Thad McCain, my boss at Manhattan-Universal Insurance, beamed over the sprawling1 automatic brain's silver gauges2 and plastic toggles as proudly as if he had just personally gave birth to it. "This will simplify your job to the point of a pleasant diversion, Madison."
"Are you going to keep paying me for staying with my little hobby?" I asked, suspiciously eyeing my chrome competitor.
"The Actuarvac poses no threat to your career. It will merely keep you from flying off on wild-goose chases. It will unvaryingly separate from the vast body of legitimate3 claims the phony ones they try to spike4 us for. Then all that remains5 is for you to gather the accessory details, the evidence to jail our erring6 customers."
"Fine," I said. I didn't bother to inform him that that was all my job had ever been.
McCain shuffled7 his cards. They were cards for the machine, listing new individual claims on company policies. Since the two-month-old machine was literate8 and could read typewriting, the cards weren't coded or punched. He read the top one. "Now this, for instance. No adjuster need investigate this accident. The circumstances obviously are such that no false claim could be filed. Of course, the brain will make an unfailing analysis of all the factors involved and clear the claim automatically and officially."
McCain threaded the single card into the slot for an example to me. He then flicked9 the switch and we stood there watching the monster ruminate10 thoughtfully. It finally rang a bell and spit the card back at Manhattan-Universal's top junior vice-president.
He took it like a man.
"That's what the machine is for," he said philosophically11. "To detect human error. Hmm. What kind of a shove do you get out of this?"
He handed me the rejected claim card. I took it, finding a new, neatly12 typed notation13 on it. It said:
"You want me to project it in a movie theater and see how it stands it all alone in the dark?" I asked.
"It's too general. What does the nickel-brained machine mean by investigating a whole town? I don't know if it has crooked16 politics, a polygamy colony or a hideout for supposedly deported17 gangsters18. I don't care much either. It's not my business. How could a whole town be filing false life and accident claims?"
"Find that out," he said. "I trust the machine. There have been cases of mass collusion before. Until you get back, we are making no more settlements with that settlement."
Research. To a writer that generally means legally permissible19 plagiarism20. For an insurance adjuster, it means earnest work.
Before I headed for the hills, or the Ozark Mountains, I walked a few hundred feet down the hall and into the manual record files. The brain abstracted from empirical data but before I planed out to Granite City I had to find the basis for a few practical, nasty suspicions.
Four hours of flipping21 switches and looking at microfilm projections22 while a tawny23 redhead in a triangular24 fronted uniform carried me reels to order gave me only two ideas. Neither was very original. The one that concerned business was that the whole village of Granite City must be accident-prone25.
I rejected that one almost immediately. While an accident-prone was in himself a statistical26 anomaly, the idea of a whole town of them gathered together stretched the fabric27 of reality to the point where even an invisible re-weaver couldn't help it.
There was an explanation for the recent rise in the accident rate down there. The rock quarry28 there had gone into high-level operation. I knew why from the floor, walls, ceiling border, table trimmings in the records room. They were all granite. The boom in granite for interior and exterior29 decoration eclipsed earlier periods of oak, plastics, wrought30 iron and baked clay completely. The distinctive31 grade of granite from Granite City was being put into use all over the planet and in the Officer's Clubs on the Moon and Mars.
Yet the rise in accident, compared to the rise in production, was out of all proportion.
Furthermore, the work at the quarry could hardly explain the excessive accident reports we had had from the village as far back as our records went.
We had paid off on most of the claims since they seemed irrefutably genuine. All were complete with eye-witness reports and authenticated32 circumstances.
There was one odd note in the melodic33 scheme: We had never had a claim for any kind of automobile34 accident from Granite City.
It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to prove is either right or wrong.
Tentatively, I decided36 that for generations the citizens of Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy37 to defraud38 Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors39 of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of dollars in false accident claims.
Maybe they made their whole livelihood40 off us before the quarry opened up.
I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane reservation and a gun.
After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take kindly42 to my spoil-sport interference.
The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively43 fast. Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular stewardess44 was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear the outline of her thesis on the guilt45 purgings effected by The Life and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge was already nibbling46 the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase47 as we chute-braked for a landing at the Greater Ozarks.
It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains.
Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted48 over to the automobile rental49 and hired a few hundred of them under the hood41 of a Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen, and I have steadfastly50 refused to enter an American model since they all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo51 trucks when I was a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for prestige.
It was a tiresome52 fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves, flipping into second for the hills.
The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a tumble of dingy53 building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo54 sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these few little stacks of lumber55 had taken Manhattan-Universal for three quarters of a megabuck.
I turned off onto the gravel56 road, spraying my fenders with a hail of a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing57 myself to keep from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man sitting at the side of the road, huddled58 in his dusty rags.
"Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window.
"I've suffered no harm at your hands—or your wheels, sir. But I could use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when you leave town?"
I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides their initials belonged to some cult59 or other. I try to be as tolerant as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to drive with them down lonely mountain roads.
"We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me where I can find Marshal Thompson?"
"I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there."
"Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City."
"It's the house at the end of the street."
"It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open."
The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't like people to run automobiles60 on the streets of Granite City."
"So I'll just lock the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go getting tire tracks all over your clean streets."
The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls.
"You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know," he said conversationally61.
"Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I could keep an eye on him.
"Come back," he said, as if he had doubts.
The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less lethal62 means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped63 up a baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my small change pocket.
I have made smarter moves in my time.
As I approached the house at the end of the lane, I saw it was about the worse construction job I had seen in my life. It looked as architecturally secure as a four-year-old's drawing of his home. The angles were measurably out of line. Around every nail head were two nails bent64 out of shape and hammered down, and a couple of dozen welts in the siding where the hammer had missed any nail. The paint job was spotty and streaked65. Half the panes66 in the windows were cracked. I fought down the dust in my nose, afraid of the consequences of a sneeze to the place.
My toe scuffed67 the top porch step and I nearly crashed face first into the front door. I had been too busy looking at the house, I decided. I knocked.
Moments later, the door opened.
The lean-faced man who greeted me had his cheeks crisscrossed with razor nicks and his shirt on wrong side out. But his eyes were bright and sparrow alert.
"Are you Mr. Marshal Thompson, the agent for Manhattan-Universal Insurance?" I put to him.
"I'm the marshal, name of Thompson. But you ain't the first to take my title for my Christian68 name. You from the company?"
"Yes," I said. "Were you expecting me?"
Thompson nodded. "For forty-one years."
Thompson served the coffee in the chipped cups, favoring only slightly his burned fingers.
I accepted the steaming cup and somehow it very nearly slipped out of my hands. I made a last microsecond retrieve70.
The marshal nodded thoughtfully. "You're new here."
"First time," I said, sipping71 coffee. It was awful. He must have made a mistake and put salt into it instead of sugar.
"You think the claims I've been filing for my people are false?"
"The home office has some suspicions of that," I admitted.
"I don't blame them, but they ain't. Look, the company gambles on luck, doesn't it?"
"No. It works on percentages calculated from past experience."
"But I mean it knows that there will be, say, a hundred fatal car crashes in a day. But it doesn't know if maybe ninety of them will be in Iowa and only ten in the rest of the country."
"There's something to that. We call it probability, not luck."
"Well, probability says that more accidents are going to occur in Granite City than anywhere else in the country, per capita."
I shook my head at Thompson. "That's not probability. Theoretically, anything can happen but I don't—I can't—believe that in this town everybody has chanced to be an accident prone. Some other factor is operating. You are all deliberately72 faking these falls and fires—"
"We're not," Thompson snapped.
"Or else something is causing you to have this trouble. Maybe the whole town is a bunch of dope addicts73. Maybe you grow your own mescalin or marijuana; it's happened before."
Thompson laughed.
"Whatever is going on, I'm going to find it out. I don't care what you do, but if I can find a greater risk here and prove it, the Commission will let us up our rates for this town. Probably beyond the capacity of these people, I'm afraid."
"That would be a real tragedy, Mr. Madison. Insurance is vital to this town. Nobody could survive a year here without insurance. People pay me for their premiums74 before they pay their grocery bills."
I shrugged75, sorrier than I could let on. "I won't be able to pay for my own groceries, marshal, if I don't do the kind of job the company expects. I'm going to snoop around."
"All right," he said grudgingly76, "but you'll have to do it on foot."
"Yes, I understood you didn't like cars on your streets. At least not the cars of outsiders."
"That doesn't have anything to do with it. Nobody in Granite City owns a car. It would be suicide for anybody to drive a car, same as it would be to have a gas or oil stove, instead of coal, or to own a bathtub."
I took a deep breath.
"Showers," Thompson said. "With nonskid mats and handrails."
I shook hands with him. "You've been a great help."
"Four o'clock," he said. "Roads are treacherous77 at night."
"There's always a dawn."
Thompson met my eyes. "That's not quite how we look at it here."
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1
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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2
gauges
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| n.规格( gauge的名词复数 )；厚度；宽度；标准尺寸v.（用仪器）测量( gauge的第三人称单数 )；估计；计量；划分 | |
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3
legitimate
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| adj.合法的，合理的，合乎逻辑的；v.使合法 | |
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4
spike
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| n.长钉，钉鞋；v.以大钉钉牢，使...失效 | |
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remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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6
erring
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| 做错事的，错误的 | |
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7
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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literate
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| n.学者；adj.精通文学的，受过教育的 | |
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flicked
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| （尤指用手指或手快速地）轻击( flick的过去式和过去分词 )； （用…）轻挥； （快速地）按开关； 向…笑了一下（或瞥了一眼等） | |
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10
ruminate
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| v.反刍；沉思 | |
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philosophically
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| adv.哲学上；富有哲理性地；贤明地；冷静地 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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13
notation
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| n.记号法，表示法，注释；[计算机]记法 | |
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14
granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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15
wagon
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| n.四轮马车，手推车，面包车；无盖运货列车 | |
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crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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17
deported
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| v.将…驱逐出境( deport的过去式和过去分词 )；举止 | |
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gangsters
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| 匪徒，歹徒( gangster的名词复数 ) | |
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permissible
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| adj.可允许的，许可的 | |
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plagiarism
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| n.剽窃，抄袭 | |
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21
flipping
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| 讨厌之极的 | |
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projections
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| 预测( projection的名词复数 )； 投影； 投掷； 突起物 | |
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23
tawny
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| adj.茶色的，黄褐色的；n.黄褐色 | |
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24
triangular
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| adj.三角（形）的，三者间的 | |
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25
prone
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| adj.(to)易于…的，很可能…的；俯卧的 | |
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statistical
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| adj.统计的，统计学的 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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29
exterior
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| adj.外部的，外在的；表面的 | |
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wrought
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| v.引起；以…原料制作；运转；adj.制造的 | |
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31
distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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32
authenticated
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| v.证明是真实的、可靠的或有效的( authenticate的过去式和过去分词 )；鉴定，使生效 | |
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33
melodic
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| adj.有旋律的，调子美妙的 | |
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34
automobile
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| n.汽车，机动车 | |
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35
projector
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| n.投影机，放映机，幻灯机 | |
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36
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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37
conspiracy
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| n.阴谋，密谋，共谋 | |
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38
defraud
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| vt.欺骗，欺诈 | |
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39
predecessors
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| n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身 | |
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40
livelihood
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| n.生计，谋生之道 | |
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41
hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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42
kindly
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| adj.和蔼的，温和的，爽快的；adv.温和地，亲切地 | |
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43
relatively
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| adv.比较...地，相对地 | |
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44
stewardess
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| n.空中小姐，女乘务员 | |
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45
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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46
nibbling
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| v.啃，一点一点地咬（吃）( nibble的现在分词 )；啃出（洞），一点一点咬出（洞）；慢慢减少；小口咬 | |
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47
briefcase
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| n.手提箱，公事皮包 | |
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48
trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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49
rental
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| n.租赁，出租，出租业 | |
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50
steadfastly
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| adv.踏实地，不变地；岿然；坚定不渝 | |
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51
cargo
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| n.(一只船或一架飞机运载的)货物 | |
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52
tiresome
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| adj.令人疲劳的，令人厌倦的 | |
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53
dingy
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| adj.昏暗的，肮脏的 | |
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54
indigo
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| n.靛青，靛蓝 | |
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55
lumber
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| n.木材，木料；v.以破旧东西堆满；伐木；笨重移动 | |
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56
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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57
bracing
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| adj.令人振奋的 | |
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58
huddled
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| 挤在一起（huddle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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59
cult
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| n.异教，邪教；时尚，狂热的崇拜 | |
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60
automobiles
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| n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 ) | |
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61
conversationally
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| adv.会话地 | |
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62
lethal
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| adj.致死的；毁灭性的 | |
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63
scooped
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| v.抢先报道( scoop的过去式和过去分词 )；（敏捷地）抱起；抢先获得；用铲[勺]等挖（洞等） | |
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64
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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65
streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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66
panes
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| 窗玻璃( pane的名词复数 ) | |
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67
scuffed
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| v.使磨损( scuff的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚走 | |
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68
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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69
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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70
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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71
sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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72
deliberately
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| adv.审慎地；蓄意地；故意地 | |
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73
addicts
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| 有…瘾的人( addict的名词复数 )； 入迷的人 | |
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74
premiums
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| n.费用( premium的名词复数 )；保险费；额外费用；（商品定价、贷款利息等以外的）加价 | |
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75
shrugged
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| vt.耸肩（shrug的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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76
grudgingly
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77
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
参考例句： |
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