Needle in a Timestack Read online

  “I can make them see anything I want them to see. I created him, Harry.”

  “With volition. With autonomy.”

  “After all this time you start worrying now about these things?”

  “It’s my neck on the line if something that you guys on the technical side make runs amok. This autonomy thing suddenly troubles me.”

  “I’m still the one with the data gloves,” Richardson said. “I twitch my fingers and he dances. That’s not really Pizarro down there, remember. And that’s no Frankenstein monster either. It’s just a simulation. It’s just so much data, just a bunch of electromagnetic impulses that I can shut off with one movement of my pinkie.”

  “Do it, then.”

  “Shut him off? But I haven’t begun to show you—”

  “Shut him off, and then turn him on,” Tanner said.

  Richardson looked bothered. “If you say so, Harry.”

  He moved a finger. The image of Pizarro vanished from the holotank. Swirling gray mists moved in it for a moment, and then all was white wool. Tanner felt a quick jolt of guilt, as though he had just ordered the execution of the man in the medieval armor. Richardson gestured again, and color flashed across the tank, and then Pizarro reappeared.

  “I just wanted to see how much autonomy your little guy really has,” said Tanner. “Whether he was quick enough to head you off and escape into some other channel before you could cut his power.”

  “You really don’t understand how this works at all, do you, Harry?”

  “I just wanted to see,” said Tanner again, sullenly. After a moment’s silence he said, “Do you ever feel like God?”

  “Like God?”

  “You breathed life in. Life of a sort, anyway. But you breathed free will in, too. That’s what this experiment is all about, isn’t it? All your talk about volition and autonomy? You’re trying to recreate a human mind—which means to create it all over again—a mind that can think in its own special way, and come up with its own unique responses to situations, which will not necessarily be the responses that its programmers might anticipate, in fact almost certainly will not be, and which not might be all that desirable or beneficial, either, and you simply have to allow for that risk, just as God, once he gave free will to mankind, knew that He was likely to see all manner of evil deeds being performed by His creations as they exercised that free will—”

  “Please, Harry—”

  “Listen, is it possible for me to talk with your Pizarro?”

  “Why?”

  “By way of finding out what you’ve got there. To get some first-hand knowledge of what the project has accomplished. Or you could say I just want to test the quality of the simulation. Whatever. I’d feel more a part of this thing, more aware of what it’s all about in here, if I could have some direct contact with him. Would it be all right if I did that?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Do I have to talk to him in Spanish?”

  “In any language you like. There’s an interface, after all. He’ll think it’s his own language coming in, no matter what, sixteenth-century Spanish. And he’ll answer you in what seems like Spanish to him, but you’ll hear it in English.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “And you don’t mind if I make contact with him?”

  “Whatever you like.”

  “It won’t upset his calibration, or anything?”

  “It won’t do any harm at all, Harry.”

  “Fine. Let me talk to him, then.”

  There was a disturbance in the air ahead, a shifting, a swirling, like a little whirlwind. Pizarro halted and watched it for a moment, wondering what was coming next. A demon arriving to torment him, maybe. Or an angel. Whatever it was, he was ready for it.

  Then a voice out of the whirlwind said, in that same comically exaggerated Castilian Spanish that Pizarro himself had found himself speaking a little while before, “Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you, yes. I don’t see you. Where are you?”

  “Right in front of you. Wait a second. I’ll show you.” Out of the whirlwind came a strange face that hovered in the middle of nowhere, a face without a body, a lean face, close-shaven, no beard at all, no mustache, the hair cut very short, dark eyes set close together. He had never seen a face like that before.

  “What are you?” Pizarro asked. “A demon or an angel?”

  “Neither one.” Indeed he didn’t sound very demonic. “A man, just like you.”

  “Not much like me, I think. Is a face all there is to you, or do you have a body too?”

  “All you see of me is a face?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wait a second.”

  “I will wait as long as I have to. I have plenty of time.”

  The face disappeared. Then it returned, attached to the body of a big, wide-shouldered man who was wearing a long loose gray robe, something like a priest’s cassock, but much more ornate, with points of glowing light gleaming on it everywhere. Then the body vanished and Pizarro could see only the face again. He could make no sense out of any of this. He began to understand how the Indians must have felt when the first Spaniards came over the horizon, riding horses, carrying guns, wearing armor.

  “You are very strange. Are you an Englishman, maybe?”

  “American.”

  “Ah,” Pizarro said, as though that made things better. “An American. And what is that?”

  The face wavered and blurred for a moment. There was mysterious new agitation in the thick white clouds surrounding it. Then the face grew steady and said, “America is a country north of Peru. A very large country, where many people live.”

  “You mean New Spain, which was Mexico, where my kinsman Cortes is Captain-General?”

  “North of Mexico. Far to the north of it.”

  Pizarro shrugged. “I know nothing of those places. Or not very much. There is an island called Florida, yes? And stories of cities of gold, but I think they are only stories. I found the gold, in Peru. Enough to choke on, I found. Tell me this, am I in heaven now?”

  “No.”

  “Then this is hell?”

  “Not that, either. Where you are—it’s very difficult to explain, actually—”

  “I am in America.”

  “Yes. In America, yes.”

  “And am I dead?”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “No, not dead,” the voice said uneasily.

  “You are lying to me, I think.”

  “How could we be speaking with each other, if you were dead?”

  Pizarro laughed hoarsely. “Are you asking me? I understand nothing of what is happening to me in this place. Where are my priests? Where is my page? Send me my brother!” He glared. “Well? Why don’t you get them for me?”

  “They aren’t here. You’re here all by yourself, Don Francisco.”

  “In America. All by myself in your America. Show me your America, then. Is there such a place? Is America all clouds and whorls of light? Where is America? Let me see America. Prove to me that I am in America.”

  There was another silence, longer than the last. Then the face disappeared and the wall of white cloud began to boil and churn more fiercely than before. Pizarro stared into the midst of it, feeling a mingled sense of curiosity and annoyance. The face did not reappear. He saw nothing at all. He was being toyed with. He was a prisoner in some strange place and they were treating him like a child, like a dog, like—like an Indian. Perhaps this was the retribution for what he had done to King Atahuallpa, then, that fine noble foolish man who had given himself up to him in all innocence, and whom he had put to death so that he might have the gold of Atahuallpa’s kingdom.

  Well, so be it, Pizarro thought. Atahuallpa accepted all that befell him without complaint and without
fear, and so will I. Christ will be my guardian, and if there is no Christ, well, then I will have no guardian, and so be it. So be it.

  The voice out of the whirlwind said suddenly, “Look, Don Francisco. This is America.”

  A picture appeared on the wall of cloud. It was a kind of picture Pizarro had never before encountered or even imagined, one that seemed to open before him like a gate and sweep him in and carry him along through a vista of changing scenes depicted in brilliant, vivid bursts of color. It was like flying high above the land, looking down on an infinite scroll of miracles. He saw vast cities without walls, roadways that unrolled like endless skeins of white ribbon, huge lakes, mighty rivers, gigantic mountains, everything speeding past him so swiftly that he could scarcely absorb any of it. In moments it all became chaotic in his mind: the buildings taller than the highest cathedral spire, the swarming masses of people, the shining metal chariots without beasts to draw them, the stupendous landscapes, the close-packed complexity of it all. Watching all this, he felt the fine old hunger taking possession of him again: he wanted to grasp this strange vast place, and seize it, and clutch it close, and ransack it for all it was worth. But the thought of that was overwhelming. His eyes grew glassy and his heart began to pound so terrifyingly that he supposed he would be able to feel it thumping if he put his hand to the front of his armor. He turned away, muttering, “Enough. Enough.”

  The terrifying picture vanished. Gradually the clamor of his heart subsided.

  Then he began to laugh.

  “Peru!” he cried. “Peru was nothing, next to your America! Peru was a hole! Peru was mud! How ignorant I was! I went to Peru, when there was America, ten thousand times as grand! I wonder what I could find, in America.” He smacked his lips and winked. Then, chuckling, he said, “But don’t be afraid. I won’t try to conquer your America. I’m too old for that now. And perhaps America would have been too much for me, even before. Perhaps.” He grinned savagely at the troubled staring face of the short-haired beardless man, the American. “I really am dead, is this not so? I feel no hunger, I feel no pain, no thirst, when I put my hand to my body I do not feel even my body. I am like one who lies dreaming. But this is no dream. Am I a ghost?”

  “Not—exactly.”

  “Not exactly a ghost! Not exactly! No one with half the brains of a pig would talk like that. What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s not easy explaining it in words you would understand, Don Francisco.”

  “No, of course not. I am very stupid, as everyone knows, and that is why I conquered Peru, because I was so very stupid. But let it pass. I am not exactly a ghost, but I am dead all the same, right?”

  “Well—”

  “I am dead, yes. But somehow I have not gone to hell or even to purgatory but I am still in the world, only it is much later now. I have slept as the dead sleep, and now I have awakened in some year that is far beyond my time, and it is the time of America. Is this not so? Who is king now? Who is pope? What year is this? 1750? 1800?”

  “The year 2130,” the face said, after some hesitation.

  “Ah.” Pizarro tugged thoughtfully at his lower lip. “And the king? Who is king?”

  A long pause. “Alfonso is his name,” said the face.

  “Alfonso? The kings of Aragon were called Alfonso. The father of Ferdinand, he was Alfonso. Alfonso V, he was.”

  “Alfonso XIX is King of Spain now.”

  “Ah. Ah. And the pope? Who is pope?”

  A pause again. Not to know the name of the pope, immediately upon being asked? How strange. Demon or no, this was a fool.

  “Pius,” said the voice, when some time had passed. “Pius XVI.”

  “The sixteenth Pius,” said Pizarro somberly. “Jesus and Mary, the sixteenth Pius! What has become of me? Long dead, is what I am. Still unwashed of all my sins. I can feel them clinging to my skin like mud, still. And you are a sorcerer, you American, and you have brought me to life again. Eh? Eh? Is that not so?”

  “It is something like that, Don Francisco,” the face admitted.

  “So you speak your Spanish strangely because you no longer understand the right way of speaking it. Eh? Even I speak Spanish in a strange way, and I speak it in a voice that does not sound like my own. No one speaks Spanish any more, eh? Eh? Only American, they speak. Eh? But you try to speak Spanish, only it comes out stupidly. And you have caused me to speak the same way, thinking it is the way I spoke, though you are wrong. Well, you can do miracles, but I suppose you can’t do everything perfectly, even in this land of miracles of the year 2130. Eh? Eh?” Pizarro leaned forward intently. “What do you say? You thought I was a fool, because I don’t have reading and writing? I am not so ignorant, eh? I understand things quickly.”

  “You understand very quickly indeed.”

  “But you have knowledge of many things that are unknown to me. You must know the manner of my death, for example. How strange that is, talking to you of the manner of my death, but you must know it, eh? When did it come to me? And how? Did it come in my sleep? No, no, how could that be? They die in their sleep in Spain, but not in Peru. How was it, then? I was set upon by cowards, was I? Some brother of Atahuallpa, falling upon me as I stepped out of my house? A slave sent by the Inca Manco, or one of those others? No. No. The Indians would not harm me, for all that I did to them. It was the young Almagro who took me down, was it not, in vengeance for his father, or Juan de Herrada, eh? or perhaps even Picado, my own secretary—no, not Picado, he was my man, always—but maybe Alvarado, the young one, Diego—well, one of those, and it would have been sudden, very sudden or I would have been able to stop them—am I right, am I speaking the truth? Tell me. You know these things. Tell me of the manner of my dying.” There was no answer. Pizarro shaded his eyes and peered into the dazzling pearly whiteness. He was no longer able to see the face of the American. “Are you there?” Pizarro said. “Where have you gone? Were you only a dream? American! American! Where have you gone?”

  The break in contact was jolting. Tanner sat rigid, hands trembling, lips tightly clamped. Pizarro, in the holotank, was no more than a distant little streak of color now, no larger than his thumb, gesticulating amid the swirling clouds. The vitality of him, the arrogance, the fierce probing curiosity, the powerful hatreds and jealousies, the strength that had come from vast ventures recklessly conceived and desperately seen through to triumph, all the things that were Francisco Pizarro, all that Tanner had felt an instant before—all that had vanished at the flick of a finger.

  After a moment or two Tanner felt the shock beginning to ease. He turned toward Richardson.

  “What happened?”

  “I had to pull you out of there. I didn’t want you telling him anything about how he died.”

  “I don’t know how he died.”

  “Well, neither does he, and I didn’t want to chance it that you did. There’s no predicting what sort of psychological impact that kind of knowledge might have on him.”

  “You talk about him as though he’s alive.”

  “Isn’t he?” Richardson said.

  “If I said a thing like that, you’d tell me that I was being ignorant and unscientific.”

  Richardson smiled faintly. “You’re right. But somehow I trust myself to know what I’m saying when I say that he’s alive. I know I don’t mean it literally and I’m not sure about you. What did you think of him, anyway?”

  “He’s amazing,” Tanner said. “Really amazing. The strength of him—I could feel it pouring out at me in waves. And his mind! So quick, the way he picked up on everything. Guessing that he must be in the future. Wanting to know what number pope was in office. Wanting to see what America looked like. And the cockiness of him! Telling me that he’s not up to the conquest of America, that he might have tried for it instead of Peru a few years earlier, but not now, now he’s a little too old for that. Incredible! Nothing could
faze him for long, even when he realized that he must have been dead for a long time. Wanting to know how he died, even!” Tanner frowned. “What age did you make him, anyway, when you put this program together?”

  “About sixty. Five or six years after the conquest, and a year or two before he died. At the height of his power, that is.”

  “I suppose you couldn’t have let him have any knowledge of his actual death. That way he’d be too much like some kind of a ghost.”

  “That’s what we thought. We set the cutoff at a time when he had done everything that he had set out to do, when he was the complete Pizarro. But before the end. He didn’t need to know about that. Nobody does. That’s why I had to yank you, you see? In case you knew. And started to tell him.”

  Tanner shook his head. “If I ever knew, I’ve forgotten it. How did it happen?”

  “Exactly as he guessed: at the hands of his own comrades.”

  “So he saw it coming.”

  “At the age we made him, he already knew that a civil war had started in South America, that the conquistadores were quarreling over the division of the spoils. We built that much into him. He knows that his partner Almagro has turned against him and been beaten in battle, and that they’ve executed him. What he doesn’t know, but obviously can expect, is that Almagro’s friends are going to break into his house and try to kill him. He’s got it all figured out pretty much as it’s going to happen. As it did happen, I should say.”

  “Incredible. To be that shrewd.”

  “He was a son of a bitch, yes. But he was a genius too.”

  “Was he, really? Or is it that you made him one when you set up the program for him?”

  “All we put in were the objective details of his life, patterns of event and response. Plus an overlay of commentary by others, his contemporaries and later historians familiar with the record, providing an extra dimension of character density. Put in enough of that kind of stuff and apparently they add up to the whole personality. It isn’t my personality or that of anybody else who worked on this project, Harry. When you put in Pizarro’s set of events and responses you wind up getting Pizarro. You get the ruthlessness and you get the brilliance. Put in a different set, you get someone else. And what we’ve finally seen, this time, is that when we do our work right we get something out of the computer that’s bigger than the sum of what we put in.”