Heinlein, Robert A – Friday

I programmed the machine to display how the directorates interlocked inside the Shipstone complex, and then what directorships in other companies were held by directors of Shipstone companiesÄand the results were so startling that I asked the computer to list stock ownership of one percent or more of the voting stock in all Shipstone companies.

I spent the next three days fiddling with and rearranging and looking forbetter ways to display the great mass of data that came back in answer to those two questions.

At the end of that time I wrote out my conclusions:

a) The Shipstone complex is all one company. It just looks like twenty-eight separate organizations.

b) The directors and/or stockholders of the Shipstone complex own or control everything of major importance in all the major territorial nations in the solar system.

c) Shipstone is potentially a planetwide (systemwide?) government. I could not tell from the data whether it acted as such or not as control (if indeed it were exerted) would be through corporations not overtly part of the Shipstone empire.

d) It scared me.

Something I had noticed in connection with one Shipstone company (Morgan Associates) caused me to run a search on credit companies and banks. I was unsurprised but depressed to learn that the

very company now extending me credit (MasterCard of California) was in effect the same company as the one guaranteeing payment (Ceres and South Africa Acceptances) and that was duplicated right down the line, whether it was Maple Leaf, Visa, Credit Qu‚bec, or what. That is not news; fiscal theorists have been asserting that as long as I can remember. But it struck home when I saw it spelled out in terms of directorates interlocking and ownership shared.

On impulse I suddenly asked the computer: “Who owns you?”

I got back: “Null Program.”

I rephrased it, conforming most carefully to its language. The computer represented by this terminal was a most forgiving machine and very smart; ordinarily it did not mind somewhat informal programming. But there are limits to what one may expect in machine understanding of verbal language; a reflexive question such as this might call for semantic exactness.

Again: “Null Program.”

I decided to sneak up on the idea. I asked it the following question, doing it step by step exactly in accordance with this computer’s language, computer grammar, computer protocol: “What is the ownership of the information-processing network that has terminals throughout British Canada?”

The answer was displayed and flashed several times before wipingÄand it wiped without my order: “Requested data are not in my membanks.”

That scared me. I knocked off for the day and went swimming and sought out a friend to share a bed with me that night, not waiting to be asked. I wasn’t superhorny, I was superlonely and dern well wanted a warm living body close to mine to “protect” me from an intelligent machine that refused to tell me who (what) it really was.

During breakfast next morning Boss sent word to me to see him at ten hundred. I reported, somewhat mystified because in my opinion there had not been nearly enough time for me to complete my two assignments: Shipstone, and the marks of a sick culture.

But when I came in, he handed me a letter, of the old-fashioned sort, sealed into an envelope and physically forwarded, just like junk mail.

I recognized it, for I had sent itÄto Janet and Ian. But I was surprised to see it in Boss’s hands, as the return address on it was phony. I looked and saw that it had been readdressed to a law firm in San Jose, the one that had been my contact to find Boss. “Pixies.”

“You can hand it back to me and I will send it to Captain Tormey when I know where he is.”

“Uh, when you know where the Tormeys are, I will write a very different letter. This one is sort of blind.”

“Commendably so.”

“You’ve read it?” (Damn it, Boss!)

“I read everything that is to be forwarded to Captain and Mrs. TormeyÄand Dr. Perreault. By their request.”

“I see.” (Nobody tells me a damn thing!) “I wrote the way I did, phony name and all, because the Winnipeg police might open it.”