Forever Begins Tomorrow (12 page)

“I called for that meeting because I didn't want to take the risk of sending this message over the computer. Unfortunately, as it turned out, my alternative was no improvement. I still don't like doing this; you can never be sure someone won't intercept it. But now I have no choice. I must leave the island almost immediately, and it is vital that you keep an eye on Black Glove until I return.

“However, it is equally vital that you DO NOT make a move unless a major emergency arises!

“You will understand why when I tell you that Black Glove's real identity is—”

Suddenly the flow of words ceased. An instant later a burst of letters and symbols exploded across the screen, as if someone had slammed their fists against the keyboard.

“Chips!” exclaimed Wendy. “Now what?”

“Get on that keyboard, Rachel!” cried Roger, seething with frustration because he couldn't do it himself. “Put a trace on that transmission.”

Rachel was already calling up the program they had been developing to track down some of their mysterious messages. But it was too late. The connection had been severed.

 

The Traitor

Less than an hour after the transmission from their mysterious friend had been so strangely interrupted, the A.I. Gang could be found gathered outside the door to Dr. Hwa's office.

“At least
his
message was complete,” said the Gamma Ray, speaking of the summons that had brought them here. “Even so, I wish it had been a little more specific. We've had enough little mysteries in the last few days.”

“Well, the fastest way to find out what the good doctor wants is to ask,” said Roger. Without further hesitation, he pushed open the door and stepped in.

To his surprise, one of Sergeant Brody's air police was slouched in the chair behind Bridget McGrory's desk.

“He'd better not let Bridget catch him there,” whispered Wendy. “If she does they'll be able to use what's left of him for meat loaf tonight.”

The guard barely looked up from the book he was reading. “Go on in. The boss is waiting for you.”

As they filed into Dr. Hwa's office, Ray lingered for a moment to see if the guard would reach under the desk, as he had seen Bridget McGrory do on several occasions. While the movement had always seemed suspicious to him, he had admitted to himself that she might simply be releasing an electronic lock of some kind, or doing something else equally innocent.

But the guard was completely absorbed in his book; he didn't move at all.

Scratch the electronic lock theory
, thought Ray, following the others into Dr. Hwa's sanctum sanctorum.

The little scientist was sitting behind his desk, studying a thick file of papers. An atypical clutter covered the rest of the surface. In fact, an air of disarray seemed to have descended over the entire office—right down to Dr. Hwa himself. The scientist's usually neat hair was rumpled, his tie askew, his lab coat only half buttoned.

He didn't look up until Roger cleared his throat to indicate that they were waiting for him. When he did, his face appeared drawn and weary, as if he had not slept for many hours. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the large conference table on the other side of the room.

The gang exchanged uneasy glances. In their numerous interviews with Dr. Hwa he had rarely invited them to sit. When he did, it was generally a sign of something big.

“Please,” said Dr. Hwa, rising from his chair and coming around the desk to join them. “Have a seat.” They let him lead the way to the conference table. When he had taken his place at the head of the table, they sat three on either side of him, eager to discover what came next.

“This is hard for me,” said Dr. Hwa.

He locked his fingers together and stared into the little cave made by his hands. The gang, even Wendy, remained silent, waiting for him to speak.

Finally he looked up. “I do not make many mistakes. However, I now find that when I do make one, it is—to use an appropriate Americanism—a dilly.” He turned to look directly at Roger. “I owe you an apology,” he said, his eyes straying to the cast on Roger's arm. “And the rest of you, as well, though it is Roger who has suffered most recently, and most severely, as a result of my disbelief.” He sighed. “Please accept my sincere regrets for having ignored your warnings.”

A look of puzzlement passed among the gang. What was going on here?

“You spoke to me of a spy,” said Dr. Hwa. “I would not listen. Now I find, to my dismay, that there was indeed an agent on Anza-bora who was hostile to my interests. Worse, it was someone I trusted as I would have trusted my own parents.”

He sighed and stared into his hands again.

“Well, who the heck was it?” cried Wendy.

When Dr. Hwa looked up, his face seemed twisted with sorrow. “Your mysterious Black Glove has turned out to be my secretary, Bridget McGrory. We caught her red-handed, so to speak. She has been going through classified files in my desk.”

He sighed. “I have not felt so betrayed since… well, that was a different time and place. Suffice it to say that this discovery has pained me more than I can tell you.”

“I can't believe old Bridget had it in her,” said Hap when the gang had gathered in their headquarters to digest this latest piece of news.

“Watch it, bub,” said Wendy. “That comes perilously close to being a sexist remark. Bridget McGrory is one tough cookie. I bet she can do just about anything she puts her mind to. And don't forget that Ray's been babbling for months now about some mysterious move she makes at her desk whenever we go in to see Dr. Hwa. We should have paid more attention to what he was saying.”

“Thanks,” said Ray. “I think. I
was
getting tired of all of you acting like I had several screws loose when I said there was something strange about her. My theory is, she was switching on a remote recording device or something like that.”

“I feel silly for not having figured it out ourselves,” said Rachel. “I think I ignored her because she was ‘just' a secretary!”

“I'll tell you one thing,” said Roger. “I'd like to get a chance to talk to her. I've got a lot of questions about what's been going on here for the last several months, and she might be able to answer them.”

“Well, she'll be here for a while,” said Trip. “Dr. Hwa said they were going to ship her out on the next supply plane. But the plane was here just yesterday, so it will be another six days before they can send her off island.”

“What difference does that make?” asked Hap. “They're not about to let
us
in to see her.”

“So?” asked Wendy. “We haven't let that kind of thing stop us yet, have we?”

“Why, no,” said Roger, with a widening smile. “I can't say as we have. Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“If I'm not, you're dumber than I thought,” said Wendy.

Rachel sighed. “Oh, great. Most people want to break out of jail. Now we're going to try to break
into
one? That should do wonders for our reputation!”

“It's not like we're going to try to get right into her cell,” pointed out Wendy. “Just up to the door of it, so we can talk to her.”

“But how are we going to do it?” asked Trip. “Now that the robots are back in Brody's control, we can't just walk into the place.”

“So we'll have to find some other way,” said Wendy. “I've done my part; I got the brilliant idea to begin with. Why don't the rest of you figure out how to pull it off?”

“I've got a better idea,” said Trip. “Let's put the question to Sherlock. This will be a good test for him.”

“If you've made that machine smarter than I am, I'm going to be very jealous,” said Paracelsus.

“Hey, baby,” said Wendy, patting the automaton's shiny skull. “You gotta roll with the punches. Now be quiet, or we'll take you apart and make transistor radios out of you.”

“Call the SPCA!” shrieked Paracelsus.

“Don't even ask,” said Roger, before Wendy could open her mouth. “Just ignore him.”

“Well, I like that!” said Paracelsus. Then the automaton shut off its own circuits and went to sleep.

“This was harder than I thought,” said Trip after the gang had spent nearly fifteen hours of programming and careful questioning to get Sherlock to come up with an answer. “But I think he's ready.”

“How come it took so long?” asked Hap. “Sherlock figured out that code for where the transmitter was located in almost no time.”

“Different kind of question,” said Roger. “Different thought processes. Ready, everyone?”

When the gang had gathered around, Roger said, “Sherlock, what are your conclusions?”

“Find out the robot's patrol schedule,” replied the computer in its crisp British accent. “Then either try to slip in when there is a brief break, or else use the knowledge of where the guard will be to prepare a distraction.”

Ray snorted. “This is not a fifteen-hour answer! I worked out the same strategy yesterday.”

“Yes, but you were operating from a base of common sense,” said Rachel.

“Tell that to my parents! They don't think I have any.”

“Well, they may not agree,” said Rachel. “But the truth is, common sense is a heck of a lot easier to come by in a person than in a machine. Remember that guy who spent a year trying to program a computer so it would know enough to come in out of the rain?”

“Wait a minute,” said Hap. “Why was it out in the rain to begin with?”

Rachel made a, face “It wasn't really out in the rain, silly. It was a simulation program. The researcher set up the situation, then asked the computer what it would do.”

“If it didn't know, why didn't he just tell it?”

“Because he wanted the machine to figure it out on its own! That was the whole point. As it turned out, teaching a machine to add and subtract is a snap compared to teaching it to do the kind of things we take for granted.”

“Enough theory,” said Trip. “The question now is whether or not we take Sherlock's suggestion. If we do, we've still got to get the robot's patrol schedule.”

“It's probably in the main computer,” said Hap. “Do you think we can pull it out?”

“I expect so,” said Wendy. “I'm guessing they hardly bothered to protect it, since they would figure they had already taken care of security with their access code plan. I bet I can find it without much trouble.”

“I hope so,” said Rachel. “We've only got four days before the supply plane lands and Bridget is gone for good. If we're going to talk to her, we've got to move fast.”

“I'll start on it right away,” said Wendy.

“Good,” said Roger. He lifted his arm to glance at his watch, realized that he was wearing a cast instead, and moved his attention to his other wrist. “I have to be at the infirmary for a check on my arm in fifteen minutes. I'll leave this in your capable hands.”

“Aye-aye, Chief,” said Wendy, snapping him a salute. “Come on, Ray. I can use your help on this one.”

To Roger's surprise, the infirmary was empty when he arrived.

“Dr. Clark?” he called, standing at the door to her office.

That's funny. She's usually right on time. I wonder if anything is wrong
.

He called again.

Still no answer.

He stepped in and looked around. The office was empty. Walking through it, he entered the examination room, where he took his usual place on the high-topped table.

Several minutes went by. After a while Roger got up and began to poke through the equipment arrayed on the shelves.
I wonder when they'll invent an electronic tongue depressor
, he thought, looking at a jar of wooden strips. He took one out and clenched it between his teeth, plucking the end so it made a strange vibrating sound.

Where is she, anyway?

Making another circuit of the room, Roger noticed that the door in the back wall was slightly ajar. He pushed on it, and it swung open.

“Dr. Clark?” he called.

Again, no answer. He was about to pull the door shut when he noticed a strange odor drifting through from the other side. Curious, he stepped into the next room. What he saw there made him feel as if his world had turned upside down.

Project Alpha was a high-tech
hardware
operation.

So what were all these rows of tanks filled with bubbling yellow water and something that looked disturbingly like flesh?

He stepped closer to one of the tanks to examine it.

“Roger!” cried a horrified voice. “What are you doing in here?”

He spun around and winced in pain as his cast smashed into a tank.

“Dear God!” cried Dr. Clark. As she rushed forward the tank tottered on its stand, then began tipping slowly forward.

Halfway around the globe a Russian soldier named Leonid Chernekov stared in horror at the computer screen it was his job to monitor. After a moment he shook his head in disbelief and retyped the command, assuming he would get a more sensible response. This time he checked the key sequence carefully before pushing the Enter key.

To his dismay, the results were identical to the last time.

Chernekov was not a man to panic. He began a series of tests designed to spot 99.9 percent of the malfunctions possible in the computer.

When every one of them came up negative, Chernekov felt a cold fear begin to grow in his stomach. He summoned a superior, who listened to his story, tried a few tricks of her own, and then summoned
her
superior.

This third person, the second-highest-ranking officer and the most knowledgeable computer specialist on the base, had no more luck than his underlings in getting the computer to provide a readout that made sense.

Chernekov began to tremble.

This was not an unreasonable reaction. The discovery that two of your country's largest nuclear warheads have shifted in their orbits and are entering a pattern that would put one of them in line for a direct hit on Washington, D.C., and the other for a direct hit on Moscow, would be enough to make any soldier a little shaky.