Graveyard of Dreams Page 4

all, we haven't seen each other forover five years."

  * * * * *

  They were silent, however, until they were away from the AirportBuilding and walking along High Garden Terrace in the direction of theMall. Conn was glad; his own thoughts were weighing too heavily withinhim: I didn't do it. I was going to do it; every minute, I was going todo it, and I didn't, and now it's too late.

  "That was quite a talk you gave them, son," his father said. "Theybelieved every word of it. A couple of times, I even caught myselfstarting to believe it."

  Conn stopped short. His father stopped beside him and stood looking athim.

  "Why didn't you tell them the truth?" Rodney Maxwell asked.

  The question angered Conn. It was what he had been asking himself.

  "Why didn't I just grab a couple of pistols off the table and shoot thelot of them?" he retorted. "It would have killed them quicker andwouldn't have hurt as much."

  His father took the cigar from his mouth and inspected the tip of it."The truth must be pretty bad then. There is no Brain. Is that it, son?"

  "There never was one. I'm not saying that only because I know it wouldbe impossible to build such a computer. I'm telling you what the one manin the Galaxy who ought to know told me--the man who commanded the ThirdForce during the War."

  "Foxx Travis! I didn't know he was still alive. You actually talked tohim?"

  "Yes. He's on Luna, keeping himself alive at low gravity. It took me acouple of years, and I was afraid he'd die before I got to him, but Ifinally managed to see him."

  "What did he tell you?"

  "That no such thing as the Brain ever existed." They started walkingagain, more slowly, toward the far edge of the terrace, with the sky redand orange in front of them. "The story was all through the Third Force,but it was just one of those wild tales that get started, nobody knowshow, among troops. The High Command never denied or even discouraged it.It helped morale, and letting it leak to the enemy was goodpsychological warfare."

  "Klem Zareff says that everybody in the Alliance army heard of theBrain," his father said. "That was why he came here in the first place."He puffed thoughtfully on his cigar. "You said a computer like the Brainwould be an impossibility. Why? Wouldn't it be just another computer,only a lot bigger and a lot smarter?"

  "Dad, computermen don't like to hear computers called smart," Conn said."They aren't. The people who build them are smart; a computer only knowswhat's fed to it. They can hold more information in their banks than aman can in his memory, they can combine it faster, they don't get tiredor absent-minded. But they can't imagine, they can't create, and theycan't do anything a human brain can't."

  "You know, I'd wondered about just that," said his father. "And none ofthe histories of the War even as much as mentioned the Brain. And Icouldn't see why, after the War, they didn't build dozens of them tohandle all these Galactic political and economic problems that nobodyseems able to solve. A thing like the Brain wouldn't only be useful forwar; the people here aren't trying to find it for war purposes."

  "You didn't mention any of these doubts to the others, did you?"

  "They were just doubts. You knew for sure, and you couldn't tell them."

  "I'd come home intending to--tell them there was no Brain, tell them tostop wasting their time hunting for it and start trying to figure outthe answers themselves. But I couldn't. They don't believe in the Brainas a tool, to use; it's a machine god that they can bring all theirtroubles to. You can't take a thing like that away from people withoutgiving them something better."

  "I noticed you suggested building a spaceship and agreed with theprofessor about building a computer. What was your idea? To take theirminds off hunting for the Brain and keep them busy?"

  Conn shook his head. "I'm serious about the ship--ships. You and ColonelZareff gave me that idea."

  His father looked at him in surprise. "I never said a word in there, andKlem didn't even once mention--"

  "Not in Kurt's office; before we went up from the docks. There was Klem,moaning about a good year for melons as though it were a plague, and youselling arms and ammunition by the ton. Why, on Terra or Baldur orUller, a glass of our brandy brings more than these freighter-captainsgive us for a cask, and what do you think a colonist on Agramma, orSekht, or Hachiman, who has to fight for his life against savages andwild animals, would pay for one of those rifles and a thousand rounds ofammunition?"

  His father objected. "We can't base the whole economy of a planet onbrandy. Only about ten per cent of the arable land on Poictesme willgrow wine-melons. And if we start exporting Federation salvage the wayyou talk of, we'll be selling pieces instead of job lots. We'll netmore, but--"

  "That's just to get us started. The ships will be used, after that, toget to Tubal-Cain and Hiawatha and the planets of the Beta and GammaSystems. What I want to see is the mines and factories reopened, peopleemployed, wealth being produced."

  "And where'll we sell what we produce? Remember, the mines closed downbecause there was no more market."

  "No more interstellar market, that's true. But there are a hundred andfifty million people on Poictesme. That's a big enough market and a bigenough labor force to exploit the wealth of the Gartner Trisystem. Wecan have prosperity for everybody on our own resources. Just what do weneed that we have to get from outside now?"

  His father stopped again and sat down on the edge of a fountain--thesame one, possibly, from which Conn had seen dust blowing as the airshiphad been coming in.

  "Conn, that's a dangerous idea. That was what brought on the SystemStates War. The Alliance planets took themselves outside the Federationeconomic orbit and the Federation crushed them."

  Conn swore impatiently. "You've been listening to old Klem Zareffranting about the Lost Cause and the greedy Terran robber barons holdingthe Galaxy in economic serfdom while they piled up profits. TheFederation didn't fight that war for profits; there weren't any profitsto fight for. They fought it because if the System States had won, halfof them would be at war among themselves now. Make no mistake about it,politically I'm all for the Federation. But economically, I want to seeour people exploiting their own resources for themselves, instead ofgrieving about lost interstellar trade, and bewailing bumper crops, andsearching for a mythical robot god."

  "You think, if you can get something like that started, that they'llforget about the Brain?" his father asked skeptically.

  "That crowd up in Kurt Fawzi's office? Niflheim, no! They'll go onhunting for the Brain as long as they live, and every day they'll beexpecting to find it tomorrow. That'll keep them happy. But they're allold men. The ones I'm interested in are the boys of Charley's age. I'mgoing to give them too many real things to do--building ships, exploringthe rest of the Trisystem, opening mines and factories, producingwealth--for them to get caught in that empty old dream."

  He looked down at the dusty fountain on which his father sat. "Thatghost-dream haunts this graveyard. I want to give them living dreamsthat they can make come true."

  Conn's father sat in silence for a while, his cigar smoke red in thesunset. "If you can do all that, Conn.... You know, I believe you can.I'm with you, as far as I can help, and we'll have a talk with Charley.He's a good boy, Conn, and he has a lot of influence among the otheryoungsters." He looked at his watch. "We'd better be getting along. Youdon't want to be late for your own coming-home party."

  Rodney Maxwell slid off the edge of the fountain to his feet, hitchingat the gunbelt under his coat. Have to dig out his own gun and startwearing it, Conn thought. A man simply didn't go around in publicwithout a gun in Litchfield. It wasn't decent. And he'd be spending alot of time out in the brush, where he'd really need one.

  First thing in the morning, he'd unpack that trunk and go over all thosemaps. There were half a dozen spaceports and maintenance shops andshipyards within a half-day by airboat, none of which had been looted.He'd look them all over; that would take a couple of weeks. Pick thebest shipyard and concentrate o
n it. Kurt Fawzi'd be the man to recruitlabor. Professor Kellton was a scholar, not a scientist. He didn't knowbeans about hyperdrive engines, but he knew how to do library research.

  They came to the edge of High Garden Terrace at the escalator, longmotionless, its moving parts rusted fast, that led down to the Mall, andat the bottom of it was Senta's, the tables under the open sky.

  A crowd was already gathering. There was Tom Brangwyn, and there