leave work undocumented; their cold-blooded A Group minds could
not envision a super-intelligence operating by a logic different from
their efficient own. That he might have left them in a form unintelligible to them was outside their imaginative scope; that he might make a joke of some sort (his sort) would be unthought of, an intellectual flightiness.
It was in some degree incomprehensible to me also, but I could
make no guesses at the working of Young Feller’s mind; his reasons
were beyond me but I was sure of my flash of intuition in Mayflower’s
house. I had seen the ‘blueprint’, his will and testament, to be read by
whomever could.
A question: Did Mayflower know what she had painted in that
trickery of light, form and illusion?
I thought she did. That final nuance of complicity after the shock
of warning, after frightening the daylight out of me by revealing that
the end of the line was where I had begun . . . with the ancient Arm
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George Turner
strong, once Minister . . . that jokey, coarse survivor.
This time there was no pleasant chat on the balcony overlooking the
ocean. An electronic frisk declared me free of weapons (depending on
what the frisk was programmed to see as a weapon). I was expected;
the door flunkey had his orders and led me into the heart of the house,
to a windowless room.
Building regulations made windowless rooms illegal, for health reasons, a century and a half ago; a windowless room in a modern house is a private place but not therefore a fine one. A step through the door
into Armstrong’s holy of unholies was a step from our world into his
private world. On one side of the door were the small movements and
reverberations of comforting life; on his side of it was a total lack of
sound, a deadness in the atmosphere, a removal from the sense of ambient life.
So Armstrong had a protected room — spyproof. I had heard such
places described in eerie terms but had never been in one. Eerie may
have been the word for it but I was tense and frightened, concerned
with realities before impressions.
It was a council chamber, boardroom, furnished with long table
and sixteen chairs and the usual array of reference terminals. What
vice was bred in this secret womb? I don’t know; I don’t care. I am
alive, which is what I care about.
Armstrong sat alone at the head of the table, old beyond his desert
but looking healthily middle-aged. He smiled agreeably because he
had spent a lifetime smiling agreeably over tiger thoughts, and said,
‘I imagine you are wired for sight and sound, as the phrase goes.’
‘O f course.’ But not really; the circuits were printed on my bones
and the visual segued directly into the optic system, but why alert him
to techniques he knew nothing of?
He said, still agreeable, still with claws sheathed, ‘I shan’t waste my
time or yours. To whom do you report?’
To whom. His native, educated English with no overlay of the common touch he had practised on the hustings. A man of intent, seeking knowledge.
‘I don’t report.’
I took a dozen paces down the length of the room and his hand slid
to the dashboard in the table’s edge. Alarm? A weapon of some sort?
He smiled, very briefly, without humour. (Just a journalist after a human interest story.’
On the nursery floor
189
‘Not at all.’ It was far too late for evasion or delay. ‘I don’t report because I am monitored continuously. I have no storage capacity, so you can’t drain the content.’
‘Who monitors you?’
‘Does it matter? When I entered this room the monitoring was cut
off by your dampers. O ur business is therefore private.’ He became
visibly alert to possible threat, the idea that matters might be less simple than he had assumed. I raked the exposed nerve. ‘My location when communication ceased will have been recorded. You are
pinpointed.’
I think my voice was steady. When there is no way to go but forward
the mind divests itself of waste frights and scurryings.
‘By whom?’ He was conceding nothing.
‘The Mob,’ I said.
Momentarily he was rocked. ‘A criminal gang?’ The association of
ideas was as old as melodrama. An underworld organisation? I don’t
believe you.’
I shrugged. He leaned back in his chair, making a production of
studying me while he groped for decision. ‘I can have information
electro-probed out of you.’ I nodded agreement. ‘O r physical torture.
Quicker but finally less reliable.’
‘Crime then on both sides,’ I suggested, without any specific
intention. ‘These days the gangs don’t battle it out; they make a deal.’
‘Ah!’
.................'
It was such a satisfied sound that 1 could have kicked myself for not
realising that he needed knowledge and a deal might be the means of
pursuing it.
‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘I made things easy for you. I monitored your
appointments and had some of your interviewees give you a little confidential information, enough to keep your nose to the trail, to lead you on until your aim became plain.’
A nd did it?’
‘No. That is why you are here. Tell me.’
Why not? The situation needed clearing. ‘I wanted Young Feller’s
notes. We were sure they existed.’
He was most alert. And . . . ?’
‘I found them.’
‘Where?’
‘Hanging on Mayflower’s wall.’
‘Excellent!’ He sounded genuinely appreciative of my perception
— which was in fact intuition of the sort that graces my level of IQ
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George 'Eirner
once in a lifetime. I had been half hypnotised by the thing when it
declared itself. Armstrong
