Supermind
little favor, because I’m an old, tired man and I’m not used to things
any more.”
“Sure,” Malone said. “Anything, Chief.”
“Don’t call me—”
“Sorry,” Malone said.
Burris breathed heavily. “When you leave,” he said, “please, please
use the door.”
“But—”
“Malone,” Burris said, “I’ve tried. I’ve really tried. Believe me.
I’ve tried to get used to the fact that you can teleport. But—”
“It’s useful,” Malone said, “in my work.”
“I can see that,” Burris said. “And I don’t want you to, well, to stop
doing it. By no means. It’s just that it sort of unnerves me, if you
see what I mean. No matter how useful it is for the FBI to have an
agent who can go instantaneously from one place to another, it
unnerves me.” He sighed. “I can’t get used to seeing you disappear
like an overdried soap bubble, Malone. It does something to me, here.”
He placed a hand directly over his sternum and sighed again.
“I can understand that,” Malone said. “It unnerved me, too, the first
time I saw it. I thought I was going crazy, when that kid—Mike
Fueyo—winked out like a light. But then we got him, and some FBI
agents besides me have learned the trick.” He stopped there, wondering
if he’d been tactful. After all, it took a latent ability to learn
teleportation, and some people had it, while others didn’t. Malone,
along with a few other agents, did. Burris evidently didn’t, so he
couldn’t teleport, no matter how hard he tried or how many lessons he
took.
“Well,” Burris said, “I’m still unnerved. So please, Malone, when you
come in here, or go out, use the door. All right?”
“Yes, sir,” Malone said. He turned and went out. As he opened the
door, he could almost hear Burris’ sigh of relief. Then he banged it
shut behind him and, feeling that he might as well continue with his
space-bound existence, walked all the way to the elevator, and rode it
downstairs to the FBI laboratories.
The labs, highly efficient and divided into dozens of departments,
covered several floors. Malone passed through the Fingerprint section,
filled with technicians doing strange things to great charts and
slides, and frowning over tiny pieces of material and photographs.
Then came Forgery Detection, involving many more technicians, many
more slides and charts and tiny pieces of things and photographs, and
even a witness or two sitting on the white bench at one side and
looking lost and somehow civilian. Identification Classified was next,
a great barn of a room filled with index files. The real indexes were
in the sub-basement; here, on microfilm, were only the basic
divisions. A man was standing in front of one of the files, frowning
at it. Malone went on by without stopping.
Cosmetic Surgery Classification came next. Here there were more
indexes, and there were also charts and slides. There was an agent
sitting on a bench looking bored while two female technicians—
classified as O&U for Old and Ugly in Malone’s mind—fluttered around
him, deciding what disguises were possible, and which of those was
indicated for the particular job on hand. Malone waved to the agent,
whom he knew very slightly, and went on. He felt vaguely regretful
that the FBI couldn’t hire prettier girls for Cosmetic Surgery, but
the trouble was that pretty girls fell for the Agents, and vice versa,
and this led to an unfortunate tendency toward only handsome and
virile-looking disguises. The O&U division was unfortunate, he
decided, but a necessity.
Chemical Analysis (III) was next. The Chemical Analysis Section was
scattered over several floors, with the first stages up above.
Division III, Malone remembered, was devoted to nonpoisonous
substances, like clay or sand found in boots or trouser cuffs, cigar
ashes and such. They were placed on the same floor as Fingerprints to
allow free and frequent passage between the sections on the problems
of plastic prints, made in putty or like substances, and visible
prints, made when the hand is covered with a visible substance like
blood, ketchup or glue.
Malone found what he was looking for at the very end of the floor. It
was the Computer Section, a large room filled with humming, clacking
and buzzing machines of an ancient vintage, muttering to themselves as
they worked, and newer machines which were smaller and more silent.
Lights were lighting and bells were ringing softly, relays were
relaying and the whole room was a gigantic maze of calculating and
control machines. What space wasn’t filled by the machines themselves
was filled by workbenches, all littered with an assortment of gears,
tubes, spare relays, transistors, wires, rods, bolts, resistors and
all the other paraphernalia used in building the machines and
repairing them. Beyond the basic room were other, smaller rooms, each
assigned to a particular kind of computer work.
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