"Morning, partner," said a voice above him. He looked up. Way up. Steve Kronski was built along the general lines of a water buffalo. The usual battered grin was smeared across his face. "I see we got a new assignment."
"Oh—did Larkin brief you on it already?"
"Yeah. Before I could get my hat off. Funny set-up, all right. I punched for basic data before you got in. Hardly any."
"Maybe that means something in itself. Maybe somebody saw to it that the information never got into the central banks."
The C.I.B. computers could be hooked into the central banks which stored information on nearly everything and everybody. If you incorporated, filed for a patent, paid taxes, voted, or just were born, the central banks had an electronic record of it.
Kronski jerked his thumb toward the computer room. "I punched for names of Supremist members coupla minutes ago. Thought maybe we could start in that way."
Pell followed, his mind not really on the job yet. He wasn't at his best working with the computers, and yet operating them was ninety per cent of investigation. He supposed he'd get used to it sometime.
Three walls of the big computer room were lined with control racks, consisting mostly of keyboard setups. Code symbols and index cards were placed in handy positions. The C.I.B. circuits, of course, were adapted to the specialized work of investigation. In the memory banks of tubes and relays there was a master file of all names—aliases and nicknames included—with which the organization had ever been concerned. Criminals, witnesses, complaints, everyone. Code numbers linked to the names showed where data on their owner could be found. A name picked at random might show that person to have data in the suspect file, the arrest file, the psychological file, the modus operandi file, and so forth. Any of the data in these files could be checked, conversely, against the names.
Kronski walked over to where letter sized cards were flipping from a slot into a small bin. He said, "Didn't even have to dial in Central Data for these. Seems we got a lot of Supremist members right in our own little collection."
Pell picked up one of the cards and examined it idly. Vertical columns were inscribed along the card, each with a heading, and with further sub-headed columns. Under the column marked Modus Operandi, for instance, there were subcolumns titled Person Attacked, Property Attacked, How Attacked, Means of Attack, Object of Attack, and Trademark. Columns of digits, one to nine, were under each item. If the digits 3 and 2 were punched under Trademark the number 32 could be fed into the Operational Data machine and this machine would then give back the information on a printed slip that number 32 stood for the trademark of leaving cigar butts at the scene of the crime.