Rof Tosen entered the outer office of the Bureau of Strategic Information and gazed about with dismay.
There were half a dozen Bureau staffers in the room, and his emo-monitor picked up high enthusiasm from each of them. But it was obvious at a glance that the enthusiasm was not for their work.
Three were huddled in conversation that seemed to concern, from the snatches Tosen overheard, the doings of their various children. Two others were seated at their desks using their communicators. One of these, a man, was close enough for Tosen to gather that he was discussing plans for a hunting trip on the planet Glarsek.
Only one was going through the motions of handling some paperwork, and her main attention was focused on the conversing group.
Tosen sighed. Just like back home in the offices of his Arbemel Systems Corporation on Haverly, he reflected glumly. Anyone would think the econo-war was over—or had never existed—from the actions of these people. And in the Bureau of Strategic Information, of all places! Regardless of the indifference of Commonality citizenry at large, he had expected somehow to find competitive morale still running strong here.
The woman doing paperwork looked at him. "May I help you?" she asked.
"I'm Rof Tosen," he said. "I have an appointment with Stol Jonmun."
"The Bureau chief won't be in this week," she replied. "Dave Mergly will see you instead. This way, please."
She rose, ignoring the flash of annoyance from Tosen, and led the way up a jumpshaft and along a corridor. Dave Mergly was the one man in the Bureau Tosen had hoped to avoid. He was Stol Jonmun's top assistant in charge of saying "no." But if Jonmun was out gold-bricking like everyone else . . . well, it would have to be Mergly.
The woman guided him into Mergly's office and departed. The two men studied each other for a moment. Dave Mergly was middle-aged, several years Tosen's senior, and was one of those men who remained slender with minimal exercise. He could burn up energy simply sitting at a desk. A high-tension type, Tosen reflected—and clearly that way as a matter of genetics, because psych-releasers made doubly sure, when treating government officials, that every possible source of unsanity was fully lifted.
Tosen's emo-monitor read the bureaucrat's attitude as one of detached curiosity, which gradually shifted into reserved approval, as they studied each other.
Mergly's thin lips bent in a slight smile. "Still competing, Tosen?" he asked.
"Trying to. You, too, I would judge."
"Yes. Not many of us around anymore. Welcome into the shrinking minority. Have a seat."
Tosen lowered into a chair, asking, "You holding the fort alone, here in the Bureau?"
"Not quite. How about your company . . . Arbemel Systems, isn't it?"
Tosen nodded. "I've got two good men. Mike Stebetz in Management and Clarn Rogers in Research. Makes two out of a payroll of sixty-seven hundred."
"Three, counting yourself," observed Mergly. "A little better than average, I would say." He studied Tosen for a moment, then asked, "How do you explain the situation, Rof?"
With a shrug Tosen replied, "I don't have any original thoughts on the subject. The obvious answer is that the public at large considers the econo-war to be over, so they're no longer participating in it. The Lontastan Federation, with its telepath Monte, has an overpowering advantage over us. So the average citizen considers it all over but the official surrender and seizure."
Mergly frowned. "The Commonality has been in tight squeezes before, and managed to squirm out, and morale didn't go to pot while we were doing it. Remember old Radge Morimet?"
"No, he predated me by ten years. But, of course, I'm familiar with what he accomplished—and what he didn't accomplish. His motto was 'war in our time,' and let the next generation worry about war in its time. Well, we're the next generation, and the compromises he made to keep the econo-war going have made our position even more difficult. He managed to squirm, but in doing so he left no squirming room for us.
"I think the public realizes that," Tosen continued thoughtfully. "The time is past when we can find a short-term answer by compromising the philosophical foundation of the econo-war. Morimet didn't leave us any compromises to make. Except for a handful of diehards, which includes the two of us, nobody sees any possibility of bringing the war back to life."
"And the public doesn't seem to care," grunted Mergly.
"Oh, the people care, all right," Tosen disagreed. "I have talked to a lot of the people in my company about it. They regret the ending of the war, but without panic or grief. That's the sane way to face a loss, no matter how tremendous it is. We're inclined to misjudge their reaction—and this is something to think about—because this is the first major social crisis humanity has faced since we attained racial sanity, nearly a thousand years ago. We listen for screams of anguish and look for people wringing their hands, or lashing out angrily at everybody and everything, or sinking into the apathy of defeat. But such responses from the Earth-Only days are no longer in character."
Mergly nodded slowly. "A good point. The people write off their loss and fall back on what they have left—their purely personal interests, their love for their families, and what not. Meanwhile, our social structure collapses about us."
"Yes," Tosen agreed. "That's what the econo-war was for, essentially . . . to stimulate the individual's motivation as a functioning member of a racial social structure."
"Then why," demanded Mergly, "are we few diehards still hanging on?"
"Maybe because we're more informed than most on how damaging a social collapse could be. At the best, we would have a stasis civilization. At worst, we could slide back into unsanity. Unless . . . and this is a trillion-to-one shot . . . some sublime genius of a philosopher discovered some presently unsuspected Higher Purpose for humanity to pursue."
Mergly gave a dry chuckle. "Another explanation for us diehard types," he said, "could be that we still see, or imagine, some thin hope to cling to."
"Yes," nodded Tosen, "there's that."
"Which gets us around to the real reason for your visit, doesn't it?"
Tosen hesitated. "I'd rather not have my scheme termed a 'thin hope' before you've even heard it," he said with a grin.
Mergly nodded, and his emo reading was a cold nothing. He was, Tosen guessed, all set to listen analytically—and thoroughly critically—to the proposal. "Go ahead," he said.
"What I have in mind," Tosen began, "would get us away from damaging compromises, and hit at the basic imbalance in the econo-war. That is, at the fact that the Lontastan Federation has Monte, and the Commonality of Primgran doesn't. Essentially, Monte was the first compromise. The Lontastans should never have allowed a nonhuman to participate in what was a purely human conflict. Do you agree with that?"
"Yes."
"Unless, of course, Monte isn't a nonhuman life form at all," Tosen added, eying the Information man closely.
Mergly blinked. "Oh? You think there's room for doubt about that?"
"That's what I'm here to find out. Let's consider what we think we know about Monte, and why we think we know it.
"First, he's a huge globe in form, perhaps a hundred meters in diameter, with a stonelike shell of sufficient thickness and strength to support that tremendous weight on a planet of approximately Earth-gravity. Second, he's a one-member species that does not produce offspring, and presumably had his genesis in the earliest stages of the life-formation processes on his planet, perhaps a billion years ago. Third, a Lontastan exploration team entered his star's planetary system and discovered him, and he volunteered his services in the econo-war very soon thereafter.
"Now, we aren't dealing with impossibilities in any of those three areas—that is, Monte's present form, his history, or his discovery by man. But I suggest each of the three holds substantial improbabilities, and when all of them are combined the likelihood of truth is statistically slight.
"For example, such giant size and mass would create problems of inadequate muscular strength for mobility, of finding sufficient nourishment, and of dissipating body heat. A Monte creature ought to be immobile, and stewing in its own weak juices.
"And yet, this creature reportedly has survived and grown through most of the geologic ages of his planet. Earthquakes, floods, volcanic eruptions, ice incrustations . . . he got through them all.
"And then this creature, after a billion years of total intellectual solitude, becomes a 'joiner' as soon as he encounters humanity!"
Tosen paused, then added, "I don't say all this is impossible. Merely improbable."
Frowning, Mergly countered, "Perhaps; perhaps not. Every difficulty you cite can be explained. The matter of nourishment, for instance, seems to be handled in large part by a process similar to photosynthesis, called radiosynthesis. Radioactive ores would have been plentiful and rich in Monte's youth—and incidentally there may have been many small Montes back then, making the survival of one far more probable. The nourishment problem would have built up with the passage of time, I agree. And according to some reports I've seen, that could explain Monte's eagerness for human associates. People can mine and refine radioactives for him to bed down in.
"I won't bother to cover all your 'improbables'," Mergly concluded with a shrug. "Presumably you've studied the matter sufficiently to know the explanations yourself. My question is why do you even bother to bring the subject up?"
"Because despite the explanations, the improbables are still just that," retorted Tosen. "And if there is any reason to believe the account of Monte we have is based on misinformation, we might be well-advised to assume a more believable account of what he is, and how he got that way."
Mergly's eyebrows raised and he flickered annoyance. "Misinformation?" he said.
"That's what I want you to tell me," said Tosen quickly. "What are the sources of our data concerning Monte? How close has one of our own agents ever got to him? Have we ever captured and questioned a Lontastan who had direct knowledge of Monte's physical nature?"
There was a moment of silence. "You're suggesting the Lontastans have sold us a comet tail," Mergly said slowly.
"Could be. I want to know if any of our data on Monte is unimpeachable enough to prove me wrong."
"Well . . . as you know, Lontastan security around Orrbaune is extremely tight," said Mergly. "As soon as one of our agents breaks warp anywhere in the planetary system he's detected telepathically. And he can't stay long . . . everybody's jumpy about intruders these days, partly because of the crisis condition of the econo-war, and partly because Radge Morimet brought unsane motivation into play. The Lontastan Guardsmen blast away at an agent immediately, on the chance that he might be some kind of nut with a superweapon in his pocket.
"As for picking up direct data on Monte from a captured Lontastan, I'd have to check on that, but I believe all information from such sources is third-hand at best. For the moment, I'll go along with your notion that the Monte story has been falsified. The question remains, what good would this falsification do the Lontastans? And what can we gain by penetrating it?"
"Easy," smiled Tosen. "If Monte's not a living being, the most probable alternative is that he's a machine built by the Lontastans. If we are led to think the Monte machine is a being, we won't try to build one of our own. After all, anything the Lontastans can build, so can we. But a telepathic life form isn't one of those things . . . biotechnics just isn't up to it. Thus, the Lontastans develop a telepathic device, make us believe it's a natural life form, and keep a monopoly on their gadget."
"But why on such an out-of-the-way planet as Orrbaune?" protested Mergly. "Would they actually go to the trouble of shifting their capital way out there, if Monte were indeed a machine that could be built presumably anywhere?"
"Sure, for verisimilitude!" exclaimed Tosen. "And for security reasons, too. Keep in mind that, back before they had Monte, we had the upper hand in the war. They hadn't broken our monopoly on implanted emo-monitors then, and our undercover agents and saboteurs were having a field day on their central worlds. When they hit on the telepathy gimmick, they had to spirit their development team off somewhere, to such an undeveloped world as Orrbaune, to keep the project secret from us.
"But if they had started building Monte machines on all their major planets, we would have caught on quickly. So they built just the one . . . and on a planet where a startling life form might possibly have been discovered, and started spreading their tall story."
Mergly nodded slowly, and Tosen felt a calm elation.
"Of course," Mergly said, not quite willing to be convinced, "what you have here is a purely suppositional structure."
"Yes, but one that, if I'm right, could straighten out the entire econo-war mess and get everybody back in competition. But I agree it would help if we had more dependable data to go on."
"Such as what?"
"Such as an agent might get during a very close—though necessarily quite brief—approach to Orrbaune. For a moment our man would be in the thick of the telepathic communications network that Monte provides the personnel on the planet, not merely within range of telepathic detection. He might get a surprise reaction from Monte, especially if it is a living creature. And he might pick up thoughts from the local humans who have first-hand knowledge of the telepath."
Mergly was radiating impatience. "Who's dealing with extreme improbabilities now?" he snorted. "But never mind that for a moment, since I can see from your emo that you think you know how such a close approach could be made. If you're asking me to assign a Bureau agent to that mission, the answer is NO. For the very good reason that we no longer have an agent fit for that type of job."
"No agent?" murmured Tosen.
"They've all turned noncompetitive," grunted Mergly. "Which makes sense from their viewpoint. Agents are among the few people who actually risk their lives in the conduct of the econo-war. That takes strong motivation, which present conditions don't provide."
"But if it was explained to one that this mission might revitalize the econo-war . . ." Tosen began.
"He would laugh at you," Mergly responded. "Have you tried to explain your scheme to a noncompetitor?"
"Well, yes. To my wife."
"What did she think of it?"
"She laughed," Tosen admitted lamely.
Mergly's smile was sour. "So there you are. You have a suppositional structure, which you need more data to substantiate sufficiently to impress someone who has turned noncompetitive. But to get that data, you have to impress a noncompetitive agent with your suppositions. Quite a dilemma."
After a silence, Tosen said, "There's one answer to it: I can make the jaunt to Orrbaune myself if you'll agree."
"That's a deadly game for an amateur," replied Mergly.
"I know," said Tosen.
Four light-days away from Orrbaune's sun Tosen came out of warp, well outside telepathic detection range.
For an instant he felt a purely subjective chill, so distant from a sun's warmth and clad only in the shorts, sleeveless shirt and low boots normally worn by space travelers. However, the tiny implanted devices of his life-support system were keeping him warm while they protected him from the vacuum, and from the high-energy particles of interstellar space. And embedded in the tissues of his throat and nasal passages were gas-converting macromolecules to permit normal breathing.
He torqued his repulsor field to start himself spinning slowly, blinked tightly to turn on his ampli-sight, and peered about for the equipment pod which had been set to follow three seconds behind him through warp. This was an uncertainty-filled point in his mission—finding his equipment—because warping over a two-hundred-light-year jump was not totally precise. His pod might emerge on top of him or fifty thousand miles away. And it could not make any blatant announcement of its location so near the Lontastan capital system . . . it had a powerful red blinker for Tosen to look for, and that was all.
Without the equipment in the pod, he might as well warp for home immediately. He had to have it, and it could not have made the trip through warp with him. A man-sized mass was about the maximum that could move at warp velocities without stirring up mind-wrecking turbulence in prime-field.
So Tosen spun slowly in space, straining for a glimpse of the red blinker.
He almost missed it. It was a dim flicker in his peripheral vision that vanished when he tried to look directly at it. But he had its direction spotted. He activated his propulsor field and zoomed toward it on semi-inert mode.
Within fifty yards of the pod he went full-inert and drifted in slowly. The pod was a slender torpedo of dull red, and the color went black when he reached and killed the blinker. After activating the automatic setup system, he drifted a few feet away while he watched the pod unfold, extend a framework of slender lattices, and fan out a thin pie-slice of silver into a six-meter telescope mirror. When the components clamped together and motion stopped, he drifted to the eyepiece and swung the instrument to point in the direction of Orrbaune.
Basically it was an ancient device that would have been readily recognized for what it was back in Earth-Only times—an astronomical reflector telescope. It was rendered more effective by an ampli-sight attachment and tight-line tracking, but its mirror optics differed little from those used by men to peer into space even before man himself could leave old Earth's atmosphere.
Tosen grinned at the sheer size of the instrument. Who would imagine a spy using such a big, cumbersome gadget?
And that was the whole point. Nobody had imagined it, and that was why it had never been tried. People were used to thinking of space equipment in pill-sized packages . . . devices small enough to place in the various available nooks and crannies of the human body without making noticeable bulges. Like ampli-sight, for example, for which a specialized field phenomenon was produced by speck-like transmitters located within the eyeballs.
Being sane, Tosen mused as he busied himself with the telescope, only gave individuals access to such abilities as they inherently possessed. It was no guarantee of great wisdom, or of creative imagination. He felt himself fortunate to possess the latter of these.
He spent fifteen hours working with the telescope and its computer attachment, getting the data he needed. When his series of observations was complete, he knew his position and motion relative to Orrbaune with more exactitude than any earlier Commonality agent. He figured on a maximum margin of error of ten miles.
Satisfied at last, he activated the breakdown system and watched the telescope collapse back into the compact pod configuration. When the process was complete, he switched on the systems of the pod's record-and-home automatic sequence.
Then he drifted away from the pod, carefully set up his approach vector, and warped toward Orrbaune.
He exited into norm space almost sitting on the planet. His altitude was only two hundred miles, and his inert momentum in relation to the surface was near zero.
But he had no time to congratulate himself on this success. He was too busy observing with every implant-augmented sense he could bring to bear. He had a lot to try to learn in the two seconds he had allowed himself.
At that, he nearly overstayed. The Lontastans were skittish indeed about unheralded visitors—and especially one appearing almost on top of their heads. Tosen realized as he automatically went into warp and zipped away that he had felt the first few milliseconds of a zerburst flare that had blossomed within a few hundred meters of where he had been. He could feel the burn all across his back, and could detect his medicircuits going to work on the damage.
What had he learned?
He wasn't sure, but he hadn't expected to be at this stage. The important information, he hoped, was that which had been gathered by his special sensing devices and transmitted to the pod, to be recorded and transported home.
But at any rate, his memory of those two seconds held nothing to indicate Monte was not a device.
There had been telepathic contact. It had come so swiftly after his exit from warp that he had noticed no time lag.
But the . . . the feel of that contact was, at first, impersonal, without even mild emotion. Would a living telepath have such a feel? Tosen had never experienced telepathy before, but he doubted it.
Then, a split-second later, that impersonal feel was lost in a welter of obviously human thought-patterns as alerted Guardsmen came storming into the telepathic linkage with the expected reactions of alarm and anger, and harsh demands that the intruder identify himself instantly.
All in all, Tosen considered his mission to Orrbaune a complete success.
He left a confused flurry of exchanges behind him.
Who was that? demanded Frikason of the Lontastan High Board.
Monte replied: His identity was not revealed as his attention was so totally on receiving data that he transmitted very little. However, he was from the Commonality, and his purpose came through clearly.
Oh? What was it?
To obtain information to verify his belief that I'm a machine, not a living being. Monte's thought was obviously amused. If I were a machine, it would be possible for the Commonality to build my counterpart. That was his intention.
Frikason along with several others present shared Monte's amusement.
Then from Frikason: In a way it's too bad he's so completely off the track.
True, agreed Monte. The deterioration of the econo-war game is regrettable, and my equivalent on the Primgranese team would be the ideal way to restore the balance. But extensive studies by myself in collaboration with a number of your scientists has produced the unavoidable conclusion: a telepathic device, or machine, lies totally beyond all present skills and knowledge, and may, in fact, be an impossibility. Whereas certain of the reasoning capabilities of the mind can be duplicated by computing devices, telepathy lends itself to no such mechanical production. It is too purely a life-function for that.
After a moment of relative telepathic silence, a thought came from Garsanne of the High Board: Surely even the Primgranese should have figured that out. Why did this spy think otherwise? Did he have an unsane motivator?
No, replied Monte. My impression was that he bases his belief on a logical—if thoroughly wishful—interpretation of such data concerning myself as the Commonality has obtained.
Wishful indeed, remarked Frikason. By the way, did he warp out safely?
Yes, barely. He escaped with the equivalent of a bad case of sunburn.
Sadder but wiser, huh?
No, not wiser, Monte informed them. As you know, there is practically nothing of what may be called personality in any one of my billions of telepathic attention units. Each is simply a circuit. The spy would not be able to distinguish the attention unit that detected his presence and revealed him to the nearest Guardsmen as the product of a living mind. As for the Guardsmen with whom he was in mental contact, able though they are for their assignments they are genetic barbarians of meager intellectual curiosity. Their knowledge of me is only of the hearsay type the spy discountenances.
So he's going home, still thinking you're a machine he can duplicate. observed Garsanne. Look, Tedaboyd, you'd better dispatch a couple of agents to learn his identity and see what he comes up with, just in case.
The Lontastan Intelligence chief's thought was annoyed: What couple of agents? I told the High Board months ago that I haven't got a decent agent left! They've all become slack-outs! And I can't say I blame them. Why should they stick their necks out for a war that is already won?
Yes, I'm afraid we non-slack-outs are a vanishingly small minority, agreed Frikason. Never mind trying to track down that spy. He can't possibly succeed, as Monte's told us. Let's get back to the task at hand of devising the least disastrous means of bringing the econo-war to an official close.
Monte observed: The Commonality of Primgran, though defeated, still has one strength we lack.
Oh? What's that? Frikason asked.
One highly-motivated agent, still on the job.
Tosen soon found himself needing all his high motivation.
"Why," demanded Mergly, glowering across Tosen's desk, "didn't you tell me you didn't have even the backing of your own research man?"
Tosen glanced sideways at Clarn Rogers, who was emoting offended surprise, then replied, "Because I didn't know." He grinned wryly and added, "I didn't bother to check with him."
"Why not?"
"Because I suspected what his answer would be."
Mergly growled, "So you got me to go to bat for you before the Council to get you an R-and-D contract, with my neck way out—not that I give a damn about my neck, but wasting what competitive push we've got left is another matter!"
"I don't think it's a waste," Tosen returned. "I think Rogers is wrong."
"But, Rof," Rogers complained, "a telepathic machine just doesn't make sense. Every piece of substantial research on the subject indicates that telepathy is a function of the ego-field, or the spirit, or soul, or whatever you want to call it. Definitely, telepathy is not a function of the physiological nervous system. Or at any rate, not basically. A proper nervous system, such as that of the creature Monte, doubtless is essential machinery to facilitate an ego-field's telepathic abilities—otherwise all humans would have it. But you certainly can't produce telepathy with a mere machine!"
"Psionic devices have been around for several centuries," Tosen remarked softly.
"Certainly," Rogers said, showing impatience, "but they function as accessories of the users' nervous systems, as relatively simple additional nerve-ends, so to speak. Very useful as controls for our life-support implants and what not."
"But it's the ego-field that makes a psionic device work, isn't it?" said Tosen.
Rogers wriggled. "Well, of course. But as a small added part of the nervous system under the ego-field's control! What you're proposing wouldn't be small. It would be several orders of magnitude more complex than the human brain itself, according to my understanding of what Monte is. You couldn't merely focus your attention on such a thing and make it work. You don't have that much . . . that much attention! Certainly not that much to spare."
Mergly asked Rogers, "Then what would you expect to be the result of the project if we carried it out?"
Rogers shrugged. "We would have a very large, very expensive, and very inactive conglomerate of close-connected macromolecules."
"As large as Monte is reported to be?" demanded Mergly.
"No. We can crowd more functional capacity into artificially produced macromolecules than you find in living tissue, and use more concentrated energy sources. The construct would be less massive than Monte's living brain, but approximately as complex. I would estimate the diameter at two meters."
Tosen smiled inwardly at Rogers's insistence on thinking of Monte as a living creature, despite the flat, mechanical emo-quality of the telepathic contact made with him on his spying jaunt—that quality having been duly recorded and scrupulously analyzed since his return.
Now he kept silent as Mergly and Rogers continued the discussion. He was for the moment in the bad graces of both men for getting them involved in a project they considered half-baked at best. But they were both good constructive competitors who would, if they could, find a way to salvage something useful from the mess his "irresponsibility" had created.
In the meantime, his research man and the government's Information man were a team from which he was excluded. So the less he had to say, the better.
"Assuming that Monte is a natural life form," Mergly said, "with a brain as massive as that assumption would suggest, wouldn't our artificial construct be superior to him, provided it worked at all?"
"Interconnections would be much shorter," Rogers nodded, "which would permit faster responses. But, of course, it wouldn't work at all. It would be a sumptuous mock-up of a superior central nervous system, capable of producing billions of responses of the quality Rof picked up from Monte. But it would be an uninhabited mock-up. It would be dead."
After a pause, Mergly said, "Yes, but would it stay that way?"
"What do you mean?"
Mergly shifted in his seat and frowned. "There's much we don't know about the disembodied ego-field, even though that's a state we've all gone through. The experience just doesn't carry over to the normal embodied state; perhaps there are too few similarities to use as guides. My own impressions of disembodiment are completely vague. I'm wondering . . . would our artificial construct be attractive to a disembodied ego-field? Could it be made attractive?"
Rogers blinked. "That's a possibility, I suppose. We don't know what attracts an ego-field into a newly-created life form, such as a human baby, although there's no shortage of conflicting theories. There are, certainly, the physical pleasures, such as sex. Perhaps a structure that facilitated telepathic communication would have its attractions."
"O.K., and if that didn't do the trick," Mergly persisted, "couldn't pleasure-producing circuits, or physical structures, be added on?"
"Well, yes, in an artificial way. But let me put it like this: Would you want to live in a body composed completely of prosthetics?"
Mergly frowned. "No."
"Well, that's what we would be offering any interested ego-field. Strictly ersatz, second-rate physical pleasures. I think telepathy would be the real—perhaps the only—attraction we could offer."
Mergly considered this in silence, displaying a varying emo-pattern as he did so. Then suddenly his pattern went clean and he rose from his seat. Obviously, he had decided.
"O.K., Clarn," he said to Rogers. "Get on with the project. Build that structure, and we'll see if anyone moves in. We're taking a shot in the dark, but," he shrugged, "these are rather frantic times." His eyes moved to Tosen and he added, "Frantic enough to justify frantic schemes I'm sure."
Tosen was radiating triumph, and the contrite tone of his "Thank you, Dave" fooled nobody.
He stayed on the side lines of Project Bauble as the research and development work moved ahead. He assisted Rogers mostly by seeking out people in the company who hadn't gone completely noncompetitive, giving them exciting sales pitches about "something big and revolutionary" going on in the lab, and sending on to Rogers the recruits who responded with genuine interest.
Within a month, there was a notable difference in atmosphere at Arbemel Systems Corporation. It wasn't back to the status of Hot Econo-war times, but had shifted in that direction. Even Tosen's secretaries were showing alert interest in their work, whereas before the project started their attention had been dispersed over such areas as the care and feeding of each other's children, beauty regimens, and in a few cases astrology. Now they were trying to outdo each other once more in demonstrating their efficiency.
Tosen was pleased. Whatever the outcome of the project, he had restored for a while, and within the limited confines of his company, the old spirit that had brought humanity so far and so fast.
But he knew the spirit would die quickly if the Bauble did not come alive.
Mergly was spending at least as much time on Haverly, at the Arbemel lab, as he was on the capital planet. Project Bauble was, after all, about the only real action going, so far as econo-war effort was concerned. Mergly wanted to keep an eye on it . . . and make sure there were no Lontastans doing the same.
"I've taken the liberty," he told Tosen after the project had been underway for several months, "of having the Arbemel floating stock purchased quietly for a Commonality trust."
Tosen nodded. "A good move," he said. "Since the bottom dropped out of the market three years ago, I've been uncomfortably aware of the possibility of being descended upon by a team of referees from Exchange World, with the news that Lontastans had bought a majority interest in the company for peanuts and had voted to liquidate."
"That wouldn't have been likely," said Mergly. "Why would they want this company, even for peanuts, the way things were? But now, because of the project, which they might find out about, we can't have a majority of the stock loosely held."
"How much did you buy for the trust?" Tosen asked.
"Forty-one percent."
"With my fourteen, that makes us safe." Tosen fiddled with the antique ballpoint pen he kept on his desk. "Been in the lab lately?" he asked.
"I just came from there."
"How are Rogers and his people doing?"
"They're coming along." Mergly paused, then added, "The Bauble will be complete next week, he says. This has been an expensive undertaking, Rof. The Council wouldn't have stood still for it if they had known what a gamble it is, or if other projects had been competing for R-and-D funds."
Tosen made a face. "O.K., you can consider me chastised. But despite all informed opinion to the contrary, I still believe the evidence favors Monte being an artificial, Lontastan-built structure, concerning which everyone but a few top Lontastans has been fed a load of misinformation."
"Maybe so," Mergly answered coolly. "We can hope so. If they haven't sold us misinformation, then you certainly have."
The Bauble had a pearl-like luster, and Tosen decided as soon as he walked in the lab and saw it that it was well though deceptively named. A big bauble in appearance, but no bauble at all in price.
Rogers and Mergly were both there, gazing expressionlessly at the two-meter globe of glittery gray.
"That's it, huh?" Tosen said to announce his presence. "When are you going to turn it on?"
Rogers gave him a blank look. "It's turned on. It was built with its energy sources activated. It stays turned on."
"Well?"
Rogers said, "It's not doing anything. No life in it."
"O.K. So we wait for an interested ego-field to come along and discover it," said Tosen.
"We've already waited three hours," Mergly complained. "What's more, we've paraded every pregnant woman on the company payroll through here . . . two hundred and seven of them."
"What for?"
"Oh, one of the ego-field traditions that seems solider than most," shrugged Mergly. "Disembodied ego-fields are supposed to hang around pregnant women, waiting for the moment one of them can inhabit her child."
Tosen nodded. He had never thought highly of that idea. Ego-fields like a swarm of starving beggars, all of them after a tidbit only one could have! It carried the concept of competition to an unpleasantly ugly extreme.
"You may as well have a seat and a drink and be comfortable, if you're going to join the watch," said Rogers.
Tosen did so. The three of them sat with little conversation for over an hour.
At last Mergly said, "We ought to take this in shifts."
Rogers agreed. "This could keep up for days."
"I started last," said Tosen, "so I'll take the first shift if you like. Until midnight, say?"
"O.K."
The others left and Tosen got himself a fresh drink.
How long, he wondered, would it be reasonable to wait? With knowledge of ego-field characteristics so uncertain, a definite answer to the question was impossible. But his hunch was that, if an ego-field were ever going to inhabit the Bauble, it would have done so before now. From all accounts, ego-fields were numerous. And they moved around constantly. One should have discovered the Bauble before now. Probably one had—and had either considered it an undesirable habitation, or had not even regarded it as a possible habitation.
And unencumbered by a body and brain, an ego-field could presumably act with the swiftness of thought. Perhaps a hundredth of a second was all the time required for an ego-field to recognize a body's desirability and move in.
In which case the Bauble should have been inhabited within less than a full second after its completion. But that had not happened, not even in the first minute—nor the first hour—nor the first six hours.
Tosen sighed. So far as orders of magnitude were concerned, he realized uncomfortably, six hours resembled a century more closely than it did a hundredth of a second. So, if the Bauble were ever going to be occupied, chances were that it would have been so by now.
Another uncomfortable thought struck him for the first time, seriously undermining all his reasoning on the nature of Monte.
The Lontastans had, over the centuries, been less noted for innovation than the Primgranese. Usually, the Lontastans were content to copy, or improve upon, basic advances first made in the Commonality.
Would the Lontastans have gone to the extreme expense of a Project Bauble without foreknowledge that it would work?
It would have been most uncharacteristic of them, for sure. And Mergly could never have got Council support for this Project, except by arguing that this was something the Lontastans had already shown was possible.
Tosen chuckled, because in the final analysis none of that mattered in the least. The econo-war was lost, thanks to an obviously alive Monte on the Lontastan team. So what resources and effort had been spent on Project Bauble was merely decreasing the wealth that would be available for Lontastan claimancy, when the Lontastans got around to demanding settlement of the war.
So, as far as he was concerned, the project had been a good final try, even if a rather frantic and poorly thought-out one . . . at the enemy's eventual expense.
Tosen leaned back in his seat and relaxed, gazing at the Bauble.
A very handsome piece of workmanship, he mused, whether it did anything but look pretty or not. Actually it could be more accurately described as something grown rather than something built, being produced by chemical processes that had their genesis back in Earth-Only times when crystals were grown for solid-state electronic components. While the Bauble could theoretically be subdivided into millions of individual macromolecules, it was in fact one super-macromolecule, since the linkages between its theoretical units were themselves molecular in nature.
It would have been one hell of a gadget—if it had worked.
Why did the ego-fields turn up their ectoplasmic noses at it? he wondered with sudden irritation.
Maybe he could find out.
He put down his drink, let himself go limp, and left his body. This was something any psych-released adult could do easily enough, but was a rather useless trick except when the body was dying, at which time the ego-field usually went exterior to escape the death trauma.
Now Tosen drifted a few feet behind and above his head, still controlling his body from a distance and looking at the Bauble with normal sight and at the same time perceiving it with vague field senses. He drifted forward very slowly and entered the Bauble.
It was . . . like and unlike a body. Or more exactly, like and unlike a mind. It was difficult to pin down the flaw of the place as an abode. A poor analogy would be the interior of an empty house, with no furnishings, no fixtures, no doors. Just walls that were, strangely, both stark and indistinct at once.
He realized that he was exterior rather than fully disembodied, and that this might alter his view considerably from that of a totally detached ego-field. But his impression was strong that the Bauble was so totally lacking in hominess that no ego-field could possibly find it livable.
He pulled out of it and returned to his body. The mental exercise had, unaccountably, left him slightly exhausted and very hungry.
He walked over to an autospenser, dialed himself a tray of supper, and returned to his chair to eat. When he finished, he lay back and napped for a couple of hours.
Mergly came in promptly at midnight. "Nothing yet?" he asked.
"No, and I'm afraid not ever," said Tosen. He quickly explained why the time they had already waited should have been more than adequate for the Bauble to take on life, and why the Lontastans would not have tried to develop an artificial telepath.
"As a final check," he wound up, "I exteriorized and entered the thing to get the feel of the place. I wouldn't care to live there."
Mergly nodded slowly. "What was your feeling inside the . . ." he began, then hesitated. "Never mind describing it. I'll take a look for myself."
He sat down and relaxed. Tosen waited quietly for close to ten minutes before Mergly stirred and looked up.
"Well, what did you think of it?" Tosen asked.
"A vast empty place with hard echoes. That's about as close as I can describe it," Mergly replied thoughtfully. "Even with you along for company the emptiness felt overwhelming."
"I didn't go along," objected Tosen. "I stayed right here in my own comfortable noggin."
Mergly frowned. "Oh? Perhaps you didn't, at that. What I sensed, I believe, was that you had been there before me. Maybe some of you rubbed off inside."
Tosen laughed. "Could be. I felt half exhausted when I came out." "So do I." Mergly yawned, and stared at the Bauble from beneath drooping eyelids.
"I'm going home," said Tosen heading for the door. "Tell Rogers I'll contact him around midday to see if he thinks it worthwhile for me to stand another watch."
"O.K.," replied Mergly. "I'll suggest that he take a feel inside the Bauble, too. He might have some ideas on how to make it more homey."
Walking down the hallway Tosen replied, "O.K., no harm in asking him. But I feel the Bauble's flaws are too basic to be remedied easily or cheaply." He paused outside the lab to gaze upward into the clear, starry night. Then he activated his transport implants and soared up and westward toward his home. "At the least," he added, "we would have to start again from scratch and build a completely different kind of Bauble. What would the Council say to that?"
Mergly emoted such a violent shudder that Tosen chuckled.
"I'm glad you can feel amused," complained Mergly with a flash of anger. "Unfortunately, I can't share that don't-give-a-damn attitude you've taken on. It smacks of non-competitiveness to me."
Tosen flinched. "Sorry," he said. "I got us into this thing, and I'd have no business turning deserter now."
"I didn't say you were a deserter," Mergly denied.
"No, but you felt it . . . or thought it." Suddenly Tosen gasped and whirled his body, searching the upper atmosphere for sight of Mergly. "Say, where the hell are you, anyway?"
"Why . . . right here in the lab, in my body."
Tosen watched through Mergly's eyes as the Information man looked away from the Bauble to search the room for the man he had been talking to. "Where are you?" Mergly demanded, then added, "Oh . . . I . . . see."
The damned thing works! Tosen exulted.
But just for us? from Mergly, whose mind was tumbling confusedly.
Sure! The Bauble's not a living telepath like Monte. It's merely a gadget! It doesn't reach out. We have to reach in. Give it our individual punched cards, so to speak. And so far, only you and I have reached in! You felt I had been there before you, remember. That was because it had my pattern. It has yours, too. I'm going to flip on this antique toothmike of mine and call Rogers, while you warp for the capital to give the Council the news!
Very well, but . . . but this is difficult to take in, Rof. Not thirty minutes ago you had me convinced the Bauble couldn't possibly work, that the whole project was based solely on your wishful thinking and misinformation . . .
Tosen thought a big happy smile. Dave, we'd all still be living in Earth caves if we hadn't wished for things we couldn't possibly have. And as for misinformation . . .
Yes? Mergly prompted.
Well, when misinformation says the impossible can be done instead of the other way around, then it just might turn out to be the truest information you ever heard!