bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1999) — Spring 1999 // Printemps 1999, pp. 46–48
Chief MacBannock couldn’t find his hearing aid. A Scot to the core, he still used an early model, with an earpiece wired to an external box receiver. Today, the earpiece dangling unconnected from his ear, he was subjecting his office to a creditable Category 7 search (“maximum brouhaha’’) as Liebnitz ushered someone in with the words, “Chief, I think we have a breakthrough on the Third Generation crisis. May I present Baron Rüdiger von Sneezewagon?”
The broad expanse of MacBannock’s trouser seat was suddenly replaced by his alarmed countenance as he straightened up from an assault on his hassock and turned around. “A ruder Sleazewagon? Whatever did you bring him in for? Isn’t the one we’ve got bad enough?” The tall, aristocratic visitor glowered. “Sneezewagon, my good man, a distinguished family of yarrow merchants going back to the Middle Ages. The Sleazewagons are a black-sheep cadet branch that we sawed off the family tree over thirty years ago, when I caught young Rialto mixing LSD into our top-of-the-line sinus spray. Wanted people to blow their nose and their mind at the same time.”
Meanwhile, MacBannock found a small black box under a kipper on his desk, plugged in his earpiece and turned expectantly to his ace logician. “Now what’s all this about?” Liebnitz replied, “You remember the weird results we’ve been getting on the Third Generation diplomatic cloning project? The cell cultures that reverted to slime when we added gin? The embryos that started charging rack rent to their siblings in the womb? The blastocyst with a pencil-thin moustache? Well, I believe the Baron here has the key to explaining the problem.”
MacBannock smiled broadly and replied, “Nong rao yahk bpai. Chai way-lah taorai?” Liebnitz looked non-plussed for a second, then strode over to look at the box in the Chief’s hand and shouted into his free ear, “That’s not your hearing aid, that’s the tape recorder for your language lessons. And that’s a terrible thing to say about your brother, even in Thai.” Luckily, the Baron found another small box behind a six-foot Venus flytrap. The Chief accepted it gratefully.
“As I was saying,” the logician continued, “the Baron has news for us.” Picking up his cue, von Sneezewagon set off. “Rialto visited us a year ago for the first time in decades. I was suspicious, but he seemed sincere in seeking reconciliation and even expressed an interest in visiting the family chapel to pay his respects. Impressed, I unlocked the doors and left him to what I thought would be his devotions. Imagine my horror when I returned later to find Rialto gone and with him a dozen reliquaries containing locks of hair from the most distinguished Sneezewagons through the years.
“Rushing upstairs, I cornered him trying to sneak quietly out carrying a clanking five-foot carpetbag full of heavy ecclesiastical silver. When I confronted him, he admitted the theft, claiming that he needed the samples in order to bring the family to new greatness by using their DNA to take over the foreign ministry of a well-known power. I called him mad. He told me to smile when I said that and tossed a handful of the firm’s own sneezing powder in my face. I had to admire his style, but by the time I recovered, he had made his escape. I dismissed the whole think as a prank until I heard about your problems in one of my Internet chat groups — alt scitech genetics.gesundheit, as I recall. Then it all fell into place and I got in touch.”
While the Baron was talking, the Chief looked increasingly perplexed and kept adjusting his earpiece. As silence fell, he started tapping randomly at the new black box. Suddenly the room got very busy. A panel slid down on the north wall to reveal a television playing Norman Schwartzkopf videos. A bar slid out of a hidden closet and a robot arm began pouring drinks. Transparent bulletproof shutters appeared over the windows, while outside men with bazookas emerged from the building and calmly took up position submerged in the Japanese fishponds. From the ceiling descended what looked suspiciously like the Cone of Silence.
Liebnitz cried out, “Chief, stop! That’s your Ultramax Remote Control! For God’s sake, don’t hit the red button!” But MacBannock’s finger was already there, Liebnitz and the Baron could only stare in horror as the barrels of twin 50-caliber machine gun emerged from a large credenza and tracked pitilessly to target them. But just as the guns opened fire, MacBannock’s flailing fingers touched the black button on his remote and the two visitors dropped with a shrill scream as a trap door suddenly appeared beneath their feet. Passing just over their heads, the bullets punched out the full text of “Tam o’ Shanter” in the wall beside the office door before the Chief finally found the “Off” key, slumped in this chair and accepted a Scotch from the robot bartender.
Eleven stories down, Liebnitz and von Sneezewagon came to a sudden stop in a huge pile of crumpled paper, which broke their fall. “Thank heavens for the Business Plan,” said the logician, dusting himself off. “Interesting ride,” replied the Baron,, “but in future I believe I will stick to research and the Web. Have I told you about my plans for virtual hay fever?”
Some days later, Liebnitz explained this conversation to his aides, Inspector Wa and Felix Africa. “The Third Generation project is the latest phase of the Centre’s research program to create the perfect diplomat by extracting DNA from famous statesmen and combining them through genetic engineering. Development of the resulting embryos is accelerated through massive doses of growth hormones and education is force-fed through direct synaptic stimulation.”
“The First Generation was graded as ’an instructive first step’ (ie an unmitigated disaster that certainly identified some wrong directions). The goal was to produce a diplomat with the infectious cheerfulness of Lester Pearson, the ideological commitment of Leon Trotsky, Henry Kissinger’s keen analytical sense of historical flows, Prince Talleyrand’s sophisticated instinct for compromise and Attila the Hun’s ruthlessness hidden under Neville Chamberlain’s self-effacing modesty. Unfortunately, mistakes were made: the result was a series of dark-suited figures with the infectious cheerfulness of Leon Trotsky, the ideological commitment of Prince Talleyrand, Neville Chamberlain’s keen sense of historical flows, Attila the Hun’s instinct for compromise and the ruthlessness of Lester Pearson masked by the self-effacing modesty of Henry Kissinger.”
“Good heavens, Liebnitz,” said the horrified Inspector. “Whatever did you do with them? What sort of useful life could they hope to lead?” The ace logician repressed a shudder as he remembered his last meeting with Treasury Board analysts. “Actually, they were snapped up rather quickly by another agency…”
“In any event,” he went on, “The Second Generation was more successful. They are now in a special facility undergoing careful testing, while doing much of the work on the Third Generation. That phase is supposed to take the most successful man and woman of the Second Generation, cross their genetic material and clone the resulting embryo to create as many perfect diplomats as the Government could want. We weren’t in fact sure that Cabinet would agree to the plan, but then someone in Finance convinced his Minister that since all the clones had identical genetic material, they were in fact all the same person and so the Government would only have to pay out one salary, one benefits package and one retirement option. They say the Minister hadn’t laughed so hard since he confiscated our pension surplus.”
“But we quickly ran into some very peculiar problems while the embryos were still in the early stages of development. With the Baron’s information, we now know the problem: Rialto Sleazewagon has somehow managed to “turn” one of the Second Generation scientists and substituted DNA from his own family in the Third Generation program. He’s using our research project to clone a whole panoply of Sleazewagons. But we’re onto him now. And you two are just the ones to identify the double agent.”
On the following Monday morning, a bedraggled-looking pair were back in Liebnitz’s office. Felix spoke for them: “Well, we solved the problem for you. Found the traitor. At least I think we did. We carried out a full inspection at the Second Generation dormitories and wrapped things up on Friday.” He paused in embarrassment. The inspector gulped and continued for him. “Jimmy the Turk came over on Friday night and we celebrated. I’m afraid our finding got scrambled by alcohol.” Liebnitz asked, “You mean you got so drunk you can’t remember what you found out?” “Worse,” replied the Inspector. “Felix accidentally dropped all of our notes into a blender of ugli-fruit daiquiris and turned it on before he noticed. We’ve spent all weekend putting things together. Jimmy was a lot of help — even said the result looked like his own reports.” The ace logician closed his eyes and muttered a small malediction as Wa timidly handed over this paper:
The twenty Second Generation officers, ten men and ten women, are housed two to a room in a special dedicated dormitory (see map). The building has three floors with identical floor plans of four rooms each. The first floor has two unnumbered common rooms plus two private rooms (101-102), while each of the other two floors has four private rooms (201-204 and 301-304). Rooms with the same last number are directly above/below each other. Of the ten rooms, eight are assigned to mixed pairs (one male and one female each), one is assigned to a pair of men and one to a pair of women. Of the mixed pairs, six are sleeping with their own roommates, while two pairs have recently had a falling out and are sleeping with each other’s roommates.
Each of the twenty officers has a dominant genetic heritage from one of six famous diplomats (eg Metternich). As an external marker, each also has a facial characteristic from that diplomat (eg Metternich’s nose). No two officers within the twenty have the same facial characteristic. No pair of roommates has a facial characteristic that derives from the same heritage personality or is reflected in the same part of the face. Other than the above general notes, the following facts are known. (Note that each of the officers is identified by a single name and that they refer to a male lover as an “ami” and a female lover as an “amie”.)
(1) Nansen’s room number and the room number of Cecil’s amie are different exact multiples of the room number of the woman with Bismarck’s eyes. (2) The men in room 203, Kellogg and Jouhaux, are the only gay couple. They have Zhou’s hair and Talleyrand’s lips respectively.
(3) The people with Metternich’s features are Gobat in room 101 (lips), the man in room 302 (eyes) and Brandt’s amie
(nose).
(4) Rotblat’s roommate in 304 is the woman with Zhou’s lips, but his amie has Zhou’s eyes.
(5) The three people with “heritage” ears are the woman in 301 (Kissinger’s), Sato (Pearson’s) and the unattached female in 102 whose name comes earlier in alphabetical order (Bismarck’s). (6) The man with Pearson’s chin, Mr
Deklerk, Ms Ignarro and the woman with Kissinger’s eyes make up the four people in two adjacent rooms. (7) Esquivel’s ami is the man in 303, but her roommate is the man with Kissinger’s nose.
(8) Three women live on the ground floor. (9) Ossietzky (the man with Bismarck’s chin) and Tutu are roommates on the third floor.
(10) Pauling is the ami of the woman with Talleyrand’s nose.
(11) Fried is roommates with Hume and lives next door to Lange.
(12) Addams, Mott’s ami and the unattached woman with Talleyrand’s chin live directly above/below each other on different floors.
(13) The man with Bismarck’s nose shares a room with the woman with Pearson’s hair.
(14) Cecil and Mott share a room directly across the stairway from Brandt’s room on the same floor.
(15) Quidde is the roommate of the man with Kissinger’s hair.
Felix coughed gently as the ace logician finished reading and said, “The Turk had a look at what we could piece together and said we should give you this clue to the traitor’s name: [302-304-302-202-304 303- 301-204-304-101 304-X-202-304-302-301- 201-301-303].” Liebnitz replied, “His clue clearly spells out words using the room numbers to represent letters — the first initial of one of the people who live there, or I miss my guess. You’ll have noticed that everyone’s name starts with a different letter, but that no-one’s starts with an X-which is why he had to write that letter out plainly. Of course that means that each number could always represent either of two letters.”
As they were finishing, Chief MacBannock trudged by their open office door. Poking his head in, he asked, “Did I just hear you say you wished you had a pencil-thin moustache, the Boston Blackie kind? It seems in pretty bad taste, after what we’ve been going through. And what does it mean, anyway?” The ace logician sighed. “No, Chief, I didn’t say it. I expect it was Jimmy Buffett. And what it means is that you’ve got your hearing aid plugged into your pocket radio again. You really should stay away from those ’Golden Oldies’ stations.”
Liebnitz then reconstructed the scrambled report and identified the villain. Can you duplicate his feat by working out the two occupants of each room and the name of Sleazewagon’s mole? bout de papier will decide the winner by drawing from a box containing all correct entries received by August 3. The winner will receive a book prize autographed by A Aalto.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 16, No. 1 (1999) — Spring 1999 // Printemps 1999, pp. 46–48. Read the rest of this issue →
