“Ummm. Didn’t he ever try it out and discover Crmblznski’s Limit for himself?”
“Oh, he never progressed that far. First, you see, it was necessary to set up the memory banks, then to work out a method of coding types of information that no one had ever coded before—for example, smells and emotions and subjective judgments. Methods had to be worked out for the acquisition of tapes of everything ever recorded—in every field. He worked with the Library of Congress and the British Museum and with newspapers and book publishers and universities. Unhappily he overlooked the time element. He spent the last twenty-five years of his life at the task of coding. He spent all the cash he’d ever made on reducing all human knowledge to coded tapes and feeding them to the memory banks.”
“Say,” Case said, “there might be something in that. We could run a reference service. Ask the machine anything, it answers.”
“You can do that in the public library.”
“Yeah,” Case admitted. “Anyway, the whole thing’s probably rusted out by now.”
“No, Great-grandfather did set up a trust fund to keep the information flowing in. The Government has kept it in working order; it’s Government property in a way. Since it was running when they took it over—digesting daily newspapers, novels, scientific journals and what not—they’ve allowed it to continue.”
Chester sighed. “Yes,” he went on, “the old computer should be fully up to date. All the latest facts on the Martian ruins, the Homo Protanthropus remains the Mediterranean Drainage Commission turned up, new finds in biogenics, nucleonics, geriatrics, hypnotics, everything.” Chester sighed again. “Biggest idiot savant in the world. It knows everything and doesn’t know what to do with it.”
“How long since you saw it work, Chester?”
“Work? Why, never. Coding and storing information is one thing, Case; performing the feats that Great-grandfather expected is another.”
“You mean nobody’s ever really tried it?”
“In view of Crmblznski’s Limit, why should anyone bother?”
Case finished his drink and rose. “Things are going to be quiet around here for the rest of the afternoon. Let’s you and me take a run out to the place, Chester. I think we ought to take a look at this thing. There’s got to be some way to save the show.”
2
Two hours later, under a bright sun, Chester settled the heli gently onto a patch of velvety grass surrounded by varicolored tulips directly before the ornately decorated portico of the old house. The two men rode the balustraded escalator to the broad verandah, stepped off under a carved dinosaur with fluorescent eyes. The porter chimed softly as the door slid open. Inside, light filtering through stained-plastic panels depicting traditional service-station and supermarket scenes bathed the cavernous entry hall in an amber glow.
Case looked around at the plastic alligator-hide hangings, the beaded glass floor, the ostrich-feather chandeliers, the zircon doorknobs.
“I see why neo-Victorian stuff is rare,” he said. “It was all burned by enraged mobs as soon as they got a look at it.”
“Great-grandfather liked it,” said Chester, averting his eyes from a lithograph titled Rush Hour at the Insemomat. “I told you he was eccentric.”
“Where’s the invention?”
“The central panel’s down in the wine cellar. The old gentleman used to spend a lot of time down there.”
Case followed Chester along a dark red corridor lighted by a green glare strip, into a small elevator. “I haven’t been down here since I was a child,” Chester said. “The Internal Revenue people occasionally permitted the family in to look around. My pater always brought me down here to look at the computer, while he inspected the wine stocks.”
The elevator grounded and the door opened. Case and Chester stepped out into a long, low room lined on one side with dusty racks of wine bottles and on the other with dial faces and tape reels.
“So this is the G.N.E.,” Case said. “Quite a setup. Where do you start?”
“We could start at this end and work our way down,” said Chester, eyeing the first row of bottles. He lifted one from its cradle, blew the dust from it. “Flora Pinellas, ’87; Great-grandfather was a keen judge of vintages.”
“Hey, that would bring in some dough.”
Chester raised an eyebrow. “These bottles are practically members of the family. Still, if you’ll hand me the corkscrew, we can make a few spot checks just to be sure it’s holding up properly.”
Equipped with a bottle each, Case and Chester turned to the control panel of the computer. Case studied the thirty-foot-long panel, pointed out a typewriter-style keyboard. “I get it, Chester. You type out your problem here; the computer thinks it over, checks the files and comes up with an answer.”
“Or it would—if it worked.”
“Let’s try it out, Chester.”
Chester waved his bottle in a shrug. “I suppose we may as well. It will hardly matter if we damage it; it’s to be disassembled in any event.”
Case studied the panel, the ranks of micro-reels, the waiting keyboard. Chester wrestled with the corkscrew.
“You sure it’s turned on?” Case asked.
The cork emerged from the bottle with a sharp report. Chester sniffed it appreciatively. “It’s always turned on. Information is still being fed into it twenty-four hours a day.”
Case reached for the keyboard, jerked his hand back quickly. “It bit me!” He stared at his fingertip. A tiny bead of red showed. “I’m bleeding! Why, that infernal collection of short circuits—”
Chester lowered his bottle and sighed. “Don’t be disturbed, Case. It probably needed a blood sample for research purposes.”
Case tried again, cautiously. Then he typed: WHAT DID MY GREAT-UNCLE JULIUS DIE OF?
A red light blinked on on the board. There was a busy humming from the depths of the machine, then a sharp click! and a strip of paper chattered from a slot above the keyboard.
“Hey, it works!” Case tore off the strip.
MUMPS
“Hey, Chester, look,” Case called.
Chester came to his side, studied the strip of paper. “I’m afraid the significance of this escapes me. Presumably you already knew the cause of your uncle’s death.”
“Sure, but how did this contraption know?”
“Everything that’s ever been recorded is stored in the memory banks. Doubtless your Uncle Julius’ passing was duly noted in official records somewhere.”
“Right; but how did it know who I meant? Does it have him listed under ‘M’ for ‘my’ or ‘U’ for ‘uncle’?”
“We could ask the machine.”
Case nodded. “We could at that.” He tapped out the question. The slot promptly disgorged a paper strip—a longer one this time.
A COMPARISON OF YOUR FINGERPRINTS WITH THE FILES IDENTIFIED YOU AS MR. CASSIUS H. MULVIHILL. A SEARCH OF THE GENEALOGICAL SECTION DISCLOSED THE EXISTENCE OF ONLY ONE INDIVIDUAL BEARING AN AVUNCULAR RELATIONSHIP TO YOU. REFERENCE TO DEATH RECORDS INDICATED HIS DEMISE FROM EPIDEMIC PAROTITIS, COMMONLY CALLED MUMPS.
“That makes it sound easy,” Case said. “You know, Chester, your great-grandpop may have had something here.”
“I once calculated,” Chester said dreamily, “that if the money the old idiot put into this scheme had been invested at three per cent, it would be paying me a monthly dividend of approximately fifteen thousand credits today. Instead, I am able to come down here and find out what your Uncle Julius died of. Bah!”
“Let’s try a harder one, Chester,” Case suggested. “Like, ah . . . ” He typed: DID ATLANTIS SINK BENEATH THE WAVES?
The computer clunked; a paper strip curled from the slot.
NO
“That settles that, I guess.” Case rubbed his chin. Then: IS THERE ANY LIFE ON MARS? he typed.
YES
“These aren’t very sexy answers I’m getting,” Case muttered.
“Possibly you’re not posing your questions correctly,” Chester suggested. “Ask something that requires more than a yes-or-no response.”
Case considered, then tapped out: WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CREW OF THE MARIE CELESTE?
There was a prolonged humming; the strip emerged hesitantly, lengthened. Case caught the end, started reading aloud.
ANALYSIS OF FRAGMENTARY DATA INDICATES FOLLOWING HYPOTHESIS: BECALMED OFF AZORES, FIRST MATE SUGGESTED A NUDE SWIMMING PARTY . . .
“Oh-oh,” Case commented. He read on in silence, eyes widening. “Wow!”
“Try something less sensational, Case. Sea serpents, for example, or the Loch Ness monster.”
“O.K.” Case typed out: WHAT HAPPENED TO AMBROSE BIERCE?
He scanned the emerging tape, whistled softly, tore the strip into small pieces.
“Well?”
“This stuff will have to be cleaned up before we can release it to the public—but it’s no wonder he didn’t come back.”
“Here, let me try one.” Chester stepped to the keyboard, pondered briefly, then poked gingerly at a key. At once a busy humming started up within the mechanism. Something rumbled distantly; then, with a creak of hinges, a six-foot section of blank brick wall swung inward, dust filtering down from its edges. A dark room was visible beyond the opening.
“Greetings, Mr. Chester,” a bland voice said from the panel. “Welcome to the Inner Chamber!”