should Ashton have an ex-directory number?
I said, ‘Know anything about high-impact plastics, Larry?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘A chap called Ashton runs a factory in Slough making the stuff. I could bear to know a little more about him.’
‘Haven’t heard of him. What’s the name of the firm?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know much. There might be a trade association.’
‘Great thinking.’ I went to our library and an hour later knew there were more associations of plastics manufacturers than I wotted of – there was even one devoted to high-impact plastics – but none of them had heard of George Ashton. It seemed unnatural.
Gloomily I went back to my office. It’s a hard world where a man can’t check up on his prospective father-in-law. Ashton, as of that moment, knew a hell of a lot more about me than I knew about him. Larry saw my face and said, ‘No luck?’
‘The man keeps a bloody low profile.’
He laughed and waved his hand across the room. ‘You could ask Nellie.’
I looked at Nellie and grinned. ‘Why not?’ I said lightly, and sat at the console.
You don’t have to cuddle up to a computer to ask it questions – all you need is a terminal, and we called ours Nellie for no reason I’ve ever been able to determine. If you crossed an oversized typewriter with a television set you’d get something like Nellie, and if you go to Heathrow you’ll see dozens of them in the booking hall.
Where the computer actually was no one had bothered to tell me. Knowing the organization that employed me, and knowing a little of what was in the monster’s guts, I’d say it was tended by white-coated acolytes in a limestone cavern in Derbyshire, or at the bottom of a Mendip mineshaft; anywhere reasonably safe from an atomic burst. But, as I say, I didn’t really know. My crowd worked strictly on the ‘need to know’ principle.
I snapped a couple of switches, pushed a button, and was rewarded by a small green question mark on the screen. Another button push made it ask:
IDENTIFICATION?
I identified myself – a bit of a complicated process – and Nellie asked:
CODE?
I answered:
GREEN
Nellie thought about that for a millionth of a second, then came up with:
INPUT GREEN CODING
That took about two minutes to put in. We were strict about security and not only did I have to identify myself but I had to know the requisite code for the level of information I wanted.
Nellie said:
INFORMATION REQUIRED?
I replied with:
IDENTITY
MALE
ENGLAND
The lines flicked out as Nellie came back with:
NAME?
I typed in:
ASHTON, GEORGE
It didn’t seem to make much difference to Nellie how you put a name in. I’d experimented a bit and whether you put in Percy Bysshe Shelley – Shelley, Percy Bysshe – or even Percy Shelley, Bysshe – didn’t seem to matter. Nellie still came up with the right answer, always assuming that Bysshe Shelley, Percy was under our eagle eye. But I always put the surname first because I thought it would be easier on Nellie’s overworked little brain.
This time she came up with:
ASHTON, GEORGE – 3 KNOWN
PRESENT ADDRESS – IF KNOWN?
There could have been two hundred George Ashtons in the country or maybe two thousand. It’s a common name and not surprising that three should be known to the department. As I typed in the address I reflected that I was being a bit silly about this. I tapped the execute key and Nellie hesitated uncharacteristically. Then I had a shock because the cursor scrolled out:
THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE GREEN TRY CODE YELLOW
I looked pensively at the screen and tapped out:
HOLD QUERY
Dancing electronically in the guts of a computer was a whole lot of information about one George Ashton, my future father-in-law. And it was secret information because it was in Code Yellow. I had picked up Larry Godwin on a joke and it had backfired on me; I hadn’t expected Nellie to find him at all – there was no reason to suppose the department was interested in him. But if he had been found I would have expected him to be listed under Code Green, a not particularly secretive batch of information. Practically anything listed under Code Green could have been picked up by an assiduous reading of the world press. Code Yellow was definitely different.
I dug into the recesses of my mind for the coding of yellow, then addressed myself to Nellie. ‘Right, you bitch; try again!’ I loaded in the coding which took four minutes, then I typed out:
RELEASE HOLD
Nellie’s screen flickered a bit and the cursor spelled out:
THIS INFORMATION NOT AVAILABLE ON CODE YELLOW TRY CODE RED
I took a deep breath, told Nellie to hold the query, then sat back to think about it. I was cleared for Code Red and I knew the information there was pretty much the same as the code colour – redhot! Who the hell was Ashton, and what was I getting into? I stood up and said to Larry, ‘I’ll be back in a minute. Don’t interfere with Nellie.’
I took a lift which went down deep into the guts of the building where there lived a race of troglodytes, the guardians of the vaults. I presented my card at a tungsten-steel grille, and said, ‘I’d like to check the computer coding for red. I’ve forgotten the incantation.’
The hard-faced man behind the grille didn’t smile. He merely took the card and dropped it into a slot. A machine chewed on it for a moment, tasted it electronically, and liked the flavour but, even so, spat it out. I don’t know what would have happened if it hadn’t liked the flavour; probably I’d have been struck down by a bolt of lightning. Strange how the real world is catching up with James Bond.
The guard glanced at a small screen. ‘Yes, you’re cleared for red, Mr Jaggard,’ he said, agreeing with the machine. The grille swung open and I passed through, hearing it slam and lock behind me. ‘The coding will be brought to you in Room Three.’
Half an hour later I walked into my office, hoping I could remember it all. I found Larry peering at Nellie. ‘Do you have red clearance?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Yellow is my top.’
‘Then hop it. Go to the library and study Playboy or something elevating like that. I’ll give you a ring when I’m finished.’
He didn’t argue; he merely nodded and walked out. I sat at the console and loaded Code Red into Nellie and it took nearly ten minutes of doing the right things in the right order. I wasn’t entirely joking when I called it an incantation. When faced with Nellie I was always reminded of the medieval sorcerers who sought to conjure up spirits; everything had to be done in the right order and all the right words spoken or the spirit wouldn’t appear. We haven’t made much progress since then, or not too much. But at least our incantations seem to work and we do get answers from the vasty deep, but whether they’re worth anything or not I don’t know.
Nellie accepted Code Red or, at least, she didn’t hiccough over it.
I keyed in:
RELEASE HOLD
and waited with great interest to see what would come out. The screen flickered again, and Nellie said:
THIS