Morrissey had been experimentally changing the view on the screen, and now cleared his throat. “While you theoreticians have been groping for conclusions by pure deduction, I’ve got hold of some facts. Take a look at this.”
Roberts and Hammell glanced at the screen, to see a tall gray-haired man wearing dark-blue clothing of good material and narrow cut, who was standing before a wall-size screen showing a roughly rectangular section of fortified city, with square bastions at the corners.
Beside him stood a burly giant with bristling red beard, who said angrily, “Damn it, Kelty, they’ll tunnel. Right this minute, a dozen teams of shovel-gangs are digging under your fortified line.”
Hammell stared at the red-bearded giant. “That’s one of the technicians!”
Roberts ran his hand over his face. The last time they’d been here, Kelty, second-in-command of the city’s huge police force, had told Roberts that the bulk of the technicians had left the city. Moreover, Kelty said, there was an implacable enmity between the bulk of the technicians and the computer, and hence no chance of the technicians returning to the city. So, how—
From somewhere in the ship came an odd creaking gritting noise, but Roberts was too preoccupied to pay any attention to it.
Morrissey said, “I suppose if anything could make that planetary computer give concessions to get the technicians back, this is it.”
On the spy screen, Kelty was now saying, ” . . . Very true. Right this minute, they’re tunneling. But eventually, they’ll have to come up, or come out in another tunnel that we control. And when they do—”
“No, they won’t have to come out. That’s the point. They can dig from that fortified line of yours, right under one of the power mains, all the way to Center, and with a little luck they can then blow the computer itself right off the map.”
“If,” said Kelty, “they don’t lose their following first.”
“How?”
“This tunnel will take a long time to dig. A lot of food will be consumed in that time. They don’t have it to consume. The stores outside the line have only so much, and no more is going to them. Without food, the fanatics will lose their grip on the populace. They’ll be forced to give up.”
The red-bearded giant shook his head. “Maybe we can starve the other eighty or ninety percent of the populace into submission, but not that crew. They’re a bunch of fanatics, led by a fanatic to end all fanatics. They’ll dig till they don’t have the strength to lift a pick. And all they need to do to maintain their strength is to take the lion’s share of the food for themselves.”
“The point,” said Kelty, “is in this other eighty or ninety percent of the populace you speak of. What will they do when they don’t get food!”
The giant snorted. “Raid the remaining food stores, steal from each other, run around screaming till they’re out of strength. Don’t kid yourself that they’ll attack the fanatics’ Leader. He’s got ninety percent of the men with weapons. The best the rest of them will do is to knock off a few stragglers and isolated guards here and there to relieve their feelings. Meanwhile, the fanatics and their work-gangs will tunnel. When the computer blows up, you and I and the rest of us will have no choice but to get out somewhere beyond the forest, and I can tell you from experience that that’s no fun. But it’s better than starving, which is what will happen to us if we’re back here once the computer is gone.”
Kelty’s face had the look of a man forcing himself to consider unwelcome facts. He turned away, then suddenly turned back again.
“What’s your idea?”
“We’re producing some items of machinery I haven’t mentioned before.”
“Namely?”
“I’ve got three oversize trenchers in process, and the largest is almost finished. These are step-trenchers. The first makes a trench big enough for a canal. The second rides in the bottom of that and sends its dirt up on a conveyer. The third rides in the bottom of that trench and makes a deep cleft like a glacial crevasse. Let the fanatics try to tunnel across that. For good insurance, we can drop projectors of some good heavy gas in there, and when their tunnel comes through the wall of the trench down below, the gas will go to work on them.”
Kelty looked horrified. “That’s too hor . . .”
“It will work.”
Kelty shook his head. “A trench like that would cut every power and water main from Center out.”
“We can stop the flow from the cut mains. We’ve . . .”
“I don’t mean that. This will cut off their water supply.”
“Let it. We’ll still be alive afterward, and we’ll have the wherewithal to put the whole place back together again.
“Do you have some way to put millions of dead men back together? The minute you cut those mains, you sign the death-warrant for three-quarters of the human population of this planet.”
“The minute you let the Great Leader blow up the computer, you sign the death-warrant for ninety-nine percent of the human population of this planet.”
Kelty hesitated. “Suppose we cut off the water in the mains from here? Just shut the main valves?”
“Now you’re grasping at straws. Their leader thought of that before we did. He’s already got gangs of men doing nothing but carrying up buckets and cans filled with water. A deep trench is what we need, to cut their tunnels. Shutting off the water from here won’t do it.”
Kelty shook his head wearily. “These trenches of yours will cut through the mains. Won’t they break down?”
“They’ll chew right through them. That part’s no problem. What we need is your approval, so we don’t waste any time. When you’re dealing with fanatics, you can’t afford to give them any advantage, and we don’t want them to get a minute’s lead on us.”
“But it’s my job in a situation like this to restore order with a minimum loss of life.”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You spend a winter out with us in that forest, and you’ll run into situations that make this seem easy by contrast. All you have to do is stop those fanatics, and the best-skilled, most cooperative section of the populace lives. This is horrible in its way”—the giant shrugged—”but what do you expect? This way, you get to save the sources of power, the skills, and the organization, to hold back what you might call the wild forces of this planet. Do you know what it’s like to fight the elements and the beasts and insects of this so-called Paradise with no technology? That’s the problem, Kelty. To save humanity plus technology.”
Kelty, his face pale and shaken, said, “How long before this first big trencher of yours is ready?”
“Not long. About three hours.”
“I’ll think it over.”
“The sooner we get started with it, the better.”
“All right. I’ll think it over.”
* * *
Roberts glanced at Morrissey. “Is there any way we can possibly find the chief fanatic they call the Great Leader?”
Morrissey shook his head. “So far as I can see, only by pure luck. He’s almost sure to be in one of those tunnels, and since the city’s surveillance system doesn’t cover the tunnels, the screen won’t either. How do we find him?”
“Yes. That’s no solution.”
From somewhere in the ship came a creaking noise that momentarily caught Roberts’ attention, but then he saw what was happening on the screen. The red-bearded technician had left the room, and Kelty had crossed to a kind of typewriter keyboard set out from the wall. His hands flashed over it in a blur. After only a moment’s delay, the wall lit up in several lines of green letters:
PLAN FEASIBLE
LONG-RANGE COST ACCEPTABLE.
PLAN IS APPROVED.
Now that it was too late, it suddenly came to Roberts that the crisis might have been delayed by using the want-generator on Kelty. But now the computer had accepted the plan, and the want-generator could no more influence the computer than a bee could intimidate a sledgehammer.
Hammell said, “Wait—Why not hit the whole city with an overpowering jolt of ‘desire for peace’? Just pour it on, and end this!”
Morrissey’s face cleared. “Why didn’t we think of that sooner?” He set up “desire for peace” on the want-generator, and turned it on.
Roberts, Hammell, and Morrissey waited tensely to see what would happen.
Somewhere, there was a grinding crunching nose.
Roberts looked around curiously, then a flash of movement on the screen caught his attention.
A number of hard-looking individuals were walking out of doorways and climbing out of trenches in the garbage dumps. They tossed their guns aside, and waving their hands over their head, shouted “Let’s be friends!” and walked out toward the burnt bare no-man’s-land and its wire barrier.