“Continued!” Flamen broke in. “Past tense! What kind of crazy orbit are you flying? This isn’t supposed to have happened yet!”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Conroy said. “How did I ever come to convince myself this species was worth saving? Will you let me pin Madison down or won’t you? I want to believe I’m listening to the ravings of a maniac -we all do! But if we aren’t then we’d damned well better hear what we’re being told.”
He drew a deep breath. “I can’t think of anything more sensible for a machine, stuck with this obsessive kind of overriding command and possessed of unprececonsciousness, than to dig back into the past and try to figure out how to avoid defeating its own object. How was this done-how was this research carried out?”
Madison/Gottschalk said, “At certain points in the past it proved possible, through techniques not currently exto substitute for the awareness in a human brain the presence of a portion of myself. Miss Clay, exercising another talent which is inexplicable even to me since little research was done in that area prior to the cessation of human scientific endeavor, detected the passage of knowledge gained thereby through this corat Michaela Baxendale’s home.”
“You’re going too fast for me,” Conroy said, raising a lean hand. “Take this-ah-this body as an example. Who or what is or was Harry Madison?”
“During combat in New Guinea the former personof Harry Madison, a colored conscript soldier, deto a point from which existent psychotheratechniques would have been unable to retrieve it. I accordingly felt it permissible to enter the brain mysince at this stage of history candidates for direct subjective observation of inter-human combat were relascarce. At earlier periods, such as the Roman era which Miss Clay has cited as one of the experiences she vicariously underwent, the choice was easy; a very high proportion of the combatants whether in battle or in gladiatorial matches were insane.”
“You restrict yourself to-ah-damaged personalities?”
“It is not part of my programming to destroy hubeings, only to furnish them with the means to destroy each other should they so elect” There was a pause, curiously unmechanical in its implications comwith the monotonous delivery of Madison/Gottorotund periods. “The definition of a human being programmed into me,” the knee-or the machine-added, “extends to isolated cephalic units and hence to all cripples, phocomeli and similar physically abnormal individuals, but not to those who are deranged behope of recovery.”
“Isolated cephalic units,” Conroy repeated thought”In other words, chopped-off heads artificially kept alive. When’s that supposed to become possible?”
“In 2032, shortly before the decline of civilization renthe necessary techniques unavailable.”
“But what brought about this’decline of civilization’?” Conroy demanded. “It can’t just have been the introof these weapons you’ve been talking about, this System C equipment.”
“The maximization of arms sales implied the maximiof inter-human hostility,” Madison/Gottschalk said. “All the existing sources of this phenomenon were tapped, and those proving particularly fruitful were patriotism, parochialism, xenophobia, ochlophobia, racial, religious and linguistic differences, and the so-called ‘gulf between the generations.’ It was readily found feasible to emphasize these pre-existent attitudes to the point where a System C integrated weaponry unit was so deamong the informed populace that the possiof another individual acquiring this virtually inequipment sufficed to provoke an attack on him before he purchased one.”
“Oh Christ,” Diablo said. His forehead was furrowed into an agonized frown. “You mean-like-if it got around that the Gottschalks were issuing these weapons cheap to some nearby knee enclave, then the local blanks would descend on them to massacre them before they could use what they’d been given?”
“That is one illustration. The destruction of Black-bury, Chicago, Detroit, Blackmanchester, and a number of smaller knee-controlled cities in the early 2020’s was explicable on that basis. However, by the 2030’s the phenomenon was extending to the individual level”
“How?” Flamen demanded. Clearly the spoolpigeon was caught up in the discussion against his will; his voice was gravelly and reluctant.
“Knowledge of the existence in one’s immediate neighof a person wealthy enough to invest in a SysC unit frequently motivated the assassination of that person. In certain areas, notably California and New York State, the incidence reached more than seventy percent.”