The Romantic Analogue Read online

  Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  Transcriber's Note:

  This etext was produced from If Worlds of Science Fiction September 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  THE

  Romantic Analogue

  By W. W. Skupeldyckle

  Illustrated by Ed Emsh

  _Norm Venner's fancy was pretty well fixed on thoughts of electronic calculators--until the invention started making passes at the inventor!_

  * * * * *

  Mathematicians are just like people: old, young, fat, thin, male,female. This one was male, thirty-five, with steady brown eyes and anice smile when he remembered to use it. His name was Norman Venner,and besides being a mathematical whiz generally, he had designed andbuilt an electronic brain, or calculator, which was in some wayssmarter than himself--and a lot less diffident.

  Electronic calculators are invariably given acronymic names such asBINAC, SEAC, and MANIAC, and nine out of ten of them are of thedigital type. This is a nice way of saying that they count on theirfingers. They're nearly as big as yachts, and cost more, but cancalculate a million times faster than any human.

  Norm's machine was of the analogue type, which is less flexible, lesscomplex, and vastly smaller and cheaper. He called it the ICWEA(ICK-wee-ah), which stood for "I Can Work 'Em All!" It could, too! Itwas especially good at deriving equations from curves, which wasreally something.

  Charley Oglethorpe burst into the office one morning, catching Norm ina brown study. "Hi, Genius. How is she perking now?"

  "All right, except the pen skips a little sometimes and makes a messycurve."

  "Have to damp that arm better. When can I have her to work on?"

  "Soon as I finish these Mugu problems."

  Charley stared at him.

  "Mugu. Guided-missile center. It's nice business if we can get it--thedigitals are all booked up months ahead, and the particular type ofproblem they send us is right up our alley."

  "I thought you were kidding me, like that Boolean Algebra stuff."

  "Wasn't kidding then, either."

  "I'll stick to instrument-making, thanks. You math guys never have anyfun."

  Norm shrugged, turned to the telephone, and called an extension.

  "Hermosa." It was a rich, pleasant voice.

  "Vic? How about the rest of the Mugu cards? Ready yet?"

  "I'll send them up right away. Just finished them."

  "Who was that?" Charley inquired.

  "Vic Hermosa. Smart boy."

  Charley smiled a little.

  * * * * *

  There was a knock at the door.

  "Come in," Norm called. The door opened, and a small, neat girlentered. Her long bob was dark and silky, but windblown. She tossedher head and her hair settled into place, as if she had just brushedit. She extended a pack of punched cards.

  "Thank you," Norm said, gravely.

  The girl looked up at him suddenly, and he stepped back a little. Shehad surprising, deep-violet eyes, and their glance seemed to have atangible impact. She nodded grave acknowledgment and left.

  "Damn it, I wish I could do that!" Norm complained.

  "Make goo-goo eyes?"

  "No. Shake my head so my hair would automatically be combed like hers.I've been fighting this cowlick ever since I've been a kid--stockingcaps, gunk, the works. Still got it. And the part moves around and Ihave to hunt for it."

  "Know who she is?"

  "Nope. Clerk, messenger, I guess. They're always hiring new ones."

  "Doesn't she ever speak?"

  "Of course she--come to think of it, I've never heard her. Must sayit's a relief after the usual yackety-yack. Haven't anything to talkto her about, anyway. She's just a child."

  "A pretty one, though."

  "Yes, she is."

  "You sure don't know anything about women. If anyone made eyes at methat way, I'd do something about it."

  "What, for instance?" Norm inquired dryly.

  "Well, of course, I'm married. But I'd find out who she was, anyhow.Sometimes I think you're dead and don't know it."

  "Sometimes I agree with you," Norm said. He fed one of the punch cardsinto the transmitter head, which fingered the holes and told ICWEAwhat the problem was. ICWEA began drawing a curve on the curve tracer.It would have taken Norm or anyone else days to arrive at the answer."See? Skips here and there, but I can ink in the gaps."

  "Looks like the pen catches on the paper a little. I'll grind thepoint while I'm at it. Say, that thing really thinks, doesn't it?"

  "In a way. Generally, the digitals have it all over the analogues whenit comes to reasoning, but I built an extra brain into her."

  "Where?"

  "The 'Y' path. Remember? Tries several appropriate methods insuccession. I analyzed my own methods of attack, and built the samemethods into her. She's an electronic _me_, except faster and moreaccurate."

  "I bet. She's more alive than you are. Why don't you step out alittle? First thing you know, you'll be getting old, and it'll be toolate."

  "Leave the match-making to the women. I may be old, but I'm not an oldfool. It's fall, not spring."

  "Yeah? All you need to be an old fool is just a little more time."

  * * * * *

  Norm ignored him, and took a card from his desk. It seemed to be anextra, not with the pack. He put it in the machine. The curve-tracerbegan to draw a rather abrupt curve, which meandered half across thesheet before Norm realized what it was. Suddenly, an image leaped tohis mind's eye and he watched with fascination while the pen tracedthis mathematical impossibility to the far end of the paper, and inobedience to several successive negative factors in the problemretraced in the opposite direction a little lower down.

  A head, a slightly lifted elbow, full rounded breast, a kneeluxuriously drawn up, a dangling arm, all in one continuous line.There was nothing obvious about it; it was formalized, but with theindividual style that is the artist's signature. Once seen, the imagepersisted.

  "Hey, Charley, look at this!"

  "Yeah. What about it?"

  "What about it! You ever see anything like it?"

  "Sure. It's a closed loop, like a hysteresis curve."

  "_An_ hysteresis curve. But this isn't one. Look closely."

  "Of course, it has harmonics and variables in it. Might be one ofthose gas-discharge curves, if the gas tube happened to be defective.I've seen some funny...."

  "Look! It's a reclining figure, with the head turned towardyou--see?--and the forearm over the head--_here_. Breast, knee here,foot with the toe pointed, calf, thigh, and the near arm hanging.Remarkable, once you see it...."

  "You're crazy. All I can see is a closed loop with some wrinkles init."

  "Why, it's nearly as plain as a photograph! I can't understand...."

  "Plain, my eye! If that's the arm hanging down, and this the hand,where are the fingers? That 'hand' is just an oval. You got someimagination if you can get a reclining figure out of that."

  "Not a nude of the beer-garden type, I grant you. This is real art.Know what this means? Have you any idea how complex a formula must beto trace a curve like this? Just a plain hyperbola is bad enough. Thisis a test of the machine. Those Mugu boys have worked out this formulato see if she could break it down and draw the equivalent curve,though I don't see how they did it. Even the larger digitals wouldfind this a tough nut to crack, but our baby i
s a whiz at curves, see?I wonder how they justified the machine-time on it. Of course it isbarely possible that they derived the equation themselves, but itmust have taken weeks if they did."

  "Maybe it took us long as you say, but I still can't see any recliningfigure in that curve. It's just a closed curve with some wiggles andbumps on it."

  "In any case, I'm going to send this to Mugu right away. They'll wantto know how long it took."

  "I wouldn't, if I were you."

  "Why not?"

  "Maybe trouble developed in the machine. Better run some more cardsthrough it first.