Gordon Dickson - The Human Edge

Grimly, Ty turned on his translator collar and gave the cargo platform the address of the human Consulate. Then, he lifted a section of the transparent cover of the platform and stepped aboard, to sit down on the luggage and wait for Mial. After a while, he saw Mial break off his conversation and approach the cargo platform. The statesman spoke briefly to the cargo platform, something Ty could not hear from under the transparent cover, then came aboard and sat down next to Ty.

The platform lifted into the air and headed in between the blue and gray metal of the towers with their gossamer connecting bridges.

“I already told it where to take us,” said Ty.

Mial turned to look at him briefly and almost contemptuously, then turned away again without answering.

The platform slid amongst the looming towers and finally flew them in through a wide window-opening, into a room set up with human-style furniture. They got off, and Ty looked around as the platform began to unload the baggage. There was no sign of the Laburti individual who filled the role of human Consul. Sudden suspicion blossomed again in Ty.

“Wait a minute—” He wheeled about—but the platform, already unloaded, was lifting out through the window opening again. Ty turned on Mial. “This isn’t the Consulate!”

“That’s right,” Mial almost drawled the words. “It’s a hotel—the way they have them here. The Chedal Observer recommended it to me.”

“Recommended—?” Ty stared. “We’re supposed to go to the Consulate. You can’t—”

“Can’t I?” Mial’s eyes were beginning to blaze. The throttled fury in him was yammering to be released, evidently, as much as its counterpart in Ty. “I don’t trust that Consulate, with its Laburti playing human Consul. Here, if the Chedal wants to drop by—”

“He’s not supposed to drop by!” Ty snarled. “We’re here to demonstrate Annie, not gabble with the Observers. What’ll the Laburti think if they find you and the Chedal glued together half of the time?” He got himself under control and said in a lower voice. “We’re going back to the Consulate, now—”

“Are we?” Mial almost hissed. “Are you forgetting that the orders show me in charge of this Demonstration—and that the aliens’ll believe those orders? Besides, you don’t know your way around here. And, after talking to the Chedal—I do!”

He turned abruptly and strode over to an apparently blank wall. He rapped on it, and flicked on his translator collar and spoke to the wall.

“Open up!” The wall slid open to reveal what was evidently an elevator tube. He stepped into it and turned to smile mockingly at Ty, drifting down out of sight. The wall closed behind him.

“Open up!” raged Ty, striding to the wall and rapping on it. He flicked on his translator collar. “Open up. Do you hear me? Open up!”

But the wall did not open. Ty, his knuckles getting sore, at last gave up and turned back to Annie.

Whatever else might be going on, his responsibility to her and the Demonstration tomorrow, remained unchanged. He got her handling rigging off, and ran a sample problem through her. When he was done, he checked the resultant figures against the answers to the problem already established by multiple statistics back on Earth. He was within a fraction of a per cent all the way down the line.

Ty glowed, in spite of himself. Operating Annie successfully was not so much a skill, as an art. In any problem, there were from fourteen to twenty factors whose values had to be adjusted according to the instincts and creativity of the Operator. It was this fact that was the human ace in the hole in this situation. Aliens could not run Annie—they had tried on Annie’s prototypes and failed. Only a few specially trained and talented humans could run her successfully… and of these, Ty Ross was the master Operator. That was why he was here.

Now, tomorrow he would have to prove his right to that title. Under his hands Annie could show that a hundred and twenty-five Earth years after the Laburti and Chedal went to war, the winner would have a Gross Racial Product only eight per cent increased over today—so severe would the conflict have been. But in a hundred and twenty-five years of peaceful co-existence and cooperation, both races would have doubled their G.R.P.s in spite of having made only fractional increases in population. And machines like Annie, with operators like Ty, stood ready to monitor and guide the G.R.P. increases. No sane race could go to war in the face of that.

Meanwhile, Mial had not returned. Outside the weather shield of the wide window, the local sun, a G5 star, was taking its large, orange-yellow shape below the watery horizon. Ty made himself something to eat, read a while, and then took himself to bed in one of the adjoining bedrooms. But disquieting memories kept him from sleeping.

He remembered now that there had been an argument back on Earth, about the proper way to make use of Annie. He had known of this for a long time. Mial’s recent actions came forcing it back into the forefront of his sleepless mind.

The political people back home had wanted Annie to be used as a tool, and a bargaining point, rather than a solution to the Laburti-Chedal confrontation, in herself. It was true. Ty reminded himself in the darkness. Mial had not been one of those so arguing. But he was of the same breed and occupation as they, reminded the little red devils of suspicion, coming out to dance on Ty’s brain. With a sullen effort Ty shoved them out of his mind and forced himself to think of something else—anything else.

And, after a while, he slept.

He woke suddenly, feeling himself being shaken back to consciousness. The lights were on in the room and Mial was shaking him.

“What?” Ty sat up, knocking the other man’s hand aside.

“The Chedal Observer’s here with me.” said Mial. “He wants a preview demonstration of the analyzer.”

“A preview!” Ty burst up out of bed to stand facing the other man. “Why should he get to see Annie before the official Demonstration?”

“Because I said he could.” Underneath, Mial’s eyes were stained by dark half-circles of fatigue.

“Well, I say he can wait until tomorrow like the Laburti!” snapped Ty. He added, “—And don’t try to pull your paper rank on me. If I don’t run Annie for him, who’s to do it? You?”

Mial’s weary face paled with anger.

“The Chedal asked for the preview,” he said, in a tight, low voice. “I didn’t think I had the right to refuse him, important as this Mission is. Do you want to take the responsibility of doing it? Annie’ll come up with the same answers now as seven hours from now.”

“Almost the same—” muttered Ty. “They’re never exact, I told you that.” He swayed on his feet, caught between sleep and resentment.

“As you say,” said Mial, “I can’t make you do it.”

Ty hesitated a second more. But his brain seemed numb.

“All right,” he snapped. “I’ll have to get dressed. Five minutes!”

Mial turned and went out. When Ty followed, some five minutes later, he found both the other man and the alien in the sitting room. The Chedal came toward Ty, and for a moment they were closer than they had been even in the spaceliner airlock. For the first time, Ty smelled a faint, sickening odor from the alien, a scent like overripe bananas.

The Chedal handed him a roll of paper-like material. Gibberish raved from his lipless mouth and was translated by the translator collar.

“Here is the data you will need.”

“Thank you,” said Ty, with bare civility. He took the roll over to Annie and examined it. It contained all the necessary statistics on both the Laburti and Chedal races, from the Gross Racial Products down to statistical particulars. He went to work, feeding the data into Annie.