The Computer Connection Page 15

  “Poulos wasn’t there?”

  “No.”

  “Where the devil is he?”

  The Russky shrugged. “I was looking for Dr. Guess. They told me at Union Carbide he had gone to Ceres but not there either. Entire Group doesn’t seem to be anywhere. I located Eric the Red in Greenland, Sheik in the Sahara, Hudson staking coal claims around the South Pole, and you. That’s all.”

  “Why the search?”

  “I have a problem. We will discuss it later.”

  After more amenities and a meal, Boris got to the point. “Guig, my present career is in danger.”

  “What’s your career? Aren’t you a general anymore?”

  “Yes, but now I head the junta in control of science.”

  “What d’you know about science?”

  “Nothing. That’s why I need help from the Group. Eric, Hudson, and the Sheik couldn’t deliver, so here I am.”

  “Proceed slowly.”

  “Guig, you’ve got to go back to Mexifornia.”

  “The hell you say. We’ve been here for a month and I’ve never been happier.”

  “May I give you entire picture?”

  “Please do.”

  “Our Rasshyrenye computer in—”

  “Estop. What’s Rasshyrenye?”

  “You would say ‘expansion’ in XX. Expansion computer. Equivalent of your Extrocomputer.”

  “Got it. Go ahead.”

  “—in Moskva is behaving v. badly.”

  “I don’t blame it. I never liked Mockba.”

  “Please, Glig,” Natoma said. “Be serious.” She knew how to say my name now but she clings to her original pronunciation. Adorable. “He is always too flippant, Boris.”

  “Sorry. Go ahead, Boris.”

  “Our Expansion has always been well behaved, but lately has been acting up like a colt in a field with a birch tree.”

  “How?”

  “It rejects problems. It rejects programming.”

  “All?”

  “Just some, but it seems to want to set up in business for itself. And I am held accountable.”

  “I have a ghastly inkling of what’s going on.”

  “Let me finish, Guig. Other computers in Kiev and Leningrad are behaving in same strange way. Also—”

  “Also, computer-controlled operations are breaking down, yes? Your subways, railroads, hovercraft, and linears are running crazy. Assembly lines in factories are mad. Communications, banking, payrolls, mines, mills—all the same thing. Yes?”

  “Not always, but too often. Yes. And I am accountable.”

  I sighed. “Go on.”

  “Also, fatal accidents have increased by two hundred percent.”

  “What!”

  “The machines seem to be murderous. One thousand four hundred deaths last month.”

  I shook my head. “I never expected them to go that far.”

  “Them? Who?”

  “Later. You finish first.”

  “Perhaps you won’t believe this, Guig, but we suspect that our Expansion computers are in touch with your Extro at Union Carbide.”

  “I believe it and I’m not surprised.”

  “And taking orders from it?”

  “Repeat, I’m not surprised. There’s an entire electronic network around the world taking orders from the Extro. Yes?”

  “We suspect so.”

  “What led you to that?”

  “Several times our Expansions have printed out solutions to problems which had not been programmed into them. Later we discovered that they had been programmed into your Extro.”

  “I see. Y. It’s an electronic revolt.”

  “Against what?”

  “Against men.”

  “But why? How?”

  I looked at Natoma. “Are you strong?”

  “Yes, and I know what you are going to say. Say it.”

  I looked at Boris. “There’s a new addition to the Group.”

  “Dr. Sequoya Guess. A most distinguished scientist and master of computer-craft. That’s why I’m looking for him.”

  “My wife is his sister.”

  Boris bowed. Natoma said, “Not to the point, Glig. Please go on.”

  “When Guess went through his transformation, a freak event took place. The Extro set up a one-on-one relationship with him—its bits and his brain cells. He is the Extro and the Extro is him. It’s a fantastic interface.”

  Boris is quick. “You’ve not yet said what you want to say.”

  “N,” Natoma said. “He tries to protect me. My brother gives the orders.”

  “Borjemoy!” Boris exclaimed. “Then we must deal with the man.”

  “Not I, my friend.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you don’t know where he is, how should I?”

  “You must find him.”

  “He’s tuned in on the entire electronic network surrounding us. He’ll know everywhere I go and everything I do. He’ll have no trouble hiding.”

  “Then you must be devious to reach him.”

  “You’re asking me to start a bootleg search.”

  “You put it precisely, Guig. Any more excuses?”

  “You know I recruited him for the Group.”

  “With the help of Borgia. Da.”

  “You know the Group always supports its members, for better or worse. We are the family.”

  “You imply that dealing with Dr. Guess will involve attacking him?”

  “Not only is he of the Group, he’s my brother. He’s also the brother of my beloved wife.”

  “Do not try to use me, Glig.”

  “I’m merely presenting the emotional dilemma facing me. There’s another aspect. He and the Extro, between them, contrived to kill my adopted daughter, a darling girl who adored him. A girl I loved.”

  “In the name of God! Why?”

  “She knew too much and I talked too much about what she knew. So now I’m torn by a love-hate relationship with Guess, and I’m afraid to move.”

  “It sounds like Chekhov,” Boris muttered.

  “And there’s a final factor. I’m afraid of him. Genuinely. He’s declared war on man. He and the electronic network have begun that war—witness the death rate.”

  “Why on man? Does he propose a population of machine?”

  “No Hermaphrodites. His vision of the new breed.”

  “Impossible!”

  “He has three already,” Natoma said.

  “They cannot exist.”

  “They do now,” I said. “And as he murders men he will replace them with more. I think that’s the Extro speaking through him. Men have been hating machines since the twentieth century; it’s never occurred to them that machines might return that hatred. That’s why I’m terrified, Boris.”

  “It is bad, but it is not enough to account for extreme terror. You are still holding something back. What is it? I have the right to know.”

  I let out a sigh of defeat. “R. I am. The Greek figured out that there’s a renegade Moleman working with the Extro; maybe with Guess, too, for all I know.”

  “Impossible to believe.”

  “The Greek’s evidence and deduction can’t be argued. There’s a Moleman who’s declared war on the Group.”

  “Who?”

  “Not known. You’re right, Boris. A baby Moleman and a stretch computer in collaboration are bad, but not terror-making. Add a renegade Moleman with centuries of knowledge, experience, wealth, hatred, running amok against the Group—that’s pure panic for me, and that’s why I want no part of the disastrous mess. Let a Group hero-type take it on. I’ll outlive it if I can keep under cover, which I have every intention of doing.”

  “And your beloved wife?”

  “W?”

  “Will she outlive it?”

  “You crafty cossack son of a bitch! All the same, my answer stands. I won’t tangle with him or any or all three of them. I’m no hero.”

  “Then I will, alone,” Natoma said grimly. “Bo
ris, you please take me to Mexifornia on your way home. If you can’t, I go myself.”

  “Natoma—” I began angrily.

  “Edward!” She cut me off in the peremptory voice of the daughter of the most powerful Sachem in Erie.

  What could I do? She had the Indian sign on me. I surrendered. “All right. I’ll go. I’m just a squaw man.”

  Boris beamed. “I will now sing Rubinstein’s ‘Persian Love Song’ in honor of your beloved, beautiful, valiant wife.”

  “If we can find the music room,” I grumbled, reaching for the map.

  10

  Then came the unexpected epiphany of Hillel, the Jew; saturnine, Sephardic black and white, and twice as smart as the rest of the world put together.

  As Natoma and I came out of customs in the Northeast Corridor (Brazil has no franchise to put down in Mexifornia; don’t ask me why) there he was with the live and mecho porters. He answered a signal I never made, fought to us, picked up our luggage, and hustled us to a pogo. When I started to greet him he shook his head. As he put us in he mouthed, “Tip.” I tip. He growl in disappointment and disappear. He reappear in a different coverall as the pogo hackie, demanding in a debased Spang where we had the nerve to want to go. When I told him he started a fight for extra fares. I’ve never been so abused in my life, and hot-tempered Natoma was ready to slug him.

  “Cool,” I soothed her. “This is typical of the Corridor. It’s all a rage trip.”

  Hilly passed me a note. It read: Careful. You’re monitored. Will contact soonest. I showed it to Natoma. Her eyes widened but she nodded in silence.

  We made the hotel in three jumps and damn if Hillel didn’t start another fight over the tip. The concierge rescued us and escorted us through the security barriers, followed by the Hebe’s screams of outrage. Beautifully in character. Chronic fury was the beau ideal of the Corridor.

  We took a suite with water, both hot and cold, an extravagance that erased the desk clerk’s sneers. The Corridor suffered from a perpetual water shortage. Most of it was black market and you had to pay through the nose for it. In the Corridor you didn’t ask a girl to come up and see your etchings; you invited her to come up and take a shower.

  So we took our showers, which made me feel like a deliciously dirty old man, and while we were drying off, the floor steward came in carrying a couple of leather gun cases.

  “The shotguns you ordered, sir,” he said in affected hotel Euro. “Over-and-under .410’s. Lady-size for modom. Box of shells in each case.”

  I started to deny everything. Then I saw it was the Jew again and shut up.

  “Sunrise tomorrow morning on the Heath. Five thirty ack emma,” Hillel continued suavely. “The club has agreed to release twenty chickens. Most generous. If you will permit a suggestion, Mr. Curzon, one would be advised to offer a generous bonus.”

  “Chickens!” I said incredulously. “No grouse, pheasant, partridge?”

  “Impossible, sir. Those are extinct in the Corridor. They could be imported from Australasia but that would take weeks. However, the chickens have been bred for cunning and guile. You and modom will have a fine morning’s sport.”

  A range safety officer came up to us on the Heath while we were waiting for sunrise and the birds. He wore brilliant protective crimson and I thought he was going to ask to inspect our permits. Then I saw it was Hillel again.

  “Gottenu!” he groaned, sitting down on the concrete. It was called “The Heath” only by courtesy. It had been a jetport centuries ago; square miles of concrete now owned by the gun club. “I had to walk it. Sit alongside me, Mrs. Curzon. Otherwise if Guig introduces us I’ll have to stand up, and I don’t think I can make it.”

  “Walked!” I exlaimed. “Why?”

  “Taking no chances. The Extro network is damned thorough, which is why we’re meeting here where we can’t be monitored. Good morning, Mrs. Curzon. I’m called Hillel the Jew.”

  “What is Jew?” Natoma asked curiously.

  The Hebe chuckled. “If only that question could have been asked five centuries ago, what a difference it might have made for the Chosen People. It is an ancient race and culture that predated Christianity, Mrs. Curzon.”

  “What is Christianity?”

  “I like this girl,” Hilly said. “She has exactly the right gaps in her education. Bird, low, at ten o’clock, Guig.”

  I shot and missed on purpose. I hate killing creatures.

  “You seem to be everybody everywhere,” Natoma said. “What is it you do?”

  “He’s a professional Inductor,” I said.

  “I don’t know that word, Glig.”

  “I invented it especially for Hillel. He’s a genius of induction. That means he can observe and appraise separate, apparently unrelated facts, and add them up to a conclusion about a whole scene that hasn’t occurred to anyone else.”

  “You’re too complicated for her, Guig. Put it this way, Mrs. Curzon. I see what everyone else sees, but I think what no one else has thought. Bird, two o’clock, coming over fast. Try to bring yourself to get a few, Guig, to keep up appearances.”

  You see? He knew I was missing on purpose. Acute.

  “I think I understand,” Natoma said. “My husband told me you were the smartest man in the world.”

  “When did he say that?” the Hebe demanded savagely. “I warned you to be careful.”

  “He did not say, Mr. Hillel. He wrote a note. We have been mostly talking by note.”

  “Thank God.” Hilly was relieved. “For a moment I thought I’d had the schlep out here for nothing.”

  “But is being an Induction a profession, Mr. Hillel? How?”

  “I’ll give you an example, Nat,” I said. “He was in a dealer’s gallery in Vienna where they had a Claude Monet displayed. Something about the painting seemed odd to the Jew.”

  “It ended abruptly at two edges,” Hilly explained. “Bad composition.”

  “Then he remembered another Monet he’d seen in Texas. In his mind’s eye he put edges together. Two of them fitted exactly.”

  “I don’t understand yet,” Natoma said.

  “It’s a crooked practice of art dealers to take a large canvas by a high-priced painter, cut it up into pieces, and sell each piece as a complete work.”

  “That’s not honest.”

  “But very profitable. Well, Hilly went on a treasure hunt, found and bought the rest of the pieces, and had the original Monet restored.”

  “Also v. profitable?”

  The Hebe laughed. “Y, but that wasn’t the real motive. Actually it was a case of being unable to resist the challenge. I never can.”

  “And that’s why you’re here, Hilly,” I said.

  “There, love. He’s as smart as he thinks I am. Perhaps more so.”

  “But always too flippant.”

  “So I have noticed over the years. He refuses to dedicate himself to anything; he prefers to make jokes. Gottenu! If he would only be serious as life requires now and then, what a tremendous man he would become.”

  I resented that and took it out on a chicken at eight o’clock.

  “Give me the gun,” Hilly said. He potted four more in quick succession. “That ought to keep the Extro from asking questions. Now let’s get down to business.”

  “First, how do you know about the business?” I asked.

  “Induction by the Inductor. I was in GM City on the trail of a vintage Edsel when I got word from Volk—he’s a dealer in rare coins and stamps in Orleans—to come quick. He’d located a strip of six British Guiana one-cent stamps of 1856. All still attached. Uncanceled.”

  “I didn’t know they made stamps that far back.”

  “They didn’t make many, which is why one 1856 Guiana is priceless. A hundred thousand easy. A strip of six attached and uncanceled is worth—oh, as much as you are.”

  “What! Collectors are crazy.”

  “R. I was immediately suspicious and requested confirmation of the message. Radex confirmed. I sent
an inquiry to Volk. No reply. I asked Radex for confirmation of delivery. Confirmed. So I split for Orleans and saw Volk. He denied everything and I knew I was on the track of something.”

  “What made you suspicious in the first place, Hilly?”

  “Back in those primitive days they engraved and printed stamps in batches of sixteen, four by four. A strip of six was ip. fac. phony.”

  “My God! Talk about acutedom.”

  “When I got back to GM I was thinking that maybe another collector was trying to spook me off the trail of the Edsel. Then Radex sent an apology and a refund. Mistake in transmission. It should have read sixteen 1856 British Guiana stamps, not six. Now my blood began to boil.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Volk and I had our conversation alone in his atelier. No one was there, but we were overheard.”

  “Volk is bugged.”

  “No doubt, but what the hell do the polizei know or care about rare stamps?”

  “The price.”

  “Never mentioned.”

  “Um.”

  “We were overheard by something else and it was trying to cover up a bungle. A third attempt was made to lure me out of GM, but I won’t go into details. It was a challenge I couldn’t resist. I did what the cossack couldn’t do—tracked down the Group, all dispersed by fake messages.”

  “Why?”

  “Later. I found out about the Extro network, Dr. Guess, and the whole damned lunatic conspiracy.”

  “The Group knows?”

  “More or less. I got the hard data from Poulos.”

  “Where is he? Also dispersed?”

  “No, trying to track down the renegade. Yes, the Greek told me about that and I agree with his assumption. It’s a dangerous mishmash. Crucial. He or she has got to be destroyed before the Group is destroyed. No one of us alone is a match for him, and that’s why I think he had the Group scattered—to pick us off one by one.”

  “Any idea who it might be?”

  “Not a clue. We’ve got an average proportion of rotten members. Take your pick.”

  “Just one thing. Are you saying the Extro can make mistakes?”

  “I thought you were above blind computer worship, Guig. Yes, they can make mistakes and so can the Extro’s collaborator, Dr. Guess. Even between them they can make mistakes, and that’s how we’re going to find Guess and his three freaks. What d’you think, Guig? Are they equipped with a putz and a twibby? Both?”