The Ultimate Secret

by David Thomas Moore

  “To be honest, old chap,” said Hotston, as he made his way along the gangway, trunk trundling along behind him, “it’s not like we have much choice. The Sultan’s made it clear we weren’t welcome back in Istanbul. We can’t very well head back home as long as the Committee for Ethics in Analytics has it in for us. And that business in Milan’s probably put the kibosh on working in the Socialist League, for the time being.”

  “I don’t know what their beef is,” Ledgerwood protested. “They wanted the machine to think faster; we more than doubled its processing speed.”

  “Yes, well, unfortunately it didn’t know it was thinking faster, did it? I don’t know exactly how much it costs to replace that much factory equipment, but I imagine it’s a fair sight more than our commission.” He sighed. The queue off the boat slowed as they approached the dock. “At any rate, at least we’re on Britannian soil, after a fashion. Could be worse; we could be working in America. You’d be begging for Indian telegraphy then.”

  Ledgerwood huffed. “Fat chance.” He fanned himself for a moment, reflecting. “I’ve always wondered. What is it with the Yanks? Why don’t they use electricity?”

  Hotston shrugged. “Politics. They’d invested so much in steam, before Independence. When Britannia discovered electricity, I guess they saw it as a symbol of Imperialism.”

  The larger man mused on this for a moment. “I suppose it is, really. You always know you’re in the arms of old Vicky, when you’re ten thousand miles from home and there’s still a power point in the corner.”

  “And then there’s that Doc Thunder chap. Apparently he keeps pressure on the government to keep out of it. Thinks it’s too dangerous to be in the hands of mortal men.”

  Ledgerwood chuckled. “Pish. Like steam’s any safer.”

  They stepped off the gangway and onto the Mumbai dock, and were immediately set upon by beggars and porters, grabbing at their clothes and trunk and calling for attention. “No!” shouted Hotston, flapping his hands. “Get off!” He clutched the trunk, looking around desperately. He turned to Ledgerwood. “A little help would be good?”

  “Don’t you talk the language, then? I thought your mother was Indian.”

  “Well, she wasn’t Marathi, was she? Stop being an arse and see if you can see who this Smith person sent. Or even a robo-bobby, or something.”

  “Alright, alright.” Ledgerwood straightened and cast about through the crowds.

  “Dr Ledgerwood? Dr Hotston?”

  The voice came from behind them. Ledgerwood wheeled, a little too quickly, and staggered. “Yes?”

  A pretty Indian girl of about sixteen or seventeen stood behind him, dark hair tied up in a ponytail, hands behind her back, smiling pleasantly.

  “You are Doctors Ledgerwood and Hotston?”

  “Clearly,” said Hotston, pulling the trunk over to her and straightening. One of the five or six porters who had persisted up to this point started shouting at the others at the sight of the mysterious girl, and they quietened down.

  She grinned and held her hand out. “I’m Kim. I’ve been sent to collect you.” As Hotston shook her hand uncertainly, she continued, “You’ll need a porter for your trunk, of course.”

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll be–”

  “I’m afraid you’ve no real choice. You’ll be badgered until you hire one.” As if to prove her point, the porters resumed their clamouring, pushing each other out of the way and waving in the men’s faces.

  “Hire that one,” she said, pointing at the shortest of them; Hotston thought he’d been the one shouting the others down. “I know him; he’s honest. His name’s Suni. And he won’t charge you more than twenty rupees or so.”

  “Why, that’s not much more than a shilling,” said Ledgerwood, fishing in his pocket.

  “Then it won’t be a great imposition on you.” She rattled off instructions to Suni, sending the others on their way, and the boy stepped forward, bowed solemnly and heaved the trunk bodily onto his back.

  “Doesn’t he speak English, then?” asked Hotston, as the four of them headed off the docks and onto the road.

  “Perfectly, Dr Hotston,” replied Kim, with a slight smirk. Suni looked up with a huge grin. “The porters always start speaking to tourists in Marathi.”

  Hotston chuckled. “So where are we headed, then?”

  “Sion. It’s north of here. Do you have the machine?”

  “In the trunk,” said Ledgerwood.

  “Excellent,” said Kim. “After you’ve done the work you’ve been hired for, we part ways. My employer has seen to your travel from the warehouse.”

  They’d reached the road, where the heaving masses by the disembarking ship had thinned to the merely dense crowds of the Mumbai streets. A row of steam-car taxis were lined up at the docks; she flagged one and led the party over.

  “BLACK LINE,” MUTTERED one of the signal-hackers Kim’s mysterious employer had provided, a young man called Randeep. His partner, Sanjay, nodded and tapped at the keys of the Cooke-Wheatstone engine.

  They’d been in the warehouse for three hours already. It was damp, with a wide puddle at the far end of the rough brick building, but hot and stuffy, even after the sun had gone down. The air was humid, and sweat collected on Hotston’s brow and nose as he worked. The Mk IV was connected within half an hour of arriving, and tested another half-hour later; but waiting on the signal was tedious, and he’d taken to testing and retesting her, tinkering with the system and tuning it. Ledgerwood had hunkered down next to him and was sorting through code cards and tapes, occasionally jotting down notes in his memo book.

  Kim looked up. “Black line?”

  “Signal’s heading for Afghanistan,” said Sanjay, focusing on the screen as his fingers rattled across the keyboard. Both men were soft-spoken and earnest, and spoke English with only a hint of an accent. “We call them black lines. Partly because they’re less reliable, but chiefly because pretty much the only thing people use that trunk for is information smuggling.”

  “Oh?”

  “Or signal-hacking,” muttered Randeep, staring at his own screen. “Although we’d be able to tell in that case. Much higher bandwidth. Usually crashes the whole trunk, unless the hacker knows what he’s doing.”

  “Which we do.” Sanjay looked up momentarily, grinned.

  “Well, naturally. But a lot of the other people that do it don’t.”

  “All about the compression, you see,” said Ledgerwood to Kim. He turned to Randeep and Sanjay. “Do you use Lovelace or von Neumann?”

  “A little of both,” said Randeep, grinning, “but mostly Ramanujan. And Sanj here’s obsessed with Gatesian algorithms.”

  The big Englishman snorted. “The bloody Yank?”

  Sanjay never looked up from the screen. “Don’t underestimate American analyticists, doctor. They have to do a lot more with a lot less; it makes them more creative.”

  “Hmph. Well, just let us know when you’ve got the signal. We’re good to go.”

  Randeep suddenly leaned back in his chair and swore in Hindi, throwing his hands in the air.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Hotston.

  “Line dropped. We have to start again. Ah-cha. The send’ll get a fail flag and restart in about five minutes. Get us a tea, would you, Sanj?”

  “GOT IT!” YELLED Randeep.

  “Really?” asked Ledgerwood, almost anxiously. The young signal-hackers had lost the line four times; the sun had come up, and the warehouse was starting to heat up again. Hotston and Kim had been to get breakfast; the empty bowls were scattered about around their feet.

  “Yep. All intact. No fails.” Randeep was beaming. “Sanj?”

  Sanjay was pulling the end of the code tape from the Cooke-Wheatstone machine and winding it. “Here you go, doctor.” He tossed it to Ledgerwood.

  “Thanks,” said Ledgerwood, turning to spool it into Rosie. “We all good to go, Doctor Hotston?”

  “We’re all set, Doctor Ledgerwood,” said Hotst
on, who’d been dozing in his seat, but was sitting up now, looking keen.

  “Let’s crack on, then.”

  “THIS IS NESTED,” murmured Ledgerwood, as he pored over Rosie’s read-out.

  “Yes?” asked Kim, politely. She’d been watching the English analyticists work intently. Ledgerwood turned to face her.

  “Sorry. The signal looks bigger than it is, because it’s been encoded several times. When it arrives at its stated destination and is opened, it bounces off the local telegraphic router and straight back in again as a fresh request, for a new destination. The operator – or the engine, if it’s automated – doesn’t realise he’s just getting the same signal he received a minute before. It’s a way of hiding where a signal’s come from; the sort of thing your lads who were here earlier might do.”

  “So you don’t know where it came from originally?” asked Kim.

  “I didn’t say that. But you have to know what to look for...” He peered at the display again and made a few notes. “It’s been round the houses, actually. Calcutta to Kabul... and before that... Accra to Calcutta... then before that, Dar-Es-Salaam to Accra... Bonn to Dar-Es-Salaam. This came from the Ultimate Reich, but the sender went to pains to hide himself.”

  “Or herself.”

  “Hmm.” He tapped a few more keys, wrote a few more notes; Hotston made another adjustment to the machine. “Lucky guess, or do you know something about this signal?”

  Kim shrugged. “Lucky. So it was a woman?”

  “I just have a surname for the recipient and a first name for the sender. From ‘Daria’ to ‘Smith.’ Curious. Not sure what they’d have done with that in Kabul even if they had got it. Smith...” He frowned, stood and stretched.

  Kim frowned as well. “Never mind the destination. The message itself?”

  “Just getting to that now. Had to crack through the nest first.” The two Englishmen turned back to their machine.

  TWO LINES.

  An address – no city or country, although the street name sounded Spanish – and a code of some sort: six letters and numerals.

  Kim had the sheet of paper holding the decoded message folded up and tucked in her shirt. Her heart pounded as she left the warehouse and crossed the Eastern Carriageway, running to dodge steam cars and carriages, rickshaws and bicycles. In principle, automatons at major junctions controlled traffic and fined breaches of the highway code; in practice, there were too few for the job, and many of them were old and poorly maintained. Indian road traffic was famously among the worst in the Britannian Empire.

  Kim had grown up with these roads. A few years ago, it had been a game, she and her friends daring each other to cross the biggest, busiest roads. She smiled at the memory of her mother’s rage when she’d learned about it. She skipped and weaved as she ran between the cars and carriages, the movements second nature. She got so lost in the moment that she almost missed the battered old steam car pulling onto the road from the car park opposite the warehouse, cruising slowly after her as she reached the far footpath and continued down the road.

  It could just be a coincidence, of course; Smith’s warning making her too sensitive.

  Best not to risk it. She ducked down a foot alley between shops, nearly pushing a passing student over as she wheeled on her foot. Once in the shadows of the alley, she ran to its far end. It was taking her directly away from the market where Smith’s office stood, but that was for the best; she was leading her tail, whoever it was, away from him. The alley came out in a small square at the backs of four apartment buildings, with washing lines crossing the space overhead and the smell of cooking coming from several of the windows. She calmed her breathing and listened for pursuit from the alley.

  Nothing.

  Choosing another alley out of the square at random, Kim went more cautiously. A washing line hung within reach, giving her an idea; glancing quickly around her to see if she was being observed, she whipped a red and gold sari off the line and wrapped it around herself, folding the end up and over her head.

  The alley brought her out on another main road. Kim paused briefly to get her bearings and headed off in another direction. The footpath was crowded in the early afternoon traffic, and Kim couldn’t be sure if she was being followed or not. At least the car – if it had been following her – was nowhere to be seen.

  Kim brushed by a young Chinese man in a grey suit, who didn’t acknowledge her apology. She stared at him briefly; Chinese were a rare sight in Mumbai.

  A rickshaw and a handful of rupees took her closer to Smith’s office. Kim craned her neck the whole time, but couldn’t see the battered old car. She stopped the driver a half-hour away from Smith’s office and continued on foot again.

  TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK-TICK.

  Kim started at the sound, heart hammering in her throat.

  She’d been on foot for more than half an hour, and was still no nearer Smith’s office. Jumping off the rickshaw, she’d cut through two open-air markets, trying to lose herself in the crowd. As she did, though, she’d seen four more suited Chinese men, and nearly run into one of them, who had also woodenly ignored her. Trying too hard to act nonchalant, too slow to react when she surprised him. There was no way this was a coincidence.

  They must have followed the rickshaw, or have friends who were able to track her, coordinating their efforts on the ground. She’d stopped on a street corner and looked up, trying to see if there were people in the windows of the high residential blocks around her, watching. She’d looked up in the sky; there were five or six airships over Mumbai, but there were always airships over Mumbai. Any of them could be coordinating the men she kept seeing. Agents for the Chinese Imperial Bureaucracy? Triads? It didn’t matter. She needed to move under cover.

  That was what had brought her into the covered alley behind the fish market, where she’d started hearing the sound. She’d seen another of the Chinese strangers as she ran through the market, and he’d started, turned to move towards her, so she’d ducked into the alley. An elderly beggar had called out to her as she’d jumped over his splayed legs. She hadn’t heard what he said, and hadn’t wanted to turn back. She’d heard him chuckling to himself behind her. Then had come the sound.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  The alley was shadowy and muggy, if cooler than in the open. A couple of the locals had set up improvised stalls at the near end, selling watches – stolen, she guessed, sold off the beaten path to avoid the attention of the automaton policemen – and trinkets. The sellers watched her placidly but didn’t speak to her. Further down the alley, however, were pools of darkness, the impression of shapes and people waiting out of sight.

  There. Near the far end of the alley, next to a pile of rotten boxes. A shape, taller than a man and broader, shifting slightly, and again that sound.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  Just then, the Chinese man from the market came into view at the mouth of the alley. One of the watch sellers broke into his spiel, assuming he was a tourist, but the stranger walked past him. Kim, trapped, looked desperately around her and opened one of the doors in the alley, charging into the home beyond.

  THE HIGH TENEMENTS in most of central Mumbai were a warren of rooms and corridors. Original Britannian designs had been modified endlessly – walls knocked out or put in, corridors blocked off, even extra floors added in, creating cramped sleeping spaces for the numberless families crammed into the towers. Arcane and obscure boundaries separated one family’s space from another, with doors and walls having little to do with the matter. If you knew what you were doing, knew what to look for, it was possible to travel the length of one of these buildings, room to room, crawling, climbing, ducking and scrambling, without even stepping into a corridor, much less out into the street.

  Women, children and the elderly cried out, startled, as she barged through, jumping over or slipping past people as they cooked, ate, sang, talked, argued, read and slept. She paid none of them any heed. Behind her, she heard a somewhat lou
der outcry as her pursuer blundered into the tightly-packed homes. She heard shouting and swearing, and she smiled. Then she heard two gunshots and she ran even faster.

  She threw open another door and came out into a covered alley on the far side of the building, this one wider, cleaner, even dimly gaslit. The smell of the fish market wafted up from one end, and the roar of traffic could be heard at the other.

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  She looked up and left towards the sound, close to panic, and made out two huge figures lumbering–

  No, that wasn’t right. They moved slowly and haltingly, as though assessing every step, but with precision and economy.

  The figures picked their way slowly and carefully towards her. They were at least seven feet tall, and broad with it, with slightly unnatural proportions, their ungainly limbs and craning necks seeming slightly stretched. Although they were fully dressed, in long kurtas and broad hats, she was sure it was more for disguise than modesty. In the half-light, she could make out nothing of their features. Every few steps, one or the other would pause for a half-second or so, as though uncertain about its footing. Every time they did, they emitted that staccato ticking sound.

  Kim felt ice trickle down her back as they picked their way towards her. She backed away from them, stumbling and nearly falling over before she could finally tear her eyes from the things. She wheeled on one foot and sprinted down the alley, dimly registering them both stopping to make that noise as she did so:

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick.

  She’d gone no more than five steps before skidding to a halt, as two of the suited Chinese men entered the alley from the other end. Now they were looking directly at her, and both drawing pistols from hidden holsters.

  “No need for you to be hurt,” one of them said, in thickly-accented English. “We just want the message.”