The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01]

by By Kim Newman

  “Open-and-shut-and-open-and-shut?” suggested Richard.

  Moana gave the thumbs-up.

  “I’m going to need help to convince myself of this,” said Richard. “I’ve decided to call on mighty deductive brainpower to get to the bottom of the mystery.”

  “More yesterday men?” said Jess-F, appalled.

  “Interesting term. You’ve been careful not to use it before now. Is that what you call us? No, I don’t intend to summon any more plods from the outside.”

  Gewell couldn’t suppress his surge of relief.

  “I’ve decided to apply the techniques of tomorrow to these crimes of the future. Jess-F, I’ll need your help. Let’s take this puzzle to Big Thinks, and see how your mighty computer does.”

  Shutters came down behind Jess-F’s eyes.

  “Computer time is precious,” said Gewell.

  “So is human life,” answered Richard.

  * * * *

  The inside of the building, the insides of Big Thinks, was the messiest area Richard had seen in Tomorrow Town. Banks of metal cabinets fronted with reels of tape were connected by a spaghetti tangle of wires that wound throughout the building like coloured plastic ivy. Some cabinets had their fronts off, showing masses of circuit boards, valves and transistors. Surprisingly, the workings of the master brain seemed held together with a great deal of Sellotape, string and Blu-Tak. Richard recognised some components well in advance of any on the market, and others that might date back to Marconi or Babbage.

  “We’ve been making adjustments,” said Jess-F.

  She shifted a cardboard box full of plastic shapes from a swivel chair and let him sit at a desk piled with wired-together television sets. To one side was a paper-towel dispenser which coughed out a steady roll of graph-paper with lines squiggled on it.

  He didn’t know which knobs to twiddle.

  “Ms. Jess-F, could you show me how a typical dispute arbitration is made? Say, the triangle of Zhoule, Buster and Sue-2.”

  “That documentation might be hard to find.”

  “In this futopia of efficiency? I doubt it.”

  Jess-F nodded to Moana, who scurried off to root through large bins full of scrunched and torn paper.

  Vanessa was with Gewell and Zootie, taking a tour of the hydroponics zone, which was where the body of Varno Zhoule had been found. The official story was that Buster (now, Mal-K) had gone to Zhoule’s bungalow to kill him but found him not at home. He had taken the Hugo from its display case and searched out the victim-to-be, found him contemplating the green gunk that was made into his favourite pills, and did the deed then and there. It didn’t take a computer to decide it was more likely that Zhoule had been killed where the weapon was handy for an annoyed impulse-assassin to reach for, then hovercrafted along with the murder weapon to a public place so some uninvolved zenvol clot could find him. But why ferry the body all that way, with the added risk of being caught?

  “Tell you what, Ms. Jess-F, let’s try BeeTee out on a hypothetical dispute? Put in the set-up of Hamlet, and see what the computer thinks would be best for Denmark.”

  “Big Thinks is not a toy, Mm.”

  Moana came back waving some sheaves of paper.

  Richard looked over it. Jess-F ground her teeth.

  Though the top sheet was headed “Input tek: Buster Munro,” this was not the triangle dispute documentation. Richard scrolled through the linked printout. He saw maps of Northern Europe; lists of names and dates; depositions in nonphonetic English, German and Danish; and enough footnotes for a good-sized doctoral thesis. In fact, that was exactly what this was.

  “I’m not the first to think of running a hypothetical dispute past the mighty computer,” said Richard. “The much-maligned Buster got there before me.”

  “And wound up recategorised as a zenpass,” said Jess-F.

  “He tried to get an answer to the Schleswig-Holstein Question, didn’t he? Lord Palmerston said only three men in Europe got to the bottom of it—one who forgot, one who died and one who went mad. It was an insanely complicated argument between Denmark and Germany, over the governance of a couple of border provinces. Buster put the question to Big Thinks as if it were a contemporary dispute, just to see how the computer would have resolved it. What did it suggest, nuclear attack? Is that why all the redecoration? Buster’s puzzle blew all the fuses.”

  Richard found the last page.

  The words “forgot died mad” were repeated over and over, in very faint ink. Then some mathematical formulae. Then the printer equivalent of scribble.

  “This makes no sense.”

  He showed it to Jess-F, hoping she could interpret it. He really would have liked Big Thinks to have got to the bottom of the tussle that had defeated Bismarck and Metternich and to have spat out a blindingly simple answer everyone should have seen all along.

  “No,” she admitted. “It makes no sense at all.”

  Moana shrugged.

  Richard felt a rush of sympathy for Jess-F. This was painful for her.

  “BeeTee can’t do it,” said Richard. “The machine can do sums very fast, but nothing else?”

  Jess-F was almost at the point of tears.

  “That’s not true,” she said, with tattered pride. “Big Thinks is the most advanced computer in the world. It can solve any logic problem. Give it the data, and it can deliver accurate weather forecasts, arrange schedules to optimise efficiency of any number of tasks ...”

  “But throw the illogical at it, and BeeTee just has a good cry.”

  “It’s a machine. It can’t cry.”

  “Or arbitrate love affairs.”

  Jess-F was in a corner.

  “It’s not fair,” she said quietly. “It’s not BeeTee’s fault. It’s not my fault. They knew the operational parameters. They just kept insisting it tackle areas outside its remit, extending, tampering, overburdening. My techs have been working all the hours of the day ...”

  “Kronons, surely?”

  “... all the bloody kronons of the day, just trying to get Big Thinks working again. Even after all this, the ridiculous demands keep coming through. Big Thinks, Big Thinks, will I be pretty, will I be rich? Big Thinks, Big Thinks, is there life on other planets?”

  Jess-F put her hands over her face.

  “‘They’? Who are ‘they’?”

  “All of them,” Jess-F sobbed. “Across all disciplines.”

  “Who especially?”

  “Who else? Varno Zhoule.”

  “Not any more?”

  “No.”

  She looked out from behind her hands, horrified.

  “It wasn’t me,” she said.

  “I know. You’re left-handed. Wrong wound pattern. One more question: What did the late Mm. Mal-K want from Big Thinks?”

  Jess-F gave out an appalled sigh.

  “Now, he was cracked. He kept putting in these convoluted specific questions. In the end, they were all about taking over the country. He wanted to run the whole of the United Kingdom like Tomorrow Town.”

  “The day after tomorrow, the world?”

  “He kept putting in plans and strategies for infiltrating vital industries and dedicating them to the cause. He didn’t have an army, but he believed Big Thinks could get all the computers in the country on his side. Most of the zenvols thought he was a dreamer, spinning out a best-case scenario at the meetings. But he meant it. He wanted to found a large-scale technomeritocracy.”

  “With himself as Beloved Leader?”

  “No, that’s how mad he was. He wanted Big Thinks to run everything. He was hoping to put BeeTee in charge and let the future happen.”

  “That’s why he wanted Vanessa and me out of the story. We were a threat to his funding. Without the subsidies, the plug is pulled.”

  “One thing BeeTee can do is keep track of figures. As a community, Tomorrow Town is in the red. Enormously.”

  “There’s no money here, though.”

  “Of course not. We’ve spent it. An
d spent money we don’t have. The next monorail from Preston is liable to be crowded with dunning bailiffs.”

  Richard thought about it. He was rather saddened by the truth. It would have been nice if the future worked. He wondered if Lincoln Steffens had had any second thoughts during the Moscow purge trials.

  “What threat was Zhoule to Mal-K?” he asked.

  Jess-F frowned. “That’s the oddest thing. Zhoule was the one who really encouraged Mal-K to work on his coup plans. He did see himself as, what did you call it, ‘Beloved Leader.’ All his stories were about intellectual supermen taking charge of the world and sorting things out. If anything, he was the visioneer of the tomorrow take-over. And he’d have jumped anything in skirts if femzens wore skirts here.”

  Richard remembered the quivering Sue-2.

  “So we’re back to Buster in the conservatory with the Hugo award?”

  “I’ve always said it was him,” said Jess-F. “You can’t blame him, but he did it.”

  “We shall see.”

  Sirens sounded. Moana put her fingers in her ears. Jess-F looked even more stricken.

  “That’s not a good sign, is it?”

  * * * *

  The communal meal area outside Big Thinks swarmed with plastic-caped zenvols, looking up and pointing, panicking and screaming. The three light-heat globes, Tomorrow Town’s suns, shone whiter and radiated hotter. Richard looked at the backs of his hands. They were tanning almost as quickly as an instant photograph develops.

  “The fool,” said Jess-F. “He’s tampered with the master controls. Buster will kill us all. It’s the only thing he has left.”

  Zenvols piled into the communally owned electric carts parked in a rank to one side of the square. When they proved too heavy for the vehicles, they started throwing each other off. Holes melted in the canopy above the globes. Sizzling drips of molten plastic fell onto screaming tomorrow townies.

  The sirens shrilled, urging everyone to panic.

  Richard saw Vanessa through the throng.

  She was with Zootie. No Gewell.

  A one-man hovercraft, burdened with six clinging zenvols, chugged past inch by inch, outpaced by someone on an old-fashioned, non-solar-powered bicycle.

  “If the elements reach critical,” said Jess-F, “Tomorrow Town will blow up.”

  A bannerlike strip of paper curled out of a slit in the front of Big Thinks.

  “Your computer wants to say good-bye,” said Richard.

  SURKIT BRAKER No. 15.

  “Not much of a farewell.”

  Zootie walked between falling drips to the central column, which supported the three globes. He opened a hatch and pulled a switch. The artificial suns went out. Real sunlight came through the holes in the canopy.

  “Now that’s what computers can do,” said Jess-F, elated. “Execute protocols. If this happens, then that order must be given.”

  The zenvol seemed happier about her computer now.

  Richard was grateful for a ditch-digger who could read.

  * * * *

  “This is where the body was?” he asked Zootie. They were by swimming-pool-sized tanks of green gunk, dotted with yellow and brown patches since the interruption of the light-source. “Bit of a haul from Zhoule’s place.”

  “The body was carried here?” asked Vanessa.

  “Not just the body. The murder weapon too. Who lives in that bungalow?”

  On a small hill was a bungalow not quite as spacious as Zhoule’s, one of the mass of hutches placed between the silver pathways, with a crown of solar panels on the flat roof, and a dish antennae.

  “Mm. Jor-G,” said Moana.

  “So you do speak?”

  She nodded her head and smiled.

  * * * *

  Gewell sat on an off-white cube in the gloom. The stored power was running down. Only filtered sunlight got through to his main room. He looked as if his backbone had been removed. All the substance of his face had fallen to his jowls.

  Richard looked at him.

  “Nice try with the globes. Should have remembered the circuit breaker, though. Only diabolical masterminds construct their private estates with in-built self-destruct systems. In the future, as in the past, it’s unlikely that town halls will have bombs in the basement ready to go off in the event that the outgoing Mayor wants to take the whole community with him rather than hand over the chain of office.”

  Gewell didn’t say anything.

  Vanessa went straight to a shelf and picked up the only award in the display. It was another Hugo.

  “Best Fan Editor 1958,” she read from the plaque.

  The rocketship came away from its base.

  “You killed him here,” said Richard, “broke your own Hugo, left the bloody rocketship with the body outside. Then, when you’d calmed down a bit, you remembered Zhoule had won the same award. Several, in fact. You sneaked over to his bungalow—no locks, how convenient—and broke one of his Hugos, taking the rocket to complete yours. You made it look as if he were killed with his own award, and you were out of the loop. If only you’d got round to developing the glue of the future and fixed the thing properly, it wouldn’t be so obvious. It’s plain that though you’ve devoted your life to planning out the details of the future, your one essay in the fine art of murder was a rushed botch-up job done on the spur of the moment. You haven’t really improved on Cain. At least Mm. Mal-K made the effort with the space suit and the zapper-prod.”

  “Mm. Jor-G,” said Jess-F, “why?”

  Good question, Richard thought.

  After a long pause, Gewell gathered himself and said, “Varno was destroying Tomorrow Town. He had so many ... so many ideas. Every morning, before breakfast, he had four or five. All the time, constantly. Radio transmitters the size of a pinhead. Cheap infinite energy from tapping the planet’s core. Solar-powered personal flying machines. Robots to do everything. Robots to make robots to do everything. An operation to extend human lifespan threefold. Rules and regulations about who was fit to have and raise children, with gonad-block implants to enforce them. Hats that collect the electrical energy of the brain and use it to power a personal headlamp. Nonstop, unrelenting, unstoppable. Ideas, ideas, ideas

  Richard was frankly astonished by the man’s vehemence. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “But Varno did the easy bit. Once he’d tossed out an idea, it was up to me to make it work. Me or Big Thinks or some other plodding zenvol. And nine out of ten of the ideas didn’t work, couldn’t ever work. And it was always our fault for not making them work, never his for foisting them off on us. This town would be perfect if it hadn’t been for his ideas. And his bloody dreadful spelling. Back in the 50s, who do you think tidied all his stories up so they were publishable? Muggins Gewell. He couldn’t write a sentence that scanned, and rather than learn how he decreed the language should be changed. Not just the spelling—he had a plan to go through the dictionary crossing out all the words that were no longer needed, then make it a crime to teach them to children. It was something to do with his old public school. He said he wanted to make gerunds extinct within a generation. But he had these wonderful, wonderful, ghastly, terrible ideas. It’d have made you sick.”

  “And the medico who wanted to rule the world?”

  “Him too. He had ideas.”

  Gewell was pleading now, hands fists around imaginary bludgeons.

  “If only I could have had ideas,” he said. “They’d have been good ones.”

  Richard wondered how they were going to lock Gewell up until the police came.

  * * * *

  The monorail was out of commission. Most things were. Some zenvols, like Jess-F, were relieved not to have to pretend that everything worked perfectly. They had desiyears—months, dammit!—of complaining bottled up inside, and were pouring it all out to each other in one big whine-in under the dead light-heat globes.

  Richard and Vanessa looked across the Dales. A small vehicle was puttering along a winding, illogic
al lane that had been laid out not by a computer but by wandering sheep. It wasn’t the police, though they were on the way.

  “Who do you think this is?” asked Vanessa.

  “It’ll be Buster. He’s bringing the outside to Tomorrow Town. He always was a yesterday man at heart.”

  A car-horn honked.

  Zenvols, some already changed out of their plastic suits, paid attention. Sue-2 was excited, hopeful, fearful. She clung to Moana, who smiled and waved.