The Thinktank That Leaked Read online

  She said firmly, “Don’t evade the issue, Roger. To suit itself.”

  “Maybe. Maybe it’s got that far … What we have to look for is the linkage. You came into that duty room, pale and white and terrorized — don’t deny it —”

  “It’s true.”

  “Yes. You came in and you said ‘It knows’. All right. I accept that ‘it knows’. But we’re not talking about black magic, or sorcery, or phantoms. If this is an intelligent system it relies on intelligence. Like an army does. How did it know?”

  Nesta said, “For a start, Spender didn’t have a motive for letting it ‘know’.”

  I said, “Yet it has been said of Spender that he’s schizophrenic.”

  Nesta said, “Let’s keep this simple for the moment. You’re looking for an ordinary link. A message.” She snapped her fingers. “And my Christ, I’ve got it: when I called the met office to get the QNH for the Bristol area they wanted the identification of your aircraft. I gave it to them: I said you had a Grumman trainer and that its registration number ended in Bravo-Delta!”

  “A roundabout route though.”

  “No more roundabout, Roger, than a twisted message going out, via radio satellite to the Pacific! Look, didn’t you think it rather odd that Bristol Radar didn’t call us? We were tuned to the Bristol frequency. We were flying in the middle of the night and must have been conspicuous on their screens. We weren’t challenged even though we turned off course to make the landing here.”

  I said slowly, “Because they knew already — or the Bristol computer did. If so, it decided for some reason to suppress our radar echo from the screens!”

  “Is that possible?”

  “It’s feasible, let’s put it that way. Modern radar systems allow you to suppress unwanted radar echoes for reasons of clarity.”

  Nesta said, “Then we come to you and the nurse.” There was no edge to her voice. She was as convinced as I was that the close encounter hadn’t been a voluntary act on my part. “A kiss,” she said, “is surely communication.”

  I couldn’t listen to that without smiling a bit. “When I kiss you I’m certainly communicating something.”

  “Yes. But what were you communicating to the nurse?”

  “I don’t think … It wasn’t anything.”

  “So she was communicating.”

  I said, under my breath, “A Kissing Machine.”

  “What was that again?”

  “Just a crazy idea.”

  “Go ahead and be crazy. Everyone else is.”

  “A Kissing Machine.”

  I felt her shiver. “That sounds right. But you say you felt nothing.”

  “I …”

  “Don’t be coy, Roger. You had a stand! How can you kiss an attractive nurse without getting a stand? That’s just normal. What isn’t normal is that you felt nothing else at the time. What is far more abnormal is the revulsion you felt later.”

  “Yes but —”

  “Come on. It wasn’t revulsion against yourself. Whatever was transmitted, via that kiss, was something alien to your own human instincts. Something was transferred, Roger.” She felt me as I suddenly curled up physically as if in pain. She tried to see the expression on my face. “What is it?”

  “Nesta, you’ve just kissed me! Something we don’t know about is transferred from the nurse to me, via the lips; then I promptly contaminate you with it in the same way. The thing is using sex and using love to disseminate something! — to spread it and get what it wants!”

  Nesta said calmly, “The question is, what does it want?”

  I felt her sudden movement as she got to her feet at the exact same moment as I did. We both had the same thought in mind. Nesta said, “Let’s get back to that duty room. There just has to be something in that place that we missed.”

  I said, “Not you.”

  She said, “Two pairs of eyes are better than one.”

  “If you think I’m going to kiss that bloody nurse again —”

  “— I don’t. I’ve learned that you’re genuine. I know that if you tell me it was not you, it was not you. but I still think we should both take a look.”

  “Suppose the nurse has got back from her rounds?”

  Nesta said, “We’ll still have to find something to work on, at whatever risk. We must. Don’t you see why?” By this time we were back across the road and at the gates.

  I was beginning to understand how Nesta reasoned. It may not have been all that scientific. But it was, quite unquestionably, inspired. “Yes. You think we didn’t even come here of our own free will. We were enticed. Otherwise, why suppress the radar blip? They could have stopped us. By now a patrol car could have been here asking me what the hell I was doing making a night landing in a dark field when there was nothing wrong with the aircraft.”

  Nesta opened the gates, it wasn’t their creakiness that caused the eerie sensation to recur. We were back within range of that house and whatever was in it.

  Quite unconsciously, I had slid one hand inside Nesta’s blouse and found myself caressing her nipple. I needed that contact. I was more frightened even than she was. And I was learning fast that sudden changes in the emphasis of our relationship reflected the needs that outside events imposed. I’d never known or guessed at such a complete love affair. I could certainly not have believed that eroticism — and with it a sudden, almost helpless urge to make love right there while we stood — could act as such a tremendous shield against terror. The nipple went hard. Her hand just barely touched my flies. She reassured my prick and through that act she reassured me throughout. I was strong enough, even, to control and prevent an orgasm. And she expected nothing less of me because she knew that the potential of the orgasm was a source of strength. To have spent it outside of her vagina would have, in some indefinable way, weakened my resolve.

  So I felt stronger. I’ve always known that women were braver than men. So much for the equality of the sexes.

  The nurse had not yet returned to the duty room; and had it not been for our one lucky break I don’t believe we would have found what we were searching for, when we had not the least idea what it was we expected.

  It so happened the phone rang. As a reflex I picked it up without thinking.

  I didn’t answer, and indeed I don’t know what I would have said. But when I saw what was on the earpiece I froze.

  “Nesta. That roll of Cellophane. The roller on the side of the dispense cupboard. Grab two yards of it and bring it here!”

  She didn’t hesitate but tore off a long strip immediately and handed it to me.

  “Now a pair of sharp scissors. Big ones. Look in the drawers.”

  “What have they got to cut?”

  “Telephone cable!”

  She rummaged through the drawers. “There aren’t any.”

  “Try just outside. There must be a surgical room somewhere. A trolley or something. Fast!”

  She dashed out of the room.

  I gazed, horrified, at the telephone receiver.

  Nesta called something then returned with the scissors.

  I cut the telephone receiver off and, just as we heard the approaching footsteps of the nurse as she returned from her rounds, I wrapped it in the Cellophane.

  “Now we beat it! Kissing Machine on it’s way back,” I said. Afterwards I noticed I’d used the pronoun ‘It’. That spoke volumes regarding the nature of things as they already seemed to us. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

  We managed to make the staff door before the nurse took the last corner of the corridor. I wondered how long it would take her to discover that the phone had been decapitated, and what it would indicate to her — if anything — when she did.

  But I didn’t linger right then.

  Outside, there were the first signs of dawn. Not enough light to make much difference to a take-off; but at least there was one significant fact: this time we would be taking off upwind. It had freshened, at that.

  Before we attempted
to turn the aircraft in the mud, I put my horrendous package behind the seats, as far back as I could, jamming it behind the outer casing of the ILS unit, which had been mounted at the very back because it is not standard equipment for a Grumman, though a place had been found on the instrument panel for the crossed-vernier indicator and the necessary controls.

  We had to heave like mad to free the aircraft from the marshy ground. If we’d tried to turn by using engine power and differential braking we would simply have torn off the undercarriage or strained the mountings.

  In the end we got it round.

  I said, “Now we’ve got to push it clear of the mud. Be very careful where you push, Nesta.”

  “I know what’s safe to push.”

  “Good. I’ll try and take some of the weight off the wheels. I’ll say One, Two, Three — Heave. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We had to do it three times before it would shift. But we eased it free at last. I got out the torch and had a good look at the underside. As far as I could see, nothing had got bent during the landing. The only problem was that some long grass had wound itself tight around the hub of the nosewheel. It took ten minutes to rip this out; and all the time I was expecting some kind of a rumpus from the house. I didn’t know how many of the staff slept there; but certainly there was the possibility of the Kissing Machine arousing the computer engineer if she noticed the amputated telephone and saw any significance in what I’d done.

  I made absolutely sure the wheels were free to rotate properly; then checked all the aerofoils. No damage — a lucky landing indeed. I rechecked this, having got in, by stirring the controls for absolute freedom of movement. Then primed and switched on and started up. Delicious! She fired first time.

  Nesta was now securely strapped in, got quite cross as I checked her harness, then said, “What about fuel?”

  “We won’t make Elstree,” I said.

  “And Bristol,” said Nesta, “wouldn’t be a good idea. How about Thruxton?” Thruxton is a registered field just west of Andover.

  I did some quick sums.

  I said, “We’ll make it with a tail wind. If God doesn’t bless us with that, there’s a military field on Salisbury Plain.” I located it on the chart and showed her. She was satisfied.

  I knew by now that we must have woken the entire neighbourhood but that wasn’t going to stop me doing the proper drills. All the time Nesta wanted me to risk it, but I told her my own skin was as valuable as hers. I believed it, too.

  I said, “Do you want to do the take-off?”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not?” — If her flying was anything like as good as Mike’s we didn’t have a problem. And considering she had been the one that had supplied the courage at the time it was most needed I thought this was no time for Chauvinism.

  She checked the weather vane. It hadn’t swung. There was a good, healthy breeze blowing up from the sea now; and the tops of the pines were bending promisingly.

  Vital actions — she was as thorough as anyone. And cocky as hell as she kicked off the toe-brakes and taxied the Grumman so that we’d get the longest possible run into wind, keeping to the north of the cow bridge.

  Nesta braked and ran up the engines. A sound to wake the dead at five in the morning. No significant drop in RPM on either ignition system.

  We rolled and gathered speed and Nesta cleared the fence by a healthy ten feet. “That,” she said, on climb-out, “was because I was flying instead of trying to show off. What’s upset you about the telephone receiver?”

  “Crystals on the earpiece,” I said. “Growing out of it. Hence the Kissing Machine. The nurse is contaminated. She then passes it on to me via the mouth. I then pass it on to you via the mouth. We’ve got a problem.”

  Nesta took off flap and set the heading. “Do we have a solution?”

  I said, “We do if we can get someone to find a way of preventing crystallized viruses from going to work — or whatever process it is that allows those filthy LSIs to grow the way they want.”

  “And if not?”

  “That’s anybody’s guess.”

  “What’s yours?”

  I said, “If hate is hate, we’ll probably kill each other.”

  “Is that what they want?”

  “What else? We’re highly inconvenient and already we know too much.”

  Nesta thought a bit. “We’d better switch on all the love we’ve got, then. That should take a bit of beating.”

  I said, “Interesting competition between two species, isn’t it? Have we got more love than they’ve got hate?”

  Nesta said, “As long as we don’t get grand and imagine we’re the only two people who ever fell in love, we have a chance. The fatal thing would be conceit. We’re just ordinary, Roger. You don’t seem ordinary to me — nor I to you — but we don’t have an exclusive on loving.”

  5

  After refuelling without incident at Thruxton we took off and set course for Elstree. I handled the controls for this last leg of the trip and Nesta got a bit of sleep. At Elstree there was a blazing row which really doesn’t need describing. They wanted to know what time I’d taken off and where we’d been and why was an MG parked just off the runway and Who Did I Think I Was? — The shock-haired controller assured me he’d put in a report to the authorities; and I said he was wasting his time because I had a special clearance direct from the Minister to make an urgent flight. Of course, I had nothing of the sort; I would have to try and get it in retrospect, God knows how, and take some of the wind — and the hot air — out of his sails.

  “What’s that,” he snapped, “that you’ve got wrapped in Cellophane?”

  I said, rather childishly, “Flowers. I was going to give them to you but I’ve changed my mind.”

  The MG had been put back on the car park, and nobody seemed to have the key, and it took us forty minutes to retrieve it, and all this time I kept my temper because Nesta was being adorable and I wasn’t easy to upset.

  “You drive,” she said. “I’m so sleepy everything is a blur. You seem to be as fresh as new paint.”

  I said, “I stole a can of yours.”

  Earlier, I’d told her about my brief conversation with Mike concerning Dr. Richter. I’d fully intended seeing him anyway; but now the matter was urgent as I wanted some immediate analysis done on the severed telephone receiver. It would provide tangible evidence of what had been going on in any case and would make it that much easier to discuss the whole sequence of events that had begun the night I first visited Spender’s Flying Saucer.

  Actually, the word ‘begun’ is quite out of place here and I knew it had then. I’d stumbled over the tripwire long after it had gone live.

  To this proposition Nesta had said, “You’ll never get to Richter without seeing my father first.”

  I said, “I’ll have to meet him sooner or later.”

  “If only you could make it later.”

  I’d said, grimly enough, “Let’s hope we’re not too late already. This thing’s got loose. We’d better live in the hope that the stable door is still on its hinges.”

  Nesta had obviously been greatly troubled at the idea of a confrontation between her father and me — on any count. She’d said he was bound to be at least a hundred and fifty per cent unhelpful, and she didn’t want anything to do with him, and I said I’d handle it, and she’d said I’d be the first person ever to get anything out of him, and she also said he’d be sarcastic and jealous about our relationship, and I’d said that was fine with me and she needn’t come up to his office, and she’d said I didn’t stand a hope in hell of getting an interview unless she came with me, so we’d decided to make a frontal assault on his computer company and risk the firework display.

  I could see what she meant about him straight away. I must admit that when she’d first discussed him — during that first drive from the airfield — I’d thought she was being unnecessarily harsh and sweeping. I think one is conditioned to recoil from
all-out attacks on a parent. I should have realized the significance of the fact that Nesta hadn’t then mentioned her mother. It’s the omissions which so often tell the tale. A short exposure to Lee Crabtree was enough to suggest how such a man would treat his wife … not, of course, through anything so simple as calculated cruelty — men like Lee Crabtree fume in the shadows and simulate a smile when the lights come on. But the smile has been grafted there. Reserved for specific occasions and used fleetingly to acknowledge a human message that never penetrated his innermost feelings, it was a ritual movement of a set of muscles which were normally tautened by unconscious self-torture laced with half-asphyxiated guilt.

  Not that he strained them now. Making it clear that he disliked any sort of interruption to his routine he kept the greeting down to a curt acknowledgement of my existence and an undisguised grunt of disapproval at the sight of his daughter. I couldn’t help wondering what his head must have looked like when he was a younger man; in middle age it had swelled disquietingly as if to accommodate the ever-gathering conflicts that were pushing out his face. Fortunately for me, I always got on with my own parents though they were as imperfect as anybody else’s. Ultimately they emigrated to Japan where my father joined a team of researchers in the somatic effects of radioactivity.

  That Nesta was immediately at busting point was evident the moment we entered his office. I had never seen a line on Nesta’s face before; nor had I observed her eyes withdrawing behind a film of caution and distaste. More — there was fear in them; and she had to modify the way she spoke to conceal the fact that she was inwardly palpitating. I know nothing of psychiatry; but you couldn’t help sensing the latent lusting for her that showed now in the set of Lee Crabtree’s mouth.

  If I’ve painted a picture of a man whom anyone would have detested on sight the impression is inaccurate. I was seeing him as much through Nesta’s eyes as my own. There were — I’m told people who not only admired and respected him but who often referred to his kindliness and generosity. This only serves to emphasize the degree of conflict that made life so intolerable for the man. It was evident from the veiled eyes that he drank a lot.