The Queen's Own FBI Trilogy: Brain Twister; The Impossibles; Supermind

by Mark Phillips

  The narrow aisles were choked here and there with men who looked up as Malone passed by, but most of them gave him one quick glance and went back to work. A few didn't even do that, but went right on concentrating on their jobs. Malone headed for a man working all alone in front of a workbench, frowning down at a complicated-looking mechanism that seemed to have neither head nor tail, and prodding at it with a long, thin screwdriver. The man was thin, too, but not very long; he was a little under average height, and he had straight black hair, thick-lensed glasses and a studious expression, even when he was frowning. He looked as if the mechanism were a student who had cut too many classes, and he was being kind but firm with it.

  Malone managed to get to the man's side, and coughed discreetly. There was no response.

  "Fred?” he said.

  The screwdriver waggled a little. Malone wasn't quite sure that the man was breathing.

  "Fred Mitchell,” he said.

  Mitchell didn't look up. Another second passed.

  "Hey,” Malone said. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Fred,” he said in a loud, reasonable-sounding voice, “the State Department's translator has started to talk pig-Latin."

  Mitchell straightened up as if somebody had jabbed him with a pin. The screwdriver waved wildly in the air for a second, and then pointed at Malone. “That's impossible,” Mitchell said in a flat, precise voice. “Simply impossible. It doesn't have a pig-Latin circuit. It can't possibly—” He blinked and seemed to see Malone for the first time. “Oh,” he said. “Hello, Malone. What can I do for you?"

  Malone smiled, feeling a little victorious at having got through the Mitchell armor, which was almost impregnable when there was a job in hand. “I've been standing here talking to you for some time."

  "Oh, have you?” Mitchell said. “I was busy.” That, obviously, explained that. Malone shrugged.

  "I want you to help me check over some calculators, Fred,” he said. “We've had some reports that some of the government machines are out of kilter, and I'd like you to go over them for me."

  "Out of kilter?” Fred Mitchell said. “No, you can forget about it. It's absolutely unnecessary to make a check, believe me. Absolutely. Forget it.” He smiled suddenly. “I suppose it's some kind of a joke, isn't it?” he said, just a trifle uncertainly. Fred Mitchell's world, while pleasant, did not include much humor, Malone knew. “It's supposed to be funny,” he said in the same flat, precise voice.

  "It isn't funny,” Malone said.

  Fred sighed. “Then they're obviously lying,” he said, “and that's all there is to it. Why bother me with it?"

  "Lying, Fred?” Malone said.

  "Certainly,” Fred said. He looked at the machinery with longing.

  Malone took a breath. “How do you know?” he said.

  Fred sighed. “It's perfectly obvious,” he said in a patient tone. “Since the State Department translator has no pig-Latin circuit, it can't possibly be talking pig-Latin. I will admit that such a circuit would be relatively easy to build, though it would have no utility as far as I can see. Except, of course, for a joke.” He paused. “Joke?” he said, in a slightly uneasy tone.

  "Sure,” Malone said. “Joke."

  Mitchell looked relieved. “Very well, then,” he began. “Since—"

  "Wait a minute,” Malone said. “The pig-Latin is a joke. That's right. But I'm not talking about the pig-Latin."

  "You're not?” Mitchell asked, surprised.

  "No,” Malone said.

  Mitchell frowned. “But you said—” he began.

  "A joke,” Malone said. “You were perfectly right. The pig-Latin is a joke.” He waited for Fred's expression to clear, and then added: “But what I want to talk to you about isn't."

  "It sounds very confused,” Fred said after a pause. “Not at all the sort of thing that-that usually goes on."

  "You have no idea,” Malone said. “It's about the political machines, all right, but it isn't anything as simple as pig-Latin.” He explained, taking his time over it.

  When he had finished, Fred was nodding his head slowly. “I see,” he said. “I understand just what you want me to do."

  "Good,” Malone said.

  "I'll take a team over to the Senate Office Building,” Fred said, “and check the computer-secretaries there. That way, you see, I'll be able to do a full running check on them without taking any one machine out of operation for too long."

  "Sure,” Malone said.

  "And it shouldn't take long,” Fred went on, “to find out just what the trouble is.” He looked very confident.

  "How long?” Malone asked.

  Fred shrugged. “Oh,” he said, “five or six days."

  Malone repressed an impulse to scream. “Days?” he said. “I mean-well, look, Fred, it's important. Very important Can't you do the job any faster?"

  Fred gave a little sigh. “Checking and repairing all those machines,” he said, “is an extremely complex job. Sometimes, Malone, I don't think you realize quite how complex and how delicate a job it is to deal with such a high-order machine. Why—"

  "Wait a minute,” Malone said. “Check and repair them?"

  "Of course,” Fred said.

  "But I don't want them repaired,” Malone said. Seeing the look of horror on Fred's face, he added hastily, “I only want a report from you on what's wrong, whether they are actually making errors or not. And if they are making errors, just what's making them do it. And just what kind of errors. See?"

  Fred nodded very slowly. “But I can't just leave them there,” he said piteously. “In pieces and everything. It isn't right, Malone. It just isn't right."

  "Well, then,” Malone said with energy, “you go right ahead and repair them, if you want to. Fix ‘em all up. But you can do that after you make the report to me, can't you?"

  "I—” Fred hesitated. “I had planned to check and repair each machine on an individual basis."

  "The Congress can allow for a short suspension,” Malone said. “Anyhow, they can now, or as soon as I get the word to them. Suppose you check all the machines first, and then get around to the repair work."

  "It's not the best way,” Fred demurred.

  Malone discovered that it was his turn to sigh. “Is it the fastest?” he said.

  Fred nodded.

  "Then it's the best,” Malone said. “How long?"

  Fred rolled his eyes to the ceiling and calculated silently for a second. “Tomorrow morning,” he announced, returning his gaze to Malone.

  "Fine,” Malone said. “Fine."

  "But—"

  "Never mind the buts,” Malone said hurriedly. “I'll count on hearing from you tomorrow morning."

  "All right."

  "And if it looks like sabotage,” Malone added, “if the errors aren't caused by normal wear and tear on the machines, you let me know right away. Phone me. Don't waste an instant."

  "I'll-I'll start right away,” Fred said heavily. He looked sadly at the mechanism he had been working on, and put his screwdriver down next to it. It looked to Malone as if he were putting flowers on the grave of a dear departed. “I'll get a team together,” Fred added. He gave the mechanism and screwdriver one last fond parting look, and tore himself away.

  Malone looked after him for a second, thinking of nothing in particular, and then turned in the opposite direction and headed back toward the elevator. As he walked, he began to feel more and more pleased with himself. After all, he'd gotten the investigation started, hadn't he?

  And now all he had to do was go back to his office and read some reports and listen to some interview tapes, and then he could go home.

  The reports and the interview tapes didn't exactly sound like fun, Malone thought, but at the same time they seemed fairly innocent. He would work his way through them grimly, and maybe he would even indulge his most secret vice and smoke a cigar or two to make the work pass more pleasantly. Soon enough, he told himself, they would be finished.

  Somet
imes, though, he regretted the reputation he'd gotten. It had been bad enough in the old days, the pre-1971 days when Malone had thought he was just lucky. Burris had called him a Boy Wonder then, when he'd cracked three difficult cases in a row. Being just lucky had made it a little tough to live with the Boy Wonder label. After all, Malone thought, it wasn't actually as if he'd done anything.

  But since 1971 and the case of the Telepathic Spy, things had gotten worse. Much worse. Now Malone wasn't just lucky any more. Instead, he could teleport and he could even foretell the future a little, in a dim sort of way. He'd caught the Telepathic Spy that way, and when the case of the Teleporting Juvenile Delinquents had come up he'd been assigned to that one too, and he'd cracked it. Now Burris seemed to think of him as a kind of God, and gave him all the tough dirty jobs.

  And if he wasn't just lucky any more, Malone couldn't think of himself as a fearless, heroic FBI agent, either. He just wasn't the type. He was ... well, talented. That was the word, he told himself: talented. He had all these talents and they made him look like something spectacular to Burris and the other FBI men. But he wasn't, really. He hadn't done anything really tough to get his talents; they'd just happened to him.

  Nobody, though, seemed to believe that. He heaved a little sigh and stepped into the waiting elevator.

  There were, after all, he thought, compensations. He'd had some good times, and the talents did come in handy. And he did have his pick of the vacation schedule lately. And he'd met some lovely girls...

  And besides, he told himself savagely as the elevator shot upward, he wasn't going to do anything except return to his office and read some reports and listen to some tapes. And then he was going to go home and sleep all night, peacefully. And in the morning Mitchell was going to call him up and tell him that the computer-secretaries needed nothing more than a little repair. He'd say they were getting old, and he'd be a little pathetic about it; but it wouldn't be anything serious. Malone would send out orders to get the machines repaired, and that would be that. And then the next case would be something both normal and exciting, like a bank robbery or a kidnapping involving a gorgeous blonde who would be so grateful to Malone that...

  He had stepped out of the elevator and gone down the corridor without noticing it. He pushed at his own office door and walked into the outer room. The train of thought he had been following was very nice, and sounded very attractive indeed, he told himself.

  Unfortunately, he didn't believe it. His prescient ability, functioning with its usual efficient aplomb, told Malone that things would not be better, or simpler, in the morning. They would be worse, and more complicated.

  They would be quite a lot worse.

  And, as usual, that prescience was perfectly accurate.

  CHAPTER 2

  The telephone, Malone realized belatedly, had had a particularly nasty-sounding ring. He might have known it would be bad news.

  As a matter of fact, he told himself sadly, he had known.

  "Nothing at all wrong?” he said into the mouthpiece. “Not with any of the computers?” He blinked. “Not even one of them?"

  "Not a thing,” Mitchell said. “I'll be sending a report up to you in a little while. You read it; we put them through every test, and it's all detailed there."

  "I'm sure you were very thorough,” Malone said helplessly.

  "Of course we were,” Mitchell said. “Of course. And the machines passed every single test. Every one. Malone, it was beautiful."

  "Goody,” Malone said at random. “But there's got to be something—"

  "There is, Malone,” Fred said. “There is. I think there's definitely something odd going on. Something funny. I mean peculiar, not humorous."

  "I thought so,” Malone put in.

  "Right,” Fred said. “Malone, try and relax. This is a hard thing to say, and it must be even harder to hear, but—"

  "Tell me,” Malone said. “Who's dead? Who's been killed?"

  "I know it's tough, Malone,” Fred went on.

  "Is everybody dead?” Malone said. “It can't be just one person, not from that tone in your voice. Has somebody assassinated the entire senate? Or the president and his cabinet? Or—"

  "It's nothing like that, Malone,” Fred said, in a tone that implied that such occurrences were really rather minor. “It's the machines."

  "The machines?"

  "That's right,” Fred said grimly. “After we checked them over and found they were in good shape, I asked for samples of both the input and the output of each machine. I wanted to do a thorough job."

  "Congratulations,” Malone said. “What happened?"

  Fred took a deep breath. “They don't agree,” he said.

  "They don't?” Malone said. The phrase sounded as if it meant something momentous, but he couldn't quite figure out what. In a minute, he thought confusedly, it would come to him. But did he want it to?

  "They definitely do not agree,” Fred was saying. “The correlation is erratic; it makes no statistical sense. Malone, there are two possibilities."

  "Tell me about them,” Malone said. He was beginning to feel relieved. To Fred, the malfunction of a machine was more serious than the murder of the entire Congress. But Malone couldn't quite bring himself to feel that way about things.

  "First,” Fred said in a tense tone, “it's possible that the technicians feeding information to the machines are making all kinds of mistakes.” Malone nodded at the phone. “That sounds possible,” he said. “Which ones?"

  "All of them,” Fred said. “They're all making errors-and they're all making about the same number of errors. There don't seem to be any real peaks or valleys, Malone; everybody's doing it."

  Malone thought of the Varsity Drag and repressed the thought. “A bunch of fumblebums,” he said. “All fumbling alike. It does sound unlikely, but I guess it's possible. We'll get after them right away, and—"

  "Wait,” Fred said. “There is a second possibility."

  "Oh,” Malone said.

  "Maybe they aren't mistakes,” Fred said. “Maybe the technicians are deliberately feeding the machine with wrong answers."

  Malone hated to admit it, even to himself, but that answer sounded a lot more probable. Machine technicians weren't exactly picked off the streets at random; they were highly trained for their work, and the idea of a whole crew of them starting to fumble at once, in a big way, was a little hard to swallow.

  The idea of all of them sabotaging the machines they worked on, Malone thought, was a tough one to take, too. But it had the advantage of making some sense. People, he told himself dully, will do nutty things deliberately. It's harder to think of them doing the same nutty things without knowing it.

  "Well,” he said at last, “however it turns out, we'll get to the bottom of it. Frankly, I think it's being done on purpose."

  "So do I,” Fred said. “And when you find out just who's making the technicians do such things-when you find out who gives them their orders-you let me know."

  "Let you know?” Malone said. “But—"

  "Any man who would give false data to a perfectly innocent computer,” Fred said savagely, “would-would—” For a second he was apparently lost for comparisons. Then he finished: “Would kill his own mother.” He paused a second and added, in an even more savage voice, “And then lie about it!"

  The image on the screen snapped off, and Malone sat back in his chair and sighed. He spent a few minutes regretting that he hadn't chosen, early in life, to be a missionary to the Fiji Islands, or possibly simply a drunken bum without any troubles, but then the report Mitchell had mentioned arrived. Malone picked it up without much eagerness, and began going through it carefully.

  It was beautifully typed and arranged; somebody on Mitchell's team had obviously been up all night at the job. Malone admired the work, without being able to get enthusiastic about the contents. Like all technical reports, it tended to be boring and just a trifle obscure to someone who wasn't completely familiar with the field invo
lved. Malone and cybernetics were not exactly bosom buddies, and by the time he finished reading through the report he was suffering from an extreme case of ennui.

  There were no new clues in the report, either; Mitchell's phone conversation had covered all of the main points. Malone put the sheaf of papers down on his desk and looked at them for a minute as if he expected an answer to leap out from the pile and greet him with a glad cry. But nothing happened. Unfortunately, he had to do some more work.

  The obvious next step was to start checking on the technicians who were working on the machines. Malone determined privately that he would give none of his reports to Fred Mitchell; he didn't like the idea of being responsible for murder, and that was the least Fred would do to someone who confused his precious calculators.

  He picked up the phone, punched for the Records Division, and waited until a bald, middle-aged face appeared. He asked the face to send up the dossiers of the technicians concerned to his office. The face nodded.

  "You want them right away?” it said in a mild, slightly scratchy voice.

  "Sooner than right away,” Malone said.

  "They're coming up by messenger,” the voice said.

  Malone nodded and broke the connection. The technicians had, of course, been investigated by the FBI before they'd been hired, but it wouldn't do any harm to check them out again. He felt grateful that he wouldn't have to do all that work himself; he would just go through the dossiers and assign field agents to the actual checking when he had a picture of what might need to be checked.