The Probability Man Page 3

  Would either or both of them suspend the immediate hostilities in order to save one or both of them?

  And did it matter!

  “I’m out of it,” Spingarn told himself, knowing he wasn’t.

  “I could leave it to them,” he added, quite sure that he couldn’t.

  No. Time-Out meant that you were filletted out of the Plot, but once you were out of it, you had to make sure that whoever took your place had some kind of continued existence. All this flashed through Spingarn’s mind as he allowed his still-muddy fingers to reach for the serried rows of controls. More circuits fused in his mind as the twin sensor pads slid out like gray slugs to fit into the palms of his hands. He knew about the sensor pads. In that still-shadowy earlier life, he had learned the use of the total-experience simulators which keyed you into the innermost thoughts of the characters in the Plot. Now he knew what the armored man felt: he already was fully familiar with the new Spingarn’s panic-stricken mind. The trick now was to slip a little correction in the Plot.

  Otherwise, the action continued along its predestined course, just as some hack Plot Director had dreamt it up: saucisse to splutter madly, barrels to explode furiously, Frog and Private Spingarn to die horribly. Time-Out gave you a chance to get out of the perpetual wheel of existence within the Frames.

  Time-Out.

  You called out “Hold everything!” and this blip occurred in the gaps between events—it hung unseen like a huge and invisible equation over the Plot. And when you were gently wafted into the blip, someone took your place.

  The new Spingarn—roughly your build, much like you in looks, probably with that same restlessness of spirit that had made you opt for one of the Primitive Frames—whoever he was, he was moved along the unresolved situations and put in your place. But he too must have shouted “I want out!”

  Spingarn watched his counterpart.

  The fuse passed him, a furious insect, a malevolent gobbet of radiance in the fetid, dank, smoke-filled tunnel.

  This new Spingarn. Whoever he was, he had been in dire trouble, for no one shouted “I want out!” unless it was bad in the Plot. You came up with the words—if you could remember the formula—only when there was nothing you could do to save yourself. Spingarn remembered now the countless times he had seen that abstracted, intent expression on the faces of men and women: always when circumstances were unbearable. They had been tearing at their shreds of memories, those memories which were overlaid with the new personae, trying with utter desperation to find their way out of a hopelessly dangerous Plot.

  Perhaps half-a-second passed while he absorbed the now-recalled data.

  Time-Out.

  You got out. For a time. Not long. And if you couldn’t keep your replacement alive, you went back into the central pool of screaming, demented characters who had, in their turn, yelled to be given a chance elsewhere—anywhere!—in the recreated worlds of the Frames.

  So you had to make sure that Private Spingarn lived.

  This time, you were behind the banks of scanners; the sensors were alive with thoughts and impressions in your hands. Buried beneath the skin, reaching inward to the big nerve centers, they roared information into the brain; and, before you, was the total situation which the two men were experiencing. Now it was up to you, ex-Private Spingarn, to use the controls.

  Spingarn looked into the Frenchman’s mind.

  The blood lust was ebbing:

  “The English deserter was right—the countermine was far advanced and but for the comte’s gold the English would be burrowing under the very walls of the main tower—this bright light, though!—its noise confuses me when I have the last of the English Pioneers here before me like a crippled snake! The damned saucisse! One slash and I have it! One blow and the fuse is cut—but their miner escapes to bring more of the cursed Anglais! And then I have a unique feat of arms! I, de Froulay! Alone, I destroyed the entire gallery full of English moles! A few steps and I have the last one—but he writhes away—and the fire advances!”

  A chronic indecision gripped the giant’s brain. The Plot had him in its grip: he knew his part, and though he could alter minutiae, the end result of this particular scene could not be changed. At least, not by him. The Plot obviously demanded that the tunnel be blown, along with the characters who had been Written-Out. What of the new Private Spingarn?

  The fuse was almost at the armored man’s feet.

  It took Spingarn as long as it took the flaring fuse to advance a foot to sum up the new Spingarn’s state of mind: helpless rage; an overlay of fear; a shadowy hint of bewilderment while the cassette which had been slipped into the base of his skull built up the new persona; amazingly, a surge of sex-lust, perhaps an echo of the man’s previous part in the Plot he had just left. But this new Private of Pioneers was already considering the probabilities of the Plot.

  Spingarn saw that the giant Frenchman had made up his mind and opted for glory.

  He was blinded by tiredness and the pursuit of a personal record: he wanted to kill all his enemies, by hand. Spingarn knew that he was watching an unredeemed psychopath who would not turn aside from the hunt.

  “Now then,” said Spingarn, at last able to come to a decision. “Let’s keep within the rules.”

  He allowed his fingers to whip over the banks of controls.

  It had to be the new Spingarn.

  He acknowledged the skill he found in his hands as the sensors deftly interpreted his decision: there was a strange excitement in the handling of the wild forces which reached out of the blip into the physical world beyond.

  The giant summoned up his failing strength.

  The new Spingarn stopped his mad scrambling.

  The fuse sputtered and flared, a yard beyond the Frenchman.

  Inside the Time-Out blip, Spingarn acted. He fed power into the sensors and the new Private of Pioneers leapt. Almost immediately, he began to scream in sheer sense-blinding pain.

  Spingarn felt a moment of pity for the pain-wracked figure. But the action had to be taken. If his intervention in the Plot was successful, its computer-ordered course could continue; more important, his replacement, though in torment, might live.

  And then Spingarn could turn his attention to the larger problem of manipulating future events in the Plot so that the new Private of Pioneers would fulfill the part which he himself had been playing in the reenactment of the Siege of Tournai.

  Spingarn watched and felt the cold thrill of creation.

  “Prettily done,” said a voice behind him.

  Spingarn said aloud:

  “I didn’t speak.”

  “No,” said the silky voice again. “I did.”

  He turned.

  Memories flooded back.

  “Umpire,” said Spingarn. “You’re the Umpire.”

  4

  Like all robots of its grade—one of the highest—the Umpire was humanoid. The incredible thing about them was that they were vain about their appearance; it was not that they tried to look more human than their bodies permitted. Rather, they emphasized their robotic nature. Within limits, the robot could design its own body.

  Some developed a certain fastidiousness about the use of this or that metal, or plastic. One would opt for soft black stuff as oily as treacle, while another would make a stiff metallic body like the first of the robots. Spingarn recalled hazily a fashion among high-grade automata for a green jadelike substance brought into the Galaxy in some strayed extra-galactic ship a million years old. The robots had found it in a scrap heap and realized its possibilities: used as a headpiece, it was exquisite, masklike and in a violent translucent way, unutterably alien. And then humans had begun to use it too. But this one had adopted an outer skin of a fiery, fibrous material. It glowed, red-gold and ornate.

  “I like it,” he said. “The outfit. Your own design?”

  “Why, yes! I took—” Then the robot stopped. “You’re still a null entity! As Umpire, I rule you still in Time-Out!”

  Sp
ingarn gave up his attempt at flattery.

  “But I kept my replacement alive!”

  “Well, sir, you haven’t yet kept the probabilities within the Laws of Frame Probability Generating Function. You’re still officially in the seventeenth-century Primitive Frame.”

  “Eighteenth.”

  “Sir?”

  It was pointless to argue. Until he cleared up the probability factors in the Plot where the new Private Spingarn might or might not survive, the robot wouldn’t give him clearance. It wouldn’t let him ask about the few threads of thoughts that might serve to connect him to the life he had come from. And it wouldn’t settle the who that troubled him more than anything else.

  So he would be an empty character for a while. A spare part. As the robot had said, a null entity. In a sophisticated Galaxy where there were only two ways of life—you went into the Frames and took your chances, or you worked on the Frames to manufacture other people’s probabilities—he was a nothing. He was in a limbo out of the space-time events of the rest of the Galaxy. Until the Time-Out Umpire was satisfied that the man who had taken his place wouldn’t disrupt the delicate balance of uncertainty and probability in the Primitive Frame.

  He had to close the Time-Out loop before he could go back to his own time. And begin to find the answers.

  “Eighteenth century,” said Spingarn. “Early Mechanical Age.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Egocentric, vain, and hurt. He would have to soothe the robot.

  “I had to admire the efficiency of the sensors. I’d say I had maximum impact from the protagonists in the Plot”

  “One tries.”

  They had to be like this: things with an inbuilt sense of proportion, so that they could evaluate the poor wretch who yelled to be taken out. They were almost feminine in their ability to weigh one uncertainty against the other.

  Spingarn tried again:

  “I thought you judged the moment to a nicety. I know that you high-grade automata have this subtle sense of direction, but to allow me a Time-Out at that precise moment! Masterly!”

  “You had called the formula correctly.”

  “But you could have ignored it—the exigencies of the Plot and all that?”

  “Well, not really. We’re allowed a certain amount of independence, but not in the matter of successful claims for Time-Out. Let me explain.”

  And it did. Spingarn bore it. While the robot explained the distinction between recognizing a clear call for release when the subject (“Me!” Spingarn groaned inwardly) was in full possession of his faculties, and an accidental bellow wrung by sheer chance from some unfortunate’s lips; in his case, the robot had made something of a case study of Private Spingarn’s gradual realization that he was in the wrong place. The furry red automaton stretched itself out and began to recount anecdotes.

  “Why do we do it?” Spingarn asked himself as he heard of three donkey-men who had triggered off four separate Time-Out blips simply by imitating the braying of their charges. “Why can’t we have the thing set automatically?”

  He was regaining more and more of that overlaid persona. He could remember discussing the Time-Out blips with others. And then the answer came out pat: the humanoid operatives had to be tolerated, for they were self-perpetuating. They lived in a small sector of a Plot and monitored the entire cast of characters, taking in each tiny thread of circumstance and relating it to the broad program devised by the writers; only they could spend the long years recording, coding, relating, cross-referencing and, as now, extracting a character.

  “It’s kind of you to say that,” the robot assured Spingarn as he mentioned the reports he had heard of the Frame. “It’s quite true, of course. Since we—we meta-robots, as we call ourselves—since we offered to control the Time-Out blips in this Frame, there hasn’t been a single case of recourse to Disaster Control. Not one.”

  “I don’t know how the Frames were operated without you.”

  “No more do I!”

  “I do admire the brilliance of your covering.”

  The automaton stood up gracefully:

  “How kind!”

  Spingarn put an arm on its thin shoulders; it stood a foot or more higher than his head; the red-gold stuff shivered as if it had a life of its own. “It might,” thought Spingarn, a stray memory of the things that inhabited the micro-worlds of Sector ZI 68 skittering through his skull; they had built little devices for the humanoids, until they were stopped. But he controlled the shivering in his own hand. He needed the help of the vain robot.

  “Between you and me, don’t you think we could work together on my revision of the Plot?”

  “I don’t see how—” it began. “You put me in an extremely awkward position—”

  But it allowed itself to be guided to the battery of scanners; and when Spingarn accepted the eager sensor pads in the palms of his hands, it sat in the command seat next to his.

  “Now then,” said Spingarn. “I’m in your capable hands—let’s clear this little Plot up, shall we?”

  “I’m not sure I’m allowed——”

  “I’m not asking for assistance!” Spingarn exclaimed. “I know I have to adjust the Plot myself—get this character out of harm’s way and still keep the story line! I know it’s against Frames Law to bring in robots! But, damn it, you’re not robots! You’re the Time-Out Umpire! And I’m not asking for help—I’m simply inviting an old friend to sit in while I clear up the mess!”

  “If you put it like that?”

  “I do! Now.”

  Spingarn let his hands do the work they were trained for: the cunning, instinctive blending of probabilities and physical happenings that had made him such a promising—Plot Director!

  Yes! He had been a Plot Director!

  So why did he need the red-furred automaton beside him?

  “I could pass on a few of the inherent possibilities—without transgressing Frame Law,” said the robot. “I have my sources, sir.”

  Spingarn remembered. The Umpires had access to the big comps. And it was the comps who put the Frames together; they alone were capable of sorting through the fantastic amount of detail needed to fit millions of human lives into a reenactment of a historical event. He, Spingarn (and why not keep to that primitive name!), could use the vain Umpire’s huge memories. Then, perhaps he could begin to find out what he, a one-time Plot Director, was doing in the Frames.

  And why he knew that he could call himself the Probability Man.

  “That’s a kind thought,” said Spingarn.

  The red-gold form quivered with gratification.

  “We—you—you might—no doubt you’ve thought of it already—I mean—”

  “Do go on. This is fascinating,” said Spingarn.

  “Well, sir, if you look at this high uncertainty level here—and the probability function which has a maximum there—and if we use the coordinates you keyed in at first—”

  Spingarn watched the gradual buildup of the changing probability curves, admiring the flow of the glittering charts; millions of brief messages sped electronically about huge machines to resolve the problem. Some time later, Spingarn breathed a sigh of relief. “Brilliant,” he said. The robot smiled.

  5

  They watched the results through the sensors.

  Spingarn followed it through to the new Private Spingarn’s report to Sergeant Hawk; he had sweated through the intricate maneuvers which were put into effect by the powerful forces inside the Time-Out capsule; he had become so closely involved with his replacement that he had yelled in anguish as the white-hot fuse burned his chest. The humanoid had looked faintly disgusted. But it was done, and Sergeant Hawk was almost satisfied:

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, Sergeant,” the well-remembered voice said firmly—even the voice was right!—“it’s Private Spingarn reporting, Sergeant! And a dreadful time we’ve had of it down in the pit, with all of the rest of ’em cold as mutton and Froggies pouring out on us in suits of mail, if you please! A
stark sight it were, Sergeant, and me with only me fusil—fired once, twice, three times and the bullets barely dented the chest plate! And the Hollander dead and poor witless Jack Smiley cold by this time and brave Corporal Tillyard—yes, Sergeant Hawk, both of the Pioneers slaughtered by the ogre, hacked down in their own gore and me blinded by the smoke and the stench from the tallows and our own poor men’s lights lying a-smoking there tool—yes, I’ll be short, if you wish, Sergeant, it’s true every word of it—see the blood of the Frenchies on what’s left of me breeches! What did I do, Sergeant? Well, the train was fired—a big fat saucisse, well bound and greased against the damp—Yes, I’m trying to be short, Sergeant! Corporal Tillyard? Didn’t I say he’d lost his fusil dagger and no weapon to hand? Do? What did he do, Sergeant? As I stand here, he went for the Frenchie’s heel with his teeth! Oh, he was armed from head to foot and showed no flesh to attack but at his ankles! And the Corporal worried him like a very crocodile of the Nile, Sergeant! Fanciful, you say, Sergeant! And me with me own blood pouring out of every limb! I’ll proceed, if you will, Sergeant and tell you the rest, and on my life’s blood or what’s left of it, I’ll swear—on the fair Queen’s head I’ll swear—I’m trying to be brief, Sergeant! Do? Why, I went for the Frog’s leg! Worried him with me teeth, and I’m glad I have sharp fangs! And he fell! He was so tired a child could have pushed him over in that heavy suit of mail! Steel plate from King Hal’s day or maybe from one of the Seven Champions of Christendom! And the fuse? Look!”

  Spingarn felt the shock of that remembered pain.

  The humanoid rose.

  “I was reminded of a particularly interesting situation in one of the Steam Age Frames,” it began; but Spingarn was still staring at the globe which projected in toto the confrontation between the new Private Spingarn and the unbelieving Sergeant Hawk.