to do was go back to his office and read somereports and listen to some interview tapes, and then he could go home.
The reports and the interview tapes didn't exactly sound like fun,Malone thought, but at the same time they seemed fairly innocent. Hewould work his way through them grimly, and maybe he would evenindulge his most secret vice and smoke a cigar or two to make the workpass more pleasantly. Soon enough, he told himself, they would befinished with.
Sometimes, though, he regretted the reputation he'd gotten. It hadbeen bad enough in the old days--the pre-1971 days when Malone hadthought he was just lucky. Burris had called him a Boy Wonder then,when he'd cracked three difficult cases in a row. Being just lucky hadmade it a little tough to live with the Boy Wonder label--after all,Malone thought, it wasn't actually as if he'd done anything.
But since 1971 and the case of the Telepathic Spy, things had gottenworse. Much worse. Now Malone wasn't just lucky any more. Instead, hecould teleport and he could even foretell the future a little, in adim sort of way. He'd caught the Telepathic Spy that way, and when thecase of the Teleporting Juvenile Delinquents had come up he'd beenassigned to that one too, and he'd cracked it. Now Burris seemed tothink of him as a kind of god, and gave him all the tough dirty jobs.
And if he wasn't just lucky any more, Malone couldn't think of himselfas a Fearless, Heroic FBI Agent, either. He just wasn't the type. Hewas--well, talented. That was the word, he told himself: talented. Hehad all these talents and they made him look like somethingspectacular to Burris and the other FBI men. But he wasn't, really. Hehadn't done anything really tough to get his talents; they'd justhappened to him.
Nobody, though, seemed to believe that. He heaved a little sigh andstepped into the waiting elevator.
There were, after all, he thought, compensations. He'd had some goodtimes, and the talents did come in handy. And he did have his pick ofthe vacation schedule lately. And he'd met some lovely girls--
And besides, he told himself savagely as the elevator shot upward, hewasn't going to do anything except return to his office and read somereports and listen to some tapes. And then he was going to go home andsleep all night, peacefully. And in the morning Mitchell was going tocall him up and tell him that the computer-secretaries needed nothingmore than a little repair. He'd say they were getting old, and he'd bea little pathetic about it; but it wouldn't be anything serious.Malone would send out orders to get the machines repaired, and thatwould be that. And then the next case would be something both normaland exciting, like a bank robbery or a kidnapping involving a gorgeousblonde who would be so grateful to Malone that--
He had stepped out of the elevator and gone down the corridor withoutnoticing it. He pushed at his own office door and walked into theouter room. The train of thought he had been following was very nice,and sounded very attractive indeed, he told himself.
Unfortunately, he didn't believe it. His prescient ability,functioning with its usual efficient aplomb, told Malone that thingswould not be better, or simpler, in the morning. They would be worse,and more complicated.
They would be quite a lot worse.
And, as usual, that prescience was perfectly accurate.
II
The telephone, Malone realized belatedly, had had a particularlynasty-sounding ring. He might have known it would be bad news.
As a matter of fact, he told himself sadly, he had known.
"Nothing at all wrong?" he said into the mouthpiece. "Not with any ofthe computers?" He blinked. "Not even one of them?"
"Not a thing," Mitchell said. "I'll be sending a report up to you in alittle while. You read it; we put them through every test, and it'sall detailed there."
"I'm sure you were very thorough," Malone said helplessly.
"Of course we were," Mitchell said. "Of course. And the machinespassed every single test. Every one. Malone, it was beautiful."
"Goody," Malone said at random. "But there's got to be something--"
"There is, Malone," Fred said. "There is. I think there's definitelysomething odd going on. Something funny. I mean peculiar, nothumorous."
"I thought so," Malone put in.
"Right," Fred said. "Malone, try and relax. This is a hard thing tosay, and it must be even harder to hear. But--"
"Tell me," Malone said. "Who's dead? Who's been killed?"
"I know it's tough, Malone," Fred went on.
"Is everybody dead?" Malone said. "It can't be just one person, notfrom that tone in your voice. Has somebody assassinated the entireSenate? Or the President and his Cabinet? Or--"
"It's nothing like that, Malone," Fred said, in a tone that impliedthat such occurrences were really rather minor. "It's the machines."
"The machines?"
"That's right," Fred said grimly. "After we checked them over andfound they were in good shape, I asked for samples of both the inputand the output of each machine. I wanted to do a thorough job."
"Congratulations," Malone said. "What happened?"
Fred took a deep breath. "They don't agree," he said.
"They don't?" Malone said. The phrase sounded as if it meant somethingmomentous, but he couldn't quite figure out what. In a minute, hethought confusedly, it would come to him. But did he want it to?
"They definitely do not agree," Fred was saying. "The correlation iserratic; it makes no statistical sense. Malone, there are twopossibilities."
"Tell me about them," Malone said. He was beginning to feel relieved.To Fred, the malfunction of a machine was more serious than the murderof the entire Congress. But Malone couldn't quite bring himself tofeel that way about things.
"First," Fred said in a tense tone, "it's possible that thetechnicians feeding information to the machines are making all kindsof mistakes."
Malone nodded at the phone. "That sounds possible," he said. "Whichones?"
"All of them," Fred said. "They're all making errors--and they're allmaking about the same number of errors. There don't seem to be anyreal peaks or valleys, Malone; everybody's doing it."
Malone thought of the Varsity Drag and repressed the thought. "A bunchof fumblebums," he said. "All fumbling alike. It does sound unlikely,but I guess it's possible. We'll get after them right away, and--"
"Wait," Fred said. "There is a second possibility."
"Oh," Malone said.
"Maybe they aren't mistakes," Fred said. "Maybe the technicians aredeliberately feeding the machine with wrong answers."
Malone hated to admit, even to himself, but that answer sounded a lotmore probable. Machine technicians weren't exactly picked off thestreets at random; they were highly trained for their work, and theidea of a whole crew of them starting to fumble at once, in a big way,was a little hard to swallow.
The idea of all of them sabotaging the machines they worked on, Malonethought, was a tough one to take, too. But it had the advantage ofmaking some sense. People, he told himself dully, will do nutty thingsdeliberately. It's harder to think of them doing the same nutty thingswithout knowing it.
"Well," he said at last, "however it turns out, we'll get to thebottom of it. Frankly, I think it's being done on purpose."
"So do I," Fred said. "And when you find out just who's making thetechnicians do such things--when you find out who gives them theirorders--you let me know."
"Let you know?" Malone said. "But--"
"Any man who would give false data to a perfectly innocent computer,"Fred said savagely, "would ... would--" For a second he was apparentlylost for comparisons. Then he finished: "Would kill his own mother."He paused a second and added, in an even more savage voice: "And thenlie about it!"
* * * * *
The image on the screen snapped off, and Malone sat back in his chairand sighed. He spent a few minutes regretting that he hadn't chosen,early in life, to be a missionary to the Fiji Islanders, or possiblysimply a drunken bum without any trouble, and then the report Mitchellhad mentioned arrived. Malone picked it up without much eagerness, andbegan going through
it carefully.
It was beautifully typed and arranged; somebody on Mitchell's team hadobviously been up all night at the job. Malone admired the work,without being able to get enthusiastic about the contents. Like alltechnical reports, it tended to be boring and just a trifle obscure tosomeone who wasn't completely familiar with the field involved. Maloneand cybernetics were not exactly bosom buddies, and by the time hefinished reading through the