Like taxes, for instance. With computers, one could predict what price the competition would charge, right to the penny. But one could not predict what the politicians would decide to spend, unless of course one owned the local politicians. Owning them was much more easy if you could learn their secrets. Money could not always buy a politician but information could.

In America, on the shores of Long Island Sound, there was a mother lode of such information, beyond IDC's wildest projections. Information on who paid what taxes, which people took what payoffs, where narcotics entered the country, who sold what to whom and when, even the effect of weather on commodities futures was calculated. The works. And no one at this place called Folcroft Sanitarium, on the shores of Long Island Sound, seemed to be using that information to its fullest advantage. It seemed a crime against nature that IDC did not have access to it. Blake Corbish intended to amend that crime.

At the San Francisco Airport, Blake Corbish prepared the flight plan of his Lear jet to Westchester Airport, a few scant miles from Rye, New York. He was told there would be some sticky weather over Colorado. Corbish said he would fly above it.

The man at the control tower seemed impressed by Corbish's knowledge of aeronautics. So impressed that he asked questions about Corbish's training, very nicely, very politely.

Corbish was polite in return. The man at the control tower might be one of the thousands of people who unknowingly fed information into those computers at Folcroft. If that were so, then this man would be working for IDC soon—also without knowing it.

Only a genius could have set up the computers at Folcroft so that only one man had the information at his terminal.