The House of Doors - 01 Read Online Free PDF

they do it all a lot faster than any human mind—but they can’t think. Not yet anyway. Look: if you want to make a three-minute egg timer, put some fine sand in your funny bottle and let it run out. And time it. When you have exactly three minutes worth of sand in there, seal the bottle. After that, every time you want a three minute egg, the timer will give you exactly that. Does that make it intelligent? A better example: if you want to know the time you check your watch, right? Day or night it gives you the right answer at a glance. But has your watch got a mind? It’s programming, that’s all.”
    “My watch is programmed?”
    “Certainly, to tick away one second every second.”
    “See,” said Turnbull, grinning, “that’s why I was so good at interrogation.”
    “Eh?”
    “Methinks you protest too much. Have you tried listening to the Castle think?”
    Gill found himself smiling a real smile for the first time in too long. “You know, Jack,” he said. “I liked you the first time I saw you. Something about you—a bloke I could get on with. But I didn’t tag you as brilliant. You are, though, in your way. Or if not brilliant, very clever.” “You have heard it thinking?” Turnbull sat up straighter.
    “I’ve heard it doing … something.” The smile slid from Gill’s face.
    “Listening, watching, waiting?”
    Gill nodded. “Yes.”
    “But you didn’t tell that to the VIPs.” It wasn’t an accusation, just a statement of fact.
    “Most of them already know,” said Gill. “Those who are worth their salt.”
    “Come again?” Turnbull’s heavy eyelids came awake and propped themselves wide open. “I don’t recall hearing anything about that.”
    “Scare mongering,” said Gill. “That’s what I’d be accused of if it was public knowledge. That’s what the government would be accused of. What? This pile of alien masonry up here on a Scottish mountainside, sitting watching us, waiting for something? Perhaps making its mind up about something? They’d yell, ‘What’s the government thinking of? Why aren’t they protecting us?’ And then they’d have to be told that the government is protecting them—or that they’re prepared to, anyway. And when they knew just how prepared …”
    “So-called ‘tactical’ nuclear weapons,” said Turnbull, low-voiced. “CND would have a field day!”
    “Hey! You’re not supposed to know about that!” Gill was alarmed.
    “Damn right I am,” said Turnbull, matter-of-factly. “How am I supposed to play the game if I don’t know the stakes? We both have talents, Spencer, and mine’s minding. I look after the Man Responsible, remember?”
    “Anyway, enough’s enough,” said Gill. “I’m tired and I’m turning in. I may read for a little while. Will the light bother you?”
    “Not me.” Turnbull shook his head. “I won’t sleep for a while anyway. Too much to think about.”
    Gill had the bed and Turnbull a long, wide settee. He’d slept in worse places. When Gill switched the light off, Turnbull said, “Just one more thing.”
    “Shoot.” Gill’s voice was weary in the darkness of the room.
    “You said the Castle was perhaps making its mind up about something. Now what did you mean by that? Machines don’t have minds, you said, and they don’t think. A bit contradictory, isn’t it?”
    “Yes,” said Gill, after a little while. And: “It was a figure of speech, that’s all.”
    Unconvinced, Turnbull nodded thoughtfully to himself. “Computers can’t think, you said—not yet. But you were talking about our computers, made here, on Earth. This thing, this alien thing, has to be way ahead of anything we’ve got. It would have to be just to have come from—wherever.” He waited for a response, and when none was forthcoming: “Gill?”
    “Yes,” said Gill, very quietly. “It would have to be … .”
    Turnbull left it at that. And now he had even more to think about before sleeping.
     
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