Harry Harrison: The Turing Option

He tore off the wrapping and a videocassette dropped onto the bench.

“That’s what it looked like in the X rays. Any message with it?”

“This is message enough. It says ‘play me’ loud and clear.” He weighed it in his hand, looked at Woody’s dark, stolid face. “I must look at this alone. Your suspicions were right — it is important. But I can’t break a promise so I can’t tell you why right now. But I will make another one. I’ll let you know what it is about just as soon as I can.”

“You do just that. Don’t see I have any choice.” Then he frowned. “Don’t do anything stupid, hear?”

“Loud and clear. Thanks.”

He went into the first empty office, closed the door and slipped the cassette into the machine. The screen flickered and cleared and showed a familiar book-lined study. Dr. Bociort was in his armchair. He raised a hand to the camera and spoke.

“I am saying good-bye, Brian. Or rather I have said good-bye sometime ago, since I made this recording soon after we met. I am an old man and filled with years — and mortal as the next. This recording has been left with my bank, which has instructions laid out in my will to post it to you after my demise. Therefore, you might say that I speak from the grave, as it were.

“When we met here I must now admit that I withheld one rather important bit of information from you. I do beg your forgiveness since it was done from pure selfishness. Had I revealed it, and had it led in turn to your discovering who your enemies are — that might have led in turn to my own death. We know they stop at nothing.

“I will talk no more about that. What I wish to tell you is that J. J. Beckworth is alive and living here in Switzerland. A country that specializes in anonymity and the keeping of secrets. It was only by accident that I saw him, coming out of a bank in Bern. Pure chance that he did not see me first. I of course no longer go to Bern, that is the reason I am here in St. Moritz. However, I did employ a firm of reliable investigators who located his residence. He is now living in a very expensive suburb of Bern under the name of Bigelow. I will read his address out to you and then I will say not au revoir, but a true and final good-bye.”

Brian broke the stunned silence that followed Bociort’s words with a cry of excitement.

“He’s alive — and I know where to find him!”

Beckworth alive — the thought cut through him like a knife. The one man who would know all the details, all the people behind the theft and murders, would know everything. They tried to kill me, tried more than once. Almost wiped out my brain, put me in the hospital, altered my life in every way.

He would find Beckworth, find who was behind him. Find them and make mem pay for what they had done to him. Brian paced the floor, forcing away the excitement and making himself think clearly — then reached for his telephone.

Benicoff would know what to do. He had started his investigation — now he was going to close it!

Ben was as elated by the news as Brian was — though he wasn’t happy about the terms forced upon him.

“This is really a matter for the police to take care of. Beckworth is a dangerous man.”

“The police can grab him after we have talked to him. I want to meet him face-to-face, Ben. I must do it. If you don’t want to come with me I just have to do it alone. I have his address and you don’t.”

“Blackmail!”

“Please don’t think that. It is just the way I have to go. You and I talk to him first and then the police grab him. We will take Sven along to record everything said. Okay?”

In the end Brian extracted reluctant agreement. Brian went back to the meeting but heard little of it. There was only a single thought in his mind now. Beckworth. As soon as possible he slipped out and went back to his apartment to pack a bag. Before he was done Sven knocked on the door.

“I was going to send for you as soon as the meeting ended. I have news—”

“I know. I listened to that video with great interest.”

“I should have known.”

“I was intrigued as you about the package. Will we be leaving soon?”

“Now. Let’s go.”

They met Ben at the Orbitport in Kansas in time for the evening flight to Europort in Hungary. The flight, out of the atmosphere and then back in, took less than half an hour. They spent ten times that amount of time on the sleeper train to Switzerland. Sven enjoyed the trip, enjoyed the attention he got. MIs in public were still a novelty.

The cabdriver passed the house, as instructed, and dropped them off at the next comer. Ben was still worried.

“I still think we should talk to the police before we go in there.”

“There is too big a risk. If there is even the slightest chance that the people behind this thing have an informant or a tap in the local police department, we risk losing everything. The compromise is a good one. Your office will be on to Interpol and the Bern police in a half an hour. That means we get to talk to him first. Let’s go.”

A chime sounded somewhere inside the house and a moment later an AI opened the door. It was one of the simpler production models made under license in Japan.

“Mr. Bigelow, if you please.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“I certainly hope so,” Brian said. “I am a former associate of his from the United States.”

“He is in the garden. This way, please.”

The AI led the way through the house to a large room that opened out through French doors to the patio beyond. Beckworth sat with his back to them reading his newspaper.

“Who was it?” he asked.

“These gentlemen to see you.”

He lowered the paper and turned to see them. His face froze when he saw Brian; he slowly rose to his feet.

“Well, gentlemen — it is about time you showed up. I have been keeping track of your activities and am quite amazed at your lack of enterprise. But you are here at last.” There was no warmth in his voice; cold hatred in his expression. “So — Brian Delaney at last, and one of the new MIs. And I see that you have brought Ben as well. Still clumsily in charge of the investigation — which appears to finally have succeeded or you would not be here. Though I am afraid, Ben, that I cannot offer you my congratulations—”

“Why, J.J.? Why did you do it?”

“That is a singularly foolish question for you to ask. Didn’t you know that the parent companies behind Megalobe were about to retire me? No insult intended, they said, but they wanted somebody with more technical skills. I considered this, then decided that retirement on my own terms would be more beneficial. It would also let me get rid of the old house, and old wife — and even more boring and grasping children. I would make a new life — and a far more financially rewarding one.” He looked directly at Brian for the first, his face a sudden mask of icy hatred. “Why didn’t you die the way you should have?”

Brian’s face mirrored Beckworth’s, hatred — but hard memories of pain were there as well. He was silent for a long moment as he carefully put his emotions under tight control. Then he spoke quietly.

“Who is behind the murders — the theft?”

“Don’t tell me that you came all the way here just to ask me that? I should think that the answer would be obvious by now. You know better than I do who in the world is doing AI research.”

“That’s no answer,” Brian said. “There are plenty of universities—”

“Don’t be stupid. I was referring to national governments. Where else do you think the immense sums would come from to finance an expensive operation such as the one that was mounted against Megalobe?”

“You’re lying,” Brian said coldly, his anger suppressed, controlled. “Governments don’t commit murder, hire assassins.”