"Ahh, beautiful! Whoever you are, that is." Andre winked at me. "I am finished with you," he said after a meticulous inspection of the man he'd created. "But may I suggest one more thing?"
"Please do, Andre. It's important. Maybe one day I can tell you what this is—"
"Tut tut!" A finger wagged beneath my nose to reproach me. "Say no more. Ah, but what I started to tell you, no? Your voice. It identifies you, it identifies anyone, of course. So I have an advice for you."
He handed me a card. "Go to this drugstore and ask for Mr. Scragg. A friend of mine. Here"—he scribbled on the card— "this will assure him I sent you to him. He will give you the drag I have written here, and—"
"Drug?"
"But of course! Twelve hours after you take this drug, no one will recognize your voice, not even you. You will have," he winked again, "first a runny nose, and then a stuffed nose, oh, it will be terrible, this cold that you have! And no one will be able to recognize your voice. Not even you, perhaps." He laughed.
I hoped it worked as well as he promised. I handed Andre another fifty as I left.
I caught the first plane out of Pueblo, Colorado, due south of Colorado Springs. There I ran into my first error of omission; fortunately, it didn't present any problems. Although my business card and the initials on my new attache case indicated I was Jack Tarvin, the driver's license I carried was still that belonging to Steven Rand. It didn't matter. Renting a car in Pueblo was just as safe for Steven Rand as for anyone else. I drove north and registered in the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. That evening I dialed Kim.
"Miss Michele? This is Dr. Tarvin. I'm a friend of Steve Rand, and he suggested that I call you as soon as I got in. I'm at the Broodmoor. . . ."
Bless André! Kim sympathized with Dr. Tarvin's "terrible cold." She also promised to meet him the next morning at the main entrance to the "NORAD Auxiliary Data Center," as Project 79 was known to the outside world.
The whole thing went beautifully. There wasn't the slightest indication that Kim found anything unusual in Dr. Jack Tarvin or that she harbored any suspicion he might not be the genuine article. The telephone call to Kim from Steve Rand set up the first phase. That Tom Smythe had the facilities and personnel ready to prepare the security clearance for Dr. Tarvin served to reinforce the position of the MIT visitor as just one more of the many visiting firemen who were cleared for one reason or another into Project 79.
I did my best, and apparently I was successful. To those about me I was the overly preoccupied, slightly exasperating scientist who had a hell of a cold and who was always blowing or drying his nose and who talked as if his voice came from the bottom of a well filled with cotton.
My initial meeting with Tom Smythe went as smoothly as it had done with Kim. We went through the usual banalities; I made pleasant noises about how impressed I was and, between sniffling and rubbing my watery eyes, I also made it clear that I had little time to spare from my work at MIT and that I should be grateful for getting through the preliminaries as quickly as possible. Tom Smythe obliged; he led me through the long corridors while I snuffled alongside him like a walrus, anxious in more ways than Tom ever knew to have my initial encounter with the cybernetics Brain.
In the security office I stared into the optical sensors that produced a record of my retinal pattern.
The glasses proved no problem, for the subject was required to remove them before the test was made.
My fingerprints were taken, my body mass made a matter of record, and pertinent data—height, weight, color of eyes and hair, complexion, all went into the records.
I'd won the first hand in the poker game. .
I knew that, when Smythe handed me my identicard—a duplicate of the one I had always carried as Steven Rand. I had managed to pull the wool over the eyes of the omnipotent computer—first by setting the stage and then by lying through my teeth.
It was all bluff. The first step in this critical maneuver was to feed into 79 the daily newspaper reports that included the story of the airplane crash and the death of one Steven Rand, cybernetics specialist. Tom Smythe followed through with the official data update that Steven Rand of Project 79, reason death, was to be deleted from security and other requirements of the project. The computer correlated and cross-checked such inputs. Then came the key moment.
Computers have total recall, of course, but only of the data retained by intention. All sorts of garbage get into the input of a cybernetics system. Incorrect reports, data proved by experiments to be no longer applicable to any science or technology, obsolescence, and so forth. To eliminate the clutter that builds inevitably, and because the data not only no longer are pertinent but misleading, automatic systems are built into the memory mechanisms to delete such superfluous material.
Since Steven Rand no longer existed as a living person, there was no need to retain his active file in the security banks of the cybernetics system. Ergo—79 deleted from its electronic recall the person of Steven Rand.
The retinal pattern, fingerprints, and other information pertaining to Steven Rand were scoured from the records.
When Dr. Jack Tarvin of MIT submitted to retinal pattern tests, fingerprinting, and other security-applicable data, the computer automatically cross-checked its references on file. The response proved to be negative.
79 approved the identification for Dr. Jack Tarvin.
And Steven Rand—alias Dr. Jack Tarvin—was provided with a means of penetrating the automatic defense mechanisms of the cybernetics system.
Kim took me through a VIP tour of the facilities that involved the work of the Bionics Division.
I—Dr. Tarvin—even met Dr. Selig Albracht and had a brief (if, to me, bizarre) conversation with the famous heuristics scientist.
I made certain the tour would test the security systems of 79. The automatic check mechanism accepted the identicard, and approved identification of the retinal pattern and fingerprints.
I was ready to play the second hand.
That evening I ran into a sticky problem I just couldn't shake. Tom Smythe insisted we have dinner together. He wanted to discuss with me my work at MIT as it applied to Project 79. He also made it clear that Steve Rand had asked him to be certain to look after Tarvin during his visit. I couldn't get out from under.
It went well, all things considered. I remained vague and fell back on my severe cold to beg off early so that I could take some medicine and crawl into bed. Tom Smythe sympathized with me and drove me to the Broadmoor after dinner. He promised to have a car waiting to pick me up at eight o'clock sharp the next morning.
When I left the hotel, the car was there. Dr. Tarvin was certainly getting the VIP treatment. The only unpleasant part of the whole affair was that damnable "cold drug" I'd taken. I felt almost as bad as I sounded. But—I shrugged—it was an easy price to pay for the tremendous success I'd achieved so far.
I walked directly to Smythe's office on arrival at the project center. Tom greeted me warmly, explained he had my itinerary all set for the day. He called his secretary, told her "no calls or visitors for a while," and turned to give me his undivided attention.
Seated behind his desk, Tom Smythe calmly opened his jacket, reached inside. The next moment I stared into the unwavering muzzle of a .38.
"Party time is over. You're not Tarvin. Put your hands on the sides of your chair. Don't even twitch."
I froze.
36
"jack tarvin has been in Japan for two years. He's still there."
I had never met Tom Smythe on this end of his business. The .38 didn't move a hair to either side.
With a sabotage attempt still fresh in his mind, with attempted murder something with which he lived every day, with problems multiplying all about him, Tom Smythe was not the man with whom to make unexpected moves. He was as friendly as a cobra, and many times more dangerous.
"The only reason you're not behind bars at this moment," Tom went on in the same steely tone, "is Steve Rand.
Now we get down to business. Who are you?"
I started to remove the false glasses. My hand didn't move a fraction of an inch when one word locked my arm right where it was.
"Freeze."
Fear rushed through me. Christ, I'd forgotten. Tom Smythe knew the man before him only as an impostor, a danger to Project 79.
"Tom, I'm Steve."
He didn't say anything.
"I'm Steve Rand," I persisted.
He looked carefully at me. "That's interesting."
"Easy enough to prove," I said. "Compare my fingerprints, do your own retinal check, and—"
"Hold it right there," he broke in. I held it, doing my best to imitate a statue. My nose was running and it began to itch, but I didn't make a move for my handkerchief. Not yet, anyway.
Tom Smythe reached out with his left hand, his eyes and the .38 still locked on me. He picked up his telephone, stabbed the left button on the dial console.
"Get me Wilkins. Priority."
He waited only a few seconds; Wilkins came on the phone immediately.
"Dick; Smythe here. Priority, drop whatever else you're doing. Pull the security file on Steven Rand. Then do the same for the one we ran yesterday on Tarvin. Dr. Jack Tarvin, from MIT. I'll wait here on the phone. Do a comparison check of the thumbprints. Right, I'll hold on."
The seconds dragged and my nose itched and I forced down the urge to sneeze. Perspiration began to drip along my neck and down my ribs. That damned corset and the padding! It felt like an hour, but I know that no more than minutes passed. Dick Wilkins came back on the phone; still with his eyes on my hands, Tom Smythe punched the other end of his telephone call to the small speaker box on his desk. I listened to Wilkins' voice.
"Tom, I've run the check. Something crazy here."
"Go ahead."
"It's impossible. The thumbprints match. But Rand is supposed to be dead and . . . and, well, according to this, they're both, Rand and Tarvin, I mean, they're both the same person."
My muscles relaxed like piano wires being cut in the middle. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply.
"No question?" Smythe talking to Wilkins.
"Absolutely none, Tom. When I got the cross-check I ran the comparators on all prints. There's no question about it; Rand and Tarvin are one and the same."
"Thanks, Dick. Keep it under your hat. No one besides me is to know of this. Understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"And lock those files in our safe. No entry to anyone else but me."
"Right; will do."
Tom Smythe broke the connection.
I let my breath out in a long sigh as the .38 went back into the shoulder holster. "Christ, can I move now?"
"Welcome home, you blasted idiot." I sneezed wildly and scrubbed at my itchy nose. "Where did you get a cold like that? It's a beaut."
"Not a cold," I said, my ears ringing. "Drugs. Gives all the symptoms of a cold. Disguises the voice." Achoooo!
Tom looked unhappy. "It works, too. I never had you figured. Got to remember that little trick."
He cracked his knuckles and he still had that angry expression on his face. Tom didn't like being swept under the rug by an amateur—and he'd been taken cold. Well, not really— I think he'd already suspected that Tarvin might be a bogus identity. It was Tom's nature to be suspicious, and he would run his own checks as a matter of routine. He'd done just that, and although he hadn't recognized me—Andre deserved a bonus—he spotted the security breach almost at once.
"All right, Sherlock," he said nastily. "Spill it. I'm all ears." He leaned forward to stab the control that would record everything I said. "And start at the beginning." I did.
Three hours later Tom was still firing questions at me in an unending stream. We had received everything. I gained one great sense of comfort from that exhausting session. There was no question but that Tom had avoided the hypnotic control of 79. When a man holds a gun pointed unerringly at your heart and puts away the weapon, he's not out to smear you into a corpse.
I thought we had covered every aspect of the situation. Tom Smythe, however, wasn't satisfied.
"It still doesn't fit together, not completely, anyway," he complained. "I know something's fouled up with 79, but I am not yet ready to agree that an electronic brain is trying to take over the country."
I started a heated protest, but he cut me off swiftly. "I'm looking at this thing from all sides, Steve,"
he pointed out.
"You're the individual who got into a wild and bitter public fight with Selig Albracht. Remember?
That was stupid. It was not the action of a man who's fully in control of what he's doing. And what's more—"
I shot to my feet, anger sweeping through me. "What the hell are you trying to say?" I shouted.
"Are you blind? What else do you need for proof? People have shot at me, tried to kill me with cars, and
..." I ground to a halt, rage making me shake. I fought for control.
"All right," I said, the anger checked. "There's nothing preposterous about Charles Kane trying to kill me. That damned brain can do things hypnotically that the best hypnotists in the business couldn't even begin to approach. And I haven't any doubt but that what took place before is much worse now."
"Spell that out," Tom said.
"Oh, hell, it's easy enough to figure." I was disgusted with the turn of the conversation. "79 has failed to achieve its goal through those people it controls. Careful planning, subterfuge, traps . . . they haven't worked. What's next is inevitable. It will—I'd bet my life it has— reprogrammed Kane and the others it controls. These people are in a trap, a psychological cell. Just like any Pavlovian creature, and—"
"Hold it. What do you mean by 'Pavlovian'? What has that got to do with—"
I broke in. "If you can't accomplish your goal, where hypnotic control is involved, anyway," I explained, "you go a different route. You eliminate the matter of planning. You set up posthypnotic controls so that the individual, in a given situation, reacts to that situation. It triggers the actions. It's a response, not a directed movement thought out beforehand. Pavlov's dogs . . . What the hell am I telling you this for? You're the psychological mastermind around here, not me."
I slouched in the chair, suffering a sense of failure.
"You've got a point there," Tom said after several moments. "All right, we'll give it a whirl."
"What do you mean?"
"Never mind," he said. "Do you trust me, Steve?"
"Of—of course I do."
"Then do exactly as I tell you to. And nothing else, do you hear?"
I nodded. What could Tom be up to? I decided to wait it out and see.
He called his secretary. "Get Charles Kane for me. He's working in, umm, let's see; yes, he's in Data Review right now. Tell him to get here on the double."
He switched off and turned back to me. "Put your glasses back on."
I did as he asked. "What are you trying to pull?" I demanded.
"I told you. Trust me." He made a sour face. "And shut up. I want to think."
Several minutes later Charles Kane walked into the office. He glanced at me and turned to Tom Smythe.
Tom studied his face. "Charlie, this is Dr. Jack Tarvin from MIT."
Charlie smiled. "Nice to meet you, sir."
I nodded, afraid to open my mouth.
Tom Smythe opened his desk drawer, glanced down, and turned back to Charles Kane.
"Charlie, Tarvin's an impostor."
I gasped. This was crazy!
Charlie turned again to look at me.
"His real name isn't Tarvin. He's wearing makeup. That man is really Steven Rand!"
Charlie's eyes were wide, his body instantly tense.
"What the hell are you—"
I didn't finish. Tom's voice filled the room.
"Charlie!" he shouted. "Here! Take this!"
Smythe reached into the open desk drawer, withdrew an ugly-looking revolver and tossed it to Charlie Kane
.
"Steve Rand—that's who it is!"
Charlie's features dissolved into a snarling mask as he grasped the revolver, swinging it toward me.
I came to my feet, sick through and through. "You rotten son of a bitch!" I screamed.
The gun roared.
37
the sound smashed against my ears. Stupidly, I tensed for the impact of the bullets. A third shot, a fourth! My ears screamed from the sound. Five! Six!
But I'd felt nothing!
I stared openmouthed at Charlie Kane, the gun smoking in his hand, his face twisted into animal hatred.
He had fired point-blank at me! How could he—it wasn't possible for him to have missed!
The next thing I saw shook me almost as much as the sight of Charlie Kane swinging the gun at me and squeezing the trigger. Shock made me numb; by now I knew I should have been on the floor, a corpse. But I wasn't, and I wasn't prepared for Tom Smythe moving swiftly around his desk, getting between me and Charlie Kane.
Charlie was screaming incoherently. He hurled the gun away, hooking his fingers into claws. The next instant he came at me like a thing berserk.
He didn't make it. Tom Smythe's left fist thundered into his midsection. As Charlie doubled over, the side of Tom's right hand smacked against the exposed neck. Charlie Kane fell like a poled steer.
Tom stood straight, looking me in the eye.
"Congratulations," he said. "Your theory on Pavlovian reactions was right." He gave a short laugh.
"Lucky for you that gun had blanks, huh?"
I gaped at him. "All right, watch what you say," he snapped. "People will be pouring through that d—"
He never finished the sentence. Two men burst through the door, guns drawn. Tom Smythe gestured at the unconscious form of Charles Kane.
"He went off the deep end again," Tom rasped. "Get him into the security ward of the hospital.
Maximum cover on him, and I want a man in there with him every second; when he sleeps, eats, and goes to the crapper. And no questions for now."
The God Machine Page 27