The Computer Connection

“Too abstruse,” I called in XX. “A simple, graphic example which even heads can see and believe.”

Sitting Bull thought hard for a moment. Then he turned to Fee. “Nitric acid. Hydrochloric. Three beakers. Three slugs of gold.”

While she scurried to the stock shelves he smiled at the house and said, “I’m going to give you a simple demonstration. I will show you that neither nitric acid nor hydrochloric acid attack the noble metals. Their properties are known. And yet when they are combined they form an Emergent called aqua regia, which does consume the noble metals. Early chemists had no way of predicting this. Today, with our knowledge of ion transfer, we do understand and can predict, particularly when we’re assisted by computer analysis. This is what I mean when I say the new cryogenic research is Emergent. Nothing can be foretold. Computers can’t help us because a computer is no better than its stored data and we have none available yet. Thank you, Fee.”

He set up the three beakers, dropped a chunk of gold into each, and unstoppered the acid bottles. “Watch closely, please. Gold in each beaker. Hydrochloric acid in the first. Nitric acid in the second. Aqua regia, the royal water, in the—”

He was interrupted by a blast of coughings, gaspings, stranglings. It sounded like fifty people were drowning. In half a minute the entire audience had stampeded out of the laboratory; only Edison, the Syndicate, and myself were left with the Chief. Sequoya looked at us in bewilderment. “What happened?” he asked in XX.

Glassware began to crash down as their metal supports gave way. Window blinds and valence and spectra charts fell with a clatter. The light fixtures dropped with sizzling short-circuit flares, and we were in pitch darkness. “What happened?” Guess repeated.

“What happened? I can tell you what happened.” Edison barked with laughter. “That damn fool girl brought you fuming nitric acid. Fuming. And the fumes have turned this room into one big nitric acid bath. Everything’s being eaten away.”

“Did you see her do it? Did you see the label? Why didn’t you stop her?” The Chief sounded furious.

“No. No, and no. I’ve deduced it. Not an Emergent, just a Resultant.”

“Dear God! Dear God! I’ve ruined the whole pitch to the U-Con crowd.” Despairing.

Suddenly I did the take and let out a yell.

“What’s the matter, Guig?” the Group called. “Are you hurt?”

“No, you damn fools, and that’s why I’m hollering. I’m Grand Guignol triumphant. Don’t you understand? Why didn’t he know it was fuming nitric acid? Why didn’t he choke on the fumes? Why isn’t he eaten away now? Why wasn’t he forced to ran out with Fee and the rest? Think about it while I revel.”

After a long moment, the Syndicate said, “I never believed in your campaign, Guig. I apologize. It was a million to one against, so I hope you’ll pardon me.”

“You’re pardoned. You’re all pardoned. We’ve got another Molecular Man. We’ve got a brand new beautiful Moleman. Still there, Uncas?”

“I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

“Take a deep breath of nitric. Belt down a stiff shot. Do anything you like to celebrate, because nothing, but nothing you eat, drink, or breathe can kill you. Welcome to the Group.”

5

And he disappeared. How it happened: We had to get out of the acid bath before everything was eaten off us — rings, watches, bridgework, fillings, the portable lab Hiawatha carried inside his tutta. There was a crowd of dumbfounded stockholders milling outside the laboratory sounding like victims of a coryza plague, and we got separated. When we finally got together again, clustered around Fee-5, the Chief was gone and there was no locating him in the crowd. We hollered for him in XX. N. Fee began to panic.

I gave her a look. Again no time for cosseting. “Where can we talk in private? Sacred private?”

She feathered her vanes and landed again. “The high vacuum chamber.”

“R. Go.”

She led us on a twisted course to a giant sphere, opened a sequence of submarine hatches, and we were inside the sphere keeping company with half a space capsule.

“High vacuum circuitry check,” she said.

“Lovely scene for criminal assault.”

She gave me a look, the equal of mine, and it began to dawn on me that I’d better mind my ma

I said to the Syndicate, “That was a lovely performance. Thanks.”

“Ah, yes. To make someone want something you must show them that someone else wants it more. Elementary.”

“By any chance was anything you said true?”

“But it was all truth.”

“You represent the independent sovereign state of I.G. Farben?”

“I own fifty-one percent of it.”

“How much of the whole world do you own, Greek?”

“Fourteen point nine one seven percent, but who counts?”

“My God, you’re rich. Am I rich?”

“You have eleven million six hundred thousand one hundred and three. By my standards you are poor.”

Fee-5 let out a little moan and I relented. “R,” I said. “It’s a simple problem. The poor bastard has had too many shocks in one day and he’s run off in all directions. All we have to do is find him and cool him. Now he may be somewhere in the JPL complex or at the university. Your job, Fee. Find him.”

“I can if he’s anywhere.”

“R. Let’s hope he’s somewhere. Now, he may have scuttled for the tepee, but there’s the problem of the wolves. We’d better let M’bantu handle that. On the other hand he may have levanted to a Particle Bio research center for technical advice. Ed?”

“I’ll handle that.”

“He may have cut for a patent office to file for an exclusive on his discovery.”

“Mine,” the Syndicate said.

“He may have started on a bash to relieve the pain. I’ll put Scented Song on that.”

Edison barked his laugh. “I can just see her charging into the fangojoints on Sabu.”

“Y. I’d like to be with her. Now there’s an outside chance that he may have gone into cataleptics again. That’s for Borgia.”

“What about you, Guig?”

“I’m going back to my place. Nemo and I will hold the fort. Keep the progress reports coming. Gung?”

“R.”

Fee had been breathing heavily — controlling panic, I thought — but now she began to gasp in heaves and her face was turning blue.

“Now what?” I shot at her.

“Not her fault,” Ed said calmly. “Somebody’s started pumping out the chamber. She’s strangling on vacuum.”

“Never a dull moment at JPL,” I said. “Out.” We out, me carrying Fee-Cyanosis Chinese, and a dozen techs outside wanted to know how dast we be in there contaminating the circuits. You can’t please everybody.

So we started our various searches for Sequoya and I did like hell go home. I had a damned good hunch where the Chief had taken refuge (I hadn’t spent five days in a bamboo caul for nothing) and I took the next linear for the Erie reservation. But I did have the courtesy to call and brief Nemo on the assignments.

Now, here had been this mudhole, the size of a moon crater, 240 miles long, 60 miles wide, 200 feet deep, black, repellent, all ooze, crisscrossed with gutters containing the poisonous effluents extruded by a better industry for a better tomorrow. This was the generous gift to the Amerind nations to possess and inhabit forever or until a progressive Congress ousted the dispossessed again. Nine thousand square miles of hell.

Now it was nine thousand square miles of paradise. It suggested a fantastic image to me; a shattered rainbow of odd-shaped fields of poppies glowing red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. The cha