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Sheffield repied calmly, ÓYou are. Hands off Mark Annuncio, Captain. Just as you've got to
keep your bands off Cimon's monochrome and Vailleux's microptics, you've got to keep
your hands off my Annuncio. And that means each one of your ten, four-striped fingers. Got
it?Ô
The Captain's uniformed Chest expanded. ÓI take no order on board my own ship. Your
language is a breach of discipline, Mister Sheffield. Any more like that and it's cabin arrest.
You and your Annuncio. Don't like it, then speak to Board of Review back on Earth. Till then,
it's tongue behind teeth.Ô
ÓLook, Captain, let me explain something. Mark is in the Mnemonic Service×-Ô
ÓSure, he said so. Nummonic Service. Nummonic Service. It's plain secret police as far as
I'm concerned. Well, not on board my ship, eh?Ô
ÓMnemonic Service,Ô said Sheffield patiently. ÔEm-en-ee-em-oh-en-eye-see Service.
You don't pronounce the first em. It's from the Greek word meaning memory.Ô
The Captain's eyes narrowed. ÓHe remembers things?Ô
ÓCorrect, Captain. Look, in a way this is my fault. I should have briefed you on this. I would
have, too, if the boy hadn't gotten so sick right after the take-off. It drove most other matters
out of my mind. Besides, it didn't occur to me that he might be interested in the workings of
the ship itself. Space knows why not. He should be interested in everything.Ô
ÓHe should, eh?Ô The Captain looked at the timepiece on the wall. ÓBrief me now, eh?
But no fancy words. Not many of any other kind, either. Time limited.Ô
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ÓIt won't take long, I assure you. Now you're a space-going man, Captain. How many
inhabited worlds would you say there were in the Confederation?Ô
ÓEighty thousand,Ô said the Captain promptly.
ÓEighty-three thousand two hundred,Ô said Sheffield. ÓWhat do you suppose it takes to
run a political organization that size?Ô
Again the Captain did not hesitate. ÓComputers,Ô he said.
ÓAll right. There's Earth, where half the population works for the government and does
nothing but compute and there are computing subcenters on every other world. And even so
data gets lost. Every world knows something no other world knows. Almost every man. Look
at our little group. Vernadsky doesn't know any biology and I don't know enough chemistry to
stay alive. There's not one of us can pilot the simplest space cruiser, except for Fawkes. So
we work together, each one supplying the knowledge the others lack.
ÓOnly there's a catch. Not one of us knows exactly which of our own data is meaningful to
the other under a given set of circumstances. We can't sit and spout every thing we know.
So we guess, and sometimes we don't guess right. Two facts, A and B, can go together
beautifully sometimes. So Person A, who knows Fact A, says to Person B, who knows Fact
B, 'Why didn't you tell me this ten years ago?' and Person B answers, 'I didn't think it was
important,' or, 'I thought everyone knew that.'Ô .
The Captain said, ÓThat's what computers are for.Ô
Sheffield said, ÔComputers are limited, Captain. They have to be asked questions. What's
more, the questions have to be the kind that can be put into a limited number of symbols.
What's more, computers are very literal-minded. They answer exactly what you ask and not
what you have in mind. Sometimes it never occurs to anyone to ask just the right question or
feed the computer just the right symbols, and when that happens, the computer doesn't
volunteer information.
ÓWhat we need, what all mankind needs, is a computer that is nonmechanical; a computer
with imagination. There's one like that, Captain.Ô The psychologist tapped his temple. ÓIn
everyone, Captain.Ô
ÓMaybe,Ô grunted the Captain, Óbut IÒll stick to the usual, eh? Kind you punch a button.Ô
ÓAre you sure? Machines donÒt have hunches. Did you ever have a hunch?Ô
ÓIs this on the point?Ô The Captain looked at the timepiece again.
Sheffield said, ÔSomewhere inside the human brain is a record of every datum that has
impinged upon it. Very little of it is consciously remembered, but all of itÒs there, and a
small association can bring an individual datum back without a personÒs knowing where it [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]

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