Chapter VI

It was almost like being let out of jail. The administrator, Bernard Jackson, gave them a few brief instructions and showed them the way out of the building.

“Just a kind of once-over-lightly today,” Deva said. “We’ll just go along the streets and through some of the shops to give you an idea of what things are like here.”

“I’d be a lot more interested in seeing--”

“Hush! General sightseeing is _expected_ of us. Do you want to ruin everything?”

He found himself fascinated by the sights and sounds of the city in spite of his reluctant interest. The metropolis was built like a machine itself, with precision-placed masses of pleasant-hued steel and concrete flung against the sky and linked with a lacy network of connecting ways up to the highest levels. There was no darkness or filth or visible deterioration anywhere.

“There was a time when big, massed cities like this were considered failures,” Deva said. “It was all the fashion to abandon them, tear them down, and spread the buildings out all over the landscape. That was before we understood the true function of a city. Now we know it can be both a thing of supreme beauty and of maximum efficiency. It’s a device for civilized living. But today’s model compares with a city before the Atom War in about the same way that a starship compares with the first wooden cartwheels.”

“Are you trying to sell me something?” Rick asked.

Deva shook her head. “I’d like to sell it to myself.”

“Why can’t you?”

“Because of the Machine. It’s inexplicable. The Machine actually made possible the cities we have now. And yet because of the Machine I can’t bear to live here any longer. It just doesn’t make sense!”

“Everybody seems happy enough.” Rick said.

And it was true. The people he passed on the street seemed universally content and peaceful--to judge by their expressions. Within a block or two a hundred strangers had smiled and nodded to him. The city was certainly not a place of violent discontent.

“It’s me and you!” said Deva bitterly. “Even Barie is happy to conform to the will of the Machine. But you’re not. Gerald is glad to be free of me because he’s convinced that Utopia has come. And maybe it has! No one lacks food, shelter, luxuries, aggressive outlets. Nothing is lacking--except whatever is tormenting you and me.”

Rick smiled at her outburst. “In the Agro regions you have a chance to become very wise,” he said quietly. “There’s something lacking, all right--something most people don’t even know exists. The love of something that belongs to you alone. You take pride in moulding it to a state of perfection. Pride in yourself because you’re not _owned_.”

“Owned?”

“Of course. All men are property now. Don’t you see? They belong to the Machine and can be dispensed and manipulated as the Machine decides through its all-powerful wisdom. A man cannot have pride if he is owned--and by a mere automaton, at that! He can’t even experience love, because he hasn’t the right to offer himself. He’s no longer the proprietor of his own being.”

Deva walked slowly beside him, her face sober with thought. “I don’t know. That may be the answer. It _would_ be strange if it took an Agro to show us what was wrong!”

They walked all day--to the outskirts of the city and back. They stood silently at the edge of the great mass, where the towers dwindled to a thin layer of individual homes. Beyond these stretched the river and the highways leading north and south. Their eyes scanned the distances in silence, each sensing the thoughts of the other, and each saying nothing.

They went more deeply into the heart of the city on the following days. Deva showed Rick the factories and plants that worked in total silence and without attendants, each throwing up a mountain of goods that were automatically inspected, packed and shipped to locations within the city itself or across the continent without a single human voice to guide them.

On the last day she took him to the headquarters of the Machine. These were many tiers of banked memory circuits and blinking lights below the surface of the city itself, in the depths of the solid rock where nothing short of a convulsion of the Earth could disturb the intricate mechanism.

But there wasn’t a great deal to see. And the Machine’s more intangible aspects were totally foreign to Rick’s mind. They stood in the visitors’ gallery, behind the impregnable plastic sheets which afforded them a clear view of the mechanisms and the attendants on the other side.

“There is really no such thing as _the_ Machine,” Deva said. “In reality there are many hundreds of machines. Every city has one. Its storage vaults contain data on each and every resident. It computes upon that data, and its judgment circuits render decisions based upon its final computations.

“Each machine is interconnected with all others in the nation by tremendous microwave cables. A main clearing panel located somewhere in Kansas links the function of all local machines to a central, coordinating unit.

“In addition, there is a worldwide network of interconnections between New York, London, Paris, Rome, and Moscow. It even extends to Africa and the cities of Central Asia. Actually, for instance, a Mech, First Rating, could be checked out for pairing against a South African native if the Machine so decided. It’s never happened as far as I know. But it could happen.”

“It’s _the_ Machine, all right,” said Rick bitterly. “I never quite realized before how viciously it has succeeded in wrapping itself around the whole world. You can almost feel it strangling, crushing--”

“Hush!” Deva warned, her fingers tightening in his clasp.

They stood apart from the other visitors to the gallery. But Rick could almost feel invisible eyes and ears ominously recording their every change of expression. He understood Deva’s caution.

“There must be some kind of human administration involved in the operation of the Machine,” he said more quietly.

Deva nodded. “There is, of course. In the beginning they were the elected representatives of the people--the remnants of the old democratic system.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. “But now that human safeguard doesn’t even exist any more. The machine picks its own personnel. The original administrators spent most of their time watching and checking on each other to see that no tampering with the mandates occurred. The Machine decided it could do much better by picking men who would not be tempted to tamper.”

The Machine seemed so harmless, with its rows on rows of black panels and glowing tubes and murmuring relays! But it was the enemy. Its very existence had made it forever impossible for him to possess Barie as his own. From every man upon the face of the Earth it had taken something. A desire, a dream, a woman, a treasured possession.

They left the gallery quietly, for they had seen all that they cared to see. They went quickly out and up to the street level and took one of the cars that were freely available to the citizens. Rick glanced at his watch. “It’s almost time to get back to the bull pen,” he said.

Deva did not reply. Her lips were compressed, and she was staring straight ahead of her. Rick looked around at the magnificent towers and airy bridges of the city.

“No regrets?” he whispered.

“No,” Deva said. “No regrets.”

She started the motor of the car, punched the button for the lane and route she desired, and leaned back against the seat with her eyes closed. Swiftly the car moved out into the stream of traffic, and picked up speed.