Philip Dick - Vulcan's Hammer

Rachel Pitt said nothing; she stared sightlessly ahead.

In his pockets, Jason Dill carried the two reels of tape; they never left him, night and day. He had them with him now as he walked slowly along the brightly lit corridor. Once again, involuntarily, he lifted his hand and rubbed the bulge which the tapes made. Like a magic charm, he thought to himself with irony. And we accuse the masses of being superstitious!

Ahead of him, lights switched on. Behind him, enormous reinforced doors slid shut to fill in the chamber's single en­trance. The huge calculator rose in front of him, the im­mense tower of receptor banks and indicators. He was alone with it-alone with Vulcan 3.

Very little of the computer was visible; its bulk disap­peared into regions which he had never seen, which in fact no human had ever seen. During the course of its existence it had expanded certain portions of itself. To do so it had cleared away the granite and shale earth; it had, for a long time now, been conducting excavation operations in the vicinity. Sometimes Jason Dill could hear that sound going on like a far-off, incredibly high-pitched dentist's drill. Now and then he had listened and tried to guess where the operations were taking place. It was only a guess. Their only check on the growth and development of Vulcan 3 lay in two clues: the amount of rock thrown up to the surface, to be carted off, and the variety, amount, and nature of the raw materials and tools and parts which the computer requested.

Now, as Jason Dill stood facing the thing, he saw that it had put forth a new reel of supply requisitions; it was there for him to pick up and fill. As if, he thought, I'm some errand boy.

I do its shopping, he realized. It's stuck here, so I go out and come back with the week's groceries. Only in its case we don't supply food; we supply just about everything else but.

The financial cost of supporting Vulcan 3 was immense. Part of the taxation program conducted by Unity on a world-wide basis existed to maintain the computer. At the latest estimate, Vulcan 3's share of the taxes came to about forty-three percent.

And the rest, Dill thought idly, goes to schools, for roads, hospitals, fire departments, police-the lesser order of human needs.

Beneath his feet the floor vibrated. This was the deepest level which the engineers had constructed, and yet some­thing was constantly going on below. He had felt the vibra­tions before. What lay down there? No black earth; not the inert ground. Energy, tubes and pies, wiring, trans­formers, self-contained machinery ... He had a mental image of relentless activity going on: carts carrying sup­plies in, wastes out; lights blinking on and off; relays closing; switches cooling and reheating; worn-out parts re­placed; new parts invented; superior designs replacing ob­solete designs. And how far had it spread? Miles? Were there even more levels beneath the one transmitting up through the soles of his shoes? Did it go down, down, forever?

Vulcan 3 was aware of him. Across the vast impersonal face of metal an acknowledgment gleamed, a ribbon of fluid letters that appeared briefly and then vanished. Jason Dill had to catch the words at once or not at all; no latitude for human dullness was given.

Is the educational bias survey complete?

"Almost," Dill said, "A few more days." As always, in dealing with Vulcan 3, he felt a deep, inertial reluctance; it slowed his responses and hung over his mind, his faculties, like a dead weight. In the presence of the computer he found himself becoming stupid. He always gave the shortest answers; it was easier. And as soon as the first words lit up in the air above his head, he had a desire to leave; already, he wanted to go.

But this was his job, this being cloistered here with Vul­can 3. Someone had to do it. Some human being had to stand in this spot.

He had never had this feeling in the presence of Vulcan 2.

Now, new words formed, like lightning flashing blue-white in the damp air.

I need it at once.

"It'll be along as soon as the feed-teams can turn it into data forms."

Vulcan 3 was-well, he thought, the only word was agitated. Power lines glowed red-the origin of the series' name. The rumblings and dull flashes of red had reminded Nathaniel Greenstreet of the ancient god's forge, the lame god who had created the thunderbolts for Jupiter, in an age long past.

There is some element misfunctioning. A significant shift in the orientation of certain social strata which cannot be explained in terms of data already available to me. A re­alignment of the social pyramid is forming in response to historic-dynamic factors unfamiliar to me. I must know more if I am to deal with this.

A faint tendril of alarm moved through Jason Dill. What did Vulcan 3 suspect? "All data is made available to you as soon as possible."

A decided bifurcation of society seems in the making. Be certain your report on educational bias is complete. I will need all the relevant facts.

After a pause, Vulcan 3 added: I sense a rapidly ap­proaching crisis.

"What kind of crisis?" Dill demanded nervously.

Ideological. A new orientation appears to be on the verge of verbalization. A Gestalt derived from the experience of the lowest classes. Reflecting their dissatisfaction. "Dissatisfaction? With what?"

Essentially, the masses reject the concept of stability. In the main, those without sufficient property to be firmly rooted are more concerned with gain than with security. To them, society is an arena of adventure. A structure in which they hope to rise to a superior power status.

"I see," Dill said dutifully.

A rationally controlled, stable society such as ours de­feats their desires. In a rapidly altering, unstable society the lowest classes would stand a good chance of seizing power. Basically, the lowest classes are adventurers, con­ceiving life as a gamble, a game rather than a task, with social power as the stakes.

"Interesting," Dill said. "So for them the concept of luck plays a major role. Those on top have had good luck. Those-" But Vulcan 3 was not interested in his contribu­tion; it had already continued.

The dissatisfaction of the masses is not based on eco­nomic deprivation but on a sense of ineffectuality. Not an increased standard of living, but more social power, is their fundamental goal. Because of their emotional orientation, they arise and act when a powerful leader-figure can co­ordinate them into a functioning unit rather than a chaotic mass of unformed elements.

Dill had no reply to that. It was evident that Vulcan 3 had sifted the information available, and had come up with uncomfortably close inferences. That, of course, was the machine's forte; basically it was a device par excellence for performing the processes of deductive and inductive rea­soning. It ruthlessly passed from one step to the next and arrived at the correct inference, whatever it was.

Without direct knowledge of any kind, Vulcan 3 was able to deduce, from general historic principles, the social conflicts developing in the contemporary world. It had manufactured a picture of the situation which faced the average human being as he woke up in the morning and reluctantly greeted the day. Stuck down here, Vulcan 3 had, through indirect and incomplete evidence, imagined things as they actually were.

Sweat came out on Dill's forehead. He was dealing with a mind greater than any one man's Or any group of men's. This proof of the prowess of the computer-this verifica­tion of Greenstreet's notion that a machine was not limited merely to doing what man could do, but doing it faster . .. Vulcan 3 was patently doing what a man could not do no matter how much time he had available to him.