Destination: Void

All he'd done with his experiment was change the potential at one point and insure that they would not have the addresses on any of the test information they had just sent into the total computer system.

Timberlake followed him to the bench. "But what about those results, the truncated -"

"Use your head!" Bickel whirled on him. "This computer has a random-access system as far as we're Concerned - enormous blocks of information filed in it bit by bit in such a way that only the total computer can reproduce it for us. That's why we have so many special-function routines and subroutines and sub-subroutines ad infinitum. The addresses of those we know."

"But the fail-safe, the warning..."

"That's a special kind of message to us," Bickel said.

Prudence knew she had to head him away from this conjecture. She spoke quickly:

"The Organic Cores must've known where their information was."

"And they're dead," Bickel said. "Get the message?"

"Wait a minute!" Timberlake said. "Are you trying to tell us..."

"The computer is what keeps us alive," Bickel said. "That's all that keeps us alive. We win or lose with that computer."

Timberlake turned to stare at the open access panel. "But we..." He broke off.

Prudence, seeing what Timberlake had just realized, felt her mouth go dry. Some of the information in this monster would be filed many times, depending on the power with which it had been inserted. Some information was filed just once and could be lost through the kick of a proton. And that total system controlled their destiny.

"This computer's storage banks amount to one enormous internally balanced system," Bickel said.

Prudence nodded. It was like a superb human memory in some respects - even worked something like a human memory - but it was a fine instrument with all the delicate weaknesses implied by that term.

"Jeeeeesus." Timberlake whispered. "And we shot an unknown program through it."

"Worse than that," Bickel said. "Because of that unrecorded tie-in to the computer..." He swallowed, wondering if they already appreciated the extent of this disaster. Turning, he indicated the piled cubes and rectangles, the sheafs of quasibiological nerve fiber that constituted his "Ox."

The others turned in the direction he pointed.

"That setup is, in effect, an extension of the computer," Bickel said.

"The error factor!" Prudence said. She put a hand to her mouth.

"We've introduced an error factor into the computer," Bickel said. "And that means, first, that we've introduced the probability - no, the certainty, of an unknown number of subspaces within the computer's space time. The program we've just thrown into the computer... to land, we know not where, will produce unknown topological linkages, new networks all through the system."

"In the memory storage banks, primarily," Timberlake said.

"And in the transducer nets," Bickel said.

"But this storage unit here produced the circuit-analysis information when I asked for it," Prudence said.

"Certainly," Bickel said. "But your demand amounted to a program for a subroutine. Where the information came from God alone knows. Just in the first stage, there are fifty lines leading out of this unit. And those lines filter through a buffer system, remember. The bits go out of here, charge through that buffer system, and are split up fifty ways, according to their differences in potential. That's just the first stage. At the next stage, your division is fifty times fifty. And then fifty times fifty times fifty. And so on."

It was like trying to work with a memory whose only certain property was that everything stored in it was stored according to a scatter pattern and could only be recovered if you knew the pattern.

Guaranteed selective amnesia. But that... was kind of human.

"This bank here was just like a knitting machine," Prudence said. "It took the threads of the record from this test setup and knitted them out through the storage banks of the entire system... smearing that record across an unknown number of retainer cells."

"An unknown number of times," Bickel said. "Remember that. And we only have one address for the entire record of that test, the address of a subroutine program. If that's lost the whole record's lost... unless we manage to match enough pieces of it in another program to pull it out of the system again."

"But isn't that pretty much the way human memory works?" Prudence asked. "And here's another thing: It produced the right answer at the translator. The right answer."

Bickel looked at her, turning that fact over in his mind.

She was right, by God! And not for the reason he had so glibly spouted.

The thing had produced the right answers in spite of errors and misprogramming. The processing procedure stank. It was heuristic and should not under any circumstances have yielded the desired output.

But it had. Why?

Bickel experienced a mental sensation as though his mind lurched. It was so much like a physical sensation he wondered that the others didn't notice.

The beautiful clarity with which he understood what had happened in the computer washed through him like a stimulant.

Didn't the others see it?

He looked at Prudence, at Timberlake, realized this had all occurred in a fraction of a second.

"For motion produceth nothing but motion."

The words rang through his mind, producing awe at the way apparently disco

Just the way it had happened in the computer.

Prudence, correctly interpreting Bickel's expression, spoke quietly, "You're onto something, John."

He nodded. "Prudence, you're our mathematician. What's pi?"

She stared at him, puzzled.

"I'm serious," Bickel said.

"The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter," she said. "A rational approximation would be approximately twenty-two over seven. A closer approximation would be three hundred and fifty-five over a hundred and thirteen."

"For most applications, that approximation of pi would give us significant results?" Bickel asked.

"You don't have to ask that. You know it would."

"Okay, now tell me why you didn't answer my question by saying pi is a sweet concoction of starchy crust enclosing a filling often of fruit?"

She saw his seriousness in the way he stared at her, waiting. This bore on the problem in some way. She looked at Timberlake and he interpreted her motion as an appeal for help.

"It's obvious," Timberlake said. "You set up a category first by saying, 'You're our mathematician.' Then you asked: 'What's pi?' You didn't say: 'What's a pie?'"

"Yeah," Bickel said. "You had two screening references through which to filter the question and come up with the right answer. Then, because you sensed this was a rhetorical question in some way, you didn't try to explain first that there's no rational number for pi; you just gave me the rational approximations."

"Well, I knew I didn't have to explain that to you," Prudence said.

"That was category 'common information,'" Bickel said. "All you had to do was produce the significant answer."

"Holy cow!" Timberlake exploded, seeing where Bickel was leading them.

"Holy Ox, you mean," Bickel said.

Prudence whirled, pointed wildly toward the computer panel. "But it wasn't conscious! It couldn't have been!"

"It wasn't conscious," Bickel agreed. "But first crack out of the box, we've produced a significant result. And it was no accident. What can we say about the results of this test? First, we can say that the computer had sufficient information to produce an accurate answer despite errors in the system. Second, we can say that we've introduced a new kind of sense data into the system previously called a computer. We can go on calling this a computer, but it's a step up from 'computer' now. It has learned how to use a new kind of sense data."