without damage?”
“It does not reach the brain, Master. We convert it. Each minute of this is what you
would call a ‘good, square meal’.” “I see . . . dimly. You can eat energy, or drink it, or
soak it up through your skins. However it comes, it’s all duck soup for you.”
“Yes, Master.”
Hilton glanced ahead, toward the far end of the immensely long, comparatively narrow,
room. It was, purely and simply, an assembly line; and fully automated in operation.
“You are replacing the Omans destroyed in the battle with the skeletons?”
“Yes, Master.”
Hilton covered the first half of the line at a fast walk. He was not particularly interested
in the fabrication of superstainless-steel skeletons, nor in the installation and
connection of atomic engines, converters and so on.
He was more interested in the synthetic fluoro-silicon flesh, and paused long enough to
get a general idea of its growth and application. He was very much interested in how
such human-looking skin could act as both absorber and converter, but he could see
nothing helpful.
“An application, I suppose, of the same principle used in this radiation suit.”
“Yes, Master.”
At the end of the line he stopped. A brain, in place and connected to millions of
infinitely fine wire nerves, but not yet surrounded by a skull, was being educated.
Scanners multitudes of incomprehensibly complex machines–most of them were, doing
nothing, apparently; but such beams would have to be invisibly, microscopically fine.
But a bare brain, in such a hot environment as this . . .
He looked down at his gauges. Both read zero. “Fields of force, Master,” Laro said.
“But, damn it, this suit itself would re-radiate . “The suit is self-decontaminating,
Master.”
Hilton was appalled. “With such stuff as that, and the plastic shield besides, why all the
depth and all that solid lead?” “The Masters’ orders, Master. Machines can, and
occasionally do, fail. So might, conceivably, the plastic.”
“And that structure over there contains the original brain, from which all the copies are
made.”
“Yes, Master. We call it the ‘Guide’.”
“And you can’t touch the Guide. Not even if it means total destruction, none of you can
touch it.”
“That is the case, Master.”
“Okay. Back to the car and back to the Perseus.”
At the car Hilton took off the suit and hung the thought screen generator around his
neck; and in the car, for twentyfive solid minutes, he sat still and thought.
His bluff had worked, up to a point. A good, far point, but not quite far enough. Laro
had stopped that “as you already know” stuff. He was eager to go as far in cooperation
as he possibly could . . . he couldn’t go far enough but there had to be a way . . .
Hilton considered way after way. Way after unworkable, useless way. Until finally he
worked out one that might-just possibly might-work.
“Laro, I know that you derive pleasure and satisfaction from serving me-in doing what I
ought to be doing myself. But has it ever occurred to you that that’s a hell of a way to
treat a first-class, highly capable brain? To waste it on secondhand, copy-cat,
carbon-copy stuff?”
“Why, no, Master, it never did. Besides, anything else would be forbidden . . . or would
it?”
“Stop somewhere. Park this heap. We’re too close to the ship; and besides, I want your
full, undivided, concentrated attention. No, I don’t think originality was expressly forbid-
den. It would have been, of course, if the Masters had thought of it, but neither they nor
you ever even considered the possibility of such a thing. Right?”
“It may be . .. . Yes, Master, you are right.”
“Okay.” Hilton took off his necklace, the better to drive home the intensity and sincerity
of his thought. “Now, suppose that you are not my slave and simple automatic relay
station. Instead, we are fellow-students, working together upon problems too difficult for
either of us to solve alone. Our minds, while independent, are linked or in mesh. Each
is helping and instructing the other. Both are working at full power and under free rein at
the exploration of brand-new vistas of thought-vistas and expanses which neither of us
has ever previously . . .”
“Stop, Master, stop!” Laro covered both ears with his hands and pulled his mind away
from Hilton’s. “You are overloading me!”
“That is quite a load to assimilate all at once,” Hilton agreed. “To help you get used to
it, stop calling me ‘Master.’ That’s an order. You may call me Jarve or Jarvis or Hilton or
whatever, but no more Master.” “Very well, sir.”
Hilton laughed and slapped himself on the knee. “Okay, I’ll let you get away with that-at
least for a while. And to get away from that slavish ‘o’ ending on your name, I’ll call you
‘Larry.’ You like?”
“I would like that immensely . . . sir.”
“Keep trying, Larry, you’ll make it yet!” Hilton leaned forward and walloped the android
a tremendous blow on the knee. “Home, James!”
The car shot forward and Hilton went on: “I don’t expect even your brain to get the full
value of this in any short space of time. So let it stew in its own juice for a week or two.”
The car swept out onto the dock and stopped. “So long, Larry.”
“But . . . can’t I come in with you . . . sir?”
“No. You aren’t a copy-cat or a semaphore or a relay any longer. You’re a
free-wheeling, wide-swinging, hard-hitting, independent entity-monarch of all you
survey-captain of your soul and so on. I want you to devote the imponderable . force of
the intellect to that concept until you understand it thoroughly. Until you have developed
a top-bracket lot of top bracket stuff-originality, initiative, force, drive and thrust. As soon
as you really understand it, you’ll do something about it yourself, without being told. Go
to it, chum.”
In the ship, Hilton went directly to Kincaid’s office. “Alex, I want to ask you a thing that’s
got a snapper on it.” Then, slowly and hesitantly: “It’s about Temple Bells. Has she . . .
is she . . . well, does she remind you in any way of an iceberg?” Then, as the
psychologist began to smile, “And no, damn it, I don’t mean physically!”
“I know you don’t.” Kincaid’s smile was rueful, not at all what Hilton had thought it was
going to be. “She does. Would it be helpful to know that I first asked, then ordered her
to trade places with me?”
“It would, very. I know why she refused. You’re a damned good man, Alex.”
“Thanks, Jarve. To answer the question you were going to ask next-no, I will not be at
all perturbed or put out if you put her onto a job that some people might think should
have been mine. What’s the job, and when?”
“That’s the devil of it-I don’t know.” Hilton brought Kincaid up to date. “So you see, it’ll
have to develop, and God only knows what line it will take. My thought is that Temple
and I should form a Committee of Two to watch it develop.” “That one I’ll buy, and I’ll
look on with glee.”
“Thanks, fellow.” Hilton went down to his office, stuck his big feet up onto his desk,
settled back onto his spine, and buried himself in thought.
Hours later he got up, shrugged and went to bed without bothering to eat.
Days passed. And weeks.
Chapter 4
“Look,” said Stella Wing to Beverly Bell. “Over there.” “I’ve seen it before. It’s simply
disgusting.”
“That’s a laugh.” Stella’s tawny-brown eyes twinkled. “You made your bombing runs on
that target, too, my sweet, and didn’t score any higher than I did.”
“I soon found out I didn’t want him-much too stiff and serious. Frank’s a lot more fun.”
The staff had gathered in the lounge, as had become the custom, to spend an hour or
so before bedtime in reading, conversation, dancing, light flirtation and even lighter
drinking. Most of the girls, and many of the men, drank only soft drinks. Hilton took one
drink per day of avignognac, a fine old brandy. So did de Vaux-the two usually making a
ceremony of it.
Across the room from Stella and Beverly, Temple Bells was looking up at Hilton and
laughing. She took his elbow and, in the gesture now familiar to all, pressed his arm
quickly, but in no sense furtively, against her side. And he, equally openly, held her
forearm for a moment in the full grasp of his hand.
“And he isn’t a pawer,” Stella said, thoughtfully. “He never touches any of the rest of
us. She taught him to do that, damn her, without him ever knowing anything about it . . .
and I wish I knew how she did it.”
“That isn’t pawing,” Beverly laughed lightly. “It’s simply self-defense. If he didn’t fend