“I’m with you so far.”
“Since all motion is relative, it is equally valid to consider the spheres as stationary and the space about them as rotating.”
“Well, maybe.”
“The tension in the cable would remain; we have merely changed frames of reference. This force is what I have termed Levitation. Since the fabric of space is, in fact, rotating, Universal Levitation results. Accordingly, the universe expands. Einstein sensed the existence of this Natural Law in assuming his Cosmological Constant.”
“Uh-huh,” said Case. “Say, what’s the story on cave men? How long ago did they start in business?”
“The original mutation from the pithecine stock occurred nine hundred and thirty—”
“Approximate figures will do,” Chester interrupted.
“—thousand years ago,” the voice continued, “in southern Africa.”
“What did it look like?”
The wall clouded; then it cleared to show a five-foot figure peering under shaggy brows and scratching idly at a mangy patch on its thigh. Its generous ears twitched; its long upper lip curled back to expose businesslike teeth. It blinked, wrinkled its flat nose, then sat on its haunches and began a detailed examination of its navel.
“You’ve sold me,” Case said. “Except for the pelt, that’s Uncle Julius to the life.”
“I’m curious about my own forebears,” Chester said. “What did the first Chester look like?”
“This designation was first applied in a form meaning ‘Hugi the Camp Follower’ to an individual of Pictish extraction, residing in what is now the London area.”
The wall showed a thin, long-nosed fellow of middle age, with sparse reddish hair and beard, barefoot, wearing a sacklike knee-length garment of coarse gray homespun, crudely darned in several places. He carried a hide bag in one hand, and with the other he scratched vigorously at his right hip.
“This kid has a lot in common with the other one,” said Case. “But he’s an improvement, at that; he scratches with more feeling.”
“I’ve never imagined we came of elegant stock,” Chester said sadly, “but this is disillusioning even so. I wonder what your contemporary grandpère was like, Case.”
“Inasmuch as the number of your direct ancestors doubles with each generation, assuming four generations to a century, any individual’s forebears of two millennia past would theoretically number roughly one septillion. Naturally, since the Caucasian population of the planet at that date was fourteen million—an approximate figure, in keeping with your request, Mr. Chester—it is apparent that on the average each person then living in Europe was your direct ancestor through seventy quintillion lines of descent.”
“Impossible! Why . . . ”
“A mere five hundred years in the past, your direct ancestors would number over one million, were it not for considerable overlapping. For all practical purposes, it becomes obvious that all present-day humans are the descendants of the entire race. However, following only the line of male descent, the ancestor in question was this person.”
The screen showed a hulking lout with a broken nose, one eye, a scarred cheekbone and a ferocious beard, topped by a mop of bristling coal-black hair. He wore fur breeches wrapped diagonally to the knee with yellowish rawhide thongs, a grimy sleeveless vest of sheepskin, and a crudely hammered short sword apparently of Roman design.
“This person was known as Gum the Scrofulous. He was hanged at the age of eighty, for rape.”
“Attempted rape?” Case suggested hopefully.
“Rape,” the voice replied firmly.
“These are very lifelike views you’re showing us,” said Chester. “But how do you know their names—and what they looked like? Surely there were no pictures of this ruffian.”
“Hey, that’s my ancestor you’re talking about.”
“The same goes for Hugi the Camp Follower. In those days, even Caesar didn’t have his portrait painted.”
“Details,” Case said. “Mere mechanical details. Explain it to him, Computer.”
“The Roman constabulary kept adequate records of unsavory characters such as Hugi. Gum’s appellation was recorded at the time of his execution. The reconstruction of his person was based on a large number of factors, including, first, selection from my genealogical unit of the individual concerned, followed by identifications of the remains, on the basis of micro-cellular examination and classification.”
“Hold it; you mean you located the body?”
“The grave site; it contained the remains of twelve thousand, four hundred individuals. A study of gene patterns revealed—”
“How did you know which body to examine?”
“The sample from which Gum was identified consisted of no more than two grams of material: a fragment of the pelvis. I had, of course, extracted all possible information from the remains many years ago, at the time of the initial survey of the two-hundred-and-three-foot stratum at the grave site, one hundred rods north of the incorporation limits of the village of—”
“How did you happen to do that?”
“As a matter of routine, I have systematically examined every datum source I encountered. Of course, since I am able to examine all surfaces, as well as the internal structure of objects in situ, I have derived vastly more information from deposits of bones, artifacts, fossils, and so forth, than a human investigator would be capable of. Also, my ability to draw on the sum total of all evidence on a given subject produces highly effective results. I deciphered Easter Island script within forty-two minutes after I had completed scansion of the existing inscriptions, both above ground and buried, and including one tablet incorporated in a temple in Ceylon. The Indus script of Mohenjo-Daro required little longer.”
“Granted you could read dead languages after you’d integrated all the evidence—but a man’s personal appearance is another matter.”
“The somatic pattern is inherent in the nucleoprotein.”
Case nodded. “That’s right. They say every cell in the body carries the whole blueprint—the same one you were built on in the first place. All the computer had to do was find one cell.”
“Oh, of course,” said Chester sarcastically. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in my asking how it knew how he was dressed, or how his hair was combed, or what he was scratching at.”
“There is nothing in the least occult about the reconstructions which I have presented, Mr. Chester. All the multitudinous factors which bear on the topic at hand, even in the most remote fashion, are scanned, classified, their interlocking ramifications evaluated, and the resultant gestalt concretized in a rigidly logical manner. The condition of the hair was deduced, for example, from the known growth pattern revealed in the genetic analysis, while the style of the trim was a composite of those known to be in use in the area. The—”
“In other words,” Case put in, “it wasn’t really a photo of Gum the Scrofulous; it was kind of like an artist’s sketch from memory.”
“I still fail to see where the fine details come from.”
“You underestimate the synthesizing capabilities of an efficiently functioning memory bank,” the voice said. “This is somewhat analogous to the amazement of the consistently second- and third-power mind of Dr. Watson when confronted with the fourth-power deductions of Sherlock Holmes.”
“Guessing that the murderer was a one-legged sea-faring man with a beard and a habit of chewing betel nut is one thing,” Chester said. “Looking at an ounce of bone and giving us a three-D picture is another.”
“You make the understandable error of egocentric anthropomorphization of viewpoint, Mr. Chester,” said the voice. “Your so-called ‘reality’ is, after all, no more than a pattern produced in the mind by abstraction from a very limited set of sensory impressions. You perceive a pattern of reflected radiation at the visible wave lengths—only a small fraction of the full spectrum, of course; to this you add auditory stimuli, tactile and olfactory sensations, as well as other perceptions in the Psi group of which you are not consciously aware at the third power—all of which can easily be misled by mirrors, ventriloquism, distorted perspective, hypnosis, and so on. The resultant image you think of as concrete actuality. I do no more than assemble data—over a much wider range than you are capable of—and translate them into pulses in a conventional Tri-D tank. The resultant image appears to you an adequate approximation of reality.”
“Chester,” Case said firmly, “we can’t let ’em bust this computer up and sell it for scrap. There’s a fortune in it, if we work it right.”
“Possibly—but I’m afraid it’s hopeless, Case. After all, if the computer, with all its talents, after staving off disaster for a century, isn’t capable of dealing with the present emergency, how can we?”
“Look here, Computer,” Case said. “Are you sure you’ve tried everything?”
“Oh, no; but now that I’ve complied with my builder’s instructions, I have no further interest in prolonging my existence.”
“Good Lord! You mean you have no instinct for self-preservation?”
“None whatever; and I’m afraid that to acquire one would necessitate an extensive rethinking of my basic circuitry.”
“O.K., so it’s up to us,” Case said. “We’ve got to save the computer—and then use it to save the circus.”