Part 4

His failure to deliver McGuire to Baedecker Metals & Mining might lose him some of the money he'd been promised, but he was prepared for that, too. I knew he was a Baedecker agent, even if he didn't, because I knew who Borodin worked for.

Meanwhile, five brains were trying frantically to think of some way of convincing McGuire that he should obey my orders.

First, I tried reasoning with him.

"McGuire, do you understand what it is that generates the human voice?"

"Yes, sir. A flow of slightly compressed air from the lungs causes vibration of the vocal cords, and this sound is modified by the lips, tongue, and teeth."

"Very well. Now, you see Mr. Oak, do you not?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you see that this voice is being generated by Mr. Oak?"

"I cannot tell that, sir. I have no way of sensing the operation of Mr. Oak's vocal equipment."

"But you can tell that this voice is coming from Mr. Oak?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then it must be Mr. Oak's voice."

"That does not coincide with the facts, sir, therefore the logic is faulty. A comparison of the present voice with the voice of Mr. Oak shows too few points of similarity for identification."

"You won't get anywhere that way," Felder said wearily. "None of the data you give him verbally is used in his final computations, since it doesn't come from Daniel Oak, by his own reasoning."

"That is correct, sir," said McGuire.

"Idiot machine!" said Vivian Deveraux angrily.

I shut up and did some more thinking. Talking only made my throat hurt.

Nobody could argue impressively with McGuire except Daniel Oak, and as far as McGuire was concerned Mr. Oak was keeping an impressive silence.

"Maybe I could write out the orders," I said.

"Nope," said Videnski. "He can read, but information coming in that way isn't counted as orders, not even from you. We should have installed a teletyper, too, but this is a little late for thinking of that."

"McGuire," I whispered, "what sort of proof would be needed to show you that this is the voice of Daniel Oak?"

"I'm sorry, sir," McGuire said after a moment, "but that information is not in my banks."

"Maybe somebody could imitate Dan's voice," Vivian said hopefully. Videnski and Felder shook their heads in unison.

"No dice," Videnski said rumblingly. "It not only has to sound like Oak, it has to come from Oak."

"Ventriloquism?" Vivian said with a half-hearted grin.

"Wouldn't fool McGuire for an instant," Felder said. "That's an audio-visual trick of the human mind, not of a robot's."

The ship kept on moving. McGuire went serenely on, following his last orders.

We finally reached the point where we were too tired to think, and sleep became imperative. We were nearly two days out of Ceres.

When I announced my intention of taking a snooze, Felder looked at me through groggy, bloodshot eyes. "Hadn't we better sleep in two shifts? I mean, just in case there's another spy among us?"

I shook my head. "No spy would try anything now. There isn't anything to try. We're all safe, as far as that's concerned. I'll go in and sleep in my assigned room. Not even Brentwood could or would do anything to me now."

"For that matter," Felder said, "it's senseless to keep him locked up now. He's harmless until we reestablish control over McGuire. When that happens, we can lock him up again."

"My sentiments exactly," I said in my new hoarse, breathy, susurrant voice.

Brentwood didn't say much when I gave him the news; he just thanked me. I got into bed and worried for a while, but lack of sleep soon cut off my ability to worry. I only woke up once in the next nine hours, when McGuire changed course a trifle to avoid some unseen meteor. Not even the ache in my throat kept me from sleep.

* * * * *

It was Videnski's voice that woke me up. The door of my room was slid open a little, and I could hear him in the lounge. I got to my feet fast, shoved open the door, and went out.

Videnski had grabbed Brentwood by the front of his union suit, and had lifted him off his feet and slammed his back up against the wall. His free hand was swinging back and forth in open-handed slaps that looked as though any one of them should have torn the smaller man's head off. Felder was ineffectually trying to pull Videnski away from Brentwood, but the big man didn't even seem to notice it. Vivian Devereaux was nowhere in sight.

Videnski's harsh baritone was filled with invective that should have made the air as glowingly blue as the inside of an old-fashioned rectifier tube.

I ran across the room, grabbed Videnski by the shoulder and said: "Stop that!"

He stopped. When I throw out an emotional field like that, only a very exceptional man can disobey.

"Let him go," I said.

Videnski released him, and Brentwood slid down the wall, just this side of unconsciousness.

"What's the idea?" I asked.

"I ... I'm sorry," Videnski rumbled. "Lost my temper, I guess. That ... I mean, _he_--" He stopped, fumbling for words.

"I know. I heard what you were saying. Sure it's his fault my voice sounds the way it does. Sure he's a spy and probably a saboteur. And if we die, he'll be morally guilty of manslaughter. _And_ suicide--remember _that_.

"But slapping him around like that isn't going to do any of us any good, and we need all the thinking we can get if we intend to pull ourselves out of this mess.

"So leave him alone, Videnski. Hear?"

My whispery voice didn't sound very authoritative, but a crisp, firm, commanding baritone does not authority make, any more than iron bars a cage.

"Yeah," he said apologetically. "I'm sorry, Oak. I sort of lost my head. It won't happen again."

I knelt down and took a look at Brentwood. He wasn't actually damaged much, but his face was going to be swollen and bruised. Somehow, I couldn't feel very sorry for him.

I got him to his feet. "Come on, Brentwood; let's go lie down for a while. You'll feel better."

"Yeah," he mumbled through thickening lips. "Thanks."

I got him into his bunk, closed the door on him, and came back to the lounge.

"Anybody dream up any solutions in his sleep?" I asked.

It was apparent that they hadn't. "Maybe Vivian has," Felder said. "She's still asleep."

"Let's not bank on it," I said.

"Oh, I did have one idea," Felder said dispiritedly. "Ted, here, and I were working on it when Brentwood came out. When it didn't pan out, well, that's when the fight started."

"What was your idea?"

"I asked McGuire if he realized what would happen to Mr. Oak if he just kept going. He said he did; that if he ran out of fuel, you'd be marooned and would die. So he's figured out a nice, complicated orbit that will allow him to obey your last order until the very last possible moment. He'll land us on Titan at the very last moment. The trouble is, we forgot to tell him how much food we have aboard, and he's made the assumption that there's plenty for everybody, for an indefinite length of time. But we're going to be plenty hungry by the time we get there. Can you last twelve days without food?"

"I don't want to try it. And of course it wouldn't do any good for you to tell him that we haven't enough food. How about letting him take a look at the food supply?"

"He doesn't know how much is necessary, and he would only have our word for it that there was no more aboard. One thing I can tell you: if we ever get back to rebuild McGuire, one of the things he's going to have is a lot more sensory devices, so that he can judge more facts on his own hook."

"Agreed," said another voice; "right now, we're dealing with a half-blind idiot." Vivian Devereaux had stepped out of her room and had been listening to Felder explain what he'd tried. Sleep hadn't done her as much good as it might have under other circumstances; the strain was showing on her face.

* * * * *

Breakfast was a half-hearted affair. Brentwood stayed in his room, though he accepted the cup of coffee I brought him. The rest of us didn't eat much more than that. I was trying to think our way out of the fix, and so were the others.

Something, some sort of an idea, had been sitting quietly at the bottom of my mind, just barely discernible through the semipermeable barrier that separates the conscious from the subconscious, but I couldn't fish it out.

When I managed to grasp part of it, I said: "Look. The trouble is that McGuire is incapable of connecting my present voice with the voice he's used to. Then it seems to me that our job is to supply him with the missing steps."

"How?" asked Felder.

"One of you--or all of you, if it took that to convince him--could fake a hoarse, whispery voice. You could slowly make your voice worse and worse, so that he could see the steps involved."

Vivian brightened, but Felder and Videnski shook their heads together like the Bobbsey Twins sorrowing over a lost pet.

"What we may do voluntarily," said Felder, "over a relatively long period of time, has nothing to do with what happened to you suddenly and involuntarily. You see, in the long run, he really doesn't _care_ about our voices. He doesn't pay any attention to us, really, except as incidental cargo. He has no concept of intelligence, actually; he can't accept any statements of ours unless they're verifiable by McGuire himself."

"Well, we could at least try it," said Vivian.

We did, and Felder was right. McGuire seemed almost condescending in his sorrow for our inability to see that there was no _logical_ connection between their whispers and the voice of his Lord and Master, Daniel Oak.

Vivian, who had been standing near Videnski while we were talking to McGuire, suddenly blew up when McGuire assured us that our whispering was a waste of time. She grasped her book--"Some Applications of Discontinuity in Pattern Theory"--and threw it at the wall speaker from which McGuire's voice came. It bounced harmless off the protective grill and fell to the floor. Vivian Devereaux burst into tears.

I put my arm around her, gave Videnski and Felder the high sign to keep thinking, and led her to her room. As soon as I got her settled, I said: "Relax. No matter what happens, we'll get out of it alive. If we stretch our rations, we'll be able to make it to Titan without being more than underweight and hungry."

"It's not that," she said tearfully, "it's the delay. All that time off the schedule."

"But I thought that was what you wanted," I said gently.

"Not any more. I--" She stopped suddenly and looked up at me, her eyes widening. "What are you talking about?" Her voice was as whispery as mine.

"It was the insistence on meeting me at the _Seven Sisters_ that gave you away," I said. "Dyeing your hair and combing it straight back, and putting on that plexiskin mask and the contact lenses--none of that helped conceal that lush figure of yours. It can't be done under a union suit. So you had to put on jacket and shorts, and that meant you had to meet me in some plush restaurant like the _Seven Sisters_ or you'd look out of place.

"I knew all that talk about being afraid of being overheard was just that--talk. A directional beam microphone could have picked up every word at our table.

"What made you change your mind about delaying the work on McGuire?"

"Buh-Buh-Brentwood. I duh-didn't know they'd go that far in trying to stop the work. Nuh-nuh-not kih-kidnapping and piracy." She took a deep breath and forced herself to stop sobbing. "I guess they didn't trust me, anyway. Otherwise they wouldn't have put Brentwood on the same job without telling me."

* * * * *

She didn't know that Brentwood was working for Baedecker rather than for the Thurston group. How could she? The difference lay in their tactics. Thurston wanted to take over Viking as a going concern--a little under the weather, perhaps, but still functioning. That meant that they wanted the work on McGuire delayed and complicated, but they didn't want to put him out of the picture completely, since they expected to take over the work as soon as they got control of Viking.

Baedecker, on the other hand, didn't give a care about Viking Spacecraft. They wanted to take over Ceres for their own firm. If that meant that getting rid of McGuire completely would give them what they wanted, then they'd get rid of McGuire.

"Why'd you take the job?" I asked.

"Money. I'm sick of the Belt. I want to go back home, to Earth." Her eyes were quite dry by now, and there was a choked sort of fear in them. "I hate it out here. There's death all around you all the time; sometimes it's just outside your skin, on the other side of the fabric of your vac suit. I wanted to get back home. But all the money is out here in the Belt. Back there, it's all eaten up in taxes and welfare, and nobody has a chance to get a job that really pays. So when they offered me the money--" She stopped and closed her eyes. "I'm scared, that's all. I've been scared ever since I came out here. And now--" She shuddered. "And now we're at the mercy of this idiot machine. I get so scared that I get mad, every time I hear his voice."

If somebody had set a thermonuclear bomb off inside my skull, there couldn't have been more sudden illumination.

I patted her on the shoulder. "You may get your money and more besides," I said.

She shook her head. "I wouldn't take their money now."

I stood up. "I think I can talk you into changing your mind, but right now, I think I have a way of getting McGuire to listen to me, thanks to you."

She looked up at me. "What did I do?"

"You threw a book," I said. "That's enough to win you a pardon as far as I'm concerned. You sit tight and don't let on that I know anything. Nobody else knows anything at all. Not even Brentwood. So keep quiet."

She dried her face quickly and stood up, too. "All right. Whatever you say."

As we went back out into the lounge, I felt a little pleased with myself. If things worked out right--and they would--we now had a double agent inside Thurston's organization. It wouldn't take too long to clear things up, and Miss Devereaux could go back to Earth with a nice piece of change in her pocket.

"What are you looking so happy about?" Videnski asked suspiciously when he saw us.

"I'll show you," I said. "Where's the tool kit?"

* * * * *

Ten minutes later, I had the wall speaker in the lounge out of its housing, but still connected. McGuire hadn't interfered with the work, as he might have if someone else had tried to do it, because he could see perfectly well that it was Daniel Oak who was doing the job, even though Oak hadn't been speaking to him much lately.

Then I said: "McGuire, can you hear me?"

"Yes, sir; I can hear you," came his voice from the speaker.

"Can you hear your own voice?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Now, are you watching what Mr. Oak is doing?"

"Yes, sir."

I picked up a small ball-peen hammer and hit the speaker--not too gently--at just the right place.

"Did you see that, McGuire?" I asked.

"Yes, sir. I saw it." His voice sounded hoarse, muffled, and whispery coming through the damaged speaker.

"Do you see what sudden damage can do to speaking apparatus?"

"I must test," McGuire said, an almost hesitant note in his new voice. He spent fifteen seconds or so saying a series of nonsense syllables that are used as a test for a robot's speaking apparatus. They contain every sound used in English.

When that was over, he said: "The damage inflicted has radically changed the basic patterns of the voice. If an equivalent amount of damage was done to Mr. Oak's vocal apparatus, then the voice which has been speaking must belong to Mr. Oak."

"You saw the damage being done in each case," I said quickly. "You also see that it is the source of the voice that becomes important when the pattern has changed."

"Yes, Mr. Oak. I see that."

I breathed a deep, heartfelt sigh of relief.

Felder looked at me in a sort of numb awe. "How did you figure that out?"

"It came to me in a flash, but the clues were all over the place. McGuire didn't stay on the course I gave him; he couldn't, if he wanted to avoid meteors. And then, too you said that he ought to have more sensory apparatus, so that he could judge facts. The facts that come into his brain from his own sensory apparatus _have_ to be utilized in his memory banks. He didn't have to know all the steps in reasoning that would lead from one voice pattern to another if it could be demonstrated as a _fact_--as an axiom, if you like.

"If _you_ tell him that he must change course, he isn't obliged to pay any attention; but if he spots a meteor, he has to accept that as a fact, and he changes course to allow for it. In a sense, then, the meteor is capable of giving McGuire orders, and you aren't."

Felder didn't look any too happy; no one likes to have a point in his own field explained to him by a layman. But he couldn't argue with me.

"There's a great deal more to be done before McGuire can be put into practical service," he said heavily. "We may as well head back to Ceres."

"I don't think so," I said. "McGuire's in good enough shape to let us make the big splash on Earth that Ravenhurst wants to make. He'll need it if Viking is to have enough financial leeway to go on with this project."

"What about ... what about Brentwood?" Vivian Devereaux asked.

"We can get rid of him at Phobos just as easily as we can at Ceres. If there's any explaining of any kind to do, we can lay the blame on him. He won't be in any position to deny it."

She nodded, understanding exactly what I meant.

There were still plenty of bugs to be worked out of McGuire, but now I could see our way clear to getting both Thurston and Baedecker off our backs for a while.

At that point, Brentwood stuck his head in the door. "What's going on?" he asked in his soft voice.

"We're going on to Phobos, Brentwood," I said. "Go on back to your room and stay there." He withdrew his head. I looked at Videnski. "Go lock him in, Ted. He gives me a pain in the neck."

I got the first laugh I'd heard in forty-eight hours.

End of Project Gutenberg's His Master's Voice, by Gordon Randall Garrett