He re-dreamed it now, the time when Roderick seemed unstoppable, when they’d found themselves solving problems no one else had even posed. He re-lived the high moments: the day Bunsky’s Deep Structure babbled out its first genuine sentence on the teleprinter (‘Mama am a maam’); Dan’s first Introspector, the day it thought (it thought) and therefore it was (it thought). The day his own Face-recognizer, seeing him stick out his tongue, cried…
He started opening and shutting desk drawers. ‘Let me show you something, just let me show you… here, this, look at this.’
Rogers took the bundle of accordion-folded paper, yellow-edged and dusty. ‘What’s this?’ He read the top page and passed it back. ‘What is it?’
‘The spelling’s all wrong, but that’s, it’s still intelligent, you can see a living intelligence there, it’s, I guess you could call it an essay… listen, let me read some of it to you:
‘“There a like because they both sound like they begin with R. There a like they both have some syllables more than one. There a like because one is like a bird and theres a bird called a secretary and the other is like a furniture and theres a furniture called a secretary too. Or may be they both have quills which are like old pens. May be E. A. Poe wrote one when he sat at the other or is that a like? There both inky. I give up. I give up. There a like because otherwise you would not ask me why. Or there a like because there both in the same riddle—’”
Rogers hung his legs over the arm of the chair and tapped a foot on air. ‘Okay, so you had fun working on this.’
‘Fun? I — fun? We had four years of hard work, good work but too hard, some of us didn’t even make it all the way. But it was going to be worth it, we were getting closer all the time, closer and then… and now, those maniacs in Houston want us to just… stop. As if you could just stop a thing like this, just forget about it and… Look, look, here’s the damned telex, read it yourself
He smoothed out the paper and handed it over.
Dr Lee Fong Cmptr sci dept univ of Minnetonka be advised all funding ex NASA per project robber and/or any other project your dept frozen as of this date, pending internal NASA audit. Recall all purchase orders and cease all ongoing operations immediately. Address all future communications to section officer
‘All this Masterson would tell me on the phone was that I couldn’t talk to Stonecraft any more, he’s suspended. And that their auditors were getting a court order to look over my books. And he practically called me a crook.’
Rogers nodded and tapped. ‘Doesn’t look good, does it? I really don’t see how you can expect the University to foot the bill for your project while you’re under a cloud like this. I mean of course you’re innocent, probably meaningless to assign guilt labels at all in a multivalent situation like this, okay I can buy that — but. But Lee, why don’t you just get a good lawyer and ride this thing out? Then when you’re cleared — who knows?’
Fong looked at him. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lawyers, why should I get a lawyer? Whole thing’s probably a misunderstanding, Stonecraft’ll clear it up. All I want is to finish—’
‘Sure, sure, you want emergency funding from the U to tide you over, and believe me if it was my decision you’d get the bread. Only the rest of the committee might not see it that way…’ An elaborate shrug, and he was on his feet. ‘Good to talk to you, Lee.’
‘Wait, you haven’t even looked at the lab, don’t you want—?’
‘Okay. A tour. Fine, but a quickie. Then I really must…’
They left, closing the anonymous ivory-coloured door on the stuffy little room where nothing moved, or almost nothing: a telex message lay on the desk, trying to gather itself once more into the crumpled form of the inside of Dr Fong’s fist, as though it would remember bafflement and anger at its reception, as it remembered (with a misprint) the confusion at its transmission.
The four young accountants might have been four high-school boys, trashing Stonecraft’s office just for fun. And it was fun, one of them realized, catching sight of his own gleeful face reflected in a picture glass, as he passed to dump another armload of files on the floor.
‘This is kinda fun, you know?’
‘Yeah, only don’t let Masterson see you standing around looking at pictures. We gotta get the dirt on this sonofabitch before he gets back here.’
‘What the hell’s this, a bill for a buffalo? And this, for a hurricane? Who the hell buys hurricanes?’
‘I got a lot of those funny bills, just put ’em in this pile. Like this one, a Grumman Avenger—’
‘You dumb twat, that’s an airplane. Let me see those — holy Christ, forty-three thousand for a model — they must be real planes! He must be collecting old airplanes!’
‘But hey, there must be fifty, a hundred of ’em, look at this, Hellcat, Focke-Wulf—’
‘Yeah you Focke-Wulf, hahahaha.’
‘I’m serious, Bob, here’s a Liberator, a Flying Fortress, a Spitfire, no two Spitfires, a Messerschmidt, Thunderbolt, Zero, Christ he’s got a air force here, it’s like he’s getting ready for World War Two all over again…’
‘Yeah and look at these repair bills, and this… deed to a fucking airfield, what do you think all this adds up to?’
‘We’ll run it when we get them all. I can tell you right now where the fucking money came from, only question is how did he rip it off?’
Masterson was on the telephone in the outer office; they could hear every roar: ‘I don’t care where he is, I want him found. I want him back here now… Well you just make sure he does. I don’t care if you have to call out the Air Force and force him down, just don’t let him turn up missing across the border… He’ll find out when he gets… you do what? Yas, yas, I’m holding…’
One of the accountants nudged another and giggled. ‘Old Masterson wants his damn job, that’s what it’s all about.’
‘Looks like he’s got it, lookit all this shit, man, must be over eight figures — Kevin, you gettin’ anywhere with your stuff?’
‘I got it, all right. Simple, he just funnelled the money through this hick university up north, into these here dummy companies. I mean, look at these names, Rockskill Industries, Pebblework Electronics, Bouldersmith Inc — who the hell’s supposed to be fooled by names like that?’
‘Hey you twat, them files are marked TOP SECRET, you got a clearance?’
‘Bullshit, man, Stonecraft never had no clearance himself, this is all faked up. See, he got this university to buy stuff from these companies — owned by him — at about ten times market value, only we picked up the tab. Look, double-billing, I mean that’s really an old trick, I mean that’s really old, man…’
‘How did he get away with it? Didn’t this university look at their own bills? SOP, Bob.’
‘That’s just it, he looked over all the damn universities till he found this jerkwater outfit using an old computer accounting system, shoulda been scrapped years ago. There, he seen his chance and took it.’
Masterson swore next door, and the four fell silent, but only for a moment.
‘Gotta admire the old bugger, in a way. He bitched our computer too, so it passed stuff over to the next audit, and then the next — looks like two, three billion here never audited. Bob, what you got there?’