came down until he had a bid of?8000. '?8000 I am bid-who will say nine? Eight-five I am bid-thank you, sir-who will say nine? Nine I am bid-who will say ten?' Michaelis said, 'The dealers are coming in, but they won't stand a chance.
Hartman will freeze them out.' I had been watching Hartman who hadn't moved a muscle. The bidding crept up by 500s, hesitated at the?13,500 mark, and then went up by 250s to?15,000 where it stuck. 'Fifteen I am bid; fifteen I am bid,' chanted the auctioneer. 'Any advance on fifteen?' Hartman flicked a finger. 'Sixteen I am bid,' said the auctioneer. '?16,000. Any advance on sixteen?' The dealers were frozen out. I held up a finger. 'Seventeen I am bid. Any advance on seventeen? Eighteen I am bid-and nineteen-and twenty. I have a bid of ?20,000. Any advance on twenty?' There was a growing rustle of interest as Hartman and I battled it out. At?25,000 he hesitated for the first time and raised his bid by?500. Then I knew I had him. I raised a single finger and the auctioneer said, Twenty-six and a half-any advance… twenty-seven, thank you, sir-twenty-eight I am bid.' And so it went. Hartman lost his nerve at thirty and gave up.
The auctioneer said, 'Any advance on thirty-one? Any advance on thirty-one? Going once.' Crack! 'Going twice.' Crack! 'Sold to Mr.
Jaggard for?31,000.' Crack! I was now the proud owner of a railway.
Maybe it wasn't British Rail but perhaps it might show more profit. I said to Michaelis, 'I wonder if Ogilvie has that much in the petty cash box?' Hartman came over. 'I guess you wanted that very much, sir.' 'I did.' 'Perhaps you would be so kind as to let me study the layout some time. I am particularly interested in those schedules.' I said, 'I'm sorry. I acted as agent in this matter. However, if you give me your address I'll pass it to the owner for his decision.' He nodded. 'I suppose that will have to do.' Then I was surrounded by pressmen wanting to know who, in his right mind, would pay that much money for a toy. I was rescued by Mary Cope. 'You're wanted on the telephone, Mr. Jaggard.' I made my escape into Ashton's study. It was Ogilvie. 'I understand you wanted me.' 'Yes,' I said, wishing he had rung half an hour earlier. The department owes me?31,000 plus bank charges.' 'What's that?' 'You now own a model railway.' His language was unprintable.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE I saw Ogilvie at his home that night. His welcome was somewhat cool and unenthusiastic and he looked curiously at the big ledger I carried as he ushered me into his study. I dumped it on his desk and sat down. Ogilvie warmed his coat tails at the fire, and said, 'Did you really spend?31,000 on a toy train set?' I smiled. 'Yes, I did.' 'You're a damned lunatic,' he said. 'And if you think the department will reimburse you, then I'll get the quacks in and have you certified. No bloody model railway can be worth that much.' 'An American called Hartman thought it worth?30,000,' I observed. 'Because that's how much he bid. You haven't seen it. This is no toy you buy your kid for Christmas and assemble on the floor before the living room fire to watch the chuff-chuff go round in circles. This is big and complex.' 'I don't care how big and complex it is. Where the hell do you think I'm going to put it in the department budget? The accountants would have me certified. And what makes you think the department wants it?' 'Because it holds what we've been looking for all the time. It's a computer.' I tapped the ledger.
'And this is the programming for it. One of the programs. There are eleven more which I put in the office vaults.' I told him how Michaelis had unavailingly tried to sort out the schedules and how I'd made an intuitive jump based on the timetable in Ashton's hand. I said, 'It would be natural these days for a theoretician to use a computer, but Ashton knew we'd look into all his computer files and programs. So he built his own and disguised it.' 'It's the most improbable idea I've ever heard,' said Ogilvie. 'Michaelis is the train expert. What does he think?' 'He thinks I'm crazy.' 'He's not far wrong.' Ogilvie began to pace the room. 'I tell you what I think.
If you're right then the thing is cheap at the price and the department will pay. If you're wrong then it costs you?31,000.' 'Plus bank charges.' I shrugged. 'I stuck out my neck, so I'll take the chance.' 'I'll get the computer experts on it tomorrow.' He wagged his head sadly. 'But where are we to put it? If I have it installed in the department offices it'll only accelerate my retirement. Should the Minister hear of it he'll think I've gone senile-well into second childhood.' 'It will need a big room,' I said. 'Best to rent a warehouse.' 'I'll authorize that. You can get on with it. Where is it now?' 'Still in the Ashtons' attic. Michaelis is locked in with it for the night.' 'Enthusiastically playing trains, I suppose.' Ogilvie shook his head in sheer wonderment at the things his staff got up to.
He joined me at the desk and tapped the schedule. 'Now tell me what you think this is all about.' It took four days to dismantle the railway and reassemble it in a warehouse in South London. The computer boys thought my idea hilarious and to them the whole thing was a big giggle, but they went about the job competently enough. Ogilvie gave me Michaelis to assist. The department had never found the need for a model railway technician and Michaelis found himself suddenly elevated into the rank of expert, first class. He quite liked it. The chief computer man was a systems analyst called Harrington. He took the job more seriously than most of the others but even that was only half-serious. He installed a computer terminal in the warehouse and had it connected to a computer by post office land lines; not the big chap Nellie was hooked up to, but an ordinary commercial timesharing computer in the City. Then we were ready to go. About this time I got a letter from Penny. She wrote that Gillian was well and had just had the operation for the first of the skin grafts. She herself was not coming back immediately; Lumsden had suggested that she attend a seminar at Berkeley in California, so she wouldn't be back for a further week or ten days. I showed the letter to Michaelis and he said he'd had one from Gillian, written just before the operation. 'She seemed a bit blue.' 'Not to worry; probably just pre-operation nerves.' The itch at the back of my mind was still there, and so the buried connection was nothing to do with the railway. Little man Hunch was sitting up and rubbing his eyes but was still not yet awake. I badly needed to talk to Penny because I thought it was something she had said that had caused the itch. I was sorry she wasn't coming home for that reason among many. One morning at ten o'clock Harrington opened the LNER schedule. 'The first few pages are concerned with the placement of the engines and the rolling stock,' he said. 'Now, let's get this right if we can. This is silly enough as it is without us putting our own bugs into the system.' It took over an hour to get everything in the right place-checked and double checked. Harrington said, 'Page eleven to page twenty-three are concerned with the console settings.' He turned to me. 'If there's anything to your idea at all these ROMs will have to be analysed to a fare-thee-well.' 'What's a ROM?' 'A read-only module-this row of boxes plugged in here. Your man, Michaelis, calls them microprocessors. They are pre-programmed electronic chips-we'll have to analyse what they're programmed to do.
All right; let's get on with the setting.' He began to call out numbers and an acolyte pressed buttons and turned knobs. When he had finished he started again from the beginning and another acolyte checked what the first had done. He caught three errors. 'See what I mean,' said Harrington. 'One bug is enough to make a program unworkable.' 'Are you ready to go now?' 'I think so-for the first stage.' He put his hand on the ledger. 'There are over two hundred pages here, so if this thing really is a computer and if this represents one program, then after a while everything should come to a stop and the console will have to be readjusted for the next part of the program. It's going to take a long time.' 'It will take even longer if we don't start,' I said tartly. Harrington grinned and leaned over to snap a single switch. Things began to happen. Trains whizzed about the system, twenty or thirty on the move at once. Some travelled faster than others, and once I thought there was going to be a collision as two trains headed simultaneously for a junction; but one slowed just enough to let the other through and then picked up speed again. Sidings and marshalling yards that had been empty began to fill up as engines pushed in rolling stock and then uncoupled to shoot off somewhere else. I watched one marshalling yard fill up and then begin to empty, the trains being broken up and reassembled into other patterns. Harrington grunted. 'This is no good; it's too damned busy. Too much happening at once. If this is a computer it isn't working sequentially like an ordinary digital job; it's working in parallel. It's going to be hell to analyse.' The system worked busily for nearly two hours. Trains shot back and forth, trucks were pushed here and there, abandoned temporarily and then picked up again in what seemed an arbitrary manner. To me it was bloody monotonous but Michaelis was enthralled and even Harrington appeared to be mildly interested. Then everything came to a dead stop. Harrington said, 'I'll want a video camera up there.' He pointed to the ceiling. 'I want to be able to focus on any marshalling yard and record it on tape. And I want it in colour because I have a feeling colour comes into this. And we can slow down a tape for study. Can you fix that?'
'You'll have it tomorrow morning,' I promised. 'But what do you think now?' 'It's an ingenious toy, but there may be something more to it,' he said, noncommittally. 'We have a long way to go yet.' I didn't spend all my time in the warehouse but went back three days later because Harrington wanted to see me. I found him at a desk flanked by a video recorder and a TV set. 'We may have something,' he said, and pointed to a collection of miniature rolling stock on the desk. 'There is a number characterization.' I didn't know what he meant by that, and said so. He smiled. 'I'm saying you were right. This railway is a computer. I think that any of this rolling stock which has red trim on it represents a digit.' He picked up a tank car which had ESSO lettered on the side in red. 'This one, for
