CHAPTER ELEVEN
“We could take over one of the giant space stations being built for colonies.” Dyer sat forward eagerly in the chair while Hoestler listened from the other side of his desk. For once Hoestler’s eyes were active and alert. He had said little but it was obvious that Dyer’s words were setting all kinds of wheels in motion inside his head.
“The residential portions of some of the colonies are miles across,” Dyer went on. “They’ve got everything—complete towns, landscapes, rivers, farms and lakes . . . everything as near natural as it’s possible to get. You could have agriculture, industry, an economy to manage, an ecology to look after, energy programs to schedule, transportation, communications. Pretty well every aspect of Earth’s society that matters, duplicated on a miniature scale. Only it would be small enough to handle. All the problems that come about as a result of the scale of the real thing simply go away. We set it up as a lab-scale experiment.”
Hoestler’s eyes widened slowly as the vision took shape inside his head.
“So exactly what are you saying we do?” he checked. “We put in a total FISE-based system to run the whole thing. A totally computer-managed micro-planet, that it? A system at least as advanced functionally as anything that exists on Earth . . . Then we wait to see what it does . . . Hmm . . . Interesting . . .” He leaned back from the desk and nodded slowly to himself.
“More advanced than anything on Earth,” Dyer said. “FISE wouldn’t be suitable as it stands because it’s been adapting to Hector’s world, which is too simple. But the basic techniques that we’ve developed with FISE could be used to program the microplanet system to give it capabilities way ahead of TITAN. That’s the whole point. If you want a preview of what TITAN might grow into in a hundred years’ time, this would be just the way to do it. If it does start doing things you didn’t bargain for, at least you know about it before it happens for real down here. Also nothing that happened up there could have any effect on the system down here. It’s perfect.”
Hoestler fell silent for a long time. As he turned the suggestion over, a slow frown spread across his fleshly features.
“I see a problem with it,” he said at last. “So we set this system up the way you say and we wait. So what? There’s no guarantee that it will evolve any survival drive at all. We might wait years. And even if it didn’t, that wouldn’t prove that it could never happen with TITAN, would it?” He shook his head glumly and made a tossing-away motion with his hand. “Anyway, the question isn’t, Could TITAN evolve a survival drive?; our worst-case assumptions already presuppose that it could. The question is, What could it do about it?.” Hoestler sighed heavily and looked dubious. “I’m sorry, Ray, but I can’t see it. How would what you’re proposing get us any nearer answering questions like that?”
“We don’t have to wait and see if it develops a survival instinct,” Dyer replied at once. “We make sure it does. We build the instinct in to start with!”
Hoestler stared at him as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses.
“Why not?” Dyer demanded. “Kim’s already developing exactly the techniques we need to do it We don’t have to wait and see if it ever gets around to equating Man to a threat. We attack it!”
“Attack it?” Hoestler gasped incredulously. Dyer nodded his head rapidly.
“Exactly! We set up a situation in which all the worst-case ‘maybes’ have already come true because we made them come true. Then we take it on in a battle of wits to see just who can outwit whom if it ever came to the point of us versus it. We can act out all the what-if-this and what-if-that scenarios everybody has been talking about and get some real data once and for all to answer them. As with everything else, the only way to find out what a complex of smart machines is capable of is to try it and see. The problem up until now has been that the only complex we’ve had to try it on happens to be the one that manages our planet and if things screw up there won’t be any second chance. What I’m saying is, it doesn’t have to be that way.”
Hoestler stared back at Dyer in open amazement as he listened. Every objection that his mind could devise crumbled away almost as soon as he thought of it.
“I think you’ve got something, Ray,” he breathed at last. “I really think you’ve got something.”
Within the hour Hoestler had endorsed the idea to Richter. Richter rushed off in excitement to put it to Lewis and by lunchtime Lewis had involved Schroder from Washington. Schroder was at once captivated and promised to raise the matter with his advisers, that same day he hoped. The message found its way back to Dyer that things were moving on it. What happened next was something he could only wait for to shape itself in its own way and in its own time.
Nothing further had developed by the end of the day, which was not really surprising. Just as Dyer was in the process of tidying up to leave, Betty stuck her head in through the door and announced that Laura was on the line asking for him. As he told her to put the call through he caught a momentary expression of mild surprise flickering across Betty’s face, and then realized that it was because he had failed to display any of his usual reactions to such news. It was probably, he told himself as he settled back to take the call, because for once the world in general seemed to be spinning smoothly.
“Hi there,” Laura greeted from the screen. “How’s my exception that proves the rule today?”
“Hi. What rule?”
“About scientists. You’re the one who’s different from the way they’re all supposed to be.”
“Point one, I’m fine,” he said. “Point two, I thought you were supposed to be forgetting what we’re supposed to be like and finding out what we’re really like. Point three, exceptions don’t prove rules. It’s an idiotic popular saying. Now, what can I do for you?”
“I’ve got a proposition to put to you,” Laura told him. Dyer eyed her suspiciously.
“What kind of proposition?”
“You remember Sam Gallenheim who was at the dinner the other night?”
“Producer from Summit, wasn’t he? Yes, I remember him. What about him?”
“He’s been talking to my boss today,” Laura said. “He was pretty impressed by some of the things you said and he’s been suggesting we ought to make more use of outside professional consultants. Not just to vet the technical stuff, but to advise on the things I’ve been working on too—you know, getting the people to come out right and all that. He recommended you especially. Anyhow, they asked me to mention it and find out if you might be interested. What d’you think?”
“I’d need more details than that,” Dyer replied. “What kind of thing have they got in mind?”
“Oh, a little time outside whatever your usual hours are—helping get the outlines right in the early stages, maybe being on hand to advise in some sets . . . things like that. It could be fun and I know they’d make it more than worth your while. That sound like a good deal?”
“Well, you’re selling it fine,” Dyer said with a grin; “Have they put you on commission or something?”
“I wish they would. No, I’m just doing my job.”
“When do you want answers?”
“I’m not looking for a yes-no here and now. I just want to know how you think you might feel about it in principle. If it sounds okay we’ll think about it some more and give you something more detailed in writing later. How does that grab you?”
“Oh hey, in that case go right ahead,” Dyer told her. “Sure, I’ll look at it, but I can’t say anything definite until I’ve seen it. Fair enough?”
“Good. That’s all I needed to know for now.” Laura looked away for a moment and exchanged a brief dialogue of signs with somebody offscreen. “Sorry about that,” she said, looking back again. “We’ve got a meeting due to start in a couple of minutes. That was why I needed to get your reaction to this idea.”
“Meetings at this time?” Dyer made a face. “What’s the matter with you people? Can’t you sleep at night or something?”
“Well, that’s the way it is,” she said with a shrug. “There’s always something going on in this business.”
“Staying on late in town then, huh?”
“Oh, we won’t make an all-night thing out of it,” she replied automatically. “An hour maybe . . . two at the most. It happens a lot.”
“I’ll buy you a dinner when you get through.” The words had somehow said themselves even before he’d thought about them. They came out as a blunt statement of fact rather than as a request. Laura’s expression registered surprise, compelling him to look for something additional to defend his stance. “We owe you one,” he explained. “Zeegram treated us last week. Now it’s our turn.”
Chris, Ron, Kim and Betty were milling around and putting on coats just outside his office. He stretched out a leg to kick the door shut and returned his eyes to the screen. Laura was looking at him in a mischievous and knowing kind of way but her mouth was smiling.
“Okay, why not?” she said simply. “Thank you, kind sir. I—” She glanced away again for a second and nodded. “Gee, I’ve really got to go. Do you know Delaney’s?”
“Small bar off one side of West Thirty-Four High Precinct?”
“That’s it. How about there at, say, eight? Okay?”
“Sure.”
“Over and out.” The screen went blank.
He was still asking himself what the hell he thought he was playing at when he came out of the office to find Chris and Ron frowning suspiciously at him
“What’s going on?” Ron demanded, nodding toward Dyer’s door. “You putting out feelers for jobs or something?”
“It’s his past catching up with him at last,” Chris declared solemnly. “They’ve all got wicked pasts, these project leaders. Right, Chief?”
“Personal,” Dyer said simply. Betty’s smirk from the doorway leading into the corridor said that she at least had a fairly good idea of what was going on. Dyer’s steely glare in the reverse direction told her she’d better make sure she kept it to herself.