“Eighty-Five’s got it down to a fine art!” Wrench chortled. “Damn near subatomic circuitry! Creates its own ‘waldoes’… manipulators, like hands… miniaturizes ’em, then uses those to make the next set still smaller, and so on. A lot fancier than the Magellan series the Army’s using… or anything Korinek and his kikibirds have developed!” He lay back on the sofa, obviously pleased with himself.
“Many of my extensions are now mobile: cameras, audio recorders, infrared and X-ray sensors.”
“You could create a tiny poison needle, on tracks, like a tank… the size of an insect!” Wrench made a stabbing motion, then rolled up his eyes and feigned death.
“No, Commander Wren. I am specifically ordered not to harm human beings.”
“Directly harm them. I remember one time, right here in Washington “
“If you command me to seek ways around my directives, then I will do that.” Eighty-Five’s sugary voice was expressionless.
“I think you enjoy looking for ‘ways around,’” Wrench commented.
“‘Enjoy’ is a verb I cannot fully comprehend. I am programmed to employ energy, ingenuity, and intuition in solving problems.”
Mulder idly opened a desk drawer and extracted a pad of hotel stationery. The letterhead was years old. “We don’t have time for chit-chat. What do Korinek’s conversations contain? His messages to you?”
Lessing interjected: “And why can’t you just replay all of your White House terminal’s interchanges with Korinek? Why just the ones picked up by Wrench’s eavesdropping device?”
“Can’t,” Wrench told him. “Like the two of us separately playing the same computer game. You shoot down your Martians, I shoot down mine. What with sneaky access codes and passwords, Eighty-Five can’t tell us what’s in somebody else’s file, or even acknowledge that that file exists. We can only hear what Korinek says to his Eighty-Five terminal, if Wrench’s transmitter picks it up and sends it to our Eighty-Five terminal. Our Eighty-Five can’t read Korinek’s Eighty-Five files, pen or no pen. To access them, we’d have to have Korinek here, willing to use his eye-and voice-prints, verbal codes, and whatever else. We’ve got our private files, Korinek and his boys have theirs, and the Army chiefs have theirs. And ‘never the twain shall meet.’”
Mulder had grown impatient. “What’s in the conversations?” Eighty-Five inquired, “Do you wish summaries or verbatim replays?”
“Summaries will do.”
“Message one: call to Mr. Korinek’s mistress, Ms. Dolores Can-era; he will be working overtime tonight and will contact her tomorrow. Message two: call to Mr. William Michael Tangen, Special Treasury Agent, Grade 9, to arrange for a racquetball court and a sauna at the Newport Club this afternoon at 1500 hours. Message three: call to his secretary reminding her to search for the file dealing with President Outram’s Grand Coulee Dam rebuilding project “
“Anything relating to the Party of Humankind? To us?” “Message five: a telephone call to an unidentified party. Shall I replay it?”
“Yes,” Mulder and Wrench answered simultaneously.
Korinek’s reedy voice filled the room. “Put me through. Yes. Korinek. They were here Yes… I told them. I think they’re scared, but they won’t run.” Silence. Then: “If that’s what’s needed. I’ll get Horowitz on it…”
“Horowitz?” Lessing whispered.
Eighty-Five heard him. “Ninety-three per cent certainty that the reference is to Colonel Abraham L. Horowitz, U.S. Army, commanding Special Ranger Force ‘Black Lightning’ at Fort Meade, Maryland.”
Korinek’s voice resumed: “…and we’ll take the bastards out. You coordinate it from your place…. Oh, there won’t be any slip-ups. The thirteenth? Fine…. Yes, I’ll see that somebody
handles the West Coast and the South Finley? And Arris?…
Yes, and Oakes. They’ll do.” Another pause. “Listen, I have to go. Get back to you Right.”
“Take us oufl” Mulder exclaimed. “Some sort of military action?”
“It’s not impossible,” Lessing stated. “Remember Ponape?” He himself did not — could not — remember much about that period of his life.
Wrench tugged at his lower lip. “The thirteenth? Of October?” He peered at his wristwatch calendar. “We’ve got ten days!”
Mulder was already asking Eighty-Five fordata: troop schedules, readiness reports, and dossiers. He swivelled to face Lessing: “Get your Cadre troops back here from Canada. Make excuses: rest and relaxation, normal rotation, minor incidents here that need their attention. Liese, you inform Sam Morgan, Jennifer Caw, Grant Simmons, Hans Borchardt… all our leadership! Wrench, work with Eighty-Five and see what more you can find out. Where the hell is Bill Goddard?”
“Here.” The big man bulked in the doorway. “Traffic.”
“Fill him in,” Mulder ordered Wrench. “We’ll need PHASE to find that secret camp Korinek mentioned.”
“And to see to this guy Horowitz,” Wrench added. “As well as Finley, Arris, Oakes, and the rest of Korinek’s Seven Dwarves.”
Lessing was off on another tangent. “Eighty-Five, you said Korinek’s call was to an unidentified person? Can you trace it? Get the number from the beep-tones when he dialed?”
“I have already done that. It is a local number: 555-9201.”
“What? ‘555’ is an empty prefix… the telephone companies don’t issue it.” Wrench scratched his chin in puzzlement.
“This appears to be an exception,” Eighty-Five said. “I do not find it in any directory, nor is it in the ‘unlisted number’ files. It is also not recorded as a secret government number.”
“How the hell can that be? Trace it!”
“Mr. Korinek has ordered my White House terminal to institute baffles and tell-tales to prevent that.”
“You mean you are actually blocking… obstructing, fighting… yourself}” Lessing snapped his fingers in frustration. “For God’s sake!”
“Quite so. As you humans say, ‘I am my own worst enemy.’” Lessing thought he heard an audible chuckle. Wrench’s efforts to give Eighty-Five a sardonic sense of humor were apparently succeeding.
“We must know who that unidentified person is!” Mulder said. “Priority one!”
“If only we could access Korinek’s Eighty-Five files!” Liese put in.
Lessing considered. “Eighty-Five, you said we could order you to try to solve problems. All right, I’m ordering: find a way around Korinek’s passwords and get us into his Eighty-Five files.”
The machine seemed to ponder. Then it said, “There is a way, although my creators would be alarmed to learn that I am using it I can accept a direct command from a high Government official, however. Mr. Mulder, as Secretary of State, will you issue such an order?”
Mulder cleared his throat. “Yes. I do so issue.”
“Very well. If you wish to observe, you must go to my hologram projector room, or else have the apparatus brought here.”
“Let’s go!” Wrench urged. “Up a floor, in what used to be the penthouse fun-and-games suite.” He did not wait for the others to follow.
The penthouse was another relic of a bygone age: lavish, luxurious, provided with everything from billiards to bedrooms, a huge sauna and jacuzzi, full-wall TV, a landscaped terrace big enough to land a small plane on, and all the trappings of opulent decadence. In the bar Lessing quickly found the refrigerator behind the sleek, bubble-swirl Glassex counter; it was stocked with mixers and beer, but somebody had liberated all the hard liquor. He chose a bottle of fancy German beer — God knew how long it had been there — and poked around in the clever, little cupboards until he discovered a glass — as well as a pair of see-through panties and a set of handcuffs. The old hotel must’ve seen some fun parties…!