Kzine Issue 11

by Graeme Hurry

  “This is one of the data entry pools,” she said.

  “Data entry?”

  “Yes, we take all the newspapers and books and so forth that are published and type them into Leviathan.”

  “And why would you do that? Given that you can just read them for real?”

  Fortunately, she’d prepared for this question. She’d got Simpkins to load up the relevant discs the night before. “Well, for instance, did you know the broadsheet newspapers have mentioned you 317 times in the past three months? 80% of the time in association with some positive or approving adjective. The Home Secretary, by comparison, has been mentioned 242 times with an approval rating of 65%.”

  That made him think. The Home Secretary was Mitchell’s rival to take over the leadership of his party. One of those political secrets everyone knew about.

  “I see. Interesting.” Mitchell looked more thoughtful now.

  “If you’ll follow me to the Exec?” she said.

  The Exec – the Executive Control Room – was where she spent a large percentage of her waking life. Too much of her waking life. Here they controlled every aspect of Leviathan. She showed Mitchell to Simpkins’ seat.

  “This a television?” Mitchell asked, looking confused.

  “It’s one of Leviathan’s terminals,” she said. “We control the machine through these and also see its output. But in essence, yes, it’s just a cathode ray tube like any television.”

  “And this… typewriter?”

  “That how we instruct the machine. Simpkins? Could you show us the new program in operation, please?”

  Simpkins began the speech they’d prepared for Mitchell’s benefit. “Of course, Dr. Appleton. I call it the Interconnect Data Translation Network. Essentially it provides access to all the files stored on the discs of Kryptonite, Shiva and Red Square. Those they choose to make available to us at least. Long March and the others aren’t connected up, yet, but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be. The program is like a … librarian. It allows us to scan and correlate all the data on the other machines’ data stores.”

  “Scan and correlate it?” said Mitchell.

  “He means read it,” said Ada. “You see, we used to keep all the platters in dark storage and get each disc out when we needed it. Over the past year we’ve moved towards storing the discs in stacked arrays that can also read them. If we could build big enough arrays then all the information we hold could be retrieved more-or-less instantaneously. Think what we could achieve then. We could…”

  “Just a minute,” said Mitchell, holding his hand up to stop her. “You’re saying you’ve connected Leviathan to those other computers? New York, Moscow and so forth? You can see what they’re doing over there?”

  “Yes,” said Ada. “In a manner of speaking. We’re piggy-backing on the sea-bed cables. The other machines have radically different hardware and they, ah, talk a different language. But what we’ve done allows us to pool all the data typed into Kryptonite and the others. We see their records just as they see ours. They don’t use microdot aluminium of course. America uses huge drums of magnetized tape and Moscow sheets of etched glass. But the effect is the same.”

  “Show me.”

  “Very well. Simpkins, let Mr. Mitchell look at the latest news from the USA.”

  Simpkins showed Mitchell what buttons to press to control the flashing square on the terminal screen. “And if you press this button, the highlighted item is opened up and you can read it. Press this to go back up a level in the menu. You’ll also notice you can sometimes jump directly from within one document to another, if Leviathan has spotted a link between them.”

  Dr. Appleton and Simpkins stood behind Mitchell as he navigated menus and, repeatedly, stopped to read paragraphs of text. Five minutes went by. Ten. Twenty. Fortunately, the sea-bed cables were functioning well today. Mitchell didn’t have to wait longer then twenty seconds for data to start coming through each time.

  “This is incredible,” he said at last, turning to look at them. “I mean, it’s all here. News, politics, economics, sport, fiction. All of it.”

  “We index everything, too, so we can search for any mention of a word or a phrase. Try typing in your own name.”

  “My name?”

  “I’m sure you’ll have lots of matches.” She knew he would. She’d tried the very thing that morning. Just as long as Anderson and Karkov, her equivalents in Washington and Moscow, did as they’d promised and kept the relevant data stores online. International co-operation was a wonderful thing.

  Using one finger, Mitchell typed out his name on the keyboard. Simpkins showed him the button to press to begin the search. Within seconds, sentences began appearing on the screen: quotations mentioning Mitchell, some from American and Russian news reports.

  “We think we can do the same for sounds and pictures, too,” said Ada. “Even moving pictures eventually. They’re all just different types of data. We just need more cables as well as the extra spindle arrays to keep all the information on the line.”

  Mitchell actually appeared to be lost for words for a moment. Finally, he spoke.

  “And would it be possible for one of these terminals to be installed in, say, London? In Whitehall?”

  She hesitated for only a moment. Here was her chance. In truth it would be easy, but didn’t need to know that. “It’s a long way to run a terminal connection. It would have to go underground. But given enough funding we could do it.”

  Mitchell considered, then nodded in a decisive sort of way. “Dr. Appleton, I’m going to talk to the PM this evening. Given the potential of this, I think I can persuade him of the benefits of Leviathan to Great Britain. To think you can actually connect computers together and make them talk to each other. Remarkable.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Mitchell.”

  “One thing, though. I think we’ll need a snappier title for this new system of yours. Something to catch the imagination.”

  She looked questioningly at Simpkins. The existing name seemed like a perfectly good one to her.

  “Well,” said Simpkins. “Program names have a maximum of eight characters on Leviathan, so I’ve already had to abbreviate Interconnect Data Translation Network.”

  “What to?” asked Mitchell.

  “Internet.”

  Mitchell turned the word over in his mouth. “Boring name. Can’t see it catching on. OK, one more question Dr. Appleton.”

  “Yes. Ask anything.”

  “If you can see their files they can see ours, yes?” “Absolutely. The spirit of openness is fundamental to the whole operation.”

  “But how do they know that what they’re reading is the truth?”

  “I don’t… I’m not sure I understand,” she said.

  “You could make up anything,” said Mitchell. There was a little light in his eyes as he spoke now. A gleam. “You could make the other capitals believe whatever you wanted, yes?”

  “I suppose. But I don’t see why…”

  “And these programs you write. They’re also data? More microdots stored on those platters?”

  He was smarter than she’d given him credit for. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “So you could transfer those too? Even get them to quietly execute on the other machines once you’ve worked out these other languages they use? Then you could find out what our friends are really up to. See the things they don’t want us to see.”

  “It’s theoretically possible. Still I don’t…”

  Mitchell waved her objections away. “How long before you can have Processor Hall ‘C’ up and running, Dr. Appleton?”

  “Six months, given the funding. But doing what you suggest…”

  Mitchell ignored her. He stood. “Six months. You’ve worked wonders here, Dr. Appleton. Britain has a lot to thank you for. We could even name the new hall after you.”

  She watched his back as he headed for the lifts. She’d done it. She’d actually done it. Leviathan would be completed after all
.

  She should have felt elated. But instead, something like dread filled her at the thought of what she’d done.

  ALL YOU NEED IS YESTERDAY

  by Eamonn Murphy

  “Get off!”

  Tanya grabbed the mutant by his tangled mop of black hair and yanked upwards as hard as she could. The boy screamed as he was pulled upright. Tanya’s father was on his back on the floor and now his feet scrabbled as he desperately backed away from the mutant’s wildly kicking legs. He put a hand to the red marks on his throat where the boy had just been trying to strangle him.

  Tanya pulled a six inch blade from the sheath in her belt and plunged it into the boy’s chest. Her aim was good and he died instantly, his heart pierced. Still gripping his hair she dragged him outside and threw him to the ground.

  “You!”, she called to a passing soldier. “Dispose of this scum.”

  Tanya had a fierce reputation so the soldier trotted over hastily but he frowned when he looked down at the corpse. “It’s just a kid. Maybe ten years old, if that.”

  Tanya spat on the corpse. “It’s a Mutie. How the Hell did it get so far into the camp? Never mind. Just get rid of it.”

  She strode back into the Medical Centre, a neat brick building that had been a doctors surgery before the Cataclysm. “Are you alright, Dad?”

  “I’ll live.” Still holding his throat he walked unsteadily to a nearby swivel chair and sat down. He was only fifty but his hair was white and he had the stooped, defeated air of a very old man. Years of struggle in difficult circumstances had taken their toll.

  Tanya curled her lithe, muscular body into an armchair opposite. Her life had been almost as hard as his but she was strong. The struggle had not yet ground her down. She was aggressive but optimistic and as she whipped off her headband, freeing a mass of red curls, she managed a smile. “I’m glad my arrival was so timely but I came with exciting news.”

  The old man’s eyes widened slightly. Tanya was not given to exaggeration and if she said news was exciting then it had to be something important. “So?”

  “We have found the Tomb of the Ancients.”

  “Dad?”

  Tanya’s father had stood up and gone to the sink and poured himself a cup of water. He dropped a sterilizing tablet into it and took a sip.

  “Didn’t you hear? We have located the Tomb of the Ancients. It’s in central London, as we always suspected, deep underground.”

  He grunted in annoyance. “Don’t call it by that silly name. It’s not a tomb it’s a Cryogenic Preservation Facility. It’s only called the Tomb of the Ancients in half-baked melodramatic legends spread by bards.”

  Tanya shrugged. “In any case, some of the greatest men and women of the twenty-first century are preserved there, father. I suppose it’s called a tomb because its underground.” She stood up and moved over to the window, looked out at the rubble around their small Greenwich settlement. Most of London had been reduced to ruins by the Cataclysm generations before when the Age of Waste had given way to the Age of Chaos. “One of the patrols has found it at last in the old ruins. The legendary building where the greatest minds of the ancient world are preserved, frozen.”

  The old man shuffled over to the stove and began to stir the thin gruel in the pot. “Food is getting scarce. The mutants from the badlands are getting bolder in their raids. We need some way to fight them off, some way to grow more food, some way to build better shelters. Most of all we need medical knowledge.”

  Tanya refused to let his pessimism deflate her. “The ancients will know how to do all this, father. Their wisdom is legendary. They conquered the elements. They flew in the air and moved along the ground at incredible speeds. They dug tunnels under the sea and built vast bridges that spanned the mightiest rivers.” She rose from the chair and looked out of the window at their home, the Greenwich settlement. Most of London had been laid waste by the holocaust and the survivors had settled in the parks or by the river to be near water and grow food. Tanya scanned the towers in the distance. “We see the ruins of their greatness all about us. They could do anything.”

  “Including destroy the world,” said the old man bitterly. “They lived in the Age of Waste and left their heirs nothing.”

  “That is the past, dad. Now they can save us.”

  He sighed. “I hope there are doctors among them. Disease kills most of our children and half of the survivors are mutants. We need men with real medical knowledge or we will die out soon. Only the muties will be left.”

  She gripped his shoulder reassuringly. “There must be doctors, and scientists, and technicians. Only the best would have been preserved so, for the future. All we need, we can get from these ancients. I’m sure of it.”

  “I hope so.” He did not sound convinced.

  Tanya was not deterred. “I’m leading a well armed rescue party to the city tomorrow morning, father. Now that the legendary tomb has finally been located we shall lose no time. Soon the ancients will be awakened. They will help us with their wisdom.”

  His father sighed. “There is so much to do.”

  Tanya put a reassuring hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Soon, father, you shall have all you need.”

  “This is dangerous”, said Lieutenant Cromby. “And unprecedented. We always go back to the settlement at night. Always.” He scanned the area warily. They had camped overnight in a square paved area with roads circumnavigating it on all four sides. Rusting old cars filled most of the road, immobile and useless now with their silly stickers saying “Baby on Board” and “Little Princess On Board.” The babies, the princesses and even the cheeky monkeys had not had the bright future expected for them. The square itself was clear except for a few trees. The square was lined with crumbling red brick houses that had once been expensive and desirable residences for the well off middle class.

  “We don’t have a choice”, said Tanya. “The tomb is more than a day’s march into London. Are the guards posted?”

  He nodded. “Posted and armed to the teeth but a circle of men is no substitute for a strong wall, ditches and palisades. I wish we were home.”

  “Couriers stay out at night.”

  “A courier is one person and can hide somewhere. We are a band of twenty. We’re bound to be noticed.”

  Tanya nodded absently and looked at the car stickers. Ghosts on board, she thought, and shrugged. Her father was bitter about the people of the past but she had a feeling that the majority had been powerless, trying to get by, bamboozled and misled by financial and political power brokers until the day it had all gone wrong. She allowed Cromby one of her rare smiles.

  “I don’t suppose you play any musical instruments, Lieutenant? Or sing?”

  He gave her a puzzled look and shook his head.

  Tanya sighed. “We haven’t had any music around Greenwich for a while now. There are a few instruments but no one can play them.”

  Cromby didn’t seem very interested. “What happened to that saxophone player… Baker, was it? He used to liven up parties, as I recall.”

  “Dead. Muties got him.”

  “Muties!” As if in echo the cry went up nearby.

  It came from a soldier who had been squatting on the ground eating his meagre rations. It was followed by a gurgle as a serrated six inch blade cut his throat.

  Tanya dropped to her knees, drew her pistol and fired in one swift motion. The gun kicked in her hand and the knife wielding mutie grew a new hole in his forehead. Tanya turned quickly and saw Cromby wrestling with a four-armed monster with huge misshapen feet. Another carefully placed shot blew this one’s head off. Another cry to her left made her spin again, just in time to see a smaller mutie being stabbed efficiently through the eye by Sergeant Riley.

  The skirmish was over.

  “Riley, report!”

  He trotted over, a big man with broad shoulders and arms like a gorilla, rumoured to be the toughest son-of-a-bitch in England.

  “Just five of them, Captain. Th
ey attacked recklessly. Must have thought we were a much smaller group.”

  “How the devil did they get through the perimeter?”

  He saluted. “I’ll find out.”

  He was not long in doing so. He returned minutes later accompanied by a sheepish looking young soldier, one of the perimeter guards who had fallen asleep, tired after the day’s march, no doubt. No excuse as far as Tanya was concerned.

  “Ten lashes!” she barked. “I’ll do it myself, right now.”

  Sergeant Riley adopted a stoical expression. “Aye, Captain.’ He touched the young soldier gently on the shoulder. “Take your shirt off, son. Lie on the ground.”

  Tanya pointed at another soldier stood quietly nearby. “Get my whip, in the pack over there.”

  She knew that her father disliked lashes as punishment and would complain when he heard about it. She knew, too, that it was rumoured among the men that she got a thrill from administering them, especially to the younger soldiers.

  Rumours are not always wrong, she thought, smiling grimly.

  Tanya had no husband or partner. She occasionally slept with a comrade but it was rough, almost violent sex to satisfy her physical needs, eschewing any romance or sentiment. She had to be tough. She had always repelled any intimacy or gentleness, except from her father. All her life she had projected a hard exterior to the world.

  By now it felt like her real skin.

  She was sweating a little and her fingers trembled slightly as she grasped the whip. The erring guard was stripped to the waist displaying a well muscled torso. He lay spread-eagled face down on the concrete and two other soldiers grasped his wrists.

  Tanya flicked the whip.