“People. As they always do. Some say Tazz did it himself,” Hayes said slyly. “Or a Tazz supporter.”
“No!” Andersson said, shocked. “That is nonsense!”
Hayes shrugged. “You just have to pay attention to who’s going to gain the most from this. It seems those men were causing trouble for Tazz. Doing bad things in his name. This way he gets two things, he gets some bad business out of his way and he gets something to rally everyone around. And no one would ever suspect him. Has Tazz denied it?”
“Yes,” said Andersson angrily.
“You saw him? Saw him deny it?”
“Well. No.”
“You didn’t see him?”
Andersson frowned into his beer mug. “Tazz has said nothing about the trolley murders.”
“Really? Nothing?”
“Nothing,” said Andersson.
“Not even anything about the Red Star?”
“He is not coming out anymore.”
“What? Coming out of where?”
“Union men died, Andrew,” Andersson said softly. “A lot of union men. There is danger, they say. He is in hiding.”
“Hiding?”
“Yes. In some place. Safe place. Place where no one knows where he is except only a few. Only his most trusted men. And no one knows who they are. This has become a deadly secret game, Andrew,” said Andersson, shaking his head. “Trust no one. That is the way it now goes for us down here, in the Southern.”
“That’s how it always goes, I think. Now, tell me, Martin,” said Hayes, “where did he spend his time in the clink?”
“Clink?” said Andersson, confused.
“In jail. Tazz was in jail, correct?”
“Yes. After the docks protest.”
“Where was that? Savron Hill?”
“I think so. Why?”
“Curiosity. That’s all. Just curiosity.”
“I see.” Andersson looked away, then asked bashfully, “Andrew, would you mind if I ask you a question?”
“No.”
“Even if it is a very silly question?”
“No. I don’t mind at all.”
“All right.” He frowned as he considered his words and said, “Andrew, you are not a little man. Well, in some ways, yes, but in business ways, no. In the city, no, in the company, no. And all I hear is of McNaughton’s magic. With its genius-men who think these things up. And I just wonder, eh-”
“Where McNaughton’s secrets come from? Or what the big secret is?”
“Yes. Yes, that is what I am wondering.”
Hayes smiled. He considered telling one of his more fun lies about secret scientists smuggled in from abroad. But he had developed a soft spot for the big man and decided to tell him the simple and boring truth, as far as he had it figured out, which he thought was pretty far.
“Well, internally they say it’s marketing,” said Hayes.
Andersson frowned. “Marketing?”
“Yes. Marketing. Like, the way you pitch something. The way you lie to someone else in the marketplace about what you’re selling. They say it’s not designs, not mechanics, no. The real secret to everything is the McNaughton approach to sales.”
“It is this? Just a thing of sales? You believe that?”
“Well, they do,” Hayes said with a smile. “You know what I believe?”
“You do not believe it’s marketing?”
“No. I believe it’s all a load of shit.”
“Shit? What is shit?”
“Everything. The very idea of it. Horseshit. Poppycock. Tripe. I do think there were, oh, a half-dozen neat things Kulahee came up with long ago. And that was a good start for the business. And then McNaughton just said there were a hundred more things, but they were all secret, and you could buy them but never know where they came from. So, naturally, everyone wants to buy and invest in these wonders. But it’s nothing special. It’s just normal things developed by some well-paid men. That’s what I think.”
Andersson thought that over, frowning, and settled back in his chair, fingers twined together and resting on his belly.
“Why do you ask?” said Hayes.
“Oh, it is just something I have seen over the years,” said Andersson. “Some of the more advanced devices… Some of them seem to have not been made for people at all.”
“What? Then who? Elves? Imps? Bloody fairies?”
Andersson stared at him as his internal translator tried to make sense of that. “Oh, no,” he said after a while. “Not like that. It is just that over the years, I have been promoted a few times, assigned manufacturing of some of the more specialized items. And many of those… Well, it seems like the designers spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make them used for people. Like they just had to put in levers or consoles or, say, on the airships, walkways and cockpits and passenger cells and such. Like when they were first designed, they did not have people in mind at all. Maybe it is the way Kulahee first thought of them. But why would he design a thing that way? And if you are right, and it is not Kulahee at all but our own people, why are they doing it that way?”
Hayes was quiet as he considered this. “Then who were they made for, originally?” he asked.
Andersson just shrugged. The two men drank their black ale in silence for a bit. Then Andersson sat forward, leaning over the table. “Some of the men in Telecommunications,” he said softly, “they say that some of the things they build, they talk to them.”
“What?” said Hayes. “What talks? The machines?”
Andersson nodded dourly. “Yes. Talks to them.” He tapped his temple. “In their heads. Whispers to them.”
“Well… What are they saying?”
“They cannot tell. They only get the feeling that they are talking. The machines want something from them, they guess. But maybe they are crazy. Who can say?”
Hayes thought quickly. “These machines… Do they have little crystals? Are they like lamps, that light up blue? Some big, some little?”
“Lamps?” said Andersson, confused. “No, they did not say they were lamps.”
“Are you sure? No little lights, nothing like that at all?”
“No, I’ve never heard of that. They just said the machines whisper to them, if they spend enough time around them.” He drained off the last of his beer. “Perhaps you are right, though,” he said. “Perhaps it is just marketing.”
“Maybe so,” said Hayes, disturbed, and then he thanked the big Swede for his insight and paid and left.
When he returned to the Southern Office the interview room was empty except for a single note on the table that said, YOU COULD HAVE TOLD ME. Hayes smiled and put it in his pocket and found a semi-decent restaurant with a phone station. He put a call through to Garvey and left a message with the number for the station. Then he ordered a drink and downed it and wadded up his coat and used it as a pillow and slept in the booth. A waiter came and asked him to kindly clear the hell out and Hayes shoved a ten-dollar bill into his hand and told him to bring him a sandwich and another drink. As he ate the phone rang and Garvey answered, his voice faint and exhausted.
“Listen, I have a favor to ask you,” Hayes said.
“Oh, boy.”
“Mickey Tazz has gone underground.”
“What?”
