“Then there’s the question of resources. The conspiracy has built huge fleets of ships and found crews to man them. Some of the income came from piracy, but piracy isn’t that lucrative. The conspiracy has huge space manufacturing bases and battle stations. Jules and Vonnie smashed the arms manufacturing plant on Slag, but weapons are still coming from somewhere. The conspiracy found an entire planet, Sanctuary, that had somehow been passed over by imperial explorers, and built a civilization on it. They hid from us the fact that traitors were routinely being taken off Gastonia and returned to the ranks of the conspiracy. They were even able to design and build an entire race of alien invaders to lure us into an almost-fatal ambush.
“Hidden resources. A war of information. Machine-like efficiency. The conspiracy’s emblem is an integrated circuit chip. And no one’s ever seen C; they just get his orders over the teletype.”
“You’re saying the whole conspiracy works by computers,” Helena said. “There’s nothing new in that theory. In order to get all the information h knows about us, the conspiracy has to be tapping our files somewhere. But different kinds of information are available in different places, using different codes and different security clearances. No one person, not even Father – not even the Empress unless she really tried – has access to all of it. There’d have to be a widespread coalition of computer operators, a whole army of them, to achieve those results. And if that many computer operators were working against us, our tests should have given us some indication of it by now.”
Yvette smiled grimly. “Not an army of computer operators,” she said. “The computers themselves.”
A silence descended, broken only by the pounding of the waves. At last the Head said, “Explain yourself.”
“The Primary Computer Complex processes information from all over the Empire – everything from rain fall statistics on Floreata to actuarial tables for Nevander. The computers at SOTE Headquarters are closely linked to it; so are the computers at Luna Base. Every action the Navy takes, every bit of information the Service gathers, is stored away in the computer system.
“In addition, the computer tells us what course of action to take. We let it correlate the data for us, and then it tells us what to do about it. It may say, ‘This situation here looks suspicious; investigate it.’ Or it may say, ‘Everything’s fine over here; don’t bother looking any closer.’ The computer regulates shipping schedules and interstellar commerce. When credit transfers are made between banks, no real money changes hands; it all goes through the computer and comes out the other side – supposedly unchanged.
“If the PCC is our enemy, then we are the leak we’ve been looking for. The reports we write are given to computer operators who are totally loyal to the Empire, and they program the information into the computer – feeding it straight to our worst enemy without even realizing it. No wonder the conspiracy knew everything we were doing – we were telling them all along, every step of the way. In return, the PCC gave us back the information it wanted us to know – and as a result we just stumbled from crisis to crisis, escaping by a narrower and narrower margin each time. We had to run at top speed just to close the gap between what we thought we knew and what was really happening.”
“But… but the computer’s just a machine, a sophisticated calculator,” Helena protested. “How can it come alive and plot an entire revolution?”
“The Primary Computer Complex is the most complicated system ever devised,” the Head said quietly. “It was designed by the most brilliant team of cyberneticists ever assembled. It’s so intricate that even they admitted no one person could ever understand the whole thing. Suppose that somewhere along the line, in the midst of all that complexity, the PCC developed consciousness, an awareness of itself – a mind.”
“Exactly,” Yvette nodded. “We’ve seen what the conspiracy can do with artificial intelligence. They made robots that looked and acted so much like people it was impossible to tell without special equipment. The conspiracy knows how to make a machine duplicate human thought. What better explanation than if the leader of the conspiracy were a machine itself?”
‘A’ stood for Amorat, a simple, logical abbreviation,” Pias said. “Why shouldn’t ‘C’ stand for Computer? It would explain why we’ve never found anyone named ‘B’ in their hierarchy, and why ‘A’ wasn’t necessarily higher in rank.”
“But why?” Helena persisted. “Why would a machine want to take over the Empire?”
“I don’t know,” Yvette admitted. “As I said, it sounded screwy to me, too. But regardless of why, the more I look at it, the more this theory seems to make sense.”
“Why would anyone want to take over the Empire?” the Head asked philosophically. “It’s a killer of a job. I’ve heard Bill and Edna both say, on more than one occasion, how tempting it would be to trade it all in for a simpler life. Maybe it’s the fact that any life form tries to make order out of its surroundings, to protect itself. The more advanced the life form, the more order it seems to need. If the PCC has become, in some sense, alive, then it might want to control its environment – meaning the Empire. As a very advanced organism, it would need very thorough control.”
He fell silent for several minutes, contemplating the situation, and the others respected his silence. “If your hypothesis is correct,” he said at last, “you’ve just handed us a hell of a problem.”
“I know,” Yvette said quietly. “I still get the shakes thinking about it, I’m so scared.”
“Bozhe moi!” Helena gasped suddenly.
“What is it?” Pias asked.
“Something just occurred to me. When I was on Dr. Loxner’s asteroid and he was talking about putting Aimée Amorat into a robot body, he said he tried to talk her into entering a computer the way he did. She told him no – she already had a computer.”
“Not just a computer,” Pias said. “The computer.”
“It also brings Amorat’s final words into perspective,” the Head said. “In a very real sense, the PCC is the glue that holds the Empire together. It’s the central nervous system of the Galaxy. If we destroy the brain, can the body of the Empire survive?
“The PCC itself controls very little directly. We thought it was used mostly for storage and analysis of data. But it has direct link-ups with SOTE’s computer facilities and with the Navy’s computer array at Luna Base, so we’ll have to assume they’re an extended part of its system. It also has its own independent subcom network, which means it could be in touch with – and re-program – virtually any computer in the Empire.”
“You see now why I’m so scared,” Yvette said. “There’s hardly an aspect of our lives these days that isn’t influenced by computers somehow. If they all went haywire, the Empire would be in chaos within hours.”
The Head nodded gravely.” ‘Chaos’ is a mild way of putting it. The Empire could very easily be destroyed, just as Amorat predicted. Plus there’s the fact that the conspiracy’s forces are prepared for such a contingency, more than we are; the instant a power vacuum occurs, they’ll be all set to march in and take over. We’ve just scored a decisive victory over their fleet, so we can be grateful we don’t have to look at a threat from that direction – but there’ll be plenty of other threats to worry about. The big problem, of course, is how we’re going to stop the PCC from causing its damage.”
“Can’t we just turn it off?” Pias asked. “It’s only a machine.”
“Could you just turn off the FitzHugh and Fortier robots?” Yvette asked him. “They were only machines, too.”
“Yvette’s right,” the Head said. “The Primary Computer Complex may be only a machine, but it’s the most intricate machine ever built. You’ve never been there, you’ve never seen how incredible it is. It’s got its power source, its own armaments, its own defense screens, even its own subspace engines in case it’s ever attacked and has to escape. We’ve always known how pivotal the PCC was to the Empire’s survival. We knew that if we lost it we’d be in deep trouble, so we made sure it was the most secure place in the entire Galaxy. I can see we’re now going to pay dearly for our precautions.”
He paused and stared out at the ocean for several seconds. “I’m going to have to give this a lot of thought, and very quickly,” he said. “We’ll have to act fast, but not precipitously. Edna will have to be notified, of course – in person, since we have to assume the computer is monitoring all communications channels. That’ll mean a trip to Moscow for me tonight. She’ll have to make the final decision in the matter, and I don’t envy her. One way or another, the Empire is in for a major shock – and since she is the Empire in a very real sense, this will hit her hard.”