Philip Dick - The Complete Stories of Philip K. Dick Vol. 5 - The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Stories

Gesturing, Stafford said, "I'm just a repairman. Maintenance and service – not even malfunct analysis. I do only what I'm told."

"Then do what we're telling you," the FBI man closest to him spoke up harshly. "Find out why Genux-B decided to flash a Red Alert, scramble SAC, and begin a 'counterattack.' Find out why it did so in the case of France and Israel. Something made it add up its received data and get that answer. It's not alive! It has no volition. It didn't just feel the urge to do this."

The engineer said, "If we're lucky, this is the last time Genux-B will malreact in this fashion. If we can spot the misfunction this time, we'll perhaps have it pegged for all time. Before it starts showing up in the other seven Genux-B systems around the world."

"And you're certain," Stafford said, "that we're not under attack?" Even if Genux-B had been wrong both times before, it at least theoretically could be right this time.

"If we are about to be attacked," the nearest FBI man said, "we can't make out any indication of it – by human data processing, anyhow. I admit it's logically thinkable that Genux-B could be correct. After all, as he pointed out -"

"You may be in error because the S.A.T.A. has been hostile toward us so long we take it for granted. It's a verity of modern life."

"Oh, it's not the South African True Association," the FBI man said briskly. "In fact, if it were we wouldn't have gotten suspicious. We wouldn't have begun poking around, interviewing survivors from the Israel War and French War and whatever else State's done to follow this up."

"It's Northern California," the engineer said, and grimaced. "Not even all of California; just the part above Pismo Beach."

Stafford stared at them.

"That's right," one of the FBI men said. "Genux-B was in the process of scrambling all SAC bombers and wep-sats for an all-out assault on the area around Sacramento, California."

"You asked it why?" Stafford said, speaking to the engineer.

"Sure. Or rather, strictly speaking, we asked it to spell out in detail what the 'enemy' is up to."

One of the FBI men drawled, "Tell Mr. Stafford what Northern California is up to that makes it a hot-target enemy – that would have meant its destruction by SAC spearhead assaults if we hadn't jammed the damn machinery… and still have it jammed."

"Some individual," the engineer said, "has opened up a penny gum machine route in Castro Valley. You know. He has those bubble-headed dispensers outside supermarkets. The children put in a penny and get a placebo ball of gum and something additional occasionally – a prize such as a ring or a charm. It varies. That's the target."

Incredulous, Stafford said, "You're joking."

"Absolute truth. Man's name is Herb Sousa. He owns sixty-four machines now in operation and plans expansion."

"I mean," Stafford said thickly, "you're joking about Genux-B's response to that datum."

"Its response isn't exactly to that datum per se," the closest of the FBI men said. "For instance, we checked with both the Israeli and French governments. Nobody named Herb Sousa opened up a penny gum machine route in their countries, and that goes for chocolate-covered peanut vending machines or anything else remotely similar to it. And, contrarily, Herb Sousa maintained such a route in Chile and in the U.K. during the past two decades… without Genux-B taking any interest all those years." He added, "He's an elderly man."

"A sort of Johnny Apple Gum," the engineer said, and tittered. "Looping the world, sending those gum machines swooping down in front of every gas -"

"The triggering stimulus," the engineer said, as the flapple began to drop toward a vast complex of illuminated public buildings below, "may lie in the ingredients of the merchandise placed in the machines. That's what our experts have come up with; they studied all material available to Genux-B concerning Sousa's gum concessions, and we know that all Genux-B has consists of a long, dry chemical analysis of the food product constituents with which Sousa loads his machines. In fact, Genux-B specifically requested more information on that angle. It kept grinding out 'incomplete ground data' until we got a thorough PF amp;D lab analysis."

"What did the analysis show?" Stafford asked. The flapple had now berthed on the roof of the installations housing the central component of the computer, and, as it was called these days, Mr. C-in-C of the North American Prosperity Alliance.

"As regards foodstuffs," an FBI man near the door said, as he stepped out onto the dimly illuminated landing strip, "nothing but gum base, sugar, corn syrup, softeners, and artificial flavor, all the way down the line. Matter of fact, that's the only way you can make gum. And those dinky little prizes are vacuum-processed thermoplastics. Six hundred to the dollar will buy them from any of a dozen firms here and in Hong Kong and Japan. We even went so far as to trace the prizes down to the specific jobber, his sources, back to the factory, where a man from State actually stood and watched them making the damn little things. No, nothing there. Nothing at all."

"But," the engineer said, half to himself, "when that data had been supplied to Genux-B -"

"Then this," the FBI man said, standing aside so that Stafford could disemflapple. "A Red Alert, the SAC scramble, the missiles up from their silos. Forty minutes away from thermonuclear war – the distance from us of one Phillips head screwdriver wedged in a tape drum of the computer."

To Stafford, the engineer said keenly, "Do you pick up anything odd or conceivably misleading in those data? Because if you do, for God's sake speak up; all we can do this way is to dismantle Genux-B and put it out of action, so that when a genuine threat faces us -"

"I wonder," Stafford said slowly, pondering, "what's meant by 'artificial' color."

"It means it won't otherwise look the right color, so a harmless food-coloring dye is added," the engineer said presently.

"But that's the one ingredient," Stafford said, "that isn't listed in a way that tells us what it is – only what it does. And how about flavor?" The FBI men glanced at one another.

"It is a fact," one of them said, "and I recall this because it always makes me sore – it did specify artificial flavor. But heck -"

"Artificial color and flavor," Stafford said, "could mean anything. Anything over and above the color and flavor imparted." He thought: Isn't it prussic acid that turns everything a bright clear green? That, for example, could in all honesty be spelled out on a label as "artificial color." And taste – what really was meant by "artificial taste"? This to him always had a dark, peculiar quality to it, this thought; he decided to shelve it. Time now to go down and take a look at Genux-B, to see what damage had been done to it. – And how much damage, he thought wryly, it still needs. If I've been told the truth; if these men are what they show credentials for, not S.A.T.A. saboteurs or an intelligence cadre of one of several major foreign powers.

From the garrison warrior domain of Northern California, he thought wryly. Or was that absolutely impossible after all? Perhaps something genuine and ominous had burgeoned into life there. And Genux-B had – as designed to do – sniffed it out.

For now, he could not tell.

But perhaps by the time he finished examining the computer he would know. In particular, he wanted to see firsthand the authentic, total collection of data tapes currently being processed from the outside universe into the computer's own inner world. Once he knew that -

I'll turn the thing back on, he said grimly to himself. I'll do the job I was trained for and hired to do.

Obviously, for him it would be easy. He thoroughly knew the schematics of the computer. No one else had been into it replacing defective components and wiring as had he.