ring of a final decision in men's age-old
arguments; but elsewhere such discussions were _verboten_, and subject
to swift, stiff penalties.

There were some who thought quietly to themselves that perhaps in the
reaction to horror they had voted too much power to a small group of
men known as Security, but there were others, weary of the insecurity
of world power-politics, who felt that Security was a blessing, and
would for all time protect all men in the freedom of their own
beliefs. The pressures had been great, and the pendulum of political
weight had swung far in an opposite direction. In fact, man had
achieved that which he would deny--in a reach for freedom, he had made
the first turn in the coil that would bind him--in the coil that would
bind the mass of the many to the will of the very few.

* * * * *

In school in Moscow, these things touched Bessandra's life only
remotely. The concepts, the talk, the propaganda from Radio Moscow,
these she heard, but they were not her main interests.

Her main interests were two--one, the fascination which the giant
computer at Moscow University held for her; and two, the students
around her. People, she had noted, had behavior patterns very similar
to the complex computer; not as individual units, though as individual
units they could also be as surprisingly obtuse as the literal-minded
reaction of the computer; but in statistical numbers they had an even
greater tendency to act as the computer did.

The information fed them and their reactions to it had a logic all its
own; not a logic of logic, but a logic of reaction. And the reaction
could be controlled, she noted, in the same self-corrective manner
that was applied to logic in the interior of the computer--the
feedback system.

It was obvious that with a statistical group of people, the net result
of action could be effectively channeled by one person in an obscure
position acting as a feedback mechanism to the group, and with
selective properties applied to the feedback.

At one point she had quietly, and for no other reason than to test
this point to her own satisfaction, sat back and created a riot of the
women students at the University, without once appearing either as the
cause or the head or leader in the revolt. The revolt in itself had
been absolutely senseless, but the result had been achieved with
surprisingly little effort on the part of one individual.

Computers and