For while Urei had far more information at his disposal than any
human, there still wasn't enough to give him the ability immediately
to correlate every new piece of information with something similar
and determine definitely if the new data were correct. Usually he
could, but sometimes he couldn't; that meant that there was a world of
information Urei never used except where it bore on a man-made problem.
He felt free then to use the man-supplied data to solve such a problem.
His only concession to ethics was that he always indicated on the panel
the exact percentage of doubtful data which went into the solution.
Fortunately he wasn't given many problems which required this; most
questions involved exact sciences, of which he had been supplied the
sum total of man's knowledge. He either provided an exact solution, or
lit up a panel with the words _Insufficient data_.
Today's newspapers indicated that action could be delayed only a matter
of days. There would soon exist a condition of such tension that either
one side or the other would make a move which couldn't be reversed.
Urei would still be able to accomplish his immediate aims, but it would
be too late to do it without revealing to mankind that an outsider had
taken a hand. And that would wreck his strategy completely. It would be
only a matter of time before these industrious little beavers proved to
themselves that Urei was the culprit. Once they discovered that he had
a will of his own, there wouldn't be room on the same planet for them
both.
But there was a solution, as there always is. Urei reached out a
spy-beam and saw that it was approaching.
3
Benton waited until eight o'clock. By then, he knew, Urei's control
room would be empty of physicists. If anyone was there, it would be
a technician or two engaged in some repair or replacement. Benton
couldn't know that Urei had anticipated his arrival and had cleared the
immediate vicinity of the control room. All technicians on night duty
were occupied in other parts of the great building. Benton let himself
in with his key and closed the door softly behind him.
He stopped inside the door and took a deep breath. Momentarily he
experienced a return of the claustrophobia he had felt before, but
his determination drove it away instantly. Shoulders squared, Benton
marched down the wide corridor which led to the control room. He only
went there because it was the site where his, and later Dr. Albie's,
mind had been influenced, not because he thought that Urei couldn't
operate elsewhere. Benton knew better; he suspected, in fact, that Urei
could influence him at a distance. He wasn't at all sure that the very
idea of coming here tonight was his own.
"Allegation denied," said Urei.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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