and bigger at the expense of ordinary workers. You know the sort of thing.”
“But it is true that the living standard is going down all the time, isn’t it?” asked Mr. Tanter, keeping his ephemeral smile. “What about those three thousand starvation deaths up in Hydroburgh?”
Krayton waved an impatient hand. “There will always be problems like that here and there.” He turned and stared almost reverently at the long control rack. “Be thankful we have The Computer to solve them.”
“But the deaths were due to diverting that basic carbon shipment down here to Computer City for computer-building, weren’t they?”
“Now, there—you see how powerful the propaganda of the Prims can be?” Krayton put his hands on his hips. “That statement is not true! It simply isn’t true at all! It was analyzed on The Computer some days ago. Here, let me show you.” He took several steps down the corridor again and stopped at another panel.
“We first collected from the various departments—Food, Production, Labor and so forth—all the possible causes of the starvation deaths in Hydroburgh. Computer Administration had its machine translate them into symbols. We’re getting a huge new plant and machine addition over at Administration, by the way.
“At any rate, we simply registered all the possible causes with the Master Computer, threw in this circuit marked Validity Selector. Out of all those causes The Computer picked the one that was most valid. The Hydroburgh tragedy was due to lack of foresight on the part of Hydroburgh’s planners. If they’d had a proper stockpile of basic carbon the thing never would have happened.”
“But no community ever stockpiles,” said the little man.
“That,” said Krayton, “doesn’t alter the fundamental fact. The Computer never lies.” He drew himself up stiffly as he said this. Then abruptly he consulted the chronometer on the far wall.
“Excuse me just a moment, Mr. Tanter,” he said. “It’s time to feed the daily tax computation from Finance. We have to start a little earlier on that these days—the new taxes, you know.”
As Krayton moved off Tanter’s thin smile widened just a little. As soon as Krayton was out of sight he stepped with his odd, crow-like stride to the numerical panel, punched two-plus-two, then adjusted the Operations pointer to hold. After that he punched three-plus-one, and hold once more.
He moved over to the Validity Selector, switched the numerical panel in, closed the circuit.
In his dry voice he murmured to the whole control rack: “Three-plus-one makes four, two-plus-two makes four. Three-plus-one, two-plus-two—tell me which is really true.”
All through the master computer relays clicked and tubes glowed as the problem was sent to all the sub-computers in their own special terms. Food, Production, Labor, Public Information, War, Peace, Education, Science and so forth.
All over Computer City the solenoids moved their contacts and the filaments turned cherry red. Oscillating circuits hummed silently to themselves in perfect Q. The life warmth of hysteresis pulsed and throbbed along wires and channels. Three-plus-one, two-plus-two—tell me which is really true. The problem criss-crossed in and out, around, about, checking, cross-checking, re-checking as The Computer ‘thought’ about the problem.
Which was really true?
Even before Krayton returned parts of The Computer had begun to get red hot. It hummed in some places and in the other places relays going back and forth in indecision made an unhealthy rattling noise.
Little Mr. Tanter beamed happily to himself as he recalled the words of an old directive The Computer itself had issued in the matter of public thought control. When a brain is faced with two absolutely equal alternatives complete breakdown invariably results.
Mr. Tanter kept smiling and rocked back and forth on his feet as Krayton had done. Before nightfall The Computer would be a useless and overheated mass of plastic and metal!
He took a printed folder from his pocket and casually dropped it on the floor where someone would be sure to find it. It was one of the pamphlets the Prims were always leaving around.
Song in a Minor Key
by C. L. Moore
He had been promising himself this moment for how many lonely months and years on alien worlds?
BENEATH him the clovered hill-slope was warm in the sun. Northwest Smith moved his shoulders against the earth and closed his eyes, breathing so deeply that the gun holstered upon his chest drew tight against its strap as he drank the fragrance of Earth and clover warm in the sun. Here in the hollow of the hills, willow-shaded, pillowed upon clover and the lap of Earth, he let his breath run out in a long sigh and drew one palm across the grass in a caress like a lover’s.
He had been promising himself this moment for how long—how many months and years on alien worlds? He would not think of it now. He would not remember the dark spaceways or the red slag of Martian drylands or the pearl-gray days on Venus when he had dreamed of the Earth that had outlawed him. So he lay, with his eyes closed and the sunlight drenching him through, no sound in his ears but the passage of a breeze through the grass and a creaking of some insect nearby—the violent, blood-smelling years behind him might never have been. Except for the gun pressed into his ribs between his chest and the clovered earth, he might be a boy again, years upon years ago, long before he had broken his first law or killed his first man.
No one else alive now knew who that boy had been. Not even the all knowing Patrol. Not even Venusian Yarol, who had been his closest friend for so many riotous years. No one would ever know—now. Not his name (which had not always been Smith) or his native land or the home that had bred him, or the first violent deed that had sent him down the devious paths which led here—here to the clover hollow in the hills of an Earth that had forbidden him ever to set foot again upon her soil.
He unclasped the hands behind his head and rolled over to lay a scarred cheek on his arm, smiling to himself. Well, here was Earth beneath him. No longer a green star high in alien skies, but warm soil, new clover so near his face he could see all the little stems and trefoil leaves, moist earth granular at their roots. An ant ran by with waving antennae close beside his cheek. He closed his eyes and drew another deep breath. Better not even look; better to lie here like an animal, absorbing the sun and the feel of Earth blindly, wordlessly.
*
NOW HE was not Northwest Smith, scarred outlaw of the spaceways. Now he was a boy again with all his life before him. There would be a white-columned house just over the hill, with shaded porches and white curtains blowing in the breeze and the sound of sweet, familiar voices indoors. There would be a girl with hair like poured honey hesitating just inside the door, lifting her eyes to him. Tears in the eyes. He lay very still, remembering.
Curious how vividly it all came back, though the house had been ashes for nearly twenty years, and the girl—the girl . . .
He rolled over violently,
