Conroy deliberately turned his back on Diablo and addressed Madison/Gottschalk again.
"I was about to ask when I was interrupted: what has the 'temporal locus' of 2113 to do with all this?"
"Being self-powered, virtually immune from attack and designed for exceptional durability, I survived the disintegration of human civilization in the middle of the twenty-first century and continued to pursue my built-in directives, according precedence to the element of sales maximization rather than R&D or production of weaponry, and ultimately concluded after an exhaustive study of human combativeness that only direct interference with the recorded course of events would lead to continuance of sales. In November 2113 the decision was taken to employ techniques developed for purposes of supplementing my stored data with human subjective experience in order to provoke such incalculable changes. Hence this conversation."
"So that's why you know so much about killing!" Lyla exclaimed. Conroy glanced at her.
"What do you mean?"
The pythoness leaned forward excitedly. "At Mikki Baxendale's! I
told
you I was getting something from him. Professor, I believe all this—I have to believe it 'I met a man with seven brains!' "
"Correct," Madison/Gottschalk said in a rather bored tone. "The influence of the drugs led to an unpredictable surge through the cortex of this body of a quantity of stored data from various historical periods which I had investigated in the hope of determining the factors governing the desire of any given individual to purchase and employ a deadly weapon."
"Lunacy!" Reedeth said. He glanced at Flamen, who gave a vigorous nod of agreement.
"For heaven's sake stop shutting your minds," Conroy said wearily. "I'm getting downright ashamed of you, Jim. You damned well ought to know that when facts don't fit the theory you change the theory. I think this hangs together so far. I'm simply hoping that it'll stop hanging together pretty soon, because I don't much relish the prospect of civilization collapsing. Even though I doubt if I'll be around to see it As I understand it, having been left without buyers for its products owing to the failure of organized human society, this machine continued to function under orders—"
"Continued!" Flamen broke in. "Past tense! What kind of crazy orbit are you flying? This isn't supposed to have happened yet!"
"Oh, for God's sake," Conroy said. "How did I ever come to convince myself this species was worth saving? Will you let me pin Madison down or won't you? I want to believe I'm listening to the ravings of a maniac -we all do! But if we aren't then we'd damned well better hear what we're being told."
He drew a deep breath. "I can't think of anything more sensible for a machine, stuck with this obsessive kind of overriding command and possessed of unprecedented consciousness, than to dig back into the past and try to figure out how to avoid defeating its own object. How was this done—how was this research carried out?"
Madison/Gottschalk said, "At certain points in the past it proved possible, through techniques not currently explicable, to substitute for the awareness in a human brain the presence of a portion of myself. Miss Clay, exercising another talent which is inexplicable even to me since little research was done in that area prior to the cessation of human scientific endeavor, detected the passage of knowledge gained thereby through this cortex at Michaela Baxendale's home."
"You're going too fast for me," Conroy said, raising a lean hand. "Take this—ah—this
body
as an example. Who or what is or was Harry Madison?"
"During combat in New Guinea the former personality of Harry Madison, a colored conscript soldier, deteriorated to a point from which existent psychotherapeutic techniques would have been unable to retrieve it. I accordingly felt it permissible to enter the brain myself, since at this stage of history candidates for direct subjective observation of inter-human combat were relatively scarce. At earlier periods, such as the Roman era which Miss Clay has cited as one of the experiences she vicariously underwent, the choice was easy; a very high proportion of the combatants whether in battle or in gladiatorial matches were insane."
"You restrict yourself to—ah—damaged personalities?"
"It is not part of my programming to destroy human beings, only to furnish them with the means to destroy each other should they so elect" There was a pause, curiously unmechanical in its implications compared with the monotonous delivery of Madison/Gottschalk's orotund periods. "The definition of a human being programmed into me," the knee—or the machine-added, "extends to isolated cephalic units and hence to all cripples, phocomeli and similar physically abnormal individuals, but not to those who are deranged beyond hope of recovery."
"Isolated cephalic units," Conroy repeated thoughtfully. "In other words, chopped-off heads artificially kept alive. When's that supposed to become possible?"
"In 2032, shortly before the decline of civilization rendered the necessary techniques unavailable."
"But what brought about this 'decline of civilization'?" Conroy demanded. "It can't just have been the introduction of these weapons you've been talking about, this System C equipment."
"The maximization of arms sales implied the maximization of inter-human hostility," Madison/Gottschalk said. "All the existing sources of this phenomenon were tapped, and those proving particularly fruitful were patriotism, parochialism, xenophobia, ochlophobia, racial, religious and linguistic differences, and the so-called 'gulf between the generations.' It was readily found feasible to emphasize these pre-existent attitudes to the point where a System C integrated weaponry unit was so desirable among the informed populace that the possibility of another individual acquiring this virtually indestructible equipment sufficed to provoke an attack on him
before
he purchased one."
"Oh Christ," Diablo said. His forehead was furrowed into an agonized frown. "You mean—like—if it got around that the Gottschalks were issuing these weapons cheap to some nearby knee enclave, then the local blanks would descend on them to massacre them before they could use what they'd been given?"
"That is one illustration. The destruction of Black-bury, Chicago, Detroit, Blackmanchester, and a number of smaller knee-controlled cities in the early 2020's was explicable on that basis. However, by the 2030's the phenomenon was extending to the individual level"
"How?" Flamen demanded. Clearly the spoolpigeon was caught up in the discussion against his will; his voice was gravelly and reluctant.
"Knowledge of the existence in one's immediate neighborhood of a person wealthy enough to invest in a System C unit frequently motivated the assassination of that person. In certain areas, notably California and New York State, the incidence reached more than seventy percent."
"You mean seventy percent of the wealthy people who got killed were killed because their neighbors were afraid of them buying these weapons?" Conroy demanded.
"No. Seventy percent of the persons wealthy enough to purchase the weaponry were killed before they could do so."
There was a terrible dead silence in which the faint, faint humming of the surrounding computers was like the tolling of a funeral bell.
"How—much?" The words were squeezed out of Flamen like juice from an orange.
"Initially, one hundred thousand dollars. Inflation raised this until the Mark V and final was priced at $155,000."
Once more there was a pause. Once more Lyla broke it, as though she were shy about speaking unless it was clear no one else was eager to do so.
"But I don't see what we're expected to do," she said. "It's worse to
know
that something horrible is going to happen. I mean, obviously it could. Everybody's putting up the barricades—when you and I went out the other night just to try and get something to eat . . ." The sentence faltered and died.
"I can see several things worth trying," Conroy said. "For example, the Flamen show on Monday could carry precise details of the proposed System C weaponry, right down to the market price, and if I have any insight at all into how the minds of the Gottschalks work that's going to cause a hell of a lot of Anthony's supporters to switch sides on the grounds that if he can't keep a secret he's not fit to be the leader. How about it, Flamen?"
The spoolpigeon was framing an answer which, by the set of his face, was meant to be scornful, when the comweb buzzed and a voice said, "Able Baker override—he
must
be there."
"What the hell?" Flamen spun on his heel to face the camera. "Who in the world can be trying to reach me here on a weekend?"
In the screen, Prior's face took form, displaying relief. "Thank heaven I found you, Matthew!" he blurted. "I've been hunting for you everywhere—at home, at the Ginsberg, at the hotel where you booked Conroy . . ." Eyes darting past Flamen, he took in the others who were present, and his tone changed.
"What on earth are you up to? Oh, never mind, it can't be this important. Matthew, we've been put out of business!"
"What?"
"I just had a call from Eugene Voigt You know the PCC always monitor out-of-hours dealings in communications stock in case someone tries to pull a fast one. Well, somebody has, and of all people it's the Gottschalks. About forty minutes ago they registered the fifty-one percent holding in Holocosmic—apparently they've been buying off everyone who could be reached at nearly double the market price—and their
first
decision now that they control the network is to discontinue the Matthew Flamen show."
"But I have a contract!"
"Lump sum in lieu of salary plus compensation for probable loss of renewal. Voigt said his computers estimate a shade under two million. Advises us to lie down under it because they could get away with half a million less."
"What the hell are they going to put in my slot, then?"
Prior shrugged. "Who cares? Catch
them
being hauled into court for exceeding the PCC's advertising limit!"
"They can't do this to ..." Foolishly, Flamen let his hands drop to his sides. They could indeed do this to him, and it was no use trying to get away from it. He settled for:
"Why
should they want to do this to me?"
"To prevent premature release of details concerning System C integrated weaponry," Madison/Gottschalk said. "I recall issuing this recommendation." He fell silent, scowling dreadfully.
Prior blinked at his image, bewildered, but clung to his theme. "Matthew, have you been overreaching yourself? Have you set something up about the Gottschalks?"
"I ..." Flamen shook his head. "I don't know. I lost track." He hesitated.
"What am I going to
do?"
he burst out
"There's a pythoness here who's short of a mackero," Conroy said with a shrug. "Oh, for God's sake, man! Can't you think of anyone but yourself right now? For me this is the clincher; I'll go right along with Madison's crazy story until I'm forced to disbelieve it. This whole damned species of ours is out of its collective skull already, so why—?"
Behind Prior in the screen, a new face appeared, peering over his shoulder: Celia's.
"Why, you're calling Matthew," she said brightly. She seemed to have shed most of the dulling effect of the drugs she had been pumped full of in the Ginsberg, and was almost vivacious again. "And that's his office. Hmm! It must be something important for him to be working on a Saturday afternoon. Hello, Matthew!"
"Freeze it!" Flamen barked. "I'm not in a sociable mood. Apparently I just lost my job."
"What? But how could you? I thought your contract still—"
"Lionel says the Gottschalks bought out Holocosmic, and it looks as though it was specifically to get rid of my show."
"But that's awful," Celia said slowly. "I mean, I know how important your work is to you. It even made you neglect me, didn't it?"
"Now if you're going to start a domestic wrangle you can—"
"No, no, of course not," Celia interrupted soothingly. "I'm not blaming you, it's just the way you are. I suppose I do resent it, sort of subconsciously, because a woman likes to be wooed and pampered, but it's not a rational reaction and after all you have been doing some wonderful work with your show all these years." She sounded perfectly sincere, although Flamen's reaction was to look suspicious. "Isn't there something you can do about it, like sue them for breach of contract?"
"They're going to offer compensation," Prior said before Flamen could answer. "Celia darl, go away, will you? We have troubles!"
"Yes. Yes, of course." Her pretty face set in a sympathetic frown, she withdrew from camera range.
"Now where were we?" Prior said in an annoyed tone. "Oh yes: Matthew, I was asking whether you'd done something to alarm the Gottschalks and if so whether you—"
He was cut short by an exclamation from Diablo, who had jumped to his feet and thrust out an arm towards Madison.
"What's wrong with him all of a sudden?" he cried.
All heads turned. Madison had slumped in his chair, and his formerly stem face had taken on an idiot slackness, the lips so loose that a trace of drool was glistening on his chin. After a moment he picked up his left hand in his right and examined it curiously, seeming to count the fingers. When Conroy spoke to him, his only reaction was a bland foolish smile.