The Cosmic Computer, H. Beam Piper [best sci fi novels of all time .TXT] 📗

would turn to frantic violence and smash everything they most wanted to preserve. Conn pushed another button.

The second information-request went in: What is the best course to be followed under these conditions by the people of Poictesme? It had taken some time to phrase that in symbols a computer would find comprehensible; the answer, at great length, emerged in two minutes eight seconds. Retranslating it took five hours.

In the beginning and for the first ten years, it was, almost item for item, the Maxwell Plan. Export trade, specialized in luxury goods. Brandies and wines, tobacco; a long list of other exportable commodities, and optimum markets. Reopening of industrial plants; establishment of new industries. Attainment of economic self-sufficiency. Cultural self-sufficiency; establishment of universities, institutes of technology, research laboratories. Then the Maxwell Plan became the Merlin Plan; the breakup of the Federation was a fact that entered into the computation. Buildup of military strength to resist aggression by other planetary governments. Defense of the Gartner Trisystem. Lists of possible aggressor planets. Revival of interstellar communications and trade; expeditions, conquest and re-education of natives⁠ ⁠…

“We can’t begin to handle this without Merlin,” Conn said. “If that means blowing up the Federation, let it blow. We’ll start a new one here.”

“No; if there’s a general, violent collapse of the Federation, it’ll spread to Poictesme,” Shanlee told him. “Let’s ask Merlin the big question.”

Merlin took a good five minutes to work that one out. The question had to include a full description of Merlin, and a statement of the information which must be kept secret. The answer was even more lengthy, but it was summed up in the first word: Falsification.

“So Merlin’s got to be a liar, too, along with the rest of us!” Sylvie cried. “Conn, you’ve corrupted his morals!”

The rest of it was false data which must be taped in, and lists of corrections which must be made in evaluating any computation into which such data might enter. There was also a statement that, after fifty years, suppression of the truth and circulation of falsely optimistic statements about the Federation would no longer have any importance.

“Well, that’s it,” Conn said. “Merlin thought himself out of a death sentence.”

They crowded into the lift and went down to the office below. Everybody who knew what had been going on upstairs was there. Most of them were nursing drinks; almost everybody was smoking. All of them were silent, until Judge Ledue took his cigar from his mouth.

“Has the jury reached a verdict?” he asked, clinging with courtroom formality to his self-control.

“Yes, your Honor. We find the defendant, Merlin, not guilty as charged.”

In the uproar his words released, Rodney Maxwell got to his feet and came quickly to Conn.

“Flora called just a while ago. Your mother is conscious; she’s asking for us. Flora says she seems perfectly normal.”

“We’ll go right away; take a recon-car. General, will you explain things till I get back? Sylvie, do you want to come with us?”

XXII

It was autumn again, the second autumn since he had landed from the City of Asgard at Storisende and taken the Countess Dorothy home to Litchfield. Again the fields were bare and brown; all up and down the Gordon Valley the melons were harvested, and the wine-pressing was ready to start.

The house was crowded today. All top-level Litchfield seemed to have turned out, and there were guests from Storisende, and even a few who had made the trip from Koshchei to be there, Simon Macquarte, the president of Koshchei Tech; Conn would always remember him in the screen threatening a whole planet with devastation. Luther Chen-Wong, the chief executive of Koshchei Colony. Clyde Nichols, the president of Koshchei Airlines.

He almost bumped into Yves Jacquemont, coming in from the hall. Jacquemont’s beard had been trimmed down to a small imperial, and he was wearing the uniform of Trisystem & Interstellar Spacelines, nothing at all like a Federation Space Navy uniform. He was laughing about something; he threw an arm over Conn’s shoulder, and they went into the front parlor together.

“Oh, Gehenna of a big crop!” he heard Klem Zareff’s voice, chuckling happily, above the babble in the room. “You wouldn’t believe it. Why, we had to build six new vats⁠ ⁠…”

The thin-faced, white-haired man in the chair beside him said something. Mike Shanlee and Klem Zareff, old enemies, were now fast friends. Shanlee had come in from Force Command with Conn that morning. He had stayed on Poictesme as nominal head of Project Merlin, and intended to remain there for the rest of his life.

“Oh, there aren’t any more farm-tramps,” Zareff replied. “Everybody’s getting factory jobs off-planet. I have an awful time getting help, and what I can get won’t work for less than ten sols a day. Why, they’re even organizing a union⁠ ⁠…”

There were feminine shrieks from across the room, and a stampede. The housecleaning-robot had come in, running its vacuum-cleaning hose around and brandishing its mops. He saw his mother break away from a group of older ladies and shout:

“Oscar!”

The robot stopped dead. “Yash’m?” a voice came out of it, Sheshan-accented.

“Go out!” his mother commanded. “Go to kitchen. Stay there.”

“Yash’m.” The robot floated out the door to the hall.

His mother rejoined her friends. Probably telling them, for the thousandth time, that her boy Conn fixed up the sound receptors and voice for Oscar. Or harping on how Conn had been telling everybody the truth, all along, and people wouldn’t believe him.

Sylvie came up to him and caught his arm. “Come on, Conn; they’re going to start the rehearsal,” she said.

“They’ve been going to start it for an hour,” her father told her.

“Well, they’re really going to start it now.”

“All right. You two run along,” Yves Jacquemont said. “And you’d better start rehearsing for your own wedding before long. The Genji will be ready to hyper out in another month, and I don’t want to be at space when my only daughter gets married.”

They pushed through the crowd, dragging Conn’s mother