‘That is what we are,’ I enthused. ‘Stainless steel rats! It is a proud and lonely thing to be a stainless steel rat!’
He lowered his head in acknowledgment, then spoke. ‘I agree. Now – my throat is dry from all this talking and I wonder if you could aid me with the complex devices about us. Is there any way you might extract a double-cherry oozer from them?’
I turned to the maze of thudding and whirring machinery that covered the inner wall.
‘There is indeed, and I shall be happy to show you how. Each of these machines has a testing switch. This, if you will look close, is the one on the drink dispenser. First you must turn it to on, then you can actuate the dispenser which will deliver here, instead of to the customer on the other side. Each is labelled – see, this is the cherry oozer. A mere touch and … there!’
With a whistling thud it dropped into place and The Bishop seized it up. As he began to drink he froze, then whispered out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I just realised, there is a window here and a young lady is staring in at me!’
‘Fear not,’ I reassured him. ‘It is made of one-way glass. She is just admiring her face. It is the inspection port to look at the customers.’
‘Indeed? Ahh, yes, I can see now. They are indeed a ravenous lot. All that mastication causes a rumble in my own tum, I am forced to admit.’
‘No trouble at all. These are the food controls. That nearest one is for the Macbunnyburger, if you happen to like them.’
‘Love them until my nose crinkles.’
‘Then here.’
He seized up the steaming package, traditionally decorated with beady eyes and tufted tail of course, and munched away. It was a pleasure to watch him eat. But I tore, myself away before I forgot and pushed coins into the slot on the back of the armoured coinbox.
The Bishop’s eyes widened with astonishment. As soon as he swallowed he spoke.
‘You are paying! I thought that we were safely ensconced in a gustatorial paradise with free food and drink at our beck and call, night and day?’
‘We are – for all of this money is stolen and I am just putting it back into circulation to keep the economy healthy. But there is no slack in the Macswiney operation. Every morsel of porcine tissue, every splinter of ice, is accounted for. When the mechanic tests the machines he is responsible for every item delivered. The shop’s computer keeps track of every sale so that frozen supplies are filled exactly to the top each time they are replenished. All of the money collected is taken away each day from the safe on the outer wall – which is automated as well. An armoured van backs over it just as the time lock disengages. A code is keyed in and the money disgorged. So if we simply helped ourselves the records would reveal the theft. Prompt investigation would follow. We must pay for what we use, precisely the correct amount. But, since we won’t be coming back here, we will steal all the money on the day we leave.’
‘Fine, my boy, fine. You had me worried there for a minute with your bit of forced honesty. Since you are close to the controls, please trigger another delicious morsel of Lepus cuniculus while I pay.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I suppose that there have been stranger places to go to school, but I can’t think of any. At certain times of day it was hard to be heard above the rattle, hiss and roar of the dispensing machinery. Lunch and dinner were the busiest times, but there was another peak when the schools got out. We would eat then as well, since it was so hard to talk, working our way through the entire Macswiney inventory. Countless Macbunnyburgers hopped down our throats, and many a Frozen Forney followed. I liked Dobbindogs until one too many cantered past my gums, and switched to jellied porcuswinetrotters, then to feline-fritters. The Bishop was very catholic in his tastes and liked everything on the menu. Then, once the crowds had gone, after we had patted the last taste of gravy from our lips, we would loll back at our ease and my studies would continue. When we started on computer crime I discovered what The Bishop had been up to for the past couple of decades.
‘Give me a terminal and I can rule the world,’ he said, and such was the authority of his voice that I believed he could. ‘When I was young I delighted in all manner of operations to please the citizens of this planet. It was quite a thrill to intercept cash shipments while en route, then substitute my calling card for the bundles of bills. They never did find out how I did it …’
‘How did you?’
‘ We were talking about computers.’
‘Digress just this once, I beg of you. I promise to put the technique to good use. Perhaps, with your permission, even leave one of your cards.’
‘That sounds an excellent idea. Baffle the current crop of coppers as thoroughly as I did their predecessors. I’ll describe what happens – and perhaps you can discover for yourself how it was done. In the Central Mint, a well guarded and ancient building with stone walls two metres thick, are located the giant safes filled with billions of bucks. When a shipment is to be made guards and officials fill a bullion box which is then locked and sealed while all present look on. Outside the building waits a convoy of coppers all guarding a single armoured car. At a given signal the car backs up against the armour-plated delivery door. Inside the building the steel inner door is opened, the box placed inside the armoured chamber. This door is sealed before the outer one can be opened. The box then travels in the armoured car to the linear train where an armoured wagon receives it. This has but the single door, which is locked and sealed and wired with countless alarms. Guards ride in a special chamber of each car as it shuttles through the linear network to the city needing the bucks. Here another armoured car awaits, the box is removed – still sealed – placed in the car and taken to the bank, where it is opened – and found to contain only my card.’
‘Marvellous!’
‘Care to explain how it was done?’
‘You were one of the guards on the train …’
‘No.’
‘Or drove the armoured car …’
‘No.’
I racked my brains this way for an hour before he relented and explained. ‘All your suggestions, have merit, but all are dangerous. You are far more physical than I ever was. In my operations I always preferred brains to brawn. The reason that I never had to break into the box and extract the money is that the box was empty when it left the building. Or rather it was weighed with bricks as well as my card. Can you guess now how it was done?’
‘Never left the building,’ I muttered, trying to stir my brain into life. ‘But it was loaded into the box, the box put into the truck …’
‘You are forgetting something.’
I snapped my fingers and leapt to my feet. ‘The wall, of course it had to be the wall. You gave me all the clues, I was just being dense. Old, made of stone, two metres thick!’
‘Exactly so. It took me four months to break in, I wore out three robots doing it, but I won out in the end. First I bought the building across the road from the mint and we tunnelled under it. With pick and shovel. Very slow, very silent. Up through the foundations of the building and inside the wall. Which proved to have an outer and inner stone wall, and as is the building custom, it was filled with rubble in between. Our diamond saws were never heard when we opened the side of the armoured vault connecting the inside of the mint with the outside. The mechanism I installed could change boxes in one point oh five seconds. When the inner door was closed, the lock had to be thrown before the outer door could be opened. That was enough time, almost three seconds, to allow for the switch. They never did find out how I did it. The mechanism is still in place. But the operation was basically misdirection, along with a lot of digging. Computer crime is something else altogether. Basically it is an intellectual exercise.’
‘But isn’t computer theft almost impossible these days with codes and interlocks?’
‘What man can code or lock, man can decode and unlock. Without leaving any trace. I will give you some examples. Let us begin with the rounding-off ca
per, also called the salami. Here is how it works. Let us say that you have eight thousand bucks in the bank, in a savings account that earns eight per cent a year. Your bank compounds your account weekly in order to get your business. Which means at the end of the first week your bank multiples your balance by .0015384 per cent and adds this sum to your balance. Your balance has increased by twelve point three zero bucks. Is that correct? Check it on your calculator.’
I punched away at the sum and came up with the same answer. ‘Exactly twelve bucks and thirty centimes interest,’ I said proudly.
‘Wrong,’ he said deflatingly. ‘The interest was twelve point three zero seven two wasn’t it?’
‘Well, yes, but you can’t add seventy-two hundreths of a centime to someone’s account, can you?’
‘Not easily, since financial accounts are kept to two decimal places. Yet it is at this precise moment in the calculations that the bank has a choice. It can round all decimals above point zero zero five up to the nearest centime, all those below point zero zero four nine down to zero. At the end of a day’s trading the rounding-ups and rounding-downs will average out very close to zero so the bank will not be out of pocket. Or, and this is the accepted practice, the bank can throw away all decimal places after the first two, thereby making a small but consistent profit. Small in banking terms – but very large as far as an individual is concerned. If the bank’s computer is rigged so that all the rounding-downs are deposited to a single account, why at the end of the day the computer will show the correct balance in the bank’s account and in the clients’ accounts. Everyone will be quite pleased.’
I was punching like fury into my calculator, then chuckled with glee at the results. ‘Exactly so. All are pleased – including the holder of that account that now holds the round-downs. For if only a half a centime is whipped from ten-thousand accounts, the profit is a round fifty bucks!’
‘Exactly. But a large bank will have a hundred times that number of accounts. Which is, as I know from happy experience, a weekly income of five thousand bucks for whoever sets up this scam.’
‘And this, this is your smallest and simplest bit of computer tomfoolery?’I asked in a hushed voice.
‘It is. When one begins to access large corporative computers the sums become unbelievable. It is such a pleasure to operate at these levels. Because if one is careful and leaves no traces the corporations have no idea that they have even been fiddled! They don’t want to know about it, don’t even believe it when faced with the evidence. It is very hard to get convicted of computer crime. It is a fine hobby for one of my mature years. It keeps me busily engaged and filthy rich. I have never been caught. Ahh, yes, except once …’
He sighed heavily and I felt mortified.
‘My fault!’ I cried. ‘If I had not tried to contact you, why you would never have got involved with the Feds.’
‘No guilt, Jim, feel no guilt over that. I misjudged their security controls, far more rigid than the ones I had been dealing with. It was my mistake – and I certainly paid for it. Am still paying. I am not decrying the safety of our refuge here, but this junk food begins to wear on one after a bit. Or perhaps you haven’t noticed?’
‘This is the staff of life of my generation.’
‘Of course. I had not thought of that. The horse tires not of hay, the porcuswine will snuffle up his swill greedily unto eternity.’
‘And you could probably tuck into lobster and champagne for the next century.’
‘Well observed and correct, my boy. How long do you think that we shall be here?’ he asked, pushing away half of an unconsumed portion of crumptumps.
‘I would say a minimum of two weeks more.’ A shudder shivered his frame.
‘It will be a good opportunity for me to reduce.’
‘By that time the heat of the chase will have died down considerably. We will still have to avoid public transportation for a good while after that. However I have prepared an escape route that should be secure fairly soon.’
‘Dare I ask what it is?’
‘A boat, rather a cabin cruiser on the Sticks river. I bought it some time ago, in a corporative name, and it is at the marina just outside Billville.’
‘Excellent!’ He rubbed his hands with glee. ‘The end of summer, a cruise south, fried catfish in the evening, bottles of wine cooling in the stream, steaks at riverside restaurants.’
‘And a sex change for me.’
He blinked rapidly at that, then sighed with relief when I explained. ‘I’ll wear girl’s clothes when I’m aboard and can be seen from the shore, at least until we are well away from here.’
‘Capital. I shall lose some weight – there will be no difficulty dieting here. Raise a moustache, then a beard, dye my hair black again. It is something to look forward to. But shall we say one month instead of two weeks? I could last that amount of time incarcerated in this gustatorial ghetto as long as I would not be eating. My figure will be the better for the extra weeks, my hair and moustache longer.’
‘I can do it if you can.’
‘Then it is agreed. And we shall make the most of the time now by forwarding your education? RAM, ROM and PROM will be the order of the day.’
I was too busy with my studies to be bothered by the omnipresent odour of barbecued porcuswineburgers. Besides that, I could still eat them. So as my comprehension grew of all the varied possibilities of illegality in our society, so did my companion’s figure fade. I wanted to leave earlier, but The Bishop, having made up his mind, would not be swayed.
‘Once a plan is made it must always be followed to the letter. It should only be changed if outside circumstances change. Man is a rationalising animal and needs training in order to become a rational one. Reasons can always be found for altering an operation.’ He shuddered as the machines speeded up with a roar – school was out – then crossed off one more day on his calendar. ‘An operation well-planned will work. Meddle with it and you destroy it. Ours is a good plan. We will stay with it.’
He was far leaner and harder when the day of our exodus finally arrived. He had been tried in the gustatory furnace and had been tempered by it. I had put on weight. Our plans were made, our few belongings packed, the safe cleaned out of all its bucks – and all trace of our presence eliminated. In the end we could only sit in silence, looking again and again at our watches.
When the alarm sounded we were on our feet, smiling with pleasure.
I turned off the alarm as The Bishop opened the door of the freezer room. As the key turned in the outer lock we closed the door behind us. Stood and shivered in Macswineys’ mausoleum while we listened to the mechanic enter the room we had so recently left.
‘Hear that?’ I asked. ‘He’s adjusting the icer on the cherry oozer dispenser. I thought it sounded funny.’
‘I prefer not to discuss the contents of the ghastly gourmet gallery. Is it time to go out yet?’
‘Time.’ I eased open the outer door and blinked at the light of day, unseen for so long. Other than the service van, the street was empty. ’Here we go.’
We shuffled out and I sealed the door behind us. The air was sweet and fresh and filled with lovely pollution. Even I had had my fill of cooking odours. As The Bishop hurried to the van I slipped the two wedges into the outer door to our chamber of culinary horrors. If the mechanic tried to get out before his appointed time these would slow him down. We only needed about fifteen minutes.
The Bishop was a dab hand with a lockpick and had the van open and the door swinging wide even as I turned about. He dived into the back among the machine parts as I started the engine.
It was just that easy. I dropped him close to the marina where he sat on a bench in the sunshine, keeping an eye on our possessions. After that it was simplicity itself to leave the purloined van in the parking lot of the nearest liquor store. Then I strolled, not ran, back to the riverside to rejoin him.
‘It’s the white boat, that one there.’ I pointed it out, pressing on my mous
tache with my other hand at the same time to make sure that it was securely in place. ‘The entire marina is fully automated. I’ll get the boat and bring it back here.’
‘Our cruise is about to begin,’ he said, and there was a merry twinkle in his eye.
I left him there in the sunlight and went to the marina, to insert the boat’s identification into the operations robot.
‘Good morning,’ it said in a tinny voice. ‘You wish to take out the cabin cruiser Lucky Bucks. The batteries have been recharged at a cost of twelve bucks. Storage charges …’
It went on like that, reading aloud all the charges that could be clearly seen on the screen – presumably for customers who couldn’t read – and there was nothing that could be done about it. I stood on one foot and then the other until it was finished, then pumped in the coins. The machine gurgled and spat out my receipt. Still strolling, I went to the boat, inserted the receipt, then waited for the welcome click when the chain unlocked. Seconds later I was out on the river and heading for the solitary figure on the bank.
Solitary no more. A girl sat beside him.
I circled out and around and she was still there. The Bishop sat slumped and gave me no sign what to do. I circled once more, then the sight of a patrolling police car sent me burbling to the bank, the girl stood and waved, then called out.
‘Why little Jimmy diGriz, as I live and breathe. What a lovely surprise.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Life had had far too many moments like this lately. I looked at the girl more closely as I eased the boat against the bank. She knew me, I should know her; smashingly good-looking, her blouse filled to perfection. Those tulip lips, her! – object of my wildest dreams.
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