"Just what is your stake in this, Senator?" Lindsay asked.
Anderson said, "I could give you a score of 'good' reasons, Zalen. But my real reason is this—I'm damned if I want to see professional politicians become rubber-stamps to a computer. When Sylac was first used officially three decades ago, it looked as if it might be a help. All we had to do was palm off all unpopular decisions on the machine.
"Elsac, however, has proved to be something else," he went on. "It is making too damned many of our decisions for us—and thanks to our having set Sylac up as a master-brain god we can't controvert its judgment. When President Giovannini gets his new Giac computer working we might as well shut up shop. And the announcement that Giac is in operation may come at any time now."
Lindsay studied him, then said, "Your real complaint then, Fernando, is that the computers deprive you of patronage and power."
"That's about it," said the senator from New Mexico. "We'll be reduced to the level of the political commissars of the Soviet nations. The scientists and symbolic logicians who feed and tend the computers will actually be running the country. And the world."
"And just where do I come into this?" Lindsay asked.
"You, Zalen, are the last representative of the last sizeable and important human organism that is not dependent upon computer judgment," said Anderson. "That's our side of it. From your own side—if you already distrust computer decisions, as in the case of the British hunting boots—you surely don't want to see them in full control."
"Hardly," said Lindsay. "But at the same time I have no desire to be assassinated or to be the cause of an Earth-Mars war."
"Think it over, Zalen," said Anderson. "I need hardly tell you that I am not speaking for myself alone." He got up, put down his glass, bade Maria farewell and left the Martian alone with her.