The Thinktank That Leaked

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  She watched me as if inviting it, her lips twisted into a fake of a smile, wanting me to incriminate myself.

  I couldn’t believe it was happening, and yet I’d always known it would. But it was so real, so her … I could have imagined her talking to her father in just that way. And I wasn’t ready for it, either. I felt bitter and cheated that the mosaics had got hold of her at this particular moment, when I was weakened, in need of reassurance, I think I hated her back, just then — mosaics or not.

  She said, “Not quite the reception you were expecting. Is it?”

  So this was to be another test of my control … another sort, and following immediately upon the one of before. I was shivering still, shock still lingered; yet I knew I couldn’t afford to think of myself, not yet. There was at least as much to lose by failure now as there had been in the 747. More.

  I said quietly, “We’ve both been expecting it. Remember? We talked about it after leaving Orscombe.”

  “Oh yes, Orscombe. Where you tried to pick up that bitch behind my back. Two minutes I’d been out of that duty room and you were in a clinch with a nurse. You don’t waste much time when it comes to love at first sight, my God. Cheap lipstick, too. It was on your face, making you look ridiculous.”

  “Nesta! Switch out that software! It wants you to hate me just as it wants you to hate yourself! Switch it out — you can.”

  “And just suppose I don’t want to? Just suppose it happens to suit me? — protection against soft lights and sweet music?”

  I needed every ounce of control I had left. Exhausted, I still had to force myself to accept and believe and know that her brain was being attacked and that somehow I had to give her the means of resisting it. Certainly violence was absolutely the last thing that would help. I felt like tearing her hair out from sheer frustration … an act of contact that would at least amount to something personal; but you cannot cure hate with anything resembling it. I decided just to try and keep her talking. “Was it your idea to see me in here?” — I couldn’t understand what she thought her motives to be.

  “Yes, I spoke to Richter.”

  “Did he know what was on your mind?”

  “I wasn’t exactly friendly so he must have had some idea of what I had in mind.”

  “Where’s Richter now?”

  “Does it matter? In the Tower, I think. They’re all saying how wonderful you are. Half of them probably think I’d asked for the key of the door so that you could lay me at your earliest convenience … You know, the prize. After all, you’ve saved the insurance companies a lot of money.”

  “And my own skin.”

  “I’ve no doubt that came into it.”

  “Nesta, I was only able to land that aircraft because I love you.”

  “Define love. Greed? Release of tension? A means of restoring your nerve?”

  “Perhaps also a means of restoring your mind, Nesta.”

  “It’s in good shape, thanks.”

  “I wish mine was. I’m not up to this.”

  “No. Okay for filth. Not so hot for thinking things out.”

  I said calmly, “I’m not sure about that. You’ve suddenly made me think of something. Remember what Paula said?”

  “Paula! We have to talk about Paula? Again? You’re mad!”

  “She said there was an argument going on in her head.”

  “The one going on in mine, Roger, is why the hell I went for that line —”

  “ — It implies there are two variants of the same species.”

  She flared. “Yes, there are two variants of every species: male and female. And one is physically a lot stronger than the other.”

  “Nesta, think.” I knew I had to make her reason. If she could outreason the mosaics which were torturing her they would recede — for a while. I knew also that they could be milked of their own secrets, now that Nesta was in this state. For they were gnawing at her very cortex. Information cannot flow only one way, surely? Through Nesta, I could monitor the organism itself, get at its fundamental anxieties.

  So I fought to hold onto my self-control that much longer, to keep my voice level, suppress all my own emotions and in so doing dampen down hers. “Variants within one species … trivial ones that get blown up out of all proportion because of the competition to survive —”

  “—I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about.”

  “But you do!” Her eyes had suddenly blanked out, filmed over, at bay. They were controlled by the mosaics, guarding their fears, sensing intellectual attack. “Nesta, whites against blacks; not men against women.”

  She was defensive, backing away toward the grill of the bar. “Picturesque, Roger. But changing the subject won’t get you out of this hole.”

  “Hole. Why did you say ‘hole’?”

  Her eyes blazed again. “Because you’re in one. Caught at it, pressing your bloody affections —”

  I rammed my next statement through the slits in her eyes. “Positive holes, negative electrons … Two types. Isn’t that it?”

  “Get out of here!”

  In clutching for a straw I had grasped the wheatgerm.

  I shouted, “Two! — p-n-p! n-p-n! Deny it, but you can’t deny it, one lot of you are positive, the other lot negative! That’s why you’re split! That’s why you fought inside Paula’s head!” I could envisage the sudden shock to the mosaics in contact with her brain, as if some kind of Achilles’ heel had been exposed by X-ray.

  Two types. Yes! Right from the beginning of transistor technology it had emerged that you could arrange the tiny sandwich in two different ways. In effect, the two slices of ‘bread’ can be electrically positive and the meat between them negative, or vice versa. The first type is known as p-n-p (positive/negative/positive); the second n-p-n (negative/ positive/negative). They work the same, do the same job; but electrically they are mirror images of each other. Normally they work together very efficiently. Would they always?

  Suppose they had become enemies? — racial enemies, subject to the same sort of prejudice, resentment and ultimate hatred that variants in the human species endured?

  Wild? — maybe. On target? … The test lay in her reactions.

  I knew also that the idea had arisen directly from the depth of our relationship. The urge to get her back to me was so great I had dredged the tank for the palliative.

  She stood there, rocking slightly, and stared at me.

  As I watched, her expression gradually changed.

  There had been an ugliness, a grotesque caricature of herself. It was falling away. She seemed bewildered, her eyes curiously blurred, I’d never seen human eyes go through a change quite like it.

  “Roger?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did I say such dreadful things to you, just then?”

  “Don’t worry; you weren’t responsible for the script.”

  She said, “Then something made me feel different again.”

  I said, “Pure logic. You needed logic; and you needed to demonstrate to your own brain that human logic can be inspired by love. Love is not mere sentimentality. It’s productive. The mosaic can’t possibly understand that …”

  “Roger, I said sex was filth.”

  “That’s what it wanted you to believe.”

  “Roger, will you touch me? … Just touch my hand?”

  I stepped forward and placed my fingertips gently against hers.

  “Nice fingers,” she said. “Do you want to kiss me?”

  “No, because I wouldn’t be able to hold back, and your brain is shocked, and a few people around here might be shocked as well. You need gentleness; we have to consolidate on love itself, not its physical expression. I could lose everything by playing into the hands of the enemy that’s trying to eat into you if I merely provided it with proof of aggression.”

  “It’s gone,” she said.

  “It’s waiting. We must be careful.”

  “Then I’m weaker than you, Roger. As a personality. It’s w
orking on me first.”

  “You know better than that, Nesta. It knew how dependent I felt on you, just then. So it was you it attacked. A strategy.”

  “And I let you down.”

  “It didn’t involve you.”

  “It certainly must have sounded like it!”

  I admitted, “It did.”

  “And you kept a hold of yourself. After all you went through.”

  “I had to … But, Nesta, you were merely its mouthpiece.”

  “How … humiliating.”

  “Don’t think of that. You said something important: you asked me what the flight was for. The answer is I still don’t know. Yet there had to be a purpose.”

  She said, “Perhaps Captain Hitchcock had one purpose and the mosaics had another.”

  I said, “Which would explain his weird state of conflict.”

  “You mean, like me? Pulled in two different directions? That means the real Captain Hitchcock desperately wanted to show you something.”

  “But failed to demonstrate anything we didn’t know already.”

  “So far,” Nesta said. “Perhaps you ought to take a closer look at the aeroplane. And not just the computers inside it.”

  I was staring at her. “What made you say that?”

  “Just an idea. Obvious, surely?”

  “Go on with these obvious ideas.”

  “Roger, you’re using a funny tone on me.”

  “Just keep talking.”

  “Well, how does a new species multiply? It has to think of some way of spreading, doesn’t it? You know, like the seeds blown from a dandelion clock … Know what I mean?”

  “Nesta, what’s happening right this minute is that you’re somehow picking up information from the crystal mosaic inside your head.”

  “Instead of the other way round? — Why now?”

  “Because it’s been taken off its guard.”

  “The p-n-p versus n-p-n business?”

  “Yes … It’s as if information the mosaic doesn’t want to give away is leaking through. Can you get any closer to what you really mean?”

  “I thought I was just talking out of the blue.”

  “Out of the blue?”

  “Roger! Stop making such a big deal of everything I say!”

  “No, look. If the mosaic can get what it wants out of your brain when the mosaic is in command, surely it must follow that when you yourself are predominant it must work the other way round. For the moment you’re getting information out of the mosaic — and for the moment there’s nothing it can do about it … ‘Out of the blue’. What comes out of the blue?”

  “I still think you’re —”

  “— No, listen! That stuff — somehow — is being spread. And not by us. Not even by Spender … at least not now.”

  “Pollination?”

  I felt very excited. I could sense that she was close. But crystals don’t pollinate. Although they can be said to ‘grow’ they do so in a way that is in no sense analogous to processes of plant or animal life.

  “What we must check,” I said, “Is the outside of the 747. Some kind of fall-out.”

  She said, “Take wing-scrapings! Particles, Roger! But from what?”

  “Something highly practical. We are not dealing with magic. We are not talking UFOs or little green men. Starting from Spender’s weird desire to put people’s hate into the dustbin, he somehow spread the dust. Let’s find Richter and follow up on that —”

  “Don’t go for a minute.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. I’m all right — for the moment. It’s cringing, frightened; scared that it’s given too much away. I can feel it receding.”

  “Nesta, if you knew how I felt —”

  “Me too. We must. Feel my pants. See?”

  “But it’s crazy! You’re the one with the overwhelming convictions on privacy, anyway.”

  “Am I — When we do it in the long grass at Elstree?”

  “Nesta —”

  “Roger. Show me you love me. Please? … We can jam a chair against the door. What’s private anyway when we’re already watched by a disgusting crystal mosaic? No one will know. They sent you in here because I asked them to. They agreed you needed time to recover. They’ll never suspect.”

  She had taken up the most enchanting pose on record … not a Playboy cutie pull-out, but a vision of softness, at once yielding and at the same time demanding; tender as a butterfly but with a tigress’ stripes on the wings.

  I said, “I have a better idea …” I went to the phone, and after what seemed an interminable delay, managed to get hold of Richter. I said, “Listen. Do something for me.”

  “If I can.”

  “Get some scrapings off the windscreen and the leading edges of the wings of that 747. Anything flaky. Wrap it in polythene.”

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “Daren’t say on the phone. Then contact Spender; or if you can’t get him, try his assistant … What’s his name? — Pottersman, the man in hospital … the annexe at the Barbican. Try and find out if any of Spender’s patients were connected with the aerospace program. Nesta’s onto something.”

  “I’m not with you, Kepter. Why would Spender seek such patients?”

  “I’m saying one such individual might have sought him — initially for treatment, perhaps.”

  Richter’s lively voice went up a key. “Through his connections with aviation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I think I’m beginning to get the idea. Where will you be? — Where you are now?”

  “No.” I glanced across at Nesta. She looked adorable and I was finding it hard to speak coherently. “I’m a bit all-in. I’m checking into the Eastways Hotel. It’s just across the Bath Road from the Airport. I’m going to get some rest there; then we can talk somewhere in the hotel. Okay?”

  He wasn’t fooled but he was a gentleman. “After your exploit I should say you do need some rest. What time do we meet there?”

  “Say ten o’clock tonight. I have a hunch we might have to get down to Orscombe in a hurry but what is the great Lee Crabtree doing about your alleged political activities? Is he going to cramp your style?”

  “I resigned Standard Electronic Computers this morning but Lee is trying to whip up trouble with the Foreign Office. He’s made headway largely due to the, er, influence reacting on key people. As you learned the hard way, my own electronic credentials have been withdrawn.”

  “So you’ve heard what happened at the Manchester Computer Centre?”

  “I’ve heard from a lot of people about that Manchester exploit. Seems to me, Kepter, you’d survive anything.”

  “We have a couple of theories, Dr. Richter.”

  “Tell me about them when I see you tonight. And please make sure Nesta arrives at the hotel in time. She has brains, that one. Kew Gardens is looking up!”

  With carefully contrived casualness Nesta and I rushed for the car park, raced out of there in the MG, and sauntered at some eighty miles an hour through the airport tunnel. We must have seemed as unobtrusive as a 747 folding its wings and hurtling down the tube railway. At the Eastways Hotel I signed in with false names so fast that the porter had called the express lift before the ink had dried.

  There was no time to undress fully. We just irrupted wildly on the bed like any other pair of animals with nothing to do but live.

  *

  “Mr. Roger Kepter?”

  “What the hell do you mean, barging in here like this?”

  I’d just had a bath in our hotel suite. Still towelling myself I was now confronted with an officer of the U.S. Navy. Luckily Nesta was now in the bath herself. She called out, “What is it, Roger?”

  “An uninvited guest.”

  The American was unmoved. “You’re wanted at the Naval Attaché immediately. I am here to escort you there.”

  “Sorry. I have an appointment.”

  “So it seems.” He folded his arms and gazed at me wit
h pale eyes. He was young and arrogant; so slim I thought he must have come in through the keyhole. “Where to next? — Niagara Falls?”

  I ignored this. “I have a meeting here at ten.”

  “There’s time.”

  “How did you find this hotel room?”

  “I watched you registering downstairs. False names and all that stuff. Please prepare to leave immediately.” He nodded toward the bath room door. “Tell her you’re lucky not to be under armed escort.”

  Instead I shouted to Nesta, “Hold the fort. It seems I’m the guest of the American Navy. I’ll be back by ten.”

  Her sarcasm was for our visitor. “Is your journey really necessary?”

  “I’ll let you know. I should double-lock the door. Master keys all over the place.”

  She said, “How nasty.”

  In the car the navy man hardly said a word. We sat in the back, where the American was terribly careful not to rumple his nice clean pants. The uniformed driver scorched the length of the motorway at a speed approaching Vee-One. In town he unsuccessfully played skittles with scuttling pedestrians and we squealed to a halt in Grosvenor Square. “You’re seeing the Chief of Staff,” said my escort, making nearly five knots along an apparently endless corridor. Before we stopped we passed a door where stood two men on guard. They wore steel helmets.

  I asked him, “What’s in there? — A private pool of sharks to chuck me in afterwards?”

  The officer opened the adjacent door. Once again, the pale eyes. “I think you would be well advised to keep your idea of humour under control with the Chief. He does not think you’re funny.”

  The Chief of Staff seemed to be part of the desk. At any rate, he didn’t move from it. He wore civilian clothes; but a cap bearing a great deal of scrambled egg lay nearby, as if he might incongruously put it on suddenly and play dressing up games. He had a furrowed face, pocked less by rough weather — I thought — than lack of oxygen. The room was stifling. In it, prominently displayed on the wall, was a painting of Rear Admiral Hartford, Commander of the Sixth Fleet. The painting itself was about as lively in effect as the Chief of Staff was in action.

  It must have been me, but I got the strong impression that the Chief s voice actually came from a source about two feet to his left. When he did speak I wondered if there’d been gravel embedded in his T-bone steak. “Dr. Richter,” he said, “has Soviet affiliations. I want to know whether it was his idea for you to intrude upon the Manchester Computer Centre.”