the alarm chimed softly beside his bed; he reached out and silenced it, and lay looking at the early sunlight in the windows, and found that he was wishing himself back in his dorm room at the university. no, back in this room, ten[pg 25] years ago, before any of this had started. for a while, he imagined himself thirteen years old and knowing everything he knew now, and he began mapping a campaign to establish himself as litchfield's juvenile delinquent number one, to the end that kurt fawzi and dolf kellton and the rest of them would never dream of sending him to school on terra to find out where merlin was.
but he couldn't even go back to yesterday afternoon in kurt fawzi's office and tell them the truth. all he could do was go ahead. it had seemed so easy, when he and his father had been talking on the mall; just get a ship built, and get out to koshchei, and open some of the shipyards and engine works there, and build a hypership. sure; easy—once he got started.
he climbed out of bed, knuckled the sleep-sand out of his eyes, threw his robe around him, and started across the room to the bath cubicle.
they had decided to have breakfast together his first morning home. the party had broken up late, and then there had been the excitement of opening the presents he had brought back from terra. nobody had had a chance to talk about merlin, or about what he was going to do, now that he was home. that, and his career of mendacity, would start at breakfast. he wanted to let his father get to the table first, to run interference for him; he took his time with his toilet and dressed carefully and slowly. finally, he zipped up the short waist-length jacket and went out.
his father and mother and flora were at the table, and the serving-robot was floating around a few inches off the floor, steam trailing from its coffee urn and its tray lid up to offer food. he greeted everybody and sat down at his place, and the robot came around to him. his mother had selected all the things he'd been most fond of six years ago: shovel-snout bacon, hotcakes, starberry jam, things he hadn't tasted since he had gone away. he filled his plate and poured a cup of coffee.
"you don't want to bother coming out to the dig with me this morning, do you?" his father was saying. "i'll be back here for lunch, and we'll go to the meeting in the afternoon."[pg 26]
"meeting?" flora asked. "what meeting?"
"oh, we didn't have time to tell you," rodney maxwell said. "you know, conn brought back a lot of information on locations of supply depots and things like that. an amazing list of things that haven't been discovered yet. it's going to be too much for us to handle alone; we're organizing a company to do it. we'll need a lot of labor, for one thing; jobs for some of these tramptowners."
"that's going to be something awfully big," his mother said dubiously. "you never did anything like that before."
"i never had the kind of a partner i have now. it's maxwell & son, from now on."
"who's going to be in this company?" flora wanted to know.
"oh, everybody around town; kurt and the judge and klem, and lester dawes. all that crowd."
"the fawzis' office gang," flora said disparagingly. "i suppose they'll want conn to take them right to where merlin is, the first thing."
"well, not the first thing," conn said. "merlin was one thing i couldn't find out anything about on terra."
"i'll bet you couldn't!"
"the people at armed forces records would let me look at everything else, and make microcopies and all, but not one word about computers. forty years, and they still have the security lid welded shut on that."
flora looked at him in shocked surprise. "you don't mean to tell me you believe in that thing?"
"sure. how do you think they fought a war around a perimeter of close to a thousand light-years? they couldn't do all that out of their heads. they'd have to have computers, and the one they'd use to correlate everything and work out grand-strategy plans would have to be a dilly. why, i'd give anything just to look at the operating panels for that thing."
"but that's just a silly story; there never was anything like merlin. no wonder you couldn't find out about it. you were looking for something that doesn't exist, just like all these old cranks that sit around drinking brandy and mooning about[pg 27] what merlin's going to do for them, and never doing anything for themselves."
"oh, they're going to do something, now, flora," his father told her. "when we get this company organized—"
"you'll dig up a lot of stuff you won't be able to sell, like that stuff you've been bringing in from tenth army, and then you'll go looping off chasing merlin, like the rest of them. well, maybe that'll be a little better than just sitting in kurt fawzi's office talking about it, but not much."
it kept on like that. conn and his father tried several times to change the subject; each time flora ignored the effort and returned to her diatribe. finally, she put her plate and cup on the robot's tray and got to her feet.
"i have to go," she said. "maybe i can do something to keep some of these children from growing up to be merlin-worshipers like their parents."
she flung out of the room angrily. mrs. maxwell looked after her in distress.
"and i thought it was going to be so nice, having breakfast together again," she lamented.
somehow the breakfast wasn't quite as good as he'd thought it was at first. he wondered how many more breakfasts like that he was going to have to sit through. he and his father finished quickly and got up, while his mother started the robot to clearing the table.
"conn," she said, after his father had gone out, "you shouldn't have gotten flora started like that."
"i didn't get flora started; she's equipped with a self-starter. if she doesn't believe in merlin, that's her business. a lot of these people do, and i'm going to help them hunt for it. that's why they all chipped in to send me to school on terra; remember?"
"yes, i know." her voice was heavy with distress. "conn, do you really believe there is a ... that thing?" she asked.
"why, of course." he was mildly surprised at how sincerely and straightforwardly he said it. "i don't know where it is, but it's somewhere on poictesme, or in the alpha system."
"well, do you think it would be a good thing to find it?"[pg 28]
that surprised him. everybody knew it would be, and his mother didn't share his father's attitude about things everybody knew. she hadn't any business questioning a fundamental postulate like that.
"it frightens me," she continued. "i don't even like to think about it. a soulless intelligence; it seems evil to me."
"well, of course it's soulless. it's a machine, isn't it? an aircar's soulless, but you're not afraid to ride in one."
"but this is different. a machine that can think. conn, people weren't meant to make machines like that, wiser than they are."
"now wait a minute, mother. you're talking to a computerman now." professional authority was something his mother oughtn't to question. "a computer like merlin isn't intelligent, or wise, or anything of the sort. it doesn't think; the people who make computers and use them do the thinking. a computer's a tool, like a screwdriver; it has to have a man to use it."
"well, but...."
"and please, don't talk about what people are meant to do. people aren't meant to do things; they mean to do things, and nine times out of ten, they end by doing them. it may take a hundred thousand years from a stone age savage in a cave to the captain of a hyperspace ship, but sooner or later they get there."
his mother was silent. the soulless machine that had been clearing the table floated out of the room, the dishwasher in its rectangular belly gurgling. maybe what he had told her was logical, but women aren't impressed by logic. she knew better—for the good old feminine reason, because.
"wade lucas wanted me to drop in on him for a checkup," he mentioned. "that's rubbish; i had one for my landing pratique on the ship. he just wants to size up his future brother-in-law."
"well, you ought to go see him."
"how did flora come to meet him, anyhow?"
"well, you know, he came from baldur. he was in storisende, looking for an opening to start a practice, and he heard about some medical equipment your father had found[pg 29] somewhere and came out to see if he could buy it. your father and judge ledue and mr. fawzi talked him into opening his office here. then he and flora got acquainted...." she asked, anxiously: "what did you think of him, conn?"
"seems like a regular guy. i think i'll like him." a husband like wade lucas might be a good thing for flora. "i'll drop in on him, sometime this morning."
his mother went toward the rear of the house—more soulless machines, like the housecleaning-robot, and the laundry-robot, to look after. he went into his father's office and found the cigar humidor, just where it had been when he'd stolen cigars out of it six years ago and thought his father never suspected what he was doing.
now, why didn't they export this tobacco? it was better than anything they grew on terra; well, at least it was different, just as poictesme brandy was different from terran bourbon or baldur honey-rum. that was the sort of thing that could be sold in interstellar trade anytime and anywhere; the luxury goods that were unique. staple foodstuffs, utility textiles, metal products, could be produced anywhere, and sooner or later they were. that was the reason for the original, pre-war depression: the customers were all producing for themselves. he'd talk that over with his father. he wished he'd had time to take some economics at the university.
he found the file his father kept up-to-date on salvage sites found and registered with the claims office in storisende. some of the locations he had brought back data for had been discovered, but, to his relief, not the underground duplicate force command headquarters, and not the spaceport on the island continent of barathrum, to the east. that was all right.
he went to the house-defense arms closet and found a 10-mm navy pistol, and a belt and spare clips. making sure that the pistol and magazines were loaded, he buckled it on. he debated getting a vehicle out of the hangar on the landing stage, decided against it, and started downtown on foot.[pg 30]
one of the first people he met was len yeniguchi, the tailor. he would be at the meeting that afternoon. he managed, while talking, to comment on the cut of conn's suit, and finger the material.
"ah, nice," he complimented. "made on terra? we don't see cloth like that here very often."
he meant it wasn't armed forces salvage.
"father ought to be around to see you with a bolt of material, to have a suit made," he said. "for ghu's sake, either talk him into having a short jacket like this, or get him to buy himself a shoulder holster. he's ruined every coat he ever owned, carrying a gun on his hip."
a little farther on, he came to a combat car grounded in the middle of the street. it was green, with black trimmings, and lettered in black, gordon valley home guard. tom brangwyn was standing beside it, talking to a young man in a green uniform.
"hello, conn." the town marshal looked at his hip and grinned. "see you got all your clothes on this morning. you were just plain indecent, yesterday.... you know fred karski, don't you?"
yes, now that tom mentioned it, he did. he and fred had gone to school together at the litchfield academy. but the six years since they'd seen each other last had made a lot of difference in both of them. he was beginning to think that the only strangers in litchfield were his own contemporaries. they shook hands, and conn looked at the combat car and fred karski's uniform.
"what's going on?" he asked. "the system states alliance to business again?"
karski laughed. "oh, that's the colonel's idea. green and black were his colors in the war, and he's in command of the regiment."
"regiment? you need a whole regiment?" conn asked.
"well, it's two companies, each about the size of a regular army platoon, but we have to call it a regiment so he can keep his old rebel army rank."
"we could use a regiment, conn," tom brangwyn said seriously. "you have no idea how bad things have gotten.[pg 31] over on the east coast, the outlaws are looting whole towns. about four months ago, they sacked waterville; burned the whole town and killed close to a hundred people. that was blackie perales' gang."
"who is this blackie perales? i heard the name mentioned in connection with the harriet barne."
"blackie perales is anybody the planetary government can't catch, which means practically any outlaw," fred karski said.
"no, fred; there is a blackie perales," tom brangwyn said. "he used to be a planter, down in the south. the banks foreclosed on him when he couldn't pay his notes, and he turned outlaw. that's the way it's going, all around. every time a planter loses his plantation or a farmer loses his farm, or a mechanic loses his job, he turns outlaw. take tramptown, here. we used to plant nothing but melons. then, when the sale for wine and brandy dropped, the melon-planters began cutting their melon crops and raising produce, instead of buying it from up north, and turning land into pasture for cattle. the people we used to buy foodstuffs from couldn't sell all they raised, and that threw a lot of farmhands out of work. so they got the idea there was work here, and they came flocking in, and when they couldn't get jobs, they just stayed in tramptown, stealing anything they could. we don't even try to police tramptown any more; we just see to it they don't come up here."
"well, where do these outlaws and pirates who are looting whole towns come from?"
"down in the badlands, mostly. none of them have been bothering us, since we organized the home guard. they tried to, a couple of times, at first. there may have been a few survivors; they spread it around that gordon valley wasn't any outlaws' health resort."
"why don't you join us, conn?" fred karski asked. "all our old gang belong."
"i'd like to, but i'm afraid i'm going to be kind of busy."
brangwyn nodded. "yes. you will be, at that," he agreed.
"so i hear," fred karski said. "do you really know where it is, conn?"[pg 32]
"well, no." he went into the routine about merlin being still classified triple-top secret. "but we'll find it. it may take time, but we will."
they talked for a while. he asked more questions about the home guard. his father, it seemed, had donated all the equipment. they had a hundred and seventy men on the active list, but they had a reserve of over eight hundred, and combat vehicles and weapons on all the plantations and in all the towns along the river. the reserve had only been turned out twice; both times, outlaw attacks had been stopped dead—literally. the home guard, it appeared, was not given to making arrests or taking prisoners. finally, he parted from them, strolling on along the row of stores and business places, many vacant, under the south edge of the mall, until he saw a fluorolite sign, wade lucas, m. d. he entered.
lucas wasn't busy. they went into his consultation office, and conn took off his gun-belt and hung it up; lucas offered cigarettes, and they lighted and sat down.
"i see you've started carrying one," he said, nodding to the pistol conn had laid aside.
"civic obligation. i'm going to be too busy for home guard duty, but if i can protect myself, it'll save somebody else the job of protecting me."
"maybe if there weren't so many guns around, there wouldn't be so much trouble."
he felt his good opinion of wade lucas start to slip. the liberals on terra had been full of that kind of talk, which was why only four out of ten of last year's graduating class at armed forces academy had been able to get active commissions. the last war had been a disaster, so don't prepare for another one; when it comes, let it be a worse disaster.
"guns don't make trouble; people make trouble. if the troublemakers are armed, you have to be armed too. when did you last see an air patrol boat around here, or even a constabulary trooper? all we have here is the home guard and tom brangwyn and three deputies, and his pay and theirs is always six months in arrears."[pg 33]
lucas nodded. "a bankrupt government, an unemployment rate that rises every year, currency that buys less every month. and do-it-yourself justice." the doctor blew a smoke ring and watched it float toward the ventilator-intake. "you said you're going to be busy. this company your father's talking about organizing?"
"that's right. you're going to be at the meeting at the academy this afternoon, aren't you?"
"yes. just what are you going to do, after you get it organized?"
"well, i brought back information on a great deal of undiscovered equipment and stores that the third force left behind...." he talked on for some time, keeping to safe generalities. "it's too big for my father and me to handle alone, even if we didn't feel morally obligated to take in the people who contributed toward sending me to school on terra. you ought to be interested in it. i know of six fully supplied hospitals, intended to take care of the casualties in case of a system states space-attack. you can imagine, better than i can, what would be in them."
"yes. medical supplies of all sorts are getting hard to find. but look here; you're not going to let these people waste time looking for this alleged computer, this thing they call merlin, are you?"
"we're looking for any valuable war material. i don't know the location of merlin, but—"
"i'll bet you don't!" lucas said vehemently. that was the same thing flora had said.
"—but merlin is undoubtedly the most valuable item of abandoned tf equipment on this planet. in the long run, i'd say, more valuable than everything else together. we certainly aren't going to ignore it."
"good heavens, conn! you aren't like these people here; you were educated at the university of montevideo."
"so i was. i studied computer theory and practice. i have some doubts about merlin being able to do some of the things these laymen like kellton and fawzi and judge ledue think it could. those sorts of misconceptions and exaggerations have to be allowed for. but i have no doubt whatever[pg 34] that the master computer with which they did their strategic planning is probably the greatest mechanism of its sort ever built, and i have no doubt whatever that it still exists somewhere in the alpha system."
he almost convinced himself of it. he did not, however, convince wade lucas, who was now regarding him with narrow-eyed suspicion.
"you mean you categorically state that that computer actually exists?"
"that, i think, was the general idea. yes. i certainly do believe that merlin exists."
maybe he was telling the truth. merlin existed in the beliefs and hopes of people like dolf kellton and klem zareff and judge ledue and kurt fawzi. merlin was a god to them. well, take ghu, the thoran grandfather-god. ghu was as preposterous, theologically, as merlin was technologically; ghu, except to thorans, was a federation-wide joke. but he'd known a couple of thorans at the university, funny little fellows, with faces like terriers, their bodies covered with matted black hair. they believed in ghu the way he believed in the second law of thermodynamics. ghu was with them every moment of their lives. take away their belief in ghu, and they would have been lost and wretched.
as lost and wretched as kurt fawzi or judge ledue, if they lost their belief in merlin. he started to say something like that, and then thought better of it.
yes, virginia, there is a santa claus.