“Ticking,” Hymie replied. “I’m ashamed to say, she’s ticking along happily. It doesn’t bother her a bit that she’s been computer-napped by KAOS. It won’t bother her when she’s brainwashed, either. Keep her in oil, and she’ll work for anybody.”
“This is preposterous!” Max said to 99. “He’s talking about that machine as if she were a human. I don’t even believe she’s in there. If you ask me, Hymie is overdue for a spring check-up.”
“Hymie,” 99 asked, “what brought you here to this candy factory in the first place?”
“The tire tracks,” Hymie replied. “I followed them, and they led me straight here. Then I listened at the wall and heard Number One ticking.”
“All right, all right,” Max said. “The only thing to do is go in there and search the place and show him that he’s wrong. You can’t reason with a machine. A machine has a one-gear mind.”
“Max,” Hymie said, “I have twenty-six gears just running the main gear that runs all the secondary gears.”
“All right,” Max replied, “put yourself in gear and let’s go in there and prove to you that you’re wrong.”
They entered the factory and found themselves in a large, lavishly-decorated reception area. At the far end there was a huge desk, with an attractive blonde seated behind it.
“She’s either the receptionist or the chairman-of-the-board,” Max said, leading on.
As they neared the desk, the young lady waggled her fingers amiably at Hymie. “Hi, cutie!” she smiled. “Hear any termites?”
“As a matter of fact-” Hymie began.
But Max interrupted. “As a matter of fact,” he broke in, “we exterminators haven’t quite finished our inspection of the premises yet, Miss. We like to examine a building both from the outside and the inside.”
“That makes a lot of sense,” the receptionist said.
Max whispered to 99. “You can tell a dumb blonde anything,” he said. “Now watch this.” Speaking in a normal tone, he addressed the young lady again. “It will be necessary for us to examine every square inch of the building,” he said. “And when I say every square inch, I mean all the nooks and crannies and all the secret tuck-away places where a computer the size of a refrigerator might conceivably be hidden.”
The young lady sighed. “Boy, what a dumb secret agent,” she said. She got a pistol from a drawer of the desk and pointed it at Max. “I knew you weren’t exterminators,” she said. “Only Control agents would go around listening to bricks.”
“See! — what did I tell you?” Max said to Hymie. “Now look what you’ve got us into!”
Holding the gun on them, the blonde marched them through a secret opening in the wall behind her desk, then into the factory area. Giant machines were humming away, turning out candy bars by the hundreds.
“Say. . this is interesting,” Max said. “I’ll bet you make a nice little profit on a secret installation like this.”
“Profits were up seventeen per cent last year,” the blonde replied. “We had a hot item-the Fudgy-Nut Bar.”
“I saw your television commercials,” Max said. “Very good. My favorite was where the little kid got his Fudgy-Nut Bar stuck in his father’s hairpiece. I like the humorous approach.”
“That was a tragedy,” the blonde said.
“Well. . for the father, I suppose. But-”
“No, no, I think you missed the nuances,” the blonde said. “You see, several years earlier, the boy’s mother was kidnaped by a protoplasm from outer space. As the commercial opened, the father was dandying himself up to visit a go-go dancer he’d been courting. Now, the boy did not want a go-go dancer for a stepmother. So, flashing code signals with a laser beam, he’d contacted the protoplasm and asked for his mother back. The protoplasm was completely willing to return her-in the first place, it’d thought it was getting a sample of hybrid seed corn, and, in the second place, the mother had turned out to be a regular shrew. The only problem was, the protoplasm could return to earth only at a certain time. And by then, the father would be gone, calling on the go-go dancer to ask her to become his second wife. So, somehow, the boy had to keep his father at home until the protoplasm appeared, returning the mother. Consequently-”
“I understand,” Max said. “He stuck his Fudgy-Nut Bar in his father’s hairpiece. What I don’t understand is why the kid didn’t just tell his father that the protoplasm was bringing back the mother?”
“That way, what reasonable reason would we have had to work the product into the story line?”
Max nodded. “That explains a lot,” he said. “You’re right-it was a tragedy. I’m sorry I laughed.”
A few yards on, they were met by two short chubby, well-dressed men, who were wearing derbies, chewing short, stubby cigars, and standing near a number of in-ground vats. Max looked into the nearest vat and discovered that it was bubbling with dark chocolate syrup.
“They finally got here,” the blonde said to the men.
“What kept you?” one of the men asked Max. “We left a trail that anybody with any brains could have followed with his eyes closed.”
“He’s dumb,” the blonde explained.
“Now, let me get this straight,” Max said to the man. “You wanted us to follow your trail?”
“I thought of it,” the other man said.
“Maybe we better introduce ourselves,” the first man said. “I’m Melvin Means, and this-” He indicated the second man. “-is Wayne Ways.”
“Got it,” Max nodded. “Means and Ways. But that doesn’t explain why you wanted us to follow your trail.”
“We knew a team of Control agents would be sent to follow us,” Ways explained. “And, things being what they are-with all this slanting, so that the Good Guys always catch up to the Bad Guys-we knew that, in time, you’d find us. Then, we’d eliminate you. So, knowing how it was going to turn out-why wait? We let you find us, now we’ll eliminate you, then we won’t be bothered with you anymore. Efficiency!”
“A very good plan,” Max said. “I like it. Except, of course, for the part about eliminating us.”
“That’s my department,” Means said. “And we have the means right here at hand.”
“Efficiency,” Ways repeated.
“I can see only one hitch,” Max said. “What you probably didn’t realize is that no Control team ever leaves on an assignment like this without a second team to back it up. At this very minute, this factory is probably surrounded by from fifty-to-one-hundred Control agents, all armed to the teeth with machine guns, shivs, grenades, and land-to-air communications systems.”
“Land to air. .”
“For calling in an air strike,” Max explained.
Ways frowned. “You said ‘probably’ surrounded. Aren’t you sure?”
“Little mix-ups do happen,” Max replied. “They may have been delayed. You know how traffic is at this time of day.”
“Fifty-to-one-hundred agents?” Means shot back. “Aren’t you sure about the number?”
“Well. . it depends a lot on how many men were hanging around the ready room with nothing else in particular to do.”
“With machine guns, shivs and grenades?” Ways asked.
“Listen,” Max said irritably, “did I question it when you came up with that wildy about a protoplasm kidnaping some kid’s mother!”
The blonde rolled her eye ceilingward. “Dumb!”
“Go out and look around,” Ways said to the young lady. “If you see any Control agents-give us a whistle. They’ll be easy to spot. They’ll be the ones listening to the bricks.”
The blonde hurried off.
“Since we have a few minutes to kill,” Max said to Wayne Ways, “would you answer a question for me? Is Number One really here?”
“Didn’t you hear her?” Ways replied. “We turned her up to ‘High’ so you’d hear the ticking.”
“You know, you’ll never get away with this,” Max said. “Number One is very loyal. She’ll never allow you to brainwash her.”
“You’re wrong,” Wayne replied. “We told her what we plan to do, and the only thing she said was: how much oil is in it for me?”
The blonde returned. “All clear,” she reported.