The Andromeda Strain (5 page)

IN CASE OF FIRE
Notify Division 87
Emergencies Only

He stared at the card and wondered what exactly would happen if he dialed the binary of 87. He tried to imagine the sequence of events: Who would he talk to? Would someone call him back? Would there be an inquiry, a referral to higher authority?

He rubbed his eyes and stared at the card, and finally he shrugged. One way or the other, he would find out.

He tore a sheet of paper from the pad in front of him, next to the telephone, and wrote:

This was the basis of the binary system: base two raised to some power. Two to the zero power was one; two to the first was two; two squared was four; and so on. Manchek quickly wrote another line beneath:

Then he began to add up the numbers to get a total of 87. He circled these numbers:

And then he drew in the binary code. Binary numbers were designed for computers which utilize an on-off, yes-no kind of language. A mathematician once joked that binary numbers were the way people who have only two fingers count. In essence, binary numbers translated normal numbers—which require nine digits, and decimal places—to a system that depended on only two digits, one and zero.

Manchek looked at the number he had just written, and inserted the dashes: 1–110–1010. A perfectly reasonable telephone number.

Manchek picked up the telephone and dialed.

The time was exactly twelve midnight.

day 2
PIEDMONT

5
The Early Hours

THE MACHINERY WAS THERE. The cables, the codes, the teleprinters had all been waiting dormant for two years. It only required Manchek’s call to set the machinery in motion.

When he finished dialing, he heard a series of mechanical clicks, and then a low hum, which meant, he knew, that the call was being fed into one of the scrambled trunk lines. After a moment, the humming stopped and a voice said, “This is a recording. State your name and your message and hang up.”

“Major Arthur Manchek, Vandenberg Air Force Base, Scoop Mission Control. I believe it is necessary to call up a Wildfire Alert. I have confirmatory visual data at this post, which has just been closed for security reasons.”

As he spoke it occurred to him that it was all rather improbable. Even the tape recorder would disbelieve him. He continued to hold the telephone in his hand, somehow expecting an answer.

But there was none, only a click as the connection was automatically broken. The line was dead; he hung up and sighed. It was all very unsatisfying.

Manchek expected to be called back within a few minutes by Washington; he expected to receive many calls in the next few hours, and so remained at the phone. Yet he received no calls, for he did not know that the process he had initiated was automatic. Once mobilized, the Wildfire Alert would proceed ahead, and not be recalled for at least twelve hours.

Within ten minutes of Manchek’s call, the following message clattered across the scrambled maximum-security cabler units of the nation:

UNIT