Saving Thanehaven (23 page)

“No!” Lorellina protests, stung. “Of course not!”

“It’s a text message,” Yestin quickly explains. “Our message is:
YOUR COMPUTER IS INFECTED AND NEEDS TO BE TURNED OFF.”

The man purses his lips, his expression slightly puzzled. Then he shrugs and removes the pen from behind his ear. “Got it,” he says, as he jots something down in his book. “And what’s your Mobile Equipment Identity Number?”

Yestin flicks a worried glance at Noble before replying, “We don’t have one.”

“You must have one.”

“We’re from Mikey’s computer,” Noble interrupts. “We came here on the Bluetooth connection.”

When the man frowns, Yestin asks anxiously, “Don’t you have the International Mobile Equipment Identity number for Mikey’s computer? Wouldn’t it be in your records somewhere?”

“No.”

“The Kernel gave us tokens to get in here,” Noble points out. “And I also have this.” Producing his key, he lays it on the counter with a crisp little
snap
. “We have the Kernel’s blessing. We are not wayward or malign.”

“And why would you need a number from us anyway?” Lorellina demands. “Here we are. We have a message. What more do you need to know?”

Something flickers behind the man’s watery gray eyes, which abruptly swivel toward the elevator. Following his gaze, Noble sees that the uniformed operator has reappeared, and is passing a swaddled infant to one of the busy young women in high heels.

No sooner does the baby change hands than it starts to cry.

“New ringtone,” the operator announces. Then he quickly withdraws into his elevator, banging its doors shut behind him.

“They’ll make anything into a ringtone, these days,” the man at the window says disparagingly. But
he seems to lose interest in the baby once it’s been whisked away to another room. Turning back to Noble, he grudgingly adds, “Well—it’s highly irregular, and I’m not too sure of the protocols, but since you’re already here …” Without finishing his sentence, he rings the little bell in front of him.

A young woman with bright red lips immediately responds to his summons. She takes the page that he’s just ripped from his book and hurries to the nearest desk, where she sits down and begins to tap at a black machine. Watching her, Noble realizes that she’s using the machine to transcribe words—the same words written by the man at the window.

It doesn’t take her long. Within seconds, she’s plucked two different-colored sheets of paper from her machine and trotted back to the counter, where she spikes the pink sheet and gives the white one to her boss. He promptly rolls it up and inserts it into a pipe attached to the ceiling.

Pop!
The scroll is sucked from his hand. A bell clangs. A red light flashes. Then the machine on the counter begins to clatter and whirr, spitting out more coils of paper tape.

The man at the window checks the tape before tearing it off, stamping it, and spiking it. “There,” he says. “Your message has been delivered.”

Noble gapes at him. “Really?”

“Didn’t you hear that bell?”

“Yes, but—”

“Confirmation just came off the wire machine. Our phone user has received your message.”

“Oh.” Noble looks at the princess, who asks, “What happens now?”

“I beg your pardon?” the man says. He seems mystified.

“We want to go back where we came from,” Yestin explains. “Can you give us a token?”

“A token?”

“For the train,” growls Lorellina.

“I don’t know anything about trains.
Or
tokens,” the man replies, ringing his silver bell again. Another neatly groomed young woman promptly appears at his window. “Those need to be filed,” he informs her, pointing at the papers on the spike. She nods and removes them, while Noble, Yestin, and Lorellina consult each other in low voices.

“Maybe we don’t need tokens to get back,” Noble suggests.

“I don’t remember seeing any gates downstairs.…” Yestin’s gaze wanders around the room, pausing for an instant on a woman filing papers.

But Lorellina stares straight at Noble. “Where is your key?” she says. “We might need that, instead of the tokens.”

“What? Oh. Yes.” Noble reaches for his key, which is still sitting on the brass counter. Lorellina is already moving away. She pushes past several people so roughly that one woman stumbles and drops
something. Yestin follows the princess, but has to take a detour around the scene of the collision—where several young women are now hunkered down, blocking traffic as they retrieve scattered documents.

By the time Noble catches up with Yestin and Lorellina, the wall-mounted button beside the elevator has already been pressed.

“Perhaps we should take a weapon with us,” Lorellina remarks, eyeing a nearby desk lamp.

“Oh, I don’t think so. Haven’t we caused enough trouble already?” Yestin is referring to all the paper that’s now strewn across the floor, thanks to Lorellina. “Anyone would think we were malware, the way we keep messing things up.”

“Speak for yourself,” Lorellina retorts, just as the elevator announces its arrival with a
ping!
She turns eagerly, clutching at the mesh door as the operator’s face appears behind it. “You! Varlet!” she exclaims imperiously. “Take us back to our Bluetooth connection!”

The operator gapes at Lorellina. “
Your
Bluetooth connection?” he echoes, sounding dazed.

“The one that goes to Mikey’s computer,” Yestin pipes up. “We’ve delivered our message, and now we want to go home.”

The operator raises his eyebrows. “Oh, you can’t go there,” he says. “That service is temporarily suspended.”

Noble is speechless. Lorellina stares. It’s Yestin
who stammers, “Was—was the computer turned off?”

The operator shrugs. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t have that information.” He still hasn’t opened the mesh door.

“Can you find out for us?” Noble pleads.

“I’m sorry, sir. I’m unable to be of assistance.”

Before Noble can say anything else, the inner door of the elevator slams shut. It’s like a slap in the face. For a second or two, Noble just stands there, shocked and disoriented. He doesn’t know what to do next.

“I told you,” Yestin whimpers at last. “I told you we wouldn’t be able to get back.”

“You told us we’d have to wait,” Lorellina reminds him tersely. “The question is, where?”

“We’d better ask,” says Noble.

“Ask whom?” The princess’s voice cracks on a scornful note as she shoots a look of disdain at the in-box window. “
That
man knows nothing.”

“He knows more than we do,” Noble rejoins, before heading back to the brass counter.

The ink-spattered man behind it is examining yet another ribbon of paper. “Yes?” he says in an absentminded tone, without even looking up. “May I help you?”

“Our Bluetooth connection isn’t working,” Noble announces. “We can’t get back to Mikey’s computer.”

The man grunts. Then he lifts his gaze and rings his little silver bell. “Well, that’s probably because it’s been sabotaged,” he observes.

“Sabotaged?”
squawks Lorellina.

“That’s what it says right here.” The man at the window waves a fluttering stream of paper tape under her nose, before pushing it toward the jaunty blonde woman who’s just popped up next to Noble. As this young woman seizes the tape, however, Lorellina snatches it from her.

There’s a nasty ripping sound.

“Hey!” cries the man at the window. “You can’t do that!”

But the princess ignores him. “ ‘Did u sabotage my laptop u jerk?’ ” she reads aloud, squinting at the torn piece of tape in her hand. “ ‘If u did, I will get u Rufus yor ded.’ ” Raising her eyes, she addresses Noble. “Could this be from Mikey?”

“Of course, it’s from Mikey!” snaps the man at the window. “You’re in Mikey’s phone, remember? Now give that to the copygirl at once—that’s an urgent dispatch!”

Still Lorellina defies him, though Yestin is starting to look nervous. As for Noble, he’s had a flash of inspiration.

“Where are you sending that message?” he asks the man at the window. “Are you sending it to Rufus?”

“I’m sending it to International Mobile Equipment Identity number 466672739001277.”

“That’ll be Rufus’s phone.” It’s Yestin speaking. He’s squirmed his way between Noble and the copygirl, who keeps plucking at the air, making futile
attempts to retrieve the strip of tape from the princess. Lorellina resists until Yestin rebukes her. “You’d better give that back,” he says, “or Rufus won’t get it in time. And then we
will
be acting like malware.”

Lorellina scowls. Reluctantly, she surrenders her paper strip, then turns to Noble for guidance. “I don’t understand,” she complains. “Is that message for
our
Rufus, or for the other one?”

“The other one.” As the copygirl retires to her desk with a ragged length of crumpled tape, Noble appeals to Yestin. “Do you really think that Mikey’s message will end up on Rufus’s phone?”

Yestin nods, then has second thoughts. “Or on his computer, perhaps.”

“Ah.” This is exactly what Noble has been hoping. “So Rufus
does
have a computer? Not our Rufus. I mean the other one.”

“Of course.” There isn’t a trace of doubt in Yestin’s voice.

“And would the computer be like Mikey’s? Would it be connected to Rufus’s phone?”

“Maybe.”

“Then we should deliver that message ourselves,” Noble declares. He points at the nearest desk, where Mikey’s angry text is being copied on one of the black machines. “And we should add our own message,” he continues. “We should tell Rufus—the
other
Rufus—that if he doesn’t fix Mikey’s computer, we’ll sabotage his.”

There’s a long pause. Noble waits nervously. But Yestin just stares in blank amazement. Even Lorellina remains mute.

In the background, machines clatter and voices hum. The blonde copygirl delivers her two copies of Mikey’s message. The man at the window spikes one and stamps the other, which he passes back to her.

“I think that the other Rufus—the one who created our Rufus—really
did
do something to Mikey’s computer,” Noble finally adds. “And I think … I can’t help wondering …” He sighs, then takes a deep breath. His own sense of guilt is weighing him down like a stone in his stomach. He knows he’s betraying a friend, and yet …

How can he help being suspicious? Rufus himself taught Noble to question things that he’d previously taken for granted. And it’s hard not to question Rufus, after all that’s been going on.

“I’m beginning to believe that most of our troubles have actually been caused by Rufus,” Noble reluctantly admits. The confession makes him feel dizzy, as if he’s lost his balance.

Lorellina’s brows snap together. “Which Rufus?” she wants to know. “Our Rufus, or the other one?”

“Both of them,” Noble mumbles.

Then he proceeds to tell her his plan.

N
oble has it all worked out. If Rufus
does
own a computer, it must resemble Mikey’s: a little world full of places just like Thanehaven. Places where people will listen to the same arguments that were used to change Noble’s mind.

Places where Noble can have a big impact.

“You know what
our
Rufus has been saying,” Noble explains to the princess. “You’ve heard him. He says it to everyone. He asks us if we like what we’re doing and then he tells us that we have a choice.”

“Which is true,” Lorellina insists.

“Yes. It
is
true. It makes sense. That’s why I said it to the old woman in the basement. That’s why you just said it to that man, over there.”

Lorellina shakes her head, frowning. “I did no such thing.”

“You gave him a choice,” Noble reminds her. “You asked him why he needed an International Mobile Equipment Identity number from us. You told him he could break the rules.” As Lorellina ponders this, he adds gently, “You wouldn’t have done it before you met Rufus.”

“No,” she concedes. “I daresay not.”

“Rufus offered us freedom, but he gave us chaos,” Noble continues. “We can do the same thing, now. All we have to do is imitate Rufus.” Suddenly, his attention shifts toward the elevator, which has signaled its arrival with a loud
ping
. The blonde girl must have summoned it; she’s standing beside the button, clutching her stamped copy of Mikey’s message.

“Wait! Stop! We’ll take that!” Noble shouts at her. Then he launches himself in her direction, ducking and weaving to avoid all the people who are squatting on the floor, collecting spilled paper.

Yestin and the princess hurry after him. They reach the elevator just as its inner door slides open, pushed aside by a white-gloved hand.

“Give that to me,” Noble orders. As he plucks Mikey’s message from the copygirl’s grasp, she looks around desperately for assistance. “It’s all right,” he assures her, then turns to the operator—who hasn’t yet opened the mesh door. “We’ll deliver this message
to Rufus,” Noble declares, “if you’ll take us to the right connection.”

“Oh—I—uh …” The operator doesn’t know what to say.

“Do you want this message sent or not?” Lorellina asks him. “Because it happens to be urgent!”

The operator glances at the copygirl, who concedes, “It
is
urgent. It’s a text message.”

“And we’re attachments,” adds Yestin.

This seems to do the trick. With a shrug and a sigh, the operator admits defeat, stepping aside so that Noble and his friends can board the elevator. It begins to ascend as soon as the inner door closes. Then Yestin tugs at Noble’s arm.

But when Noble shoots him an inquiring look, the boy’s eyes dart toward the stranger in their midst. So Noble leans down, enabling Yestin to whisper in his ear, “Are you going to sabotage a computer? I don’t want to do that.”

“Neither do I,” Noble quietly confesses.

“Then—”

“We won’t really do it. We’ll threaten to do it.”

“Oh.”

“We’ll make Rufus
think
we’ll hurt his computer.” As the elevator lurches to a standstill, Noble swings around to address the uniformed attendant. “Are we going to need tokens?”

“Tokens?” the young man echoes.