Page 34 - Three Adventures

Deflator Mouse

no dependents, residing for three years at his present address. His
parents had been interned at Manzanar during the war, but that fact
had not interfered with his security clearance; almost every Japanese-
American of his generation had a similar background. School records
revealed a happy-go-lucky youth absorbed in sports and social
activity, finally buckling down to serious study in his junior year. He
finished second in his class and received a scholarship in computer
science at the prestigious Palo Alto campus. His thesis, “Applications
of Chaos Theory to Iterative Processes in Heuristic Algorithms,”
brought him to the attention of Oscar Beveledge and the Litmus
Corporation.
At that time, Project Salamander was still on the Pentagon drafting
tables. Litmus, through contacts established by the “revolving door”
ex-military men on its payroll, learned of the impending contract two
years before it was publicly put out for bid. This lead gave Beveledge
time to assemble a team of experts in the fields of artificial
intelligence and amphibious transport, areas of expertise Litmus
would need in order to win a large piece of the project. He could not,
of course, reveal the actual reason for recruiting specialists like
Oshima without compromising his sources; instead, other projects
were concocted to keep his stable of scientists and engineers
temporarily occupied. Now it was three months since the contract
had been awarded to Litmus Industries. Beveledge wasted no time in
re-ordering the priorities of his staff, which immediately set to work
in earnest on Project Salamander. Security had been tightened, and
employees were given the standard drill on destroying notes and
referring to classified matters by code names. The various project
groups had swung into action smoothly, each attacking one aspect of
the design. Then Deflator Mouse had appeared.
Ken collected his mail and skipped up the stairs to apartment 207.
Daylight Savings Time had started the previous Sunday, so he raised
the venetian blinds covering the living-room window and peered out
toward the Pacific Ocean: on clear days a vertical sliver of the sea
could be seen between two apartment buildings across the street;
today the fog transmitted a dull gray glow, blotting out any object
beyond ten feet. That sight ordinarily depressed him, gave him a
claustrophobic awareness of the box-like structure he inhabited. But
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