Burton paced for a few minutes while he thought of how he could solve the problem of Loga. He had to be kept alive. The moment he was dead, he would undoubtedly be resurrected in a hidden chamber. That would mean finit for the four tenants because Loga had prime control of the Computer. If he were put in a cryogenics cylinder, he would be dead as far as the wathan was concerned, and he would be resurrected in a secret room in the tower. Should he be awake but imprisoned, he could kill himself no matter what security arrangements his captors took. Even if the tiny black ball in his brain, the ball that could release a deadly poison with one mentally projected codeword, were surgically removed, Loga could swallow his tongue and choke to death. The tongue could be cut out, but Burton was not -tough enough to do that no matter how desperate he was.
It was possible to keep Loga drugged. Burton, however, doubted that the Ethical could survive thirty-three years in that state. It was useless to ask the Computer to display Loga’s memory so that Burton could locate Loga’s hidden-body recordings. The Computer would have orders from Loga not to reveal these.
Burton stopped, and he smiled. There was a way out.
Working out the plan took two days, since he had to be very careful. One mistake, and Loga might win out after all.
He ordered the Computer to make a modified android that looked exactly like Loga and had a voice exactly like his. Inside the skin, the android matched Loga except for the brain structure, which was much simpler than Loga’s. If the android had been a one hundred percent duplicate, it would, in many respects, have been the Ethical and would have behaved as he would. The only difference, and it was a great difference, was that the android would have lacked self-consciousness.
Burton verbally programmed it in the speech of the Ethicals and then had it transmit his orders to the Computer. The Computer matched the voiceprints, electric skin field, face and body shape, skin, hair and eye color, ear shape, and the chemical composition of the odors of perspiration with Loga’s prints. It also scanned the finger, palm and foot prints.
Unfortunately, despite everything else, the Computer refused to obey the android unless the proper codeword was given.
“That’s very frustrating,” Burton told the others. “One word or perhaps a phrase is all that’s blocking it. It might as well be a million words.”
No one said anything; all looked gloomy. Even Li Po was silent for once.
After two minutes, Alice, who had been frowning and biting her lip, said, “I know that none of you believe in feminine intuition. I don’t either, not as it’s usually defined. I think it’s a form of logic that doesn’t follow the rules of logic, Aristotelian or symbolic. I don’t think that feminine intuition, call it that or something else, is confined to women. Oh, what am I talking about?”
“Yes, what are you talking about?” Burton said.
“It’s such a silly idea, so wild. I’d be making an utter ass of myself!”
“Anything will be appreciated,” Burton said. “I promise not to laugh.”
“None of us will,” Frigate said. “Anyway, what’s the difference if we do?”
“It’s just that there’s no rhyme or reason to it,” she said. “Well, perhaps there is some reason to it. Loga is such a trickster, and he does like to play games, rather childish, I think, but there it is.”
“There is what?” Burton said.
“It’s such an improbability. The odds against it are fantastically high. But … I don’t know. It couldn’t hurt to try. It wouldn’t take much time.”
“For God’s sake, what?” Burton said.
“Well, do you remember what Loga cried out just before he cracked? Seemed to crack, I mean.”
“I tsab u,’ ” Burton said. “Ethical for ‘Who are you?’ “
“Yes. Could Loga have been giving us a clue, the real codephrase? He would have been very amused doing that because there was no chance that we would ever use it. We just simply could not ever find out that it was the open-sesame, the most important identification. Yet he couldn’t resist saying it. We’d think that he was addressing the person who had killed him, a person we now know didn’t exist. And at the same time …”
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