The Turing Option

by Harry Harrison

  “Let’s go,” Ben said with great relief, putting down his glass and climbing to his feet. When they went out of the front door of the barracks they found that Major Wood and a squad were waiting for them.

  “I don’t like this public exposure,” the Major said sharply.

  “It’s not as if we were going very far,” Ben said. “Just to the administration building, which as you can see is right down the drive.”

  “And damn close to the front gate and almost in sight of the public road.”

  “Major, I’ve explained this before. There is no other way that this can be done. We need to use the conference room. Everyone is cooperating. Following your instructions, all the Megalobe employees were sent home at noon. The techs have swept the room and the entire building. What more could you possibly ask for? An antiaircraft battery?”

  “We’ve got that aheady. SAMs on four buildings. Come on.”

  There were heavily armed soldiers everywhere—even the cooks had been pulled out of the kitchen for this operation and formed part of the guard. Although it was only a few hundred yards to the building the Major insisted that they drive there in an armored personnel carrier.

  Brian had never been in the Megalobe conference room before and looked around with interest. It was decorated with quiet luxury; the Van Gogh on the wall might possibly be real. Subdued lighting, thick carpeting, mahogany conference table with chairs along one side of it. The table itself was drawn up against the picture window that stretched the length of the wall. Here on the fifth floor they had a perfect view across the desert to the mountains beyond.

  “Just about time,” Ben said, looking at his watch. Even as he spoke the desert view vanished and was replaced by another conference room. Only then did Brian realize that the entire wall was a high-resolution TV screen scanned by 3-D eye tracking cameras, just now coming into production.

  Although everyone was apparently in the same room, the conference was taking place across the entire width of the country from the nation’s Capital. The table that the others were sitting behind was also placed flush with the screen, the two tables apparently forming a single table for all of them to sit around. There was obviously a standard height and length for all tables used in teleconferencing, Brian thought. They sat down.

  “Brian, I don’t think you’ve met Agent Manias, who has been heading the FBI end of this investigation from the first day.”

  “Pleased to meet you at last, Brian.”

  “Hello,” was all that Brian could think of to say. They weren’t really meeting—or were they? The agent was obviously more used to this kind of thing than he was.

  “Going to bring us up to date, Dave?” Ben asked.

  “That’s what this is all about. You have received copies of all our information as it was processed. Are there any questions?”

  “There certainly are,” Brian snapped, still angry. “Isn’t the time long past to take some action, pull in these criminals?”

  “Yes, sir, the time has certainly come. That is what this meeting is about.”

  “Good,” Brian said, sinking back into his chair as some of the tension of the past days drained away.

  “Let me bring you up to date where we stand at this moment. We now have in our possession the complete company records of DigitTech, as well as up-to-date files on every employee. The time has now come when we can’t get anything more from public—or private—records. We also feel that it is counterproductive to continue the surveillance much longer. Our people are very good and very professional, but with each day that passes the chance of accidental discovery grows. Therefore it was decided that four P.M. mountain time today would be optimum, to conduct this operation.” Brian looked at his watch—forty-five minutes to go. “Agent Vorsky will explain what will be taking place.”

  Vorsky nodded at them, a lean man with an upright military bearing. He glanced at the notes on the table before him.

  “At the present moment there are four agents employed inside the plant.”

  “That many?” Ben said. “There are sure to be suspicions.”

  “Yes, sir, there would be if there were any delay. That’s one of the reasons that we are going in today. There is the one agent in the office that you know about. Two days ago there were three cases of mild food poisoning, inadequate refrigeration in one of the roach-coaches that service the plant. The employment agency that is used by DigitTech already had our agents on their books.”

  No one else wanted to ask how these fortuitous cases of food poisoning had happened, so Brian kept his mouth shut as well.

  “The plan is a very simple one that has proven effective in the past. Precisely at four the fire alarm will sound and everyone will be asked to evacuate the buildings. As soon as that happens two agents will secure the office, allowing no access to any files or records, while the other two agents will occupy the research premises. The team that goes in will be wearing these helmets so we will all be able to watch every phase of the operation.” Agent Vorsky reached down and picked up a helmet that he placed on the table. It looked like a black-plastic baseball cap with a light mounted on top.

  “This is made of very tough plastic and protects the wearer’s head. More important to us is this omnidirectional pickup on top. This device works completely independent of the wearer. The image is stabilized by a laser-gyroscope and is controlled by our operators here. No matter which way the wearer walks—or turns his head—we will pick up the image that we choose.”

  He twisted the helmet up and down, turned it around quickly—but the lens always remained facing at the screen.

  “There are six separate hit teams and these units will be worn by one man on each team. These six images will all appear on our screens. Our mixers here will enlarge the most relevant one and you will hear the sound from that one. All of the images will of course be recorded for later study. What we will be doing now is letting you follow the operation in real time.”

  “Any questions?” Manias asked. “There is just enough time left for me to tell you what we will do. Firstly we secure all equipment and records so that nothing can be sabotaged. Then everyone working there—as well as the four employees off sick today—will be taken into custody and interrogated. We have a lot of questions to ask and I know that we will get answers to all of them. Countdown has now begun at minus ten minutes.”

  The other conference room vanished and was replaced by six very uninteresting pictures. Two must have been located inside darkened trucks because the harsh black-and-white pictures were obviously being taken with infrared light. The picture on the upper right was of shrubbery and tree leaves; the other three were black. Brain pointed.

  “Burned out?”

  “Probably turned off. Agents in cars or visible to the public. Don’t want to attract attention yet by putting on those Mickey Mouse hats. Six minutes to go.”

  At zero minus two things got busier. All the screens were on now, two of them showing the view through the windshields of moving cars. All of the hit teams were now converging on the plant.

  When the countdown hit zero things began to happen very fast. The hooting of fire alarms sounded. The images on the screen stayed pointed straight ahead under the operators’ remote control, but some of them bobbed up and down as the agents wearing the devices ran forward. Doors were forced open, there were shouts of surprise, firm orders to remain calm.

  Then one of the images enlarged suddenly to show an armed agent forcing open a door. Inside was a group of men standing against the wall, hands raised. A man with a gun faced them, obviously an agent since the others hurried past him.

  “That’s an electronic lab,” Brian said.

  As the lab scene shrank to its original size a scene of men hurrying through an office door expanded to take its place. A shocked woman just going out tried to stop them.

  “What’s this? You can’t go in there—who are you?”

  “FBI. Stand aside, please.”

  A hand reached
out and opened the inner door. Which must have been soundproof because the gray-haired man sitting at the large desk was punching a number into his phone and did not even look up. The scene moved into the room before he heard something and looked their way, putting the phone down.

  “Where is the fire? And what are you doing in my office?”

  “There is no fire, Mr. Thomsen.”

  “Then get out of here—now!”

  “Are you Mr. Thomsen, Managing Director of DigitTech?”

  “I’m calling the police,” Thomsen said, grabbing up the telephone.

  “We are the police, sir. Here is my identification.”

  Thomsen looked at the badge, then slowly lowered the phone.

  “All right, you’re FBI. Now tell me just what the hell you think you are doing here.”

  He dropped back into his chair and had gone very pale. He did not look well.

  “You are Mr. Thomsen?”

  “My name is on the goddamned door. Are you going to tell me what you are doing here?”

  “I am going to caution you now so that you know your rights.” Thomsen was silent as the agent read him his rights from the card. Only when he was done did he repeat the question.

  “Your firm and you are under investigation …”

  “That’s damn obvious! You had better tell me what you are playing at.”

  “We have reason to believe that a person or persons employed with this firm was directly involved with criminal acts in California on February 8 of this year at Megalobe Industries.”

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  It happened with horrifying speed. There was a thunderous explosion, a sheet of flame, smoke.

  Loud cries, someone screaming.

  The picture on the screen swung dizzily, showed floor, wall, spun about.

  Another screen expanded to prominence, the shouting continued, the displayed picture moved quickly into the room through the doorway.

  The office was a gutted shambles, men coughed in the smoke that filled it. “Medic!” someone shouted. Agents were climbing to their feet. The view swung about the room, moved back and zoomed in on the white wall.

  “Blood,” Benicoff said. “What in hell happened in there?”

  Other voices shouted the same thing. The camera was jostled to one side as two medics ran in, bent over the figures on the floor. A moment later an agent with smoke-blackened face, a trickle of blood on his forehead, turned to face the camera.

  “Bombs. In the telephones. The one on the desk was close to us, I have two men badly injured. But the suspect—he was wearing his personal phone on his belt.” The agent hesitated, took a grim, deep breath.

  “He was practically blown in half. He is really but dead.”

  31

  September 12, 2024

  They watched in numb silence as the reports came in one by one. Other than this incident, this disaster, the rest of the operation had been a complete success. All of the suspects had been secured and were in custody: no records, files or machines had been touched or sabotaged. A police guard had moved into position and now surrounded the premises. The only alteration to the original plans was that a reinforced bomb squad was going over everything before the technicians entered any of the buildings. They would be alone inside the complex until the premises had been secured.

  One of the agents was dead, another mangled severely.

  “Suicide?” Brian finally said. “Did Thomsen kill himself, Ben?”

  “I doubt that. He was all bluster at first, but beginning to ravel at the edges—you saw how worried he looked. If he was planning suicide he was a remarkable actor. My snap guess is that he was killed to shut him up. He must have had information on the people we are looking for, was probably one of them himself. This is not the first time they have killed—or tried to kill—to ensure silence. They are a brutal lot.”

  “But how did they know what was happening?”

  “Lots of ways, bug the office, maybe bug the whole building. But I think we will find out that it was the telephones. They are all solid-state now and never malfunction. Filled with gadgetry. They record calls, answer calls, remote page, conference, fax facility, you name it. Easy enough to fix a phone so that it is always turned on, always being monitored and listened to by another number. Put some plastic explosive inside with a coded detonator. It could sit there for years waiting for the right moment. Then when the day comes and whoever is listening doesn’t like what he hears he presses the button—and boom. End of conversation, end of party.”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “These are terrible people.”

  “But they would have to listen in twenty-four hours a day … no, I take that back. Easy enough to use automatic word-recognizing machines. Let it be on the lookout for certain words like FBI or Megalobe, that’s all you have to do. It would sound the alarm when one of the words triggered the program, get someone on the line at once to listen in, decide what to do. The people behind this are horrible. While we were listening to what was happening in that office—somewhere else, someone evil, was listening as well. When he heard what was happening, understood the situation—”

  “He ended the conversation. This is bad but don’t let it depress you too much. This is not the end of the investigation but only the very beginning. They hid their tracks well—but you and Sven found them. One villain dead, more in hiding, but all the evidence to hand. We’ll get them yet.”

  “Meanwhile I’m still locked inside Megalobe. It’s like a life sentence.”

  “It won’t be forever, I can guarantee that.”

  “You can’t guarantee anything, Ben,” Brian said with a great tiredness. “I’m going to lie down for a while. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”

  He went to his quarters and dropped onto the bed, fell asleep at once. When he awoke it was after ten at night and he realized that it was his stomach that had growled him awake, protesting the fact that he hadn’t eaten in over fourteen hours. He had drunk a lot, too much probably. There was cereal and a fresh quart of milk in the fridge and he poured himself a bowl. Turned on the recently installed window that really wasn’t a window and pulled a chair up before it. Ate the cereal slowly and looked out at the moonlit desert. Stars right down to the horizon. What was going to happen next? Had they reached another dead end with Thomsen’s murder? Or would the investigation turn up the people behind it? The dark and murderous group that had planned the theft, the killings.

  It was very late before he pulled his clothes off and finally fell into bed. Slept like a rock until the buzzing telephone woke him up; he blinked at the time, after eleven in the morning.

  “Yes?”

  “Morning, Brian. Going into the lab today?”

  He hadn’t thought about it at all, too tired, too depressed. Too much else happening.

  “No, Shelly, I don’t think so. It’s been a seven-day week for too long a time. We both could use a day off.”

  “Talk about it over lunch?”

  “No, I’ve got—things to do. You take care of yourself and I’ll phone when we are ready to get back to work.”

  The black depression just would not go away. He had got his hopes up so high when they had traced his AI to DigitTech Products. He had been so sure that this would be the end, that his imprisonment was going to be over soon. But it wasn’t. He was still inside and not getting out until they found the conspirators. If ever. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  He tried watching television but it made no sense. Nor did the National Almanacs that he had printed and bound. Usually he enjoyed browsing through them to catch up on his missing years. Not today. He made himself a margarita, sipped at it, wrinkled his lips at the taste so early in the day, then poured it down the sink. Turning into an alcoholic wouldn’t help. He slapped together a cheese and tomato sandwich instead and permitted himself one beer to wash it down.

  When Ben hadn’t called by noon Brian phoned him instead. No news. Slow progress. Stand
by. Contact you the instant anything happened. Thanks a lot.

  In the end he fell back on an old favorite, E. E. Smith, and reread four volumes, then some Benford robot stories before he went to bed.

  It was noon of the second day before the phone rang again—he grabbed it up.

  “Ben?”

  “It’s Dr. Snaresbrook, Brian. I’ve just got to Megalobe and I would like to see you.”

  “I’m, well, a little busy now, Doc.”

  “No you are not. You are in your quarters by yourself and haven’t been out for two days. People are concerned, Brian, which is why I am here. Speaking as your physician I think that it is important that I see you now.”

  “Later, maybe. I’ll phone you at the clinic.”

  “I’m not in the clinic—but right downstairs in your building. I would like to come up.”

  Brian started to protest—then resigned himself to the inevitable. “Give me five minutes to pull some clothes on.”

  He pulled on his clothes, answered the door when the bell rang.

  “You don’t look too bad,” the doctor said when he let her in. She looked him up and down professionally then took a diagnoster from her bag. “If I could have your arm, thank you.”

  One touch against his skin was enough. The little machine buzzed happily to itself, then filled its display screen with numbers and letters.

  “Coffee?” Brian asked. “I just made it fresh.”

  “That would be very nice,” she said, squinting at the tiny screen. “Temperature, blood pressure, glucose, phos-pholamine. Everything normal except a slightly elevated alpha-reactinase. How is the head?”

  He brushed his fingers through the red bristle. “Like always, no symptoms, no problems. I could have saved you a trip. What’s bothering me is not physical. It is just good old melancholia and depression.”

  “Easy enough to understand. Cream, no sugar. Thanks.”

  She settled into one of the dining chairs and stirred her cup, staring into it as though it were a crystal ball. “I’m not surprised. I should have seen this coming. You are working too hard, using your brain too hard, putting a strain on yourself. All work and no play.”