lies." He drew himself up stiffly as he said this. Then abruptly
he consulted the chronometer on the far wall.

"Excuse me just a moment, Mr. Tanter," he said. "It's time to feed the
daily tax computation from Finance. We have to start a little earlier on
that these days--the new taxes, you know."

As Krayton moved off Tanter's thin smile widened just a little. As soon
as Krayton was out of sight he stepped with his odd, crow-like stride to
the numerical panel, punched two-plus-two, then adjusted the Operations
pointer to HOLD. After that he punched three-plus-one, and HOLD once
more.

He moved over to the _Validity Selector_, switched the numerical panel
in, closed the circuit.

In his dry voice he murmured to the whole control rack: "Three-plus-one
makes four, two-plus-two makes four. Three-plus-one, two-plus-two--tell
me which is really true."

All through the master computer relays clicked and tubes glowed as the
problem was sent to all the sub-computers in their own special terms.
Food, Production, Labor, Public Information, War, Peace, Education,
Science and so forth.

All over Computer City the solenoids moved their contacts and the
filaments turned cherry red. Oscillating circuits hummed silently to
themselves in perfect Q. The life warmth of hysteresis pulsed and
throbbed along wires and channels. _Three-plus-one, two-plus-two--tell
me which is really true._ The problem criss-crossed in and out, around,
about, checking, cross-checking, re-checking as The Computer 'thought'
about the problem.

Which was really true?

Even before Krayton returned parts of The Computer had begun to get red
hot. It hummed in some places and in the other places relays going back
and forth in indecision made an unhealthy rattling noise.

Little Mr. Tanter beamed happily to himself as he recalled the words of
an old directive The Computer itself had issued in the matter of public
thought control. _When a brain is faced with two absolutely equal
alternatives complete breakdown invariably results._

Mr. Tanter kept smiling and rocked back and forth on his feet as Krayton
had done. Before nightfall The Computer would be a useless and
overheated mass of plastic and metal!

He took a printed folder from his pocket and casually dropped it on the
floor where someone would be sure to find it. It was one of the
pamphlets the Prims were always leaving around.

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Fantast