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  She offered her hand without rising. “I am Thea Beldaniel.” The clasp was perfunctory on both sides. “Please be seated, Freeman Kubichek.”

  He lowered his frame into a lounger. It extended an arm, offering excellent cigars. He took one. “Thanks,” he repeated. “Uh, now that I’m here, I can drop the nom du phone. Most visitors do, I’m sure.”

  “Actually, no. There is seldom any reason, until they are alone with the machines. Of course, we are bound to recognize many because they are prominent.” Thea Beldaniel paused before adding, with a tactfulness that appeared equally studied: “Prominent in this galactic neighborhood, that is. No matter how important some beings may be, no living brain can recognize them all, when civilization extends across scores of light-years. You, sir, for example, are obviously from a colonized planet. Your bearing suggests that its social structure is aristocratic, yourself born into the nobility. The Commonwealth does not have hereditary distinctions. Therefore your home world must be autonomous. But that leaves quite a few possibilities.”

  Since he had long been curious about this organization, he tried to strike up a genuine conversation. “Right, Freelady. I’m not on political business, though. I work for an Earth-based company, Solar Spice & Liquors. My real name’s David Falkayn. From Hermes, to be exact.”

  “Everyone knows of Nicholas van Rijn,” she nodded. “I have met him personally a few times.”

  I must confess to myself he’s the main reason I’ve been lionized, Falkayn thought. Reflected glory. By now, high society is a-buzz about me. Invitations are pouring in, from the emperors of industry, their wives, daughters, hangers-on, to the bold space ranger and his partners, in honor of our (largely unspecified) exploits among the far stars. But that’s because we aren’t just any bold space rangers, we’re Old Nick’s bold space rangers.

  A paradox remains. The Beldaniel sisters, Kim Yoon-Kun, Anastasia Herrera, Freeman and Freelady Latimer—the founders and owners of Serendipity, Inc., which aims to correlate all the information in known space—they haven’t heard about us. They don’t go out in society. They keep to themselves, in these offices and in that castle where outsiders never visit . . . I truly would like to get a rise out of this woman.

  She wasn’t bad-looking, he realized piecemeal. Indeed, she could be called handsome: tall, lithe, well-formed, no matter how much the severe white slacksuit tried to conceal that fact. Her hair was cut short, but this only emphasized a good shape of head; her face was practically classic, except that you thought of Athene as showing a bit more warmth. Her age was hard to guess. She must be at least in her forties. But having taken care of her body and, doubtless, advantage of the best antisenescence treatments, she might be older by a decade, and yet show merely the same gray streak in brown tresses, slight dryness in the clear pale skin, crow’s-feet about the eyes. Those eyes were her best feature, Falkayn decided, wide-spaced, large, luminous green.

  He started his cigar and rolled the smoke about his tongue. “We may find ourselves bargaining,” he said. “Don’t you buy information, either for cash or for remittance of fees?”

  “Certainly. The more the better. I must warn you that we set our own prices, and sometimes refuse to pay anything, even after the item has been given us. You see, its value depends on what is already stored in the memory banks. And we can’t let others see this. That would risk betrayal of secrets entrusted to us. If you wish to sell, Freeman Falkayn, you must rely on our reputation for fair dealing.”

  “Well, I’ve visited a lot of planets, species, cultures—”

  “Anecdotal material is acceptable, but not highly paid for. What we most desire is thorough, accurate, documented, quantitative facts. Not necessarily about new discoveries in space. What is going on in the major civilized worlds is often of greater interest.”

  “Look,” he said bluntly, “no offense meant, but I’ve been wondering. I work for Freeman van Rijn, and in an important capacity. Suppose I offered you details about his operations that he didn’t want released. Would you buy them?”

  “Probably. But we would not then release them to others. Our whole position in the Polesotechnic League depends on our trustworthiness. This is one reason why we have so few employees: a minimal staff of experts and technicians—all nonhuman—and otherwise our machines. In part, it is a good reason for us to be notoriously asocial. If Freeman van Rijn knows we have not been partying with Freeman Harleman of Venusian Tea & Coffee, he has the fewer grounds for suspecting us of collusion with the latter.”

  “Coffee grounds?” Falkayn murmured.

  Thea Beldaniel folded her hands in her lap, sat back, and said: “Perhaps, coming from the frontier as you do, Freeman, you don’t quite understand the principle on which Serendipity, Inc. works. Let me put it in oversimplified language.

  “The problem of information retrieval was solved long ago, through electronic data storage, scanning, coding, and replication. But the problem of information usage continues acute. The preceptual universe of man and other space-traveling species is expanding still more rapidly than the universe of their exploration. Suppose you were a scientist or an artist, with what you believed was a new idea. To what extent has the thought of countless billions of other sophonts, on thousands of known worlds, duplicated your own? What might you learn from them? What might you contribute that is genuinely new? Well, you could ransack libraries and data centers, and get more information on any subject than is generally realized. Too much more! Not only could you not read it all in your lifetime, you could not pick out what was relevant. Still worse is the dilemma of a company planning a mercantile venture. What developments elsewhere in space will collide, compete, conceivably nullify their efforts? Or what positive opportunities are being overlooked, simply because no one can comprehend the overall picture?”

  “I’ve heard those questions asked,” Falkayn said. He spoke dryly, with puzzlement rather than resentment at being patronized. Was this woman so insensitive to human feelings—hell, to ordinary human common sense—that she must lecture a client as if he were some six-legged innocent newly hauled out of his planet’s Stone Age?

  “Obvious, of course,” she said imperturbably. “And in principle, the answer is likewise obvious. Computers should not merely scan, but sift data. They should identify possible correlations, and test them, with electronic speed and parallel-channel capacity. You might say they should make suggestions. In practice, this was difficult. Technologically, it required a major advance in cybernetics. Besides . . . the members of the League guarded their hard-won knowledge jealously. Why tell anything you knew to your rival? Or to public data centers, and thus indirectly to your rival? Or to a third party who was not your competitor but might well make a deal with your rival—or might decide to diversify his interests and himself become your rival?

  “Whether or not you could use a datum, it had cost you something to acquire. You would soon go bankrupt if you made a free gift of every item. And while secrets were traded, negotiations about this were slow and awkward.

  “Serendipity, Inc. solved the problem with improved systems—not only better robotics, but a better idea for exchanging knowledge.”

  Falkayn sat back with his cigar. He felt baffled, fascinated, the least bit frightened. This female was even weirder than he had been told the partners were. Giving a basic sales pitch to a man who’d already bought an appointment . . . in God’s name, why? Stories were rife about the origin of these people.

  But what story might account for the behavior he was observing?

  Beneath her quick, level words, intensity gathered: “The larger the information pool, the greater the probability of making a correlation that is useful to a given individual. Thus the creation of such a pool was to the general benefit, provided that no one gained a special advantage. This is the service that we have offered. We draw on ordinary sources, of course. And that in itself is valuable, there being so many libraries and memory banks scattered on so many planets. But in addition, we bu
y whatever anyone cares to tell, if it is worthwhile. And we sell back whatever other data may be of interest to him. The important point is, this is done anonymously. We founders of the business do not know or wish to know what questions you ask, what answers you get, what you relate, how the computers appraise it, what additional conclusions their logic circuits draw. Such things stay in the machines. We only concern ourselves, or our staff, with a specific problem if we are requested to. Otherwise our sole attention is on the statistics, the input-output average. Our firm has grown as trust in us has grown. Innumerable private investigations have shown that we favor no one, do not blurt anything out, and cannot be corrupted. Likewise has the accumulated expel ience of doing business with us.”

  She leaned forward. Her gaze was unblinking on him. “For example,” she said, “imagine that you did wish to sell us confidential information about your company. Mere word-of-mouth assertions would be filed, since a rumor or falsehood is also a datum, but would probably not be believed. The usual precautions against commercial espionage should safeguard documentary evidences. But if this fails—yes, we will buy it. Crosschecks will quickly show that we have bought thief’s goods, which fact is noted. If your employer was the only one who possessed the information, it will not be given out until somebody else has registered the same thing with us. But it will be taken into account by the logic circuits in preparing their recommendations—which they do impersonally for any client. That is to say, they might advise your employer’s rival against a certain course of action, because they know from the stolen information that this will be futile. But they will not tell him why they offer such counsel.”

  Falkayn got a word in fast while she caught up on her breathing: “That makes it to everybody’s advantage to consult you on a regular basis. And the more your machines are told during consultations, the better the advice they can give. Uh-huh. That’s how you grow.”

  “It is one mechanism of growth for us,” Thea Beldaniel said. “Actually, however, information theft is very minor. Why should Freeman van Rijn not sell us the fact that, say, one of his trading ships happened upon a planet where there is a civilization that creates marvelous sculptures? He is not in the art business to any significant extent. In exchange, he pays a much reduced fee to learn that a crew of hydrogen-breathing explorers have come upon an oxygen-atmosphere planet that produces a new type of wine.”

  “I’m not clear about one thing,” Falkayn said. “My impression is he’d have to come in person to be told any important fact. Is this true?”

  “Not in that particular case,” she answered. “His needs would be obvious. But we must safeguard privacy. You, for example—” She paused. The strangeness left her eyes; she said shrewdly: “I would guess that you plan to sit down before the machine and say, ‘My name is David Falkayn. Tell me whatever might be of special interest to me.’ No doubt you have good reason to expect that the memory banks include something about you. Now don’t you realize, sir, for your own protection, we can’t let anyone do this? We must ask for positive identification.”

  Falkayn reached into his pocket. She raised a palm. “No, no,” she said, “not to me. I don’t have to know whether you really are who you claim to be. But to the machine—retinal scan, fingerprints, the usual procedures if you are registered in the Commonwealth. If not, it will suggest other ways to establish yourself to its satisfaction.” She rose. “Come, I’ll take you there and demonstrate its operation.”

  Following her and watching, Falkayn couldn’t decide whether or not she walked like a frigid woman.

  No matter. A more interesting thought had struck him. He believed he could tell why she behaved the way she did, dwelt on elementary details though she must realize he knew most of them already. He’d encountered that pattern elsewhere. It was usually called fanaticism.

  III

  Seated alone—and yet not alone, for the great quasi-brain was there and had already spoken to him—Falkayn took a moment to consider his surroundings. Though he had spent his life with robots, including his beloved Muddlehead, this one felt eerie. He tried to understand why.

  He sat in an ordinary self-adjusting chair before an ordinary desk with the standard secretarial apparatus. Around him were bare gray walls, white fluorolight, odorless recycled air, a faint humming through stillness. Confronting him was a basic control panel and a large 3D screen, blank at the moment. What was strange?

  It must be subjective, he decided, his own reaction to the mystery about this organization. The detectives of a wary League had verified that the founder-owners of Serendipity, Inc. had no special ties to any other group—or, for that matter, to anyone or anything, human or nonhuman, throughout known space. But their origin remained obscure. Their chilly, graceless personalities (Thea Beldaniel was evidently typical of the whole half dozen) and aloofness from society only emphasized that basic isolation.

  Their secret could not be ferreted out. Quite apart from the regard for privacy inherent in today’s individualism, it wasn’t feasible. The universe is too big. This tiny segment of the fringe of one spiral arm of a single galaxy which we have somewhat explored and exploited . . . is too big. In going to thousands of suns that intrigue us, we have passed by literally millions of others. It will take centuries even to visit them, let alone begin to understand them a little. And meanwhile, and forever, beyond the outermost radius of our faring will lie nearly all the suns that exist.

  The partners had entered the Solar System in a cargo vessel loaded with heavy metals. Selling that for a good price, they established their information enterprise. Though they ordered many parts on Earth, the basic logic and memory units were brought from Elsewhere. Once, out of curiosity, Nicholas van Rijn had bribed a Commonwealth customs inspector; but that man merely said: “Look, sir, I verify that imports aren’t dangerous. I make sure they don’t carry disease, and aren’t going to blow up, that sort of thing. What else can we stop, under a free trade law? What Serendipity got was just a shipment of computer-type stuff. Not human made, I’m sure. You get an eye for, uh, style, after a few years in my job. And if, like you tell me, nobody can quite duplicate the kind of work it’s been doing since it was installed . . . well, jingles, sir, isn’t the answer plain to see? These people found a planet that can do tricks we aren’t up to yet, nobody we know about. They made a deal. They kept quiet. Wouldn’t you? Don’t you, sir?”

  Falkayn started from his reverie. The machine had spoken again. “Pardon?” he said. Instantly: What the devil am I doing, apologizing to a gadget? He picked his cigar from the rack above the disposer and took a nervous puff.

  “David Falkayn of Hermes and the Solar Spice & Liquors Company, your identity has been verified.” The voice was not the flat baritone of most human-built robots; it was high, with a curious whistling quality, and varied both pitch and speed in a way hard to describe. “Your name is associated with a number of accounts in these data banks, most notably the episodes involving Beta Centauri, Ikrananka, and Merseia.” Judas priest! Falkayn thought. How did it learn about Ikrananka? “Many items are logically connected with each of these, and in turn connected with other facts. You will understand that the total ramifications are virtually infinite. Thus it is necessary to select a point and search the association chains radiating from it in a limited number of directions. If none of them are productive, other lines are tried, and eventually other starting points, until a satisfactory result is obtained.” Or until I run out of money. “What type of search do you desire?”

  “Well . . . I—” Falkayn rallied his shaken wits. “How about new markets on extrasolar planets?”

  “Since confidential information is not released here, you are asking no service which ordinary data centers cannot provide.”

  “Now, wait. I want you to do what you’re uniquely built to do. Take the points Me and Cash, and see what association chains exist between ’em.”

  Did the humming louden, or did the silence deepen? Falkayn leaned back and struggled to relax
. Behind that panel, these walls, electrons and quanta hurtled through vacuum; charges and the absence of charges moved through crystal lattices; distorted molecules interacted with magnetic, electric, gravitational, nuclear fields; the machine thought.

  The machine dreamed.

  He wondered if its functioning was continuous, building immense webs of correlation and inference whether or not a client sat here. Quite probably; and in this manner, it came closer than any other entity to comprehending our corner of the universe. And yet the facts must be too many, the possible interconnections between them uncountable. The fruitful few were buried in that sheer mass. Every major discovery has involved a recognition of such rare meaningful associations. (Between the water level in a bath and the weight of gold; between the pessimism of a small-town parson and the mechanism of organic evolution; between the Worm Ouroboros, that biteth its own tail, and the benzene molecule—) Living creatures like Falkayn, coming from the living cosmos to the cave where this engine dwelt, must be what triggered its real action, made it perceive the significance of what had hitherto looked like another isolated fact.

  “David Falkayn of Hermes!” the machine called.

  “Yes?” He sat bolt upright and tensed.

  “A possibility. You will recall that, a number of years ago, you showed that the star Beta Centauri has planets in attendance.”

  Falkayn couldn’t help crowing, uselessly save that it asserted his importance in contrast to the huge blind brain: “I should forget? That was what really attracted the notice of the higher-ups and started me to where I am. Blue giant suns aren’t supposed to have planets. But this one does.”

  “That is recorded, like most news,” said the machine, unimpressed. “Your tentative explanation of the phenomenon was later verified. While the star was condensing, a nucleus still surrounded by an extensive nebular envelope, a swarm of rogue planets chanced by. Losing energy to friction with the nebula, they were captured.