The Fellowship of the Hand (2 page)

Jazine wandered the paths to the central administrative office, where he found Professor Lawrence Friday alone in an office that seemed more like a chemist’s lab than a zookeeper’s study.

“But I’m not a zookeeper, you see,” Friday told him in response to Earl’s opening comment. “I’m an administrator, and there’s quite a difference.” He was a slender man of perhaps fifty years, who carried himself with the slightly stoop-shouldered resignation of a person who has bent to some minute task most of his life. Jazine had seen the look before, among scientists at their microscopes and astronomers at their telescopes. Perhaps it was not too strange to find it among computer technicians turned zoo directors.

“In any event,” Jazine observed, “it’s a hell of a long way from the FRIDAY-404.”

Lawrence Friday smiled slightly, in recognition of his brainchild. “Not so far as you’d think, Mr. Jazine. The city and state allow me complete freedom to carry on my experiments here, as long as they do not interfere with my work.”

“And what experiments would those be?”

“The nervous system of animals and reptiles as it relates to the computer sciences.”

“You must be kidding, Professor!”

“Not at all,” he replied, smiling slightly as if he’d had this reaction before. “Scientists had the clues a full century ago, during World War II, if they’d only followed through with them. At that time, extensive secret research was conducted into electric eels—but it was aimed at finding an antidote for nerve gas. I have carried that research several steps further, tracing the electrical output of eels and other animals as it relates to the nervous system, and thus to computer sciences. Because, you see, the brain of today’s computer is not much different from the brain of a lower animal.”

“Interesting,” Jazine conceded, not really knowing if the man was talking sense.

“At least it explains my interest in animals and computers,” Professor Friday said with a smile. “If that’s what roused the curiosity of the Computer Investigation Bureau.”

“It wasn’t really that, Professor. I came to talk to you about the FRIDAY-404.”

“The election unit?” A frown knitted his forehead.

“Correct.” Earl ran quickly through the events of the last few days, covering in some detail his investigation of the FRIDAY-404 computer. When he’d finished, he leaned back and asked, “Any ideas?”

Lawrence Friday tapped a pencil against his lower lip. “One thought comes immediately to mind. The FRIDAY-404, like all of the election apparatus, is unused during most of the year. Unused and unguarded. It would be fairly simple for some person or group to gain access to the computer relay stations and through them to the skysphere satellite. Using ordinary computers to cast their ballots, they could then have the voting tabulated by my FRIDAY-404 system and relayed by the satellite to some central point—obviously not Washington.”

Earl Jazine thought immediately of HAND. “Are you familiar with a group called Humans Against Neuter Domination?”

“HAND? Of course! I read the telenews like everyone else. In my line of work they could hardly have escaped attention.”

“Could HAND be using the FRIDAY-404 for some sort of election, or to sabotage the legitimate presidential elections?”

“It’s possible.”

“Is there anything about the construction or operation of the FRIDAY-404 that would enable us to backtrack to the source of input? Anything that could pinpoint the approximate time of input?”

“Not really,” Friday said. Then he added, “But there is one thing—a memory unit that allows a double-check on returns, to be certain none are reported twice by the same voting machine. This memory unit could tell you whether the figures are new input.”

Jazine got to his feet. “That might help us. I’ll check it out. You’ll be available if we need more help?”

“Certainly.”

“Lawrence Friday walked partway out with him, commenting on the new dolphin pool that had just been installed. It was after they parted, as Jazine boarded the moving sidewalk for the Fifth Avenue exit, that he realized he was being followed. The man had blended into the crowd at first, but as the strollers thinned out on the walk he edged his way up, getting closer to where Jazine stood with one hand on the safety rail.

He was a slender man with nondescript features except for an odd tattooed design on his left cheek. He could have been either a private detective or a hired killer, and Jazine was still trying to decide which as the moving sidewalk passed over a little bridge spanning the lion habitat. Then, before he realized what was happening, the man stepped around two children and pulled a stunner gun from under his coat.

Jazine tried to duck, but the force of the weapon caught him full in the chest, knocking him against the safety rail. Then the man’s powerful hands were upon him, rolling him over the rail, off the bridge. Still half conscious, Jazine felt himself falling, saw the ground rushing up to meet him.

As he sprawled broken in the grass, he saw the first lion moving toward him.

T
HE DOCTOR LOOKED INTO
Crader’s questioning eyes and said, “Don’t worry. He’ll live.”

“How bad is it?”

“Two broken ribs and a concussion from the fall, plus a few cuts and bruises, but otherwise he’s not bad. We want to keep him hospitalized for a day or so, but then he can go home.”

“Are visitors allowed?”

“Sure. Go ahead.” The doctor motioned toward the closed door and retreated down the plasticized corridor.

Inside, Crader found Earl Jazine sitting up in bed, swathed in bandages but apparently in good spirits. “Hello, chief,” he said, just a bit sheepishly.

Carl Crader eyed the flowers and get-well teleprints. “One day in the hospital and you acquire all this? Who are the flowers from?”

“Judy, your secretary. She put your name on them too.”

Crader grunted and sat down. Judy and Earl were always friendly, and he knew they’d been out together a few times. “How did it happen? When I heard you’d been mauled by a lion at the zooitorium—”

“It wasn’t exactly like that,” Jazine said, trying to adjust to a more comfortable position in the electronic air-bed. “Somebody was following me. He let go with a stunner blast and then dumped me off a bridge. The lions were the least of my worries. They sniffed around and roared a bit, but that was about all. One of them scratched me with his paw.”

“Any idea who tried to kill you?”

Jazine shook his head, then held his hands to his temples. “God, that doesn’t feel so good with a concussion! No, I never saw the guy before, chief. But he sure seemed to know I was visiting Lawrence Friday.”

“What did Friday have to offer?”

Jazine repeated the conversation as best he could remember it. When he’d finished, Carl Crader said, “A secret election! That’s hardly likely.”

“Remember how unlikely the transvection machine business was, chief? These are unlikely times. Hell, fifty years ago, the Venus Colony would have seemed unlikely too.”

The mention of the Venus Colony reminded Crader of Stanley Ambrose. He’d meant to run a check on the man, just to see what he was up to back on earth. Perhaps, if there was anything to this election idea, he was the Ambrose of Blunt and Ambrose. “All right, Earl, we’ll look into it further. It certainly seems you’ve stumbled onto something, or they wouldn’t have tried to kill you. What did he look like—this man with the stunner?”

“Slender, with an odd tattoo on his left cheek.” Jazine’s bandaged face clouded, as if he was trying to recapture some half-forgotten impression. “His hands were very powerful. I was stunned when he rolled me over that bridge railing, but I still had the impression of powerful hands.”

Crader nodded. “I’ll run a computer check through Washington and see if they come up with anything.”

“Maybe HAND is hiring assassins these days.”

“It’s not their sort of crime,” Crader said. “Remember when Euler Frost tried to kill the secretary of extra-terrestrial defense? He used an anesthesia gun loaded with an industrial poison. Somehow that seems more HAND’s way than a stunner gun and a flip into a lion pit.”

“That was HAND’s way in the past, before they blew up the computers at the Federal Medical Center. Who knows what their way is today?”

A chime sounded on the wall behind Crader and a nurse’s recorded voice said, “This patient is under automated care control. Since visits are limited to fifteen minutes, we must request that you now leave.”

“The machines again,” Crader said with a smile. He got to his feet. “Take it easy now, and don’t worry. I’ll get right onto this election business and see if there’s anything to it.”

He left the hospital and took the moving sidewalk to the lot where his electric car was parked. At that moment he had every intention of following through on Earl Jazine’s investigation as soon as he returned to his office. But life isn’t always that simple.

The offices of the Computer Investigation Bureau at the summit of the World Trade Center were in more than their usual state of confusion when he arrived. Judy had a sheaf of urgent printouts for him, and word that President McCurdy had phoned from the New White House.

“Get the President,” Crader decided, because that always came first.

In less than a minute he was facing President McCurdy on the vision-phone. “Carl, good to see you. What’s this I hear about one of your men being attacked?”

“Earl Jazine, sir. You’ve met him in Washington. I just came from the hospital. He shouldn’t be laid up more than a few days.”

“Yes, yes! But who did it? Is this more of HAND’S work?”

“We don’t know, sir. We’re working on that.” Staring at the vigorous gray-haired man on the screen made Carl Crader feel old. In a young man’s world, Andrew Jackson McCurdy had survived to his fiftieth year. He was already older than the last three presidents had been when they left office, and now he was running for a third term. Somehow Crader did not want to tell him just then about what Earl had found in that election computer. Not until there was more information. No need of rousing all those sleeping dogs in Washington.

“Well, we have another problem,” President McCurdy said, quickly changing the subject. A month before election, there were always many problems. Anything that might upset a sector of the electorate became a problem.

“What’s that, sir?”

“Radiation leakage out in Chicago. You should have a scan on it. The telenews has been playing it up all day.”

“Computer-caused?”

“I wouldn’t be calling on you if it wasn’t,” President McCurdy rapped back, just a bit testily. “Get right on it, will you? The people get in a panic whenever there’s radiation leakage.”

“Yes, sir,” Crader replied, and the screen before him went blank. The President had broken the connection. Crader picked up the sheaf of printouts and tried to read through them, but the words kept blurring. Once again McCurdy had made him realize he was getting old. A few more years and they’d force him out at sixty-five. There was no more staying on till you were seventy-seven, as Hoover had done in the last century.

“Judy!” he called into the intercom.

“I’m here.” She appeared at his office door.

“Judy, my eyes are tired. Give me a rundown on this Chicago radiation business, will you?”

“Certainly.” She took the papers from his hand and asked, a bit too casually, “How’s Earl?”

Crader had to smile. He’d forgotten to give her a report. “Concussion and some broken ribs, but he’ll be out of the hospital in a few days. He liked your flowers.”

She blushed prettily. “They were from the office.”

“Now then, what about Chicago?” He leaned back and closed his eyes, listening.

“High radiation levels on the South Side, with no apparent source. The only industry nearby is Crossway Computers. They make these little deskpacks for accountants to use at home. But they insist there’s no radiation involved.”

“What’s the power source of the deskpacks?”

“Regular wall outlets, the same as adding machines a century ago. Not much progress there.”

“But President McCurdy thought the radiation was computer-caused.”

“Remember the radiation scandal of 2024?” Judy was great on history.

“You were barely born then!” He opened his eyes long enough to admire her crossed legs, enticingly blue in the bodysuit which government employees had finally been allowed to wear on the job.

“I read about it, though!” she countered defensively.

“Do people still read?”

“I do! Those video cassettes drive me up the wall after a while.”

“Glad to hear it. Sometimes they affect me the same way. Now where were we?”

“The scandal of 2024, when a radiation leak in the Lake Superior reactor almost canceled the federation of the United States and Canada. That one cost Abraham Burke a second term as president. I don’t suppose McCurdy wants history repeated.”

“Anybody die in Chicago?”

“Not yet, but three children are in critical condition. They all live in the neighborhood.”

“What are the levels of Alpha-particle emissions?”

She read him a series of figure, ending with the observation, “The measurements were all taken from the air. The radiation is almost certainly airborne.”

“Does Crossway Computers have smokeless stacks?”

“Of course! It’s the law. But you know that doesn’t screen out radiation, chief.”

He opened his eyes once more. “Get me a screen-map of the area. Order it up on our map table.” He walked across the room to the flat table of frosted plastic, about the size of a skull-pool game. There, after only a moment’s wait, he saw a detailed photo-map of Chicago’s South Side.

“This is the area of radiation,” Judy said, circling several blocks with a neon pencil. “The computer plant is here, near the center.”

Crader grunted and studied the map. “Then the plant is not at fault.”

“Why not?”

“Prevailing winds are from the west. The radiation, if it’s airborne as you say, would tend to drift downwind. No, I think we’ll find its source over here, on the western edge of your circle.”

“But there’s nothing there. No industry.”