“The time would not be wasted. Any attempt to overwork the Sack would result in its premature annihilation.”
“That is your idea, is it?”
“No, sir, that is what the Sack itself said.”
At this point Senator Horrigan swung into a speech of denunciation, and Siebling was excused from further testimony. Other witnesses were called, but at the end the Senate investigating body was able to come to no definite conclusion, and it was decided to interrogate the Sack personally.
It was out of the question for the Sack to come to the Senate, so the Senate quite naturally came to the Sack. The Committee of Seven was manifestly uneasy as the senatorial ship decelerated and cast its grapples toward the asteroid. The members, as individuals, had all traveled in space before, but all their previous destinations had been in civilized territory, and they obviously did not relish the prospect of landing on this airless and sunless body of rock.
The televisor companies were alert to their opportunity, and they had acquired more experience with desert territory. They had disembarked and set up their apparatus before the senators had taken their first timid steps out of the safety of their ship.
Siebling noted ironically that in these somewhat frightening surroundings, far from their home grounds, the senators were not so sure of themselves. It was his part to act the friendly guide, and he did so with relish.
“You see, gentlemen,” he said respectfully, “it was decided, on the Sack’s own advice, not to permit it to be further exposed to possible collision with stray meteors. It was the meteors which killed off the other members of its strange race, and it was a lucky chance that the last surviving individual managed to escape destruction as long as it has. An impenetrable shelter dome has been built therefore, and the Sack now lives under its protection. Questioners address it through a sound and sight system that is almost as good as being face to face with it.”
Senator Horrigan fastened upon the significant part of his statement. “You mean that the Sack is safe—and we are exposed to danger from flying meteors?”
“Naturally, Senator. The Sack is unique in the system. Men—even senators—are, if you will excuse the expression, a decicredit a dozen. They are definitely replaceable, by means of elections.”
Beneath his helmet the senator turned green with a fear that concealed the scarlet of his anger. “I think it is an outrage to find the Government so unsolicitous of the safety and welfare of its employees!”
“So do I, sir. I live here the year round.” He added smoothly, “Would you gentlemen care to see the Sack now?”
They stared at the huge visor screen and saw the Sack resting on its seat before them, looking like a burlap bag of potatoes which had been tossed onto a throne and forgotten there. It looked so definitely inanimate that it struck them as strange that the thing should remain upright instead of toppling over. All the same, for a moment the senators could not help showing the awe that overwhelmed them. Even Senator Horrigan was silent.
But the moment passed. He said, “Sir, we are an official Investigating Committee of the Interplanetary Senate, and we have come to ask you a few questions.” The Sack showed no desire to reply, and Senator Horrigan cleared his throat and went on. “Is it true, sir, that you require two hours of complete rest in every twenty, and one hour for recreation, or, as I may put it, perhaps more precisely, relaxation?”
“It is true.”
Senator Horrigan gave the creature its chance, but the Sack, unlike a senator, did not elaborate. Another of the committee asked, “Where would you find an individual capable of conversing intelligently with so wise a creature as you?”
“Here,” replied the Sack.
“It is necessary to ask questions that are directly to the point, Senator,” suggested Siebling. “The Sack does not usually volunteer information that has not been specifically called for.”
Senator Horrigan said quickly, “I assume, sir, that when you speak of finding an intelligence on a par with your own, you refer to a member of our committee, and I am sure that of all my colleagues there is not one who is unworthy of being so denominated. But we cannot all of us spare the time needed for our manifold other duties, so I wish to ask you, sir, which of us, in your opinion, has the peculiar qualifications of that sort of wisdom which is required for this great task?”
“None,” said the Sack.
Senator Horrigan looked blank. One of the other senators flushed, and asked, “Who has?”
“Siebling.”
Senator Horrigan forgot his awe of the Sack, and shouted, “This is a put-up job!”
The other senator who had just spoken now said suddenly, “How is it that there are no other questioners present? Hasn’t the Sack’s time been sold far in advance?”
Siebling nodded. “I was ordered to cancel all previous appointments with the Sack, sir.”
“By what idiot’s orders?”
“Senator Horrigan’s, sir.”
At this point the investigation might have been said to come to an end. There was just time, before they turned away, for Senator Horrigan to demand desperately of the Sack, “Sir, will I be re-elected?” But the roar of anger that went up from his colleagues prevented him from hearing the Sack’s answer, and only the question was picked up and broadcast clearly over the interplanetary network.
It had such an effect that it in itself provided Senator Horrigan’s answer. He was not re-elected. But before the election he had time to cast his vote against Siebling’s designation to talk with the Sack for one hour out of every twenty. The final committee vote was four to three in favor of Siebling, and the decision was confirmed by the Senate. And then Senator Horrigan passed temporarily out of the Sack’s life and out of Siebling’s.
Siebling looked forward with some trepidation to his first long interview with the Sack. Hitherto he had limited himself to the simple tasks provided for in his directives—to the maintenance of the meteor shelter dome, to the provision of a sparse food supply, and to the proper placement of an army and Space Fleet Guard. For by this time the great value of the Sack had been recognized throughout the system, and it was widely realized that there would be thousands of criminals anxious to steal so defenseless a treasure.
Now, Siebling thought, he would be obliged to talk to it, and he feared that he would lose the good opinion which it had somehow acquired of him. He was in a position strangely like that of a young girl who would have liked nothing better than to talk of her dresses and her boy friends to someone with her own background, and was forced to endure a brilliant and witty conversation with some man three times her age.
But he lost some of his awe when he faced the Sack itself. It would have been absurd to say that the strange creature’s manner put him at ease. The creature had no manner. It was featureless and expressionless, and even when part of it moved, as when it was speaking, the effect was completely impersonal. Nevertheless, something about it did make him lose his fears.
For a time he stood before it and said nothing. To his surprise, the Sack spoke—the first time to his knowledge that it had done so without being asked a question. “You will not disappoint me,” it said. “I expect nothing.”
Siebling grinned. Not only had the Sack never before volunteered to speak, it had never spoken so dryly. For the first time it began to seem not so much a mechanical brain as the living creature he knew it to be. He asked, “Has anyone ever before asked you about your origin?”
“One man. That was before my time was rationed. And even he caught himself when he realized that he might better be asking how to become rich, and he paid little attention to my answer.”
“How old are you?”
“Four hundred thousand years. I can tell you to the fraction of a second, but I suppose that you do not wish me to speak as precisely as usual.”
The thing, thought Siebling, did have in its way a sense of humor. “How much of that time,” he asked, “have you spent alone?”
“More than ten thousand years.”
“You told someone once that your companions were killed by meteors. Couldn’t you have guarded against them?”
The Sack said slowly, almost wearily, “That was after we had ceased to have an interest in remaining alive. The first death was three hundred thousand years ago.”
“And you have lived, since then, without wanting to?”
“I have no great interest in dying either. Living has become a habit.”
“Why did you lose your interest in remaining alive?”
“Because we lost the future. There had been a miscalculation.”
“You are capable of making mistakes?”
“We had not lost that capacity. There was a miscalculation, and although those of us then living escaped personal disaster, our next generation was not so fortunate. We lost any chance of having descendants. After that, we had nothing for which to live.”
Siebling nodded. It was a loss of motive that a human being could understand. He asked, “With all your knowledge, couldn’t you have overcome the effects of what happened?”
The Sack said, “The more things become possible to you, the more you will understand that they cannot be done in impossible ways. We could not do everything. Sometimes one of the more stupid of those who come here asks me a question I cannot answer, and then becomes angry because he feels that he has been cheated of his credits. Others ask me to predict the future. I can predict only what I can calculate, and I soon come to the end of my powers of calculation. They are great compared to yours; they are small compared to the possibilities of the future.”