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“Now that I’m here,” said Teresa Clark, “I’m no longer so sure of myself. These people look darned intelligent.”
Gosseyn laughed at the expression on her face, but he said nothing. He felt supremely positive that he could compete right through to the thirtieth day. His problem was not would he win, but would he be allowed to try.
Aloof and impregnable, the Machine towered above the human beings it was about to sort according to their semantic training. No one now living knew exactly in what part of its structure its electron-magnetic brain was located. Like many men before him, Gosseyn speculated about that. “Where would I have put it?” he wondered, “if I had been one of the scientist-architects?” It didn’t matter, of course. The Machine was already older than any known living human being. Self-renewing, conscious of its life and of its purpose, it remained greater than any individual, immune to bribery and corruption and theoretically capable of preventing its own destruction.
“Juggernaut!” emotional men had screamed when it was being built. “No,” said the builders, “not a destroyer, but an immobile, mechanical brain with creative functions and a capacity to add to itself in certain sane directions.” In three hundred years, people had come to accept its decisions as to who should rule them.
Gosseyn grew aware of a conversation between a man and a woman who were walking near by.
“It’s the policeless part,” the woman was saying. “It frightens me.”
The man said, “Don’t you see, that shows what Venus must be like, where no police are necessary. If we prove worthy of Venus, we go to a planet where everyone is sane. The policeless period gives us a chance to measure progress down here. At one time it was a nightmare, but I’ve noticed a change even in my lifetime. It’s necessary, all right.”
“I guess here’s where we separate,” said Teresa Clark. “The C’s are down on the second basement, the G’s just above them. Meet me tonight at the vacant lot. Any objections?”
“None.”
Gosseyn waited till she was out of sight down a stairway that led to the second basement. Then he followed. He caught a glimpse of her as he reached the bottom of the steps. She was pushing toward an exit at the end of a far corridor. He was halfway along the corridor when she ran up a staircase that led outside. By the time Gosseyn shoved his way up the stairs, she was nowhere to be seen. He turned back thoughtfully. The possibility that she would not risk the tests had made him follow her, but it was disturbing to have his suspicions proved. The problem of Teresa Clark was becoming more complex.
More upset than he had expected, Gosseyn entered a vacant examination booth in the G section. The door had barely clicked shut behind him when a voice from a speaker said matter of factly, “Your name?”
Gosseyn forgot Teresa Clark. Here was the crisis.
The booth contained a comfortable swivel chair, a desk with drawers, and a transparent paneling above the desk, behind which electron tubes gleamed in a variety of cherry-red and flame-yellow patterns. In the center of the panels, also made of transparent plastic, was an ordinary streamlined speaker. It was from this that the voice of the Machine had come. It repeated now, “Your name? And please grasp the nodes.”
“Gilbert Gosseyn,” said Gosseyn quietly.
There was silence. Some of the cherry-red tubes flickered unsteadily. Then: “For the time being,” said the Machine in a casual tone, “I’ll accept that name.”
Gosseyn sank back deeper into the chair. His skin warmed with excitement. He felt himself on the verge of discovery. He said, “You know my true name?”
There was another pause. Gosseyn had time to think of a machine that was at this very moment conducting tens of thousands of easygoing conversations with the individuals in every cubbyhole in its base. Then: “No record in your mind of another name,” said the Machine. “But let’s leave that for now. Ready for your test?”
“B-but—”
“No further questions at this moment,” said the Machine more formally. Its tone was comfortable when it spoke again. “You’ll find writing materials in one of the drawers. The questions are printed on each sheet. Take your time. You’ve got thirty minutes, and you won’t be able to leave the room till they’re up. Good luck.”
The questions were as Gosseyn had expected: “What is non-Aristotelianism? What is non-Newtonianism? What is non-Euclidianism?”
The questions were not really easy. The best method was not to attempt a detailed reply but to show consciousness of the multi-ordinal meaning of words, and of the fact that every answer could be only an abstraction. Gosseyn began by putting down the recognized abbreviation for each term—null-A, null-N, and null-E.
He finished in about twenty minutes, then sat back tingling with anticipation. The Machine had said, “No further questions at this moment.” That seemed to imply that it would talk to him again. At the end of twenty-five minutes its voice came once more.
“Please don’t be surprised at the simplicity of today’s test. Remember, the purpose of the games is not to beguile the great majority of the contestants into losing. The purpose is to educate every individual of the race to make the best possible use of the complex nervous system which he or she has inherited. That can only be realized when everybody survives the full thirty days of the games. And now, those who failed today’s test have already been informed. They will not be accepted as contestants during the rest of this season’s games. To the rest—more than ninety-nine per cent, I am happy to say—good luck for tomorrow.”
It was fast work. He had simply put his paper into the slot provided. A television tube had sca
“You wish to ask more questions, Gilbert Gosseyn?” asked the Machine.
Gosseyn tensed. “Yes. I have had some false ideas planted in my mind. Were they put there with a purpose?”
“They were.”
“Who put them there?”
“No records of that exists in your brain.”
“Then how do you know they were put there?”
“Logical reasoning,” said the Machine, “on the basis of information. The fact that your illusion was related to Patricia Hardie is very suggestive to me.”
Gosseyn hesitated, then spoke the thought that had been in his mind. “Many psychoneurotics have equally strong beliefs. Such people usually claim identification with the great: ‘I am Napoleon’; ‘I am Hitler’; ‘I am Tharg’; ‘I am married to Patricia Hardie.’ Was my false belief in that category?”
“Definitely no. Very strong convictions can be induced by hypnotic means. Yours comes under that heading. That is why you were able to throw off the emotion of grief when you first learned that she was not dead. Your recovery is not yet completed, however.”
There was a pause. Then the Machine spoke again and there was a curious sadness in its words. “I am only an immobile brain, but dimly aware of what is transpiring in remote parts of Earth. What plans are brewing I can only guess. You will be surprised and disappointed to learn that I can tell you nothing more about that.”
“What can you tell me?” asked Gosseyn.
“That you are very deeply involved, but that I ca
There was a click from the door as it unlocked automatically. Gosseyn went out into the corridor, hesitated for a moment, and then worked his way northward through the hurrying crowds.