“It may be too late by that time. My informer is very close to one of the candidates. If the other man won, I won’t know anything in time to take counter-measures.”
“If what you’re telling me is true, I can get President McCurdy on the vision-phone and have these people arrested.”
“No, for two reasons. There’s not enough evidence of their plot, and such a move would only bring the government down on HAND again. I’ve served enough time in the Venus Colony.”
That seemed to remind Jazine of something. “Did you know this Ambrose when you were there?”
“Only as a prisoner knows his warden.”
“He wrote to his former mistress about you.”
“How nice of him,” Frost said dryly.
They drove for a time in silence, until finally Earl Jazine asked, “Just where is this secret election headquarters?”
“They have a building in Chicago. I could show you tomorrow.”
Jazine grunted and was silent again.
6 CARL CRADER
THE FIRST THING HE noticed about the girl was her youthful beauty, and the lightness of her walk as she came forward to meet him on the dock. She shook his hand and introduced herself, and he was surprised to learn that this child was Jason Blunt’s wife.
“You say he’ll be back soon?” Carl Crader asked.
“Soon, yes. Won’t you come in?”
She led the way up a landscaped path to a great cube of glass and metal that dominated the man-made drilling island. It was a house, he supposed, but such a house as he had never seen before. The door slid open silently as they approached, and closed just as gently behind them. She motioned to a great white couch that looked as if it might devour him, but Crader sank into it with surprising ease and found it really quite comfortable. The view through the front window, of the sea-rail line curving gently to the north, was truly breathtaking. It was obvious that the place was more of a home from the inside than it had appeared from the outside.
“Quite a place you have,” Crader said. “Been here long?”
“Jason and I have been married three years. We met in New Istanbul. I am Turkish.”
“A credit to your country.” He bowed a bit as he said it.
“Sometimes I miss New Istanbul,” she confided. “Especially when Jason is away and I’m alone here. The house is fully automated, and we need only a few servants. They’re very little company.” She walked to the window and stared out at the sea. “Do you play aqua-golf, Mr. Crader?”
“I rarely have time.”
“We have a nice little course here.” She pointed out the window and he could see the familiar green pod anchored just off shore. Aqua-golf was the sport of a crowded civilization, where there was no longer space for the elaborate courses of the twentieth century. On little more than an acre of land, usually built over the water, this version of clock golf used a single grouping of holes at its center, with the eighteen courses laid out in a radiating pattern.
Crader heard the familiar roar of a descending rocketcopter and glanced skyward. “Would that be your husband?”
Masha nodded. “That would be him.”
He followed her to the door to greet the trim, bearded man who bounded up the steps like a youth. Jason Blunt stopped short when he saw the visitor, and his questioning eyes were on Crader as he bent to kiss his wife.
“Darling, this is Carl Crader, from Washington.”
“New York,” Crader corrected. “Computer Investigation Bureau. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Blunt.”
“You caught me at a busy time,” Jason Blunt said. “As you can see, I’ve just returned …”
“Oh, I won’t take up much of your time,” Crader assured him, keeping it casual. “Just a few routine questions.”
“Very well.” He turned to his wife. “Masha, could you have some drinks mixed for us? We’ll be in the solarium.”
He led Crader down the hall to a large glassed-in room at the back of the house. It faced south, catching the maximum sunlight while presenting yet another panoramic view of the Gulf. Crader guessed the room to be fully thirty feet high, and even its ceiling was of glass, so that the whole effect was to stagger the visitor with a shimmering brilliance where light and water blended into one.
The room was almost devoid of furniture, though there were a few formfit lounges and a wireless vision-phone on a plastic stand. Jason Blunt slipped out of his jacket and stretched out on one of the lounges. Crader looked around, feeling uncomfortable, and finally chose to sit on the edge of the nearest lounge. “I won’t take too much of your time,” he repeated.
“I’d appreciate that.”
Something about the line of his face as he relaxed brought back memories to Crader, and he asked, “Didn’t you do some video acting in your younger days?”
Jason Blunt smiled at the recognition. “A touch of it. But my father never really approved. Acting today is such a feast for the makeup man, what with face foam and voice boxes. My father couldn’t even recognize me on the video or the holograms, and thus he was against it from the beginning. Finally I gave it up and joined him in his salvage work and the undersea oil drilling. That was nearly twenty years ago. I only wish he’d lived to see it now.” His face clouded for a moment and then cleared. “But what brought you here, Mr. Crader?”
“Actually, it’s about this election.”
“McCurdy? Did he send you here for a contribution?”
“I meant the election between you and Ambrose.”
Jason Blunt sat up. “I don’t think I get your meaning.”
“Well, I’ll explain it, then. The FRIDAY-404 computer was secretly programmed to receive the results of an underground election of sorts between you and a man named Stanley Ambrose. A technician named Rogers discovered the programming in the FRIDAY unit before your people had a chance to erase it. He was later murdered, but not before we were called into the investigation. We think your opponent is the Stanley Ambrose who directed the Venus Colony.”
That caused Blunt to stand. “You know a great deal. Do you have any proof of what you’re saying?”
“Enough, and we’re gathering more. You realize, sir, that a plot to overthrow our government …”
A chuckle here. “There is no plot! That’s hog-wash!”
“How would you describe it? A secret election is held, a man who discovers it is murdered, one of my own investigators is attacked …”
“Coincidence, nothing more.” The overhead sun was reflecting off the polished floor at his feet, creating the impression of a man standing in a pool of fire.
“But you admit the secret election was held? You admit to being a member of HAND?”
“HAND?” Jason Blunt roared with laughter. “I can assure you I have no connection whatsoever with that gang of criminals! The election certainly does not concern HAND!”
“Then what does it concern?”
He sighed and stroked his beard. “You realize, Crader, that you have no authority here. The Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that man-made drilling islands like this are beyond the jurisdiction of the USAC.”
“I’m aware of the laws,” Crader answered shortly.
Masha interrupted at that moment to serve drinks. “I hand-mix them for special guests,” she said as Crader accepted his.
“Thanks. I appreciate it.”
Jason Blunt took his drink and seemed to study the amber liquid. Then suddenly he came to a decision. “Stay here overnight, Crader. In the morning I’ll fly you to Utah and tell you the whole story.”
“Utah!”
“That’s where it’s at.”
“Very well,” Crader decided. “I’ll take you up on it.”
“Can I come along?” Masha asked.
Blunt seemed startled by his wife’s request. He glanced at Crader and said, “Sure. Of course you can. It must get lonely for you here on the island. See what time dinner will be ready, and arrange one of the bedrooms for our guest. In the morning we fly to Utah.”
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Although the flight was nearly 1,500 miles long, Jason Blunt chose to make it in his private rocket-copter rather than transfer to a commercial jet at Houston airport. As a result, the trip lasted some three hours, most of which Carl Crader spent in the passenger compartment with Masha.
“Does he always sit up with the pilot?”
She shrugged. “Usually. I don’t really travel with him that much. Occasional flights to New York, and that’s about it. He has the yacht, of course, and I love that.”
“How did you two happen to meet?”
She grinned a bit. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
“Try me.”
“A friend introduced us. A man named Stevro, back in New Istanbul.”
“You must have been very young.”
“I was.”
“They tell me Turkish girls are sometimes trained to wifely tasks and then sold to millionaire travelers. Is that true?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said, blushing slightly.
“Have you ever been to this place in Utah before?”
“No. Never. Until recently, Jason never discussed business with me. Lately, with all the meetings …”
Blunt reappeared in the cabin, cutting short her sentence. “Well, Crader, it’s hardly fair of you to be questioning my wife behind my back.”
Crader started to deny the charge, but at his side Masha bristled. “It wasn’t like that, Jason! We were just talking!”
“I heard your talking, over the cabin speaker.”
“You’ve started eavesdropping on me now?”
Blunt’s face flushed with anger. “Remember what you are. Remember where I found you.” He turned and reentered the pilot’s cabin.
Embarrassed, Carl Crader watched the tears well in Masha’s eyes. “The bastard! How … how can he be so nice sometimes and such a bastard other times?”
“Don’t let it bother you,” he said, trying to comfort her. His eyes were on the wall speaker, and he was certain Blunt was still monitoring their conversation.
She recovered a bit and stared out the window. “I’m all right,” she said at last.
Crader decided to risk a renewal of Blunt’s fury. “You mentioned meetings …”
“I’d better not talk about it,” she said firmly.
“All right.”
They lapsed into silence for the remainder of the flight, until Jason Blunt reappeared to announce they were coming down for a landing. He was pleasant and talkative, as if nothing had happened, and he pointed out the features of the landscape as they descended.
“Over there on your left is an old Indian reservation from the last century. And what we’re landing on is a dry lake bed. There are lots of dry lakes in Utah. The whole damn state is a dry lake—or most of it, anyway. The northern section used to be part of the Great Salt Lake.”
The copter touched down effortlessly. “There’s nothing here,” Crader observed, scanning the horizon in all directions.
“Oh, there’s something.”
They stepped out of the rocketcopter and immediately the pilot reversed power to lift the machine off the desert floor. “He’s leaving us!” Masha exclaimed, somewhat alarmed.
“We don’t need him anymore right now.” Jason Blunt produced a small electronic beeper from his pocket and pressed a coded signal. Almost at once a portion of the lake bed slid open as if by magic.
“What’s this?” Crader asked.
“Follow me down. There’s an elevator.”
Crader and Masha followed along down the steel stairway to a little underground platform that faced blank doors. After a moment’s wait the doors slid open soundlessly and they stepped into the elevator. “Amazing,” Crader observed.
Jason Blunt smiled, pleased with the reaction. “I wish I could take credit for it, but this whole complex is government-built, left over from the missile hysteria of the last century. We are descending to a vast underground city that once housed missile defenses and the North American Air Defense command post. It was one of two such units. The other, in Wyoming, was demolished early in this century, but this survived—an amazing relic of twentieth-century man. One of my companies, Nova Industries, bought it from the government some years back. We told them we might use it for underground storage of natural gas, but as you’ll see we have put it to another use.”
The elevator ceased its descent, and the doors slid open. They walked down a long stainless steel corridor that reminded Crader of something seen in the old space films of the past. Through another door they encountered their first humans in the underground city—a dozen or so young men in white bodysuits who worked at computer consoles.
“Don’t tell me this is all for the oil and natural gas business,” Crader said. He’d seen vast computer complexes before, but nothing even approaching this.
“No, no. It’s much more, really. In these memory banks are every fact, every statistic, every bit of historical information that goes to make up the United States of America and Canada.” He moved to one of the vacant consoles. “I can summon up any figures, plot and trend, within seconds.”
“They have something like this in Washington,” Crader observed.
“Not like this! Two hundred men and women live in this underground city, working full time at the computers. Another five hundred come here occasionally, or communicate via terminals around the country. Here, let me show you the range of this thing.”
He pressed a series of keys, watching the printout on the screen above the console. “Want to see a graph of federal highway expenditures over the past two hundred years?” Almost at once a steeply climbing line appeared on the screen, leveling off toward the top. “How about it, Crader? Ask it some questions. Go ahead! Anything!”
“All right,” Crader said, accepting the challenge. “What was the Corliss Engine?”
Blunt’s fingers flew over the console, and almost instantly the printout appeared: “Colossal steam engine invented by George Henry Corliss and displayed at Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.”
“Good?” Blunt asked.
“Good,” Crader conceded.
“It plays games,” Masha said. “All this for a machine that answers quiz questions?” She had the direct brashness of youth.
“It does much more than answer quiz questions,” Blunt replied, a bit stiffly. “For instance, I can order up a chart of stock market cycles, or crime rates, or even revenue shares from legalized gambling. I can go further. Using the facts and figures of the past, I can predict the future with a high degree of accuracy.”
“Who’ll win next month’s presidential election?” Crader asked.
“This is a projection on the popular vote.” Blunt fed the question to the computer. The answer took four seconds:
ANDREW JACKSON MCCURDY 81,785,480
THOMAS PARK WALLACE 78,906,473
“Fairly close,” Crader said. “Though as a department head I’m pleased to see that my boss will remain the same.”
“I can break it down by state if you’d like.”
“No need. What’s your calculated margin of error?”
“Less than half of one percent.”
“Very good. Now let’s try this one. Who won the election between Jason Blunt and Stanley Ambrose?”
The bearded man merely smiled. “The computer will not have those figures. A unit in Chicago tabulates the results, and even I do not know what they are.”
He rose from the console and motioned them to follow. But the rest of the tour provided no new insights for Crader. There was only room after underground room of memory units and readout screens, with a brief glimpse of Blunt’s office.
“Why?” he asked at last.
“Why?”
“If this is not part of some revolutionary scheme, then why?”
“This is not HAND, as you can see. Our group does not hate the machine. We know its capabilities, and we make use of them. Rather than destroy the machines, as HAND would do, we intend to
harness them for the good of mankind. The idea of using computers to distill all of human knowledge is not new with us, of course. In the late 1960s The New York Times attempted something similar, feeding all indexed items from the Times into a central computer. A large series of books and research projects resulted—everything from a directory and index of all the films ever shown in New York to an alphabetical listing of all the people whose deaths the Times had reported. Way back then there were those who voiced objections to the project, pointing out that the computer input could tend to color or distort the true facts of a more detailed news story. But the project was successful nonetheless. Here we have simply carried it one step further. We record the past, and use it to define the present while predicting the future.”
“If that’s true, you could rule the country with this machine. Rule it better than the President.”
“Perhaps,” Blunt said, smiling slightly.
“Then you admit your group could function as a sort of secret super-government?”
“Oh, certainly. I admit to everything. You must only trust me that our intentions are honorable. The very fact I brought you here shows our intentions are honorable.”
“What about Stanley Ambrose’s intentions?”
“Ambrose?”
“Obviously there are two factions fighting for control here. Otherwise, why hold a secret election? If Ambrose won that election, what happens?”
“Ambrose is an honorable man, a dedicated public servant.”
“He’s not been seen since his return from Venus a year ago. Any idea where he is?”
“He has been here many times. Soon I’m sure he’ll return to public view.”
They’d come back to the stainless steel corridor leading to the elevators. “We’ve seen it all,” Blunt said, “except for the crew’s living quarters.”
“Crew? As on a spaceship?”
“It’s very like a spaceship, isn’t it?”
“It’s cut off from reality with no view of earth, if that’s what you mean.”
“Will you report us to the President?”
Crader weighed the man’s words, wondering if they would be followed by a threat. “Of course,” he answered finally. “It’s my job. Am I free to leave?”
The Fellowship of the Hand Page 5