"Sure. Sure." Niccolo would have agreed readily to much more onerous conditions.
Paul's attention returned to the Bard.
It was saying, " 'If that is the case,' said the king, stroking his beard and frowning till clouds filled the sky and lightning flashed, 'you w'" see to it that my entire land is freed of flies by this time day after tomorrow or-' "
"All we've got to do," said Paul, "is open it up-" He shut the Bard off again and was prying at its front panel as he spoke.
"Hey," said Niccolo, in sudden alarm. "Don't break it."
"I won't break it," said Paul impatiently. "I know all about these things." Then, with sudden caution, "Your father and mother home?"
"No."
"All right, then." He had the front panel off and peered in. "Boy, this is a one-cylinder thing."
He worked away at the Bard's innards. Niccolo, who watched with painful suspense, could not make out what he was doing.
Paul pulled out a thin, flexible metal strip, powdered with dots. "That's the Bard's memory cylinder. I'll bet its capacity for stories is under a trillion."
"What are you going to do, Paul?" quavered Niccolo.
"I'll give it vocabulary."
"How?"
"Easy. I've got a book here. Mr. Daugherty gave it to me at school."
Paul pulled the book out of his pocket and pried at it till he had its plastic jacket off. He unreeled the tape a bit, ran it through the vocalizer, which he turned down to a whisper, then placed it within the Bard's vitals. He made further attachments.
"What'll that do?"
"The book will talk and the Bard will put it all on its memory tape."
"What good will that do?"
"Boy, you're a dope! This book is all about computers and automation and the Bard will get all that information. Then he can stop talking about kings making lightning when they frown."
Niccolo said, "And the good guy always wins anyway. There's no excitement."
"Oh, well," said Paul, watching to see if his setup was working properly, "that's the way they make Bards. They got to have the good guy win and make the bad guys lose and things like that. I heard my father talking about it once. He says that without censorship there'd be no telling what the younger generation would come to. He says it's bad enough as it is... There, it's working fine."
Paul brushed his hands against one another and turned away from the Bard. He said, "But listen, I didn't tell you my idea yet. It's the best thing you ever heard, I bet. I came right to you, because I figured you'd come in with me."
"Sure, Paul, sure."
"Okay. You know Mr. Daugherty at school? You know what a funny kind of guy he is. Well, he likes me, kind of."
"I know."
"I was over at his house after school today."
"You were?"
"Sure. He says I'm going to be entering computer school and he wants to encourage me and things like that. He says the world needs more people who can design advanced computer circuits and do proper programing."
"Oh?"
Paul might have caught some of the emptiness behind that monosyllable. He said impatiently, "Programing! I told you a hundred times. That's when you set up problems for the giant computers like Multivac to work on. Mr. Daugherty says it gets harder all the time to find people who can really run computers. He says anyone can keep an eye on the controls and check off answers and put through routine problems. He says the trick is to expand research and figure out ways to ask the right questions, and that's hard.
"Anyway, Nickie, he took me to his place and showed me his collection of old computers. It's kind of a hobby of his to collect old computers. He had tiny computers you had to push with your hand, with little knobs all over it. And he had a hunk of wood he called a slide rule with a little piece of it that went in and out. And some wires with balls on them. He even had a hunk of paper with a kind of thing he called a multiplication table."
Niccolo, who found himself only moderately interested, said, "A paper table?"
"It wasn't really a table like you eat on. It was different. It was to help people compute. Mr. Daugherty tried to explain but he didn't have much time and it was kind of complicated, anyway."
"Why didn't people just use a computer?"
"That was before they had computers," cried Paul.
"Before?"
"Sure. Do you think people always had computers? Didn't you ever hear of cavemen?"
Niccolo said, "How'd they get along without computers?"
"I don't know. Mr. Daugherty says they just had children any old time and did anything that came into their heads whether it would be good for everybody or not. They didn't even know if it was good or not. And farmers grew things with their hands and people had to do all the work in the factories and run all the machines."
"I don't believe you."
"That's what Mr. Daugherty said. He said it was just plain messy and everyone was miserable... Anyway, let me get to my idea, will you?"
"Well, go ahead. Who's stopping you?" said Niccolo, offended.
"All right. Well, the hand computers, the ones with the knobs, had little squiggles on each knob. And the slide rule had squiggles on it. And the multiplication table was all squiggles. I asked what they were. Mr. Daugherty said they were numbers."
"What?"
"Each different squiggle stood for a different number. For 'one' you made a kind of mark, for 'two' you make another kind of mark, for 'three' another one and so on."