Robot Trouble (20 page)

“What's going on?” she asked, taking a sip from a steaming mug that said “Love Me, Love My Computer” in dark blue letters.

“You'll never believe it,” said Roger. He turned to his father. “You tell her, Dad. I can't bring myself to do it.”

“You've got a new tutor,” said Dr. Phillips, gesturing to the small computer. “Actually, this one is Roger's. Yours is still in the Jeep.”

Rachel's face fell.

“Oh, come on,” said Dr. Phillips, his voice tinged with exasperation. “What did you two expect—a permanent vacation? Just because we're living on an isolated island while I work on Project Alpha, you can't think your education is going to come to an end! Frankly, I was relieved when Dr. Hwa gave me these computers. I think having too much spare time has been responsible for a lot of the trouble you and your friends have gotten into these last few months.”

“Who's in trouble?” exclaimed a metallic voice. “I didn't do anything!”

“Shut up, Paracelsus,” said Rachel. “No one's talking to you.”

The handsome bronze head sitting on the Phillipses' coffee table blinked its eyes in preprogrammed astonishment. “No one's talking to me? What am I, a social outcast?”

Rachel turned to her brother. “If you don't stop tampering with his shutoff cues, someone's going to rearrange
your
circuits.”

“Help!” shrieked Paracelsus. “Circuit attack! Circuit attack!”

Heaving a sigh, Dr. Phillips reached across the table and deactivated the head. “Sometimes I wish you two had never dreamed this thing up. It's made normal conversation almost impossible around here.”

“Shhh!”
hissed Roger. “Just because he can't talk doesn't mean he can't hear you.”

“Roger,” said Dr. Phillips sternly, “I don't want you acting like that machine—or any other—has a personality. It's sloppy thinking!”

“Then I can't possibly use this electronic tutor. I can't learn from someone I can't relate to!”

Dr. Phillips made no response.

“Well, maybe if I tried real hard,” said Roger, reading the expression on his father's face and deciding a momentary defeat was preferable to death.

“I thought you'd see it my way. Now, let me show you how this works.”

Though he had figured out the machine within seconds of seeing it, Roger sat quietly through his father's demonstration. His mind was elsewhere, trying to find a way to explain that he didn't have time for this stuff when he and his friends were busy protecting Project Alpha from a spy who would stop at nothing to send every bit of top-secret research done on Anza-bora Island to the terrorist organization known as G.H.O.S.T.

A mile or so from the Phillips home, Ray “the Gamma Ray” Gammand was standing on the foul line in the Anza-bora base gymnasium. He pushed his thick glasses back up onto his nose and stared at his beloved basketball.

“You can do it,” he whispered, trying to convince the ball it was going to make it through the hoop on his first shot. “All you have to do is think positive!”

Though Ray would have died of embarrassment if anyone had caught him talking to his basketball this way, he was so attached to the thing the rest of the gang already half suspected him of doing so.

He was on the court now to work out his frustration over the morning's appalling news about the electronic tutor. He had had to wait for the maintenance crew to finish their morning game, which had only added to the tension he was feeling. But he was ready to practice at last. Taking a step forward, he tossed the ball. It bounced off the backboard, wobbled on the rim for a heartbreaking instant—then fell the wrong way.

Ray said his stepmother's least favorite word. “Ah-ah!” said a husky female voice. “Temper and basketball don't mix.”

Ray turned, his cheeks warm. “Hello, Dr. Fontana. I didn't know you were there.”

Dr. Marion Fontana, who had come through the side door of the gym, picked up the ball. She was one of the hardware specialists for the artificial intelligence project that had brought the families of the A.I. Gang to Anza-bora Island. She was also a fitness nut, usually to be found jogging with Dr. Bai' Ling, a raven-haired lady who gave new meaning to the phrase “well designed.”

“Here,” she said, tossing Ray the ball. “Try it again. But watch your breathing this time. You muffed your last throw by exhaling wrong.”

Distracted by wondering where Dr. Ling might be, Ray threw the ball far wide of the hoop.

Dr. Fontana sighed. “Here, watch me.” Retrieving the ball, she made a perfect swish. Then she dashed under the basket, snatched the ball before it could hit the floor, dribbled it down the court, ran through a series of snappy maneuvers, and sank three more baskets before Ray could catch his breath.

“See?” she said, tossing the ball back to him. “It doesn't have anything to do with height!”

Ray, not yet five feet tall and seemingly on permanent hold as far as growth went, looked at Dr. Fontana gratefully. Though he knew she was being too flip when she said height had nothing to do with basketball, he also felt more hopeful about what he
could
learn to do than he had at any time in the past year.

“Would you like me to give you a few tips?” she asked, joining him at the foul line.

Oh, my God,
thought Ray,
I think I'm in love. If only she wasn't over forty!

While the Gamma Ray was getting his basketball lesson, his friend Trip Davis was getting a lecture about the new electronic tutors.

“Be reasonable, Tripton,” said his mother, Dr. Millicent Davis, in exasperation. “It won't be that bad!”

“That's what you told Lunkhead here the day you took him to the vet to be fixed,” said Trip, stroking the grotesquely overweight cat sprawled in his lap.

“Tripton Duncan Delmar Davis!”

Trip winced. His mother never resorted to his full name unless he was in real trouble.

Her tapping foot confirmed that this was indeed the case.

Trip looked at his mother.

Arms folded over her white lab coat, she glared back.

Trip's father, the highly respected landscape artist Elevard Crompton Davis, sat across the room, chuckling to himself.

“Cromp!” snapped Dr. Davis. She pushed back a strand of the ice-blond hair that had escaped from the severe bun in which she wore it. “Talk to your son!”

Trying to kill the smile on his face, Mr. Davis ambled over to where his wife and son were facing off. “What do you want me to say?” he asked, placing a paint-stained hand on his wife's shoulder.

“I don't know! Tell him how important schoolwork is. Tell him we want him to achieve so we can be proud of him. Tell him we'll kill him if he doesn't straighten out.”

Mr. Davis nodded. Turning to Trip, he said, “Everything your mother just said is true.”

“Cromp!”

Mr. Davis sighed. “Look, Tripper, I know you and your friends are keeping busy with all kinds of projects. But you can't concentrate on nothing but computers. You have to develop all the strands of your knowledge and ability.”

“Why?”

Mr. Davis paused. He looked puzzled for a moment, then took his son by the arm and led him to the easel where he was putting the finishing touches on his latest painting. Next to the easel stood a small table holding his “art box,” a wooden container cluttered with tubes of paint and brushes of every size and shape.

He took the canvas from the easel and put a blank one in its place. To Trip's astonishment, he then dumped the box of paints and brushes onto the floor.

“All right, that's your life,” he said, pointing to the blank canvas. “Hardly touched, yours to do with as you will.”

Trip nodded, wondering where this was going.

His father bent over and picked up a single tube of paint and one medium-size brush. He dropped them into the art box, handed the box to Trip, and said, “Now paint.”

“It's going to be kind of dull with only one color.”

Mr. Davis shrugged and tapped his son on the forehead. “Then put some more colors in your paint box. Take it from an artist: It will make your life a hell of a lot more interesting.”

Trip smiled. “Okay, I get the message, Dad. I'll give the thing a try.”

Cromp Davis smiled back at his son. “That's good,” he said. “To tell you the truth, if you want to live your life in black and white, that's your problem anyway. But I appreciate you getting me off the hook with your mother. Come on, I'll help you move this thing into your bedroom.”

Five minutes later Trip had settled himself in front of the new computer. He was already regretting the promise he had made to his father. Glancing at the array of electronic gadgetry scattered around his room, he fought down an urge to push the machine off his desk and turn his attention to one of the far more interesting projects he was currently in the middle of.

Shaking his head, he sighed and turned on the new machine.

Attached to the right side of the computer was a rack of tubes, each about the size of a roll of LifeSavers. Trip recognized them as a refined version of the Watson Double-Vapor Memory System, invented by Dr. Werner Watson, father of his friend Wendy Wendell. He smiled. At least this was a state-of-the-art machine. With their combination of durability and enormous memory capacity, the Watson tubes were a vast improvement on all previous storage systems.

The rack held two rows of five tubes. It was hinged at the rear, which allowed a user to flip it out to the side and read the labels on the tubes.

With a sigh, Trip swung the rack open.

The labels were pretty general: math, science, history, and so on. But he knew that with their memory capacity, each tube could hold a vast library of books and films on its assigned topic.

Grudgingly, he booted up the machine. The screen blinked into life with gratifying speed.

Trip blinked. The introductory message he found himself looking at was one of the weirdest he had ever seen:

“The first series of questions on this tube will help you prepare your computer to effectively meet your needs through all future lessons. It is essential that you answer honestly! Do you understand? Type
Y
for yes,
N
for no.”

What's this honesty bit?
he wondered as he pressed the
Y
key.

A new message appeared on the screen. Trip wrinkled his brow. This was even weirder than the last one:

“Thank you. Are you alone? BE HONEST! Type
Y
or
N
.”

What difference does it make if I'm alone? he wondered, tapping the Y key again.

When the next message appeared, he understood. After a brief jolt of surprise, he read it eagerly, then looked for a way to print it out.

Snatching up the paper, he bolted for the door, thinking,
Wait till the gang gets a load of this!

Sherlock

Hap Swenson glanced up from the rivet he was tightening in Rin Tin Stainless Steel's jaw and decided that the robotic bloodhound would have to wait. The constant motion of the tiny blond girl striding back and forth in front of him was too distracting for him to do a good job now.

Hap watched her for a moment longer, studying the way she moved, the way she looked. The first thing anyone noticed about Wendy “the Wonderchild” Wendell was her height—or rather, the lack thereof. She was, in fact, the only person on Anza-bora Island shorter than the Gamma Ray.

After that you saw the pigtails, the grubby sweatshirt borrowed from her father, and the snub nose lightly dusted with freckles.

Wendy could be demanding and difficult. Yet Hap was extremely fond of her. For one thing, she made him laugh. But right now she was starting to drive him out of his mind.

“Will you settle down!” he snapped.

“I can't!” said Wendy. “This electronic tutor thing is such a plasmagorically revolting development that if I have to hold still, I'll blow up!”

“You can't be
that
surprised. I've been expecting it for weeks now. When my father accepted Dr. Hwa's offer to stay on Anza-bora after the Air Force pulled out, the main condition he and Mom insisted on was that my education be provided for.”

“You've been getting an education,” said Wendy tartly.

Hap laughed. “That's for sure. But it's not quite what they had in mind. They're getting a little tired of spies, plots, and life-and-death situations.”

“It's better than being bored to death,” said Wendy. “Which is exactly what's going to happen to me if I'm forced to use that tinker toy tutor.”

Suddenly a three-foot-high collection of loose parts known as Norman the Doorman went scuttling past them. “Welcome!” it cried as it pulled open the door of the abandoned house the A.I. Gang used as a headquarters. “Welcome!”

“Thanks, Norman,” said Rachel. She stepped into the room. “You're doing a good job today.”

Roger came in after her, carrying the leather bag they used to transport Paracelsus.

“Welcome,” said Norman again.

Roger crossed the room and took Paracelsus out of the bag.

“Welcome,” said Norman for the third time.

“I take it you both got the bad news this morning?” asked Roger, turning to Hap and Wendy.

“Welcome,” said Norman.

“Oh, chips!” cried Wendy. “Sometimes I wish Ray had never pulled you out of that trash heap, Norman.” She crossed the room and thumped the robot soundly on the head.

“Thank you, sir,” said Norman. It turned around three times, then rolled back to its closet.

“We got it,” said Wendy. “My heart still hasn't recovered.”

Rachel started to reply, but was interrupted by the door swinging open again. The six-foot-plus frame of Trip Davis loomed in the opening. “Where's Norman?” he asked, looking around.

“He's not feeling well,” said Roger. “And what are you smirking about? Didn't you get your own private schoolroom this morning like the rest of us?”