Barrington Bayley - Barrington Bayley SF Gateway Omnibus - The Soul of the Robot, The Knights of the Limits, The Fall of Chronopolis

Morley insists that the beam’s interception of the Extra-Solar Object must have been coincidence. He laughs at any suggestion that, to put it crudely, he had been ‘manipulated’ from interstellar space. How, he asks, could he have been ‘manipulated’ into formulating entirely original concepts?

Morley, however, misses the point. External controls, if they existed, would not act on the individual, nor on the collectivity as such, but in some way on combinations of the two. Ideas, thoughts and schemes are all part of the social structure and might be treated by a controlling agency as interesting or valuable outputs.

The erecting of the Antarctic Structure, too, shows one of the classic combinations of individual (Morley) and collective (cult) action. Investigation of the subsequent economic deformations (during which transit of the Extra-Solar Object took place) has shown that the deformations travelled through the economic system in the form of ripples, much as if a stone had been dropped into a pond. Following this finding, the abandoned SEF detecting instruments on Luna and on two Earth satellites were broken into. It was discovered that they had recorded strong low-frequency oscillations of an unusual nature during this period. The magnetic pulses appeared, moreover, not to be restricted to the surface of the Earth but to be isotropic.

6. Recommendations:

(1) It is imperative to ascertain whether entities capable of exercising external control exist .

(2) While no human individual or institution can take charge of the SEF, the possibility perhaps remains that an artificial non-polar intelligence could be constructed whose function would be, not to control the SEF itself, but to act as a block on any other external agency that tried to effect control.

It must be said that the problems associated with the above two projects are not merely prodigious; we can offer no guidance as to where they should even begin.

To: Dean, Sociohistoric Faculty.

From: Director, Orbit University.

Date: 20 July AD 3065.

Dear Arthur: This report alarms me, too. If this thing gets about it will provoke a whole new crop of crank religions. The government is finding lunatics like Morley and his followers exasperating enough as it is.

Two thoughts occur to me. (1) If an exterior intelligence were to control the SEF, could we be aware of it? Such an intelligence would surely take care not to intrude new sources of energy into the system, for fear of causing internal damage. (2) This being the case, what guarantee have we that the growth of the SEF was not controlled from the start? I’m reminded of the story of the man who woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, wondering why he had always presumed he was alive for his own convenience, and not for some other purpose entirely unknown to him. For once I am inclined to think that ignorance is the better part of discretion. Do not send this report to the World Steering Committee – they’re too democratic a body, some of them are bound to blab. Replace it with something more prosaic. It shouldn’t be too difficult to suggest a reason why Morley could have known of the approach of the Extra-Solar Object in advance – he could then be arraigned for making a secret of scientific information.

Just between the two of us, I’ve already had a word with the WSC Chairman, and that’s the kind of outcome he wants. He’s been looking for a chance to nail Morley, anyway. Mansim.

Nayland’s world was a world of falling rain, rain that danced on streaming tarmac, soaked the grey and buff masonry of the dignified buildings lining the streets of the town, drummed on the roofs of big black cars splashing the kerbs. Behind faded gold lettering on office windows constantly awash, tense laconic conversation took place to the murmur of water pouring from the gutterings, to the continuous, pattering sound of rain.

Beneath the pressing grey sky, all was humid. Frank Nayland, his feet up on his desk, looked down through his office window to where the slow-moving traffic drove through the deluge. Nayland Investigations Inc. , read the bowed gold lettering on the window. The rain fell, too, in the black-and-white picture on the TV set flickering away in the corner of the office. It fell steadily, unremittingly, permanently, while Humphrey Bogart and Barbara Stanwyck fled together in a big black car, quarrelling tersely in their enclosed little world which smelled of seat leather and rain.

They stopped at a crossroads. Bogart gripped the steering-wheel and scowled while the argument resumed in clipped, deadpan tones. The windscreen wipers were barely able to clear away the rain; on the outside camera shots the faces of the two were seen blurrily, intermittently, cut off from external contact as the wipers went through their sweep.

In the office the telephone rang. Nayland picked it up. He heard a voice that essentially was his own; yet the accent was British, rather than American.

‘Is that Oliver Nayland, private detective?’

‘ Frank Nayland,’ Nayland corrected.

‘ Frank Nayland.’

The voice paused, as if for reflection. ‘I would like to call on your services, Mr Nayland. I want someone to investigate your world for me. Follow the couple in the black car. Where are they fleeing to? What are they fleeing from? Does it ever stop raining?’

Nayland replied in a professionally neutral tone. ‘My charge is two hundred dollars a week, plus expenses,’ he said. ‘For investigating physical world phenomena, however – gravitation, rain, formation of the elements – I charge double my usual fee.’

While speaking he moved to the TV and twiddled the tuning knob. The black car idling at the crossroads vanished, was replaced by a man’s face talking into a telephone. Essentially the face was Nayland’s own; younger, perhaps, less knowing, not world-weary. There was no pencil-line moustache; and the client sported a boyish haircut Nayland wouldn’t have been seen dead with.

The client looked straight at him out of the screen. ‘I think I can afford it. Please begin your investigations.’

The picture faded, giving way to Gene Kelly dancing in Singin’ in the Rain . Nayland returned to the window. From his desk he picked up a pair of binoculars and trained them on a black car that momentarily was stopped at the traffic lights. Through the car’s side window he glimpsed the profile of Barbara Stanwyck. She was sitting stiffly in the front passenger seat, speaking rapidly, her proud face vibrant with passion, angry but restrained. By her side Bogart tapped on the steering-wheel and snarled back curt replies.

The lights changed, the car swept on, splashing rainwater over the kerb. Nayland put down his binoculars and became thoughtful.

For a few minutes longer Oliver Naylor watched the private dick’s activities on his thespitron screen. Nayland held tense, laconic interviews in seedy city offices, swept through wet streets in a black car, talked in gloomy bars while rain pattered against the windows, visited the mansion of Mrs Van der Loon, had a brief shoot-out with a local mobster.

Eventually Naylor faded out the scene, holding down the ‘retain in store’ key. At the same time he keyed the ‘credible sequence’ button back in. The thespitron started up again, beginning, with a restrained fanfare, to unfold an elaborate tale of sea schooners on a watery world.

Naylor ignored it, turning down the sound so that the saga would not distract him. He rose from his chair and paced the living-room of his mobile habitat. How interesting, he thought, that the drama machine, the thespitron as he called it, should invent a character so close to himself both in name and in appearance. True, their personalities were different, as were their backgrounds – Frank Nayland , a twentieth-century American, was perfectly adapted to his world of the private eye circa 1950 whereas he, Oliver Naylor , was a twenty-second-century Englishman and a different type altogether. But physically the resemblance was uncanny.