The Fellowship of the Hand (7 page)

“We don’t need him anymore right now.” Jason Blunt produced a small electronic beeper from his pocket and pressed a coded signal. Almost at once a portion of the lake bed slid open as if by magic.

“What’s this?” Crader asked.

“Follow me down. There’s an elevator.”

Crader and Masha followed along down the steel stairway to a little underground platform that faced blank doors. After a moment’s wait the doors slid open soundlessly and they stepped into the elevator. “Amazing,” Crader observed.

Jason Blunt smiled, pleased with the reaction. “I wish I could take credit for it, but this whole complex is government-built, left over from the missile hysteria of the last century. We are descending to a vast underground city that once housed missile defenses and the North American Air Defense command post. It was one of two such units. The other, in Wyoming, was demolished early in this century, but this survived—an amazing relic of twentieth-century man. One of my companies, Nova Industries, bought it from the government some years back. We told them we might use it for underground storage of natural gas, but as you’ll see we have put it to another use.”

The elevator ceased its descent, and the doors slid open. They walked down a long stainless steel corridor that reminded Crader of something seen in the old space films of the past. Through another door they encountered their first humans in the underground city—a dozen or so young men in white bodysuits who worked at computer consoles.

“Don’t tell me this is all for the oil and natural gas business,” Crader said. He’d seen vast computer complexes before, but nothing even approaching this.

“No, no. It’s much more, really. In these memory banks are every fact, every statistic, every bit of historical information that goes to make up the United States of America and Canada.” He moved to one of the vacant consoles. “I can summon up any figures, plot and trend, within seconds.”

“They have something like this in Washington,” Crader observed.

“Not like this! Two hundred men and women live in this underground city, working full time at the computers. Another five hundred come here occasionally, or communicate via terminals around the country. Here, let me show you the range of this thing.”

He pressed a series of keys, watching the printout on the screen above the console. “Want to see a graph of federal highway expenditures over the past two hundred years?” Almost at once a steeply climbing line appeared on the screen, leveling off toward the top. “How about it, Crader? Ask it some questions. Go ahead! Anything!”

“All right,” Crader said, accepting the challenge. “What was the Corliss Engine?”

Blunt’s fingers flew over the console, and almost instantly the printout appeared:
“Colossal steam en
g
ine invented by George Henry Corliss and displayed at Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.”

“Good?” Blunt asked.

“Good,” Crader conceded.

“It plays games,” Masha said. “All this for a machine that answers quiz questions?” She had the direct brashness of youth.

“It does much more than answer quiz questions,” Blunt replied, a bit stiffly. “For instance, I can order up a chart of stock market cycles, or crime rates, or even revenue shares from legalized gambling. I can go further. Using the facts and figures of the past, I can predict the future with a high degree of accuracy.”

“Who’ll win next month’s presidential election?” Crader asked.

“This is a projection on the popular vote.” Blunt fed the question to the computer. The answer took four seconds:

ANDREW JACKSON MCCURDY     81,785,480

THOMAS PARK WALLACE   78,906,473

“Fairly close,” Crader said. “Though as a department head I’m pleased to see that my boss will remain the same.”

“I can break it down by state if you’d like.”

“No need. What’s your calculated margin of error?”

“Less than half of one percent.”

“Very good. Now let’s try this one. Who won the election between Jason Blunt and Stanley Ambrose?”

The bearded man merely smiled. “The computer will not have those figures. A unit in Chicago tabulates the results, and even I do not know what they are.”

He rose from the console and motioned them to follow. But the rest of the tour provided no new insights for Crader. There was only room after underground room of memory units and readout screens, with a brief glimpse of Blunt’s office.

“Why?” he asked at last.

“Why?”

“If this is not part of some revolutionary scheme, then why?”

“This is not HAND, as you can see. Our group does not hate the machine. We know its capabilities, and we make use of them. Rather than destroy the machines, as HAND would do, we intend to harness them for the good of mankind. The idea of using computers to distill all of human knowledge is not new with us, of course. In the late 1960s
The New York Times
attempted something similar, feeding all indexed items from the
Times
into a central computer. A large series of books and research projects resulted—everything from a directory and index of all the films ever shown in New York to an alphabetical listing of all the people whose deaths the
Times
had reported. Way back then there were those who voiced objections to the project, pointing out that the computer input could tend to color or distort the true facts of a more detailed news story. But the project was successful nonetheless. Here we have simply carried it one step further. We record the past, and use it to define the present while predicting the future.”

“If that’s true, you could rule the country with this machine. Rule it better than the President.”

“Perhaps,” Blunt said, smiling slightly.

“Then you admit your group could function as a sort of secret super-government?”

“Oh, certainly. I admit to everything. You must only trust me that our intentions are honorable. The very fact I brought you here shows our intentions are honorable.”

“What about Stanley Ambrose’s intentions?”

“Ambrose?”

“Obviously there are two factions fighting for control here. Otherwise, why hold a secret election? If Ambrose won that election, what happens?”

“Ambrose is an honorable man, a dedicated public servant.”

“He’s not been seen since his return from Venus a year ago. Any idea where he is?”

“He has been here many times. Soon I’m sure he’ll return to public view.”

They’d come back to the stainless steel corridor leading to the elevators. “We’ve seen it all,” Blunt said, “except for the crew’s living quarters.”

“Crew? As on a spaceship?”

“It’s very like a spaceship, isn’t it?”

“It’s cut off from reality with no view of earth, if that’s what you mean.”

“Will you report us to the President?”

Crader weighed the man’s words, wondering if they would be followed by a threat. “Of course,” he answered finally. “It’s my job. Am I free to leave?”

“Certainly! You were never a prisoner.” He waved his hand. “Report what you like. We have no secrets.”

“Then why did the rocketcopter leave so quickly after it deposited us? I had the distinct impression you were trying to avoid having our location pinpointed by anyone who might be following.”

A shrug. “A simple precaution against HAND. We remember what they did at the Federal Medical Center.”

“All right,” Crader said. “You showed me all this, and you showed it for a reason. You want me to carry a message back to President McCurdy.”

“That is correct.”

“What message?”

“Tell him what you saw here. Tell him …” Jason Blunt paused, choosing his words with care. “Tell him the future belongs to those with the largest computers.”

H
E’D BEEN IN CHICAGO
only once in the last decade, on a routine computer investigation involving fraudulent tax returns. The city had changed little in the meantime, though it still reminded Jazine of a compact New York, throwing its towers to the sky but never quite equaling the lure of Manhattan.

He’d left Euler Frost at the jetport, and while Frost scouted the location of the secret election headquarters, Jazine used the time to have photo prints made of the material in his microfilm camera. He read again the Venus letter of Stanley Ambrose, and saw again the man’s smiling face at his Softball game.

“Stanley Ambrose, where are you?”

No answer came, because there was no one in the hotel room to answer him. He sighed and flipped on the vision-phone, punching out the direct line to Carl Crader’s office at CIB headquarters. When he saw Judy on the other end, he said, “Hi, doll! The chief around?”

“No, and I’m beginning to worry. He hadn’t planned to be away overnight.”

“Have you checked with Jason Blunt?”

“Not yet, but I may have to. How about you, Earl? Where are you?”

“Chicago. With Euler Frost.”

“Frost!”

“It’s a long story. Look, I should be back by tomorrow. If the chief shows up, tell him.” He blew her a kiss and clicked off. Frost should be calling soon, and he wanted the phone to be free.

Jazine met Euler Frost toward evening, in the area of downtown once referred to as the Loop. They traveled along a moving sidewalk until they reached a tall, slender building near the lakefront.

“This is the place,” Frost explained. “Nova Industries. All we have to do is get in.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult,” Jazine said. “Just stick with me.”

Nova Industries occupied the entire seventy-sixth floor of the building, and they quickly established that the elevator was programmed to bypass that floor after six o’clock. Since newer buildings like this lacked fire stairs, Jazine knew there was no other way onto the floor. “It’s like a time lock on a bank vault,” he explained to Frost. “But there is a way to beat it.”

“How?”

Jazine worked quickly inside the elevator, flipping a panel to expose the clockwork mechanism. From his pocket he produced a miniature electromagnet which he pressed against the face of the clock. “These new time locks are great, but you can speed them up if you know how.” He started to rotate the electromagnet. “This’ll be the fastest night this elevator ever saw!”

He took the magnet away and pressed the button for the seventy-sixth floor. Nothing happened. He tried again, advancing the clock another hour. This time when he pressed the button the number 76 lit up. “We’re on our way,” he said softly to Euler Frost.

The offices of Nova Industries were like a dozen others Earl Jazine had checked out during the past year. A dummy corporation always operated along certain standard lines, whether its purpose was the changing of race-track odds or the overthrow of the federal government.

“Computer terminals,” Frost said, shining his light around.

“You don’t need that thing.” Jazine adjusted the polarized windows and flipped on the radiant ceiling. “Now you take those files while I check out these computers.”

It was long, tiring work, but at the end of an hour he had what they’d come for. The election figures had been erased from the FRIDAY-404 system by the man who killed Rogers, so it was necessary for Jazine to counterfeit a signal to the master memory unit to obtain the data he needed. It was something like an old-fashioned safe cracker testing the combinations of the vault.

Finally, though, he had it. Over 80,000 votes had been cast in the election, which took place on October 1st. They had come from the USAC mainly, but there was scattered overseas voting from various Nova subsidiaries and drilling islands. The result was the same as the figures Jazine had first discovered in the FRIDAY-404 system, but he didn’t tell Frost.

STANLEY AMBROSE          45,390

JASON BLUNT         36,455

They left the Nova offices the same way they’d entered, and Jazine set back the time clocks with his electromagnet. Then they returned to his hotel room and looked over what they had.

“The election has been held, and it appears that Ambrose won.” Euler Frost bit his lip and frowned. “It doesn’t help me or my informant at all.”

“If you could tell me who your informant is …”

“A young lady very close to Jason Blunt.”

“His wife?”

“I can’t tell you any more. I’ve told you too much already.” He picked up the little plastic overnight case he carried and started to open it. “Earl, I have to ask you to help me on something else.”

“I’ve bent the rules already,” Jazine said. “I don’t know how far I can go without reporting to the chief. What is it now?”

“There are many people affiliated with HAND throughout the world. They are Graham Axman’s people mainly, since he did much of the organizing for HAND while I was a political prisoner on the Venus Colony.”

“We’d like to have a list of those people.”

“So you could arrest them? Ship them all off to Venus? Can’t you see that the Blunt—Ambrose group, whatever it is, represents a far greater threat to this country than HAND? They are organized enough to hold secret elections, using the regular equipment for a presidential election. The figures we found indicate this group has over eighty thousand voting members! Can you imagine what a secret society of eighty thousand members could do to this country?”

“Not much,” Jazine observed. “In the last century there were plenty of pressure groups with more members than that—a few even bent on revolution—and they never got anywhere.”

“But they didn’t have computers, did they?” Frost asked triumphantly. “No, if HAND stands aside and lets them win this one …”

“Just what do you intend doing?”

“That’s the point! I’ve kept HAND going in this country, but without Axman I’m helpless on the overseas contacts. That island in the Indian Ocean, those Oriental girls he used so well …”

“Why do you need me?”

“I need you because I need Graham Axman. HAND needs Graham Axman.”

“He’s in prison,” Jazine said, stating the obvious.

“In prison and due for transfer to the Venus Colony.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do! His lawyer told me last week! Earl, I’ve been to the Venus Colony. I know what it’s like up there.”