He couldn’t help grinning. “Well, you haven’t kissed me, yet.” He gazed innocently at Nesta.
Nesta said, “He’s a bit fresh at times.”
I said, “Think of it this way. The information in my head would have to be processed and ready for retransmission through physical contact. It’s just exactly the same as the remote access to any sort of computer. The information has to be in the correct Line Protocol and must be stored ready and then transferred at a definite speed, in Bauds. The idea I’ve been working on is only half-formed and I’ve deliberately kept it that way. I probably haven’t allowed the mosaic to get it into binary code at this stage, let alone into valid protocol.”
Richter said, “I accept your analogy. But be careful, Kepter. In releasing the plan you are now considering for the purpose of concealing from the mosaics what you then have to say, aren’t you forewarning the mosaics about the very method you propose to use in order to keep them in the dark?”
I said, “If their working voltage is low enough there’s absolutely nothing they can do about it.”
Richter said, “Now you really have got me hooked.”
I said, “If all three of us subject ourselves to mild electric shock treatment — Electro-Convulsive Therapy, if the great Melerick will pardon me for usurping the forbidden mystic language of medicine — we could hit on a level of shock which would knock out the mosaics for a while without very much impairing our own brains. It’s simply a matter of choosing the right voltage.”
Nesta said, “That’ll teach ’em. I felt a distinct jolt somewhere inside. They know you’re right.”
Richter said, “It’s straight out of Sunday School but it might even work. Where can we get a really sensitive F.E.T. meter? — something at least as good as one megohm per volt? — We can take measurements across random areas of the mosaic which still remains in my valise.”
I said, “The quickest way is to buy one. Who needs money in a synthetic world? Off we go to Tottenham Court Road.”
Half an hour later we had the answer. Using the most sensitive meter obtainable, we could only just get a reading.
Richter switched off the meter with a diabolical little smirk. “Less than a millivolt. We’ve got them by the short hairs. And of course we don’t need ECT equipment for that. A couple of contacts, a saline paste, and a 1.5 volt battery will produce a thousand times the working voltage of the mosaics.”
Nesta said, “I don’t wish to interfere with this mutual admiration society, but if the voltage is as low as that, surely you can knock the entire System out by connecting one end of it to any old wall plug. Can’t you?”
I said, “You’re nice but naughty. Mustn’t argue with Clever People. All solid state equipment — manmade or spontaneous — can so easily be protected by crystal diodes that these would be built in as a matter of course. The reason why Richter’s mosaic inflicted damage on the Orscombe one was because it didn’t connect up with the finite beginning of any specific circuit. It was like hurling a bucket of water over a fire.”
She turned to Richter, “I shall get smacked for that.”
I said, “At the first opportunity.”
Richter said, “Children, let’s stick to the point. We’ve had our mini-triumph. But at the present the world is not a happy place. Let’s get to work.”
*
Even with hindsight it’s difficult to account for the brief mood of comparative levity and optimism we felt for a few stolen hours that day. I am inclined to think, looking back, that the near-euphoria we experienced was deliberately induced by the colossal network of mosaics which had very quickly come into operation after our invasion at Orscombe. Insofar as an entire species can be livid, then I would say that the mosaics reached their peak that day.
Yet we didn’t notice it. We didn’t seem to notice obvious things … Let’s take what is known in some circles as ‘Crowd Behaviour’. I’m writing about people — not mosaics — and I’m cheating slightly in that what was happening around us passed unnoticed as we gleefully immunized our internal mosaics so that I could confide my plan.
Richter did in fact approve it. The idea of making one variant of the species terrified of the other — if not particularly clever — was at least logical enough to appeal to a man like Richter and he declared himself willing to try it, using Pottersman as a mosaic-generator and then programming the mosaic simply by programming him.
All well and good. But the staring eyes, the silences, the near-sleepwalking of thousands of people in the streets — why didn’t we observe that? Why, for that matter, did we sneer at a Harley Street specialist as though the attitude he struck at the London Clinic was uninduced? Clearly, Melerick’s uncompromizing attitude had resulted from calculations made inside his own brain through the electrolytic influence of the crystals, which shared the same delicately-balanced chemical solution inside the man’s head as controlled the functioning of the man’s total nervous system.
Why, when we drove via Leicester Square, did we fail to notice that the huge, illuminated ticker-tape display of news flashes had ceased to function? — that there was nothing on the radio? — that television sets had gone dead? There can be no explanation other than the inescapable one that we were being manipulated like babes in the wood, isolated from reality for a reason.
There is no doubt in my mind that the entire interlock of mosaics felt threatened the moment we realized we could converse among ourselves while our own mosaics were temporarily anaesthetized by electric shock too low in voltage to affect our own brains. What we evidently missed was that, as in the case of the Kissing Machine, our brains were no longer complete without the mosaics which had eaten their way into them. In effect, each time we turned on the juice to stun the action of Electronic Cancer we unwittingly creating gaps in our own thinking power. These gaps were, it seems, chosen selectively by the mosaics as being fundamental to our inability to perceive.
So while Richter went off, if not merrily, at least with a buoyant sense of hope, on his mission to the Barbican to use what was left of Pottersman’s brain as an incubator, Nesta and I went back to my flat and made love. Probably we would not have been able to carry on in any case without the resuscitation and mutual reassurance this provided. Nevertheless it wasn’t until the effects of blanking-out the mosaics had worn off that I suddenly sat bolt upright on the couch and realized that in one absolutely vital sense we’d been had — hook line and sinker.
What we’d totally failed to realize, on being turned away from the London Clinic, was that Captain Hitchcock’s last message was perfectly reclaimable even though the tape itself had been deliberately erased and decomposed by the mosaics. The message would inevitably have remained in the software of the System, just as it would have been spooled onto a Journal Tape in ordinary computer technology.
The agonizing part of all this was that in failing to realize we weren’t dependent on the original cassette itself to discover what Hitch had said, it became starkly significant that we still didn’t know what he’d found out. A few seconds’ thought after leaving the London Clinic and we could have retrieved the information in retrospect by using the slivers of the stuff that Richter still had with him.
Now I was just left gaping.
“Roger, what is it?”
“Remember how frivolous we both felt out there with Richter? — when we were calculating the working voltage of the crystal mosaics?”
“Yes. Then what do we do? — Come here and make love. Regardless.”
“Opium.” I turned and stared at her. “Their way of hitting back. Frustrated that they can’t monitor our thoughts, they’re sealing us off from real events. What are they setting up behind our backs?”
“Anything particular on your mind?”
“Yes,” I said. “The count down. In the Pacific. It had to come.”
She said nothing to this.
Instead, she went to the window and looked down on Sloane Street. “You’re certainly right about one thin
g, Roger … I mean, not noticing what’s going on around us. That’s their opium. Come and look. Buses running almost empty. Hardly any cars.” She pointed toward the Carlton Tower Hotel. “That place is normally a hive of activity — people arriving from the airport all the time. No one at the door. Why?”
I said, “I don’t know. Unless everyone’s somehow waiting for something —”
“— Without knowing it?”
“You’ll have to re-define the word ‘know’ to suit this situation. What if they sense that a hunk of the American fleet is acting in limbo and lining up nuclear missiles? You and I ‘sense’ things, don’t we? Without knowing that we sense them! Suppose other people can ‘sense’ what’s up with the Sixth Fleet? even though it is cut off?”
She said, “But the Sixth Fleet is not cut off. It’s linked to here by satellite.”
“I agree. But only the mosaics know what Satellite Y.33 knows … What kind of a daydream are we living in? The world’s coming to a grinding halt — yet that didn’t seem to bother us blithely having it off on the sofa.”
Nesta said, “The daydream we’ve been in is the same one as everyone else is in. If you asked someone what was wrong they’d just stare at you. To them, nothing is.’”
… Somehow you could sense that some kind of a deadline was approaching. It felt like a hunch but it could only have been super-activity on the part of the mosaics pressing against the brain. I felt a bursting sense of tension and had to do something about it. “Nesta, I’m going across to the Carlton Tower. I don’t know what to look for but the urge is there.”
She said, “I wouldn’t. You’ve been lured into traps before now.”
“This feels different.”
“How different?”
I said, “Don’t forget we’ve now been in contact with mosaics originating in Pottersman.”
She said, “Telling you something.”
“Who knows?” — I couldn’t keep my mind off Hitch’s tape. “Nesta, why don’t you find out if the London Clinic was deliberately picked off?”
“I could do it by phoning some other hospitals — see if they’re out of action.”
“Yes … I think you’ll get No for an answer.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning I don’t see why the mosaics would bother with the hospitals. That’s not where you would normally concentrate military effort. The species must know there’s no cure for Electronic Cancer … it has nothing to fear from the hospitals. It should be concentrating on people who are healthy, not those who are sick … Get on the phone to any hospital you like. A hundred to one you’ll find they’re almost unaffected.”
“Roger?”
I paused at the door. “Yes?”
“Don’t be long, will you?”
*
I knew the Carlton Tower well enough because Paula had been addicted to the Chelsea Room. I could hear her voice from the past, “Darling, we really must eat something civilized. Paula’s tummy is bored.”
“Paula thinks too much about her tummy.”
“Yes darling, but there’s one very good way of stopping Paula from thinking about it.”
“I can’t afford the Chelsea Room yet again.”
“It’s my turn to pay.”
“You know it’s not.”
“Well you shouldn’t marry people who are loaded, Roger, if you can’t let them indulge themselves.”
“And me.”
“You are part of my indulgence … Come on, Roger. Don’t be a prig …”
… That seemed an incredibly long time ago and yet it hadn’t been much longer than a year.
Even then the mosaics had already been at work. You can’t reorganize an entire naval fleet in less time than that. Y.33 must have been just about ready for launching and Geoffrey Sale had already contaminated both himself and the embryonic System that had taken hold.
Now, I crossed Sloane Street for the same destination. And I didn’t know why I was doing it.
Strolling across to the desk, where occasionally in the past I had bought cigarettes late at night — Paula was always running out and frequently woke me with her “Paula needs some cigs, darling” bit — I casually went through the old routine.
“Got twenty Rothman’s?”
The porter knew me from old. We’d had midnight chats in those days, both of us bored for different reasons. He’d come to regard me as a friend and now he leaned forward and whispered as he opened the drawer. “None of my business, Mr. Kepter, but aren’t you leaving?”
“Leaving? Leaving where?”
“London.”
“What do you mean?”
He fumbled for a pack of Rothman’s and disappeared for a moment beneath the desk top. Then he surfaced again, this time holding the cigarette pack. “There are rumours in here. Some top American brass were staying for some conference, Suddenly they packed up and left, three days before they were due to go.”
“When did they leave?”
“An hour or so ago. Left half their stuff in their rooms.”
“What’s the rumour?”
“Looks like it’s going to be war.”
“But —”
“ — I know, sir. There’s been no news of it.” He leaned even closer. “But there’s been no news of anything else, either.”
“Are you getting out?”
“Difficult, but I phoned the wife. Got her to get well clear, for a start.”
“How widespread is this rumour?”
“Just in the hotel as far as I know. The people here don’t want to start a panic. Others might get in their way.”
“But something must have been said?”
“Yes. Long-Distance call placed by the switchboard. The girl listened in, told the manager discreetly … Not much of a problem booking a room here tonight, Mr. Kepter. Enough space for a small football crowd. Thought I’d let you know.”
“That’s decent of you. I … left my jacket behind at the flat, so”
“— Forget the tip, this time. There’s more at stake than an all night cigarette service.”
“Thanks. And good luck.”
*
Richter didn’t get to the flat till 2 a.m. Nesta and I had been quietly panicking — let’s not mince words — over endless cups of coffee and pretending to each other we weren’t saying our prayers. We both sensed something terrible was brewing and by now this was not, of course, mere intuition. Both of us were getting distorted messages in our heads — as if crystal mosaic originating with Pottersman was already building for a conflict with the main colony. It had the effect of creating intolerable brain tension.
Twice, when it got too much for us, we used the batteries to partially deaden the mosaics that were causing us so much brainpain. But we couldn’t afford to knock them out entirely because we knew we might need them as links with the System if Richter chose to put my plan into action. It says something for human self-control that we weren’t writhing like epileptics. The sensation must have been very similar and it was all I could do to hold a coffee cup reasonably steady in my hand.
We’d done what we could to keep up some kind of conversation between us but we hadn’t expected Richter to be this late. The suspense had finally silenced us and it was an effort even to walk to the window — as we constantly did — to look out for his car.
Earlier I’d told Nesta what the porter at the Carlton Tower had said. Following from that we’d both expected the rumour to spread very rapidly but it hadn’t — the euphoria among the public, in their total lack of information, simply held. London, though unusually quiet, certainly showed no signs of panic and we did have a dress circle view. My flat was quite high up. You could see parts of Knightsbridge from one side and a stretch of the Kings Road from the other. Hardly normal, but certainly no signs of alarm. Just very quiet. Too quiet.
Nesta had reported on her phone-around to the hospitals. She’d tried a few obvious ones — Barts, St. Thomas’, The Middlesex. Just minor problems in
these; no TV functioning in the patients’ lounges, faults in the telephone systems, a few isolated cases of ‘an undiagnosed brain disease’ although on this latter point they were understandably reticent. Even University College Hospital — including the annexe at the Barbican — communicated no sense of alarm. I did cross my fingers over that because it suggested that the mosaic wasn’t yet onto the plan we’d started to implement.
Nesta had told me, “I made discreet enquiries to find out if Richter was still at the Barbican. Apparently he wasn’t.”
“Had he seen Pottersman?”
“They wouldn’t say … What’s that? Is that the lift? Is that Richter?”
I was at the door of the flat by the time the gates had parted.
He strode in and didn’t waste words. “We’ve done everything in the wrong order! We couldn’t have known — but that’s what we did!”
He flung himself into an armchair, exhausted. “At first, all went well. I got to Pottersman in private and I virtually programmed him — very much on the lines you suggested, Kepter — so as to implant in the mosaic attached to him what it had to do. I won’t go into details but there was no shortage of the mosaic … pathetically, he’d concealed the muck that had grown out of him by hiding it in the bed, as if it were some kind of disgrace that the nurse mustn’t be allowed to see.
“The initial programming was intricate. Not only did the mosaic have to understand that — when it came to the crunch — it would have to act in such a way as to separate, throughout the existing network, all the p-n-p elements from the n-p-n; it had to grasp that mere electrical cancellation between the one and the other (as I used to get into Orscombe) wasn’t enough. There had to be a conspiracy. Pottersman was drowsy because he was heavily sedated and the process was slow. I had to make him understand — of course — in order for the mosaic to understand and I still didn’t know for certain to what degree his own mosaic would be willing to cooperate. However bizarre it might sound, there were considerations of loyalty to the rest of its Species.
The Thinktank That Leaked Page 22