`How do you find San Diego?' he asked, walking along with his maddeningly springy step.

`Boring and hot.'

Phelps sighed. `Don't blame me. I didn't choose it.'

Graves did not reply. They continued down a corridor and came upon a guard, who nodded to Phelps. `Good morning, Mr Phelps.' And to Graves: `Good morning, sir.' Phelps flashed his pink card; so did Graves. The guard allowed them to pass farther down the corridor past a large banner that read FIRST CWS SERVICE ON COACH.

`You've got a guard already,' Graves said.

`There's a lot of expensive equipment to look after,' Phelps said. They made a right turn and entered a conference room.

There were just four of them: Graves; Phelps, looking springy and alert as he greeted everyone; Decker, who was thin and dark, intense-looking; and Venn, who was nearly fifty, greying, sloppy in his dress. Graves had never met Decker or Venn before, but he knew they were both scientists. They were too academic and too uncomfortable to be anything else.

Phelps ran the meeting. `This is John Graves, who is the world's foremost expert on John Wright.' He smiled slightly. `Mr Graves has plenty of background, so you can speak as technically as you want. Decker, why don't you begin.'

Decker cleared his throat and opened a briefcase in front of him, removing a sheaf of computer printout. He slipped through the green pages as he spoke. `I've been working in Special Projects Division for the last six months,' he said. `I was assigned to establish redundancy programmes on certain limited-access files so that we could check call-up locations to these data banks, which are mostly located in Arlington Hall in Washington.'

He paused and glanced at Graves to see if the information was making sense. Graves nodded.

`The problem is basically one of access-line proliferation. A data bank is just a collection of information stored on magnetic tape drums. It can be anywhere in the country. To get information out of it, you need to hook into the main computer with an access substation. That can also be anywhere in the country. Every major data bank has a large number of access substations. For limited or special-purpose access - stations that need to draw out information once or twice a week, let's say - we employ commercial telephone lines; we don't have our own lines. To tie in to a peripheral computer substation, you telephone a call number and hook your phone up to the computer terminal. That's it. As long as you have a half-duplex or full-duplex telephone line, you're in business.'

Graves nodded. `How is the call number coded?'

`We'll come to that,' Decker said, looking at Venn. `For now, we'll concentrate on the system. Some of the major data banks, like the ones held by Defence, may have five hundred or a thousand access lines. A year ago, Wilkens' congressional committee started to worry about unauthorized tapping into those access lines. In theory, a bright boy who knew computers could tap into the system and call out any information he wanted from the data banks. He could get all sorts of classified information.'

Decker sighed. `So I was hired to install redundancy checks on the system. Echo checks, bit additions, that sort of thing. My job was to make sure we could verify which stations drew out information from the data banks, and what information they drew. I finished that work a month ago.'

Graves glanced at Phelps. Phelps was watching them all intently, pretending he was following the discussion. Graves knew that it was over Phelps' head.

`Just before I finished,' Decker said, `we discovered that an unauthorized station was tapping into the system. We called it Sigma Station, but we were unable to characterize it. By that I mean that we knew Sigma was drawing information, but we didn't know where, or how.'

He flipped to a green sheet of computer printout and pushed it across the table to Graves. `Sigma is the underlined station. You can see that on this particular day, July 21st, 1972, it tapped into the system at ten oh four rnt Eastern time and maintained the contact for seven minutes; then it broke out. We determined that Sigma was tapping in at around ten o'clock two or three nights a week. But that was all we knew.'

Decker turned to Venn, who said, `I came into the picture at this point. I'd been at Bell Labs working on telephone tracer mechanisms. The telephone company has a problem with unauthorized calls - calls verbally charged to a phone number, calls charged to a wrong credit card number, that kind of thing. I was working on a computer tracing system. Defence asked me to look at the Sigma Station problem.'

`One ought to say,' Phelps said, `that the data bank being tapped by Sigma was a Defence bank.'

`Yes,' Venn said. `It was a Defence bank. With two or three taps a week at about ten PM. That was all I knew when I began. However, I made some simple assumptions. First, you've got to have a computer terminal in order to tap the system. That is, once you've called the number that links you to the computer, you must use a teletypewriting or CRT apparatus compatible with the Defence system.'

`Are those terminals common?'

`No,' Venn said. `They are quite advanced and fairly uncommon. I started with a list of them.'

Graves nodded.

`Then I considered the timing. Ten PM Eastern time is seven rht in California, where most of these sophisticated terminals in defence industry applications are located. If an employee were illegally using a terminal to tap into Defence, he couldn't do it during office hours. On the other hand, it requires an extraordinary access to get into an East Coast terminal location at ten at night - or into a Midwest location at eight or nine. Therefore Sigma was probably on the West Coast.'

`So you checked the West Coast terminals?'

`Yes. Because in order to hook into the Defence system, you'd have to unhook from your existing system. What corporation, R amp;D group, or production unit had a terminal that was unhooked at seven Pm Western time twice a week? Answer: None. New question: What group had its terminals repaired twice a week? Repairing would entail unhooking. Answer: The Southern California Association of Insurance Underwriters, a company based in San Diego.'

Graves said, `So you investigated the repairman and you found -'

`We found our man,' Venn said, looking slightly annoyed with Graves. `His name is Timothy Drew. He has been doing repair work on the SC Association computers for about six weeks. It turns out nobody authorized those repairs; he just showed up and -'

`But you haven't picked him up.'

Phelps coughed. `No, actually. We haven't picked him up yet because he's -'

`Disappeared,' Graves said.

`That's right,' Phelps said. `How did you know?'

`Tim Drew is a friend of John Wright. He's had dinner with him several times a week for the last month or so.' As he spoke, Graves had a mental image of Drew - early thirties, blond-looking, muscular. Graves had run a check on him some weeks back and had discovered only that Drew was an ex-Army lieutenant, discharged one year before. A clean record in computer work, nothing good, nothing bad.

`We weren't able to find him,' Venn said, `but we're still looking. We thought -'

Graves said, `There's only one thing I want to know. What information did Drew tap from the classified files?'

There was a long silence around the cable. Finally Decker said, `We don't know.'

`You don't know?' Graves lit a cigarette. `But that's the most important question -'

`Let me explain,' Decker said. `Drew was an exArmy officer with knowledge of computer systems. He knew that he couldn't call in on any old number. The call-in numbers are changed at irregular intervals, roughly once a week. But the possible permutations of the call-in number aren't great. With trial and error, he might have found it.'

`You know he found the number,' Graves said, `because you know he tapped in. The question is, what did he tap out from the system?'

`Well, once he was hooked up, he still had a problem. You need subroutine codes to extract various kinds of information, and -'

`How often are the codes changed?'

`Not very often.'

Graves found himself getting impatient. `How often are the codes changed?'

'About once a year.'

Graves sighed. `So Drew might have used his old codes to get what he wanted?'

`Yes.'

`Then we want to know what codes he knew. What sort of work did Drew do when he was in the Army?'

`He did topological work. Surface configurations, shipment routings, that sort of thing.'

Graves glanced at Phelps. `Can we be more specific?'

`I'm afraid not,' Phelps said. `Defence is unwilling to release Drew's work record to us. Defence is a little defensive, you might say, about the fact that this tap occurred in the first place.'

There was a long silence. Graves stared at the men around the table. There were times, he thought, when working for the government was an exercise in total stupidity. Finally he said, `How can you get Defence to release the information?'

`I'm not sure we can,' Phelps said. `But one of the reasons you're being briefed is that we were hoping you might be able to shed light on the situation.'

`I might?'

`Yes. Drew was working for Wright, after all.'

Before Graves could answer, the telephone rang. Phelps answered it, and said, `Yes, thank you,' and hung up. He looked at Graves. `Do you have any thoughts about this?'

`None,' Graves said.

`None at all?'

`None at all.'

`Well,' Phelps said, `perhaps something will occur to you in the next hour.' He gave Graves a heavily disapproving look, then stood up and turned to Decker and Venn. `Thank you, gentlemen,' he said. And to Graves: `Let's go.'

HOUR 11
LOS ANGELES
6 AM PDT

Another conference room, another group. This room was decorated entirely in Tahiti posters; it occurred to Graves that whoever had owned the travel agency before it went bankrupt was a Tahiti-nut. Perhaps he was himself Tahitian. Graves began to wonder why the Tahitian owner had gone out of business. Too much time away from the office, basking in the sun? Discrimination against him by Angelenos? Some rare disease carried by coconuts which had made him an invalid?

`Gentlemen,' Phelps said, and cleared his throat. Graves was snapped back to the present. He looked around the room. There were, he saw, a number of high-ranking Washington people. They all looked tired and disgruntled. Phelps had brought them out to California on a red-eye flight, let them sleep a few hours, then dragged them up for a meeting with... John Graves?

`John Graves,' Phelps said, `has come up from San Diego this morning to brief you on John Wright. Mr Graves has been in charge of Wright's surveillance in New York and San Diego for the past three months.' Phelps nodded to Graves, and Graves stood.

`We have some footage which is quite revealing,' Graves said. `I thought we'd begin with that, if we can screen it...'

The men in the room looked confused. Even Phelps, who never lost his aplomb, seemed uncertain. Graves settled it by tearing down several Tahitian posters from the wall, clearing a blank white space. He was embarrassed for a moment - the tearing noise sounded somehow indiscreet with all these Washington guns, and the whole business emphasized the makeshift nature of the surroundings.

Phelps seemed to sense it, too. `You must excuse us,' he said, `but these are temporary quarters for the duration of the Republican Convention.'

Graves stepped to one side as the room lights dimmed. A black-and-white image was projected on the wall. It showed a dapper, rather handsome man standing at a podium. For a moment there was no sound, and then it came on abruptly. The voice was sharp, vigorous, and slightly petulant.

`- can a person do in the twentieth century? The question is not rhetorical, my friends. Each and every one of us is powerless in the face of giant corporations, giant institutions, giant government. Do you think automobiles are badly made? Do you think your electricity bill is too high? Do you disagree with the nation's foreign policy? Well, there's nothing much you can do about it. No matter what you think, or I think, the wheels continue to spin of their own inertia.'

The film image of John Wright paused to take a drink of water. `Perhaps you think that a few people have power - high government officials, high corporate executives, wealthy individuals. But that also is untrue. Everyone is locked into a system which he has inherited and is powerless to change. We are all trapped, my friends. That is the meaning of the twentieth century. It is the century of impotence.'

Wright's voice dropped lower, became more ominous. Isis face was grim. `Impotence,' he repeated. `Inability to act. Inability to be effective. This is what we must change. And with the help of God, we shall.'

There was some applause on the sound track before the film ran out of the camera and the room lights came back on. Graves lit a cigarette and flipped through the pages of his own file on Wright before speaking.

`I showed you that film for psychological, not politcal, reasons,' he said, `because it summarizes most of what we know about John Wright's mental state. The speech was given last year before the annual conference of the Americans for a Better Nation, an- extremist group which Wright started and still leads. You've probably never heard of it. It's small, and has no significance whatsoever in national politics. Over the last few years, Wright has poured 1.7 million dollars into the organization. The money apparently doesn't matter to him. But the lack of impact - the impotence - matters a great deal.'

He paused and glanced around the faces at the table. They seemed to be paying attention, but just barely. Two were doodling on the pads before them. `John Wright,' he said, `is now forty-nine years old. He is the son of Edmund Wright, of the Wright steel family. He is an only child. His father was a crude, domineering man and an alcoholic. John grew up in his shadow, a very strange child. He was a good student and learned quite a lot of mathematics, even made a minor reputation for himself in that field. On the other hand, he was an inveterate gambler, horse racer, and womanizer.'

The assembled men began to fidget. Graves nodded to the projectionist, who began flashing up slides. The first showed Edmund Wright glaring into the camera. `Edmund Wright died of cirrhosis in 1955. John Wright changed completely when that happened. He moved to New York from Pittsburgh and became a kind of local celebrity. He was married four times to well-known actresses; all the marriages ended in divorce. The last divorce, from Sarah Layne, occurred in 1967 and coincided with a six-month nervous breakdown for Wright. He was hospitalized in McClain General outside Atlanta for paranoid ideation and feelings of impotence. Apparently he had been impotent with his last wife.'