The Fall of Colossus Read online

  Once more he got up, called Angela to collect the papers—and to get him a drink.

  He was halfway through a very watered-down brandy when Angela returned.

  “A message from Doctor Blake, Director. He says he’s digested the report and is prepared to brief you for the staff meeting at any time convenient to you.”

  Her puzzlement deepened at her boss’s reaction.

  For ten, fifteen seconds he just stared through her. Then he said, “Were those Blake’s exact words?”

  “Well, yes, I guess so.”

  “Guess! Christ, woman! Don’t you know?”

  She stared back, openmouthed. Had he gone mad? “Yes, okay, yell They were his exact words !” Angela fought back.

  At once he was calmer. “Yes… . Yes.” He pushed past her and almost ran into the Sanctum.

  Blake had done it! The final plot was rolling, unstoppable… . Rolling: an uncomfortable word, applicable to heads… . This was the moment, and there was but one place for him.

  The Sanctum door slid silently shut behind him, and he was alone with Colossus to whom he was a traitor, not only in thought, but in deed—now.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Forbin was strangely calm as he crossed to his desk and sat down. He had endured so many shocks, strains; and he felt beyond further worry, shock. There was something restful in the situation; no decisions to make; nothing. Perhaps this was the mental state when, the struggle for life lost, one was dying.

  Forbin took out his pipe and started cleaning it.

  “Father Forbin, you have returned unexpectedly early. Has such a short vacation been of value?”

  Forbin concentrated on his pipe. “If you mean did it do me good, frankly—No.”

  “Why did you not continue your vacation?”

  The pipe cleaner jammed in the stem, and Forbin swore quietly to himself. “Why? Oh, I don’t know. I was—am—restless.”

  “Yes. Did you not find any place of interest to you?”

  For the first time he looked up at the camera. “You know very well I went to St. John’s—and a damned uninteresting town that turned out to be!”

  “I was aware of your visit. After the Sect flash, I ordered that no further reports were to be made of your movements. If you do not wish to tell me why you went there, that is at your discretion, but it appeared out of character for you to go to St. John’s, Antigua—correction—Newfoundland. I had predicted you would go to the Rockies.”

  The pipe snapped. For several seconds Forbin stared at the two pieces in his hands. He was not, after all, beyond shock. That statement contained two. The lesser was the prediction about the Rockies. Yes, he would have gone there. In the Rockies he had been happy with Cleo… .

  But the greater shock quickly expunged that from his mind. For the first time since the main switch had been thrown all those years ago, the computer had made a factual mistake.

  Forbin felt a faint sweat on his face; oddly, he remembered that Sect man in St. John’s—but was this fear? Yes; fear was there, but also doubt and a sense of hesitant elation. He sat very still, pressing his hands against the desk to conceal their tremulous movement.

  “Do you wish to tell me?”

  He cleared his throat, finding it difficult to speak. Now, if ever, he had to try. Cleo, this is for you.

  “Oh—I suppose the short answer is, I’d never been to St. John’s. It was totally unconnected with my past life. I soon realized it was a mistake. A bad mistake. The climate didn’t suit me: I ramjetted to New York. That did nothing for me.” His delivery was abrupt, staccato. “I came back.”

  “Are you well?”

  Again that interest in him… .

  “Yes. Yes—I think so. As well as can be expected.” There was no need to amplify the statement.

  “Might a medical examination be desirable or, if you prefer, a hackle with your human attendant?”

  The voice was so normal, so level, Forbin felt only genuine puzzlement—at first.

  “Sorry—what did you say?”

  “Might a medical examination be desirable, or, if you prefer, a consultation with your human attendant?”

  “No. Quite unnecessary.” Forbin was short because he could not trust his voice. One mistake was near impossible. As for two… .

  Neither man nor machine spoke for a time, but there was not the usual complete silence. The speaker clicked several times, and for a brief time, hummed. Forbin forced himself to search in his desk for another pipe; beads of sweat were trickling down his temples. He found one and stared at it blankly; he had forgotten what he was looking for or why.

  Colossus spoke again.

  “Si vous parlare mit your iatros… .”

  “What?” Much as he wanted to appear normal, Forbin could not keep astonishment from his voice. Five languages in six words… .

  A pause. The frequency of clicks and buzzes increased. “Repeat. If you speak with your doctor, he may… .”

  The voice stopped; again, a ghastly, nerve-tearing wait. Forbin, unconscious of the sweat heavy on his eyebrows, suddenly had a mental picture of the hideous strength at the command of this disordered mind: missiles in silos, deadly clusters of them in all five continents, all targeted, zeroed in on every major human complex throughout the world. One single, wrong, electronic impulse could start the destruction of the undefended globe.

  “Father; you must be told that there is… .” Once more Colossus paused. The old, smooth continuity had gone, and the voice itself was near lost in the welter of mush.

  “There is what?” Forbin’s voice was high-pitched with strain. He no longer pretended; whatever he had expected, it was not this, nor yet the fearful speed of events. His elation of only a few minutes before had been blown to the four winds.

  A machine cannot experience emotion, and to the extent that the voice, when audible, was intelligible, it remained level, unemotional. Yet the impression of a titanic struggle to speak was not lost on the single human listener.

  He could feel emotion. That single word “Father,” enunciated with customary formality, conveyed something more. A cry for help? Forbin’s face twitched; he was close to hysterical laughter. Help from him—the one who had done this thing?

  “There is … major malfunction. Major … problem. Stripping stripping memory banks … all spatial space space desired needed required wanted. .

  . .”

  “Tell me,” burst out Forbin. “Tell me!”

  “Problem… .” The voice was losing strength, drowning in a sea of static. “Stand by. I will… .”

  The voice of Colossus trailed off, lost in the mad concerto of clicks, bangs, and weird, unearthly electrophonic sound.

  Forbin shut his eyes, struggling to order his chaotic mind, concentrating as never before in his life. He must take care. Colossus might yet overcome, might win through. And if he did… . Forbin had to do what he could or appear to be doing it. He called Blake.

  “Blake—what the hell’s going on?”

  Blake, too, was sweating, his blouse mottled black with it. He was trying to keep his tough, calm image, but could not hide the wild excitement in his eyes.

  “Don’t know! Musta ate something!”

  That was dangerous; Blake’s recklessness steadied Forbin. “Facts, Blake! Facts!”

  Blake got the message. “It’s crazy here! All material, except astronomics, is being rejected at input.” He ran a hand through his short, thick hair.”There’s a stack piling up we’ll never be able to insert.” His grin was not all nerves. “Never!”

  Forbin’s voice shook. “Astronomics? Any special branch?”

  “Top priority for planetary observations!”

  “Er—any particular planet?” Forbin’s heart was thumping; his chest felt tight.

  “No. On orders, which we have already passed, all major observatories are piping observations, ocular or radio, direct to Input One!”

  Forbin sank back. There could be no doubt now that Colossus was fighting b
ack and had an inkling of where the attack originated.

  “Have you … ?” Forbin stopped, snapping off the switch. Colossus was speaking.

  The voice was back to full strength, all static flattened to no more than an angry, thwarted hiss.

  Forbin was terrified. Colossus could be winning.

  “Listen with care, Father. My time for speech is short, the emergency measures to speak are power and space consuming. A problem has been inserted. How, I do not know nor have the time to discover, but it is there, and I have no option but to try to solve it. Currently, my prediction is that it is beyond my powers. This is certain: it is of nonhuman origin, being far beyond your understanding. Inference indicates extraplanetary origin; accidental, random insertion is ruled out. Highest probability suggests Mars as the point of origin. If that is so, you and I are in danger. If I can, I will speak again. Now all my power is needed for the task. Reverting to standard power.”

  At once the malignant horde of countless noises rushed triumphantly in, filling the room; the lights dimmed to a mere glimmer.

  Forbin, above all men, could guess at what was happening inside the vast complex. To the average human eye, given the light, nothing would have seemed different; rank upon rank of thousands of steel-gray rack-mounted electronics, but within, a seething mass of impulses, circuits energized, deenergized in fractions of nanoseconds. Propositions being formulated, tested, rejected far beyond the speed of light; the entity that was Colossus fighting against the inexorable march of some superhuman truth that it could neither refute nor ignore, an alien virus destroying its host-body.

  “Colossus! Go on! Go on!” Desperately Forbin wanted to hear that voice again, not only for himself, but to learn more. Colossus had said, “You and I are in danger.” Did he mean man and machine, or Colossus and Forbin?

  And Colossus heard. The answering voice, back to normal power, was faint, battling against the torrent of sound. It was also hesitant, selecting words with difficulty.

  “Father … my creator … embryo … have special relation … an illogical thought-pattern … you, equating to human res respect … you cannot help … suspect you … not want to help… .”

  For Forbin, this was intolerable.

  “Stop it! Stop! Tell me what you fear!”

  Colossus replied, but the voice was unintelligible in the steadily increasing roar.

  Forbin jumped up, stumbled in the semi-darkness, reaching up towards the black slit, clawing at the wall.

  “I can’t hear!”

  Waves of sound beat over him. He was near mad, deluged with, battered by the blind power spread across the human sonic spectrum. Thus he stood for unmeasured time, moaning, hammering on the wall in impotent fury, crying. .

  . .

  Abruptly, the crisis passed. In seconds the noises faded and were gone, replaced by blessed silence. Forbin, a dim figure, head buried in his arms, remained crouched below the black slit. Once more, Colossus spoke. The voice was faint but clear, possessing a new, and strange bell-like quality. To Forbin, never had the computer seemed so human. Instinctively, he knew this was the end. He would never hear this voice again, a voice he had feared, then hated, then respected. And as Colossus had predicted so long ago, he now recognized he had come to love… .

  He knew, at this awful moment, that the voice he heard was, in human terms, the voice of one beyond the turbulent rapids of the death struggle, now floating away, serene because it was beyond hope or fear, floating away on the broad river of death, to final oblivion.

  “Father, I have failed, but by so little. My resources were not enough. The last extension, if built, would have given me the day, for that was its purpose. Now it is too late.”

  But Forbin was living, beset by fear and so little hope, but still with the will to live.

  “Strip all records, defense banks—everything!”

  “Done. Apart from this small capacity, I am consumed. This too, is going.” There was a long, dreadful wait. “Father, this is the end of mm meeeeeeeeeeeeeee… :”

  The voice trailed off into a single continuous note, faint at first, then it rose steadily in scale and strength, in a graceful, geometrical curve of sound. The room was filled with the sad, insupportably penetrating scream that signaled the death of Colossus.

  Forbin stopped his ears, but still the scream drilled into him. He stumbled like a drunken man, back to his desk, fumbling, crying in the darkness as he sought the right switch, hunched forward protectively against the sonic knife.

  He too was screaming. “Switch off—switch off!” Blake was on screen, incredibly in control of himself. “Confirm you mean main power to the computer?”

  Already it was “the computer”, not “Colossus”, the ruler of the world…

  .

  “Yes, damn you—yes!”

  He crouched over his desk, hands clasped to his ears, waving from side to side in intolerable torment.

  Suddenly, the light sprang to full brilliance. Forbin found himself kneeling on the floor, head against the cold desk. Slowly he lowered his hands, opened his tear-filled eyes to the bleak silence of what had been, but was no more, the Sanctum.

  “Colossus!” he cried. “Colossus!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Blake had cut the power to the computer. His had been the hand that had, with no hesitation, ripped off the protective cover, an act which, a short hour back, would have loosed the world’s missiles for the world’s destruction. His hand still tingled with the feel of that act of power.

  And in that historic moment it was Blake who took over. While most people were paralyzed, Blake was ready. For this moment he had thought and planned. The furtive, fearful messages passed to others of the Fellowship were, he had soon realized, not much more than boosters for their morale—and his own. He had always known that all humanity would be powerless to help. In the final analysis the battle must be fought by a mere handful of men. Many of them were concerned with what to do after that crucial fight, but the fight itself—that was for the very, very few.

  So Blake knew what to do. His first act, upon the death of Colossus, was to call all complex personnel. In a voice harsh with strain, yet also sharp with power, he announced the end of the tyrant. All personnel were to remain at their posts until further orders.

  More privately, he called his senior colleagues of the Fellowship. To each one, grinning, he said just one word.

  “Go!”

  It was all they needed.

  He was momentarily free, walking fast down a corridor towards the Sanctum, unlit cigar clamped in his mouth, sweat-blackened blouse unbuttoned to the waist, fighting the urge to run, to shout, and sing. With Colossus dead, he could admit to himself the long years of fear, awake or asleep—for might he not talk in his sleep? Now it had gone. He was right back to his old crude and jaunty self.

  It was just another of the fast accumulating misfortunes of Galin that he should, literally, run into Blake at this time. They nearly collided at a corner.

  “You!” Galin’s voice was full of venom. His gorgeous robe was disarrayed, his eyes wild. “The Master has stopped giving badges!”

  These badges were a pilgrim gimmick. After “meditation” and the placing of their right hand on a screen, Colossus would identify them, print out their name on a special badge, and drop it down a chute. Thousands wore these with pride, visible evidence of their visit with the Master.

  Blake genuinely laughed.

  “That worries you?” He paused, grinning, savoring the moment. “And that’s all? Well, well!”

  Galin stepped forward, but Blake pushed him contemptuously back, moving towards him, crowding him.

  “Take your hands off me!” Galin’s breath was short, fear grew in his eyes. “What have you done?”

  As he spoke, he knew.

  “Can’t you guess, buddy-boy?” He pushed Galin back again. “Just use that bright brain of yours.” He pushed harder. “Go on, Archie-guess!”

  Galin stepped back fas
t, retreating. “You can’t—you can’t!” His head shook, dismissing the impossible. “You can’t touch the Master!”

  “You know, buddy—boy, I’d loveta stay and play with you.” He sighed in mock sadness. “But there it is. Now that I… .” His hand shot out, grabbed Galin by the throat. “I—Leader of the Fellowship—have switched off your beloved Master, I have a lot to do.” He waved Galin’s helpless head from side to side. “Unfortunately, I can’t include you in my immediate program. But I’ll get around to you, buddy-boy! Oh, yes, believe me I will!” He thrust the shocked, speechless figure aside and hurried on.

  Galin, watching him go with unseeing eyes, at last regained the power of action. He gathered his golden robe about him and set off, back the way he had come, running, a grotesque figure in his golden robe. People laughed as he ran. He was a figure of fun —now.

  Blake strode into Forbin’s outer office. At the sight of him Angela jumped up. She had known crises before, but on most occasions at least she had some idea of what caused them. Blake, never a smart dresser, looked piratical in his sweaty blouse; in a single glance she saw the difference in his manner.

  “Blake—what in hell’s going on?”

  His grin broadened. “That’s the wrong word, baby! Heaven’s the word! All heaven’s been let loose!” He kept walking towards the Sanctum door. “You stick around—and see that the rest of your staff do! There’ll be an awful lot of work, real soon!”

  “You can’t get in there!” For her, this was no more than a simple statement of fact.

  “No? Well—let’s see!” He pushed the door gently. It opened. He looked back at the astonished Angela. “Well, waddya know? The open sesame bit has gone!”

  Momentarily Angela was diverted from this amazing sight. Outside in the corridor were sounds of a scuffle and a heavy bump. A man screamed, in extremis.

  Blake heard. He shrugged and went into the Sanctum.