Jasso laid the bulky report on his superior's desk. "No one living can solve the problem," he said.
Tern stared at him quizzically and leaned back in the cushioned chair behind his desk.
"That's encouraging," Tern said with a wry smile. "The second generation?"
"The probabilities are high. The most likely father is a man named Lao Protik, a psycho-artist living in Nuyork."
"The mother?"
Jasso grinned, a flashing grin in a dark face. He sank into a chair, pulled out a cigarette pack and offered one to Tern. The older man shook his head, fishing in his pocket for an old-fashioned pipe. Jasso clicked out a cigarette and drew deeply on it.
"That's one of the fascinating angles about dealing with the Calculator," he said. "We combined the fifty most probable fathers, including Lao, with the fifty most probable mothers. Believe it or not, we drew an absolute blank. They just don't jibe at all."
"Not too surprising," said Tern. "It's happened before. But I gather you've already decided to work with this psycho-artist. Why?"
"Lao's so far ahead of the rest, both men and women, it's the only thing to do. And, since life is full of little surprises, we found the probability highest if Lao marries a woman whose own separate probability rating is close to zero." Jasso consulted his notes and added: "She's a language teacher named Grida Mattin, living in Southgate, Tennessee."
"You're pretty sure these results are right?" asked Tern.
"I've checked every angle I could think of," replied Jasso carefully. "Of course, there's always the possibility that two near-zero probabilities would add up better, when combined. But the probability rating for marriage between these two is very high—you can see for yourself when you check the figures. I think it's the best we'll find."
"It would be so much simpler if we had a high probability among people in this generation," said Tern thoughtfully. "Arranging a marriage between two strangers is a ticklish business."
"It's been done before," said Jasso. "I'll put a team of agents to work on it right away."
There were millions of cards—if you could call things the size of a bedsheet "cards." Each punched with holes like a swiss cheese, they filled one of the Calculator's most strategic banks. They represented every man, woman and child in the civilized world.
Through them, the course of history could be guided, the advancement of civilization accelerated. By racing through the backgrounds and capabilities of every person in the United Nations, the Calculator could find the best one to do any job, to solve any problem.
Lao Protik, as he strolled into his swank Nuyork apartment building that July evening, was completely unaware that the Calculator had pointed a finger at him. Life flowed smoothly for him. Not a worry darkened the horizon. His annual salary from Consolidated Ads was five hundred thousand dols—a comfortable thirty thousand after taxes—and he maintained three mistresses in separate apartments.
In the lobby, he paused to open his mailbox. Two letters fell out into his hands; he tore the envelopes neatly across the end.
The first was an advertisement for the 2125 model of the Sky Swallow convertible helicar. He crumpled it and tossed it into a potted palm.
He grunted in surprise as he read the second one.
"Vr. Lao Protik," he read. "Our firm has been impressed with your accomplishments and growing reputation as a psycho-artist. We are in a position to offer you employment at a salary of one hundred thousand dols annually. Our representative, Vr. Casto Roche, will call on you in a few days to discuss this offer with you."
The letter bore the illegible scrawl of someone who signed himself as president of Colorvue Publicity, Inc. Lao had never heard of the firm.
Lao's lips curled and this missive followed the first one into the potted palm. He felt a momentary irritation at the audacity of anyone offering him a mere hundred thousand dols, then let the entire matter slip from his mind.
Softly whistling the refrain of the latest hit tune, "The Clouds of Venus Can't Come Between Us," he caught the elevator and ascended to his last untroubled night for a long time to come.
A terse memorandum was waiting for Lao at his office the next morning. It was not the sort of thing any employee of Consolidated Ads could ignore—not even a Class A psycho-artist who was an officer in his union. A worried frown creasing his normally smooth forehead, Lao hurried down the corridor to the plush office of Mavo Caprin, president of the firm.
Caprin was in no amiable mood. He grunted at Lao's somewhat querulous greeting. He kept his nose buried in papers, puffing ominously on a fat cigar for several minutes before looking up and waving Lao to a seat.
"Perhaps you can explain these, Protik," said Caprin sharply, waving a thick fistful of letters. Lao leaned over to take them, and glanced through several of them.
The phrases that met his eyes astounded and outraged him.
They were such words as "this insolent effrontery," "the unwarranted audacity of the man," "a deliberate scheme to further rip away the fabric of our tottering moral code"—all applied to his own work!
"I can't explain them because I don't know what they are talking about, Voter Caprin," said Lao.
"They're talking about these," replied Caprin. With the flourish of a magician taking a rabbit out of a hat, he produced a sheaf of Lao's original paintings from his desk drawer.
Lao riffled through them. At first glance, he saw nothing wrong. Then he looked more closely, and began to compare them with specific complaints in the letters.
His face flushed bright red with anger.
Only one in a hundred readers of the advertisements that carried Lao Protik's artwork would have noticed, but the complaints were justified! The melange which was a competent psycho-artist's painting was carefully confused to achieve a specific psychological objective—in Lao Protik's work, to make people want to buy the products sponsored by Consolidated Ads. But in these paintings the psychological impact had been distorted cleverly. The psycho-art had been turned into effective propaganda for polygamy!
"Somebody has altered my work," said Lao firmly. "I demand a thorough check of every artist on the staff."
Caprin shook his head. "That won't be necessary. I've had these paintings checked by experts, and they all agree this is your original work."
"That's outrageous!" exclaimed Lao. "What 'experts' told you such lies?"
"It doesn't matter," said Caprin, a bit wearily now. "I don't like to do it after such a long association, Lao, but Consolidated Ads has a reputation to maintain. We can't take sides in politics. We have to let you go."
Lao stared at him. Then he hurled paintings and letters in Caprin's face and stalked to the door. Halfway out of the office, he turned and shouted furiously:
"The Psycho-Artists Guild will have something to say about this, Caprin!"
"I don't think so," Caprin retorted mildly, rubbing a bruised cheek.
It wasn't long before Lao realized the significance of that parting remark. His few personal belongings jammed into his briefcase, he emerged on the roof of the huge Consolidated Ads building and looked around for a helicab. The cabstands were empty at the moment. Waiting under an awning, he dropped a dime into a newspaper vending machine. It clucked and ejected the noon edition of the Star into his hands.
A good-sized headline on Page One proclaimed: "Art union Ejects Protik." His eyes bulging slightly, Lao read swiftly:
In a specially called meeting of its executive committee, the Psycho-Artists Guild this morning revoked the membership of its second vice-president, Lao Protik, chief psycho-artist for Consolidated Ads.
Officers of the union refused to make public the reason for Protik's ejection, but there were reports that some connection with the notorious Polygamy League was involved. Protik could not be reached for comment immediately, and the switchboard operator at Consolidated Ads said she had instructions not to ring his office.
Unshaven and bleary-eyed, Lao argued plaintively over the telephone with his old friend, Majo Hobel, personnel chief at Autovance Advertising. Hobel had tried several times in the past to woo Lao from Consolidated Ads.
"It's no good, Lao," said Hobel. "You've been blackballed."
"But it's all a pack of lies, Majo!" cried Lao. "You know the inside of the field. How about the foreign firms?" Anything outside of Nuyork was "foreign."
"It's the same in Kahgo and all over. Sorry, Lao."
Cursing, Lao slammed down the receiver and dialed the number of Tinna, his favorite mistress. A voice he recognized as Tinna's answered.
"Tinna," he began, "this is Lao...."
"She isn't here," said Tinna frigidly. The telephone clicked in his ear.
Lao's shoulders drooped. He put the phone in its cradle and, without much hope, prepared to dial Phreda, another mistress. It buzzed at him before he could begin.
He answered it.
"Voter Protik, there's a gentleman in the lobby to see you," said the apartment house operator.
"I don't want to see any more reporters!" shouted Lao angrily.
"This isn't a reporter, sir. He says he's a representative of Colorvue Publicity."
"Never heard of it," growled Lao. "But send him up."
He had no time to shave, but he washed his face and tried to make himself a little more presentable before the apartment buzzer sounded. He admitted an elderly man with a gray mustache, who had the well-fed air of a corporation executive.
"Voter Protik, I am Roche of Colorvue Publicity," his visitor introduced himself. "You received our letter several days ago?"
Lao searched his memory. Vaguely he recalled such a letter and his hopes began to rise. Wasn't it something about offering him a job?
He asked Roche.
"That's correct, sir," replied Roche. "A hundred thousand dols a year, one-quarter payable in advance."
"You may not want me now," said Lao gloomily. He had no scruples about putting over a sharp business deal, but any contract he might draw would be invalid if he withheld information.
"We are aware of your recent difficulties," said Roche sympathetically. "I wish to assure you we do not believe the charges that you are associated with the Polygamy League. Also you may wish to know that my firm, while a small one, is a reputable one. A check of the Business Practices Agency will prove that to you."
"I'm not a member of the Psycho-Artists Guild any more," Lao reminded him bitterly, "to say nothing of having been blackballed by all major firms and abandoned by my three mistresses."
"We have no union contract, and your personal life is your own," answered Roche with a slight smile. "Your known ability is sufficient for us. There is one thing, however. Your work will not be in Nuyork, but in Southgate, a small town in Tennessee. If you see fit to accept our offer, we will arrange in advance for your quarters there. There will be no cost to you."
"I hate to leave Nuyork," said Lao slowly. "And I'm frank to say that I hate to come down from half a million dols to a hundred thousand. But your offer comes as a life-saver to me, Voter Roche. I'm inclined to accept it."
"Good," said Roche. "Think on it, if you like. I'll put a signed contract in the next mail for you. When you return it with your signature, your ticket and instructions will be waiting for you at Lagwad Airport."
They shook hands on it, and Roche walked out of Lao's life—for a while.
His hands in his pockets, Lao strolled into the kitchen, where his landlady, Grida Mattin, was melodiously preparing lunch. Grida wore an apron over her old-fashioned opaque clothing and her head, beginning to show a few gray streaks, was bent over the gleaming stove.
"Grida, do you mind if I use the telephone for a long-distance call to Nuyork?" he asked.
"Certainly not, Lao," she answered, turning to smile at him. Her face was not exceptionally attractive, but she had beautiful teeth. "Nothing wrong, I hope."
"I don't know," he said. "My salary check is three weeks overdue."
He placed the call to Colorvue Publicity on the kitchen extension, and stood by the stove, watching Grida stir and season.
"Cooking is almost a lost art, Grida, and you're a good cook," he said. "I'm surprised you've never married."
Grida flushed at the compliment.
"It may sound boastful, but I've never courted a man, Lao," she said. "As you may have noticed, I have conservative habits. I'm afraid I'm a little out of place in the modern world. I don't approve of the frivolous attitude people have toward marriage now."
Lao looked at her, not without some affection. Of course he had made advances, as most men did to all unmarried women with whom they associated.
But Grida was a history teacher, and she lived by the outmoded morals of the distant past. She had made it known at once that marriage was her price for intimacy, and she gave no hint she was interested in marriage.
"There's nothing frivolous about it from the man's view-point, when only a woman can apply for a divorce," replied Lao. "That's why it's hard for women to catch husbands. With ten women to every man, most men have no trouble finding mistresses."
"I don't approve of that, either," said Grida, compressing her lips firmly.
The telephone interrupted, and Lao went into the library to talk.
"On your call, sir," came the thin voice of the Nuyork operator, "there is no Colorvue Publicity listed."
"What!" he exclaimed. "There must be! Check again."
He waited a long, anxious moment.
"I'm sorry, sir," came the operator's voice again. "I have checked our directory, and there is no Colorvue Publicity listed."
Lao swore fervently.
"Wait a minute," he cried. "Nuyork? Hold it just a minute, will you?"
He raced up the ramp to his second floor bedroom, fumbled through his dresser drawer until he found his contract and ran back downstairs with it. He had the operator check the name of every Colorvue Publicity official who had signed the contract. None was listed.
"I know there's a Colorvue Publicity!" he shouted desperately. "Get me the Business Practices Agency."
"Just a moment, sir."
A man's voice answered at the Business Practices Agency. It took him several minutes to check the files in compliance with Lao's request for information.
"We have no such firm listed in our records," he said at last.
"Dammit, I know you do!" exclaimed Lao. "You told me Colorvue Publicity had a Double-A2 rating when I checked with you, not four months ago."
"Was the request for a rating by letter or by telephone, sir?"
"By telephone. It didn't take the girl three minutes to find it."
"There'd be no record of your request if it was made by telephone. There must have been some mistake, sir. If there were a firm named Colorvue Publicity in any city in the world having a population of more than 100,000, it would be in our records."
Lao cursed him and hung up. Grida came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron.
"I couldn't help overhearing, Lao," she said. "There must be something wrong. That company sent me a check for your first three months' room and board. It cleared the bank all right."
"So did my salary check for the first quarter," he said. "But the Business Practices Agency is supposed to keep records of a firm for a year after its dissolution. I can't understand anybody paying out twenty-five thousand dols and then just disappearing!"
"If you need any help to tide you over, Lao ..." she said hesitantly. "My salary isn't much—fifteen thousand dols a year. But I have something saved."
"Thanks, Grida, but I'll be all right," he said, turning away.
Lao left the house and strode down the quiet streets of Southgate, fuming. This had all the earmarks of a conspiracy. First the sabotage at Consolidated Ads, now the utter disappearance of Colorvue Publicity. But he could think of no enemies who would have reason to conspire against him. The field of psycho-art was a highly specialized one, without bitter competition.
Back in his room at Grida Mattin's house were half a dozen canvases that reflected all his co-ordinated skill. Done on the instructions he found at Lagwad Airport the night he left Nuyork, they depicted all the advantages of marriage in a small Southern town. His now-vanished employers had never sent him instructions for their disposal. Now the work was wasted, unless he could sell them free-lance.
The brown autumn leaves were drifting down on the crumbling sidewalks of Southgate, stripping the trees that lined the streets. Blue smoke drifted from chimneys of a few of the old houses, dissipating into the gray sky. It was an atmosphere that fitted his mood of despair.
The most pressing problem that faced him was financial. Lao was a lavish man with his money. His balance at the bank now wouldn't cover his income tax for the year. It was something he'd never had to worry about before, because good psycho-artists were well-paid and aways in demand. Now, marooned in the Tennessee hills, blackballed by every big firm in the nation, his prospects looked bleak.
Something Grida had said stuck in his mind. Fifteen thousand a year—plus savings. It wasn't a great deal, after taxes, but it was a living. And he could pay his own taxes next March.
He shook his head and turned his steps back toward the house. Marriage was the very last resort for Lao. He'd try free-lancing the Colorvue paintings first.
Roche looked unhappy. "While he was working on the paintings he didn't have time to get around town, such as it is," he said. "He and Grida were together a lot. They seemed to get along. Now he's sold the paintings and he's spending the money on a mistress."
"Well, Jasso, this is your baby," said Tern. "What now?"
"A mistress can be scared off pretty easily," said Jasso. "We've got agents pulling strings all over the place right now to stave off a worse problem than that. Grida's sister, Alina, visits her every year and our secondary checks with the Calculator show such a visit would be fatal to any chances of a Lao-Grida marriage. Alina's a doctor in Frisco. We've managed to get the hospital authorities to postpone her vacation, but we've got to get Lao and Grida married pretty quick. They can't stall Alina off forever."
"It strikes me that you're just as far away from the marriage as you were at the beginning," commented Tern.
"How do you make two people want to marry each other?" countered Jasso. "It's not enough the Calculator has to pick out a woman 20 years older than he is. Checking them against each other, they are basically incompatible."
"Can you tell them? Maybe if they knew how important their marriage is to the world...."
"I've checked that," said Jasso. "We can't. The probability would drop to almost nothing."
"Excuse me, sir," interposed Roche. "All the pertinent information on the basic personalities of Lao and Grida is filed in their Calculator cards. It seems to me that all you'd have to do would be to ask the Calculator how to make them want to marry each other."
"Dealing with the Calculator isn't quite that simple, Roche," replied Jasso with a smile. "It's a machine. It has no language that would permit it to tell us how things are done, even though we might say it knows, because it has all the necessary information.
"If we ask for information recorded in the Calculator, it can refer us to the place in the file to find it—if we phrase the question properly. If we ask a true-or-false question, it will answer 'yes' or 'no,' if it has the answer. If we ask for correlation of information, the Calculator can give us the probability of attaining an objective.
"That's why it takes such long training to become a Calculator operator. The Calculator can correlate the emotional factors of Lao and Grida for us, but we have to draw our own conclusions for action from them—and then ask the Calculator for probabilities. That's all."
Tern had listened gravely, without interrupting, his hands folded across the bulge of his stomach.
"You evidently haven't been asking the right questions, Jasso," he remarked sardonically. "It's hard for me to realize that this is the Jasso who stopped the Brazilo-Panamanian War and solved the economic crisis that threatened Pakistan."
"I've still got a few tricks up my sleeve, Chief," retorted Jasso. "The only way to make a pair want to marry is to throw them together and then exploit their psychological weakness. Make them need each other. I've got a psychology team checking Lao and Grida with a fine-tooth comb, and we'll check their recommendations with the Calculator."
"From what you've told me, I'd say Lao's biggest weakness is a love of luxurious living," suggested Tern. "That takes money, you know."
"Economic pressure alone doesn't go deep enough to drive him to marriage. Not with so many available women around. Don't worry; we're using economic pressure to keep him off balance. But the psychologists tell us the final motivation must be an emotional frustration. It doesn't have to be a big one, but it must be basic."
Lao had had the letter for two days, and still didn't know what to do about it. It had cost him two sleepless nights.
In the old days in Nuyork he would have aired his troubles to friends at the Psycho-Artists Club and probably acted on a dozen varying bits of advice at the same time. Here there was no one to whom he could turn.
He glared morosely at the unfinished painting. The canvas gleamed with iridescent whorls and lines, from which the face and form of Grida Mattin were beginning to emerge. In the maze of waxing and waning colors could be distinguished, if one looked closely enough, faint countenances of women and babies with expressions of anxiety, of fear, of hunger for love ... with occasionally a man.
It would have sold well, he thought. Free-lancing had been a promising idea.
He dragged himself downstairs to breakfast. He usually reacted to Grida's singing. It pleased him mildly when he was in an expansive mood, irritated him when his mind was on something else.
This morning he hardly heard it.
"Alina will be here in three weeks," Grida imparted over the toast and coffee.
"Alina?" he asked, without much interest.
"My sister. Haven't I mentioned her to you before?"
"No, I don't think so. Where is she?"
"She's a doctor in Frisco. She visits me every year, but she's already more than a month late this year."
A doctor. Jasso raised a mental image of Alina as sort of a duplicate of Grida, a plain, elderly woman with graying hair swept back into a bun at the nape of her neck. Right now, however, he had more important matters on his mind.
"Grida, do you know a good lawyer?" he blurted.
"Why, yes. Tello Distane is the best in town," she said. "Is there anything the matter, Lao?"
Silently, he pulled the crumpled letter from his pocket and handed it to her. It was from a prominent Nuyork legal firm. It said:
On behalf of our clients, Colorvue Publicity, Inc., we are instituting suit against you for one million dols in damages, for having disposed of psycho-paintings you contracted to accomplish for them.
"But isn't that the company you couldn't find any report of?" gasped Grida.
"It disappeared right off the map," said Lao grimly. "Now it's appeared again. I can't understand this at all!"
"I'd take it to Tello," said Grida firmly. "He can tell you what you should do."
He took his letter to Distane that afternoon. Small towns change little, and the attorney's office was upstairs over a department store, as his great-grandfather's probably had been.
Distane, a white-haired man with a leonine cast to his jaw, listened with fingertips together for a few moments, until the details of Lao's troubles began to unfold.
"Just a moment, Voter," he said. "What did you say your name is?"
"Lao Protik," answered Lao, somewhat nettled.
Moistening his index finger, Distane shuffled through some papers on his desk, peering at them with intense concentration. At last his face lit.
"Ah, Voter Protik," he said, settling back in his chair. "We have a new partner in our firm ... an experienced attorney, you understand, but new to our firm. I think Voter Attok is the man who should handle your case."
Getting to his feet with a grunt, Distane led Lao into an adjoining room which gave evidence of having been newly furnished not long before. An urbane-looking man of middle age sat behind the desk, twiddling a letter opener idly.
"This," said Distane heavily, "is Lao Protik, Voter Attok."
Distane left, shutting the door behind him. Lao stared at Attok. Attok raised his eyebrows quizzically.
"Excuse me," apologized Lao hurriedly. "I was just trying to remember if we had met before, Voter Attok. Your face seems very familiar to me."
"I don't believe so," said Attok in a well-modulated voice. "I gather from Voter Distane that you have a legal problem on ............