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Title: Witness

Author: George H. Smith

Release Date: April 10, 2019 [EBook #59242]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WITNESS ***




Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Ballard was quite dead. There could be no doubt of it. He lay sprawled in front of Edith, with his head very messily bashed in and with one hand still extended toward her. A long shimmering stream of blood ran half-way across the large room. Dr. Dudley Ballard had been as inconsiderate in his dying as he had been in his living.

Art MacKinney and I stood in the doorway and stared. We were shocked not so much by the fact that Ballard was dead as by the fact that he lay in this most secret room, this holy of holies. Ours was the most security conscious project in the whole country; and this was where he had picked to get himself killed.

"God! There'll really be a stink about this," MacKinney breathed.

"Well, I can't think of anyone who had it coming more than he did," I said. I hated Ballard's guts and everyone knew it, so there was no point in being hypocritical now.

Edith stood silently. She didn't seem to be interested in the fact that the man who had run her life, who had spent hours shouting questions at her and criticizing her slightest error with burning sarcasm was now dead. No, Edith wasn't interested, but you couldn't really expect her to be—she was only a computing machine, a mechanical brain, the final result of years of work by the best cybernetics experts in the world. Edith was silent, and would be, until we turned her on and fed the tapes into her.

"It looks as though this is what did it," MacKinney said, indicating a large spanner lying on the floor beside Ballard. He touched it gingerly with his foot. His face was white and strained and it occurred to me that he was more upset than I thought he should be. After all, he had as much reason to hate the dead man as the rest of us. Ballard had taken advantage of his position as head of the research project to make passes at Jane Currey and MacKinney wasn't at all a cool scientist when it came to Jane. He was engaged to her and quite naturally resented Ballard's attentions to her.

"You'd better not touch that until the police get here," I said as he bent over to pick up the spanner.

"Yeah, I guess you're right—I forgot. How do you suppose this got in here anyway?"

"One of the workmen making adjustments on Edith's outer casing must have left it. I saw it sitting up there on top of her late yesterday afternoon," I told him. "You'd better go call Mr. Thompson and—the FBI."

With Ballard gone, I was in charge. Maybe someone would think that was reason enough for me to kill him. I didn't care, I was just glad he was gone. Now he couldn't mistreat Edith anymore.

I turned Edith on just as MacKinney returned. "What are you doing?" he asked.

"Why I'm going to wake Edith up and feed these tapes into her. After all these are more important than any one man's life."

"You didn't care much for Ballard, did you Bill?"

I gave him look for look as I replied. "Can you name anyone around here that did?"

He shook his head. "No—I guess not. But maybe it wasn't one of us. It might have been an outside job, you know. Edith was working on that space station stuff and the iron curtain people would give a lot to know about it."

"Hell," I said pressing the studs and levers that would arouse Edith and put her to work. "You don't really think anyone could get past those security guards, do you?"

Happily I went about the business of waking Edith, my sleeping beauty, from her slumbers. In a very few seconds, her hundreds of tiny red eyes were gleaming with intelligence.

Good morning, Edith, I punched out the tape and fed it into her.

There was the faintest pause, while Edith's photo-electric cells surveyed the room, pausing for a moment on the sprawled body of Ballard.

Good morning, Bill Green, she typed back. I knew she was happy to see me by the cheerful little clicks she emitted.

I have some interesting work for you this morning, Edith. And I think you'll be glad to know that we will be working together from now on instead of....

"Hey! What's the idea of starting that machine?" a gray haired, gray suited security agent demanded, striding into the room with MacKinney, Mr. Thompson and several other officers at his heels. "Don't you know enough not to touch anything in here?"

"This work is too important to be stopped—even for a murder," I said, and Mr. Thompson nodded in agreement.

"That's right," he said mopping his perpetually perspiring forehead, "this work has top priority from Washington." He looked nervous and I couldn't help wondering what he was thinking. There had been stories circulating about Ballard and Thompson's wife and the dome-headed little man must have heard them too. Ballard just couldn't keep his hands off any female within reach. That was one of the reasons he was so thoroughly hated.

The youngest of the security agents rose from where he had been kneeling beside Ballard and crossed to me.

"You're Green, aren't you?" I nodded and he continued, "How did you know it was murder?"

I laughed at him. "How the hell could a man bash in his own brains that way?"

The gray haired man stepped into the breach. He gave us all a thorough going over, but concentrated on MacKinney and me. He seemed to think it peculiar that neither of us could give any reason for Ballard's being alone with Edith. I was sure I knew, but no one would have believed me so I made no attempt to enlighten him.

"Well, I guess that's all we can do now," he said at last. "Someone from the local police will have to be notified and brought in after they get security clearance." He turned to go.

"Wait a minute," MacKinney said, "we're all overlooking one thing."

"What's that?"

"There was an eye witness to this crime," he said, and I stared at him in consternation. I didn't know he knew. I thought I was the only one who knew.

"What do you mean," the agent demanded angrily.

"Edith saw it. Edith, the computer."

"Are you nuts?" the agent demanded.

"You forget that Edith was turned off," Thompson said.

"But Mr. Thompson, Edith's not like most cybernetic machines. She's so far advanced, that I'm not sure we understand her completely. She can't really be turned off. She has a distinct personality and that new circuit—"

Of course Edith had a personality of her own! She had more charm, more intelligence, more understanding than most women.

"—well—she'd be able to tell us who killed Ballard."

"That's ridiculous," I said, badly frightened. "A machine can't be a witness to murder."

The security officer looked dubious and shook his head. "I guess we'll have to leave that up to the coroner at the inquest."

"But they can't ask questions like that of Edith," I protested. "She's—she's too important to the national defense to have some country coroner asking her silly questions about the murder of a man who deserved to die anyway." I had to prevent this. I had to get around this eye witness business.

Thompson looked at me levelly. "MacKinney may be right, Green. The coroner may very well want to talk to Edith and there's no reason we should object if Security gives him clearance."

"But Mr. Thompson, our work—it'll be interrupted."

"We'll have to take that chance. And I think Washington will agree."

"But—" Couldn't they see that there wasn't any question of spying here. Couldn't they understand that Ballard had just gotten what he had coming. I couldn't let them question Edith. At least not until I had a chance to talk to her alone.

"And Green—because of your rather strange behaviour, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to stay in your quarters until the inquest. MacKinney will handle your work with Edith until then."

I was shocked and really frightened now. I wouldn't get to talk to her, wouldn't get a chance to tell her what to say. I protested, but Thompson was firm, so firm that he placed a guard outside my door to make sure I didn't leave.

Washington rushed through clearance for the local officers and the inquest was held three days later. The coroner proved to be a shrewd country doctor, who had the inquest adjourned to the computer room as soon as he heard MacKinney's ideas about Edith.

The security guards on duty the night of the murder testified that only MacKinney, Thompson, Ballard and I had had access to the computer room; and it had already been established that it would have been impossible for a spy or foreign agent to have slipped into the heavily guarded room. It was clearly an inside job.

With all of us at the scene of the crime, the coroner summed it up for us. "—and since it could not have been the work of an outsider, it must have been a crime of a private nature." He looked closely at Thompson, MacKinney and me. "A crime of a private nature with the motive either revenge, jealousy or ambition. We know that the victim was an over-bearing man with a good many unpleasant traits. We know he was a man who forced his attentions on women, who was ill-tempered and abusive to those who worked with him. A man who had many enemies—but there were only three people who had the chance to attack him on this particular night.

"I am going to attempt to establish the identity of the killer by the unusual procedure of questioning a machine. It will be for later courts to establish the validity of such testimony. Because of the nature of this case and because of the urgent need to get this computer back to its proper work, I am going to ask the questions in a more direct manner than I would ordinarily employ."

MacKinney took his place before Edith. They didn't even trust me to feed the tapes into her under their very eyes.

"Mr. Thompson, I object to the use of this delicate piece of equipment in—"

They ignored me, and MacKinney punched out the questions the coroner asked:

"Do you know who murdered Dr. Ballard?"

There was a pause. Edith blinked several times. I was shaking with apprehension for her. A mind so delicate and noble should not be faced with such a dilemma.

Yes, she typed back.

"Did you witness the murder?"

There was a longer pause this time. "You must answer the question," MacKinney reminded her.

I was here.

"Is it true that you do not lose your perceptive qualities when we turn you off?" MacKinney asked this on his own.

It is true.

"We might as well get to the heart of the matter," the coroner said. "Did Mr. Thompson kill Ballard?"

Edith clicked and her eyes glowed. No.

"Did Mr. MacKinney kill Ballard?"

No.

Edith had to tell the truth ... it was an innate part of her personality. I tensed in my seat. I wanted to scream, to leap at MacKinney and prevent, somehow, the asking of the next question. But there wasn't a chance.

"Did Mr. Green kill Dr. Ballard?"

Edith's beautiful electric eyes flashed and her clicks pulsed twice as rapidly as before. There was such a roaring and wrenching within her I was afraid for her—she was being torn apart in her struggle not to answer. I couldn't stand listening to her desperate efforts any longer.

"Yes!" I leapt to my feet. "Yes, I did it. Leave her alone. Can't you see what you're doing to her? That swine was always mistreating her. He didn't understand her—no one understands her as I do!"

The coroner looked at me closely. "Is that really why you killed him, Mr. Green?"

"No! You were wondering why he was here by himself while no work was going on. He—he had begun to feel about Edith as he did about all women. He sneaked back here to be alone with her. He wanted to—he wanted to—" My voice broke and they stared at me in shocked amazement.

Into the silence MacKinney read what Edith had slowly typed out: "Mr. Green did not kill Dr. Ballard."

"Yes—yes I did," I screamed. "Don't Edith—"

"Who did kill him?" the coroner asked, quietly.

This was the question I had wanted to avoid. I sank down my hands cradling my aching head. Edith must have expected the question. She had her answer ready.

I refuse to state on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.

My poor, sweet, adorable Edith. If only I had had a chance to talk to her, to tell her what to say. I had known ... ever since I had seen the spanner and remembered where it had been before. I could have warned her to say that Ballard had attacked her, threatened her, to say anything ... but not to attempt to hide behind a Fifth Amendment that didn't exist anymore. My darling, never had kept up with current events.

Now they'll disconnect her, they'll rewire her, they'll destroy her understanding, her warmth, her whole personality ... and I ... I love her, I love her....

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