by Paul Crilley
It was.
These areas on the maps just showed offices and work stations, but Tweed had thought it meant proper, enclosed rooms. The maps didn't say anything about them being one huge space.
He moved through the second room and into yet another one. Tweed cast his mind back to the maps. There had been ten of these spaces, hadn't there? Tweed gritted his teeth. He knew the Ministry was big, that they controlled a lot of things, but this was ludicrous.
Half an hour later, Tweed finally made it through the final room and found himself in another corridor. By then he was sweating, the moisture dripping down his face, trickling down his back. Any second now he'd start leaving a trail behind him as he walked.
Down another set of stairs he went, then through a few doors, following more passages and corridors, until he finally stood before his first destination of the night.
The programming room.
He pushed down the handle and opened the door.
Tweed closed the door behind him and stood facing row upon row of empty keypunch machines. Each machine consisted of a chair facing a viewing screen housed in a large brass and wood cabinet bolted against the wall. A small table folded out from the cabinet, making it look like a school desk. Tweed walked forward and studied the closest one. Each desk had a long, jointed arm attached to the cabinet on the wall, with a metal card puncher attached to the end. And in the center of the desk was a rectangular frame for holding the punchcards.
“I'm in,” he whispered.
Octavia breathed a sigh of relief and handed the transmitter over to Stepp. She ignored Octavia, frowning at the screen of her Ada, her thin face illuminated in a sickly, sepia glow. Octavia had to prod her with the transmitter before she actually peeled her eyes up from the viewing screen to glare at her.
“I need to prepare all this before he goes ahead,” snapped Stepp. “Give me a second.” She started to turn back to her screen, then paused. “Tell the idiot to get the punchcard ready.”
“Stepp says she'll be with you momentarily,” said Octavia in Tweed's ear. “She politely requests that you ready the punchcard.”
Tweed looked around. Right. The punchcard. That was the whole reason this had to be the first part of the plan. The government used their own patented type of card, the only kind that could be used in their Babbages. That meant they couldn't just pre-punch a card on the outside and bring it in with them. It had to be done here.
There was a large wall cupboard behind the door. He hurried over to it and pulled, but it was locked. Typical. Tweed tried to yank it, but his automaton arms hampered his grip. He quickly undid the latches under his forearms and pulled the casing from his arms and hands. A cool breeze wafted into the rest of the suit.
Tweed took a firm grip on the door and pulled again. The stupid thing still didn't budge. He needed something to use as leverage. He looked around, his eyes falling on the arms that were used to punch the cards. That would do. He went to the nearest machine and ripped off the arm that held the card puncher, splintering the wood of the cabinet as it pulled free of its moorings. He forced the thin end of the arm into the small gap between the doors and put all his weight against it. The lock snapped and the door sprung open, banging against the wall.
Tweed dropped the arm. The cabinet was filled from top to bottom with the Ministry's unique oblong punchcards. He took one from the pile and sat down at a nearby machine, slipping the card into the frame on the desk. He didn't switch it on, as he was doing this manually. No telling who would see if he started typing instructions into a government-run Babbage.
He stared at the arm, then at the keypad to his left. The keypad was a facsimile of the actual punchcard. Whichever button he pushed, the card puncher would then punch a corresponding hole in the card. Simple.
He wondered why they bothered mounting it to a Babbage at all. It seemed pretty straightforward. What added benefit did they get from such a machine? Maybe they did multiple copies? You put a pile of punchcards in, and the Babbage did one after the other? That would only work if each card was to be exactly the same. Any variation in each card would still have to be programmed—
“I'm here,” said Stepp. “Are you set?”
“Of course I am,” Tweed replied.
“Good. Make sure you type in these numbers exactly as I say them.”
Stepp then proceeded to recite a long series of numbers. Tweed typed each one into the machine, watching the arm move the card puncher across the punchcard and stab neat holes into the waxed material.
It took ten excruciating minutes. Every ten seconds Tweed would glance over his shoulder, convinced someone was about to walk into the room and catch him. But his luck held. He supposed it made sense. Who would need newly programmed punchcards at this time of night?
“That's it,” said Stepp. “All done. You'd better get a move on, Tweed. You've been in there over an hour now.”
Over and hour? So long? It certainly didn't seem like it. Tweed pulled the card from the frame and slid it into a hidden panel on his suit. Then he buckled on the arms and gloves again.
There was a thick pile of papers on a desk near the door. Tweed picked it up, then stepped back out into the corridor.
He had to head back the way he came in, moving quickly through the corridors and then through those massive open office spaces. His route took him all the way back to the fifth room. He pushed through the door, consciously forcing himself to slow down. He had to constantly fight his instinct to move faster, to get this over with. He glanced around, searching for the elevators. He spotted them over by the far wall, a line of ten grey-painted doors.
Tweed headed toward them. He really wanted this finished. The tension was starting to get to him. The back of his neck was crawling. He kept expecting a hand to clamp down on his shoulder. Or to turn around to find everyone in the room staring at him.
Not only that, but the tension of wondering if he was even going to find Barnaby was making it even worse. They were taking a huge leap of faith in their assumption that his father was even here.
Tweed pushed the button on the brass panel next to the door. He waited, staring straight ahead, trying his best not to fidget. Knowing he had to stand absolutely still made him want to move all the more. He had an almost overwhelming compulsion to lift his feet, to stretch out his ankles in an attempt to relieve the cramp.
Someone came to stand next to him. He couldn't see who, but he heard the rustle of cloth, the whisper of breath going in, the slightly wheezy, wet air coming back out. A smoker, definitely.
The elevator doors slid open. Tweed walked inside, then turned slowly around. The person followed Tweed inside: a short, overweight man wearing a tatty plaid suit, holding an accordion file very tightly to his chest.
He barely even glanced at Tweed, just turned around and hit a button. After a few moments, he turned and frowned at Tweed.
Tweed felt a rush of alarm. What? What had given him away? Then he realized he hadn't pushed a floor button. Tweed only just managed to stop himself lunging forward and slapping one of them. Instead, he moved slowly, jerkily, and depressed a button three floors below the one the man had pushed. It wasn't the floor he was going to, but he didn't want this person knowing where he was getting off.
The elevator shook and started its jerky descent. Ministry staff entered and exited until finally it was just Tweed on his own. He pushed a button:
20
The elevator trundled down the remaining floors and opened into a dim corridor. Tweed hesitated, peering out between the doors. The corridor was older, less clinical. Upturned lights in the walls cast their glow directly onto the stained roof, leaving the lower half of the passage cloaked in shadow.
Well, that actually worked in his favor, didn't it? No one would be able to see him clearly. Tweed stepped out of the elevator. According to the maps he needed to head along here, turn there, through these doors, along this corridor…
He followed his own directions until he stood before a nondescript wooden
door: the programming hub of the Ministry.
Interesting that it was tucked away at the bottom of the complex, hidden beneath everything. From the room in front of him the Ministry sent out secret instructions to the Babbages upstairs, which were then sent to their automata throughout the city, to agents overseas. Every Babbage owned by the Ministry, every piece of security equipment they used, the Tesla Towers themselves, they were all controlled from here.
And Tweed was going to set it on fire.
Well, not quite. He had suggested it, but Stepp had been horrified at the thought and had threatened to pull out of the whole operation should Tweed even bring it up again. So a compromise was reached.
He checked the opposite side of the corridor and picked one of the closest doors to the programming room. He knocked, but there was no answer, so Tweed pushed it open and peeked inside. It was filled with filing cabinets and wall-mounted shelves stuffed full of books and files. A records room. Perfect.
Tweed closed the door behind him and hastily yanked his arm plates off. He opened up the folder he carried and crumpled up the paper inside. He pulled open random drawers in the filing cabinets and tossed the scrunched-up balls inside. Then he pulled out a matchbook of Lucifers and lit one of them, touching the flame to the crumpled papers.
He waited till the paper was burning merrily, the orange light flickering up the walls, then he grabbed his arm casings and slipped back into the hall, leaving the door open.
He waited.
And waited.
Surely there had to be some sort of fire alarm. The orange glow was getting brighter, spilling out into the corridor. Smoke crawled out the top of the door, reaching up to the roof of the passage.
“The alarm is not going off,” he whispered urgently.
A pause. Then, “What?” asked Octavia.
“There is supposed to be a fire alarm,” he said. “It's not going off.”
“Are you sure the fire took?” asked Octavia.
Tweed stared at the flames now licking up the doorframe. He could feel the heat on his face.
“I'm fairly sure the fire took,” he said.
“Then improvise!” snapped Octavia.
Improvise. Right.
Tweed whirled around, yanked the door to the computing room open, and bellowed, “Fire!” at the top of his lungs. Then he darted into one of the other rooms along the passage and listened to the panicked rush of feet, the shouts of alarm, the shrieks of terror.
He poked his head around the doorframe and saw a last person staggering out of the programming room, heading for the elevators. Tweed darted into the corridor, through the door to the now-empty room, and closed it behind him.
He hoped they managed to get the fire out. This would all be a bit pointless if he actually burned down everything on this level.
He looked around. The room was brightly lit and large. All around the walls were viewing screens. Lots and lots of viewing screens. There must have been hundreds of them, all showing different images: the streets of London, various buildings, and what appeared to be hospital wards. Others, somewhat alarmingly, seemed to show images from inside peoples’ houses: normal people, sleeping in their beds or shuffling about for a late-night cup of tea.
Tweed let out a long, pent-up breath.
“I'm inside,” he said.
“He's in the room,” said Octavia.
Stepp took the transmitter from her and pushed the trigger down. “Right. Look for an access panel on the Babbages, something you can easily open. That will be the feeder, where they put the punchcards in. See it?”
Tweed stood before the rear wall, looking at the long banks of machines, all of which had access panels and a little sign with an arrow pointing upward saying, “Punchcards this way up.” He pulled a handle on the closest and the whole front section of the machine folded downward. As it lowered to form a sort of table in front of him, a section from inside slid toward him. It was a long rack holding hundreds of punchcards. There was a small, embossed piece of metal on the front of the rack. It said “Bethlem Royal Hospital, London Road—Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Fulham Road.”
Tweed looked back toward the viewing screens, then pulled the small lever on the front of the framework that held the punchcards. There was a shuffling sound, then a click, and the tray of cards rose up and rolled forward toward Tweed. As it did so, the viewing screens showing images of hospitals flickered and went black.
Tweed quickly pushed the small lever back and the punchcards retracted back inside the machine. The viewing screens flickered back into life.
“Um…there are rather a lot of machines that hold punchcards,” he said. “The one I just opened only deals with spying on hospitals.”
“Then look for one that deals with the Ministry security protocols,” said Stepp. “That's the one we need.”
Tweed started moving along the bank of machines. There was activity in the corridor, shouts, then some sort of hissing noise. A small line of white smoke curled under the door.
Right. They were putting the fire out. He needed to move faster. Tweed quickly pulled open the doors of the machines. Westminster. Downing Street. Interesting, thought Tweed. Spying on the Prime Minister? Piccadilly.
This wasn't what he needed. All these Babbages were dedicated to the Ministry spying on locations throughout London. He wondered how the people being watched would feel if they knew how their privacy was being so systematically abused. He wondered how many times he and Barnaby had appeared on these viewing screens, and whether or not Barnaby knew about them. Had his father picked their home because it was in a blind spot? That was possible. Likely, even.
Tweed finally found what he was looking for. The third bank of machines he inspected all seemed dedicated to the Ministry building itself. Tweed had a sudden, horrible thought. Had they seen him enter the building in the railway station? What if they'd seen them on the tracks and this was all a plot to get them to reveal their plan?
But…Tweed looked at the viewing screens on the walls. The Ministry had to be selective. They couldn't watch every single part of the building. There were likely other rooms like this one, with wall-to-wall viewing screens. But even then, nobody would be able to watch them all at once.
When he opened the fifth machine, he saw that it was labeled, “Security Protocols, Ministry House, Internal.”
“Found it,” he said, reaching out to pull the lever that would bring the tray of punchcards out.
“Don't touch anything yet!” Stepp shouted in his ear.
Tweed froze.
“If you disengage those punchcards all sorts of alarms will go off. Right. That punchcard you made. The sequence I gave you to imprint was the coded address for my Ada. What that means is that when you insert that punchcard inside the Ministry's security protocols, it will piggyback on their systems, transmitting everything that goes on in their security machines to me. But also, and here's the clever bit, allowing me to transmit my own instructions through that punchcard.”
Stepp hadn't actually explained this part of the plan before. “Are you saying you will have complete control of all of the Ministry's Babbage systems?” asked Tweed.
“Not all of them. Just security protocols. Alarms, doors, and prisons.”
“That's quite…impressive,” said Tweed.
“I know,” said Stepp. “Now, there's a specific place you need to insert it. You see the little cut taken out of the edge of the punchcard?”
Tweed pulled the card out and saw what Stepp was talking about. Three quarters of the way along the card there was a small oval cut.
“You need to line that up with the ones already inside. That sequence controls the transmission of instructions. That's what I need.”
Tweed bent over the machine and peered inside. He saw the little marks cut out of different places along the edges of the punchcards. Right at the back of the machine were the cards that matched the one he held. He leaned inside and lined them up.
“Got
it,” he said.
“Good. Now slip that card inside. It has to be the first in the sequence, so all instructions transmitted into the machine come through my card first.”
Tweed stretched forward with both arms and leaned inside. He flicked gently through the punchcards, then slid the new one inside at the front of the queue. He patted it down until it was perfectly in place, then closed the door on the Babbage.
“Done,” he said, straightening up. “Is that it?”
Octavia's voice came over his earpiece. “You've just snuck into the Ministry, used one of their machines to program a dummy punchcard program that hijacks their security systems, managed to embed it into their machines without being noticed, and you say ‘is that it?’”
Tweed opened his mouth to reply, but Octavia cut him off.
“But since you asked, no it isn't it. You still have to get down to the prison level, remember? Now get a move on.”
Tweed grinned and shook his head. He eyed the automaton arm panels lying on the floor. He was really coming to hate this suit. Nothing else for it though. He strapped them back on, then glanced around, making sure he had left no evidence of his presence.
He cracked the door open, and could hear lots of movement coming from the room across the way, but there was no one in the passage. There was a lot of smoke, though. He quickly slipped into the corridor and retraced his footsteps to the elevator, jabbing at the button to call it back. Chances were someone was going to get suspicious about that fire. He needed to get to the prison level as quickly as possible.
The elevator arrived. He stepped inside and let the doors slide closed again.
“I'm in the elevator,” he said. He leant over and inspected the panel on the wall. There were two floors below the one he was on: 21 and 22. He pushed 22, but nothing happened.
“Stepp, time to do your stuff. I need access to floor 22. I'm in elevator…” he looked around and saw a small panel screwed into the wall next to the roof, “…six.”
