The Thinktank That Leaked

by Christopher Hodder-Williams

  “It appears that the processed output of her profile — and might I confide, at the risk of causing offence, that I didn’t find this profile very absorbing? — got rerouted. Instead of coming back here, it was directed, by the operating system of the master computer in Manchester, to her own telephone, via voice output.”

  I chose not to interrupt by saying she’d already told me this much. I wanted his version.

  He seemed to hold the software of the Manchester computer in some affection. “On the face of it, this seemed a sensible enough way to dump. It must have occurred while the slave computer in here was shut down for maintenance. However, two further things happened and I have to say that the second event I shall describe is Classified material. In fact, it falls into the highest secret classification there is in this country; and were it not for the extreme urgency of the situation I wouldn’t risk a long term in jail — for that is what a leak would mean if it were known that I had been the originator — by confiding what little I know.”

  Silence this time. He’d got me hooked.

  “Taking first things first, it appears that Paula Kepter’s personality profile registered down at Orscombe. I was phoned at my flat up here by the Sister on duty as naturally she had no record of a patient with any such name. Two hours later I received a further phonecall from Tithings and this time it was the technician provided by Bristol University. He told me that there were some additional blocks of data — that is to say —” he peered at Nesta without actually looking, if that conveys it, “that is to say, additional information which was encoded in a different way and did not belong to the program we use for profiling the patients. He reported, however, that before he could stop it, the computer at Orscombe, for reasons that are still not clear, did some extensive arithmetic, involving data relating to both programs — and transmitted the outcome along the other cable which connects the main computer network with Orscombe.”

  He was talking unmitigated rubbish, but I wasn’t going to say so yet. “You’re telling us that there were two programs — yours, and someone else’s — and that these two programs corrupted each other?”

  “Yes.”

  “And that you found this out indirectly because the data on my ex-wife registered at Orscombe when it shouldn’t have?”

  “That’s what started the investigation, yes.”

  “And the data on my ex-wife also came through — as voice output — on my ex-wife’s telephone?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What was the nature, Dr. Spender, of the other program which, you say, got mixed up with yours?”

  “It was … a military one.”

  I felt perplexed as to how to go on with this farce. But after taking a deep breath I asked him, “What makes you so certain that these two programs did get jumbled?”

  Without turning a hair he replied, “Because of the resulting conduct of some of the patients at my clinic in Orscombe.”

  Now I knew he was mad. I said kindly, “Things don’t quite happen that way. I could tell you dozens of reasons why what you’ve told me is totally impossible.”

  “I know it’s impossible. But it happened.”

  I smiled. “I think not. What program format do you use?”

  “It was devised specifically for my purposes but it’s a plain language interrogation system. I simply talk English — limited English constrained by the program dictionary.”

  “And the military program? — Do you happen to know what was used for that?”

  “Yes. FORTRAN.”

  “And might I ask you how you know? — if the military program was so secret?”

  “I have certain … connections.” He was going weird on me again. People who have ‘certain connections’ of the type he implied neither leak classified information to almost total strangers, nor do they find it necessary to advertise their privileges.

  But I left that strictly alone. I said, “You do realize that your type of interrogative transaction-programming could under no circumstances get mixed up with a batch program written in FORTRAN?”

  “It did.”

  “No way.”

  “Mr. Kepter, why do you think I asked you to come here with me a week ago?”

  “I haven’t the slightest idea. I’d already told you I wasn’t interested in replacing the ailing Mr. Pottersman before we even got here.”

  Nesta said expressionlessly, “Let’s — just for a moment — go on the assumption that Dr. Spender is right: that the two programs did get mixed up. What would that actually mean?”

  I said, “We could discuss what the totally impossible could actually mean till doomsday, but —”

  Nesta cut me off. She was firm and definite in pursuing this and my mind was racing to try and figure out why. Then I realized that the factor she had in common with Spender was a person — Mike, her own brother.

  What on earth was leaking through to whom? — and how was it done?

  I spoke less stridently. “That would be extremely hard to guess at. My only comment is that a program dealing in moods — as yours does, Dr. Spender — would make a dangerous mate for one dealing in military facts. Tell me, what cables are run to Orscombe other than the Post Office line that links Orscombe with this place?”

  He said calmly, “That is a shared line which runs up to Manchester as well. Another line doubles back from Orscombe to Manchester.”

  “So this is part of a ‘ring-main’ system?”

  “Yes.”

  “But why would a place like Orscombe be on the main?”

  Spender remained impassive. “I can only assume that it was technologically convenient, in that a great deal of information processing is done at the Orscombe Slave in conjunction with the Manchester Master Computer.”

  “I still don’t see why Somerset is so thick with cables.”

  “The cables are there, Mr. Kepter, because that part of the ring-main passes up to the main transmitter for satellite relay.”

  Nesta, very intent — increasingly intent — on all this, spoke quietly. “You’ve lost me, Dr. Spender. Are you saying that whatever comes out of the Orscombe computer can somehow get sent up to a radio satellite as some kind of message?”

  “It certainly shouldn’t, Miss Crabtree. I am simply saying that since Orscombe is on the ring-main system, a program intended for satellite relay — to some other part of the world — must inevitably contain elements of my program if the two got mixed up.”

  I asked him, “Why is it ‘convenient’ — not to say highly expedient — for Orscombe to be on the computer ring-main?”

  “A simple case of geography. The tracking station used for passing information up to radio-satellite is on Exmoor. The landline serving it passes down the valley to Minehead … literally straight past the front door of the clinic.”

  “The clinic being the house called Tithings?”

  “Yes.”

  I said, “Clearly you have a source — I won’t ask how — from which you have been informed about the military program which you now state became confused with your own. What kind of program was it?”

  … Both Nesta and I agreed, some time later, that he had been looking forward to this very question. He seemed to gain some kind of power over himself which wasn’t natural or logical. Most normal people would have — to say the very least — have been annoyed, bothered and bewitched by what, according to him, was a major snarl-up with unpredictable and possibly dangerous consequences.

  He seemed proud of it.

  “Concurrently with the processing, at Manchester, of Paula Kepter’s profile, there was, on the same computer, a very large program running. When I tell you that it had to do with an estimate of existing Russian military technology I think you will see why I am alarmed.”

  I said, “I can’t, really. America and Russia arc equally sensitive about each other’s state of the War Game and both sides like to think that the competition is self-stabilizing. When it gets unstable, they use the hot line for
the exchange of threats and promises to make it all-square. It’s not a game I like but I didn’t invent it. What I can say, from personal knowledge, is this: if ever there was a flat personality it was surely my ex-wife Paula’s. I don’t like being too unkind about her, but if you were to put all her emotions end to end I wouldn’t have thought they’d make all that difference to ‘the emotional significance’ — so to speak — of any program … even assuming that you could envisage the type of survey-program on relative progress in the dreary-old arms race getting corrupted by any such thing. The only factor Paula could add to it would be boredom — which might turn out to be the most promising road to peaceful co-existence between America and Russia that there’s ever been.”

  Spender said, “That would be right —”

  “- Well, then —”

  “ — That would be right, Mr. Kepter, if you had been listening to what I said.”

  “I tried.”

  “You didn’t succeed.”

  “You must admit that’s what it sounded like.”

  Nesta said, “No. I do get it. Don’t be unfair, Roger. What Dr. Spender actually said was that the leak over your ex’s profile led to the investigation but it also led to a change in the behaviour of other patients — patients who are resident in Orscombe.” She addressed Spender, and gently but firmly cut me out. “Are those patients also linked to the computer?”

  Spender said, “I’m glad we have someone intelligent in here.”

  Nesta said, “I am used to listening to people who express themselves in the highly involved way you do, Dr. Spender, because, by the time you’d finished with him, my brother Mike was talking to me in the same sort of way.”

  Spender said, “I wish you would withdraw that.”

  Nesta said calmly, “I’ll improve on it. The way you muddle the people you choose to call your patients is so like the way you seem to have muddled the computers that I can’t help noticing the similarity. Roger hasn’t had the privilege of watching the net result of your egg-shaped ideas, but — to my brother’s cost I’m afraid I have.”

  “I find that highly offensive and —”

  “— and hateful?”

  I thought Nesta had struck a very dangerous note. But she was in a fury and no doubt had a lot to repay. She’d seen Mike fly perfectly normally with me and behave cheerfully in the club. What had been wrong with him before, when he couldn’t fly and couldn’t work?

  The ensuing silence was ugly. I thought it was about time to cool things a bit. I said, “Well, whatever has happened I’ve no doubt the cream-separator at the far end — wherever the radio-satellite transmitted the garbled programs — will sort things out.”

  “You are a cleverer man than that, Mr. Kepter.”

  “Enlighten me. I left my brain in my locker at the College yesterday.”

  “It’s common knowledge that the Russians have a means of stopping strategic nuclear weapons by a nuclear device which is now known to exist.”

  I did know. Everybody knows. For God’s sake, it had already been on British television anyway. “So?”

  “So this: it will take many billions of dollars and a good deal of time for the Americans to completely re-devise their strategic strike power and they will have to get this enormous budget, step by step, through the Senate.”

  “In which case,” I said, “they’ll make suitable concessions to the USSR until they’ve caught up. They’ve done it before. So has Russia.”

  ‘You’re missing the point.”

  “I think I must be.”

  “You’ve just said, from you knowledge of known technology, that the mixup of the two programs is totally impossible. Do you go back on that?”

  “No.”

  “So that would suggest, Mr. Kepter, that we are now dealing with unknown technology. Would you concede that?”

  I said, “I would if you could prove that what you say occurred really did.”

  “Very well. Would you then accept that what we would have to look for is some sort of irrational behaviour on the part of those who have received, from the radio-satellite concerned, the garbled program which it relayed?”

  I said cautiously, “It would certainly go a long way towards backing up your theory, yes. Who is at the receiving end of that satellite?”

  “The United States Sixth Fleet, in the Pacific.” His eyes owled at me. “They have just severed all contact with Washington.”

  “You know this for certain? How?”

  “Because urgent telexes have been exchanged by several sources asserting that the Sixth Fleet is acting in limbo without reference to any land-based authority. And what I am now saying is that the Sixth Fleet is a powerful nuclear strike force whose Commander, if he were motivated by some irrational additive, might well decide to take a short-cut in the arms race by anticipating Russian progress in one big bang.”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that this Sixth Fleet might respond to incompatible information by hurling strategic missiles like some monster-child in a tantrum?”

  “I am saying they are equipped to do so. The survey done at the Manchester Centre shows that the USSR will gain on American strike-power within a finite period. Can you tell me a better way for a crazed commander of a strategic strike force to restore the balance of power than by opening fire now, before the Soviet Union has overtaken American ballistic technology?”

  I glanced at Nesta to see how she’d taken this. But her expression was masked for Spender’s benefit. I got up. “I take it that you want me to discover what this ‘unknown technology’ amounts to?”

  Spender said, “In the circumstances it might be rather a good idea.”

  *

  “Nesta, how much of that stuff do you believe?”

  We were still sitting in the car. I felt irresolute. My instincts were trying to panic me but my logic was busy scorning the whole thing as drivel.

  She said, “Don’t you see? Spender himself is being manipulated by whatever ‘unknown technology’ has gone to work.”

  “We don’t know it has.”

  “Look, he can’t be as mad as he seems. Not in his own right. The man must have some sort of reputation. Yet ask yourself how a doctor could stay in business this long if the whole span of his activities turned out to be as crazy as the secret activities we know of now. Look what he’s been doing: first he treats my brother when there is nothing wrong with him until finally there is. Next, he has a patient called Pottersman who also has nothing wrong with him, makes him ill, then hires him as a cut-rate assistant until he breaks down. Next, he tampers with your ex and someway loses her data till it squeaks at her through her telephone. Then he presses all the wrong buttons and produces a hybrid recipe — part-psychiatric, part-arsenal — which somehow gets sent to a military destination. Ever tried unravelling the contents of a baked Alaska?”

  “Incompatible ingredients in the first place, I always think.”

  “Not now. The ice cream and the hot meringue are ready to come out of the oven.”

  “That doesn’t mean we have to swallow it whole.”

  “Roger, I don’t think he’s lying.”

  “Where does he get all his information, then?”

  She said, “Maybe this ‘unknown technology’ is somehow able to circulate it.”

  “He implied that he got all his facts from people in high places.”

  “It’s quite possible he doesn’t actually know where he is getting it from. And Roger … there’s something else.”

  “Well? … Go on.”

  “Why do I feel so certain that what he’s desperately trying to tell us is not only true, but told against the will of whatever ‘unknown technology’ has got a hold of him?”

  “Isn’t that a bit of a leap?”

  “Isn’t it time we took one? We can’t go on pretending forever that the only odd thing about all this is Spender. There are too many unexplained things; and the things that have been explained lead to other things; in a sort of ever-increasi
ng spiral. We don’t know why Spender insisted on taking you to his den on the night of the Common Room do. We don’t know why your ex went there, either. She says it was his idea; he says it was hers. And however much of a liar you think Spender might be, we at least know from your ex that her personality profile came at her down the telephone. You can talk all you like about the way computers get rid of the answers to their sums but I still think it’s odd. So do you, really … How did Spender behave when he first took you into the Flying Saucer?”

  I said, “He seemed anxious.”

  “But he didn’t actually say anything concrete?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Now he’s got desperate and has nerved himself to do so.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Because there have — according to him — been tangible events.”

  She spoke her next words staccato, as if it took a great effort. The words came out one by one, like a telegram being spewed out on paper tape. “I think I believe him because, in some way, I’m also getting the same sort of information.”

  “Nesta, how?”

  “Possibly via Mike. Via Orscombe. I just don’t know.”

  “You’re saying it’s … contagious.”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying.” She reached anxiously for my hand. I found hers ice cold. “Did you notice what Spender kept doing while he was talking to us?”

  “He was twitching a bit,” I admitted.

  She said, “He was sort of … stroking a sort of crystal thing, did you see it, a very odd-looking array of bluish-coloured crystals, like cheap paste-jewelry.”

  “I didn’t know he was touching it but he did show it to me last time. Apparently it’s used for assembling information he extracts from his patients.”

  “Does that make any sense in ‘known technology’?”

  “In a certain way I can see how it could, yes. Something similar happens inside a television camera.”