Tomorrow Lies in Ambush

Communication

There was one truly creative phase in the weekly routine of Hank Ripley’s job, and he liked to take care of it on Friday nights around nine o’clock.

By then he had three or four drinks under his belt and could feel the weekend—two days’ therapeutic idleness—opening up for him; yet he was still sufficiently in touch with his work to recall the week in detail. His skill in selecting amount and type of detail to put into his weekly report was, in Ripley’s estimation, the principal reason he remained in salaried employment. For over two years the area office in Vancouver had received, and apparently was mollified by, accounts of computer sales he was about to make, was planning to negotiate, or had just lost because of some inherent incompatibility between the Logicon 20/30 series and the customer’s specification. The reports were not entirely fictional—he never mentioned a prospect’s name unless he had actually called him—but they were designed to disguise the fact that Hank Ripley’s aptitude for selling computers was virtually nonexistent.

It was a few minutes before nine when he opened his portable typewriter and set it on the table, flanked by a pack of cigarettes and a glass of Four Roses. He was staring at the ceiling, awaiting inspiration, when the doorbell rang. No friends were expected to call, so he decided to ignore the bell—the report was too important to let slide. There were times when he felt guilty about having the worst record in the whole Canadian organisation, but consoled himself by reflecting on the amount of priceless ingenuity he put into his reports. Any bright boy in Vancouver who took the trouble to study Ripley’s file would find dozens of case histories, packed with verisimilitude, showing ways in which Logicon hardware or software could fail to meet a client’s requirements. The same bright boy might wonder why such a large number of quirkish businesses should flourish in one corner of Alberta, but the lesson was there to be learned just the same.

Ripley’s mind was gathering varicoloured threads of imagination when the bell gave another, and more prolonged, peal. Hissing with annoyance, he opened the door and found himself facing a man of about fifty who was wearing a lustrous business suit and carrying a softly gleaming briefcase. The stranger had a swarthy complexion and brown eyes with grey rings of cholesterol around the pupils.

“Mr. Ripley?” he said. “Pardon me for interrupting your evening.”

“Insurance?” Ripley pushed the door hastily. “I’m covered, and I’m busy.”

“No—I’m not an insurance salesman.”

“Oh, well, I’m a firm believer in my own religion,” Ripley lied. “I can’t be converted, so there’s no point in prolonging …’

“You don’t understand.” The stranger smiled easily. “I want to buy a computer.”

“You want …’ Ripley opened the door like an automaton and ushered the man in. Suppressing a feeling of unreality, he examined the visitor from the rear and noted how his dark suit drooped expensively at the shoulders, and the way his black hair curled slightly over his collar. Ripley had a theory that all wealthy and powerful men had black curly hair on the backs of their necks. He began to feel lucky, which was an unusual sensation for him.

“My name is Mervyn Parr,” The visitor dropped his case on to a chair and surveyed Ripley’s unimpressive apartment with a curious appearance of satisfaction.

“It’s a pleasure to …’ Ripley floundered. “Have a seat. Have a drink.”

“I never touch alcohol,” Parr said benignly, seating himself. ‘But please have one yourself.”

“No thanks.” Ripley lifted his glass as he spoke, realised what he was doing, and set it down again. He took a cigarette and puffed it into anxious life …

Parr viewed the performance indulgently. “I expect you’re wondering why I called with you like this?”

“No! No! Well … yes. I would have been delighted to call at your office and make the Logicon presentation during business hours. Not that I’m objecting, mind …’

“My office is in Red Deer.”

“Oh.” Ripley felt his luck desert him. “That’s north of Calgary, isn’t it? You should be talking to our rep for central Alberta.”

“I don’t want to talk to your rep for central Alberta, Mr. Ripley. I want to buy a computer from you.” Parr’s voice had a resonant quality which Ripley found vaguely reminiscent of something out of his childhood.

“The company doesn’t work that way.”

“The company won’t know anything about that side of things. I’m going to use a fictitious address right here in Lethbridge.”

“I see,” Ripley said glumly.

Parr laughed aloud, showing strong greyish teeth. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ripley. I’ve been a little wicked—playing cat-and-mouse with you. The fact is that I’m on the staff of the New University of Western Canada. My department needs a computer for use in a new kind of sociological survey centred on Red Deer.”

“I still don’t see why you’ve come to me.”

“It’s quite simple. You run a one-man outfit here in the south. My survey has to be conducted in absolute secrecy otherwise the results would be invalidated—trying to observe particles, you know, uncertainty principle—and if I were to deal with a big live-wire office the word would be bound to get out sooner or later. Now do you see why I’ve … we’ve chosen to deal with you?”

“But how about after-sales service?”

“Well, Mr. Ripley, I presumed you would be willing to undertake that for me if it becomes necessary. I understand you’re a qualified maintenance man, and a private arrangement could be beneficial to both of us.” Parr glanced significantly at the shabby furniture.

“There’s the question of payment. Our accounts people …”

“Cash,” Parr said tersely.

Ripley lifted his glass and took a long drink. “Well, I don’t know …”

“Mr. Ripley!” Parr shook his head in amazement. “Do you know you must be the worst salesman in the world? If I’d approached any other Logicon representative with this proposition I’d be signing contracts by this time.”

“I’m sorry.” Ripley gave himself a mental shake—there was such a thing as being too ethical, even when a deal looked as queer as a fifty-cent watch. “It was the mention of cash.” He laughed uncertainly. “Nobody has ever mentioned paying for a computer before. It’s going to cause a flutter at head office.”

“That doesn’t matter—as long as you sit tight. Now may we discuss business?”

“You bet, Mr. Parr.” Ripley pulled his chair closer to the other man’s knees, noticing as he did so that one of Parr’s fingers was banded with white skin which suggested he usually wore a ring. “Would you like to tell me something about the amount of data to be handled, the retrieval performance expected, and so on?”

“Fine. The population of Red Deer has grown to close on 200,000, and we’ve selected it for our study because it’s a good example of what sociologists call a Second Magnitude Area in the Willis Classification System. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No. I’m afraid not.”

“Never mind—it’s an abstruse technicality. The point is that the university is going to analyse social volition and interaction in the area more thoroughly than has ever been attempted anywhere else. To do this we are going to record data on every man, woman and child in the designated region.”

“What kind of data?”

“Straightforward. Age, place of birth, height, weight, colouring, profession …’

“Height and weight?” Ripley was startled.

“Important sociological and physiological criteria, my friend. Essential too for computer recognition of individuals whose pictures may not be stored, or whose appearance may have changed.” The resonance had crept back into Parr’s voice, stirring Ripley’s subconscious.

“Just a minute,” he said. “How is this survey going to be carried out?”

Parr examined him soberly. “If the information I’m about to give you goes any further, we have no deal. Is that understood?”

“Perfectly.”

“There will be a limited number of checkpoints—probably only one at first—with facilities for automatically photographing, weighing and measuring people who pass through. The computer must recognise subjects, and on command print out all available data.”

Ripley took another swallow of Four Roses. “That’s easy enough—the tricky part is getting your 200,000 photographs.”

“We won’t have 200,000. There will be only a few thousand in the beginning. We’ll use every source to expand the store, but in the interim would it be possible—through cross-references, deduction, what-have-you—for the computer to identify people first time without a photograph?”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, supposing Subject A is a young woman already known to the computer, which also has recorded the fact that her mother is five feet tall, weighs a hundred pounds and has a mole on her forehead. If Subject A passes through the checkpoint with un unknown Subject B who matches the recorded data on the mother, would the computer be able to identify Subject B, photograph her for future occasions, and print out the available data?”

“It could. Bigger programming job, that’s all.” Ripley stroked his chin. “I, see why you want to keep this thing secret. People would avoid it like the plague.”

“Precisely.”

Ripley took a deep breath and decided to risk the sale once again. “I don’t even feel happy about it myself.”

“Why? There’s nothing illegal about sociologists studying people’s movements.”

“It’s hard to say. If your checkpoint is centrally located the machine’s going to get to know just about everybody in Red Deer. The example you gave was fine—a girl accompanied by her mother—but supposing the computer starts noting businessmen out late with secretaries, and that kind of thing?”

Parr shrugged. ‘Blackmail? But you should know that data stored in a computer is more secure than in any filing cabinet.”

“I do know.”

“Then you think I might be considering a little blackmail?” Parr did not seem offended.

“No. Any information you got wouldn’t be very hot, certainly not valuable enough to pay your costs.” Ripley lit another cigarette, wondering how Vancouver would react if they heard him hinting that a cash customer was crooked. “It’s just …”

“It’s just the idea of a computerised Big Brother spying on the life of a city, isn’t it, Mr. Ripley? Believe me—my colleagues have studied all the ethical implications, but we’re proposing a new kind of analysis of urban behaviour and the benefits outweigh any theoretical invasion of privacy.” Parr smiled his grey smile. ‘Besides this is only 1982.”

“Hah! Very good, Mr. Parr.” Ripley tried to laugh, but he had just identified the practised resonance in the other man’s voice. Mervyn Parr spoke more like a minister than a lecturer. There was no reason why he could not be a lay preacher as well as an academic, but Ripley’s sense of unease deepened. He dispelled it by reaching for his presentation case, and by considering the wording of his new report. The circumstances of the sale would have to be changed, though. It would read better if he had closed the deal with Parr after a week of dedicated hard-selling.

“For the application you have in mind,” he said in his best computer expert’s voice, “I recommend you consider the Logicon 30. I’ll need to make a full analysis of your proposed system, of course, but I’m positive the 30 Model would offer you the …”

Parr held up a well-manicured hand, with its white ghost of a ring. “How much?”

“Basic—sixty thousand.” Ripley swallowed noisily. He should have started at the bottom of the range with the Logicon 20 and tried to work upwards.

“Done!” Parr reached for his briefcase, and clicked it open.

Inside were bulky wads of used high-denomination bills. The wads looked thicker than normal, because of the way each bill appeared to have at one time been folded into a tight square and opened out again, but it seemed that the case held enough money to buy more computers than Ripley had sold in his entire career.

On Monday morning Ripley drove to the bank and deposited sixty thousand dollars in the rarely-used company account, then went on to his office. The weather was better than usual for late September and the only hint of approaching Fall was in the ochreous tinge of the grass in the park. He put his car in the busy parking lot at the side of the building, went into the cool brown cave of the entrance hall and reached his third-floor office without seeing another person. He felt as though he lived in a ghost town.

In the cramped stillness of his office he picked up the phone, buttoned Logicon Incorporated’s Vancouver number and got through to Sara Peart, secretary to the Western Region sales manager.

“Hi, Sara,” he said brightly. “This is Hank.”

“Hank who?”

“Hank Ripley. In Lethbridge. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the name.”

“I wasn’t sure if you still worked for us, that’s all.”

“Sharp as ever, Sara, sharp as ever. Is the old man in?”

“You sure you want to disturb him on a Monday morning?”

“I’m not going to disturb him. I just want to find out if he can let me have a Model 30 off the shelf, in a hurry.”

“You mean you’ve sold one?” Sara sounded more incredulous than was strictly necessary, and Ripley began throttling the cord that carried her voice.

“Of course I’ve sold one.” He kept cool. “Didn’t you read my latest report? I mailed it Friday night.”

“I never was much of a science fiction buff.”

Before Ripley could attempt an answer the phone clicked, and he was through to Boyd Devereaux.

“Nice to hear from you again, Hank—sometimes I think you neglect us a little out here on the coast.”

With a thrill of almost superstitious dread, Ripley recognised that Devereaux was doing his coolly menacing bit. “Good morning, Boyd. I’ve closed a cash deal for a Logicon 30,” he said quickly, wishing he had caught his boss in his jovial tyrant incarnation. “Can you let me have one out of inventory right away?”

“A cash deal?” Devereaux said after a slight pause.

“Yes. The money’s in the company account as of half an hour ago.”

“Well, that’s just great, my boy—I knew I was right in defending you at the last few regional sales conferences.”

“Thanks, Boyd.” Ripley squirmed, marvelling at Devereaux’s skill in making a pat on the back feel like a karate blow.

“Who’s the customer? I don’t remember seeing anything …’

“Mervyn Parr—I mentioned him in my last report. As a matter of fact, Boyd, I’ve been working on this man for quite a few weeks now, but it was such an off-beat way-out hunch that I didn’t like to list him as a genuine prospect till I was sure.” Sweating freely under the strain of creative labour. Ripley went on to sketch in a picture of an idiosyncratic oil baron whose hobby was higher mathematics, and who had been interested in buying his own computer through meeting Ripley at an exclusive cocktail party. When he had finished there was a ruminative silence on the line and he wondered if he had overdone it with the invention of the party.

“Hank, my boy, this is great,” Devereaux said at last. “Do you know what I’m going to do?”

“Uh—no, Boyd. I don’t.”

“I’m going to see that you get a bit of recognition. Young Julian Roxby, our PR chief, tells me he is on the look-out for a good feature on the prairie provinces for the Logicon Review. I’m going to get him to send a reporter and a cameraman across to Lethbridge and give this sale of yours a real splash. We’ll get you and this man Parr together; a shot of the Model 30 in his ranch-style living room …’

“We can’t do that,” Ripley neighed frantically. “Sorry, Boyd. Strictly no publicity—Mr. Parr insists.”

“That’s not so good, Hank.”

“It can’t be helped. Mr. Parr is very publicity-shy. Almost a recluse, you might say. Why, he even wants to take delivery of the unit himself, from my office here, so that nobody’ll see our truck going to his place.”

“Are you sure his hobby is mathematics?” Devereaux demanded suspiciously.

“Well, I can’t imagine him doing anything very immoral with a Model 30. Hah! Unless he gets up to some trick with the high-speed print-out.” Ripley laughed dustily then remembered, too late, that Devereaux was running for office in the Social Credit government and had a strong Puritanical streak.

“I find myself wondering just how effective our product orientation course was in your case, Hank,” Devereaux said coldly. “Now I want you to speak to your friend Mr. Parr, and get his agreement for full internal and external publicity. Have you got that?”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

When Ripley finally got off the phone he felt as though he had completed a full day’s work—and the morning had only just begun.

The computer was delivered to the office early on Wednesday, and Parr rang to enquire about it an hour later. He sounded agreeably surprised at the promptness of the delivery, but hung up before he could be tackled about publicity for the sale. Ripley walked round and round the slick grey-and-white plastic cube of the crate in an agony of decision. Devereaux had sounded determined; Parr had sounded even more determined—and Hank Ripley was caught squarely between them. He began to feel it-would have been better had he never spoiled his record of failure.

It was almost lunchtime when the office door opened and Parr came in wearing a different but equally expensive dark suit. He showed his grey teeth in satisfaction when he saw the crate.

“Good morning, Mr. Parr,” Ripley said heartily. “Well, there she is—the most compact middle-range computer in the world.”

“Don’t start selling it to me now.” Parr spoke tersely, with none of the rueful friendliness he had shown on their first meeting. “You’ve provided a full set of operating instructions?”

“Of course. There shouldn’t be any difficulty in …’

“Help me get it down to the van.”

“Sure—but there’s just one thing …’

“Well?” Parr’s cholesterol-rimmed eyes were distinctly impatient.

“It’s about publicity for the deal. Logicon has a firm policy about these things.”

Parr sighed. “Refund my money in cash, please. My department doesn’t want any traceable credit transactions.”

“I … It isn’t really a firm policy. I just thought I should mention it.” Ripley began to perspire.

“Help me get this crate down to the van.” Parr made the request in exactly the same tone of voice as before, signifying his contempt.

“Glad to.” Ripley decided he had done all that Logicon could expect of him. He began pushing the plastic cube, which moved fairly easily on its runners, and Parr hovered around guiding it through doorways to the elevator. The ring finger of his right hand was still banded with white. At street level they slid the crate out to a blue Dodge van which had the words “Rockalta Transport Hire’ on the sides, and stowed it in the back. When the doors were closed on the computer, Parr signed the delivery receipts without speaking and turned away.

“It’s been a pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Parr.” Ripley’s sarcasm seemed to go unnoticed, and he went back into the foyer swallowing his resentment. He paused at the inner door and looked back. Parr had just got into the driving seat and was doing something with his hands, one of them performing a screwing movement over the other. The van had moved off into the traffic stream before Ripley realised Parr had been putting on a ring. He went back up to his office, thinking hard about Mr. Mervyn Parr. The business with the ring had aroused his curiosity. What reason could Parr have for not wanting Ripley to see it? And, while questions were being asked, why did an academic dress like a highly successful businessman and speak like a preacher? On impulse, Ripley looked up the number of the New University of Western Canada and rang its Department of Sociology. Ten minutes later he had talked to almost as many people and had established that the department had nobody called Parr on either its administrative or lecturing staff.

After a moment’s thought, he rang the Rockalta Transport Hire Company and was answered by a bored female voice. “Lethbridge Police Department,” he said brusquely. “Lieutenant Beasley Osgood of the traffic branch speaking.”

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” The voice sounded less bored.

“There’s been a hit-and-run accident at the west end on the McLeod highway. One of the witnesses says a blue Dodge with the name of your outfit was involved.”

“Oh, my! That’s just dreadful.” The voice had become animated.

“Yeah. Well, we’re still checking the story out. Can you let me have the names and addresses of people who rented blue ’81 Dodge vans lately?”

“You bet!” There was a rattling of paper, mingled with excited whispers, and Ripley consoled himself with the thought that he had at least brightened up an otherwise dull day for somebody. “You’re certain it was an ’81 Dodge, Lieutenant?”

“The witness seemed pretty definite about that.”

“We have only one of last year’s models out at the moment—so that’s a help, isn’t it?”

“A great help—can you give me the man’s name and address?”

“Of course. People renting from us for the first time always have to show their licences and insurance. That van was rented this morning to a Mr. Melvyn Parminter of … let me see … 4408 Champlain Avenue, Red Deer, Alberta.”

“I see—and when’s it due back?”

“Oh, it isn’t due back. Not with Mr. Parminter in it, I mean. It’s to be dropped at our Red Deer depot tomorrow.”

“Thanks.” Ripley rang off and sat heaving nervously for a moment at the success of his playacting. When the schoolboy amusement had subsided to occasional flutters in his chest he leaned back and considered what he had gained. He now had what was probably Parr’s real name and address, but very little more. He had no idea, for instance, why Parr/Parminter should secretly buy a computer and turn it into an electronic busybody capable of spying on a whole city.

Saturday morning was sharp and clear, filled with the special aureate radiance which—Ripley had often noticed—the sun could emit only on days when there was no work to do. After breakfast he sat around for almost an hour, pretending he was not going to make the longish drive north to Red Deer, then went down to the parking lot and got into his car. Even when sitting behind the wheel he found it difficult to admit he was going to spend a whole day of his adult life playing detective and was expecting, furthermore, to enjoy it. He smoked a cigarette, waited another few minutes, cleaned his fingernails, and drove off with studied carelessness.

Once on the road, and away from the divining gaze of the neighbours to whom his bacherlorhood seemed to be an affront, he shed his self-consciousness. The route took him west to Fort McLeod and from there he followed the McLeod Trail up through prairies where the cattle shared the ground with patient, unattended oil pumps. He reached Red Deer by noon, ate sparingly at a diner and ascertained that Champlain Avenue was the core of a plush residential development on the north side. Twenty minutes later he was parked close to the tree-screened cube of pastel stucco which was Melvyn Parminter’s home.

Six hours later he was still parked there, had seen no signs of life, and was rapidly losing enthusiasm. He had got out of the car several times but had not dared to slip through the entrance gates of Parminter’s miniature but beautifully tailored estate. Now he was tired, bored, hungry and—to make things worse—had just thought of a perfectly good explanation for Parminter’s behaviour. Supposing he was in some highly competitive business in which a new application for a computer would give him an edge on the opposition? The dictates of commercial security could make a person behave as oddly as a criminal or an enemy agent.

Ripley decided to wait another ten minutes before going home. He was nearing the end of the third ten-minute spell when a Continental saloon, resplendent in polychromatic grey, wafted through the wrought iron gates and dwindled silently into the distance. Parminter was at the wheel. Ripley, taken by surprise, started his engine and drove off in pursuit. The ground-hugging shape of the Continental was deceptively fast, and he had to swoop down the quiet avenue at dangerous speed to catch up with it. He got within two hundred yards and concentrated on following the big vehicle across the city and out to the south side. Finally it swept into a tree-lined street in one of the oldest parts of town, and turned into the driveway of a large frame house situated well back from the street.

Ripley stopped his car and got out. Darkness was coming down rapidly, the air smelled of dusty foliage and genteel decay, and suddenly he felt a cold disquiet at the thought of meddling in Parminter’s private affairs instead of being back home for the Saturday night poker session. He hesitated for a moment, then his eyes distinguished a sign set just inside the opening where Parminter’s car had vanished. The street was deserted, but he glanced all around before approaching the gently creaking sign. It was fretted out in the shape of an open book and said:

“RED DEER TEMPLE OF THE VITAL SPIRIT”

“Pastor: M. Parmley”

Ripley looked at the gloomy old house—it looked exactly as he had always visualised a crackpot spiritualist temple—and back to the gold Gothic lettering on the varnished board. Was Pastor M. Parmley another manifestation of Mervyn Parr/Melvyn Parminter? And if so why should he want a computer set up to … ? Ripley abruptly remembered the cash with which the computer had been bought—each bill crinkled as if it had been folded into a tiny square. A startling idea flickered across his mind like a will o’ the wisp. It was an unpleasant thought, and if his guess was correct he wanted nothing more to do with Pastor Parmley. Ripley shivered slightly in the near-darkness as he noticed that one of the tall shrubs close to the sign was shaped like a human being. He was turning away when the shrub spoke to him.

“What a shame,” it said. “Must you leave so soon?”

“Mr. Parry,” Ripley yelped. “How nice to … I mean, I was just passing by …”

“Of course, of course—and now that you’re here you must come in for a proper visit.”

“Some other time, perhaps.” Ripley turned with the intention of walking away very quickly, but suddenly a thick forearm was clamped around his throat and his left arm was twisted up behind his back.

“Don’t make me twist your arm,” Parminter whispered.

“That’s a good one,” Ripley said, wondering how long his shoulder joint was going to hold out. “What do you think you’re doing? Look—I just happened to be in Red Deer for the day, and …”

“And you spent it sitting outside my house.” Parminter forced Ripley to walk up the black tunnel of the driveway.

“Oh. How did you catch on?”

“I was expecting you. The Rockalta people rang my home to find out if I’d damaged their van, and there was only one person who could have given them that story about a hit-and-run accident. It was quite clever.”

“Thank you.”

“Yes—I misjudged you, Mr. Ripley. I wonder how much you’ve guessed.”

“The lot, I think.” The pain in Ripley’s arm discouraged him from playing dumb.

“Too bad—for you, I mean. I won’t be able to let you run around loose.”

“Don’t try anything with me,” Ripley warned. He was striving for a convincing threat when they reached the entrance of the big house. The door was ajar. Parminter thrust Ripley through it and turned on a light to reveal a large, heavily furnished lobby.

“As a matter of fact, you’ve arrived at quite a good time,” Parminter said with a kind of menacing geniality. “I haven’t switched the entire system on yet, and I’ll appreciate the opinion of someone more knowledgeable about computers than I.”

“Go and …’ Ripley’s arm clicked audibly as the pressure on it was increased. “What do you want me to do?”

“That’s better.” Parminter let Ripley go and dusted his hands. He was wearing a massive gold ring which—like his sign—was in the shape of an open book and engraved with symbols. “The door’s locked, so don’t try to run.”

“Me run?” Ripley massaged his arm.

“Jump up and down,” Parminter commanded. Ripley gave a half-hearted leap and felt the floor move slightly beneath him. “You’re standing on a weighbridge which reads your weight to within four ounces. And over here is the camera.” Parminter walked to an ornate mirror and tapped it. “One way, of course.”

“I see. Where’s the Logicon itself?”

“Back here.” Parminter opened a door on the right and led the way into a room in which the computer sat near one wall. Its slick styling looked shockingly unfamiliar against the old-fashioned embossed wallpaper. The faded carpet had been cut back from it and a slim bunch of cables ran up to the machine through a chiselled hole in the floorboards.

“Looks all right, so far,” Ripley commented. “What’s this?” He pointed at a small camera positioned close to the computer’s print-out.

“Closed-circuit television monitor. Follow me.” Parminter went back into the lobby and entered another room. It was large and high-ceilinged, the walls completely covered by dark green velvet drapes. A long pedestal table surrounded by chairs occupied the centre of the room. The chair at the head of the table was so heavy and intricately gilded as to be almost a throne. Directly in front of it a sphere of polished crystal sat on the table in an ebony cradle carved like a pair of cupped hands. Parminter sat down in the huge chair, touched something beneath the table and a glow of greenish light appeared in the crystal.

“What do you think of it?” Parminter spoke with proprietary pride as he leaned back.

Ripley peered into the depths of the polished sphere and saw a distorted image of the computer print-out. “Neat. Very neat.”

I think so,” Parminter agreed. “There’s a fortune to be made in the spiritualist world if one goes about it the right way—but it’s a chancy business. There’s a ghastly story about one of my colleagues who told his audience he could draw on all the wisdom of the ages to answer any question, and was made to look a fool when some smart alec asked him to name the capital of North Dakota.

“With the help of your little machine he could have answered the question, but that’s not the type of information a practising spiritualist needs. The point of the story is that nobody ever asks a medium something that could just as easily be looked up in a reference book.”

“How long do you think you can keep me here?” Ripley’s fears for his own well-being were beginning to reassert themselves.

“The data a professional medium needs are more personal, more individual. When a middle-aged widow walks in here I can try to do a cold reading on her and win her confidence, but people are becoming too materialistic and sceptical to be hooked easily.

“From now on, when that widow walks in—knowing she has never seen me in her life, knowing she came only on the spur of the moment because a friend asked her—the computer gives me her name. More important, it gives me the name of her dear departed, his age, his former business, the names of other dead relatives, and so on. I look up at her, before she has a chance to speak, and I say ‘Hello, Mary—I have a message for you from Wilbur’. Can you imagine the impact?”

“I’ve never heard anything so immoral in all my life. How long are you planning to keep me here?”

“Nothing immoral about it! Ordinary mediums give people hope—I’ll be able to give them certainty.”

“Sell them certainty, you mean.”

“It’s impossible to set a price on the happiness I shall dispense to the old and the lonely and the bereaved. Besides, I’m a businessman. I’ve been working towards this for years, ploughing back the profits, denying myself the pleasure of spending all those surreptitiously folded bills the marks leave in my collecting box. Apart from the cost of the computer and other equipment, have you any idea how much it cost me to build a set of memory tapes? I’ve had dozens of people working for me coding the contents of directories, slaving in the public records offices, carrying out fake market surveys …”

“I guess you’ll get your money back in the end,” Ripley said acidly. “Is spiritualism nothing but a complete confidence trick?”

“What do you think? When you’re dead, you’re dead—and that’s the way it ought to be.” Parminter returned eagerly to his main theme. ‘But don’t class me as an ordinary confidence man, Mr. Ripley—I’m a pioneer. I’ve built something that never existed before—a computer model of the human relationships that give a city its corporate identity. Family ties, geographically created friendships and enmities, business connections … everybody in this area is part of a vast intangible matrix … and I have it right here on tape.” Parminter’s eyes were luminous. He reached below the table and there came a series of faint clicks which suggested he was activating the computer.

Ripley was convinced of the deadly necessity to get away. He began backing off slowly, and at the same time tried to keep Parminter’s mind engrossed in his creation. “The crystal ball doesn’t quite fit in, does it? I thought that was a fortune-teller’s gimmick.”

Parminter chuckled hoarsely. “Not only seers use them—the ball is supposed to be the focus for all kinds of special powers—besides, do you think Mary’s going to worry about that when I give her the message from Wilbur?”

“It still doesn’t look right to me.” Ripley reached the door as he spoke and tension made his voice a nervous squawk which caused Parminter to turn his head. The big man launched himself from the chair with frightening speed. Ripley turned and ran, but had taken only one stride when two massive hands closed round his neck from behind and pulled him back into the room. He struggled vainly against the other man’s superior strength.

“I’m sorry about this,” Parminter said with incongruous gentleness, “but no miserable little snoop is going to ruin my plans at this stage of the game.”

“I won’t talk,” Ripley husked.

“Or blackmail me either?” Parminter increased his pressure. He was not compressing Ripley’s windpipe, but his thick fingers had closed major bloodvessels. Black dots rimmed with prismatic colour began to march across Ripley’s vision. He looked around for something he might use as a weapon … nothing in sight … couldn’t even call for help … nobody to hear him anyway … nobody except those people sitting at the table…

People at the table?

Behind him Parminter gave a startled gasp and suddenly Ripley was free. He fell to his knees, breathing noisily while his eyes took in the group at the table. There were about a dozen men and women, some of them in distinctly antiquated dress, all of them looking slightly smeared and blurred round the edges, like images projected on to flurry cotton.

“No! Oh, no!” Parminter sank to his knees beside Ripley. “It can’t be.” He pressed his knuckles to trembling lips and shook his head dogmatically.

One of the men at the table pointed at Parminter. “Join us,” he said in a wintry voice, ‘there are things we wish to know.”

“Go away,” Parminter moaned. “You don’t exist.”

“But, my friend …” The blurred man stood up, rippling like a figure in a three-dimensional plastic picture, and came towards Parminter and Ripley. His eyes were dark holes into another continuum. Parminter scrabbled away from him, got to his feet and ran. The front door of the house slammed behind him. Ripley and the insubstantial man faced each other.

“You,” the man said. “You know how to operate the machine?”

“I … yes.” Ripley formed the words by consciously directing his tongue and lips.

“That is good. Please be seated at the head of the table.”

Ripley stood up and walked mechanically to the big chair. A dozen vaporous faces regarded him as he sat down, and he noticed they were all expectant rather than menacing. He began to feel more at ease as the first dim understanding of the situation came to him.

“This is a great moment,” the spokesman for the group said. “Communication between the two planes of existence has always been difficult and uncertain. The few genuine mediums still alive are so … inefficient that it is hardly worth one’s while bothering with them. It is impossible for us to materialise for more than a minute or two and,” a note of petulance crept into his voice, ‘you’ve no idea how frustrating it is to make the effort only to find oneself expected to deal with an elderly lady in some kind of fainting fit.”

The blurry features became animated. “But now—at last—an effective system has been created, a pool of the kind of information about loved ones on the other side of the veil that we all crave. The information will be available quickly and easily, provided there is a human agent to operate the machine. You will continue to be available, won’t you?”

“I …” Ripley was unable to speak.

“There’s good money in the spiritualism business,” the spokesman said anxiously. The other misty figures nodded emphatically. Looking around them, Ripley thought about his miserable existence as a salesman, and suddenly the decision was very easy to make, although he would still have to come to some arrangement with Parminter.

“I’ll be here as long as you want me,” he said. There was a flutter of pleasure around the assembly.

“That’s just wonderful,” the spokesman said. “And now, as I’ve been using up ectoplasm faster than the others, I claim the first question. My name is Jonathan Mercer and I used to live on the corner of Tenth and Third. I would like to know if my daughter Emily ever married that young accountant, and if cousin Jean finally got her divorce.”

Ripley put his fingers on the keyboard beneath the edge of the table and—with the look of a man who has found fulfilment—began to address the computer.