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"What he claimed he was doing," said Whistler.
"Even so, I can't stop a Grand Master on opinion alone. He seemed queer but, after all, Grand Masters are supposed to seem queer. I didn't think him insane."
"Using Multivac to find the source of jokes?" muttered the senior analyst in discontent. "That's not insane?"
"How can we tell?" asked Trask irritably. "Science has advanced to the point where the only meaningful questions left are the ridiculous ones. The sensible ones have been thought of, asked and answered long ago."
"It's no use. I'm bothered."
"Maybe, but there's no choice now, Whistler. We'll see Meyerhof and you can do the necessary analysis of Multivac's response, if any. As for me, my only job is to handle the red tape. Good Lord, I don't even know what a senior analyst such as yourself is supposed to do, except analyze, and that doesn't help me any."
Whistler said, "It's simple enough. A Grand Master like Meyerhof asks questions and Multivac automatically formulates it into quantities and operations. The necessary machinery for converting words to symbols is what makes up most of the bulk of Multivac. Multivac then gives the answer in quantities and operations, but it doesn't translate that back into words except in the most simple and routine cases. If it were designed to solve the general retranslation problem, its bulk would have to be quadrupled at least."
"I see. Then it's your job to translate these symbols into words?"
"My job and that of other analysts. We use smaller, specially designed computers whenever necessary." Whistler smiled grimly. "Like the Delphic priestess of ancient Greece, Multivac gives oracular and obscure answers. Only we have translators, you see."
They had arrived. Meyerhof was waiting.
Whistler said briskly, "What circuits did you use, Grand Master?"
Meyerhof told him and Whistler went to work.
Trask tried to follow what was happening, but none of it made sense. The government official watched a spool unreel with a pattern of dots in endless incomprehensibility. Grand Master Meyerhof stood indifferently to one side while Whistler surveyed the pattern as it emerged. The analyst had put on headphones and a mouthpiece and at intervals murmured a series of instructions which, at some far-off place, guided assistants through electronic contortions in other computers.
Occasionally, Whistler listened, then punched combinations on a complex keyboard marked with symbols that looked vaguely mathematical but weren't.
A good deal more than an hour's time elapsed.
The frown on Whistler's face grew deeper. Once, he looked up at the two others and began, "This is unbel-" and turned back to his work.
Finally, he said hoarsely, "I can give you an unofficial answer." His eyes were red-rimmed. "The official answer awaits complete analysis. Do you want it unofficial?"
"Go ahead," said Meyerhof.
Trask nodded.
Whistler darted a hangdog glance at the Grand Master. "Ask a foolish question-" he said. Then, gruffly, "Multivac says, extraterrestrial origin."
"What are you saying?" demanded Trask.
"Don't you hear me? The jokes we laugh at were not made up by any man. Multivac has analyzed all data given it and the one answer that best fits that data is that some extraterrestrial intelligence has composed the jokes, all of them, and placed them in selected human minds at selected times and places in such a way that no man is conscious of having made one up. All subsequent jokes are minor variations and adaptations of these grand originals."
Meyerhof broke in, face flushed with the kind of triumph only a Grand Master can know who once again has asked the right question. "All comedy writers," he said, "work by twisting old jokes to new purposes. That's well known. The answer fits."
"But why?" asked Trask. "Why make up the jokes?"
"Multivac says," said Whistler, "that the only purpose that fits all the data is that the jokes are intended to study human psychology. We study rat psychology by making the rats solve mazes. The rats don't know why and wouldn't even if they were aware of what was going on, which they're not. These outer intelligences study man's psychology by noting individual reactions to carefully selected anecdotes. Each man reacts differently… Presumably, these outer intelligences are to us as we are to rats." He shuddered.
Trask, eyes staring, said, "The Grand Master said man is the only animal with a sense of humor. It would seem then that the sense of humor is foisted upon us from without."
Meyerhof added excitedly, "And for possible humor created from within, we have no laughter. Puns, I mean."
Whistler said, "Presumably, the extraterrestrials cancel out reactions to spontaneous jokes to avoid confusion."
Trask said in sudden agony of spirit, "Come on, now, Good Lord, do either of you believe this?"
The senior analyst looked at him coldly. "Multivac says so. It's all that can be said so far. It has pointed out the real jokesters of the universe, and if we want to know more, the matter will have to be followed up." He added in a whisper, "If anyone dares follow it up."
Grand Master Meyerhof said suddenly, "I asked two questions, you know. So far only the first has been answered. I think Multivac has enough data to answer the second."
Whistler shrugged. He seemed a half-broken man. "When a Grand Master thinks there is enough data," he said, "I'll make book on it. What is your second question?"
"I asked this. What will be the effect on the human race of discovering the answer to my first question?"
"Why did you ask that?" demanded Trask.
"Just a feeling that it had to be asked," said Meyerhof.
Trask said, "Insane. It's all insane," and turned away. Even he himself felt how strangely he and Whistler had changed sides. Now it was Trask crying insanity.
Trask closed his eyes. He might cry insanity all he wished, but no man in fifty years had doubted the combination of a Grand Master and Multivac and found his doubts verified.
Whistler worked silently, teeth clenched. He put Multivac and its subsidiary machines through their paces again. Another hour passed and he laughed harshly. "A raving nightmare!"
"What's the answer?" asked Meyerhof. "I want Multivac's remarks, not yours."
"All right. Take it. Multivac states that, once even a single human discovers the truth of this method of psychological analysis of the human mind, it will become useless as an objective technique to those extraterrestrial powers now using it."
"You mean there won't be any more jokes handed out to humanity?" asked Trask faintly. "Or what do you mean?"
"No more jokes," said Whistler, "now! Multivac says now! The experiment is ended now! A new technique will have to be introduced."
They stared at each other. The minutes passed.
Meyerhof said slowly, "Multivac is right."
Whistler said haggardly, "I know."
Even Trask said in a whisper, "Yes. It must be."
It was Meyerhof who put his finger on the proof of it, Meyerhof the accomplished jokester. He said, "It's over, you know, all over. I've been trying for five minutes now and I can't think of one single joke, not one! And if I read one in a book, I wouldn't laugh. I know."
"The gift of humor is gone," said Trask drearily. "No man will ever laugh again."
And they remained there, staring, feeling the world shrink down to the dimensions of an experimental rat cage-with the maze removed and something, something about to be put in its place.