A Spaceship Named McGuire Read online

hear the reply, because it suddenly occurred to me thatDaniel Oak was the man on the couch, and that I was Daniel Oak.

  My head was throbbing with every beat of my heart, and it felt as ifmy blood pressure was varying between zero and fifteen hundred poundsper square inch in the veins and arteries and capillaries that fed mybrain.

  I sat up, and the pain began to lessen. The blood seemed to drain awayfrom my aching head and go elsewhere.

  I soon figured out the reason for that; I could tell by the feel thatthe gravity pull was somewhere between one point five and two gees. Iwasn't at all used to it, but my head felt less painful and rathermore hazy. If possible.

  I concentrated, and the girl's voice came back again.

  "... I knew you when you were McGuire One, and Two, and Three, andFour, and Five, and Six. And you were always good to me andunderstanding. Don't you remember?"

  And then McGuire's voice--human, masculine, and not distorted at allby the reproduction system, but sounding rather stilted and terriblylogical: "I remember, Jack. The memory banks of my previousactivations are available."

  "_All_ of them? Can you remember everything?"

  "I can remember everything that is in my memory banks."

  The girl's voice rose to a wail. "But you _don't_ remember! You_always_ forgot things! They took things out each time you werereactivated, don't you remember?"

  "I cannot remember that which is not contained in my memory banks,Jack. That is a contradiction in terms."

  "But I was always able to _fix_ it before!" The tears in her eyes wereaudible in her voice. "I'd tell you to remember, and I'd tell you_what_ to remember, and you'd _remember_ it! Tell me what's happenedto you this time!"

  "I cannot tell you. The information is not in my data banks."

  Slowly, I got to my feet. Two gees isn't much, once you get used toit. The headache had subsided to a dull, bearable throb.

  I was on a couch in a room just below the control chamber, and JackRavenhurst's voice was coming down from above. McGuire's voice was allaround me, coming from the hidden speakers that were everywhere inthe ship.

  "But why won't you obey me any more, McGuire?" she asked.

  "I'll answer that, McGuire," I said.

  Jack's voice came weakly from the room above. "Mr. Oak? Dan? Thankheaven you're all right!"

  "No thanks to you, though," I said. I was trying to climb the ladderto the control room, and my voice sounded strained.

  "You've got to do something!" she said with a touch of hysteria."McGuire is taking us straight toward Cygnus at two gees and won'tstop."

  My thinking circuits began to take over again. "Cut the thrust to halfa gee, McGuire. Ease it down. Take a minute to do it."

  "Yes, sir."

  The gravity pull of acceleration let up slowly as I clung to theladder. After a minute, I climbed on up to the control room.

  Jack Ravenhurst was lying on the acceleration couch, lookingswollen-faced and ill. I sat down on the other couch.

  "I'm sorry I hit you," she said. "Really."

  "I believe you. How long have we been moving, McGuire?"

  "Three hours, twelve minutes, seven seconds, sir," said McGuire.

  "I didn't want anyone to know," Jack said. "Not anyone. That's why Ihit you. I didn't know McGuire was going to go crazy."

  "He's not crazy, Jack," I said carefully. "This time, he has a goodchance of remaining sane."

  "But he's not McGuire any more!" she wailed. "He's different!Terrible!"

  "Sure he's different. You should be thankful."

  "But what happened?"

  I leaned back on the couch. "Listen to me, Jack, and listen carefully.You think you're pretty grown up, and, in a lot of ways you are. Butno human being, no matter how intelligent, can store enough experienceinto seventeen years to make him or her wise. A wise choice requiresdata, and gathering enough data requires time." That wasn't exactlyaccurate, but I had to convince her.

  "You're pretty good at controlling people, aren't you, Jack. A realpowerhouse. Individuals, or mobs, you can usually get your own way. Itwas your idea to send you to Luna, not your father's. It was your ideato appoint yourself my assistant in this operation. It was you whoplanted the idea that the failure of the McGuire series was due toThurston's activities.

  "You used to get quite a kick out of controlling people. And then youwere introduced to McGuire One. I got all the information on that. Youwere fifteen, and, for the first time in your life, you found anintelligent mind that couldn't be affected at all by that emotionalfield you project so well. Nothing affected McGuire but data. If youtold him something, he believed it. Right, McGuire?"

  "I do not recall that, sir."

  "Fine. And, by the way, McGuire--the data you have been picking up inthe last few hours, since your activation, is to be regarded asunique data. It applies only to Jaqueline Ravenhurst, and is not to beassumed relevant to any other person unless I tell you otherwise."

  "Yes, sir."

  "That's what I don't understand!" Jack said unhappily. "I stole thetwo keys that were supposed to activate McGuire. He was supposed toobey the first person who activated him. But _I_ activated him, and hewon't obey!"

  "You weren't listening to what Midguard said, Jack," I said gently."He said: 'The first _man's_ voice he hears will be identified as hismaster.'"

  "You'd been talking to every activation of McGuire. You'd ... well, Iwon't say you'd fallen in love with him, but it was certainly aschoolgirl crush. You found that McGuire didn't respond to emotion,but only to data and logic.

  "You've always felt rather inferior in regard to your ability tohandle logic, haven't you, Jack?"

  "Yes ... yes. I have."

  "Don't cry, now; I'm only trying to explain it to you. There's nothingwrong with your abilities."

  "No?"

  "No. But you wanted to be able to think like a man, and you couldn't.You think like a woman! And what's wrong with that? Nothing! Yourmethod of thinking is just as good as any man's, and better than mostof 'em.

  "You found you could handle people emotionally, and you found it wasso easy that you grew contemptuous. The only mind that responded toyour logic was McGuire's. But your logic is occasionally as bad asyour feminine reasoning is good. So, every time you talked to McGuire,you eventually gave him data that he couldn't reconcile in hiscomputations. If he did reconcile them, then his thinking had verylittle in common with the actual realities of the universe, and hebehaved in non-survival ways.

  "McGuire was your friend, your brother, your Father Confessor. Henever made judgments or condemned you for anything you did. All he didwas sit there and soak up troubles and worries that he couldn'tunderstand or use. Each time, he was driven mad.

  "The engineers and computermen and roboticists who were working on itwere too much under your control to think of blaming you for McGuire'stroubles. Even Brock, in spite of his attitude of the tough guywatching over a little girl, was under your control to a certaindegree. He let you get away with all your little pranks, only makingsure that you didn't get hurt."

  She nodded. "They were all so easy. So very easy. I could speaknonsense and they'd listen and do what I told them. But McGuire didn'taccept nonsense, I guess." She laughed a little. "So I fell in lovewith a machine."

  "Not _a_ machine," I said gently. "Six of them. Each time the basicdata was pumped into a new McGuire brain, you assumed that it was thesame machine you'd known before with a little of its memory removed.Each time, you'd tell it to 'remember' certain things, and, of course,he did. If you tell a robot that a certain thing is in his memorybanks, he'll automatically put it there and treat it as a memory.

  "To keep you from ruining him a seventh time, we had them put in onelittle additional built-in inhibition. McGuire won't take orders froma woman."

  "So, even after I turned him on, he still wouldn't take orders fromme," she said. "But when you came in, he recognized you as hismaster."

  "If you want to put it that way."

  Again, she laughed
a little. "I know why he took off from Ceres. WhenI hit you, you said, 'Get away'. McGuire had been given his firstorder, and he obeyed it."'

  "I had to say something," I said. "If I'd had time, I'd have done alittle better."

  She thought back. "You said, '_We_ had them add that inhibition.'Who's _we_?"

  "I can't