Get Smart! gs-1 Read online

  Get Smart!

  ( Get smart - 1 )

  William Johnston

  William Johnston

  Get Smart!

  1

  It was a typical spring morning in New York City. The air was scented with carbon monoxide. A relative quiet hung over the metropolis, due to the fact that traffic was snarled in all directions. The only disturbing sounds were the popping of the buds and the gargling of the pigeons in Central Park.

  Then, on Madison Avenue, the quiet was interrupted by the ringing of a telephone. The jangling came not from an office building or shop. It was somewhere on the street. Men and women hurrying to work glanced about curiously-but saw no telephone. Odd. But in New York City that made it commonplace. So, for the most part, the passersby ignored the phenomenon and hurried on.

  The one person who could not disregard the ringing was Maxwell Smart-known to Control as Agent 86. Max was a slight, tight-lipped, firm-jawed, neatly-dressed young man. As the ringing continued, his expressionless eyes remained determinedly fixed on an imaginary point several yards to the front, as if he were trying to disassociate himself from the sound. Then finally he glared down at his right shoe and said testily, “All right, all right-I’m coming!” It was as if the telephone were hidden in his shoe.

  In fact, it was. But Max needed privacy to answer it. Even in New York City, talking to your shoe on Madison Avenue is cause for attracting attention. And, being a secret agent, Max felt it a duty to keep his occupation a secret.

  At the first phone booth he came to, Max stepped inside and pulled the door closed. He bent down, and with considerable difficulty, since the booth had not been built for the purpose of removing a shoe, he unlaced his right oxford, slipped it from his foot, then straightened and spoke into the sole, while listening at the heel.

  Max: 86 here-that you, Chief?

  Chief: What took you so long? I’ve been ringing you for a good ten minutes!

  Max: Sorry, Chief. I was indisposed.

  Chief: Oh… in the shower?

  Max: No, taking a stroll… enjoying the carbon monoxide on Madison Avenue. It’s lovely at this time of year.

  Chief: Max, I need you right away. There’s another crisis. How soon can you Max (interrupting): Excuse me, Chief. Hang on a second.

  Max turned toward the door of the booth, where, outside, a matronly middle-aged woman was rapping on the glass. He opened the door a crack and spoke to her.

  “Sorry, Madam,” he said, “this booth is in use.”

  “I have to make a call,” the woman said irritably. “This isn’t a dressing room, it’s a telephone booth. If you want to change your shoes, find a shoe store.”

  “Madam, I happen to be on the phone,” Max said.

  “You are not. The phone is on the hook.”

  Max glanced back over his shoulder. “Oh… that phone.” Then, facing the woman again, he said, “It so happens, Madam, that I am talking through my shoe. Now… if you’ll excuse me…”

  He pulled the door closed, and resumed his conversation with the Chief.

  Max: Sorry, Chief. A little misunderstanding with a civilian. Now

  … what were you saying?

  Chief: I said there’s a crisis afoot. And, following our procedure of assigning cases by rotation, your number came up. I need you here at Control right away. How soon can you Max (interrupting again): Chief… can you hold on? That civilian is back. I’ll just be a second.

  The middle-aged matron had returned, accompanied by a uniformed policeman. The policeman had rapped on the glass with his night stick. Once more, Max opened the door a crack.

  “Yes, officer, what can I do for you?” Max said.

  “That’s a telephone booth, buddy,” the policeman said. “And this lady wants to make a call.”

  “Officer, as I told the lady, the booth is in use,” Max said. “I’m making a call myself. A very important call. If it’s anything like most of my calls, the fate of the whole civilized world may hang in the balance.”

  “Now I believe him!” the woman snorted. “He told me he was talking through his hat!”

  “My shoe, Madam!” Max said. “I said my shoe-I’m talking through my shoe.” He opened the door the rest of the way and handed his oxford to the policeman. “Here, officer, try it yourself. The Chief is on the line. He’ll explain it to you.”

  Suspiciously, the policeman accepted the shoe.

  “No, no, you speak into the sole,” Max said. “The heel is for listening.”

  The policeman turned the shoe around.

  “Go ahead,” Max said. “Say, ‘Hello, Chief,’ or something like that. Just don’t ask him about his rheumatism-it’s a very sore point.”

  The policeman spoke. “Chief…?”

  As a reply came back, his mouth dropped open. Then, after a second, he said, “Sure, Chief, I understand. I thought he was a nut. Naturally, when he-” He listened again. Then, nodding, said, “Right. You can count on me. The fate of the whole civilized world is very important to me, too.”

  The policeman handed the shoe back to Max, then turned to the matron. “Sorry, lady,” he said, “this booth is in use.”

  “Mad!” the woman shrieked. “The whole world has gone mad!” She flounced off down the street. “I’ll report this! I’ll report it to somebody!”

  Smiling sheepishly, the policeman addressed Max. “Say, if you wouldn’t mind, there’s a little favor…” He glanced around to make sure he couldn’t be overheard, then, to make doubly sure, he whispered to Max.

  An expression of minor pain passed across Max’s face. Then he shrugged, and spoke into the shoe again. “Sorry, Chief,” he said. “I have to hang up now. The officer wants to make a call. To his mother in Brooklyn. See you in a few minutes.” Then he faced back to the policeman, handing him the shoe. “All right… but make it short. The fate of the whole civilized world… oh well, never mind.”

  Ten minutes later, his shoe back in place, Max was hustling along Madison Avenue once more, headed toward the garage where he had parked his car. When he reached there, the garage attendant had a complaint.

  “When I parked it and put on the emergency brake, there was a sound like a rat-a-tat-tat, and I shot twelve holes in the Buick parked behind me,” he said.

  “That’s not the emergency brake, that’s the trigger that operates the machine gun in the rear turret,” Max explained.

  “What about the Buick?” the attendant said.

  Max handed the man his Diners’ Club card. “Charge it,” he said.

  The attendant brought Max’s car around. It was a long, black, shiny, custom-built automobile. Max got behind the wheel and stepped on the accelerator-or, rather, what he thought was the accelerator. Instead, his foot landed on the floor button that activated the smoke screen. The garage filled with sooty, black smoke.

  Max donned his gas mask, then apologized to the attendant, who was doubled over in a spasm of coughing. “Sorry,” he said. “My foot slipped. A policeman has been talking through my shoe to his mother in Brooklyn, and I guess his hands were sweaty. It made my shoe slippery. That can happen, you know.”

  “Out!” the attendant rasped.

  Max found the accelerator with his foot, stomped on it, and roared out of the garage. “Sorehead,” he muttered, removing his gas mask.

  Control was located underground in a gray stone, government-looking building. Max parked at the service entrance, then, leaving his car, trotted down the steps. As he approached the door, an electronic device activated its mechanism and it rolled open for him to pass. He entered a bare-walled corridor. The door behind him clanged closed. Ahead of him another door rolled open. Reaching the opening, he started through-but noticed that the shoestring of his telephone had come untied.
He stooped to tie it. As he did so, the door clanged shut, nipping him from behind and sending him sprawling.

  Rising, Max eyed the door malevolently. “Whose side are you on?” he snarled.

  The door remained mute.

  Max proceeded along the passageway until he reached an unmarked doorway. He rapped out the tune of “Yankee Doodle” on the door. There was no reply. He looked thoughtful for a second, then tried “Over the Waves.” Still there was no response.

  Max turned the knob and opened the door. Seated at a large desk in a panelled, lavishly furnished office was a graying, dignified-looking man.

  “Chief, what’s the code tune for today?” Max said.

  “ ‘Yankee Doodle,’ ” the Chief replied.

  “I tried that.”

  “Which time-first time or second time?”

  “First.”

  “That sounded like ‘Anchors Aweigh,’ ” the Chief said.

  “You know my tin ear, Chief. Will you accept ‘Anchors Aweigh’ for ‘Yankee Doodle’?”

  The Chief sighed. “All right… since it’s an emergency.”

  Max closed the door behind him, tried “Anchors Aweigh,” and got “Yankee Doodle.”

  “Come in,” the Chief called.

  Max stepped in, closed the door, inserted his card in the time clock, rang it up, then moved on to the Chief’s desk. “Sorry I’m late, Chief,” he said, “but that officer’s mother was bawling him out for forgetting his gun. He left it on the bureau.”

  “Never mind that,” the Chief said crankily. As Max seated himself, the Chief leaned forward at his desk and said, “Max, this is the biggest case the department has ever been asked to handle. The fate of the whole civilized world may depend on its outcome. You couldn’t even guess what it concerns.”

  Max frowned. “Sounds to me as if the Beatles are involved.”

  “Something even more bizarre than that,” the Chief said. “Max, this concerns an electronic computer. The most sophisticated computer ever developed. The entire knowledge of civilized man has been fed into this computer. Ask it any question and you get back the correct answer in seconds. Imagine what that means! Ask it, for instance, how to make an explosive that would make the Atom Bomb look like a firecracker, and, peep-a-dotta, poop-a-dotta, dippa-dotta-boop, it would hand you the answer!”

  Max squinted at him. “Peep-a-dotta, poop-a-dotta, dippa-dotta-boop?”

  “That’s the sound it makes when it’s thinking.”

  “Oh.”

  “Max, the country that controls Fred controls the world!”

  “Fred?”

  “That’s its name.”

  Max brightened. “Oh, yes, I see. Familiar as I am with Fechner’s Law-which states that, within limits, the intensity of a sensation increases as the logarithm of the stimulus-I can guess that FRED stands for Fechnerized Radiological Electronic Decoder. Right?”

  “As a matter of fact, no,” the Chief replied. “FRED stands for Fred. The developer named the computer after her cocker spaniel… Fred.”

  “Oh…” Max said disappointedly. Then, “Her? Fred’s inventor is a woman?”

  “That’s right,” the Chief said. “Fred was constructed by a Miss Blossom Rose. You’ll meet her in a second. She’s going to accompany you on this case. Our hope is that Miss Rose will be able to talk some sense into this computer… that is, if and when you find him.”

  “You mean he’s missing?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. He left a note saying that, equipped as he was to provide the knowledge that would give one nation control over all others, he knew he wouldn’t have one peaceful moment. So he skipped. He said he hoped to find tranquility in obscurity.”

  “A computer? Let’s face it, Chief-where could a computer go so he wouldn’t be noticed?”

  “That’s your problem, Max. Your job is to find Fred and bring him back. Convince him that we’re his true and only friends. If possible, try to do it without violence. But, of course, if he won’t listen to reason, then the only alternative will be to destroy-” The Chief sighed. “Well, we’ll cross that alternative when we come to it.” He rose. “Right now, I want you to meet your companion on this case. She’s waiting in the other office.”

  The Chief pressed one of the wall panels. It opened, revealing a small room where three off-duty agents were seated at a table playing poker.

  “Oops… sorry,” the Chief said. He closed the panel.

  “That makes the third continuous year for that poker game,” Max said. “When is it due to end?”

  “Not soon,” the Chief said. “Harry is the heavy winner-he’s fifty-four thousand, two-hundred and seven dollars ahead-and the others won’t let him quit until they have a chance to get even.” He pressed another panel. It opened, he said, “Ah, yes,” then stepped back. “Miss Rose, would you come in here, please…”

  A stunning blonde emerged. She blinked her large blue eyes demurely as Max rose to offer her his chair.

  The Chief introduced the two, then Max said, “I assume you’re an electronic engineer, Miss Rose.”

  “Call me ‘Blossom,’ ” she replied. “And, no, I’m at the check-out counter at the A amp; P.”

  It was Max’s turn to blink his large blue eyes. “But the Chief tells me that you’re the inventor of Fred.”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “But it was sort of an accident. You see, I have this nephew. And, for his birthday, I bought him this sort of set. You were supposed to be able to build a computer out of it. Anyway, I opened it up-just to see what it looked like-and it looked very interesting… all those little tubes, and things that went ‘click-click,’ and things. So I wanted to see if it would be too complicated for a little boy of twenty-four months, and I started putting things together. I couldn’t make much sense of the instructions. There was all that rigamarole about connecting ‘this’ to ‘that’ and ‘that’ to ‘this,’ and I could never find the ‘this’ that went to ‘that.’ So I sort of made it up as I went along. And, one thing led to another, and then there was-”

  “Fred,” Max nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “I understand you named him after your cocker spaniel. Wasn’t that a little confusing-having a dog and a computer around the house who both answered to the name of Fred?”

  “My ex-dog,” Blossom explained. “About six months ago, my puppy Fred passed on to that great dog house in the sky.”

  “I see.” Max began pacing. “One other question. The Chief tells me that Fred has taken it on the lam. I wonder… how did he do it? Did you build him on roller skates?”

  “Oh, no,” Blossom answered. “He has legs. Just like a human being.” She lowered her eyes. “You see, I’m a single girl… and I guess I sort of had Rock Hudson on my mind while I was building him. Not that he looks like Rock Hudson. But… as close as I could come. He looks like a robot.”

  Again, Max nodded. “There may possibly be a similarity there,” he said. He halted, looking thoughtful. “There’s one aspect of this case that bothers me,” he said. His questioning eyes zeroed in on Blossom Rose. “Miss Rose, may I ask a personal question?”

  Blossom colored. “Well…”

  “The question is: What did you finally get your nephew for his birthday?”

  She brightened. “A motorcycle.”

  “Good, good,” Max said. “I was afraid there for a second that you had broken his little heart by not getting him a gift.”

  The Chief spoke up. “Miss Rose,” he said, “I think it might be helpful if you told Max exactly how Fred operates.”

  “I already know that-he operates alone,” Max said.

  “No… I mean how he functions.”

  “Well,” Blossom said, “I didn’t want him to be dependent on me. You know, have a mother complex. So I built him so he could operate himself. What he does is, I gave him a nickel, and he drops it into his slot, and that turns him on. Then he pushes a lever at his side, and his eyes start revolving, then he goes ‘peep-a-dotta, poop-a-dot
ta, dippa-dotta-boop,’ and that means he’s thinking.”

  “That’s the price of inflation,” Max said. “It used to be ‘a penny for your thoughts’-now it’s a nickel.” He scowled. “Doesn’t that run into money, a nickel every time he wants to think?”

  “No,” Blossom said. “I built him so that when he drops the nickel into his slot it falls back into his pocket. He uses the same nickel over and over again. I guess I did that because of working at the A amp; P. We’re always running out of change at the check-out counter.”

  Max turned back to the Chief. “Chief, I’d like to make a request. This looks like a tough caper to me-like looking for a robot in a haystack. I’ll need all the help I can get. I’d appreciate it if you’d also assign Agent K-13 to the case.”

  Blossom looked disappointed. “Three’s a crowd,” she said.

  Max spoke sternly to her. “I think we’d better get one thing straight,” he said. “When I’m on a case, I’m no longer Max Smart, wonderful human being and brilliant conversationalist-I’m Agent 86, dedicated secret operative. It’s all work and no play. My mind is fixed on the objective, like a foot stuck in the mud. Is that clear?”

  Blossom shrugged. “If that’s the way you want it. But I don’t see what harm maybe a movie or a little dancing could do.”

  The Chief intervened. “I’ll get K-13,” he said.

  As Max and Blossom observed, the Chief got up and went to the wall. He pressed a panel near the floor. It opened, and a large shaggy dog romped out. The dog had the appearance of having first been dropped into a vat of glue, then into a barrel of feathers.

  “Here, boy… here, Fang!” Max called.

  The dog leaped on him, pawing him. They exchanged greetings.

  “This is Agent K-13… fondly known as ‘Fang,’ ” Max said to Blossom.

  She smiled. “He reminds me of Fred-that is, Fred my cocker spaniel,” she said. “Except, of course, that he’s about ten times bigger and doesn’t look a thing like Fred.”

  “One of our top agents,” the Chief said. “Absolutely fearless.”