Aloud I said, “Dr. Richter, surely our real opponent is not the physical expression of technology gone wrong as the state of the technology itself, as an idea. Information processing became a rat-race and was bound to threaten civilization in one form or another. We know what form it takes: our job is to remould that technology, take the power away from the military and the bureaucrats, and re invest it in people.”
Some of the zest seemed to return to Richter’s voice, as if he too had picked up the vibes that Nesta, through her very nature, couldn’t help radiating. “I agree with every word of that. And have you thought of a way?”
“I’m aware of one distinct possibility.”
He sat bolt upright. “In that case, Kepter, you’d better think it through damn quickly before the organism inside you gets the hang of it. Otherwise not only will your secret be out, but the thought-processes you need to figure out your idea might be shut off by the organism as a means of protecting itself. I do not think you have a great deal of time.”
With that — somehow — he contrived to get a little sleep. That’s called self-discipline. I never had anything like that much control over my nervous system and presumably I was capable of less and less control each minute. I tried to visualize the billions of nerve cells in my brain. How could I control consciously what I had hitherto taken for granted?
Nesta said into the darkness, “I’ve found a way of fighting the mosaic inside me … at least for a time. Remember how I went into that Hate thing against you? … Well, you thought it was your use of logic that caused it to recede. In a way it’s true; because the fact that you refused to be emotional forced me to use my own logic as well.”
“What’s the trick?”
She didn’t reply until — inexplicably — she’d crossed her hands over on the steering wheel. Then she said, “I’m naturally left-handed. From what little I’ve picked up from the specialist I told you about, I know that means that my left and right temporal lobes function slightly differently from the bits of brain belonging to a right-handed person. Did you notice there was a clock in that ante-room?”
“Yes; because I was waiting for Richter to phone us.”
Nesta said calmly, “I read it back to front. It said twenty past two. I read it as twenty minutes to ten. Then I used my right hand to push my hair back. After that I used my left foot on the brake pedal of the MG when we drove to the hotel.”
I said mildly, “I’m glad I didn’t know that while you were driving. We weren’t quite sticking to the speed limit.”
With equal sang-froid she remarked, “Don’t panic, but I’ve had my left foot on the accelerator ever since we left Heathrow. I’m quite sorry for that crystal mosaic, Roger. It must be feeling kind of seasick by now.”
I found myself saying, “Nesta, for Christ sake stop the car.”
“I’d love to. Lovely Field just there!”
*
Richter asked Nesta to park the car about two hundred yards short of Tithings.
It was a warm night with wild, fresh country scents to invigorate us. Two horses ambled up to a five-barred gate in the moonlight and took a brief interest in us before walking away. There was no wind. Lights were showing at Tithings but the rest of Orscombe had long since gone to sleep. I remember nothing eerie about our feelings at this point. We were simply sharing the rich soil of Somerset with the few animals who were awake to be aware of us. The luminous dial of Richter’s wrist-watch indicated a few minutes after two-thirty but we’d turned all the car lights off including those on the dashboard. I was smoking — a rare event for me. Nesta and Richter were drinking coffee from a vacuum flask we’d had filled at the Eastways Hotel.
Quietly, Richter said, “Somehow we’ve got to get into that place and talk to a patient without being monitored.”
Nesta said, “The mosaic knew we’d arrived, on our last visit, the moment we got there.”
“Yes.” He tapped his briefcase. “But I have a mosaic of my own. I grew it out of a smear that was taken from Pottersman and there was a reason for using that source. It’s programmed. I’ll explain that in a minute. The name of the man we have to see is Geoffrey Sale. The USSR Embassy in London has quite a lot on him. Translated into colloquial English he was always a bit of a slob … perhaps one of the few people among Spender’s patients who really needed psychiatric help. I don’t mean I take exception to people suffering from mental illnesses — God forbid! — but a proportion of them elicit scant sympathy from me. Sale went to fatty degeneration, at any rate emotionally, quite early in life. Appropriately enough he looks bloated; for a youngish man he has a lot of chins and a great deal of spare fat. But he is — or was — very clever. The European Space Authority hired him to draw up the specifications for a very advanced communications satellite which is now — or is at least thought to be still — in stationary orbit roughly over Bombay. The ESA wanted some rather special features of this satellite. Neither NASA nor the European outfit had the knowhow but the Japanese did. Two years ago, Sale flew to Japan. By that time Tokyo espionage had penetrated a certain Institute in Siberia and were experimenting with what you people have called crystal mosaic. It was via Sale that this substance first reached Dr. Spender though at that time the mosaic was ‘neutral’ — that is, it was ‘unemotional’ … though of course very dangerous stuff to handle in view of its built-in tendency to attack other organisms. The satellite — designated Y.33 — was launched from Munich in May of last year.
“While in Tokyo, Sale became a drug addict. Fascinated by various unusual sexual practices he spent quite a lot of time in the bordellos there and must, no doubt, have spread Electronic Cancer through physical contact. The Soviet Embassy in Tokyo got to know about this and made contact with certain medical experts in Japan — without, of course, stating where the substance had come from. They did at least try and stop the scourge but I do not know how successful they were.
“Sale, despite his personality, had a way with him. I doubt very much if either of you would have fallen for his brand of superficial charm — you can judge that in a few minutes — but he spent a lot of time with that satellite prior to its launch and tended to work behind locked doors.
“The CIA got interested for two reasons. First, they didn’t like the keen interest being taken in the satellite by Soviet agents. Second, they had been told by NASA and other organizations that the satellite couldn’t possibly work using any known technology. Third, they had made a study of Sale’s habits, of his dealings with fringe-criminal gangs in Tokyo, and of his psychiatric condition. At one time the Americans suspected that the so-called communications satellite was really a hydrogen bomb. It now seems as though it certainly is a kind of bomb in that — indeed — it gives rise to the flake-fallout we found on the 747.”
I asked, “What was the satellite supposed to do?”
“In passing on telephone calls over its two-thousand odd channels, it was to analyse the unspoken thoughts of everyone who spoke over those channels by a process of word-choice surveillance that was so sophisticated that no one could see how it could possibly work. Clearly though, it did. It knew, for instance, that a somewhat paranoid flotilla of the American Navy — the Sixth Fleet — was overriding Presidential direction and taking international action into its own hands. As we all of us now know, it was from this Fleet that Rear-Admiral Hartford implemented the Manchester computer program for assessing the growth-rate of Soviet strike power.”
Nesta said, “Now he tells us! You must have known a lot about this before we talked to you about it, surely?”
Richter said simply, “Why do you think I took such an immediate interest in what you came to see me about? We had most of the pointers but few of the clues. It only took one discreet call to Russia and another to the Soviet Embassy in London to put what I have of the total picture in perspective. That, and my meeting with Pottersman.”
“Then what,” I asked Richter, “can Sale tell us now that we don’t know already?”
Richter said grimly, “He can tell us — I hope — what the prime targets of those flakes really are. And he can replace some of our guesswork with some of the facts. Now, the contents of my briefcase: when I saw Pottersman I confirmed immediately that he was seriously infected with Electronic Cancer. But though Pottersman hates, the person he most hates on this earth is —”
“ — Spender.” I felt excited. I was beginning to see at least some of Richter’s logic. What I didn’t realize was how close it came to my own — “What you’re saying is that because Pottersman fosters a personal hatred for Dr. Spender, the goals and feelings within the mosaic you’ve extracted, grown, and brought with you must be incompatible with those of the mosaic in Orscombe? … A crystal colony derives its emotions from its human origin and environment. You propose in some way to bring about a confrontation between the electronic expression of Pottersman’s personalized hatred with the depersonalized hatred of the main mosaic network?”
Richter said, “That’s a perfectly brilliant deduction for someone so fresh on the scene.”
Nesta said, “Don’t make Roger more of a bighead than he is already.”
Richter said, “Young woman, the size of his hat is your responsibility, not mine.”
I said, “So Pottersman can be used as a kind of separator?” “What’s on your mind?”
“That is precisely what I can’t afford to say.”
Richter asked, “But would we all understand it if you felt free to explain?”
I said, “Any hi-fi or TV engineer would grab the idea in two minutes.”
Richter said, “In that case we must think of a way, as soon as possible, for you to communicate this plan in full without the mosaics inside any of us knowing.” He smiled oddly. “Maybe they would equally well understand my proposed method of entering that house, down there, without getting any unsolicited offers from the Kissing Machine or allowing the mosaics to interfere with the proceedings.” He tapped his briefcase. “I told you the mosaic inside here is programmed. What it will do, the moment it comes into contact with the crystal mosaic at Tithings, is to immediately separate those elements of solid state that are electrically positive — p-n-p — from those which are electrically negative — n-p-n. Since equal and opposite voltages cancel each other out, there should be quite a commotion!”
Both Nesta and I stared without speaking. Richter’s mind was running along precisely the same lines as those we’d already discussed.
I found myself reassured. If Richter could think this way he would at once see the viability of generating a conspiracy so that active hatred permanently divided the two races within the mosaic community.
And I had to seriously revise my snap-judgement on Richter’s inspired determination to conquer instead of accepting defeat.
The only thing I hadn’t learned about him by then was the unique extent of his unselfishness.
That had yet to come.
*
Once in a blue moon the practical application of pure logic appears uncanny because it works.
In the abstract, you somehow don’t expect it to. And that night I didn’t notice that the moon looked particularly blue.
Be that as it may, the moment Richter unleased the contents of his briefcase on the nearest configuration of mosaic — by this time just inside the driveway of Tithings — a series of brilliant electrical flashes cracked right the way round the precincts of the house. We heard the fizzing of further flashes taking place inside it.
Then, the faint luminescence coming from the mosaics dimmed out altogether. At the same time that frighteningly tangible output of Hate immediately evaporated.
We had neutralized the entire system for the time being and it was no surprise to me that, on entering, we found the Kissing Machine to be entirely normal. She was just a passably attractive-looking nurse — spruce, neat, and uncomplicated.
“I’m not sure this is a very good time to visit a patient,” she said.
Richter lied, “It’s an urgent personal matter that might help him get well. Unfortunately I have to go abroad tomorrow and I’ve had to seize the only possible opportunity I have.”
“Does Dr. Spender know you’re here?”
“Yes,” said Richter truthfully, “he does.”
The nurse turned to me. “Was this what you really wanted to do when you flew down?”
“Yes.”
“So you and …”
“… and Miss Crabtree.”
“You and Miss Crabtree are obviously both involved in this personal matter as well? — I don’t understand why you didn’t explain that last time. Flying visits — especially real flying visits — do tend to confuse me in the middle of the night.”
She seemed only to be able to remember the fact that we’d been there; not what occurred when we arrived. I could only assume that a large amount of her reasoning was affected first one way, then the other, according to the degree of activity of her internal mosaic. In other words, her brain was no longer complete without it.
This was emphasized by the very large number of questions she could have asked, but didn’t. Clandestine flights and secret landings in small fields were no longer of interest; and now, nocturnal visits with a third party who for some reason hadn’t been necessary on the former occasion were quite acceptable. Here was positive evidence that Richter’s opposing specimen of mosaic was capable of acting, thyristor-like, as a totally effective switch. For how long we couldn’t know. The mosaic he’d brought was, after all, very small compared with the enormous conglomerate that must have, by that time, been controlling the nursing home.
The conduct and attitudes of Geoffrey Sale differed fundamentally from what any of us expected. For it wasn’t difficult to see that beneath the veneer of puffy charm and unprepossessing wit was a malevolence that I suppose we’d almost forgotten about … normal human beastliness that must have been there all the time. When the nurse showed us in, having previously gone up there to wake him, he flirted with her clumsily and — I thought — rather obscenely, gesturing extravagantly with his arms and accidentally touching her up on purpose. Worse, he didn’t mean it in a true, sexual sense. I got the impression that behind the mauling of her nipples through her spruce blouse lurked the shadow of impotence. Once again though, the manner of the Kissing Machine was entirely normal within the situation … ‘tolerantly’ impatient of it yet contriving not to openly snub him before visitors.
I took a good look at him. He had those pale, translucent eyes that sometimes go with schizophrenia, especially the more hostile brand of this complex, dangerous disease. Yet he was not obviously schizoid in the way we’re all told to recognize it; and Lord knows they make enough movies these days about lunacy. I simply saw someone I didn’t like, and couldn’t put it down to anything in particular, except in the obvious sense of finding his synthesized flirtatiousness toward Nesta highly objectionable.
“I adore you on sight,” he said to her, “but are you bitchy underneath? … Not that I don’t find bitchiness absolutely fascinating, though I must say my wife took it a lot too far. She was what I call an angel-whore, you know?, so marvellous in bed that she needed a hell of a lot of beds to be marvellous in.” He beamed at her with an odd sort of jovialness. “Are you a model, or something? An actress? I’m crazy about actresses, you know; and I’ll tell you for why, it’s very simple. You see, at least you know they’re acting. All women act — sometimes without even knowing it — but at least you know that an actress is permanently on-stage. God, we must have something to drink. Shall I have something sent up? Pretty-Lips is allowed to give me Champagne because it’s one of the less lethal forms of alcohol … I’m supposed to be an alcoholic, among other things; but I think they’ve given up trying, thank God.”
Nesta didn’t give away her feelings. “I’m not an actress.”
“Why not? You’ve got all the qualifications, I can see that. Visions like you,” he declaimed, sitting up and putting on his glasses and taking a closer
look, “don’t saunter into bins every night of the week. I thought at least we were going to have a few cocktails after your opening night … Or has the show been running a week or two already?” He glanced from her to me. “Pretty-Lips is odd, do you know that? … But I suppose I’m hardly in a position to judge. People in bins,” he explained, “are all the same really. Nurses, doctors, patients … we all live in a crazy little world and the Game is to try and work out who is craziest at any given moment.”
Nesta said, “I think you’re just incredibly unhappy. Otherwise you wouldn’t go out of your way to be disliked at such breakneck speed.”
“Ah, so you pity me, I adore that. Positively lap it up. Except in poetry. Have you noticed? Nearly all poetry is an expression of a particularly nauseous brand of Self-pity; but it doesn’t do a thing for me because I’m the one who wants the pity, not the poet … What have you come about? Do I owe you money or is it something else?”
Richter said, “We’ve come to talk about Satellite Y.33. Your views on the gentler sex now being quite plain to us, could we change the subject and discuss your work?”
Sale said, “God, my views on women aren’t plain to me, so I don’t see how they can be to you, Dr. Zhivago.”
“The name is Richter.”
“I only talk to people called Richter if they happen to play the piano.”
Richter said, “I am — or was — at least a fellow-countryman of his.”
“Then I’ll make an exception in your case.”
“Good. You were going to tell us about Y.33.”
“I wasn’t going to tell you about Y.33. You told me I was. Don’t let’s be at cross-purposes or we’ll just be talking crap.” He glanced at Nesta. “My wife hated the word ‘crap’. Do you?”
The Thinktank That Leaked Page 20
