The Ambassador, Sam Merwin [no david read aloud .TXT] 📗

with a very efficient right cross to the chin.

Nina turned on Lindsay angrily. "You damned fool!" she almost shouted. "You might have been killed."

He looked down, felt his knees turn to water. He said, "Omigod—I thought I was still wearing the star. I remembered how you saved my life in New Orleans with your diamond evening bag!"

He sat down—hard. From the floor Maria whimpered, "What are you going to do to me?"

Nina said, "I ought to kill you, you know, but it would cause too much of a stink. So beat it and let us think. You'll be hearing from me later. What you hear will depend on how you handle yourself from now on. Understand?"

When she had slunk out Lindsay said, "What broke her up?"

Nina dropped the gun into her bag casually, said, "Now I know you're lucky, you thin slob. You happened to stumble right onto her allergy. She can't stand being thought of as a third-rate lover. That's why she's always been jealous of me—because I have top-model rating and she could never make it. She's too damned concerned with pleasing herself to please anyone else. She flunked out at fourteen."

"Then why didn't you pull it?" Lindsay asked her, astonished.

"Because," Nina said thoughtfully, "I'm not conditioned to think that way. It's horribly rude here on Earth to stir up other people's allergies. As you reminded me last night, you rat, we're all people in glass houses."

"But I didn't even know...." muttered Lindsay.

"You hit it though," she reminded him. "And you're going to hit it again out there in exactly five minutes."

Lindsay was extremely conscious of the eyes of the vidar cameras upon him as President Giovannini, having finished his introductory speech, led him to the alabaster stele in the center of Giac's great central chamber and turned him over to du Fresne, whose official robe hung unevenly from the hump of his harness.

Lindsay handed the Minister of Computation the question he had prepared on paper, was brusquely told, "Read it please, Ambassador."

He cleared his throat and began.

"I am asking a question highly pertinent to the welfare and future amity of the United Worlds," he said slowly. "More specifically to the future amity of Earth and Mars. It is a simple question without involved mathematical qualifications—but one that no computer and no man has thus far been able to answer correctly.

"It is this continued failure of computers to come up with a logical answer in the full frame of interplanetary conditions that has done much to make the people of my planet feel that no computer is trustworthy to make decisions involving human beings."

He paused, looked covertly at du Fresne, repressed a smile. The Minister of Computation was already showing signs of distress. He was shaking his head, making little pawing motions toward his glasses.

"Here it is," Lindsay said quickly. "Should the governors of Mars, whose responsibilities lie at least as much in the economic improvement of their own world as in inter-world harmony, permit their planet to receive goods which retard that economic development so that it becomes a race to maintain current unsatisfactory standards, merely because certain computers on Earth are fed false facts to permit continuation of some illogical form of government or social system—or should the governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?"

He walked slowly back to his place and sat down, almost feeling the silence around him. Nina whispered, "What in hell does it mean?"

Lindsay whispered back, "It's a bit of the iron dog and the whale, a bit of the Red Queen, a bit of the suicide idea—and something else. Let's see if it works."

Lindsay watched du Fresne, whose moment of triumph was marred by his obvious discomfort. The twisted little man was very busy running the question into its various forms for submission to the feeder units, whose mouths gaped like hungry nestlings along part of one side wall.

If du Fresne failed him....

It was a long nervous wait. Lights flickered in meaningless succession on subsidiary instrument boards and du Fresne darted about like a bespectacled buzzard, studying first this set of symbols, then that one.

Lindsay glanced at Maria, who sat huddled beside her father beyond the president. To break the suspense he whispered to Nina, "What about her?"

Nina whispered back, "I've got it taped. I'm going to give her a nice empty job on the moon—one with a big title attached. It will get her out of the way—she can't do any harm there—and make her feel she's doing something. Besides"—a faint malicious pause—"there are still four men to every woman on Luna. And they aren't choosy."

"You're a witch," said Lindsay. He snickered and someone shushed him. Looking up he saw that things were happening.

"In exactly"—du Fresne glanced up at a wall chronometer—"six seconds Giac will give its answer."

They seemed more like six years to Lindsay. Then the alabaster stele in the center of the floor came abruptly to life. A slow spiral of red, composed of a seemingly endless stream of high mathematical symbols, started up from its base, worked rapidly around and around it like an old-fashioned barber-pole's markings, moving ever upward toward its top.

"Effective—very effective," murmured President Giovannini.

Suddenly a voice sounded, a pleasant voice specially geared to resemble the voice of the greatest of twentieth-century troubadors, Bing Crosby. It said, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."

There was a gasp—a gasp that seemed to emerge not only from the company present but, in reverse, through the vidarcasters from the entire listening world. President Giovannini, suddenly white, said inelegantly, "Son of a bitch!"

Nina laughed out loud and gripped Lindsay's arm tightly. "You've done it, darling—you've done it!" she cried.

"On the contrary," he said quietly, "I haven't done it; du Fresne did it." And as he looked toward the Minister of Computation that little man fainted.

But Giac kept right on. It blanked out briefly, then once more the spiral of red figures began to work its way around and up the stele. And once again the pleasant voice announced, "Interplanetary unity depends upon computer illogic."

It blanked out, began again. And this time, from somewhere in the building, came the thud of a muffled explosion. A spiral of green symbols began to circle the stele, then a spiral of yellow. The red reached the top first and the Bing Crosby voice began again, "Interplanetary unity de—"

The green and yellow spirals reached the top. A few seconds of sheer Jabberwocky emerged from the loudspeaker, ending in a chorus of, "Illogic, illogic, illogic...." with the words overlapping.

Panic began to show itself. The president gasped and Maria suddenly shrieked. Frightened onlookers crowded toward the door. The president looked from the machine to Lindsay, bewildered.

Lindsay got up and strode toward the microphone by the stele. He shouted into it, "Turn off the computer—turn it off."

And, moments later, while the angry hot glow of the stele faded slowly, he said, "People of Earth, this is Lindsay of Mars. Please be calm while I explain. There is nothing wrong with Giac or any of your computers." He paused, added ruefully, "At least nothing that cannot be repaired in short order where Giac is concerned.

"I am going to ask to look once more at the question I submitted to this machine—and to the language tape fed into it by the Honorable Mr. du Fresne." He waited while they were brought to him, scanned them, smiled, said, "No the fault was not with Giac. Nor was it consciously with Mr. du Fresne. The question was loaded.

"You see, I happen to know that your Minister's belief in computers is such that he suffers an involuntary reaction when he hears them defamed. I defamed computers both in my preliminary address and in my question. And when he had to transfer to tape the phrase '—or, should the Governors of Mars permit their planet to suffer because of computer illogic in the name of a highly doubtful status quo on the parent planet?'—when he transferred that sentence to tape he was physically unable to write the phrase 'computer illogic'.

"Involuntarily he changed it to 'computer logic' with the result that the question was utterly meaningless and caused Giac's tubes to short circuit. None of the recent computer failures was the fault of the machines—it was the fault of the men who fed them material to digest.

"So I believe it is safe to say that you may rely upon your computers—as long as they do not deal with problems affecting yourselves and ourselves. For those you need human speculation, human debate, above all human judgment!"

President Giovannini, able politician that he was, had joined Lindsay at the microphone, put an arm across his shoulders, said, "I feel humble—yes, humble—in the great lesson this great envoy from our sister planet had taught us. What they can do on Mars we can do on Earth."

When at last they were clear of the vidar cameras Lindsay grinned and said, "Nice going, Johnny—you'll have more voters than ever come next election."

Giovannini simply stared at him. His eyes began to water, his nose to run and he turned away, groping for an evapochief.

Lindsay looked after him and shook his head. He said to Nina, who had rejoined him, "How about that? Johnny's in tears."

"Of course he is," snapped Nina. "He's allergic to the word 'voters'. Night soil, but you're simple!"

Lindsay felt his own eyes water. He sneezed, violently, for the first time since coming to Earth. Concerned, Nina said, "What's wrong, darling? Have I done something?"

"If you ever say 'night soil' again..." he began. Then, "Krrachooooo!" He felt as if the top of his head were missing.

Nina hugged him, grinning like a gamine. "I'll save it for very special occasions," she promised.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ambassador, by Samuel Kimball Merwin