The Tomorrow File

by Lawrence Sanders

  “My God,” Paul breathed. “I’d have cracked.”

  “Would you?” I said. “Not our Angela. She breathes better when the oxygen is thin. She computes carefully. Probably all of three minutes. I’m not joking. She’s not a thinker; she's a feeler. Primeval. She stops Harris. She brings us in to make certain she can pin a homicide conviction on Lydia Ferguson via the Individual Microbiological Profile she knows we’ve been working on. If Lydia is taken for homicide and crimes against the state, her father, DIROB, has to resign. Has to. At least. If he can avoid arrest himself on suspected complicity. It all computes for Angela. A dream. Klein is stopped. Mansfield is stopped. And along the way, Frank Harris, Alice Hammond, and Vernon DeTilly are all stopped. Angela couldn’t care less.”

  He shook his head in wonderment.

  *‘Nick, she scares me.”

  “Does she? She is of our species. She belches, farts, pisses, defecates, bleeds, stops—even as you and I.”

  “What do you suppose she’s doing now?”

  “Now? This minute? Probably gulping the Chief Director.”

  “Nick!”

  “I mean it. Within a week she’ll be DIROB.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be Deputy Director of the Satisfaction Section.”

  “You’ll take it?”

  “Of course.”

  “Payoff?”

  “Well . . . really a token of her regard. Angela doesn’t have to do it. She knows that. I couldn’t prove a bit of what I’ve just told you. But she’ll toss me a bone to keep me happy. That’s the way she functions.”

  "What about me, Nick ? Can I be your Assistant Deputy Director of Security and Intelligence?”

  I looked at him pityingly.

  “Paul, you still haven’t computed how this ef’s brain works. It’s my guess she’ll move up to DIROB. Her first official act will be to transfer Security and Intelligence to Washington, as part of her Headquarters Staff. She doesn’t want another Burton Klein situation.”

  He nodded despondently.

  “But if I get DEPDIRSAT, you can have Research and Development. With Mary Bergstrom as your Executive Assistant. And three secretaries. Corner office. Does that please you?”

  “Sure, Nick.”

  I looked at him sympathetically.

  “It’s difficult to acknowledge you’ve been played for a fool, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Very difficult.”

  “It is for me, too. Let’s go to bed.”

  “Oh, yes!” he cried.

  I punished him until we were both panting with pleasure. Finally I pushed him away. We lay gasping.

  “ESP?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I turned onto my side, scrawled one word on a pad on the bedside table. Then we set to again, flopping like spawning salmon.

  Later, not having disengaged or even moved, I said drowsily, “What is it?”

  “One word, or more?” he asked.

  “One.” “Revenge!” he said.

  I showed him my scribbled note: “Patience.”

  “Oh, God.” He groaned. “How could we have been so far apart?”

  “Not really,” I said.

  BOOK Y

  Y-1

  So it came to pass in the Department of Bliss. . . .

  Angela Teresa Berri became DIROB. I, Nicholas Bennington Flair, became DEPDIRSAT. Paul Thomas Bumford became Ass-DepDipRad, with Mary Margaret Bergstrom his Executive Assistant.

  Angela Bern’s first official edict as Director of Bliss, as I had predicted, transferred the personnel, duties, and responsibilities of the Division of Security & Intelligence to her headquarters staff in Washington, D.C. It reduced my Section to three Divisions, but I was not disappointed.

  I told Paul: “At least it proves I’m beginning to compute the way she does.”

  “It also means a lot of problems for us,” Paul grumbled. “Now we are required to go to her for a security check on anyone. And as for investigating her, forget it.”

  “You’re too easily discouraged,” I said. “What any brain can do, a better brain can undo. Remember, as DEPDIRSAT I now award contracts to independent servers and suppliers of my Section.”

  My complacency was stopped almost immediately.

  Angela Berri’s second edict came in the form of a printed notice, return receipt requested. To all ranks, PS-3 and higher. . . .Henceforth, all bids involving contracts in excess of 50,000 new dollars would be processed by DIROB’s headquarters staff.

  “Well?” Paul said.

  “Pretty,” I acknowledged. “She’s still one step ahead of me— and anyone else in the Department computing heavy larceny. Notice the cutoff limit—fifty thousand new dollars. That’s the way this ef operates: Scatter crumbs to the peasants so they won’t become too jealous of cake on the lord’s plate.”

  “What are you going to do about it?” Paul asked.

  “At the moment? Learn my new service.”

  That is what I did. I believe Paul Bumford served just as diligently learning the duties of his new rank. I assisted him when I could, but it wasn’t often. He came up to my penthouse apartment a few times, usually to ask questions about those privy matters he had not been aware of: the restricted projects I had initiated.

  In turn, I received little assistance from Angela Berri in mastering my new service. I could appreciate that; she had her own new service to rule, more intricate than mine. I saw her at monthly DOB meetings in Washington, but most of our contacts during the early summer of 1998 were on the flasher, brief and businesslike. We were both learning to swim in new waters.

  After one of those DOB staff meetings, at a reception at her luxurious apartment in the Watergate Complex, she called me into the study. Art Roach was present, standing by the door while Angela and I talked. Roach was now Chief, Security & Intelligence, for the entire Department of Bliss.

  My initial impression of the em had been correct; he was cold. A tall, rawboned figure. Close-cropped hair, so blond it was almost white; pink scalp showed through. Large, protuberant ears. Bloodless lips. Eyes as colorless as water.

  He listened, blinking slowly, as Angela told me that Lydia Ann Ferguson, Dr. Thomas J. Wiley, Tod DeTilly, and Dr. Henry L. Hammond had been drained.

  “Could I scan their journals?” I asked. “Or hear the tapes?”

  “You have no need to know,” Angela said.

  I computed the reason for that: Lydia Ferguson hadn’t confessed to stopping Frank Harris.

  “I hope you destroyed the organization,” I said.

  “Not completely,” Angela said. She was toying with a letter opener on her desk. A miniature Turkish scimitar. “Art and I felt it would be unwise to stop the entire apparatus. Others might start a similar association under another name. By leaving a skeleton of the Society of Obsos intact, we can infiltrate it. Keep an eye on their activities. Learn the identities of new recruits. Clamp down any time we want to. Nick, we’ve got to get the terrorism level down and the Satrat up.”

  “I hope, at least, you’ve cleaned out my Section,” I said blandly.

  “Of course,” Angela said blandly. “Almost a hundred objects.”

  “That’s fine,” I said blandly.

  I repeated this conversation to Paul Bumford the following day.

  “Do you think what she said was operative?” he asked.

  “Operative to the point where I asked about SATSEC. After that, a lot of kaka. I’m certain we still have members of the Society of Obsoletes in the Section. But in addition, we now have Art Roach’s doubles. Save yourself, Paul.”

  He nodded grimly.

  Y-2

  It wasn’t until after the July Fourth threeday that I felt I had mastered the routine of DEPDIRSAT. I could begin to act on what I had been computing since Angela Berri made a fool of me. At that point in time, my plan was vague. My only input was the ef herself: shrewd, ambitious, greedy. The shrewdness I could not condition. The ambition I was powerless to
control. I could manipulate the greed.

  It began innocently enough. Everything I did had to appear innocent. I asked Phoebe Huntzinger to have dinner with me at La Bonne Vie. It couldn’t have been more public.

  The Assistant Deputy Director of the Division of Data & Statistics was an uncommonly attractive ef. Not yellow, not tan, not cafe au lait. Not bronze, nor dark. She was black, with a purplish undertone to the epidermis.

  She must have carried Benin genes; the characteristics were unmistakable: aquiline nose with splayed nostrils; almond-shaped eyes, large and slanted; wide, sculpted lips curved as artfully as a bow. It was not difficult to imagine that more than a century ago she might have been a favorite of the Oba’s court in southern Nigeria. Now she ruled one of the largest computer installations in the US.

  Not too surprising. The Bini were famous for their prowess with numbers.

  We ordered. I lighted her cannabis cigarette.

  “How’s the new service, Nick?”

  Her voice was deep, throaty, without being thick. Good resonance.

  “Getting settled in. I think I’ll find it profitable.”

  “Good. Anything I can do to help. . .

  “Thanks, Phoebe. I may take you up on that. I see the Satrat’s down again.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “It irritates me. The raw data we’re processing now from the polling contractors is uniformly lower than their tapes of just a few months ago.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I soothed her. “It will stabilize soon.” She raised those huge, lustrous eyes to stare at me. Her expression didn’t change.

  “Fiddling?” she said.

  I nodded.

  “It’s been stopped,” I said. “Just keep using the raw data.”

  "I knew it had to be that. Nick, it’s going to make my long-range predictions inoperative for awhile.”

  “I know.”

  "It would help if I knew the time period when the fiddled tapes were supplied. Then I could excise that and reconstruct my projective curves.”

  ‘‘I can’t tell you that, Phoebe, I honestly can’t. I just don’t know. Do the best you can with what you have.”

  We had a profitable dinner. I kept her talking about her service. She was voluble about the regenerative potentialities of computers: devices capable of breeding. I found it interesting.

  “Phoebe,” I said finally, “I want you to take a trip.”

  “A trip? Where to, Nick?”

  “The Denver Field Office. You know they’re doing most of our cyborg research, I see their reports, and they’ve been stalled for months now. They’re working with soft laser beams, precisely aimed, to pick up electrical activity from the central nervous system, much in the manner of an EEG. Then the signals are amplified and analyzed by computer with a typewriter printout.”

  “What hardware are they using?”

  “A Golem Mk. III.”

  “Very good. What’s the problem?”

  “They’ve been able to pick up sensations from the objects’ brains and identify them: colors, scents, sounds, and so forth.”

  She was interested now, leaning forward across the table. “Shape identification?” she asked.

  “Yes, on a primitive level. The object is shown a circle, square, star, cross, and the computer spells it out: circle, square, star, cross. Good results. But they’re stuck there. They can’t pick up conceptions.”

  “The problem may be in the equipment or in the technique. The laser beam may not be sensitive enough. It may be poorly aimed. Their signal booster may not be strong enough. The Golem may be poorly programmed.”

  “That’s why I'd like you to go out there, Phoebe. Check into every phase of their technology. See if you can suggest improvements. All right?”

  “Of course, Nick. I could use a change of scene. But why the sudden interest in cyborgs?”

  “Lewisohn’s condition. He shows no improvement. I'm trying to foresee every eventuality.”

  The next day, about 1400, I flashed the copter pad. I asked if Phoebe Huntzinger was there, They told me she had taken off for Kennedy about an hour previously. I thanked them and switched • -off.

  I went over to her office. Her Executive Assistant was a sluggish em with the unlikely name of Pomfret Wingate. Known as Pommy. He was the organizer and director of the Section’s little-theater group. They called themselves the Masque & Mirth Society. Atrocious players.

  I chatted with Pommy a few minutes. Or rather, I listened to Pommy chat, describing the Society’s coming season that would include a nude performance of King Lear.

  Finally I mentioned casually that I was serving on the budget and wanted to scan a list of contractors and suppliers the Section had dealt with for the past five years.

  “Surely, Mr. Flair,” he said. “But it won’t include anything over fifty thousand new dollars. Those reels were sent to Washington. DIROB’s orders.”

  ‘‘I know,’ ’ I said. “I just want to scan the small fry so I can make an informed estimate of expenses for the coming year. Could you get that for me?”

  “Surely, Mr. Flair,” he said.

  I sat at Phoebe Huntzinger’s cleared desk, running reels through her viewing machine. I made heavy notes in case anyone looked in and wondered what I was doing.

  I was looking for a regular supplier who specialized in one___

  particular product, who was not located on the East Coast, and who operated with a limited physical plant and few servers. I found three possibles.

  I finished in an hour, returned the reels to Pommy, thanked him profusely.

  “Surely, Mr. Flair,” he said. “Don’t forget the nude King Lear on October tenth.”

  “Who’s playing Lear?” I asked.

  “I am.” He giggled. “Nothing but a beard!”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said.

  I took the list back to my office and sat computing the three candidates. I looked them up in a thick Directory of Contractors and Suppliers, an indepsec publication of the Department of Bliss. One of the three was eliminated immediately. It was too large; it was publicly owned. A second I set aside because of its sole product: electronic prosthetic devices for the armless and legless. I couldn’t see any logical justification for a sudden increase in its sales.

  The third supplier listed was small, located in San Diego, California. It specialized in hallucinogenic drugs: mescaline, cannabis, bufotenin, lysergic acid diethylamide, etc. Its sales to SATSEC had averaged about 30,000 new dollars annually over the past five years. The directory stated it was a privately owned corporation, employed twenty-four servers, had a good credit rating, owned a somewhat obso physical plant valued at approximately

  200,000 new dollars. There was no record of any government prosecution or even investigation of illegal trafficking, mislabeling, or unexplained loss of inventory. Unusual for a company producing hallucinogens.

  The name was Scilla Pharmaceuticals, Inc. I wasn’t sure I could afford it, assuming they were open to a tender. I spent the evening computing my personal finances.

  Over the years, my mother and father had each given me 50,000 new dollars, the legal gift limit. It was tax-exempt and would reduce taxes on their estates when they stopped. And although I had never lived frugally, I had managed to save a small proportion of my rank-rate, lecture fees, love from writing assignments, etc.

  I kept my cash balance in the American National Bank to a necessary minimum. Most of my assets were in common stocks of publicly held corporations. About 50 percent was invested in Hair Toys, my father’s company. I trusted his acumen. The other half was almost all in drug manufacturers. I usually knew, weeks or months in advance, when a pharmaceutical company was close to the solution of a difficult research problem, and might announce a new commercial product shortly.

  In 1979, all stock exchanges in the US had been merged into one, the Consolidated Stock Exchange, CSE. For a monthly leasing fee, they provided an electronic push-button device, slightly sma
ller than a shoebox, that tied in with your flasher line. Simply by punching out the symbol of your stock, the current price was shown on a small screen.

  That evening I ran my list of love affairs through the stock scanner (popularly known as the “suicide machine”). The total came to a little more than 150,000 new dollars. A few miscellaneous investments in insurance policies, government, and municipal bonds, etc., plus my ANB balance, brought my total to almost 200,000 new dollars. It would, I judged, be sufficient, either converted into cash or as collateral for a loan.

  I flashed Paul Bumford. He came on screen in a dressing gown, holding an official record I recognized as a directory of DIVRAD objects serving in Field Offices. He was still learning.

  “Paul,” I said, “you’ve been serving too hard. Come on up for a few minutes.”

  “Nick, I really better—”

  “It’s a lovely night,” I said. “But wear a sweater or jacket. We’ll sit out on the terrace and have a drink.”

  He stared at me a moment. Then he computed.

  “Ten minutes,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said lightly. “See you then.”

  The last few months had mutated him. He was no longer pudgy. The girlish flush was gone from his skin. The face was thinner, harder. His whole bearing was more confident. He carried himself with an almost authoritative arrogance. Serving as administrator of so many objects had done that.

  We took our vodka-and-Smacks out onto the terrace. It was a gorgeously mild night, but at that height the wind had an edge. We sat in the shadowed comer where, not too long ago, we had plotted with Angela Berri. My penthouse was swept electronically once a week. But that meant nothing. The sweeper might be reporting directly to Angela Berri. Or to Art Roach.

  I went through it as briefly as I could. It wasn’t even apian. It was a plan for a plan. I blocked it out for him, suggesting what might be done, alternative approaches, what we might hope from luck and chance. I finished.