Unwise Child Read online

  6

  The firm of M. R. GABRIEL, POWER DESIGN was not a giant corporation, butit did pretty well for a one-man show. The outer office was a gantletthat Mike the Angel had to run when he came in the next morning afterhaving spent the night at a hotel. There was a mixed and ragged chorusof "Good morning, Mr. Gabriel" as he passed through. Mike gave the nodto each of them and was stopped four times for small details before hefinally made his way to his own office.

  His secretary was waiting for him. She was short, bony, and plain offace. She had a figure like an ironing board and the soul of a Ramsdencalculator. Mike the Angel liked her that way; it avoided complications.

  "Good morning, Mr. Gabriel," she said. "What the hell happened here?"She waved at the warped door and the ribbons of electrostatic tape thatstill lay in curls on the floor.

  Mike told her, and she listened to his recitation without any change ofexpression. "I'm very glad you weren't hurt," she said when he hadfinished. "What are you going to do about the apartment?"

  Mike opened the heavy door and looked at the wreckage inside. Throughthe gaping hole of the shattered window, he could see the toweringspires of the two-hundred-year-old Cathedral of St. John the Divine."Get Larry Beasley on the phone, Helen. I've forgotten his number, butyou'll find him listed under 'Interior Decorators.' He has the originalplans and designs on file. Tell him to get them out; I want this placefixed up just like it was."

  "But what if someone else...." She gestured toward the broken window andthe cathedral spires beyond.

  "When you're through talking to Beasley," Mike went on, "see if you canget Bishop Brennan on the phone and switch him to my desk."

  "Yes, sir," she said.

  Within two hours workmen were busily cleaning up the wreckage in Mikethe Angel's apartment, and the round, plump figure of Larry Beasley waswalking around pompously while his artistic but businesslike brain madeestimates. Mike had also reached an agreement with the bishop wherebyspecial vaultlike doors would be fitted into the stairwells leading upto the towers at Mike's expense. They were to have facings of bronze sothat they could be decorated to blend with the Gothic decor of thechurch, but the bronze would be backed by heavy steel. Nobody would blow_those_ down in a hurry.

  Since the wrecked living room was a flurry of activity and his officehad become a thoroughfare, Mike the Angel retired to his bedroom tothink. He took with him the microcryotron stack he had picked up at OldHarry's the night before.

  "For something that doesn't look like much," he said aloud to thestack, "you have caused me a hell of a lot of trouble."

  Old Harry, he knew, wouldn't be caught dead selling the things. In thefirst place, it was strictly illegal to deal in the components ofrobotic brains. In the second place, they were so difficult to get, evenon the black market, that the few that came into Old Harry's hands wentinto the defenses of his own shop. Mike the Angel had only wanted toborrow one to take a good look at it. He had read up on all theliterature about microcryotrons, but he'd never actually seen onebefore.

  He had reason to be curious about microcryotrons. There was somethingdefinitely screwy going on in Antarctica.

  Nearly two years before, the UN Government, in the person of MinisterWallingford himself, had asked Mike's firm--which meant Mike the Angelhimself--to design the power drive and the thrust converters for aspaceship. On the face of it, there was nothing at all unusual in that.Such jobs were routine for M. R. Gabriel.

  But when the specifications arrived, Mike the Angel had begun to wonderwhat the devil was going on. The spaceship _William Branchell_ was to bebuilt on the surface of Earth--and yet it was to be a much larger shipthan any that had ever before been built on the ground. Usually, aninterstellar vessel that large was built in orbit around the Earth,where the designers didn't have to worry about gravitational pull. Sucha ship never landed, any more than an ocean liner was ever beached--noton purpose, anyway. The passengers and cargo were taken up by smallervessels and brought down the same way when the liner arrived at herdestination.

  Aside from the tremendous energy required to lift such a vessel free ofa planet's surface, there was also the magnetic field of the planet toconsider. The drive tubes tended to wander and become erratic if theywere forced to cut through the magnetic field of a planet.

  Therefore, Question One: Why wasn't the _Branchell_ being built inspace?

  Part of the answer, Mike knew, lay in the specifications for theconstruction of Cargo Hold One. For one thing, it was huge. For another,it was heavily insulated. For a third, it was built like a tank forholding liquids. All very well and good; possibly someone wanted tocarry a cargo of cold lemonade or iced tea. That would be pretty stupid,maybe, but it wouldn't be mysterious.

  The mystery lay in the fact that Cargo Hold One had _already beenbuilt_. The _Branchell_ was to be built _around_ it! And that didn'texactly jibe with Mike the Angel's ideas of the proper way to build aspaceship. It was not quite the same as building a seagoing vesselaround an oil tank in the middle of Texas, but it was close enough tobother Mike the Angel.

  Therefore, Question Two: Why was the _Branchell_ being built aroundCargo Hold One?

  Which led to Question Three: What was _in_ Cargo Hold One?

  For the answer to that question, he had one very good hint. The densityof the contents of Cargo Hold One was listed in the specs as beingone-point-seven-two-six grams per cubic centimeter. And that, Mikehappened to know, was the density of a cryotronic brain, which is 90 percent liquid helium and 10 per cent tantalum and niobium, by volume.

  He looked at the microcryotron stack in his hand. It was aone-hundred-kilounit stack. The possible connections within it werefactorial one hundred thousand. All it needed was to be immersed in itsbath of liquid helium to make the metals superconducting, and it wouldbe ready to go to work.

  A friend of his who worked for Computer Corporation of Earth had built arobot once, using just such a stack. The robot was designed to playpoker. He had fed in all the rules of play and added all the data fromOesterveldt's _On Poker_. It took Mike the Angel exactly one hour tofigure out how to beat it.

  As long as Mike played rationally, the machine had a slight edge, sinceit had a perfect memory and could compute faster than Mike could. But itwould not, could not learn how to bluff. As soon as Mike startedbluffing, the robot went into a tizzy.

  It wouldn't have been so bad if the robot had known nothing whateverabout bluffing. That would have made it easy for Mike. All he'd have hadto do was keep on feeding in chips until the robot folded.

  But the robot _did_ know about bluffing. The trouble is that bluffing isessentially illogical, and the robot had no rules whatsoever to go by tojudge whether Mike was bluffing or not. It finally decided to make itsdecisions by chance, judging by Mike's past performance at bluffing.When it did, Mike quit bluffing and cleaned it out fast.

  That caused such utter confusion in the random circuits that Mike'sfriend had had to spend a week cleaning up the robot's little mind.

  But what would be the purpose of building a brain as gigantic as the onein Cargo Hold One? And why build a spaceship around it?

  Like a pig roasting on an automatic spit, the problem kept turning overand over in Mike's mind. And, like the roasting pig, the time eventuallycame when it was done.

  Once it is set in operation, a properly operating robot brain canneither be shut off nor dismantled. Not, that is, unless you want tolose all of the data and processes you've fed into it.

  Now, suppose the Computer Corporation of Earth had built a giant-sizedbrain. (Never mind _why_--just suppose.) And suppose they wanted to takeit off Earth, but didn't want to lose all the data that had been pumpedinto it. (Again, never mind _why_--just suppose.)

  Very well, then. _If_ such a brain had been built, and _if_ it wasnecessary to take it off Earth, and _if_ the data in it was so preciousthat the brain could not be shut off or dismantled, _then_ the thing todo would be to build a ship around it.

  Oh _yeah_?

  Mike the
Angel stared at the microcryotron stack and asked:

  "Now, tell me, pal, just why would anyone want a brain that big? Andwhat is so blasted important about it?"

  The stack said not a word.

  The phone chimed. Mike the Angel thumbed the switch, and his secretary'sface appeared on the screen. "Minister Wallingford is on the line, Mr.Gabriel."

  "Put him on," said Mike the Angel.

  Basil Wallingford's ruddy face came on. "I see you're still alive," hesaid. "What in the bloody blazes happened last night?"

  Mike sighed and told him. "In other words," he ended up, "just the usualsort of JD stuff we have to put up with these days. Nothing new, andnothing to worry about."

  "You almost got killed," Wallingford pointed out.

  "A miss is as good as a mile," Mike said with cheerful inanity. "Thanksto your phone call, I was as safe as if I'd been in my own home," headded with utter illogic.

  "You can afford to laugh," Wallingford said grimly. "I can't. I'vealready lost one man."

  Mike's grin vanished. "What do you mean? Who?"

  "Oh, nobody's killed," Wallingford said quickly. "I didn't mean that.But Jack Wong turned his car over yesterday at a hundred and seventymiles an hour, and he's laid up with a fractured leg and a badlydislocated arm."

  "Too bad," said Mike. "One of these days that fool will kill himselfracing." He knew Wong and liked him. They had served together in theSpace Service when Mike was on active duty.

  "I hope not," Wallingford said. "Anyway--the matter I called you on lastnight. Can you get those specs for me?"

  "Sure, Wally. Hold on." He punched the hold button and rang for hissecretary as Wallingford's face vanished. When the girl's face came on,he said: "Helen, get me the cargo specs on the _WilliamBranchell_--Section Twelve, pages 66 to 74."

  The discussion, after Helen had brought the papers, lasted less thanfive minutes. It was merely a matter of straightening out some costestimates--but since it had to do with the _Branchell_, and specificallywith Hold Number One, Mike decided he'd ask a question.

  "Wally, tell me--what in the hell is going on down there at ChilblainsBase?"

  "They're building a spaceship," said Wallingford in a flat voice.

  It was Wallingford's way of saying he wasn't going to answer anyquestions, but Mike the Angel ignored the hint. "I'd sort of gatheredthat," he said dryly. "But what I want to know is: Why is it being builtaround a cryotronic brain, the like of which I have never heard before?"

  Basil Wallingford's eyes widened, and he just stared for a full twoseconds. "And just how did you come across that information, GoldenWings?" he finally asked.

  "It's right here in the specs," said Mike the Angel, tapping the sheafof papers.

  "Ridiculous." Wallingford's voice seemed toneless.

  Mike decided he was in too deep now to back out. "It certainly is,Wally. It couldn't be hidden. To compute the thrust stresses, I had toknow the density of the contents of Cargo Hold One. And here it is:1.726 gm/cm cubed. Nothing else that I know of has that exact density."

  Wallingford pursed his lips. "Dear me," he said after a moment. "I keepforgetting you're too bright for your own good." Then a slow smilespread over his face. "Would you _really_ like to know?"

  "I wouldn't have asked otherwise," Mike said.

  "Fine. Because you're just the man we need."

  Mike the Angel could almost feel the knife blade sliding between hisribs, and he had the uncomfortable feeling that the person who hadstabbed him in the back was himself. "What's that supposed to mean,Wally?"

  "You are, I believe, an officer in the Space Service Reserve," saidBasil Wallingford in a smooth, too oily voice. "Since the EngineeringOfficer of the _Branchell_, Jack Wong, is laid up in a hospital, I'mgoing to call you to active duty to replace him."

  Mike the Angel felt that ghostly knife twist--hard.

  "That's silly," he said. "I haven't been a ship's officer for fiveyears."

  "You're the man who designed the power plant," Wallingford said sweetly."If you don't know how to run her, nobody does."

  "My time per hour is worth a great deal," Mike pointed out.

  "The rate of pay for a Space Service officer," Basil Wallingford saidpleasantly, "is fixed by law."

  "I can fight being called back to duty--and I'll win," said Mike. Hedidn't know how long he could play this game, but it was fun.

  "True," said Wallingford. "You can. I admit it. But you've beenwondering what the hell that ship is being built for. You'd give yourleft arm to find out. I know you, Golden Wings, and I know how that mindof yours works. And I tell you this: Unless you take this job, you'll_never_ find out why the _Branchell_ was built." He leaned forward, andhis face loomed large in the screen. "And I mean absolutely _never_."

  For several seconds Mike the Angel said nothing. His classicallyhandsome face was like that of some Grecian god contemplating theUniverse, or an archangel contemplating Eternity. Then he gave BasilWallingford the benefit of his full, radiant smile.

  "I capitulate," he said.

  Wallingford refused to look impressed. "Damn right you do," he said--andcut the circuit.