omputation. Forty years
of history for almost five hundred planets had to be abstracted
and summarized and translated from verbal symbols to the
electro-mathematical language of computers and fed in. Conn and Sylvie
and General Shanlee and the three men and two women Conn had taught on
Koshchei worked and rested briefly and worked again. Finally, it was
finished.

"General; you're the oldest Merlin hand," Conn said, gesturing to the
red button at the main control panel, "You do it."

"You do it, Conn. None of us would be here except for you."

"Thank you, General."

He pressed the button. They all stood silently watching the output
slot.

Even a positronic computer does not work instantaneously. Nothing
does. Conn took his eyes from the slot from which the tape would come,
and watched the second-hand of the clock above it. The wait didn't
seem like hours to him; it only seemed like seventy-five seconds, that
way. Then the bell rang, and the tape began coming out.

It took another hour and a half of button-punching; the Braille-like
symbols on the tape had to be retranslated, and even Merlin couldn't
do that for itself. Merlin didn't think in human terms.

It was the same as before. In ignorance, the peoples of the Federation
worlds would go on, striving to keep things running until they wore
out, and then sinking into apathetic acceptance. Deprived of hope,
they would turn to frantic violence and smash everything they most
wanted to preserve. Conn pushed another button.

The second information-request went in: _What is the best course to be
followed under these conditions by the people of Poictesme?_ It had
taken some time to phrase that in symbols a computer would find
comprehensible; the answer, at great length, emerged in two minutes
eight seconds. Retranslating it took five hours.

In the beginning and for the first ten years, it was, almost item for
item, the Maxwell Plan. Export trade, specialized in luxury goods.
Brandies and wines, tobacco; a long list of other exportable
commodities, and optimum markets. Reopening of industrial plants;
establishment of new industries. Attainment of economic
self-sufficiency. Cultural self-sufficiency; establishment of
universities, institutes of technology, research laboratories. Then
the Maxwell Plan became the Merlin Plan; the breakup of the Federation
was a fact that entered into the computation. Build-up of military
strength to resist aggression by other planeta