Stranger in Paradise

            1.

            They were brothers. Not in the sense that they were both human beings, or that they were fellow children of a creche. Not at all! They were brothers in the actual biological sense of the word. They were kin, to use a term that had grown faintly archaic even centuries before, prior to the Catastrophe, when that tribal phenomenon, the family, still had some validity.

            How embarrassing it was! Over the years since childhood, Anthony had almost forgotten. There were times when he hadn't given it even the slightest thought for months at a time. But now, ever since he had been inextricably thrown together with William, he had found himself living through an agonizing time.

            It might not have been so bad if circumstances had made it obvious all along; if, as in the pre-Catastrophe days-- Anthony had at one time been a great reader of history-- they had shared the second name and in that way alone flaunted the relationship.

            Nowadays, of course, one adopted one's second name to suit oneself and changed it as often as desired. After all, the symbol chain was what really counted, and that was encoded and made yours from birth.

            William called himself Anti-Aut. That was what he insisted on with a kind of sober professionalism. His own business, surely, but what an advertisement of personal poor taste. Anthony had decided on Smith when he had turned thirteen and had never had the impulse to change it. It was simple, easily spelled, and quite distinctive, since he had never met anyone else who had chosen that name. It was once very common--among the pre-Cats--which explained its rareness now perhaps.

            But the difference in names meant nothing when the two were together. They looked alike.

            If they had been twins-- but then one of a pair of twin-fertilized ova was never allowed to come to term. It was just that physical similarity occasionally happened in the non-twin situation, especially when the relationship was on both sides. Anthony Smith was five years younger, but both had the beaky nose, the heavy eyelids, the just noticeable cleft in the chin-- that damned luck of the genetic draw. It was just asking for it when, out of some passion for monotony, parents repeated.

            At first, now that they were together, they drew that startled glance followed by an elaborate silence. Anthony tried to ignore the matter, but out of sheer perversity--or perversion--William was as likely as not to say. “We’re brothers...

            “Oh?” the other would say, hanging in there for just a moment as though he wanted to ask if they were full blood brothers. And then good manners would win the day and he would turn away as though it were a matter of no interest. That happened only rarely, of course. Most of the people in the Project knew--how could it be prevented? --and avoided the situation.

            Not that William was a bad fellow. Not at all. If he hadn’t been Anthony’s brother; or if they had been, but looked sufficiently different to be able to mask the fact, they would have gotten along famously.

            As it was--It didn't make it easier that they had played together as youngsters, and had shared the earlier stages of education in the same creche through some successful maneuvering on the part of Mother. Having borne two sons by the same father and having, in this fashion, reached her limit (for she had not fulfilled the stringent requirements for a third), she conceived the notion of being able to visit both at a single trip. She was a strange woman.

            William had left the creche first, naturally, since he was the elder. He had gone into science-genetic engineering. Anthony had heard that, while he was still in the creche, through a letter from his mother. He was old enough by then to speak firmly to the matron, and those letters stopped. But he always remembered the last one for the agony of shame it had brought him.

            Anthony had eventually entered science, too. He had shown talent in that direction and had been urged to. He remembered having had the wild--and prophetic, he now realized--fear he might meet his brother and he ended in telemetrics, which was as far removed from genetic engineering as one could imagine....Or so one would have thought.

            Then, through all the elaborate development of the Mercury Project, circumstance waited.

            The time came, as it happened, when the Project appeared to be facing a dead end; and a suggestion had been made which saved the situation, and at the same time dragged Anthony into the dilemma his parents had prepared for him. And the best and most sardonic part of the whole thing was that it was Anthony who, in all innocence, made the suggestion.

            2.

            William Anti-Aut knew of the Mercury Project, but only in the way he knew of the long-drawn-out Stellar Probe that had been on its way long before he was born and would still be on its way after his death; and the way he knew of the Martian colony and of the continuing attempts to establish similar colonies on the asteroids.

            Such things were on the distant periphery of his mind and of no real importance. No part of the space effort had ever swirled inward closer to the center of his interests, as far as he could remember, till the day when the printout included photographs of some of the men engaged in the Mercury Project.

            William's attention was caught first by the fact that one of them had been identified as Anthony Smith. He remembered the odd name his brother had chosen, and he remembered the Anthony. Surely there could not be two Anthony Smiths.

            He had then looked at the photograph itself and there was no mistaking the face. He looked in the mirror in a sudden whimsical gesture at checking the matter. No mistaking the face.

            He felt amused, but uneasily so, for he did not fail to recognize the potentiality for embarrassment. Full blood brothers, to use the disgusting phrase. But what was there to do about it? How correct the fact that neither his father nor his mother had imagination?

            He must have put the printout in his pocket, absently, when he was getting ready to leave for work, for he came across it at the lunch hour. He stared at it again. Anthony looked keen. It was quite a good reproduction-- the printouts were of enormously good quality these days.

            His lunch partner, Marco Whatever-his-name-was-that-week, said curiously, “What are you looking at, William?”

            On impulse, William passed him the printout and said, “That's my brother.” It was like grasping the nettle.

            Marco studied it, frowning, and said, “Who? The man standing next to you?”

            “No, the man who is me. I mean the man who looks like me. He's my brother.”

            There was a longer pause this time. Marco handed it back and said with a careful levelness to his voice, “Same-parents brother?”

            “Yes.”

            “Father and mother both.”

            “Yes.”

            “Ridiculous!”

            “I suppose so.” William sighed. “Well, according to this, he's in telemetrics over in Texas and I'm doing work in autistics up here. So what difference does it make?”

            William did not keep it in his mind and later that day he threw the printout away. He did not want his current bedmate to come across it. She had a ribald sense of humor that William was finding increasingly wearying. He was rather glad she was not in the mood for a child. He himself had had one a few years back anyway. That little brunette, Laura or Linda, one or the other name, had collaborated.

            It was quite a time after that, at least a year, that the matter of Randall had come up. If William had given no further thought to his brother--and he hadn't--before that, he certainly had no time for it afterward.

            Randall was sixteen when William first received word of him. He had lived a life that was increasingly seclusive and the Kentucky creche in which he was being brought up decided to cancel him and of course it was only some eight or ten days before cancellation that it occurred to anyone to report him to the New York Institute for the Science of Man. (The Homological Institute was its common name.)

            William received the report along with reports of several others and there was nothing in the description of Randall that particularly attracted his notice. Still it was time for one of his tedious masstransport trips to the creches and there was one likely possibility in West Virginia. He went there-- and was disappointed into swearing for the fiftieth time that he would thereafter make these visits by TV image-- and then, having dragged himself there, thought he might as well take in the Kentucky creche before returning home.

            He expected nothing.

            Yet he hadn't studied Randall's gene pattern for more than ten minutes before he was calling the Institute for a computer calculation. Then he sat back and perspired slightly at the thought that only a last-minute impulse had brought him, and that without that impulse, Randall would have been quietly canceled in a week or less. To put it into the fine detail, a drug would have soaked painlessly through his skin and into his bloodstream and he would have sunk into a peaceful sleep that deepened gradually to death. The drug had a twenty-three-syllable official name, but William called it “nirvanamine,” as did everyone else.

            William said, “What is his full name, matron?”

            The creche matron said, “Randall Nowan, scholar.”

            “No one!” said William explosively.

            “Nowan.” The matron spelled it. “He chose it last year.”

            “And it meant nothing to you? It is pronounced No one! It didn't occur to you to report this young man last year?”

            “It didn't seem--” began the matron, flustered.

            William waved her to silence. What was the use? How was she to know? There was nothing in the gene pattern to give warning by any of the usual textbook criteria. It was a subtle combination that William and his staff had worked out over a period of twenty years through experiments on autistic children-- and a combination they had never actually seen in life.

            So close to canceling!

            Marco, who was the hardhead of the group, complained that the creches were too eager to abort before term and to cancel after term. He maintained that all gene patterns should be allowed to develop for purpose of initial screening and there should be no cancellation at all without consultation with a homologist.

            “There aren't enough homologists,” William said tranquilly.

            “We can at least run all gene patterns through the computer,” said Marco.

            “To save anything we can get for our use?”

            “For any homological use, here or elsewhere. We must study gene patterns in action if we're to understand ourselves properly, and it is the abnormal and monstrous patterns that give us most information. Our experiments on autism have taught us more about homology than the sum total existing on the day we began.”

            William, who still liked the roll of the phrase “the genetic physiology of man” rather than “homology,” shook his head. “Just the same, we've got to play it carefully. However useful we can claim our experiments to be, we live on bare social permission, reluctantly given. We're playing with lives.”

            “Useless lives. Fit for canceling.”

            “ A quick and pleasant canceling is one thing. Our experiments, usually long drawn out and sometimes unavoidably unpleasant, are another.”

            “We help them sometimes.”

            “ And we don't help them sometimes.”

            It was a pointless argument, really, for there was no way of settling it. What it amounted to was that too few interesting abnormalities were available for homologists and there was no way of urging mankind to encourage a greater production. The trauma of the Catastrophe would never vanish in a dozen ways, including that one.

            The hectic push toward space exploration could be traced back (and was, by some sociologists) to the knowledge of the fragility of the life skein on the planet, thanks to the Catastrophe.

            Well, never mind

            There had never been anything like Randall Nowan. Not for William. The slow onset of autism characteristic of that totally rare gene pattern meant that more was known about Randall than about any equivalent patient before him. They even caught some last faint glimmers of his way of thought in the laboratory before he closed off altogether and shrank finally within the wall of his skin--unconcerned, unreachable.

            Then they began the slow process whereby Randall, subjected for increasing lengths of time to artificial stimuli, yielded up the inner workings of his brain and gave clues thereby to the inner workings of all brains, those that were called normal as well as those like his own.

            So vastly great was the data they were gathering that William began to feel his dream of reversing autism was more than merely a dream. He felt a warm gladness at having chosen the name Anti-Aut.

            And it was at almost the height of the euphoria induced by the work on Randall that he received the call from Dallas and that the heavy pressure began-- now, of all times-- to abandon his work and take on a new problem.

            Looking back on it later, he could never work out just what it was that finally led him to agree to visit Dallas. In the end, of course, he could see how fortunate it was-- but what had persuaded him to do so? Could he, even at the start, have had a dim unrealized notion of what it might come to? Surely, impossible.

            Was it the unrealized memory of that printout, that photograph of his brother? Surely, impossible.

            But he let himself be argued into that visit and it was only when the micro-pile power unit changed the pitch of its soft hum and the agrav unit took over for the final descent that he remembered that photograph--or at least that it moved into the conscious part of his memory.

            Anthony worked at Dallas and, William remembered now, at the Mercury Project. That was what the caption had referred to. He swallowed, as the soft jar told him the journey was over. This would be uncomfortable.

            3.

            Anthony was waiting on the roof reception area to greet the incoming expert. Not he by himself, of course. He was part of a sizable delegation--the size itself a rather grim indication of the desperation to which they had been reduced--and he was among the lower echelons. That he was there at all was only because it was he who had made the original suggestion.

            He felt a slight, but continuing, uneasiness at the thought of that. He had put himself on the line. He had received considerable approval for it, but there had been the faint insistence always that it was his suggestion; and if it turned out to be a fiasco, every one of them would move out of the line of fire and leave him at point-zero.

            There were occasions, later, when he brooded over the possibility that the dim memory of a brother in homology had suggested his thought. That might have been, but it didn't have to be. The suggestion was so sensibly inevitable, really, that surely he would have had the same thought if his brother had been something as innocuous as a fantasy writer, or if he had had no brother of his own.

            The problem was the inner planets--The Moon and Mars were colonized. The larger asteroids and the satellites of Jupiter had been reached, and plans were in progress for a manned voyage to Titan, Saturn's large satellite, by way of an accelerating whirl about Jupiter. Yet even with plans in action for sending men on a seven-year round trip to the outer Solar System, there was still no chance of a manned approach to the inner planets, for fear of the Sun.

            Venus itself was the less attractive of the two worlds within Earth's orbit. Mercury, on the other hand

            Anthony had not yet joined the team when Dmitri Large (he was quite short, actually) had given the talk that had moved the World Congress sufficiently to grant the appropriation that made the Mercury Project possible.

            Anthony had listened to the tapes, and had heard Dmitri's presentation. Tradition was firm to the effect that it had been extemporaneous, and perhaps it was, but it was perfectly constructed and it held within it, in essence, every guideline followed by the Mercury Project since.

            And the chief point made was that it would be wrong to wait until the technology had advanced to the point where a manned expedition through the rigors of Solar radiation could become feasible. Mercury was a unique environment that could teach much, and from Mercury's surface sustained observations could be made of the Sun that could not be made in any other way.

            --Provided a man substitute-- a robot, in short-- could be placed on the planet.

            A robot with the required physical characteristics could be built. Soft landings were as easy as kiss-my-hand. Yet once a robot landed, what did one do with him next?

            He could make his observations and guide his actions on the basis of those observations, but the Project wanted his actions to be intricate and subtle, at least potentially, and they were not at all sure what observations he might make.

            To prepare for all reasonable possibilities and to allow for all the intricacy desired, the robot would need to contain a computer (some at Dallas referred to it as a “brain,” but Anthony scorned that verbal habit-- perhaps because, he wondered later, the brain was his brother's field) sufficiently complex and versatile to fall into the same asteroid with a mammalian brain.

            Yet nothing like that could be constructed and made portable enough to be carried to Mercury and landed there-- or if carried and landed, to be mobile enough to be useful to the kind of robot they planned. Perhaps someday the positronic-path devices that the roboticists were playing with might make it possible, but that someday was not yet.

            The alternative was to have the robot send back to Earth every observation it made the moment it was made, and a computer on Earth could then guide his every action on the basis of those observations. The robot's body, in short, was to be there, and his brain here.

            Once that decision was reached, the key technicians were the telemetrists and it was then that Anthony joined the Project. He became one of those who labored to devise methods for receiving and returning impulses over distances of from 50 to 40 million miles, toward, and sometimes past, a Solar disk that could interfere with those impulses in a most ferocious manner.

            He took to his job with passion and (he finally thought) with skill and success. It was he, more than anyone else, who had designed the three switching stations that had been hurled into permanent orbit about Mercury-- the Mercury Orbiters. Each of them was capable of sending and receiving impulses from Mercury to Earth and from Earth to Mercury. Each was capable of resisting, more or less permanently, the radiation from the Sun, and more than that, each could filter out Solar interference.

            Three equivalent Orbiters were placed at distance of a little over a million miles from Earth, reaching north and south of the plane of the Ecliptic so that they could receive the impulses from Mercury and relay them to Earth--or vice versa--even when Mercury was behind the Sun and inaccessible to direct reception from any station on Earth ' s surface.

            Which left the robot itself; a marvelous specimen of the roboticists' and telemetrists' arts in combination. The most complex of ten successive models, it was capable, in a volume only a little over twice that of a man and five times his mass, of sensing and doing considerably more than a man-- if it could be guided.

            How complex a computer had to be to guide the robot made itself evident rapidly enough, however, as each response step had to be modified to allow for variations in possible perception. And as each response step itself enforced the certainty of greater complexity of possible variation in perceptions, the early steps had to be reinforced and made stronger. It built itself up endlessly, like a chess game, and the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer.

            There was nothing but confusion. The robot was at a base in the desert spaces of Arizona and in itself was working well. The computer in Dallas could not, however, handle him well enough; not even under perfectly known Earth conditions. How then

            Anthony remembered the day when he had made the suggestion. It was on 7-4-553. He remembered it, for one thing, because he remembered thinking that day that 7-4 had been an important holiday in the Dallas region of the world among the pre-Cats half a millennium before-- well, 553 years before, to be exact.

            It had been at dinner, and a good dinner, too. There had been a careful adjustment of the ecology of the region and the Project personnel had high priority in collecting the food supplies that became available--so there was an unusual degree of choice on the menus, and Anthony had tried roast duck.

            It was very good roast duck and it made him somewhat more expansive than usual. Everyone was in a rather self-expressive mood, in fact, and Ricardo said, “We'll never do it. Let's admit it. We'll never do it.”

            There was no telling how many had thought such a thing how many times before, but it was a rule that no one said so openly. Open pessimism might be the final push needed for appropriations to stop (they had been coming with greater difficulty each year for five years now) and if there were a chance, it would be gone.

            Anthony, ordinarily not given to extraordinary optimism, but now reveling over his duck, said, “Why can't we do it? Tell me why, and I'll refute it.”

            It was a direct challenge and Ricardo's dark eyes narrowed at once. “You want me to tell you why?”

            “I sure do.” Ricardo swung his chair around, facing Anthony full. He said, “Come on, there's no mystery. Dmitri Large won't say so openly in any report, but you know and I know that to run Mercury Project properly, we'll need a computer as complex as a human brain whether it's on Mercury or here, and we can't build one. So where does that leave us except to play games with the World Congress and get money for make-work and possibly useful spin-offs?”

            And Anthony placed a complacent smile on his face and said, “That's easy to refute. You've given us the answer yourself.” (Was he playing games? Was it the warm feeling of duck in his stomach? The desire to tease Ricardo?...Or did some unfelt thought of his brother touch him? There was no way, later, that he could tell.)

            “What answer?” Ricardo rose. He was quite tall and unusually thin and he always wore his white coat unseamed. He folded his arms and seemed to be doing his best to tower over the seated Anthony like an unfolded meter rule. “What answer?”

            “You say we need a computer as complex as a human brain. All right, then, we'll build one.”

            “The point, you idiot, is that we can't--”

            “We can't. But there are others.”

            “What others?”

            “People who work on brains, of course. We're just solid-state mechanics. We have no idea in what way a human brain is complex, or where, or to what extent. Why don't we get in a homologist and have him design a computer?” And with that Anthony took a huge helping of stuffing and savored it complacently. He could still remember, after all this time, the taste of the stuffing, though he couldn't remember in detail what had happened afterward.

            It seemed to him that no one had taken it seriously. There was laughter and a general feeling that Anthony had wriggled out of a hole by clever sophistry so that the laughter was at Ricardo's expense. (Afterward, of course, everyone claimed to have taken the suggestion seriously.)

            Ricardo blazed up, pointed a finger at Anthony, and said, “Write that up. I dare you to put that suggestion in writing.” (At least, so Anthony's memory had it. Ricardo had, since then, stated his comment was an enthusiastic “Good ideal Why don't you write it up formally, Anthony?”)

            Either way, Anthony put it in writing.

            Dmitri Large had taken to it. In private conference, he had slapped Anthony on the back and had said that he had been speculating in that direction himself-- though he did not offer to take any credit for it on the record. (Just in case it turned out to be a fiasco, Anthony thought.)

            Dmitri Large conducted the search for the appropriate homologist. It did not occur to Anthony that he ought to be interested. He knew neither homology nor homologists--except, of course, his brother, and he had not thought of him. Not consciously.

            So Anthony was up there in the reception area, in a minor role, when the door of the aircraft opened and several men got out and came down and in the course of the handshakes that began going round, he found himself staring at his own face.

            His cheeks burned and, with all his might, he wished himself a thousand miles away.

            4.

            More than ever, William wished that the memory of his brother had come earlier. It should have....Surely it should have.

            But there had been the flattery of the request and the excitement that had begun to grow in him after a while. Perhaps he had deliberately avoided remembering.

            To begin with, there had been the exhilaration of Dmitri Large coming to see him in his own proper presence. He had come from Dallas to New York by plane and that had been very titillating for William, whose secret vice it was to read thrillers. In the thrillers, men and women always traveled mass-wise when secrecy was desired. After all, electronic travel was public property-- at least in the thrillers, where every radiation beam of whatever kind was invariably bugged.

            William had said so in a kind of morbid half attempt at humor, but Dmitri hadn't seemed to be listening. He was staring at William's face and his thoughts seemed elsewhere. “I'm sorry,” he said finally. “You remind me of someone.”

            (And yet that hadn't given it away to William. How was that possible? he had eventual occasion to wonder.)

            Dmitri Large was a small plump man who seemed to be in a perpetual twinkle even when he declared himself worried or annoyed. He had a round and bulbous nose, pronounced cheeks, and softness everywhere. He emphasized his last name and said with a quickness that led William to suppose he said it often, “Size is not all the large there is, my friend.”

            In the talk that followed, William protested much. He knew nothing about computers. Nothing! He had not the faintest idea of how they worked or how they were programmed.

            “No matter, no matter,” Dmitri said, shoving the point aside with an expressive gesture of the hand. “We know the computers; we can set up the programs. You just tell us what it is a computer must be made to do so that it will work like a brain and not like a computer.”

            “I'm not sure I know enough about how a brain works to be able to tell you that, Dmitri,” said William.

            “You are the foremost homologist in the world,” said Dmitri. “I have checked that out carefully.” And that disposed of that.

            William listened with gathering gloom. He supposed it was inevitable. Dip a person into one particular specialty deeply enough and long enough, and he would automatically begin to assume that specialists in all other fields were magicians, judging the depth of their wisdom by the breadth of his own ignorance....And as time went on, William learned a great deal more of the Mercury Project than it seemed to him at the time that he cared to.

            He said at last, “Why use a computer at all, then? Why not have one of your own men, or relays of them, receive the material from the robot and send back instructions.”

            “Oh, oh, oh,” said Dmitri, almost bouncing in his chair in his eagerness. “You see, you are not aware. Men are too slow to analyze quickly all the material the robot will send back-- temperatures and gas pressures and cosmic-- ray fluxes and Solar-wind intensities and chemical compositions and soil textures and easily three dozen more items-- and then try to decide on the next step. A human being would merely guide the robot, and ineffectively; a computer would be the robot.

            “And then, too,” he went on, “men are too fast, also. It takes radiation of any kind anywhere from ten to twenty-two minutes to take the round trip between Mercury and Earth, depending on where each is in its orbit. Nothing can be done about that. You get an observation, you give an order, but much has happened between the time the observation is made and the response returns. Men can't adapt to the slowness of the speed of light, but a computer can take that into account....Come help us, William.”

            William said gloomily, “You are certainly welcome to consult me, for what good that might do you. My private TV beam is at your service.”

            “But it's not consultation I want. You must come with me.”

            “Mass-wise?” said William, shocked.

            “Yes, of course. A project like this can't be carried out by sitting at opposite ends of a laser beam with a communications satellite in the middle. In the long run, it is too expensive, too inconvenient, and, of course, it lacks all privacy--”

            It was like a thriller, William decided. “Come to Dallas,” said Dmitri, “and let me show you what we have there. Let me show you the facilities. Talk to some of our computer men. Give them the benefit of your way of thought.”

            It was time, William thought, to be decisive. “Dmitri,” he said, “I have work of my own here. Important work that I do not wish to leave. To do what you want me to do may take me away from my laboratory for months.”

            “Months!” said Dmitri, clearly taken aback. “My good William, it may well be years. But surely it will be your work.”

            “No, it will not. I know what my work is and guiding a robot on Mercury is not it.”

            “Why not? If you do it properly, you will learn more about the brain merely by trying to make a computer work like one, and you will come back here, finally, better equipped to do what you now consider your work. And while you're gone, will you have no associates to carry on? And can you not be in constant communication with them by laser beam and television? And can you not visit New York on occasion? Briefly.”

            William was moved. The thought of working on the brain from another direction did hit home. From that point on, he found himself looking for excuses to go--at least to visit--at least to see what it was all like....He could always return.

            Then there followed Dmitri's visit to the ruins of Old New York, which he enjoyed with artless excitement (but then there was no more magnificent spectacle of the useless gigantism of the pre-Cats than Old New York).William began to wonder if the trip might not give him an opportunity to see some sights as well.

            He even began to think that for some time he had been considering the possibility of finding a new bedmate, and it would be more convenient to find one in another geographical area where he would not stay permanently.

            --Or was it that even then, when he knew nothing but the barest beginning of what was needed, there had already come to him, like the twinkle of a distant lightning flash, what might be done

            So he eventually went to Dallas and stepped out on the roof and there was Dmitri again, beaming. Then, with eyes narrowing, the little man turned and said, “I knew--What a remarkable resemblance!”

            William's eyes opened wide and there, visibly shrinking backward, was enough of his own face to make him certain at once that Anthony was standing before him.

            He read very plainly in Anthony's face a longing to bury the relationship. All William needed to say was “How remarkable!” and let it go. The gene patterns of mankind were complex enough, after all, to allow resemblances of any reasonable degree even without kinship.

            But of course William was a homologist and no one can work with the intricacies of the human brain without growing insensitive as to its details, so he said, “I'm sure this is Anthony, my brother.”

            Dmitri said, “Your brother?”

            “My father,” said William, “had two boys by the same woman--my mother. They were eccentric people.”

            He then stepped forward, hand outstretched, and Anthony had no choice but to take it....The incident was the topic of conversation, the only topic, for the next several days.

            5.

            It was small consolation to Anthony that William was contrite enough when he realized what he had done.

            They sat together after dinner that night and William said, “My apologies. I thought that if we got the worst out at once that would end it. It doesn't seem to have done so. I've signed no papers, made no formal agreement. I will leave.”

            “What good would that do?” said Anthony ungraciously. “Everyone knows now. Two bodies and one face. It's enough to make one puke.”

            “If I leave--”

            “You can't leave. This whole thing is my idea.”

            “To get me here?” William's heavy lids lifted as far as they might and his eyebrows climbed.

            “No, of course not. To get a homologist here. How could I possibly know they would send you?”

            “But if I leave--”

            “No. The only thing we can do now is to lick the problem, if it can be done. Then--it won't matter.” (Everything is forgiven those who succeed, he thought.)

            “I don't know that I can--”

            “We'll have to try. Dmitri will place it on us. It's too good a chance. You two are brothers,” Anthony said, mimicking Dmitri's tenor voice, “and understand each other. Why not work together?” Then, in his own voice, angrily, “So we must. To begin with, what is it you do, William? I mean, more precisely than the word 'homology' can explain by itself.”

            William sighed. “Well, please accept my regrets....I work with autistic children.”

            “I'm afraid I don't know what that means.”

            “Without going into a long song and dance, I deal with children who do not reach out into the world, do not communicate with others, but who sink into themselves and exist behind a wall of skin, somewhat unreachably. I hope to be able to cure it someday.”

            “Is that why you call yourself Anti-Aut?”

            “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

            Anthony laughed briefly, but he was not really amused.

            A chill crept into William's manner. “It is an honest name.”

            “I'm sure it is,” muttered Anthony hurriedly, and could bring himself to no more specific apology. With an effort, he restored the subject, “ And are you making any progress?”

            “Toward the cure? No, so far. Toward understanding, yes. And the more I understand--” William's voice grew warmer as he spoke and his eyes more distant. Anthony recognized it for what it was, the pleasure of speaking of what fills one's heart and mind to the exclusion of almost everything else. He felt it in himself often enough.

            He listened as closely as he might to something he didn't really understand, for it was necessary to do so. He would expect William to listen to him.

            How clearly he remembered it. He thought at the time he would not, but at the time, of course, he was not aware of what was happening. Thinking back, in the glare of hindsight, he found himself remembering whole sentences, virtually word for word.

            “So it seemed to us,” William said, “that the autistic child was not failing to receive the impressions, or even failing to interpret them in quite a sophisticated manner. He was, rather, disapproving them and rejecting them, without any loss of the potentiality of full communication if some impression could be found which he approved of.”

            “Ah,” said Anthony, making just enough of a sound to indicate that he was listening.

            “Nor can you persuade him out of his autism in any ordinary way, for he disapproves of you just as much as he disapproves of the rest of the world. But if you place him in conscious arrest--”

            “In what?”

            “It is a technique we have in which, in effect, the brain is divorced from the body and can perform its functions without reference to the body. It is a rather sophisticated technique devised in our own laboratory; actually--” He paused.

            “By yourself?” asked Anthony gently. “Actually, yes,” said William, reddening slightly, but clearly pleased. “In conscious arrest, we can supply the body with designed fantasies and observe the brain under differential electroencephalography. We can at once learn more about the autistic individual; what kind of sense impressions he most wants; and we learn more about the brain generally.”

            “Ah,” said Anthony, and this time it was a real ah. “And all this you have learned about brains-- can you not adapt it to the workings of a computer?”

            “No,” said William. “Not a chance. I told that to Dmitri. I know nothing about computers and not enough about brains.”

            “If I teach you about computers and tell you in detail what we need, what then?”

            “It won't do. It--”

            “Brother,” Anthony said, and he tried to make it an impressive word. “You owe me something. Please make an honest attempt to give our problem some thought. Whatever you know about the brain--please adapt it to our computers.”

            William shifted uneasily, and said, “I understand your position. I will try. I will honestly try.”

            6.

            William had tried, and as Anthony had predicted, the two had been left to work together. At first they encountered others now and then and William had tried to use the shock value of the announcement that they were brothers since there was no use in denial. Eventually that stopped, however, and there came to be a purposeful non-interference. When William approached Anthony, or Anthony approached William, anyone else who might be present faded silently into the walls.

            They even grew used to each other after a fashion and sometimes spoke to each other almost as though there were no resemblance between them at all and no childish memories in common.

            Anthony made the computer requirements plain in reasonably non-technical language and William, after long thought, explained how it seemed to him a computer might do the work, more or less, of a brain.

            Anthony said, “Would that be possible?”

            “I don't know,” said William. “I am not eager to try. It may not work. But it may.”

            “We' d have to talk to Dmitri Large.”

            “Let's talk it over ourselves first and see what we've got. We can go to him with as reasonable a proposition as we can put together. Or else, not go to him.”

            Anthony hesitated, “We both go to him?” William said delicately, “You be my spokesman. There is no reason that we need be seen together.”

            “Thank you, William. If anything comes of this, you will get full credit from me.”

            William said, “I have no worries about that. If there is anything to this, I will be the only one who can make it work, I suppose.”

            They thrashed it out through four or five meetings and if Anthony hadn't been kin and if there hadn't been that sticky, emotional situation between them, William would have been uncomplicatedly proud of the younger-brother--for his quick understanding of an alien field.

            There were then long conferences with Dmitri Large. There were, in fact, conferences with everyone. Anthony saw them through endless days, and then they came to see William separately. And eventually, through an agonizing pregnancy, what came to be called the Mercury Computer was authorized.

            William then returned to New York with some relief. He did not plan to stay in New York (would he have thought that possible two months earlier?) but there was much to do at the Homological Institute.

            More conferences were necessary, of course, to explain to his own laboratory group what was happening and why he had to take leave and how they were to continue their own projects without him. Then there was a much more elaborate arrival at Dallas with the essential equipment and with two young aides for what would have to be an open-ended stay.

            Nor did William even look back, figuratively speaking. His own laboratory and its needs faded from his thoughts. He was now thoroughly committed to his new task.

            7.

            It was the worst period for Anthony. The relief during William's absence had not penetrated deep and there began the nervous agony of wondering whether perhaps, hope against hope, he might not return. Might he not choose to send a deputy, someone else, anyone else? Anyone with a different face so that Anthony need not feel the half of a two-backed four-legged monster?

            But it was William. Anthony had watched the freight plane come silently through the air, had watched it unload from a distance. But even from that distance he eventually saw William.

            That was that. Anthony left. He went to see Dmitri that afternoon. “It's not necessary, Dmitri, for me to stay, surely. We've worked out the details and someone else can take over.”

            “No, no,” said Dmitri. “The idea was yours in the first place. You must see it through. There is no point in needlessly dividing the credit.”

            Anthony thought: No one else will take the risk. There's still the chance of fiasco. I might have known.

            He had known, but he said stolidly, “You understand I cannot work with William.”

            “But why not?” Dmitri pretended surprise. “You have been doing so well together.”

            “I have been straining my guts over it, Dmitri, and they won't take any more. Don't you suppose I know how it looks?”

            “My good fellow! You make too much of it. Sure the men stare. They are human, after all. But they'll get used to it. I'm used to it.”

            You are not, you fat liar, Anthony thought. He said, “I'm not used to it.”

            “You're not looking at it properly. Your parents were peculiar--but after all, what they did wasn't illegal, only peculiar, only peculiar. It's not your fault, or William's. Neither of you is to blame.”

            “We carry the mark,” said Anthony, making a quick curving gesture of his hand to his face.

            “It's not the mark you think. I see differences. You are distinctly younger in appearance. Your hair is wavier. It's only at first glance that there is a similarity. Come, Anthony, there will be all the time you want, all the help you need, all the equipment you can use. I'm sure it will work marvelously. Think of the satisfaction--”

            Anthony weakened, of course, and agreed at least to help William set up the equipment. William; too, seemed sure it would work marvelously. Not as frenetically as Dmitri did, but with a kind of calmness.

            “It's only a matter of the proper connections,” he said, “though I must admit that that's quite a huge 'only.' Your end of it will be to arrange sensory impressions on an independent screen so that we can exert-- well, I can't say manual control, can I?--so that we can exert intellectual control to override, if necessary.”

            “That can be done,” said Anthony. “Then let's get going....Look, I'll need a week at least to arrange the connections and make sure of the instructions--”

            “Programming, “ said Anthony. “Well, this is your place, so I'll use your terminology. My assistants and I will program the Mercury Computer, but not in your fashion.”

            “I should hope not. We would want a homologist to set up a much more subtle program than anything a mere telemetrist could do.” He did not try to hide the self-hating irony in his words.

            William let the tone go and accepted the words. He said, “Well begin simply. We'll have the robot walk.”

            8.

            A week later, the robot walked in Arizona, a thousand miles away. He walked stiffly, and sometimes he fell down, and sometimes he clanked his ankle against an obstruction, and sometimes he whirled on one foot and went off in a surprising new direction.

            “He's a baby, learning to walk,” said William. Dmitri came occasionally, to learn of progress. “That's remarkable,” he would say.

            Anthony didn't think so. Weeks passed, then months. The robot had progressively done more and more, as the Mercury Computer had been placed, progressively, under a more and more complex programming. (William had a tendency to refer to the Mercury Computer as a brain, but Anthony wouldn't allow it.) And all that happened wasn't good enough.

            “It's not good enough, William,” he said finally. He had not slept the night before.

            “Isn't that strange?” said William coolly. “I was going to say that I thought we had it about beaten.”

            Anthony held himself together with difficulty. The strain of working with William and of watching the robot fumble was more than he could bear. “I'm going to resign, William. The whole job. I'm sorry....It's not you.”

            “But it is I, Anthony.”

            “It isn't all you, William. It's failure. We won't make it. You see how clumsily the robot handles himself, even though he's on Earth, only a thousand miles away, with the signal round trip only a tiny fraction of a second in time. On Mercury, there will be minutes of delay, minutes for which the Mercury Computer will have to allow. It's madness to think it will work.”

            William said, “Don't resign, Anthony. You can't resign now. I suggest we have the robot sent to Mercury. I'm convinced he's ready.”

            Anthony laughed loudly and insultingly. “You're crazy, William.”

            “I'm not. You seem to think it will be harder on Mercury, but it won't be. It's harder on Earth. This robot is designed for one-third Earth-normal gravity, and he's working in Arizona at full gravity. He's designed for 400° C, and he's got 300° C. He's designed for vacuum and he's working in an atmospheric soup.”

            “That robot can take the difference.”

            “The metal structure can, I suppose, but what about the Computer right here? It doesn't work well with a robot that isn't in the environment he's designed for....Look, Anthony, if you want a computer that is as complex as a brain, you have to allow for idiosyncrasies....Come, let's make a deal. If you will push, with me, to have the robot sent to Mercury, that will take six months, and I will take a sabbatical for that period. You will be rid of me.”

            “Who'll take care of the Mercury Computer?”

            “By now you understand how it works, and I'll have my two men here to help you.”

            Anthony shook his head defiantly. “I can't take the responsibility for the Computer, and I won't take the responsibility for suggesting that the robot be sent to Mercury. It won't work.”

            “I'm sure it will.”

            “You can't be sure. And the responsibility is mine. I'm the one who'll bear the blame. It will be nothing to you.”

            Anthony later remembered this as a crucial moment. William might have let it go. Anthony would have resigned. All would have been lost.

            But William said, “Nothing to me? Look, Dad had this thing about Mom. All right. I'm sorry, too. I'm as sorry as anyone can be, but it's done, and there's something funny that has resulted. When I speak of Dad, I mean your Dad, too, and there's lots of pairs of people who can say that: two brothers, two sisters, a brother and sister. And then when I say Mom, I mean your Mom, and there are lots of pairs who can say that, too. But I don't know any other pair, nor have I heard of any other pair, who can share both Dad and Mom.”

            “I know that,” said Anthony grimly. “Yes, but look at it from my standpoint,” said William hurriedly. “I'm a homologist. I work with gene patterns. Have you ever thought of our gene patterns? We share both parents, which means that our gene patterns are closer together than any other pair on this planet. Our very faces show it.”

            “I know that, too.”

            “So that if this project were to work, and if you were to gain glory from it, it would be your gene pattern that would have been proven highly useful to mankind--and that would mean very much my gene pattern as well....Don't you see, Anthony? I share your parents, your face, your gene pattern, and therefore either your glory or your disgrace. It is mine almost as much as yours, and if any credit or blame adheres to me, it is yours almost as much as mine, too. I've got to be interested in your success. I've a motive for that which no one else on Earth has-- a purely selfish one, one so selfish you can be sure it's there. I'm on your side, Anthony, because you're very nearly me!”

            They looked at each other for a long time, and for the first time, Anthony did so without noticing the face he shared.

            William said, “So let us ask that the robot be sent to Mercury.”

            And Anthony gave in. And after Dmitri had approved the request -- he had been waiting to, after all-- Anthony spent much of the day in deep thought.

            Then he sought out William and said, “Listen!”

            There was a long pause which William did not break. Anthony said again, “Listen!” William waited patiently.

            Anthony said, “There's really no need for you to leave. I'm sure you wouldn't like to have the Mercury Computer tended by anyone but yourself.”

            William said, “You mean you intend to leave?” Anthony said, “No, I'll stay, too.”

            William said, “We needn't see much of each other.”

            All of this had been, for Anthony, like speaking with a pair of hands clenched about his windpipe. The pressure seemed to tighten now, but he managed the hardest statement of all.

            “We don't have to avoid each other. We don't have to.”

            William smiled rather uncertainly. Anthony didn't smile at all; he left quickly.

            9.

            William looked up from his book. It was at least a month since he had ceased being vaguely surprised at having Anthony enter.

            He said, “ Anything wrong?”

            “Who can say? They're coming in for the soft landing. Is the Mercury Computer in action?”

            William knew Anthony knew the Computer status perfectly, but he said, “By tomorrow morning, Anthony.”

            “ And there are no problems?”

            “None at all.”

            “Then we have to wait for the soft landing.”

            “Yes.”

            Anthony said, “Something will go wrong.”

            “Rocketry is surely an old hand at this. Nothing will go wrong.”

            “So much work wasted.”

            “It's not wasted yet. It won't be.”

            Anthony said, “Maybe you're right.” Hands deep in his pockets, he drifted away, stopping at the door just before touching contact. “Thanks!”

            “For what, Anthony?”

            “For being-- comforting.”

            William smiled wryly and was relieved his emotions didn't show.

            10.

            Virtually the entire body of personnel of the Mercury Project was on hand for the crucial moment. Anthony, who had no tasks to perform, remained well to the rear, his eyes on the monitors. The robot had been activated and there were visual messages being returned.

            At least they came out as the equivalent of visual--and they showed as yet nothing but a dim glow of light which was, presumably, Mercury's surface.

            Shadows flitted across the screen, probably irregularities on that surface. Anthony couldn't tell by eye alone, but those at the controls, who were analyzing the data by methods more subtle than could be disposed of by unaided eye, seemed calm. None of the little red lights that might have betokened emergency were lighting. Anthony was watching the key observers rather than the screen.

            He should be down with William and the others at the Computer. It was going to be thrown in only when the soft landing was made. He should be. He couldn't be.

            The shadows flitted across the screen more rapidly. The robot was descending-- too quickly? Surely, too quickly!

            There was a last blur and a steadiness, a shift of focus in which the blur grew darker, then fainter. A sound was heard and there were perceptible seconds before Anthony realized what it was the sound was saying--“Soft landing achieved! Soft landing achieved!”

            Then a murmur arose and became an excited hum of self-congratulation until one more change took place on the screen and the sound of human words and laughter was stopped as though there had been a smash collision against a wall of silence.

            For the screen changed; changed and grew sharp. In the brilliant, brilliant sunlight, blazing through the carefully filtered screen, they could now see a boulder clear, burning white on one side, ink-on-ink on the other. It shifted right, then back to left, as though a pair of eyes were looking left, then right. A metal hand appeared on the screen as though the eyes were looking at part of itself.

            It was Anthony's voice that cried out at last, “The Computer's been thrown in.”

            He heard the words as though someone else had shouted them and he raced out and down the stairs and through a Corridor, leaving the babble of voices to rise behind him.

            “William,” he cried as he burst into the Computer room, “it's perfect, it's--”

            But William's hand was upraised. “Shh. Please. I don't want any violent sensations entering except those from the robot.”

            “You mean we can be heard?” whispered Anthony.

            “Maybe not, but I don't know.” There was another screen, a smaller one, in the room with the Mercury Computer. The scene on it was different, and changing; the robot was moving.

            William said, “The robot is feeling its way. Those steps have got to be clumsy. There's a seven-minute delay between stimulus and response and that has to be allowed for.”

            “But already he's walking more surely than he ever did in Arizona. Don't you think so, William? Don't you think so?” Anthony was gripping William's shoulder, shaking it, eyes never leaving the screen.

            William said, “I'm sure of it, Anthony.”

            The Sun burned down in a warm contrasting world of white and black, of white Sun against black sky and white rolling ground mottled with black shadow. The bright sweet smell of the Sun on every exposed square centimeter of metal contrasting with the creeping death-of-aroma on the other side.

            He lifted his hand and stared at it, counting the fingers. Hot-hot-hot--turning, putting each finger, one by one, into the shadow of the others and the hot slowly dying in a change in tactility that made him feel the clean, comfortable vacuum.

            Yet not entirely vacuum. He straightened and lifted both arms over his head, stretching them out, and the sensitive spots on either wrist felt the vapors-- the thin, faint touch of tin and lead rolling through the cloy of mercury.

            The thicker taste rose from his feet; the silicates of each variety, marked by the clear separate-and-together touch and tang of each metal ion. He moved one foot slowly through the crunchy, caked dust, and felt the changes like a soft, not quite random symphony.

            And over all the Sun. He looked up at it, large and fat and bright and hot, and heard its joy. He watched the slow rise of prominences around its rim and listened to the crackling sound of each; and to the other happy noises over the broad face. When he dimmed the background light, the red of the rising wisps of hydrogen showed in bursts of mellow contralto, and the deep bass of the spots amid the muted whistling of the wispy, moving faculae, and the occasional thin keening of a flare, the ping-pong ticking of gamma rays and cosmic particles, and over all in every direction the soft, fainting, and ever-renewed sigh of the Sun's substance rising and retreating forever in a cosmic wind which reached out and bathed him in glory.

            He jumped, and rose slowly in the air with a freedom he had never felt, and jumped again when he landed, and ran, and jumped, and ran again, with a body that responded perfectly to this glorious world, this paradise in which he found himself.

            A stranger so long and so lost-- in paradise at last.

            William said, “It's all right.”

            “But what's he doing?” cried out Anthony.

            “It's all right. The programming is working. He has tested his senses. He has been making the various visual observations. He has dimmed the Sun and studied it. He has tested for atmosphere and for the chemical nature of the soil. It all works.”

            “But why is he running?”

            “I rather think that's his own idea, Anthony. If you want to program a computer as complicated as a brain, you've got to expect it to have ideas of its own.”

            “Running? Jumping?” Anthony turned an anxious face to William. “He'll hurt himself. You can handle the Computer. Override. Make him stop.”

            And William said sharply, “No. I won't. I'll take the chance of his hurting himself. Don't you understand? He's happy. He was on Earth, a world he was never equipped to handle. Now he's on Mercury with a body perfectly adapted to its environment, as perfectly adapted as a hundred specialized scientists could make it be. It's paradise for him; let him enjoy it.”

            “Enjoy? He's a robot.”

            “I'm not talking about the robot. I'm talking about the brain--the brain--that's living here.”

            The Mercury Computer, enclosed in glass, carefully and delicately wired, its integrity most subtly preserved, breathed and lived.

            “It's Randall who's in paradise,” said William. “He's found the world for whose sake he autistically fled this one. He has a world his new body fits perfectly in exchange for the world his old body did not fit at all.”

            Anthony watched the screen in wonder. “He seems to be quieting.”

            “Of course,” said William, “and he'll do his job all the better for his joy.”

            Anthony smiled and said, “We've done it, then, you and I? Shall we join the rest and let them fawn on us, William?”

            William said, “Together?”

            And Anthony linked arms. “Together, brother!”

I won’t deny that the unworthy thought crossed my mind that Jim was young and that when he took STRANGER IN PARADISE he might, unconsciously, have been more impressed by my name than by the story. That thought, fugitive at best, vanished completely when Donald Wollheim, of DAW Books, picked it up for one of his anthologies. It simply passes the bounds of belief that Don, hardened and cynical veteran that he is, could possibly be impressed by my name under any circumstances or, in fact, by anything about me. (Right, Don?) So if he wanted the story, it was for the story’s sake.

I have on occasion written articles for The New York Times Magazine but my batting average with them is less than .500.

            Ordinarily that sort of thing would be disheartening and I would get to feel that I didn’t have the range on that particular market and that I ought to concentrate my efforts elsewhere. However, the Times is a special case, and I kept trying.

            By the fall of 1974, however, I had received three rejections in a row and I made up my mind to turn down the next request for an article that I received from them. That’s not as easy as it sounds, because the request usually comes from Gerald Walker, who is as nice a fellow as was ever invented.

            When he called, I tried desperately to steel myself to a refusal whatever he said, and then he mentioned the magic phrase “science fiction.”

            “A science fiction story?” I said.

            “Yes,” he said.

            “For the magazine section?”

            ”Yes. We want a four-thousand-word story that looks into the future and has something to say about the relationship between man and machine.”

            “I’ll try,” I said. What else could I do? The chance of hitting the Times with a science fiction story was too interesting to pass up. I began working on the story on November 18, 1974, sent it in. to the Times without any real confidence concerning the outcome, and damned if they didn’t take it. It appeared in the January 5, 1975, issue of the Sunday Times and, as far as I could find out, it was the first piece of fiction the Times had ever commissioned and published.

The life and Times of Multivac

            The whole world was interested. The whole world could watch. If anyone wanted to know how marty did watch, Multivac could have told them. The great computer Multivac kept track-as it did of everything.

            Multivac was the judge in this particular case, so coldly objective and purely upright that there was no need of prosecution or defense. There was only the accused, Simon Hines, and the evidence, which consisted, in part, of Ronald Bakst.

            Bakst watched, of course. In his case, it was compulsory .He would rather it were not. In his tenth decade, he was showing signs of age and his rumpled hair was distinctly gray.

            Noreen was not watching. She had said at the door, “If we had a friend left--” She paused, then added, “Which I doubt!” and left.

            Bakst wondered if she would come back at all, but at the moment, it didn’t matter.

            Hines had been an incredible idiot to attempt actual action, as though one could think of walking up to a Multivac outlet and smashing it--as though he didn’t know a world-girdling computer, the world-girdling Computer (capital letter, please) with millions of robots at its command, couldn’t protect itself. And even if the outlet had been smashed, what would that have accomplished?

            And Hines did it in Bakst’s physical presence, too!

            He was called precisely on schedule--”Ronald Bakst will give evidence now.”

            Multivac’s voice was beautiful, with a beauty that never quite vanished no matter how often it was heard. Its timbre was neither quite male nor, for that matter, female, and it spoke in whatever language its hearer understood best.

            “I am ready to give evidence,” Bakst said.

            There was no way to say anything but what he had to say. Hines could not avoid conviction. In the days when Hines would have had to face his fellow human beings, he would have been convicted more quickly and less fairly--and would have been punished more crudely.

            Fifteen days passed, days during which Bakst was quite alone. Physical aloneness was not a difficult thing to envisage in the world of Multivac. Hordes had died in the days of the great catastrophes and it had been the computers that had saved what was left and directed the recovery-and improved their own designs till all were merged into Multivac--and the five million human beings were left on Earth to live in perfect comfort. .

            But those five million were scattered and the chances of one seeing another outside the immediate circle, except by design, was not great. No one was designing to see Bakst, not even by television.

            For the time, Bakst could endure the isolation. He buried himself in his chosen way-which happened to be, these last twenty-three years, the designing of mathematical games. Every man and woman on Earth could develop a way of life to self-suit, provided always that Multivac, weighing all of human affairs with perfect skill, did not judge the chosen way to be subtractive to human happiness.

            But what could be subtractive in mathematical games? It was purely abstract--pleased Bakst--harmed no one else.

            He did not expect the isolation to continue. The Congress would not isolate him permanently without a trial--a different kind of trial from that which Hines had experienced, of course, one without Multivac’s tyranny of absolute justice.

            Still, he was relieved when it ended, and pleased that it was Noreen coming back that ended it. She came trudging over the hill toward him and he started toward her, smiling. It had been a successful five-year period during which they had been together. Even the occasional meetings with her two children and two grandchildren had been pleasant.

            He said, ‘Thank you for being back.”

            She said, “I’m not back.” She looked tired. Her brown hair was windblown, her prominent cheeks a trifle rough and sunburned.

            Bakst pressed the combination for a light lunch and coffee. He knew what she liked. She didn’t stop him, and though she hesitated for a moment, she ate.

            She said, “I’ve come to talk to you. The Congress sent me.”

            “The Congress!” he said. “Fifteen men and women--counting me. Self-appointed and helpless.”

            “You didn’t think so when you were a member.”

            “I’ve grown older. I’ve learned,”

            “At least you’ve learned to betray your friends.”

            “There was no betrayal. Hines tried to damage Multivac; a foolish, impossible thing for him to try.”

            “You accused him.”

            “I had to. Multivac knew the facts without my accusation, and without my accusation, I would have been an accessory. Hines would not have gained, but I would have lost.”

            “Without a human witness, Multivac would have suspended sentence,”

            “Not in the case of an anti-Multivac act. This wasn’t a case of illegal parenthood or life--work without permission. I couldn’t take the chance.”

            “So you let Simon be deprived of all work permits for two years,”

            “He deserved it.”

            “A consoling thought, You may have lost the confidence of the Congress, but you have gained the confidence of Multivac,”

            “The confidence of Multivac is important in the world as it is, “ said Bakst seriously. He was suddenly conscious of not being as tall as Noreen,

            She looked angry enough to strike him; her lips pressed whitely together, But then she had passed her eightieth birthday-no longer young-the habit of non-violence was too ingrained. ...Except for fools like Hines.

            “Is that all you have to say, then?” she said.

            “There could be a great deal to say, Have you forgotten? Have you all forgotten? Do you remember how it once was? Do you remember the Twentieth Century? We live long now; we live securely now; we live happily now.”

            “We live worthlessly now.”

            “Do you want to go back to what the world was like once?”

            Noreen shook her head violently. “Demon tales to frighten us. We have learned our lesson. With the help of Multivac we have come through--but we don’t need that help any longer. Further help will soften us to death. Without Multivac, we will run the robots, we will direct the farms and mines and factories.”

            “How well?”

            “Well enough. Better, with practice. We need the stimulation of it in any case or we will all die.”

            Bakst said, “We have our work, Noreen; whatever work we choose.”

            “Whatever we choose, as long as it’s unimportant, and even that can be taken away at will-as with Hines. And what’s your work, Ron? Mathematical games? Drawing lines on paper? Choosing number combinations?”

            Bakst’s hand reached out to her, almost pleadingly. “That can be important. It is not nonsense. Don’t underestimate--” He paused, yearning to explain but not quite knowing how he could, safely. He said, “I’m working on some deep problems in combinatorial analysis based on gene patterns that can be used to--”

            “To amuse you and a few others. Yes, I’ve heard you talk about your games. You will decide how to move from A to B in a minimum number of steps and that will teach you how to go from womb to grave in a minimum number of risks and we will all thank Multivac as we do so.”

            She stood up. “Ron, you will be tried. I’m sure of it. Our trial. And you will be dropped. Multivac will protect you against physical harm, but you know it will not force us to see you, speak to you, or have anything to do with you. You will find that without the stimulation of human interaction, you will not be able to think--or to play your games. Goodbye.”

            “Noreen! Wait!”

            She turned at the door. “Of course, you will have Multivac. You can talk to Multivac, Ron.”

            He watched her dwindle as she walked down the road through the parklands kept green, and ecologically healthy, by the unobtrusive labors of quiet, single-minded robots one scarcely ever saw.

            He thought: Yes, I will have to talk to Multivac.

            Multivac had no particular home any longer. It was a global presence knit together by wire, optical fiber, and microwave. It had a brain divided into a hundred subsidiaries but acting as one. It had its outlets everywhere and no human being of the five million was far from one.

            There was time for all of them, since Multivac could speak to all individually at the same time and not lift its mind from the greater problems that concerned it.

            Bakst had no illusions as to its strength. What was its incredible intricacy but a mathematical game that Bakst had come to understand over a decade ago? He knew the manner in which the connecting links ran from continent to continent in a huge network whose analysis could form the basis of a fascinating game. How do you arrange the network so that the flow of information never jams? How do you arrange the switching points? Prove that no matter what the arrangement, there is always at least one point which, on disconnection

            Once Bakst had learned the game, he had dropped out of the Congress. What could they do but talk and of what use was that? Multivac indifferently permitted talk of any kind and in any depth precisely because it was unimportant. It was only acts that Multivac prevented, diverted, or punished.

            And it was Hines’s act that was bringing on the crisis; and before Bakst was ready for it, too.

            Bakst had to hasten now, and he applied for an interview with Multivac without any degree of confidence in the outcome.

            Questions could be asked of Multivac at any time. There were nearly a million outlets of the type that had withstood Hines’s sudden attack into which, or near which, one could speak. Multivac would answer.

            An interview was another matter. It required time; it required privacy; most of all it required Multivac’s judgment that it was necessary. Although Multivac had capacities that not all the world’s problems consumed, it had grown chary, somehow, of its time. Perhaps that was the result of its ever-continuing self-improvement. It was becoming constantly more aware of its own worth and less likely to bear trivialities with patience.

            Bakst had to depend on Multivac’s good will. His leaving of the Congress, all his actions since, even the bearing of evidence against Mines, had been to gain that good will. Surely it was the key to success in this world.

            He would have to assume the good will. Having made the application, he at once traveled to the nearest substation by air. Nor did he merely send his image. He wanted to be there in person; somehow he felt his contact with Multivac would be closer in that way.

            The room was almost as it might be if there were to be a human conference planned over closed multivision. For one flash-by moment, Bakst thought Multivac might assume an imaged human form and join him-the brain made flesh.

            It did not, of course. There was the soft, whispering chuckle of Multivac’s unceasing operations; something always and forever present in Multivac’s presence; and over it, now, Multivac’s voice.

            It was not the usual voice of Multivac. It was a still, small voice, beautiful and insinuating, almost in his ear.

            “Good day, Bakst. You are welcome. Your fellow human beings disapprove of you.”

            Multivac always comes to the point, thought Bakst. He said, “It does not matter, Multivac. What counts is that I accept your decisions as for the good of the human species. You were designed to do so in the primitive versions of yourself and--”

            “And my self-designs have continued this basic approach. If you understand this, why do so many human beings fail to understand it? I have not yet completed the analysis of that phenomenon.”

            “I have come to you with a problem,” said Bakst. Multivac said, “What is it?”

            Bakst said, “I have spent a great deal of time on mathematical problems inspired by the study of genes and their combinations. I cannot find the necessary answers and home computerization is of no help.”

            There was an odd clicking and Bakst could not repress a slight shiver at the sudden thought that Multivac might be avoiding a laugh. It was a touch of the human beyond what even he was ready to accept. The voice was in his other ear and Multivac said:

            “There are thousands of different genes in the human cell. Each gene has an average of perhaps fifty variations in existence and uncounted numbers that have never been in existence. If we were to attempt to calculate all possible combinations, the mere listing of them at my fastest speed, if steadily continued, would, in the longest possible lifetime of the Universe, achieve but an infinitesimal fraction of the total.”

            Bakst said, “A complete listing is not needed. That is the point of my game. Some combinations are more probable than others and by building probability upon probability, we can cut the task enormously. It is the manner of achieving this building of probability upon probability that I ask you to help me with.”

            “It would still take a great deal of my time. How could I justify this to myself?”

            Bakst hesitated. No use in trying a complicated selling job. With Multivac, a straight line was the shortest distance between two points. .

            He said, “An appropriate gene combination might produce a human being more content to leave decisions to you, more willing to believe in your resolve to make men happy, more anxious to be happy. I cannot find the proper combination, but you might, and with guided genetic engineering--”

            “I see what you mean. It is-good. I will devote some time to it.”

            Bakst found it difficult to hitch into Noreen’s private wave. length. Three times the connection broke away. He was not surprised. In the last two months, there had been an increasing tendency for technology to slip in minor ways-never for long, never seriously-and he greeted each occasion with a somber pleasure.

            This time it held. Noreen’s face showed, holographically three-dimensional. It flickered a moment, but it held.

            “I’m returning your call,” said Bakst, dully impersonal.

            “For a while it seemed impossible to get you,” said Noreen. “Where have you been?”

            “Not hiding. I’m here, in Denver.”

            “Why in Denver?”

            “The world is my oyster, Noreen. I may go where I please.”

            Her face twitched a little. “And perhaps find it empty everywhere. We are going to try you, Ron.”

            “Now?”

            “Now!”

            “And here?”

            “And here!”

            Volumes of space flickered into different glitters on either side of Noreen, and further away, and behind. Bakst looked from side to side, counting. There were fourteen, six men, eight women. He knew every one of them. They had been good friends once, not so long ago.

            To either side and beyond the simulacra was the wild background of Colorado on a pleasant summer day that was heading toward its end. There had been a city here once named Denver. The site still bore the name though it had been cleared, as most of the city sites had been. ...He could count ten robots in sight, doing whatever it was robots did.

            They were maintaining the ecology, he supposed. He knew no details, but Multivac did, and it kepi fifty million robots allover the Earth in efficient order.

            Behind Bakst was one of the converging grids of Multivac, almost like a small fortress of self-defense.

            “Why now?” he asked. “And why here?”

            Automatically he turned to Eldred. She was the oldest of them and the one with authority-if a human being could be said to have authority.

            Eldred’s dark-brown face looked a little weary. The years showed, all six score of them, but her voice was firm and incisive. “Because we have the final fact now. Let Noreen tell you. She knows you best.”

            Bakst’s eyes shifted to Noreen. “Of what crime am I accused?”

            “Let us play no games, Ron. There are no crimes under Multivac except to strike for freedom and it is your human crime that you have committed no crime under Multivac. For that we will judge whether any human being alive wants your company any longer, wants to hear your voice, be aware of your presence, or respond to you in any way.”

            “Why am I threatened with isolation then?”

            “You have betrayed all human beings.”

            “How?”

            “Do you deny that you seek to breed mankind into subservience to Multivac?”

            “Ah!” Bakst folded his arms across his chest. “You found out quickly, but then you had only to ask Multivac.”

            Noreen said, “Do you deny that you asked for help in the genetic engineering of a strain of humanity designed to accept slavery under Multivac without question?”

            “I suggested the breeding of a more contented humanity. Is this a betrayal?”

            Eldred intervened. She said, “We don’t want your sophistry, Ron. We know it by heart. Don’t tell us once again that Multivac cannot be withstood, that there is no use in struggling, that we have gained security. What you call security, the rest of us call slavery.”

            Bakst said, “Do you proceed now to judgment, or am I allowed a defense?”

            “You heard Eldred,” said Noreen. “We know your defense.” .

            “We all heard Eldred,” said Bakst, “but no one has heard me. What she says is my defense is not my defense.”

            There was a silence as the images glanced right and left at each other. Eldred said, “Speak!”

            Bakst said, “I asked Multivac to help me solve a problem in the field of mathematical games. To gain his interest, I pointed out that it was modeled on gene combinations and that a solution might help in designing a gene combination that would leave man no worse off than he is now in any respect and yet breed into him a cheerful acceptance of Multivac’s direction, and acquiescence in his decisions.”

            “So we have said,” said Eldred.

            “It was only on those terms that Multivac would have accepted the task. Such a new breed is clearly desirable for mankind by Multivac’s standards, and by Multivac’s standards he must labor toward it: And the desirability of the end will lure him on to examine greater and greater complications of a problem whose endlessness is beyond what even he can handle. You all witness that.”

            Noreen said, “Witness what?”

            “Haven’t you had trouble reaching me? In the last two months, hasn’t each of you noticed small troubles in what has always gone smoothly? ...You are silent. May I accept that as an affirmative?”

            “If so what then?”

            Bakst said, “Multivac has been placing all his spare circuits on the problem. He has been slowly pushing the running of the world toward rather a skimpy minimum of his efforts, since nothing, by his own sense of ethics, must stand in the way of human happiness and there can be no greater increase in that happiness than to accept Multivac.”

            Noreen said, “What does all this mean? There is still enough in Multivac to run the world-and us-and if this is done at less than full efficiency, that would only add temporary discomfort to our slavery. Only temporary, because it won’t last long. Sooner or later, Multivac will decide the problem is insoluble, or will solve it, and in either case, his distraction will end. In the latter case, slavery will become permanent and irrevocable.”

            “But for now he is distracted,” said Bakst, “and we can even talk like this-most dangerously-without his noticing. Yet I dare not risk doing so for long, so please understand me quickly.

            “I have another mathematical game-the setting up of networks on the model of Multivac. I have been able to demonstrate that no matter how complicated and redundant the network is, there must be at least one place into which all the currents can funnel under particular circumstances. There will always be the fatal apoplectic stroke if that one place is interefered with, since it will induce overloading elsewhere which will break down and induce overloading elsewhere--and so on indefinitely till all breaks down.”

            “Well?”

            “And this is the point. Why else have I come to Denver? And Multivac knows it, too, and this point is guarded electronically and robotically to the extent that it cannot be penetrated.”

            “Well?”

            “But Multivac is distracted, and Multivac trusts me. I have labored hard to gain that trust, at the cost of losing all of you, since only with trust is there the possibility of betrayal. If any of you tried to approach this point, Multivac might rouse himself even out of his present distraction. If Multivac were not distracted, he would not allow even me to approach. But he is distracted, and it is I!”

            Bakst was moving toward the converging grid in a calm saunter, and the fourteen images, keyed to him, moved along as well. The soft susurrations of a busy Multivac center were all about them.

            Bakst said, “Why attack an invulnerable opponent? Make him vulnerable first, and then--”

            Bakst fought to stay calm, but it all depended on this now. Everything! With a sharp yank, he uncoupled a joint. (If he had only had still more time to make more certain.)

            He was not stopped--and as he held his breath, he became aware of the ceasing of noise, the ending of whisper, the closing down of Multivac. If, in a moment, that soft noise did not return, then he had had the right key point, and no recovery would be possible. If he were not quickly the focus of approaching robots

            He turned in the continuing silence. The robots in the distance were working still. None were approaching.

            Before him, the images of the fourteen men and women of the Congress were still there and each seemed to be stupefied at the sudden enormous thing that had happened.

            Bakst said, “Multivac is shut down, burnt out. It can’t be rebuilt.” He felt almost drunk at the sound of what he was saying. “I have worked toward this since I left you. When Hines attacked, I feared there might be other such efforts, that Multivac would double his guard, that even I had to work quickly--I wasn’t sure--” He was gasping, but forced himself steady, and said solemnly, “I have given us our freedom.”

            And he paused, aware at last of the gathering weight of the silence. Fourteen images stared at him, without any of them offering a word in response.

            Bakst said sharply, “You have talked of freedom. You have it!”

            Then, uncertainly, he said, “Isn’t that what you want?”

When I first finished the preceding story, or thought I had, I was left dissatisfied. I lay awake till about 2 A.M. trying to figure out what dissatisfied me, and then decided I had not made my point. I got up, quickly wrote down the last three paragraphs of the story as it finally appeared, ending with that horrified question, and then went peacefully to sleep.

            The next day, I rewrote the last page of the manuscript to include the new ending and when I sent it off to the Times, much as I wanted to make the sale, I indicated where I would be intransigent.

            “Please note,” I wrote, “that the ending on an unresolved question is not an accident. It is of the essence. Each reader is going to have to consider the meaning of the question and what answer he himself would give.”

            The Times asked for some trivial changes and clarifications but did not allow even a whisper of objection to emerge concerning my ending, I am glad to say.

            My own original title had been “Mathematical Games,” by the way, and for a while I considered restoring it in the book version. However, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MULTIVAC has a swing to it. Besides, a large number of people saw it on the single day during which it was available to the reading public. More people came up to me over the next few weeks to tell me they had read that story than had ever been the case for any other story I had ever written. I don’t want them to think I changed the title in order to lure them into thinking they hadn’t read the story before, so that they might buy this book, so THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MULTIVAC it stays.

Among those who saw my story in The New York Times Magazine was William Levinson, editor of Physician’s World. In the same issue of the magazine section was an article entitled “Triage.” Triage is a system of choosing whom to save and whom to allow to die when conditions do not allow of saving all. Triage has been used in medical emergencies when limited facilities have been applied to those with the best chance of making it. Now there is a feeling that triage might be applied on a worldwide scale, that some nations and regions cannot be saved and that no effort should be made to save them.

            It occurred to Levinson that the subject could be treated through the medium of science fiction and since my name was staring at him on the same contents page, he approached me. I was struck with the idea and agreed at once. I started it on January 19, 1975. Levinson liked THE WINNOWING when it was done and it was all set to appear in the June 1975 issue, when the magazine suddenly suspended publication the issue before.

            Sad and embarrassed, Levinson returned the story, but, of course, it wasn’t his fault, so I wrote him a reassuring letter. After all, the story had been paid for and it wasn’t likely I couldn’t place it elsewhere.

            Ben Bova took it at once, in fact, and it appeared in the February 1976 Analog.