"The Covenant is voided!" it said sadly. "The involvement with humanity is ended."

And Malcomb 'the Marvelous' McGruder was never able to establish contact with any of them again; so that, instead of twelve of them that day, there were no control stations at all for evermore. And those already in use blinked out.

"McGruder, hey McGruder!" Colonel Schachmeister came to him.

"Ah, little Heinie, why are you not in school this day? Oh, I forget always, you are a big boy now. It is all ended, Heinie, all ended. The twenty-four dollars a day and everything is gone. I will have to live by my wits again, and I always hate to get off a comfortable con that has kept me."

"McGruder," the frantic Colonel Schachmeister moaned, "it isn't merely that there will be no more of the stations, it is that those already in service have gone dead or disappeared also. This is not possible. They were made to operate forever."

"Don't think so, Heinie, not after the Covenant was broken. I think that the guys in them quit when they heard about the wrong peanuts."

"What guys? What peanuts? We've lost the jump on them, McGruder. A third of our country will be gone before we can inst.i.tute a holding action, without the miniature stations. What made them go dead, McGruder?"

"I figure it all out now, Heinie. They didn't make any little control stations at all. They took all of us in. They didn't any more know how to make little control stations than I did, but they were smart enough to fake it and make them work. I tell you a thing, Heinie, and you write it down so you remember it when you got big: never trust a bug you can't see."

"But they worked, Marvelous! They worked perfectly till they Went dead or disappeared. They handled all the data flows perfectly. They responded, they monitored, they inhibited. Certainly they were control stations."

"Not really, Heinie. Hey, this old town will be gone in another five minutes, won't it! I bet that one took out thirty square blocks. Man, feel the hot blast from it even here, Your sleeve's on fire, Heinie. Your mother will scold and moan when she sees how it's burned. See, this is the way itwas -- You know the man who made all the fancy little cars so cheap, and n.o.body know how he did it?"

"No, no, McGruder, what is it? Oh, the asphalt is flowing like water in the streets! What do you mean?"

"A guy that bought one of those little cars lifted up the hood one day. It didn't have a motor in it. It didn't have any works at all in it.

It's the same as these little control stations were. It just had a little guy in pedalling the pedals to make it go. Now they quit pedalling, Heinie."

THIS GRAND CARCa.s.s YET.

Mord had a hopeless look when he came to Juniper Tell with the device. He offered it (or quite a small figure. He sijid he hadn't the time to haggle.

Mord had produced some unusual.looking devices in the past, but this was not of that sort. By now he had learned, apparently, to give a conventional styling to his machines, however unusual their function.

"Tell, with this device you can own the worlds," Mord swore. "And I set it cheap. Give me the small sum I ask for it. It's the last thing I'll ever ask from anyone."

"With this one I could own the worlds, Mord? Why do you not own the worlds? Why are you selling out of desperation now? I had heard that you were doing well lately."

"So I was. And so I am not now. I'm a dying man, Tell. I ask only enough to defray the expense of my burial."

"Well then, not to torture you, I will give you the sum you ask,"

Tell said. "But is there no cure for you, now that medicine has reached its ultimate?"

"They tell me that they could resuscitate a dead man easier, Tell.

They're having some success along that line now. But I'm Rnished. The spirit and the juice are sucked out of me."

"You spent hoth too lavishly. You make the machines, but you never learned to let the machines a.s.sume the worry. What does the thing do, Mord?"

"The device? Oh, everything. This is Gahn (Generalized Agenda Harmonizer Nucleus). I won't introduce you, since every little machine nowadays can shake hands and indulge in vapid conversation. You two will have plenty to talk ahout after you've come into accord, and Gahn isn't one to waste words."

"That's an advantage. But does it do anything special?"

"The 'special' is only that which hasn't heen properly fit in, and this device makes everything fit in. It resolves all details and difficulties. It can nin your business. It can run the worlds."

"Then again, why do you sell it to me for such a pittance?"

"You've done me a numher of good turns, Tell. And one bad one. I am closing my affairs before I die. I want to pay you back."

"For the number of good turns, or for the one bad one?"

"That is for you to wonder. The little marvel won't be an unmixed blessing, though it will seem so for a while."

"I test it. Produce and draw the check for the amount, Gahn."

Gahn did it -- no great marvel. You could probably do it yourself, whether you be general purpose machine or general purpose person. Nearly any general machine could do such on command, and most humans are also able to carry out minor ch.o.r.es. Juniper Tell signed the check and gave it to Mord.

And Mord took the check and left, to arrange for his own burial, and then to die: a sucked-out man.

Tell a.s.signed a quota to Gahn and stabled him with the rest of the g.p. devices. In a few seconds, however, it was apparent that Gahn did not fit into the pattern with them. The gong of the Suggestion Acc.u.mulator beganto strike with regularity, and the yellow, orange, and red lights to flash.

It sounded like a dozen times a minute, and ordinarily it was no more than two or three times a day. And the red lights, almost every second on prime suggestions. It's unusual to get more than one red-light suggestion a week from the g.p. machines. Someone was loading the Acc.u.mulator, and the only new element was Gahn.

"My G.o.d, a smart one!" Tell grumbled. "I hate a smart alec machine.

Yet all new departures now come from such, since humans lack the corpus of information to discern what has already been done. Whatever he's got will have to be approved through channels. It's had practice to let a novice pa.s.s on his own work."

Tell gave Galin a triple quota, since his original quota was done in minutes instead of hours. And Gahn began to fit in with the other g.p.

machines -- violently.

A new cow or calf introduced into a herd will quickly find its proper place there. It will give hattie to every individual of its cla.s.s It will take its place above those it can whip, and below those it cannot. The same thing happens in a herd of general purpose machines. Gahn, as the newest calf in the herd, had been given position at the bottom of the line.

Now the positions began to change and shufile, and Gahn moved silently along, displacing the ent.i.ties above him one by one. How it is that g.p.

machines do battle is not understood by men, but on some level a struggle is maintained till one defeats the other. Gahn defeated them all and moved to his rightful place at the head of the line. He was king of the herd, and that within an hour.

A small calf, when he has established supremacy over the other small calves, will sometimes look for more rugged pastures. He will go to the fence and bellow at the big bulls, ten times his size, in the paddock.

Gahn began to bellow, though not in sound. He sniffled the walls (though not with nose) beyond which the great specialized machines were located. He was obstreperous and he would not long remain with the calves.

It was the next day that a.n.a.lgismos Nine, an old and trusted machine, came to talk to Juniper Tell.

"Sir, there is an anomalous factor on your g.p. staff," he said.

"The new addition, Gahn, is not what he seems.

"What's wrong with him?"

"His suggestions. They could not possibly have come from a g.p.

device. Few of them could come from less than a cla.s.s eight complex. A fair amount are comprehensible, though barely, to a cla.s.s nine like myself. And there is no way at all to a.n.a.lyze the remainder of them."

"Why not, a.n.a.lgismos?"

"Mr. Tell, I myself am a cla.s.s nine. If these cannot be understood by me, they cannot be understood by anyone or anything ever. There is nothing beyond a cla.s.s nine."

"There is now, a.n.a.lgismos. Gahn has become the first of the cla.s.s ten."

"But you know that is impossible."

"The very words of the cla.s.s eight establishment when you and others of your sort began to appear. A-nine, is that jealousy I detect in you?"

"A human word that could never do justice to it, Mr. Tell. I won't accept it! It isn't right!"

"Don't you blink your lights at me, A-nine. I can discipline you."

"It is not allowed to discipline an apparatus of the highest cla.s.s."

"But you are no longer that. Galan has superseded you. Now then, what do the suggestions of Gahn consist of, and could they he implemented?"

"They carry their own implementation. It was predicted that that would be the case with cla.s.s ten suggestions, should they ever appear. The result will be the instant apprehension of the easiest way in all affairs, which will then be seen to have been the only way. There could be the clearing of the obstructiveness of inanimate objects, and the placating ofthe elements. There could be ready access to all existent and contingent data. There would be no possibility of wrong guess or wrong decision in anything."

"How far, a.n.a.lgismos?"

"The sky's off, Mr. Tell. There's no limit to what it can do. Gahn could resolve all difficulties and details. He could run your business, or the worlds'."

"So his inventor told me."

"Oh? I wasn't sure that he had one. Have a care that you yourself are not obsoleted, Mr. Tell. This new thing transcends all we have known before."

"I'll have a care of that too, a.n.a.lgismos."

"And now we will get down to business, Gahn," Juniper Tell told his cla.s.s ten complex the next day. "I have it on. the word of a trusted cla.s.s nine that you are unique."

"My function, Mr. Tell, is to turn the unique into the usual, into the inevitable. I break it all down and fit it in."

"Gahn, I have in mind some little ideas for the betterment of my business."

"Lct us not evade, Mr. Tell, unless with a purpose. You have long since used up all your own ideas and those of your machines to the ninth degree. They have brought you almost, but not quite, all the way in your chosen field. Now you have only the idea that I might have some ideas."

"All right, you have them then. And they are effector ideas. This is what I want exactly: that a certain dozen men or creatures (and you will know who they are, since you work from both existent and contingent data) shall come to me hat in hand, to use the old phrase; that tlley shall have come to my way of thinking when they come, and that they shall be completely amenable to my -- your -- our suggestions."

"That they be ready to pluck? Nothing easier, Mr. Tell, but now everything becomes easy for us. We'll h.o.a.rd them and seuttle them! It's what you want, and I will rather enjoy it myself. I'll be at your side, but they need not know that I'm anything more than a g.p. machine. And do not worry about your own acts: it will be given you what to say and do. When you feel my words come into your mind, say them. They will be right even when they seem most wrong. And I have added two names to the list you have in your own mind. They are more important than you realize, and when we have digested them we will be much the fatter and glossier for it.

"Ah, Mr. Tell, your own number one selection is even now at the door! He has traveled through a long night and has now come to you, heaume in talon. It is the Asteroid Midas himself. Please control your ornithophobia."

"But Gahn, he would have to have started many hours ago to be here now; he would have to have started long before our decision to take this step."

"Anterior adjustment is a handy trick, Mr. Tell. It is a simple trick, but we no not want it to seem simple -- to others."

They plucked that Asteroid Bird, the two of them, man and machine.

He had been one of the richest and most extended of all creatures, with a pinion on every planet. They left the great Midas with scarcely a tail feather. When Tell and Gahn did business with a fellow now, they really did business.

And the Midas was only one of the more than a dozen great ones they took that day. They took them in devious ways that were later seen to be the most direct ways, the only ways possible for the accomplishment. And man and machine had suddenly become so rich that it scared the man. They gorged, they reveled in it, they looted, they gobbled.

The method of the take-overs, the boarding and scuttling, would beof interest only to those desirous of acquiring money or power or prestige.

We suppose there to be no such cra.s.s persons in present company. Should the method be given out, low persons would latch onto it and follow it up. They would become rich and powerful and indepesident. Each of them would become the richest person in the world, and this would be awkward.

But it was all easy enough the way Tell and Gahn did it. The easy way is always the best way, really the only way. It's no great trick to crack the bones of a man or other creature and have the marrow out of them, not as Gahn engineered it. It was rather comical the way they toppled Mercante and crashed his empire, crashed it without breaking a piece of it that could he used later. It was neat the way they had Hekkler and Heillrancher, squeezed thein dry arid wrung every duro out of 111cm. It was nothing short of amazing the way they took t.i.tle to Boatrocker. He'd been the greatest tyc.o.o.n of them all.

In ten days it was all done. Juniper Tell rubbed his hands in glee.

He was the richest man in the worlds, and he liked it. A little tired lie was, it's true, as one might be who had just pulled such a series of coups.

lIe had even shriveled up a bit. But if Juniper Tell had not physically grown fat and glossy from the great feast, his machine Gahn had done so. It was unusual for a machine to grow in such manner.

"Let's look at drugs, Gahn," Tell called out one day when lie was feeling particularly low. "I need something to set me up a little. Do we not now control the drugs of the worlds?"

"Pretty well, Juniper, but I wish you wouldn't ask what you are going to."

"Prescribe for me, Gahn. You have all data and all resources. Whip us something to restore my energy. Make me a fire-ball."

"I'd just as soon we didn't resort to any medication for you, Juniper. I'm a little allergic to such myself. My late master, Mord, insisted on seeking remedies, and it was the source of bad blood between us.

"You are allergic? Arid therefore I shouldn't take medication?"

"We work very close together, Juniper."

"Are you crazy, Gahn?"

"Why no, I'm perfectly sane, actually the only perfectly sane ent.i.ty in --"

"Spare mc that, Gahn. Now then, whip me up a tonic, and at once."

Gahn produced a tonic for Juniper Tell. It enlivened him a little, but its effect was short-lasting. Tell continued to suffer from tiredness, but he was still ambitious.

"You always know what is on my mind, Gahn, but we maintain a fiction," he said one day. "It is one thing to be the richest man in the worlds, and I am. It is another thing to own the worlds. We have scarcely started.

"We haven't broke Remington. How did we overlook him? We haven't taken over Rankrider or Oldwater or Sharecropper. And there is the faceless KLM Holding Company that we may as well pluck. Then we will go on to the slightly smaller but more plentiful game. Get with it, Gahn. Have them all come in, hat in hand, and in the proper frame of mind."

"Mr. Tell, Juniper, before we go any further, I am declaring myself in."