The Union Club Mysteries

by Asimov, Isaac

  Before I got into that position, however, I demanded to see the man from Vietnam, who was still in the country.

  I said, "Tell me about the Hue agent, the one who disappeared. Are you sure he was captured and to be presumed dead? Are you sure he wasn't Vietcong all the time; that he finally didn't decide he had had enough, sent off nonsense and joined his friends?"

  "No, no," said the other, "I don't think that's possible at all. His wife and children had been killed in North Vietnam rather atrociously and he wanted his revenge. Besides—" he grinned, "he had a thing about his command of the English language. Sometimes I think that held him to us more than anything else. He might desert us, he might forget his passion for revenge, but he would never give up the chance of lecturing Americans and Englishmen on their own language. Not that we listened, of course. On the few occasions I met with him clandestinely, he was unbearably tedious on the subject."

  "For instance?"

  "I scarcely remember. He always said that all languages were ambiguous, but that native speakers were so used to the ambiguities they never paid attention. Like that."

  "Did he give examples?"

  "I don't remember."

  "Well now, we have here '13 THP/2NDL' for thirteenth page, second line. Why the extra letters? Wouldn't 13/2' have been enough?"

  "Hey," said the man from Vietnam, "he always did use that combination, but your questions have reminded me. He claimed that was ambiguous."

  "The 13/2?"

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  "He didn't say—I don't think he said." "So he sent it off in this version to prove it was ambiguous?"

  "I don't see that. It's the same thing, with or without the letters. Thirteenth page, second line."

  "Not at all," I said, and explained. He stared at me as though I were crazy.

  I was right, of course. With the new key, the message decoded beautifully, and the full details of the forthcoming Tet offensive lay before us.

  Except it wasn't forthcoming; it took place on that very day and we were caught flat-footed.

  "But what are you talking about?" I demanded in astonishment as Griswold returned to his drink and seemed to lapse into deep thought. "What did the phrase mean if not '13th page, 2nd line'?"

  Griswold said, "No problem. That's what it meant. And they were using the right book. It was just that the agent realized the phrase was ambiguous and lent itself to misinterpretation. And with a little thought I could see what he meant, as I think anyone should."

  "But / don't," I said.

  "So think a little. The lines on a page aren't numbered so '2nd line' means 'line 2' counting from the top in the conventional way. No problem. However, pages are numbered and that produces the confusion since '13th page' is not necessarily 'page 13.'"

  Baranov said quite loudly, "Griswold, you've finally come apart. What else can '13th page' be but 'page 13'?"

  Griswold said, "I notice you have a paperback in your jacket pocket, so we don't have to send for one. Would you take it out and turn to the first page of the novel? Got it? That's the first page? Very good. Is it page 1?"

  Baranov said in a very small voice, "Well, no, it's page 9."

  "Exactly," said Griswold. "In paperbacks they start counting the pages at the very beginning and work their way through title page, acknowledgment, chapter headings, dedications and so on. They don't actually number the pages till the novel actually begins. The first page of the novel itself can therefore be numbered 5, 7, 9, 11— depending on how many preliminary pages were used up.

  "In that case, you see, page 13 is the 13th page of the book, but not at all the 13th page of the novel it contains. This was what the Hue agent had eating at him and that he tried to explain and that no one would listen to. So he stubbornly used '13th page' to indicate he did not mean 'page 13,' but the thirteenth page of that particular novel, which happened to fall on page 21. When they used the keyword from the first letters of the 2nd line on that page, they got the message—but too late."

  To Contents

  1 to 999

  One can't help getting tired of Griswold at times. At least I can't.

  I like him well enough. I can't help liking the old fraud, with his infinite capacity to hear in his sleep and his everlasting sipping at his scotch and soda, and his lies, and his scowls at us from under his enormous white eyebrows. But if I could catch him at his lies only once I think I would like him a lot better.

  Of course, 'he might be telling the truth, but surely there can't be any one person in the world to whom so many impossible problems are posed. I don't believe it! I don't believe it.

  I sat there that night in the Union Club with windy gusts of rain battering the windows now and then, and the traffic on Park Avenue rather muted and I suppose my thoughts must have been spoken aloud.

  At least, Jennings said, "What don't you believe?"

  I was caught a little by surprise, but I jerked my thumb in Griswold's direction. "Him!" I said. "Him!"

  I half expected Griswold to growl back at me at that, but he seemed peacefully asleep between the wings of his tall armchair, his white mustache moving in and out to his regular breathing.

  "Come on," said Baranov. "You enjoy listening to him."

  "That's beside the point," I said. "Think of all those deathbed hints, for instance. Come on! How many times do people die and leave mysterious clues to their murderers? I don't think it has ever happened even once in real life, but it happens to Griswold all the time— according to Griswold. It's an insult to expect us to believe it."

  It was at that point that Griswold opened one icy-blue eye, and said, "The most remarkable deathbed clue I ever encountered had nothing to do with murder at all. It was a natural death and a deliberate joke of a sort, but I don't want to irritate you with the story." He opened his other eye and lifted his glass to his lips.

  "Go ahead," said Jennings. "We are interested. We two, at least."

  I was also, to be truthful—

  What I am about to relate [said Griswold] involved no crime, no police, no spies, no secret agents. There was no reason why I should have known anything about it, but one of the senior men involved knew of my reputation. I can't imagine how such a thing comes about, since I never speak of the little things I have done, for I have better things to do than advertise my prowess. It's just that others talk, things get around, and any puzzle within a thousand miles is referred to me—which is the simple reason I encounter so many. [He glared at me.]

  I was not made aware of the event till it was just about over so I must tell you most of the story as it was told to me, with appropriate condensation, of course, for I am not one to linger unnecessarily over details.

  I will not name the institute at which it all took place or tell you where it is or when it happened. That would give you a chance to check my veracity and I consider it damned impertinent that any of you should feel it required checking or that you should go about snuffling after evidence.

  In this unnamed institute there were people who dealt with the computerization of the human personality. What they wanted to do was to construct a program that would enable a computer to carry on a conversation that would be indistinguishable from that of a human being. Something like that has been done in the case of psychoanalytic double-talk, where a computer is designed to play the role of a Freudian who repeats his patient's remarks. That is trivial. What the institute was after was creative small talk, the swapping of ideas.

  I was told that no one at the institute really expected to accomplish the task, but the mere attempt to do so was sure to uncover much of interest about the human mind, about human emotions and personality.

  No one made much progress in this matter except for Horatio Trombone—obviously, I have just invented that name and there is no use your trying to track it down.

  Trombone had been able to make a computer do remarkable things, to respond in a fairly human fashion for a good length of time. No one would have mistaken it fo
r a human being, of course, but Trombone did far better than anyone else had done, so there was considerable curiosity as to the nature of his program.

  Trombone, however, would not divulge any information on the matter. He kept absolutely silent. He worked alone, without assistants or secretaries. He went so far as to burn all but the most essential records and keep those in a private safe. His intention, he said, was to keep matters strictly to himself until he himself was satisfied with what he had accomplished. He would then reveal all and accumulate the full credit and adulation that he was sure he deserved. One gathered he expected the Nobel Prize to begin with and to go straight uphill from there.

  This struck others at the institute, you can well imagine, as eccentricity carried to the point of insanity, which may have been what it was. If he were mad, however, he was a mad genius and his superiors were reluctant to interfere with him. Not only did they feel that, left to himself, he might produce shattering scientific breakthroughs, but none of them had any hankering to go down in the science-history books as a villain.

  Trombone's immediate superior, whom I will call Herbert Bassoon, argued with his difficult underling now and then. "Trombone," he would say, "if we could have a number of people combining mind and thought on this, progress would go faster."

  "Nonsense," Trombone would say irascibly. "One intelligent person doesn't go faster just because twenty fools are nipping at his heels. You only have one decently intelligent person here, other than myself, and if I die before I'm done, he can carry on. I will leave him my records, but they will go only to him, and not until I die."

  Trombone usually chuckled at such times, I was told, for he had a sense of humor as eccentric as his sense of privacy, and Bassoon told me that he had a premonition of just such trouble as eventually took place—though that may very well have been only hindsight.

  The chance of Trombone's dying was, unfortunately, all too good, for his heart was pumping on hope alone. There had been three heart attacks and there was a general opinion that the fourth would kill him. Nevertheless, though he was aware of the precarious thread by which his life hung, he would never name the one person he thought a worthy successor. Nor, by his actions, was it possible to judge who it might be. Trombone seemed to be amused at keeping the world in ignorance.

  The fourth heart attack came while he was at work and it did kill him. He was alone at the time so there was no one to help him. It didn't kill him at once and he had time to feed instructions to his computer. At least, the computer produced a printout, which was found at the time his body was.

  Trombone also left a will in the possession of his lawyer who made its terms perfectly clear. The lawyer had the combination to the safe that held Trombone's records and that combination was to be released to no one but Trombone's chosen successor. The lawyer did not have the name of the successor, but the will stated that there would be an indication left behind. If people were too stupid to understand it—those were the words in the will—then, after the space of one week, all his records were to be destroyed.

  Bassoon argued strenuously that the public good counted for more than Trombone's irrational orders; that his dead hand must not interfere with the advance of science. The lawyer, however, was adamant; long before the law could move, the records would be destroyed, since any legal action was to be at once met with destruction according to the terms of the will.

  There was nothing to do but turn to the printout, and what it contained was a series of numerals: 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, all the numerals up to 999. The series was carefully scanned. There was not one numeral missing, not one out of place; the full list, 1 to 999.

  Bassoon pointed out that the instructions for such a printout were very simple, something Trombone might have done even at the point of death. Trombone might have intended something more complicated than a mere unbroken list of numerals, but had not had a chance to complete the instruction. Therefore, Bassoon said, the printout was not a true indication of what was in Trombone's mind and the will was invalid.

  The lawyer shrugged that off. It was mere speculation, he said. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the printout had to be taken as it appeared, as saying exactly what Trombone wanted it to say.

  Bassoon gathered his staff together for a meeting of minds. There were twenty men and women, any one of whom could, conceivably, have carried on Trombone's work. Every one of them would have longed for the chance, but no one of them could advance any logical bit of evidence that he or she was the one Trombone thought to be the "one decently intelligent person" among them. At least, not one could convince any of the others that he or she was the person.

  Nor could a single one see any connection between that dull list of numerals and any person in the institute. I imagine some invented theories, but none were convincing to them all generally, and certainly none were convincing to the lawyer or moved him in any way.

  Bassoon was slowly going mad. On the last day of the grace period, when he was no nearer a solution than at the start, he turned to me. I received his call at a time when I was very busy, but I knew Bassoon slightly, and I have always found it difficult to refuse help—especially to someone who sounded as desperate as he did.

  We met in his office and he looked wretched. He told me the whole story and said when he had finished, "It is maddening to have what may be an enormous advance in that most difficult of subjects—the working of the human mind—come to nothing because of a half-mad eccentric, a stubborn robot of a lawyer and a silly piece of paper. Yet I can make nothing of it."

  I said, "Can it be a mistake to concentrate on the numerals? Is there anything unusual about the paper itself?"

  "I swear to you, no," he said energetically. "It was ordinary paper without a mark on it except for the numerals from 1 to 999. We've done everything except subject it to neutron activation analysis, and I think I'd do that if I thought it would help. If you think I ought to, I will, but surely you can do better than that. Come on, Griswold; you have the reputation of being able to solve any puzzle."

  I don't know where he got that notion. I never discuss such things myself.

  I said, "There isn't much time—"

  "I know," he said, "but I'll show you the paper; I'll introduce you to all the people who might be involved. I'll give you any information you need, any help you want—but we only have seven hours."

  "Well," I said, "we may only need seven seconds. I don't know the names of the twenty people who might qualify as Trombone's successor, but if one of them has a rather unusual first name I have in mind—though it might conceivably be a surname—then I should say that is the person you are looking for."

  I told him the name I had in mind and he jumped. It was unusual and one of the people at the institute did bear it. Even the lawyer admitted that person must be the intended successor, when I explained my reasoning, so the records were passed over.

  However, I don't believe anything much has come of the research after all, unfortunately. In any case, that's the story.

  "No, it isn't," I exploded. "What was the name you suggested and how did you get it out of a list of numerals from 1 to 999." Griswold, who had returned placidly to his drink, looked up sharply. "I can't believe you don't see it," he said. "The numerals went from 1 to 999 without missing a numeral and then stopped. I asked myself what the numerals from 1 to 999 inclusive had in common that numerals higher still, say 1000, do not have, and how that can have anything to do with some one particular person.

  "As written, I saw nothing, but suppose all those numerals were written out as English words: one, two, three, four and so on, all the way up to nine hundred ninety-nine. That list of numbers is constructed of letters, but not of all twenty-six letters. Some letters are not to be found in the words for the first 999 numbers; letters, such as 'a,' 'b,' 'c,' 'j,' 'k,' 'm,' 'p.'

  "The most remarkable of these is 'a.' It is the third most commonly used letter in the English language with only 'e' and 't' ahead of it, yet you may go
through all the numbers—one, fifty-three, seven hundred eighty-one, and you will not find a single 'a.' Once you pass 999, however, it breaks down. The number 1000, 'one thousand,' has an 'a' but not any of the other missing letters. It seems quite clear, then, that the message hidden behind the list is simply the absence of 'a.' What's so difficult about that?"

  I said, angrily, "That's just nonsense. Even if we were to admit that the message was the absence of 'a,' what would that mean as far as the successor was concerned? A name that lacked any 'a'?"

  Griswold gave me a withering look. "I thought there would be several names like that and there were. But I also thought that some one person might have the name 'Noah,' which is pretty close to 'no a' and one of them did. How much simpler can it be?"

  To Contents

  Twelve Years Old

  Jennings was a little testy as he walked into the Union Club that evening. He was the last to join us.

  "Right now," he said, as he lowered himself into his chair and raised his hand to signify his inevitable dry martini, "what I would most like to do is hand my kid nephew a juicy one, or maybe six, in the seat of his pants."

  "He's annoying, is he?" said Baranov.

  "Is Mount St. Helens annoying? That little penny dreadful has the damndest habit of being right in little ways and sneering at you. I don't mind a kid being bright, but he doesn't have to make a career out of humiliating everyone in sight."

  "Twelve years old, I take it," I said.

  "Yes. How did you know?" said Jennings.

  I sighed. "Look, I'm a professional lecturer and in the question-and-answer session I watch out for possible troublemakers and don't call on them. Any time I miscalculate and some undersized runt with sharp features and a boy-soprano voice asks a particularly embarrassing question, I say, 'You're twelve years old, I take it' and they always answer 'Yes, how did you know?'"