Conroy glanced at Flamen. “How do you feel about that?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Flamen admitted. “It looks as though the dispute is polarizing along regular conlines, and certainly Anthony Gottschalk is right in there with Vyacheslav and the other disafpollies.”
“Why should Marcantonio forbid its introduction?” Conroy demanded.
“Two explanations. In his own view, because it would satch the market. In the view of Anthony Gottschalk, because he is old-fashioned in his thinking.”
“Which of these views do you incline to?”
“At temporal locus 2014, the latter; at temporal locus 2113, the former-which is why I am deliberately alterthe coarse of past events.”
“Twenty-one thirteen?” Diablo said. “Oh, he is out of his skull!” He jumped up angrily. “Dr. Reedeth, what made you think this man was fit for release from the hospital?”
“Freeze it!” Conroy barked at him. “What the hell do you think will happen if the Gottschalks start supplying the knee enclaves with equipment powerful enough for one man to raze a city? Come on-let’s hear from you!”
Diablo bit his lip. He said defensively, “It’s ridicuanyway. You can’t answer a question like that”
“Hell, man! Don’t you know your own history? Don’t you keep in touch with advances in technology? It’s been possible for one man to raze a city for-oh-sixty years at least. Way back in the fifties of last century there were aircraft equipped with as many as five kiloton nuclear bombs, under the control of a single pilot. They cost millions, but refinements in design could tend towards greater availability. If you were an Aerospace Force pilot you’d be able to take out not just one city but half a continent. True or false?”
“Well, yes, but the Gottschalks-”
“The Gottschalks aren’t government contractors, they’re catering for the domestic market. So what? Right this minute, if your credit rating is good, you can walk down the street to an arms store and buy a bandolier of micronukes, and those would be enough to clear the average city block. We’ve just been lucky so far that not many people can afford to lay out sixty thousand tea-leaves for the privilege of killing their neighbors. Imyour production methods, cut your costs, and you can make this available to anyone in the middle income grades. Lovely! Especially if your customers have had it dinned into them that the local knee enclave already has this particular goody in its armory. Don’t bother to argue-you know that’s how it’s worked.”
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 interwith 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 subjecexperience 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 govthe 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 relthe 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-“