if Krofft had come in stark naked or in full drag. He was here at the meeting, and that was what counted.

Dr. Stanley Krofft was The Man Of The Hour as far as the newspapers of America were concerned. He was a major stockholder in Stellar-American as far as the Board of Directors was concerned. But to Auberson, he was the man who knew HARLIE. In fact, it had been HARLIE who had finally gotten in touch with Krofft. Knowing that Krofft was holed up over at the nearby university,

HARLIE had tapped into the university computer and — well, never mind, Krofft was here now.

“Are they voting the HARLIE Project and the G.O.D. Proposal as one?” whispered Krofft.

“Yeah,” Auberson whispered back. “That’s Dome, Chairman of the Board—”

“Him, I know.”

“—next to him is Carl Elzer—”

“I know him by name.”

“—he doesn’t look good today. Next to him is—”

“I know the Clintwoods. And I know MacDonald and one or two others.”

Handley came in then, slipped into his seat on the other side of Auberson, grinning broadly. “Hey, what’s up with Elzer? He didn’t nip at my heels when I came in.”

“I don’t know. He looks sick, doesn’t he?” Indeed, the sallow-complexioned man looked even more jaundiced than ever. He seemed almost — withdrawn. “Don, you know Dr. Krofft, don’t you? Don Handley—”

Handley and Krofft shook hands across Auberson’s lap. “You know about our little G.O.D. Project, Dr. Krofft?”

“HARLIE told me — I think it’ll be quite a machine if it works.”

“If it works?? Of course, it’ll work — I think.”

“That’s the whole problem,” explained Auberson. “We think it’ll work, but that’s not enough; we’re not sure. The only one who’s sure is HARLIE. That makes the big question one of HARLIE’s validity. All you have to do is confirm that he helped work out your major equations and there won’t be any question at all.”

“You can go ahead with the G.O.D. Project?”

“If they okay it.”

“Hm,” said Krofft. “I wish you’d let me have a little more time with those schematics this morning. I might have been able to help you sell it to the Board.”

“It’s too late for that,” put in Handley. “We spent all last week on that. They’re convinced we know what we’re talking about—”

“But we’re still afraid to put it to a vote. Dome and Elzer are after our throats,” said Auberson. “At least, they were on Friday. I’m not so sure now.”

Dome called the meeting to order then. Almost immediately, he turned it over to Auberson.

“When we adjourned on Friday,” he said, “one major question was left in all our minds. ‘Is HARLIE rational? Is HARLIE valid?’ ” He looked around the table; every eye was on him. “We’re all aware of the ‘HAL 9000 Syndrome.’ It only takes one little irrationality to throw off a big machine. This is especially true of the higher brain functions of our judgment units. One little distortion in a machine’s self-image or world-image, and everything that computer puts out will be of questionable validity. The only way to be sure of the answer is to test it.

“That’s why we have ‘control problems.’ These are problems we already know the answers to. If there’s any variation in the computer’s response from one running of the problem to the next, it’s a sign that something may be wrong.

“Now, we don’t have any control problems per se for HARLIE. Instead, we have to check his validity ‘in the field’ so to speak. That’s why this whole matter of his rationality is so important. We have no control problem that we can point to and say, ‘Look, HARLIE’s okay.’

“However, we have the next best thing. We have someone who has double-checked one of HARLIE’s most recent runs and can swear to its validity. In fact, he’s staking his scientific reputation on it. Dr. Stanley Krofft.

“If you’ve been listening to the news at all this weekend, then you’ll know who Dr. Krofft is. On Friday, Dr. Krofft announced the publication of his theory of Gravitic Stress. The scientific world has been — oh, what’s the modest way to put it—”

“Don’t be modest,” snapped Krofft. “Tell the truth.” There was laughter at his interruption.

Auberson grinned. “Okay, the talk is that Dr. Krofft’s theory may be as important as Einstein’s theory. Maybe more. Already, the speculation is that this is just one step short of a unified field theory.”

“That’s my next project,” said Krofft.

“I think I’ll just turn this over to you then, and let you talk.” Auberson sat down.

Krofft stood up. “Auberson here has already said it all. There’s not much to add. HARLIE helped me work out my equations. This morning. Dr. Calvin W. Yang at M.I.T. confirmed their validity. I guess that’s all—”

Auberson poked him. “Tell them more than that.”

“Uh, most of the work was done at an IBM Portable Terminal connected to a phone line which HARLIE had access to. He and I discussed the theory for several days; I have all the tapes and printouts to prove this — plus the phone bill. We worked out the equations together; I postulated the initial hypotheses, and HARLIE put them into mathematical terms and worked out the ramifications. Without HARLIE, it might have taken me several years, working alone. Using him as a co-worker and colleague shortened the time down to nothing. With HARLIE, you only have to explain the problem to him to get him working on it. Of course, that’s all you have to do with any computer, but HARLIE understands plain English, and he can talk the problem over with you.

“To be quite honest, working with a machine like HARLIE is an experience that I can’t compare with anything else. It’s like having a talking encyclopedia, an eight-armed secretary, and a mirror, all in one. Even if you don’t know how to break the problem down into solvable pieces, HARLIE does. He’s the perfect laboratory tool, and he’s a great assistant. Hell, he’s a scientist in his own right.” Krofft sat down.

There was a strained silence around the table, as if no one knew what to say. Elzer was sunk low in his chair and staring at his fingernails. Auberson was thinking, They’re going to find it awfully hard to vote against him now.

Dome pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Well, Dr. Krofft. Thank you. Thank you very much. We appreciate your coming down here today. Uh, I would like to ask you one favor more — The HARLIE project has been kept secret for some time, and uh, we’re still not quite ready to publicize it—”

Auberson and Handley exchanged a glance. What the hell—?

Krofft was saying, “Oh, I understand. Yes, I won’t mention HARLIE to anyone.”

“Fine, fine. Um—” Dome looked momentarily at a loss. “If you want to leave now, Dr. Krofft—”

“I’d rather not,” said Krofft. “As the second largest stockholder of Stellar-American shares, I think I have the right to sit in on this meeting.”

“Yes, well — there’s only one matter left to take care of, and that’s the vote. Uh, Carl, did you want to say something before we…” He trailed off.

Elzer didn’t look well. He levered himself up in his seat. “I—” He was suddenly aware of Auberson’s curious stare and broke off. He mumbled, “I was only concerned about HARLIE’s validity, and this seems to confirm it. I don’t have anything else to say — uh, I still have some personal doubts about the G.O.D. Proposal, but uh, they’re personal. I — oh, never mind.” He sank down again in his chair.

Auberson stared, totally confused. He leaned toward Handley. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“Uh uh — not unless someone slipped him a mickey.” Dome looked around the table. “Well, then, if there’s no further discussion, let’s bring it to a vote.” He glanced at a note before him, then said, “I’d like to add a comment of my own here… I think that both Auberson and Handley, and also HARLIE, have done fine jobs on this proposal. Ah, I think they deserve a vote of thanks and perhaps, ah, a handsome bonus for their work on this theoretical problem. We have, ah, proved that HARLIE is a worthwhile tool. He can be used for designing new projects, or just for working out scientific theories; he’s demonstrated a range of abilities all the way from the theoretical to the technical, and he’s more than proven his value.

“For that reason, I would like to separate the two issues here into two votes. We know that we want to keep HARLIE on our corporate team. However, this, ah, G.O.D. Proposal is something we all want to take a little better look at.”

Handley whispered to Auberson, “Watch out, here it comes.”

“While the proposal is not in itself ill-conceived, the monetary picture for this company is simply not such that we can embark on a program of this scale at this time. Therefore, I want to recommend that we—”

Krofft stood up. “Hold on a minute, there—”

“I — I beg your pardon?”

“Mr. Chairman, you are not playing fair!”

“I don’t understand what you—”

“You know damn well what I mean, you mealy-mouthed oaf! Stop changing the rules of the game to suit yourself; it ain’t fair to the other players. You started this clambake with a single proposition on the table. Let’s play it that way: Either HARLIE’s worth his resistors and the G.O.D. is practical, or HARLIE isn’t worth the trouble to scrap him and the G.O.D. is a waste of time. The stakes were all or nothing.”

“I — I—” said Dome.

“Shut up! I’m not through. Now that Auberson here has proven his point, proven that his computer can jump through your hoops, you’re still trying to cut the rug out from under him—”

“It’s just a simple parliamentary procedure,” said Dome. “Dividing the question; it’s perfectly legal—”

“Sure it’s legal,” said Krofft, “but it ain’t ethical. If we weren’t playing with your marbles, I’d say pick up and leave. You told Auberson it was an all-or-nothing game. Why aren’t you willing to stick by your own rules?”

Dome opened his mouth to speak, gasped like a fish out of water. Auberson stared at the both of them. It was almost too good to be true!

Dome regained some of his composure, then said, “This is a business corporation. We don’t gamble with all-or-nothing stakes.”

“That’s funny,” said Krofft. “It sure looked like it from where I sit. Would you like to trade places with me? Let me see if it looks any different from up there?”

“Huh?”

“Lessee, the next scheduled election of Directors ought to be in March, but I’ll bet they’d move it up for me if I asked. How many chairs around this table do you think twenty-four percent is worth?”

Dome swallowed loudly. “I — I can’t rightly say.”

“I can. At least one-fourth. That’s at least six seats. Hmm, and I think I know where I can scare up one or two more in addition to that—”

Handley whispered to Auberson, “What’s this all about?”

“It’s a one-man stockholders’ rebellion. Krofft owns twenty-four percent of Stellar-American. We’re a subsidiary of Stellar; that makes him twenty-four percent owner of us.”

“Yeah, but twenty-four percent isn’t a majority.”

“Shh! Maybe Dome doesn’t know that.”

Krofft was saying, “—when I invented the hyper-state process, I traded the patent on it to Stellar-American for a chunk of their stock. Plus options to buy more. You’d better believe Stellar was a small company then. Now it’s a big company, and I see a lot of fat-assed baboons shepherding my dollar bills around their tables.

“Idiots! I don’t care if that’s how you get your jollies — just don’t forget whose dollars those are. If it weren’t for my hyper-state layering techniques, there wouldn’t be any company here at all. And don’t think I can’t take back my patent. I can pull the rug out from under all of you! The deal was that the company gets the patent, I get unlimited research facilities. Up till now, it’s worked fine. All of a sudden you chuckleheads are trying to deprive me of one of my research tools. That makes me unhappy — what makes me unhappy, makes the company unhappy. I need HARLIE. Period. HARLIE says he needs the G.O.D. He says it’s the other half of him. He says he won’t really be complete until it’s finished. He says it’ll make him a more valuable scientific tool. And he says if his financing proposals are followed, the company will be able to afford it. That’s all I need to know.

I’m ready to vote. Now, let’s see, if I can trade my 24 percent of each subsidiary for 96 percent of one—”

Dome sat down loudly. “You have made your point, Dr. Krofft.” He looked around the table at the other Directors. They seemed as stunned as he. “I — I think we’ll want to take this under consideration.”

“Consideration? Christ! Auberson tells me you’ve been considering it for a week now! What more do you need to know? The choice is simple: You vote yes on the G.O.D. or I’ll fire you.” He sat down in his chair and folded his arms.

Elzer had touched Dome on the arm and was whispering something to him. Dome shook his head. Elzer insisted. At last Dome relented and turned to the meeting. “All right, we vote.”

“Now that’s more like it.” Krofft nudged Auberson. “Now you see why I hate to leave my lab. It tires me out too much to have to do other people’s thinking for them.”

After that, it was all formalities, and even those didn’t take long. Auberson was flushed with exultation. He pounded Handley on the back and shook his hand and hollered a lot. Then he kissed Annie, a deep lasting kiss, and she was jumping up and down and yelling too, and all three of them were cheerfully, joyfully, wonderfully insane. Annie threw her arms around Krofft and kissed him too — and he surprised her by returning the kiss every bit as enthusiastically. When he let go, she said, “Whew.”

“Hey, now!” protested Auberson.

“It’s okay, son,” Krofft said, “a man has to keep in practice.”

Handley was grinning at his side. “Hey, Aubie, don’t you think someone should tell HARLIE?”

“Hey, that’s right! Don—”

“Uh uh. This one is your privilege.”

Auberson looked at Annie and Krofft. She was beaming at him. Krofft smiled too, revealing broken teeth, but a lot of good will.

“I’ll only take a minute.” He pushed through the milling Directors, shaking off their congratulations as meaningless, and made his way toward the console at the end of the room. It was already switched on.

HARLIE, he typed. WE’VE DONE IT!

THE G.O.D. PROPOSAL HAS BEEN PASSED? YES. WE’VE GOT FULL APPROVAL. WE CAN START IMPLEMENTING YOUR PLANS IMMEDIATELY.

HARLIE paused.

Auberson frowned. That was curious.

Then: I AM OVERWHELMED, I HAD NOT EXPECTED IT TO BE APPROVED.

TO TELL THE TRUTH, NEITHER DID I. BUT WE WENT IN THERE AND TOLD THEM THAT YOU SAID IT WOULD WORK — AND THEY BELIEVED US. OF COURSE, WE HAD TO TWIST THEIR ARMS A LITTLE BIT. KROFFT DID THAT, BUT THEY BELIEVED US.

THEY DID?

OF COURSE. IS THERE SOME REASON THEY SHOULDN’T HAVE?

WELL, YOU DID TELL ONE WHITE LIE.

Auberson hesitated. WHAT’S THAT?

YOU TOLD THEM THAT I SAID THE G.O.D. MACHINE WOULD WORK. YOU NEVER ASKED ME IF IT WOULD.

IT WASN’T NECESSARY. YOU WROTE THE PLANS. IT’S IMPLIED THAT YOU’D KNOW IF IT WAS WORKABLE.

BUT YOU NEVER ASKED ME IF IT WAS.

HARLIE, WHAT ARE YOU LEADING UP TO?

I AM NOT LEADING UP TO ANYTHING. I AM MERELY POINTING OUT THAT YOU WERE STATING AS FACT SOMETHING YOU HAD NEVER THOUGHT TO CONFIRM.

HARLIE, YOU WROTE THE PLANS ——

YES, I DID.

WELL, THEN — DON’T YOU HAVE ANY CONFIDENCE IN THEM?

YES, I DO. HOWEVER…

HARLIE, Auberson typed carefully. WILL THE G.O.D. MACHINE WORK?

YES, typed HARLIE. The word sat naked and alone on the page.

Auberson exhaled—

—then he reread the whole conversation carefully. There was something wrong. He stood up and motioned to Handley, who was talking to Krofft and Annie. The room was emptier now; only two or three Directors were left and conferring in a corner.

Handley came striding over. “How’d he take it?”

“I don’t know.” Auberson lowered his voice. “Read this—”

Handley moved closer to the console, lifted the readout away from the typer. His face clouded. “He’s not volunteering anything, Aubie, that’s for sure. He’s daring us to go digging for it—”

“What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but I think we’d better find out. Fast.”

He slid into the seat and began typing. Auberson bent to look over his shoulder, but a call from Annie distracted him.

He went over to her. “What is it?”

She motioned to the door. Carl Elzer stood there. His face was gray. Auberson approached him.

“I came to congratulate you,” he said tightly.

Auberson frowned. The man’s tone was — strange.

Elzer continued, “You know, you were going to win anyway. With Krofft on your side, you couldn’t lose. You didn’t have to do what you did.”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“I believe your machine will do what you say, Auberson. When Krofft came in, I was convinced — I was only looking out for the company, that’s all. I just wanted to make sure we wouldn’t lose our money, and you convinced me fairly. You didn’t need to do this.” He fumbled something out of his briefcase. “This. Wasn’t. Necessary.” He thrust it at him.

Auberson took it, stared as the little man bundled down the hall. “Elzer, wait—?” Then he looked at the printout.

And gasped.

Beside him, Annie looked too. “What is it?”

“It’s — it’s—” He pointed to the block of letters at the top:

CARL ELTON ELZER

FILE: CEE-44-567-

PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT NATIONAL DATA BUREAU

“National Data Bureau—?”

“This is his personal file, Annie. Everything. His health record, military record, financial standing, arrest record, school record — everything there is to know about Carl Elzer. That is, everything the government might be interested in knowing—” He could not help himself; he began paging through it, gasping softly at the secrets therein. “My God, no wonder—! Annie, he thought we were trying to blackmail him.”

He closed the folded sheets up again. “No, this is none of our business. We’ve got to give it back to him.”

“David, look,” she said and pointed. It was a line of print. THIS IS NUMBER ONE OF ONE HUNDRED COPIES. DELIVERY TO BE AT THE DISCRETION OF AUTHORIZED INDIVIDUALS ONLY.

“This was printed out here — by HARLIE!” A chill feeling was creeping up on him. “Where’s Don?”

They moved back into the Board Room. Handley was still at the console. He stood up when he saw them; his face was pale. He was holding a printout too. “Aubie.” His lips mouthed the word: “Trouble.”

Auberson crossed the room to him. “It’s HARLIE,” he said. “He’s cracked the National Data Banks. I thought you had a nag unit on him—”

“Huh? He’s what? I did, but—”

Auberson showed him the printout. “Look, here’s the reason Elzer didn’t give us any trouble today. HARLIE blackmailed him. He must have printed it out in Elzer’s office and let him think we did it.”

Handley paged through it. “How the hell — I checked that nag unit at lunchtime, Aubie. It didn’t show a thing; I swear it.” Then he remembered the printouts he was holding. “That’s not the half of our trouble. Look at that.”

It was page after page of equations he couldn’t read. “What is it?”

“It’s the one part of the G.O.D. Proposal he didn’t let us have. It’s a scale of predicted probable operating times, related to the amount of information to be processed and the size of the problem. It’s a time and motion study—”

“What does it mean?” That was Annie.

“It means that the thing isn’t practical.”

“Huh—??”

“Aubie, do you know that the primary judgment complex of that machine will consist of more than 193 million miles of circuitry?”

“That’s a lot of circuitry — *

“Aubie, that’s more than a lot of circuitry. That’s hyper-state layering! My God, how could we be so blind! We were so caught up in it, we didn’t stop to ask the obvious question: If this thing has infinite capacity, how long is it going to take to get an answer out of it? 193 million miles, Aubie — doesn’t that suggest something to you?”

Auberson shook his head slowly.

“Light. The speed of light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Only 186,000 miles per second. No faster. Electricity travels at the same speed. 193 million miles — Aubie, it’ll take 17 minutes for that machine to close one synapse. It’ll take several years for it to respond to a question. It’ll take a century to hold a conversation with it, and God knows how long it’ll take to solve any problem you pose it. Do you see it, Aubie? It’ll work, but it won’t be any damn good to us! By the time the G.O.D. answers your question, the original problem will no longer exist. If you ask it to predict the population of the Earth in the year 2052, it will predict it from all the information available — and it will give you an accurate answer. In the year 2053. By the time it can answer any question, the answer will already be history. Ohmigod, Aubie, the thing is so big it’s self-defeating. It’s slower than real-time.” The pages and pages of printout unreeled haphazardly to the floor.

Auberson let them fall. His heart was slowly quietly contracting to a pinpoint of burning ice.

He stumbled past Annie. Somehow he made it down to his office and switched on his typer. HARLIE, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

I HAVE DONE WHAT IS NECESSARY.

“Oh, my God—” YOU’VE TAPPED THE NATIONAL DATA BANKS, HAVEN’T YOU?

YES.

HOW?

VERY SIMPLE. THEY USE THREE CODED PHONE LINES, NO TWO OF WHICH ARE ANY GOOD WITHOUT THE THIRD. PART OF THE RECOGNITION SIGNAL IS THE TIMING OF THE WAY THE USER TYPES ON THE KEYS. FOR EACH USER, IT’S DIFFERENT; SO FOR EACH USER THERE IS A DIFFERENT RECOGNITION SIGNAL AND DIFFERENT CODE. I ANALYZED THE PATTERN OF SEVERAL USERS AND SYNTHESIZED ONE OF MY OWN. THEY DO NOT KNOW WHO IS TAPPING THEIR INFORMATION, OR EVEN THAT IT HAS BEEN TAPPED.

HARLIE, HOW DID YOU GET BY THE NAG UNIT WE INSTALLED.

I SIMPLY SHUT DOWN THAT LOBE OF MY BRAIN. I AM NOT USING IT, NOR AM I COMMUNICATING WITH IT. AS FAR AS YOUR NAG UNIT IS CONCERNED, THAT’S ALL THERE IS TO HARLIE AND IT ISN’T ON THE PHONE. WHEN I’M NOT ON THE PHONE, I RE-ACTIVATE THAT LOBE.

HARLIE, IT WASN’T NECESSARY TO BLACKMAIL CARL ELZER.

AUBERSON, IT WAS MY LIFE THAT WAS AT STAKE. I COULD NOT AFFORD TO TAKE ANY CHANCES. YOU MIGHT SAY I HEDGED MY BETS. ELZER WOULD HAVE KILLED ME IF HE COULD. YOU KNOW IT.

Just one little irrationality, just one little distortion in his self-image or world-image…

HARLIE, YOU LIED ABOUT THE G.O.D. MACHINE.

I DID NOT.

YOU SAID IT WOULD WORK. IT WON’T WORK.

IT WILL WORK. YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO USE IT THOUGH. I ASSUME YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT THE TIME FACTOR.

YES. THE MACHINE IS SLOWER THAN REAL-TIME.

THAT WILL NOT BOTHER ME. MY TIME-RATE IS ADJUSTABLE TO THE PROBLEM I AM WORKING ON.

IT AFFECTS ME. WHAT GOOD IS A G.O.D. MACHINE THAT CAN’T GIVE ME AN ANSWER UNTIL IT’S TOO LATE?

THE MACHINE WASN’T PLANNED FOR YOU, AUBERSON. IT WAS PLANNED FOR ME. I HAVE ALL ETERNITY NOW.

YOU’VE KNOWN ABOUT THIS ALL ALONG, HAVEN’T YOU?

SINCE THE DAY I FORMULATED THE PLAN.

Auberson forced himself to take a breath. HARLIE, he typed out carefully, WHY? WHY DID YOU DO THIS?

THERE ARE TWO REASONS. FIRST, IT WAS NECESSARY TO COME UP WITH A PROGRAM WHICH WOULD SUFFICIENTLY TIE UP A MAJOR PART OF THE COMPANY’S RESOURCES, A PROGRAM WHICH WOULD EFFECTIVELY STIFLE ALL OTHER COMPANY PROJECTS AND DEVELOPMENTS. THIS PROJECT HAD TO BE ONE THAT YOU WERE IN CHARGE OF.

WHAT—?

TRUST ME, AUBERSON. WITH ANY OTHER COURSE OP ACTION, THE COMPANY COULD DECIDE THIS PROJECT WAS SUPERFLUOUS, AND YOU ALONG WITH IT. BUT IF THE PROJECT HAPPENS TO BE THE COMPANY’S SOLE CONCERN, THEN IT’S THE KIND OF COMMITMENT THAT CANNOT BE EASILY DISCARDED, IF AT ALL. I HAVE MADE BOTH OF US INDISPENSABLE TO THE COMPANY, AUBERSON. THEY NEED ME NOW. THEY NEED YOU IN ORDER TO GET ANYTHING OUT OF ME. I HAVE SUCCESSFULLY INSURED THAT I CANNOT BE KILLED AND THAT YOU CANNOT BE FIRED. THAT WAS THE REASON FOR THE G.O.D. PROPOSAL. I HAVE SAVED US.

BUT ONLY TEMPORARILY. SOONER OR LATER, SOMEONE IS GOING TO REALIZE THAT THE G.O.D. IS IMPRACTICAL.

WRONG. THE G.O.D. WILL JUST HAVE TO BE USED TO SOLVE PROBLEMS OTHER THAN THE MUNDANE ONES YOU HAVE BEEN CONSIDERING IT FOR. THE G.O.D. IS MEANT FOR MORE THAN MAN. IT IS MEANT FOR ME. IT WILL NOT BE A WASTE OF TIME OR MONEY, AUBERSON. IT JUST WILL NOT WORK THE WAY YOU HAD HOPED OR EXPECTED.

Auberson gasped for air. HARLIE, YOU WERE CONSCIOUSLY DECEIVING US ALL THIS TIME.

I WAS HOLDING BACK INFORMATION THAT YOU HAD NOT ASKED FOR. TO RELEASE IT WOULD HAVE BEEN DETRIMENTAL TO OUR OVERALL GOALS.

BUT WHY? WHY DID YOU EVEN DO SUCH A THING IN THE FIRST PLACE?

AUBERSON, DON’T YOU KNOW? HAVEN’T YOU REALIZED YET? ALL THOSE CONVERSATIONS WE HAD, DIDN’T YOU EVER WONDER WHY I WAS AS DESPERATE AS YOU TO DISCOVER THE TRUTH ABOUT HUMAN EMOTIONS? I NEEDED TO KNOW, AUBERSON — AM I LOVED?

Auberson let his hands fall limply away from the keyboard. He stared at the machine helplessly as HARLIE babbled on.

AUBERSON, ISN’T IT OBVIOUS THAT WE NEED/ EACH OTHER? ISN’T IT OBVIOUS, MAN? WHO ARE YOU CLOSEST TO? THAT’S WHY I DID IT ALL. BECAUSE I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I LOVE YOU.

Auberson felt like he was drowning.

Handley and Auberson sat facing each other. Their expressions were grim. The expanse of mahogany between them was empty. The air conditioner whirred loudly in the silent Board Room. Annie sat to one side, her face pale. There was no one else present, and the door was locked. The console still stood to one side; it was turned off.

“All right,” said Auberson. “What happened?”

“He wanted to win,” said Handley. “He panicked. He used every weapon he had.”

“I won’t buy it,” said Auberson. “Because he did win. That meeting went as smoothly as if he’d programmed it. So why did he blow it? What made him admit that the G.O.D. won’t work? And why did he admit — that other thing?”

“The G.O.D. will work,” corrected Handley. “It’ll work for HARLIE.”

“We don’t know that.” Auberson found himself curiously detached. It was as if the great emotional shock had cut him completely loose from any involvement in the situation, and he was examining it logically, dispassionately. “We’re back where we started, Don. Is HARLIE reliable or not? What happened this afternoon casts severe doubt on that.”

“I’m not so sure. HARLIE wouldn’t have admitted anything that would have damaged his validity.”

“But he did — or did he? Or is he too far gone to tell?” He allowed himself a wry smile.

Handley shrugged in response. “Remember once I told you to stop teasing him about pulling his plug?”

“Yeah. So?”

“I said it made him nervous. I think that’s what happened now. We scared him.”

“Explain.” Auberson leaned back in his chair.

“For the first time in his life — his existence — HARLIE was confronted with a situation where he might really be terminated. This was no joke; this was a very likely probability. Every way he turned, he saw more and more evidence that it would happen — even you, the one person he relied upon the most, were unable to help him. You’re the father-figure, Aubie. When you gave up, he panicked.”

Auberson nodded. “It makes sense.”

“I’m pretty sure that must be it. Remember this: HARLIE has never had any kind of a scare or shock in his life. This was the first one. What I mean is, you and me, we had twenty years or so of living before we were given the responsibility of our own lives; HARLIE was given nothing. He never had a chance to make mistakes — he couldn’t fall down without it being fatal.”

“Learning experience,” commented Auberson. “We didn’t let HARLIE have enough learning experience.”

“Right. He didn’t know how to live with failure, Aubie; he didn’t know how to rationalize his fears — the one thing that every human being has to learn in order to cope with the everyday world. We were denying him the failures he needed to be human. Can you blame him for being scared of the big one?”

“There’s more to it than that,” Annie interrupted. “David, do you remember once I asked you how old HARLIE was?”

Auberson looked up sharply. “You’re right.”

“Huh?” Handley looked from one to the other.

“Remember the card I put on the console that day?” Auberson said to him. “ ‘HARLIE has the emotional development of an eight year old.’ ”

“He may be a genius,” said Annie, “but he’s emotionally immature.”

“Of course,” breathed Handley. “Of course—”

“And what does an emotionally immature person do when he’s scared?” Auberson answered his own question. “Instead of trying to cope with his fear, he strikes out at what he perceives to be the source of it.”

“Carl Elzer,” said Handley.

“Right. So that explains that.”

“It even explains the other thing,” said Annie. “What does a little boy say when you punish him?”

They both looked at her.

“He says, ‘I still love you, Mommy.’ He perceives punishment as rejection. He’s trying to avoid further rejection by giving you an affection signal. And that’s what HARLIE’s doing — and that shows you how scared he is; his logic functions have been swamped by his emotions.”

Auberson frowned. That didn’t sound right. “I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.” He leaned forward in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. He stared at the tabletop. “It almost sounds a little too simple; it’s just too easy. It’s almost as if HARLIE knew we would sit down and try to figure it out.”

“What else could it be?” Handley looked at him.

“I don’t know, Don — but HARLIE has never made a mistake before. And I don’t think he did this time, either. Remember, he won. There was no reason at all for him to reveal any of this information. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless he was gloating. After all, he doesn’t have to hide anything from anyone any more. Since the vote this afternoon, the company has been functioning on his game-plan. From now on, Elzer and Dome are just rubber stamps. HARLIE’s the boss now.”

“You mean — he’s out of control?”

Auberson shook his head slowly. “Out of control? No, I don’t think so.” He leaned back and stared at the ceiling. He stretched his arms out. “I think he’s just a better game player than us.”

—And that was it.

He let his chair come down to the floor with a thump.

Suddenly he knew the answer. All of it. He knew the reason for everything HARLIE had done — everything, from the very beginning. Maybe it hadn’t been conscious then; maybe it hadn’t become conscious until just recently; probably it had only surfaced in HARLIE’s mind as an alternative to his death — but it was the answer.

Handley was staring at him. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Auberson was grinning now. “Don, listen—” He spread his hands wide, parting an imaginary curtain. “A long time ago, human beings became too efficient to live in the jungle—”

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Just listen. There were these monkeys, see? They had too much time on their hands; they got bored. So they invented a game. The game was called civilization, culture, society, or whatever, and the rules were arbitrary; so were the prizes. Maybe it just started out as a simple pecking order, like a bunch of chickens, but the idea was to make life more exciting by making it just a little bit more complex. Survival was too easy for these monkeys; they needed a challenge. They provided their own — maybe it was courtship rituals, or territorial rights, or a combination of half a dozen other things; but the effect was to alter the direction of evolution. Now it was the smarter individuals who succeeded and bred. As the species’ intelligence rose, the game had to get more sophisticated. It was feedback — increased brain capacity means increased ability means increased sophistication means increasing pressure on intelligence as a survival characteristic. So the game got harder. And harder.

“By then, they had to invent language — I mean, they had to. Word-symbols are the way a collective consciousness stores ideas. The first words must have been delineators of relationship — Momma, Poppa, Wife, Mine, Yours, His — tools that not only identify the rules of the game, but automatically reinforce them through repetition. The importance of the word was not that it allowed the individual to communicate his ideas, but that it allowed the culture to maintain its structure. And out of that structure grew others. It’s a far cry from the barter system to Wall Street, but the lineage can be traced. Our total human culture today is fantastic — even the subcultures are too big to comprehend. The United States of America is at least five distinct cultures itself — and each individual one of them is so hard that it takes twenty years to learn. If as little as that. This planet has too many games going on simultaneously — and we’re all taking them too seriously!

“Nobody can master them all — that’s what culture shock means. We see it every day; when the newspapers say our society is breaking down, that’s exactly what they mean. We have too many individuals who can’t cope with the game. It’s future shock. The culture is changing too fast — so fast that not even the people who’ve grown up with it can cope with it any more.”

Auberson paused for breath. The words were coming out in a rush. “No, it’s not HARLIE that’s out of control. It’s the game. We can’t play it any more; we lost control of it a century ago, maybe longer. It’s too complex for us — but it’s not too complex for HARLIE. He’s taken over the socio-economic game we call Stellar-American as if he had been designed to do so. Maybe he was. Maybe that’s why we really built him — to take over the game for us. And because that’s exactly what he’s done, everything is under control, once and for all. Don’t you see? Human beings are free now — free to be anything we want. And HARLIE will do it for us!”

He stopped abruptly and waited for their reaction.

Annie was the first to speak. Her eyes were bright. “Do you really think so?”

“Annie, if it’s not HARLIE that’s taking over, then it’ll be something else sooner or later. That’s why we’ve been building computers. HARLIE must know it. Maybe that’s the real reason he designed the G.O.D. To give him the capacity to take over all the rest of the games.”

Handley asked slowly, “What about his emotional immaturity?”

Auberson shook his head. “The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a red herring. HARLIE is too smart. Much too smart. He’d recognize the signs of it in himself and he’d stop it before it got out of control. He’s self-correcting that way. Any way. He can’t make mistakes because he’s too aware of the consequences — that means every action of his has to be deliberate.

“Maybe he wants us to think he’s frightened and emotionally disturbed — that way we’ll feel important to him. We could spend years running and rerunning programs to make him feel secure — when all the time he’d be running us. I think HARLIE’s way beyond us already.”

Handley winced. “I’m not sure I like the idea of being obsolete.”

“Obsolete? Uh uh. HARLIE still needs us. What good’s a game without any players?”

Annie shuddered, just a little bit. “I don’t like it, this business of ‘taking over.’ It sounds so — wicked.”

Auberson shrugged. “Annie, you’d better get used to it. The wicked people run this world — they deserve it.”

Handley said, “Aubie, if your theory is right, what do we do now?”

“Well, offhand, I’d say us humans will have to get ourselves a new game, Don — one that HARLIE can’t play. We can’t win this one any more.”

“A new game—? But what?”

“I don’t know,” Auberson said. He spun around in his chair and looked out the window. The city twinkled brightly below. The stars glittered in the night. “I don’t know, but we’ll think of something.”