There was another silence. After a minute or two, Alice said, “The computer…is dying?”
Loga was almost choking. “Yes. It wouldn’t be if it hadn’t been left unattended so many years.”
The machinery was built to last for centuries without any need for repair or replacement. Nevertheless, parts and units did malfunction now and then. That was why technicians inspected everything at regular intervals, and why there were so many self-repair capabilities. Machines, however, had a well-known but as yet unexplained obstinacy, a seeming tendency to break down of their own will or refuse to operate. It had been jestingly observed that perhaps they, too, had wathans of a sort, and their free will was more ill will than anything else.
During the long absence of human supervision, a valve had quit operating.
“This is not a mechanical valve, you understand. It’s basically a force field which shuts off or on to allow flow of sea water into the food-mixing chamber for the computer. The computer subsists on distilled water mixed with sugar and some traces of minerals. The shut-down valve is one of two. Its mate is for emergencies. It takes over should the main one go out. Then the technicians repair the field generator of the valve, and the backup one shuts down.”
Unfortunately, the emergency valve did not admit enough water for a long term. And so the protein computer was dying.
“I could use the computer memory banks to furnish a model for a duplicate of it as the original before it was fed any data. Unfortunately, the computer contains the only memory banks of that. And it won’t release the information so that I can feed it into the matter-energy converter.”
“Why don’t you repair the field generator?” Frigate said.
“For the good reason that the computer won’t permit me to. Apparently, Monat ordered long ago that it be equipped with defenses. These weren’t activated, though, until I was found out.”
There was another long silence. Alice broke it, saying “Why don’t you use one of those wathan catchers you told us about? The moment the computer died and released the wathans, the catch could restrain them.”
Logasmiled grimly.
“A very good idea. I’ve thought of that. Briefly. The only catcher is the computer. There are memory banks which I could tap to make a catcher. But these are also in the computer.”
“Are the defenses absolutely invulnerable?” Burton said.
“It’s easy to gain access to the field generator. I’d just have to pull out the malfunctioning module and replace it with another. But I’d be dead before I could do that. The computer would cut me down with beams. Just like those which my beamer shoots.”
Nur said, “You used the computer at the same time that the others were. How did you keep them from finding that out?”
“In a sense, I made the computer schizophrenic. One part of it didn’t know what the other was doing.”
“That’s it!” the Moor cried. Then his exultant expression was replaced by a frown. “No. You’d have thought of using it.”
“Yes. I can’t because the engineers apparently discovered the split mind. Now it’s dominated by the main part.”
“You said dominated, not integrated,” Nur said.
“Yes. The engineers didn’t have time to remove the complex circuits which made the computer schizophrenic. But they did put in temporary bypass circuits to give the main part dominance. They would’ve integrated the parts later. But they were killed before they could do that.”
“How do you know all this?” Burton said.
“The computer gave me that information. It doesn’t refuse to communicate. It just won’t obey any commands except those from Monat or whoever was authorized to act for him.”
“There’s no chance of finding out the codeword or whatever Monat used?”
“Not unless he recorded it somewhere. I doubt that he would. Also, the code would have to be accompanied by the voiceprints of Monat or his aide.”
“Maybe there is no codeword,” Frigate said. “Maybe the voice-recognition is enough.”
“No. Monat would think of that. It’d be relatively easy to isolate phones from records of his speech and synthesize them to make new sentences. Also, Monat might’ve required that there be body recognition, too.”