hurled at the luminaries present were reproduced almost verbatim by the press, but the speech itself was so totally passed over that my curiosity was aroused.
When I returned home, I looked up Doctor Diagoras but could not find his name either in the Cybernetic Problems yearbooks or in the latest edition of Who’s Who. So I called Professor Corcoran. Corcoran said he did not know the “madman’s” address, but would not give it to me even if he did. That was all I needed to take a serious interest in Diagoras. I placed a number of queries in the classifieds, and to my amazement met with instant success. I received a letter, dry and concise, written in a rather unfriendly tone; the doctor agreed to receive me “on his estate” in Crete. The map indicated that the estate was no more than sixty miles from the place of the legendary Minotaur.
A cyberneticist with his own estate in Crete, engaged in solitary, mysterious research! That same afternoon I flew to Athens. There was no further flight connection, so I boarded a ship and arrived at the island the next morning. I rented a car. The road was terrible — as was the heat. The surrounding hills were the color of burnt copper. The car, my duffel bag, my clothes, and finally my face were covered with dust.
During the last few miles I did not come across a living soul; there was no one I could ask for directions. Diagoras had told me in the letter to stop at the thirtieth milestone, because I would be unable to drive any farther, so I parked the car in the meager shade of some umbrella pines and began penetrating the dense brush on foot. The ground was overgrown with typical Mediterranean vegetation, so unattractive up close. It was out of the question to turn off any path; my clothes would have caught immediately on the sun-scorched brambles. I wandered over the stony trails for nearly three hours, bathed in sweat. I cursed myself for a fool. What did I care about the man and his story? I had set out at noon, when the heat was greatest, and since I had gone without lunch, I now began to feel pangs of hunger. I finally returned to the car. It had already emerged from the narrow strip of shade. The leather seats seared like an oven, and the whole interior reeked with the nauseous odor of gasoline and heated paint.
Suddenly a lone sheep appeared from around the bend. It came up to me, bleated in a humanlike voice, and toddled off to one side. As it was disappearing from view, I noticed a narrow path running up a slope. I expected to see a shepherd, but the sheep disappeared and no one came along.
Although the sheep was not a particularly trustworthy guide, I got out of the car again and began pushing through the brush. Soon the way became easier. It was already growing dark when, beyond a small lemon grove, there loomed the outline of a large building. The thickets gave way to grass so dry that it rustled underfoot like charred paper. The house, shapeless, dark, and exceedingly ugly, with the ruins of a portal, was surrounded in a wide radius by a high wire fence. The sun was setting and I still could not find an entrance. I began calling loudly, but with no result — all the windows were shuttered. I was losing hope that there was anyone inside when the gate opened and a man appeared.
He gestured to me the way to go; the wicket was in such a dense clump of bushes that I never would have suspected its existence. Protecting my face from the branches, I managed to reach it; it had already been opened with a key. The man who had opened it looked like a mechanic or a butcher. He was a paunchy, short-necked individual with a sweaty skullcap on his bald head. He wore no jacket, only a long oilskin apron over a shirt with rolled-up sleeves.
“Excuse me — does Doctor Diagoras live here?” I asked. He looked up at me with an expressionless face, large, misshapen, and puffy. The face of a butcher. But his eyes were bright and razor-sharp. Though he said not a word, I could tell from his glance that it was he.
“Excuse me,” I repeated, “you’re Doctor Diagoras, aren’t you?”
He gave me his hand. It was as small and soft as a woman’s, but it gripped mine with unexpected strength. He flexed the skin of his head, causing the skullcap to slide back, stuck both his hands in his apron pockets, and asked me with a shade of contempt:
“Just what do you want from me?”
“Nothing,” I shot back. I had undertaken this journey on the spur of the moment, wanting to meet this extraordinary person, and was prepared for almost anything. But I would not put up with insults. I was giving thought to my return trip as he stared at me, went on staring, and finally said:
“I guess it’s all right. Follow me.”
It was now evening. He took me to the gloomy mansion and entered a dim hall; when I stepped inside behind him I heard an echo, as if we stood in the nave of a church. Diagoras made his way through this darkness with ease. He did not warn me about the staircase step, and I tripped. Cursing to myself, I went up the stairs toward the faint light of a half-open door.
We entered a room with a single, shuttered window. The shape of this room, especially its unusually high, arched ceiling, reminded me more of the interior of a tower than of a home. It was crammed with huge, dark pieces of furniture, their polish dulled by age, including chairs with uncomfortably sculptured backs. On the walls hung oval miniatures, and in the corner stood a clock, a monstrous thing with a dial of burnished copper and a pendulum the size of a Hellenic shield.
The room was quite dark; the light bulbs in an intricate lamp with dusty shades barely illuminated a square table. The somber walls, covered with reddish-brown paper, absorbed the light, keeping the corners of the room black. Diagoras stood by the table, his hands in his apron pockets. It seemed as if we were waiting for something. I had just put my duffel bag on the floor when the great clock began ringing out the hour. In a clear, loud tone it struck eight; then something in it grated, and an old man’s voice exclaimed:
“Diagoras, you scoundrel! Where are you? How dare you treat me this way! Speak to me, do you hear?! For God’s sake, Diagoras… there’s a limit!” Both rage and despair trembled in these words. But what surprised me most was that I recognized the voice; it belonged to Professor Corcoran.
“If you don’t speak…” the voice threatened, but suddenly the clockwork grated again and fell silent.
“What…” I said. “Did you put a phonograph in there? Why do you waste your time on such games?”
My intenion was to nettle him. But Diagoras, as though not hearing me, pulled a cord, and the same gruff voice filled the room:
“Diagoras, you’ll regret this, you can be certain! No matter what you’ve been through, you have no excuse for abusing me. If you think I’d stoop to beg…”
“You already have,” Diagoras said nonchalantly.
“That’s a lie. You’re a scoundrel, an arrant scoundrel, unworthy of the name of scientist! The world will learn of your …”
The toothed gears turned, and again there was silence.
“A phonograph?” Diagoras sneered. “A phonograph, you say? No, my dear sir. The chime contains Professor Corcoran
“How do you mean?” I stammered. The fat man considered whether I was worth an answer.
“I mean it literally,” he said at last. “I reconstituted all his personality traits, modeled them into a suitable system, miniaturized his soul electronically, and thus obtained an exact portrait of that famous person, which I installed in this clock…”
“You say it’s not just a recorded voice?”
He shrugged.
“Try it yourself. Have a chat with him, although he’s not in the best of moods — but in his circumstances that’s understandable. You wish to talk to him?” He pointed to the cord. “Go ahead.”
“No,” I replied. What was this? Madness? A macabre joke? Revenge?
“But the real Corcoran is in his laboratory right now, on the continent,” I added.
“Of course. This is only his mental portrait. But it’s perfectly faithful, in no way inferior to the original.”
“Why did you make it?”
“I needed it. Once I had to construct a model of the human brain; that was a preliminary step to another, more difficult problem. The person was of no importance here. I chose Corcoran — who knows? — because it struck my fancy. He had created so many thinking machines himself — I thought it would be amusing to shut him up in one of them, particularly in the role of a chime.”
“Does he know…?” I asked quickly as Diagoras turned toward the door.
“Yes,” he replied indifferently. “I even made it possible for him to talk to himself — by telephone. But enough. I didn’t intend to show off; it was a coincidence that the clock struck eight when you came.”
