“What does that mean?” Robert asked. “The girl is dead?”
“Applying symbolic logic to the statement, ‘Public record was put into the deceased file,’” the computer told him, “you are not forced to come to the conclusion ‘dead’. Indeed, you are not even encouraged to come to that end. Conclusion.”
“May I have a copy of that record, please?” Robert asked.
“You may,” the computer told him. “Your Public Security classification is high enough, and you are the originator of the request. Any dissenting opinions are referred to Public Law one-two-six-dash-four-four-three-nine, as amended Nineteen Ninety-One, section three-three-one, paragraphs six through nine.”
Robert nodded and stared expectantly at the cartoon head. The cartoon head stared silently back at him.
“When,” Robert finally said, suddenly aware that he was trying to outwait a machine, which is something like trying to outstare a wall, “may I expect a copy of that record?”
“Whenever you request it,” the computer told him.
Robert mentally reviewed the recent conversation and saw where he had gone wrong. It’s hard to keep in mind just how literal-minded even the smartest artificial intelligence can be.
“I request a copy of the record we were just discussing, along with any additional information specifically regarding the girl, the fingerprints, or the file. Immediate response, to this number, please.”
The ink squirter to the side of the screen activated and spat out four document pages, stapled them and slid them into the receive basket.
“There,” the computer said. “Glad to help, Lieutenant Burrows. Any hour. Time.”
“Next time I have a few picoseconds to spare,” Robert said, “I’ll give you a call.”
“This is humor?” the computer asked. “I am doing a research into humor. If you can spare the time, please write what about that was humor so that I can integrate it.”
Robert was tempted to suggest an impossible act to the computer, which possessed neither necessary orifice, but he merely disconnected.
An hour later Robert was sitting in Rear Admiral Dennison’s office reading the pertinent sections of the fax aloud to the Admiral, Addison Friendly, Leah, and Commander Pickwick, the CinC Liaison Officer. “Their names were Broiler: Mr. and Mrs. Brian Broiler. Their daughter’s name was Ruth-Sue, named after her grandmother. She was, at that time, six years old. This was ten years ago.”
“C-c-come on, man,” Commander Pickwick did his best to bark. “D-d-do we need all that c-c-c-crap? What has this g-g-got to do with us?”
Admiral Dennison, a short, nervous man with thinning red hair and a close-cropped red beard, possessed an intense stare with which he seemed able to read secrets from the unique designs in the pore-patterns of one’s skin. He turned it on Pickwick. “Commander, you must realize that Intelligence is, principally, a service that deals in facts; we gather facts, we sort and correlate facts. We interpret facts. In order to do this, Commander, we must have facts. Do not bite the hand that feeds you.” He turned to the others. “The commander is serving a two-year tour as liaison for Noratcom Intelligence because he is slated to go to Staff College. Some bureaucrat has made it a regulation that an officer must have two years in an Intelligence branch before Staff College. It doesn’t matter what the job is: Liaison, Bedcheck, Rat and Rodent Control, Laundry and Morale; as long as it is in an Intelligence branch. Because of the Commander’s rank he did not think it necessary, and no one else found it necessary to send him to an Intelligence school before he assumed an Intelligence job. So he is Bedcheck—sorry, Liaison Officer for our happy family. It is a fond belief of the Department of the Navy that any officer who can wipe himself and brush his own teeth can handle any job.”
Commander Pickwick’s face turned two-tone; his cheeks and ears brick red, his forehead, eyes and nose dead white. “It is against the traditions of the Navy to address a b-b-brother officer th-th-that way in the presence of officers of inferior g-grade and/or civilians,” he announced in a harsh voice, rising stiffly from his chair.
“Sit down!” Dennison said sharply. “In another minute you’ll be demanding satisfaction, and I’ll have to have you court-martialed. You have that sort of antique air about you; wooden ships and iron men and like that.”
“If you d-d-don’t like me, Admiral, why d-don’t you have me t-t-transferred?”
“Because then CinC would only send down another spy, and he might be smarter than you are. Now sit down!”
Commander Pickwick sat down.
“You may continue, Lieutenant.”
“Mr. Broiler had-business in Luzon,” Robert said, keeping his voice neutral and avoiding Commander Pickwick’s glare. He was uncomfortably aware that he had made an enemy of an ambitious commander with connections in the Commander-in-Chief’s office just by being present at his humbling. This was not a wise policy for a career Lieutenant J.G. Rank was hard enough to come by in what was left of the Navy. He wondered what the Admiral had meant about Pickwick being a spy. What would CinC want to spy on Noratcomintdiv for? Was there something more to the charge than Dennison’s distrust of all Liaison posts?
“Yes, Lieutenant,” Dennison said sharply. “Luzon, comma, business in. Continue.”
“Sorry, sir. Broller took his family to Luzon with him. When he had finished his business, they went on a kind of whirlwind tour of the area: Tokyo, New Hong Kong, Taipei, the Haitung; like that. While they were in the Haitung their little girl, Ruth-Sue, got lost. A day later the authorities produced a mangled body of a small child that had been run down by a large vehicle. Hit and run, and they never found the vehicle. The identification was made positive by a partial set of prints the authorities lifted from the dead child’s fingers. At least they said that’s where they got them. And, until now, there was no reason to doubt it. Why would anyone go to the trouble of murdering one five-year-old in order to secretly kidnap another?”
“If one of them could read minds,” Friendly murmured, “and the other couldn’t—”
“I called the Broilers before I came up here,” Robert said. “Told them I was doing a statistical study on child accidents and their names were picked at random. I told them I hated to bring up old memories, and they said they understood.”
“Which of them did you speak to?” Dennison asked.
“They were both in the room. I read a prepared list of questions, and they answered between them. I doubt that they have any idea that it’s more than morbid routine.”
“And?”
“The night before, at the hotel, all three of them had strange hallucinations as a result of something they ate. The next morning the child disappeared. I did some research on this and discovered that cases of hallucinations combined with stomach cramps are known as Celestial Empire Indigestion, that’s how common it is among tourists in the Haitung.”
“A mild cathartic,” Dennison said, “combined with a small dose of silver ice.”
“And a sensitive downstairs or next door to see if you have the telepathic reaction!” Friendly applauded softly. “Damn clever, these Orientals.”
“How sure are you,” Pickwick asked, “that it’s the same g-g-girl?”
“I’m not sure at all,” Robert said. “All I’m sure of is that she has the same fingerprints.”
“I think we may act on the assumption that it is the same girl,” Dennison said dryly.
Pickwick stuttered, “T-t-t-telep-p-pathy!” and snorted. He stood up stiffly, showing his displeasure with the nonsense that the discussion had degenerated to. “If I might b-be excused, sir?”
“Certainly, Commander Pickwick. When you come up with a better explanation of the events we’re examining, please let us know.”
Pickwick marched to the door and pulled it open. “Flying saucers,” he offered firmly before strutting out into the hall.
“The gentleman’s a cynic,” Friendly said, filling two cups from the large urn in one corner of the office and handing
one to Leah. “Anyone else want coffee?”
“Thanks,” Dennison said. “I think I’ll assign Commander Pickwick the USO file to work on for a while. I’d love to read his reports and conclusions.”
“USO?” Leah asked, trying to find a place to balance her cup of coffee. “The United Service Organization?”
“Unidentified Swimming Objects,” Admiral Dennison explained. “Move your chair closer to the desk, you’ll burn your knee.”
Robert spluttered. “You’re kidding, sir,” he managed after a moment. “I mean, about the swimming objects.”
“Would that I were,” Dennison said. “You’d be amazed at the reports that come in to the Office of Naval Intelligence in this enlightened age.”
“That reminds me,” Robert said, turning to Friendly. “Just what was it you did with my mind while we were under the drug?”
Friendly snapped his fingers. “An example of mind over matter,” he said. “The power of foreknowledge and preparation, combined with a mind of genius intellect. I refer in this vague and general way to myself.”
“What, exactly, did you do?” Robert demanded.
“First, I had the advantage of being, as we have discussed, a romantic. Therefore I firmly believe that this reality is neither better nor worse than the ones I might visit while on the plain we think of as dreaming. I, you might say, dreamed of reality and thereby came to.”
“How did you know that the reality you dreamed was the—ah—real reality, and not just another dream?” Robert asked.
“You have a semantic problem there,” Friendly commented, “but I know what you mean.”
“I’m glad someone does,” Admiral Dennison said, looking from one to the other and shrugging.
Friendly smiled. “Robert my boy, Lieutenant Burrows my lad, there are just some things you have to take on faith. Step two was to establish contact with you. Having taken the drug before and knowing that I was one of the telepathic ten percent, I knew what the onset of the telepathic phase felt like. By inducing this feeling in myself I was able to produce the effect much earlier than usual. Then I merely went hunting in your head until I found you.”
“You make it sound easy,” Robert said.
“Getting you to come out of your delusionary world was not easy,” Friendly commented. “You were firmly entrenched.”
Admiral Dennison leaned back in his great swivel chair and tapped a pen on the edge of his desk. “So you’re one of them, Addison,” he said. “I might have guessed. I suppose now I have to believe in telepathy. Although God knows I never thought I’d hear myself saying that. Tell me the truth, Addison, when you quit the service and went into the occult racket, did you believe any of it?”
“I tell you now what I told you then, Bill; any man who professes to be able to invariably tell truth from falsehood or fact from fiction in this universe is a fool. The distance between myth and reality is a wide, uncharted no-man’s-land, and what your mind perceives is not necessarily less true than what nature presents. You just used the expression, ‘God knows,’ Bill. Describe to me this God who knows.”
Admiral Dennison nodded. “You’ve made your point, Addison. And once again you’ve avoided answering my question.”
Friendly wet the tip of his forefinger and marked up an imaginary score in the air in front of him.
“If I might ask a question, sir,” Robert said from behind his coffee cup.
“That’s the name of the game,” Dennison said.
“True knowledge,” Friendly volunteered, “lies in knowing what questions to ask.”
“Why?”
“Come now, Lieutenant; why what?”
“Now, don’t discourage him,” said Friendly. “That’s the only valid question, you know. All others are merely segments, fragments, or refinements of the great question, why. The best answer, I believe, is why not?”
“What I mean,” Robert continued hurriedly, before Friendly shifted the conversation too far into philosophy, “is: why us? Why the Navy? If you had a great secret weapon, like a team of telepathic spies, would you waste time spying on the Navy? Why not the Bureau of Forestry, for chrissake? It would make as much sense.”
“It sounds to me, Lieutenant, as if you are not overly enamored of your career,” Admiral Dennison commented.
“That’s not what I meant, sir,” Robert said.
“I know. And I know what you meant. The Now Navy is still a useful service, but it has certainly become predictable. Unless, perhaps, they know something that we don’t.” Dennison reached over to the side of his desk and tapped a button. “Get me Herbert,” he told the desk.
Friendly pulled a large, heavy-bowled briar from a pocket in his short cape and filled it from a supply of tobacco in the opposite pocket. “What,” he demanded, tamping the tobacco with his thumb, “could they possibly know that we don’t? And isn’t it a sorry state of affairs when such a thing is possible?” He lit the pipe with a large, wooden match, which he then blew out and stuck back in his pocket.
“Where do you get those matches, Addison?” Admiral Dennison asked. “I didn’t know they were made anymore.”
“They’re not,” Friendly said. “Don’t change the subject.”
Dennison smiled. “I don’t know what we don’t know,” he said. “But I have a suspicion. What do you know of the John Paul Jones Society?”
Friendly considered. “Our version of Britain’s Trafalgar Club,” he said, “only not as old. Elderly nuts, largely retired naval persons, who run around reenacting ancient naval battles with radio-controlled wooden ships.”
“It was just that,” Dennison agreed. “But it’s grown in the past ten years. Now it’s largely made up of American superpatriots—and a good percentage of the leadership are flag officers on active duty. They’re the ones who put through the regulation allowing Naval officers to wear what they call ‘traditional’ uniforms on duty.”
Leah put down her cup. “I remember a couple of years ago, Admiral—what’s his name?—Luche was investigated by Congress for trying to indoctrinate the men in his command. Didn’t he almost lose his commission?”
“Not quite,” Dennison explained. “He was almost retired, which isn’t the same thing.”
“A very splendid-looking old man with a face like a hawk. Said he was going to save democracy if he has to kill everyone to do it, or something like that.”
“Something like that. The quote was: ‘We’re going to preserve American democracy if we have to destroy the rest of the world to do it!’ Some people thought he was crazy, but an alarming number thought he was right.”
“Far right,” Friendly murmured.
“Right,” Dennison agreed. “And Luche is one of the bigwigs of the John Paul Jones Society. And there is a rumor, report of which has passed this desk, that they are running some kind of supersecret plot, or plan, or operation within the structure of the regular Navy.”
“Would they have enough men for that, sir?” Robert asked. “And where would they get the money. I know a lot of the superrich are far to the right politically, it’s almost a joke. But military organizations breathe money.”
“I’m afraid they would have their pick of men,” Dennison said. “Their philosophy is not exactly unpopular. Many people, in the service and out, think that one solution to the world’s overcrowding is to give the rest of the world twenty-four hours to get out. As for money, they control most Naval appropriations. I’m sure that helps.”
The phonescreen lit up, and a small, white-haired man wearing a white turtleneck, black bowtie and red dinner jacket glared suspiciously out. “Hello, Dennison,” he said. “Are we secure?”
“Hello, Herbert,” Admiral Dennison said heartily. “It’s a secure line. Allow me to introduce Addison Friendly, Miss Nova, his secretary, and Lieutenant J.G. Robert Burrows of my staff.”
“When was the last time the line was actually checked?”
Dennison sighed. “Tuesday.”
“Don’t humor me, Den
nison. You don’t really seem to take this seriously. Anyone, absolutely anyone, with five dollars worth of equipment can tap onto any phone line without you or me or Alexander Graham Bell being any the wiser, unless you keep a constant check.”
“Herbert, honestly, I’d know if anyone were tapping my phone.”
“Rabbit-dung, Dennison. I told you not to humor me. I, right now, am tapping this phone. I have a tape recorder going in the lab right now, and you had no idea. Admit it!”
“Herbert, I had no idea. Have you got anything on that—”
“Dennison! I warn you, this is not a secure line! If you insist in discussing classified information, I cannot stop you; but you have been warned!”
“You’re probably right, Herbert. Can you get over here, and we’ll discuss it? My office is secured against intrusion devices.”
“Hrmmph!” Herbert snorted. “I could bug your office.”
“I have no doubt. But very few people possess your creative genius.”
“I’ll be right over,” Herbert conceded. “I have some interesting results to show you.” He blanked the screen.
“Well!” Addison Friendly said. “I didn’t realize security was such a problem.”
“It isn’t,” Dennison said. “Herbert’s office is right down the hall. Remember the dictum that the best security officer is a suspicious paranoid? Herbert once found a subminiature transponder in the insignia on the dress hat of the Chief of Naval Operations. Since then he’s been impossible to live with. He has, however, one of the finest analytical minds I’ve ever run across. Does the Sunday Times crossword puzzle in ink on the airbus Monday morning. Has a column in New Hyperchess Monthly called ‘Mistakes of the Masters.’”
A few moments later Herbert came through the door, pulling a wheeled cart that looked like an electronic hot-dog stand. He had the smug look of a blackjack dealer with an educated shoe. “Good afternoon, Dennison,” he said.
“Glad you could come over,” Dennison told him.
“Who are these people?” Herbert demanded, standing protectively in front of the locked door on his cart.
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