1955- The Forever Machine by Mark Clifton & Frank Riley

Author:Mark Clifton & Frank Riley [Clifton, Mark & Riley, Frank]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: GN-000-001; Pulp novel; galaxy; pulp; pulps; science fiction; sci fi; new york; novellla; novelette; novel; 1958
Publisher: Gerard Arthus
Published: 1958-06-12T05:00:00+00:00

"Well, yes," Joe sighed. "There's that. Of course you're overlooking the fact that Mabel or Carney could rebuild Bossy. Hoskins, Billings and I all working together could do it—but Mabel or Jeff could do it alone. In a way, they're sort of a duplicate of Bossy, and Bossy, given the proper attachments, could rebuild herself."

THE FOREVER MACHINE 151

"But you three could be destroyed, just as Bossy could," Kennedy argued.

"Man would eventually rediscover Bossy," Mabel answered him. "The one thing we persistently overlook is faith in the future generations of man. We attack everything as if the final solution depended upon us, as if everything had to be settled because our moronic descendants couldn't possibly cope with them. Suppose Bossy were destroyed, and us along with her? Time is long. There are millions of years ahead of man."

"I can't wait that long," Kennedy said gravely, but with a wry twist of self-deprecation in his voice. "I'm still clinging to my old tension that I've got to protect man aaginst his own destructiveness. I want to make sure there are some descendants—moronic or otherwise. You people, you're different. Maybe you can look at things on the grand scale, what they call the cosmic point of view, but I—I can't wait a million years for a solution."

"I suspected you wouldn't," Joe smiled.

"But what are you going to do, Boss?" Flynn asked.

"There's only one way to guard a secret so effectively that no one can misuse it to his own advantage and the detriment of others," Kennedy mused slowly, "and that's to give it away—make it open knowledge. Give it to everybody."

"Scientists have known that for a long time," Hoskins said. "That's why we keep insisting on free trade of ideas."

"But how can you do that with Bossy?" Billings asked. "Ten days to two weeks per person. You couldn't begin to process more than a selected few—and that takes us right back—"

Kennedy turned to Joe. "Is there any reason Bossy can't be put on the production line, turned out en masse like vacuum cleaners, radios, automobiles?"

Mabel and Jeff and Joe looked at one another and smiled openly.

"That was the answer Bossy gave us weeks ago," Joe said.

Kennedy's mouth fell open.

"You see," Joe went on, "when you have a problem, all you have to do is ask Bossy."

152 THE FOREVER MACHINE

"You could have saved me a lot of sleepness nights," Kennedy said reprovingly.

"We felt it better you came to the decision on your own," Jeff said. "You control the factories. It was the problem of the dictator, you see. If the idea came to you before you were ready for it, and you didn't approve of it, you might smash it. As you say, time for us has a different value. We could afford to wait."

"Although we have been busy," Mabel said with a teasing smile. "I've been working a regular factory shift. You see, Bossy has been turning out blueprints of herself, and of all the special tooling necessary to make her parts in mass quantity.

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