There was silence, but Burton knew that it would not last long. Not in this group.
“That,” Frigate said, “may be just what we need.”
“What?”
“An army. We can have the Computer make us an army of robots and androids. We’ll set it up so that the unknown, the Snark, let’s call him, can’t override our commands to the robots. We can set them to looking for the Snark and guarding us. We’ll also order them to seize or kill anyone who is not us. Non-us is the enemy. The robots and androids can do in a short time what would take us years.”
Burton stared at the American, then said, “You wrote that— what do you call it?—science fiction too long. It’s rotted your brain.”
“It’s within the capabilities of the tower,” Frigate said. “If we’re going to win, we have to think big. I know it sounds crazy, but we need an army, and we can get it. I’d say, oh, a force of about one hundred thousand.”
Some burst out laughing. Frigate grinned, but he said, “I’m serious.” He went to a console and punched out some numbers and an operation. Simple multiplication. The screen showed: 107,379.
“Three automaton soldiers to a room makes one hundred seven thousand, three hundred and seventy-nine. We could have a whole army in several days. The soldiers could watch every known room and keep an eye out for a stranger and also probe for hidden rooms.”
Nur, smiling, said, “I admire your creativity but not your lack of restraint or your contempt for realities.”
“What do you mean?” Frigate said. “Restraint is good only in situations that call for it. This doesn’t. As for realities, the army could be easily realized.”
Nur admitted that twice the number proposed could easily be raised. However, androids were not self-conscious and were not at all intelligent. Their actions had to be programmed. The army would have to be separated into small groups acting on their own. This required command levels of noncoms and officers, androids who could act on their own initiative when situations not in their programming arose. The leaders simply would not know what to do. For that matter, they would not even know that they had to do anything.
“Moreover,” Burton said, “there’s still that nagging worry. Can the unknown install in the robots and androids some sort of channel whereby he can override our commands?”
“He’s probably thinking about that right now,” Alice said. “If he’s watching us, he can anticipate anything we do.”
She shuddered.
“My answer to your objection,” Frigate said to Burton, “is that we could make some modifications in the neural systems of the androids. We could make them partly mechanical. By that, I mean that we could install mechanical devices in them. Say, something like a locker or safe combination that would set our commands mechanically but that would then transmit them electrically.
“We would set the combinations after we’d received the basic device from the Computer. That way, neither the Computer nor the Snark could control what we did. And … oh, hell! The Snark could still put a neuron complex in the android that would tell it to override the combination command by radio or whatever.”
“The hard facts,” Nur said, “are that we are in the power of this Snark. He does not have to attack us. All he has to do is shut off our power, and we’ll starve to death. If he intended to do that, he could have done so. He has not done so, therefore, we can assume that he isn’t going to. He has set certain limits to our use of the Computer but allowed us considerable powers. There are certain things he doesn’t want us to have. Otherwise, he just doesn’t care. He’s ignoring us.”
“The question, one of the questions, is why?”
“We can’t answer that. He’ll have to, if he ever does,” Frigate said.
“Right,” Nur said. “Now, while you were all sleeping, I had the Computer locate the secret entrance that Loga arranged long ago. The entrance we used to get into the tower after we’d crossed the mountains and taken that boat to the base of the tower. I tried to get the Computer to open that. It seemed to me that perhaps the unknown might be wanting us to leave the tower and return to The Valley. He did not wish us to use the aircraft for obvious reasons.