Chapter 2
"Barquith", shouted Mike as he hammered on the heavy wooden door. "Are you in there? We've got something to show you."
Mike and Ellie barrelled into the office of their old friend. Barquith, once a student of Alan Turing and now a seemingly ageless university professor and code enthusiast who had been involved in some of Mike and Ellie's previous adventures, was leaning back in a large and comfortable looking chair behind a desk covered with enormous mounds of paper.
"Hello my friends. You're lucky to find me here at all. I've just been interviewed for an exclusive in the Manchester Examiner about the Bombe exhibition that's opening tomorrow. I expect I'll be in pretty high demand for more interviews once it's published."
"Was it a reporter called Noma de Plume that interviewed you by any chance?" asked Ellie.
"I didn't catch her name, actually, but she seemed very interested in my life and recollections of Alan Turing. She was fascinated by the perspective of one of his former students. Oh, she did have the most enormous camera though and she really knew her stuff. She specifically asked about the drums in the Bombe."
"What?" exclaimed Ellie. "What!" echoed Mike as he was putting his phone away. "What exactly did she ask?" inquired Ellie.
"She was interested in whether I knew why they were designed with covers that could be easily removed. I said that, to the best of my knowledge, they weren't. Funny thing, though, Alan gave me a drum shortly before he died and asked me to keep it safe for him. I hadn't thought about it for years, but when that nice young reporter starting asking about the drums I remembered where I'd put it."
"Where is it?" asked Mike.
"It's around here somewhere," said Barquith. "I showed it to that reporter not half an hour ago. Ah, here it is". He pulled a teak box from under yet another mound of paper, but as he opened it his face fell. "Empty!" he muttered, "but it was here just a moment ago. Perhaps I left it on my desk." Barquith, Mike and Ellie started to rummage through the piles of paper.
"It's no good," said Mike. "It's not here. I think that reporter has walked off with it. I don't trust her one bit."
"She seemed so nice, " mused Barquith, "and she was so interested in what I had to say. I'm sure it's here somewhere."
"It's important," said Ellie. "Look what we found hidden in one of the drums of the replica Bombe." She showed Barquith the scrap of paper, knowing that he would easily be able to read it.
"Psychohistory eh," said Barquith. "Well isn't that interesting."
"What is it?" asked Mike.
"It's a term used to describe the study of the thought processes and motivations that cause historical events, but it's also the name given to a fictional science in some of Isaac Asimov's short stories and novels. In the stories, psychohistory was a mathematical framework for predicting the future behaviour of society. I know that it fascinated Alan. I wonder whether he was trying to make fiction a reality."
"Do you mean that this psychoherstory could allow people to control the development of society?" asked Mike.
"It would be possible, yes, "mused Barquith. "A nudge in this direction; a little tampering with an election there. Psychohistory would tell the expert exactly how and where to manipulate situations to move society in a particular direction. It would be very dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. We must find that drum!"
Ellie was having a careful look at the box. "I haven't found the drum, but look at this", she said. The box was lined with packing material and a cylindrical hole had been cut out to the exact dimensions of one the Bombe's drums. Ellie carefully pulled at a loose bit of packing and the entire inset lifted away. Underneath the bottom of the wooden box was marked with a series of scratches.
"These look too regular to be normal wear and tear," said Mike. "It must be another code."
Below is the bottom of the box. It contains a secret message. Once you have found the message, you should enter the 19th word.
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