perhaps his wife withdraws an amount which she forgits to tell him about. Hippens all the time. I tell Mr Somchai that I could send him an interim stitemint, for which we could whyve the processing charge.’
Joyce noticed that C F Wong was watching and listening with intense concentration, struggling to understand the man’s accent. For some reason, the bank manager focused on Joyce, and related the story entirely to her. She was first nonplussed, and then pleased, and made sympathetic nodding movements as he spoke. She wondered if the others would be annoyed, since she was the only non-mystic among them.
‘Inniwhy, the guy turns mean. “Mr Sturmer,” he says. “I am not a fool. I have no wife. I know exictly what goes in and what comes out of my account. I bilince my chequebook every time I use it. What I know is that I deposited five thousand Sing dollars in my current account two dies ago and it is not there now.”’
Sturmer, now getting into his story, became more relaxed, and looked briefly at Wong and Madam Xu before returning his gaze to Joyce. He started using his hands for emphasis. ‘So I do the stroke-stroke thing and tell him that I know he is good with figures and I tell him I will personally look into the matter right awhy. Where did he deposit it? Head office? Fourth machine on the right? Right. Thank you for calling. I tell him I will call back within two business hours, which is standard procedure for private binking clients. Okay so far?’
He paused and Joyce and Madam Xu nodded. Wong continued to stare.
‘Right. Now at this stige, I am still largely disregarding the problim. Ninety-nine per cent of cases like this, it is the customer having mis-counted something. You would be amized the number of billionaires who just can’t count from one to tin or do simple arithmetic. But then my colleague, Sarah Remangan, who sits one desk away from me, she looks over. “I’ve had the same call from one of my accounts,” she says. “Put her money in last Tuesday. Got a receipt and everything. But she swears the money isn’t there now and never got there. Even ordered a stitement which bicks her up, so she says.”’
The banker paused as a waiter gently elbowed him to one side and placed plates in front of each of them. A platter containing five masala dosas followed almost immediately.
‘Go on,’ said Madam Xu, starting to distribute the potato curry pancakes, serving the banker first. ‘That is when you realised something was wrong.’
‘No, not really, not then,’ said Sturmer. ‘You see, the whole system is computerised. It can’t be wrong. It’s always that people spend too much and don’t know where the money’s gone at the end of the day. Human naeture. Then Sarah’s phone rings agin, and it was inother of her clients, with the sime problim. I could tell, just by listening to her half of the conversaition. It was probably then that I was getting a little worried. Three similar complyints, one after another. Something might just possibly be wrong.’
‘A bug in the computer?’ asked Joyce.
‘No way. You see, bink computers are set up so that they can only do one of two things: They either get it right, or they freeze. There’s no in-between. They cannot do their sums wrong. If they are working, then they are working right. All binking computer systems are based on this principle, as far as I know. Inniwhy, I called several people. I phoned my supervisor, of course, who told me to give all detiles urgently to the bink technology departmint and security departmint. This was about ten o’clock this morning.’
He ran his hands backwards through his hair. ‘Over the nixt, well, couple of hours I giss, there were several similar complyints from customers. A high-level security team was empowered to invistiguyte. By lunch time they gaive their initial findings. All checks of the bink computer showed no problim at all. No hint of a malfunction.’
The banker paused, his mystification showing in his face. ‘It was bizarre. It was like a mass hallucination. According to all our records, none of these cash deposits was ever put into the bink, and all the computers were behaving perfectly, according to all diagnostic checks. It was a complete mystery.’
‘Could it have been a mass hallucination, like you say?’ asked Madam Xu. ‘Perhaps . . . deliberate?’
‘That’s the answer the bink would like,’ said