Phantom ah-7

by Ted Bell

  “Of course he has a bean-shooter, pal, yeah, course he does, he’s a shamus, a copper, a flatfoot, ain’t he? A snub-nosed. 38 in a shoulder holster. He calls his heater Betsey.”

  “Quite a vivid imagination, Constable. You’ve got the lingo down, perhaps you should write a mystery story.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Simply part of the deductive process. Reconstructing the crime scene.”

  “While you’re reconstructing, could you keep an eye out for the Cohens’ mailbox? It should be coming up on the right.”

  “Sure thing, boss. You’re the mug running this outfit. I’m only your triggerman.”

  “Stop it.”

  “What?”

  “This isn’t a movie.”

  “You said it yourself, back at the airport. The Hotel California. It’s Hollywood, isn’t it? Tinseltown, U.S.A. You know, I’ve never been before. Quite exciting, really.”

  “This isn’t Hollywood, Ambrose. Hollywood is in Los Angeles. This is San Francisco. We’re over three hundred miles from Hollywood. A seven-hour drive.”

  “Oh, well, it’s all California, isn’t it? The Coast, I believe they call it? One big la-la-land? What’s your beef, chief?”

  Receiving no reply, Congreve was silent for a while. He saw a little Italian restaurant nestled among the trees with Christmas lights in the window; it looked like just the kind of gin mill where Bogart might take Bacall for a martini on a rainy night like this.

  “Cohen,” Ambrose said, “coming up in a couple of hundred yards. Better slow down.”

  “I see it, I see it.”

  Hawke braked and turned sharply into the narrow driveway. It was leading steeply upward, deeply rutted and muddy, the soil dark red in the headlight beams. The looming trees on either side were walls of immense black columns. In a few minutes, they came to the stone house. A white two-story stucco building, probably built in the 1920s, with a steeply pitched slate roof and a smoking chimney. A quaintly eccentric, storybook bungalow, nestled under the trees, and if Congreve had to name the most likely architects, they would be Walt Disney and Snow White.

  The house stood back from the drive, across a wide space that might once have been a lawn but was now overgrown with knee-high ferns. The lights were on, both upstairs and down, and the two men climbed out of the car and made their way up the stone walkway to the front door. Rain dripped softly off the slanting tiles of the roof.

  “Push the doorbell, Bogie,” Hawke said.

  “Aw, go soak your head. Push it yourself.”

  “My head’s already soaking,” Hawke said, pulling up the collar of his trench coat. “It’s raining, as you may have noticed.”

  Hawke gave Congreve a look and pushed the button, pleased at the pleasant chimes he heard beyond the door.

  A small woman with snow-white hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head answered the door moments later. She wore a straw hat that might have been cut from the thatched roof of an English cottage. Dressed in a simple grey dress with an open brown knit sweater, she had deep-set, keenly intelligent brown eyes, and a round face. It was clear she’d once been a beautiful woman, for she still was.

  “Mr. Hawke and Mr. Congreve, I assume. So. You found me, did you?” she said with a smile. “Come in out of that rain. Isn’t it awful? Hardly rare, but still, one tires of it.”

  The three of them had tea in front of a crackling fire in the cozy living room, three overstuffed chairs on the hooked rug facing the hearth. She politely inquired about their transatlantic voyage, England’s new prime minister, the Royal wedding, and which horse might win the Epsom Derby. Then they turned to the business at hand.

  “I’m quite happy to see you,” she said. “I had so hoped Director Kelly at the CIA might believe me and the next thing I know, Scotland Yard shows up at my door. You’ve a great reputation, Chief Inspector Congreve. I googled you just this morning. I am a Sherlockian, you see. I noticed that you admire Holmes as well.”

  “I worship daily at his altar,” Congreve said, not completely kidding, Hawke thought, but still, laying it on a bit thick.

  Hawke said, “Dr. Cohen, I wonder if you might recount the events of the evening your husband died? Director Kelly told us your suspicions, of course, but we’d like to hear it from you.”

  “Please call me Stella.”

  “Sorry. Stella, what makes you think your husband was murdered?”

  She told them, in precise detail, what had happened that night.

  Congreve said, “And this note you found afterward, do you still have it?”

  “Yes, Chief Inspector, it’s right here, folded inside my book.”

  She handed Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet to a smiling Congreve.

  Ambrose examined the scrawled note and handed it to Hawke.

  “The name Darius, Stella, does it mean anything to you?” Hawke said.

  “Yes. And I’ve been thinking about it. Waldo had a student-this was years and years ago-named Darius. He was a brilliant young physicist, postdoc, and he was instrumental in Waldo’s work in the field of AI. You both know what AI is, of course?”

  “We do.”

  “I am a physicist myself. I was acting as Waldo’s assistant at that time. Project Perseus, it was called. Federal funding. Oh, it was all so exciting. We knew we were on the verge of something-enormous. Something that could change the very fabric of human existence.”

  “In what way, Stella?” Congreve said.

  “In every way. As Waldo frequently said, ‘Nothing will ever be the same, Stella.’ ”

  Ambrose said, “Tell us about Project Perseus. Don’t worry about confusing us with scientific jargon; we’ll muddle through.”

  “Quite simply, the endgame was to create machine intelligence that could match, and then vastly exceed, human intelligence. Mammalian brains are quite limited, you see. Dreadfully slow. Because of the distance between intraneural connections in your brain. Outdated technology, compared to the minute nanodistances in a modern chip, such as in your cell phones. And, most important, the tiny confines of the human skull. Machines have neither of those limitations. Quite the opposite, in fact.”

  Hawke asked, “Forgive my ignorance, but how sizable is the difference between man and machine, in terms of brainpower, I mean?”

  “Machines will soon process and switch signals at close to the speed of light, about three hundred million meters per second. The electrochemical signals in our brains, yours and mine, are roughly one hundred meters per second. Quickly doing the math, that gives the machines a rather large advantage over us humans, a speed ratio of three million to one. Plus, the machines have the ability to remember billions of facts precisely and recall them instantly. Basically, DNA-based intelligence is just so slow and limited. Outdated, as I say.”

  Hawke smiled. “Stick a fork in us, we’re done.”

  “Yes, there is that possibility.”

  “Stella,” Congreve said, “sorry, but this sounds like a most precarious, runaway phenomenon.”

  “Well, it’s basically evolution, Chief Inspector. You can’t stop it. It’s how we are destined to evolve. At some point, human and machine intelligence will be indistinguishable from each other. The trick is to instill the machines with reverence for their progenitors.”

  “So they don’t turn against us?”

  “Precisely.”

  “Sounds fraught with danger, Stella, I must say.”

  “Oh, it is, it is. It was the thing that weighed most heavily on poor Waldo. He kept likening himself to Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project. He thought he was about to unlock secrets that could unleash a destructive force upon the world vastly more deadly than nuclear weapons.”

  Congreve said, “But he kept going? Scientists can’t help it, I suppose.”

  “Yes, he did. But when he realized the inherent dangers in his work, he began conducting his research in complete secrecy. He didn’t trust anyone with the knowledge he’d acquired. No one. Terribly frustrating for his youn
g assistants, like Darius. There were many arguments around that time. Some of them quite ugly, to be honest.”

  “He worked in secret, you say. How?”

  “He ultimately disbanded the Perseus Team. He began to encrypt all his work, creating a code-based cyberfirewall even Einstein couldn’t break. He no longer shared his progress, even with me. I’ve no idea what point he reached in his research. None.”

  “But he obviously stayed in touch with Darius?” Congreve said. “Based on the phone call your husband received the night of his death.”

  “Oh, yes. Waldo had been a great mentor to him. It was almost a father and son relationship. Waldo confided to me once that he believed Darius possessed an intellect on an order of magnitude greater than his own.”

  “Did Darius continue with his own work, once the team was dismantled?”

  “Oh, I’ve no idea. He left California, I know that. He was at MIT for a time, then I lost track. Waldo was the only one who kept up with him. By telephone, of course.”

  “Just curious, Stella,” Ambrose said. “This fellow Darius, as a key player, must have been dismayed when the project was shut down. Was he?”

  “Oh, yes, I suppose he was. I think that’s why he stayed in contact with Waldo. The two of them exchanged theorems and ideas over the years.”

  “But your husband was no longer sharing his ideas, isn’t that what you said?”

  “Correct. He stopped short of revealing anything he considered dangerous ground.”

  “Frustrating for his young pupil.”

  “I’m sure. But Waldo was adamant, I can assure you.”

  “Fascinating,” Hawke said. “I wonder, could you possibly show us the spot where you found your husband’s body? It might prove helpful.”

  “I can indeed. If you don’t mind traipsing through the woods in this stinky weather.”

  Congreve rose to his feet and said, “You forget, my dear lady, we are Englishmen. Hardy souls, stiff upper lips.”

  “Ambrose, please,” Hawke said.

  “Yes?”

  “Never mind. Shall we go?”

  Thirty-eight

  The widow led the way through the sodden woods. The rain was heavier now and they were slogging through mud. She had a powerful flashlight, which was a good thing. The massive exposed roots of the redwood trees would trip up a bull moose coming through here, Congreve thought, cinching his overcoat a bit tighter, wiping rainwater from his eyes as he stepped gingerly over a root as thick as his waist.

  “Not far now,” Stella said over her shoulder. “There’s a lookout toward the ocean. Ten minutes. Quite lovely up there, were it not obscured by weather and tainted with sadness.”

  They carried on, each alone with his or her thoughts.

  “Here we are,” she said as they finally emerged from the wood. It was a rocky promontory that jutted out from the side of the mountain. In the distance, beneath lowering clouds, the Pacific Ocean rolled on in great grey swells. In the sky above, a nighthawk circled and cried.

  “This is where I found them,” Stella said, looking at the pool of white light on the ground, avoiding their eyes.

  “Them?” Congreve asked.

  “Yes. Them. My husband, before he turned the gun on himself, shot his dog, Chief Inspector. An old black Lab named Feynman. And I will tell you something. Sometimes I felt he loved that dog more than me. I don’t care what the police say. That he was secretly depressed, dying of some fatal disease he didn’t want to suffer through for my sake. Utter nonsense. Even if it were true, he never, ever, would have killed his dog.”

  “You said he seemed distant after that phone call,” Congreve said. “How, may I ask?”

  “Not himself. Everything about him was flat, distant, mechanical. Whoever that man was who hung up the phone, he wasn’t my Waldo.”

  “Mechanical? In what way?”

  “Robotic, Chief Inspector, robotic.”

  “As if someone else was controlling his actions.”

  “That is exactly what I mean.”

  R eturning to the house, they came to a fork in the path. Stella paused and said, “Would you care to see Waldo’s laboratory? Having come all this way, I assume you would. It’s only a brief walk down this path here to the left.”

  “We should be delighted,” Ambrose said. He had intended to ask to see it in any event.

  The path was short but snaky, winding around trees and boulders, but soon they came upon it. A little log cabin with a cedar-shingled roof and a stone chimney. A place where a man might escape the world and lose himself in his work.

  “Here we are,” Stella said at the door, inserting an old-fashioned iron key into the lock and twisting it. “Wait here a moment until I can get some lights going.”

  When they were all inside, she said, “If I had to compete with Feynman for Waldo’s affection, I also had to compete with this cabin. I was victorious, of course, but it was a constant struggle, I don’t mind telling you. Have a look. Not much to see, mostly books and knickknacks he’d collected over the years. That’s his Nobel certificate on the wall. I had it framed for him; otherwise, it would have ended up lost.”

  “Ah, I’ve never seen one,” Congreve said, and he went over to inspect it.

  “Each certificate is different, Chief Inspector, unique creations for each winner. They are all lovely, rich in color, as you can see. Before and after the celebratory dinner, you are shown into a room where all the laureates’ certificates are in protective cases so everyone can see.”

  “And where did you find the note?” Hawke asked.

  “There on his worktable, between the computer and the telephone. He always kept a pad next to the phone. Scribbled things down while he was talking, reminder notes to himself that he rarely saved and probably never read.”

  Congreve sat on the stool at the worktable, and Hawke could almost see the invisible wheels beginning to spin. He said:

  “He wrote ‘Darius, 7:47PM, H50,’ and then the equation. So Darius called him before or after your anniversary dinner?”

  “Just before. We always had dinner at eight. And Waldo was never late.”

  “And the ‘H50.’ Does that have any scientific significance?”

  “No. I’m sure he was just writing what Darius said. ‘Happy fiftieth.’ That’s what he would have considered the salient fact of the call. That Darius remembered our anniversary. The equation beneath deals with the speed of light. It was a common topic between them.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if we can exceed the speed of light, which is theoretically impossible, but not necessarily so, then whole new worlds open up to us. This is one of the things Waldo was working on when he went… off the scientific community’s radar.”

  “Stella,” Hawke said, “is this the same computer your husband was working on when he was pursuing the Perseus Project?”

  “Yes. For the last few years he was using it in his office at Stanford, then he brought it here when his beloved project was disbanded.”

  Congreve said, “Those file drawers. Contain all his scientific papers, I presume. Articles he wrote for journals, that sort of thing?”

  “Indeed. Everything pertaining to Perseus is in there.”

  “So that would include work created by other members of the team? Darius, for example?”

  “I imagine so, yes. Would you like me to check?”

  “Indeed. I’m interested in anything pertaining to the work of Darius or created by him while he was under your husband’s tutelage. Was Darius his last name?”

  “No. It was something else. Odd name. Saffari. Like an African safari. That was it. Darius Saffari. Why are you so curious about him, Chief Inspector?”

  “Oh, it’s probably nothing, I assure you. But the timing of the phone calls is interesting. One just prior to dinner and one just following it. Coincidences are by their very nature intriguing, don’t you think?”

  She pulled out a drawer and began going through it.

 
“Here we go. Dr. Darius Saffari. It’s a rather large file; could you-”

  “Yes, let me get it for you. I’d like to skim through it for a few moments. Not that I’ll understand a bit of it, of course. But then one never knows, does one?”

  Ambrose took the bulging file to the worktable and began going through it, page by page. Hawke had taken a comfortable leather chair by the fireplace. He was leafing through a book from the shelf entitled Understanding the Singularity, and he asked, “Stella, could you join me over here for a moment while the chief inspector is engaged? There’s something I’d like to ask you about.”

  “Certainly, that’s what I’m here for,” she said and took the identical chair opposite Hawke’s.

  “I’m sure you’re well aware of some rather catastrophic events that have occurred lately. I am referring to the sinking of an American cruise liner by a Russian nuclear submarine. And the disaster at Fort Greely, Alaska, that killed hundreds of U.S. Army personnel and their families. And also the bizarre incident in Israel’s Negev Desert? A supposedly secret demonstration of a new robot-fighter aircraft that defied its own preprogrammed flight plan and killed everyone present.”

  “Yes, I watch the news. In addition to the horrendous loss of life, I find these incidents all rather oddly similar.”

  “So do I, Stella, so do I. You should know that there is another incident I’m aware of, classified in the interest of national security, which fits exactly the same pattern. As my friend over there would say, patterns are intriguing.”

  “Yes. Go on, please.”

  “Well, I’m wholly ignorant on the current state of AI research, I’ll freely admit. But it would seem to me that these events share a certain commonality that could be attributed to advanced artificial intelligence. They were all instances of cyberwarfare.”

  “And your point is?”

  “Let me put it this way. Every government affected is, of course, enlisting massive resources to uncover the perpetrators and bring them to justice. But they’re all coming up empty. There’s not a single clue as to who may be responsible for these attacks. Not to mention that even the top scientists in each country are bewildered as to how such attacks might have been effected.”