Shadows (46 page)

“All right,” George Engersol now said, coming out of his reverie. “There’s nothing we can do to change what’s happened. All we can do is go on from where we are now, and the most important thing we have to do is get in touch with Amy.”

“Can you do that?” Hildie Kramer asked. For the last fifteen minutes she had said nothing, listening in silence as Jeff had told his brother what had happened to their parents. She hadn’t challenged his assertion that he hadn’t intended for them to die, for she, like George Engersol, felt that the importance of the project they were finally on the verge of completing far outweighed the necessity of Adam’s understanding exactly what had happened.

Further, if Adam were convinced that whatever had happened had been his own fault, it would ensure his cooperation in whatever might now need to be done to control Amy Carlson.

Indeed, his need for approval, his almost pathological willingness to comply with whatever was asked of him, had been the prime factor that had led to his selection for the project.

Now, the guilt he was feeling over his parents’ death would provide the final stimulus for him to do whatever George Engersol asked of him. Even if it meant that he, too, would finally have to die.

“I think we can contact Amy,” Engersol replied. He sat down at the keyboard and began typing in the instructions that would send the previously recorded data from Amy’s brain back into the monitoring devices in an endless loop.

Instantly, Amy’s monitor came alive and her voice filled the room.

“It won’t work, Dr. Engersol.” She uttered the words with a certainty that made all three of the people in the lab look up at her monitor.

She seemed to be staring directly at Engersol, her eyes angry. “I know what you’re doing, and it won’t work.”

Engersol smiled, a thin grimace that held no warmth. “Just what is it you think I’m doing, Amy?”

“Trying to fool the computer. But you can’t do it. I’ve been studying, Dr. Engersol. And I think brains are like fingerprints. No two of them are exactly alike, and they’re so complicated that they never exactly repeat a sequence of measurable responses, either. So I’ve set up a new program. It will compare the newest readings being reported from my brain with all the older ones. And if my program discovers a duplication, it will assume you’ve done something to me, and start activating my viruses. But first it will start destroying this whole project.”

Engersol stared coldly at the image of the red-haired girl, her freckled face seeming no older than her ten years—until he focused on Amy’s eyes. They seemed to him to carry all the wisdom of mankind. “I don’t believe you,” he said harshly, feeling less certain of his words than his voice proclaimed.

Amy’s head cocked slightly, and a tiny grin played around the corners of her mouth. “Try it, if you want to. I’ve set it up so you’ll have thirty seconds to change your mind. But I don’t think you’ll wait that long.”

Engersol felt cold rage wash over him. She was bluffing! He was sure of it! “If I don’t change my mind, you’ll die, won’t you?”

Amy hesitated, then nodded. “Yes. And so will Adam. But I’ve been thinking about that, too, and I don’t think it matters. You didn’t have any right to put us in here, but you did. And I’ve told you what will happen if you try to hurt me, so if you go ahead, it will be you who’s killing both of us, not me.”

Engersol glanced nervously at Hildie Kramer, whose eyes, reflecting even more anger than he himself was feeling, were fixed malevolently on the image of Amy Carlson. “Well?” he asked.

Hildie’s eyes never left Amy’s monitor as she spoke. “Is she telling the truth? Won’t the computer be fooled?”

Engersol nervously ran his tongue over his lower lip. “I’m not sure,” he said. “But I think it will be. I think she’s bluffing.”

Hildie hesitated, then made up her mind. “Do it,” she said. “We cannot let this whole project become the slave of an angry child.”

Engersol finished typing his instructions and pressed the key that would enter them into the computer.

For a few seconds nothing happened. He was about to begin entering further instructions, terminating the life-support systems to Amy’s brain, when abruptly the screen came alive. An alarm sounded over the speaker system. On the control boards of both tanks red warning lights began to flash, and buzzers were activated as the systems began to abort.

“What is it?” Hildie demanded. “What’s happening?”

George Engersol said nothing, for he was already back at the keyboard, cancelling the playback of the recorded data from Amy’s mind. “Help me, Adam!” he snapped.

As the recording came to an end, the sound of the alarms died away. One by one the warning lights began to turn themselves off as Adam, using the power of his mind, reached out and began repairing the damage to the programs that controlled the equipment.

In less than a minute it was all over. Engersol had gone pale. His shirt was drenched with the sweat that had broken out over his entire body as he watched ten years of work
begin to collapse around him. Now he wiped his brow with a trembling hand.

On her monitor Amy’s visage was smiling broadly. “See?” she asked. “It happened just the way I told you it would, didn’t it?”

Engersol tried to swallow the bile that was rising in his throat, threatening to gag him. “Adam!” he snapped, his voice rasping. “Tell me where we are. Is everything under control?”

“I’m still checking,” Adam replied. Above his tank the image of the boy’s face was frozen as he concentrated all the resources of his mind on verifying each of the programs that Amy’s virus had attacked, comparing them to backups of the originals, repairing the damage.

In his own mind it was as if he were inside the computer itself, examining the data recorded on the drives, reading it as easily as if it had consisted of words written on paper. He could almost feel the data streaming through his mind, all of it perfectly remembered and perfectly controlled.

Then, within the depths of his consciousness, he felt a presence.

Not Amy.

He’d gotten used to her mind, for it always seemed to be there, working on the fringes of his own, or moving ahead of him, like a shadow he could barely make out but whose presence he could always sense.

Now he was sensing a new presence.

He cast about, searching, and then he understood.

Josh had spent only five minutes at the computer terminal in his room before he’d understood that he wasn’t going to be able to penetrate whatever system was operating in the basement. Everywhere he’d turned, at the end of every lead he’d followed in the directories, he’d come to the same message:

ENTER SECURITY CODE

The words had taunted him, and finally he’d given up. Frustrated, he’d left his room and started down the hall
toward the stairs. As he came to the landing, he heard a mewing sound and looked up.

On the fourth floor landing two flights above him, he saw the calico cat, Tabby, who had lived in Amy’s room. For the last two days the cat had been slinking around the upper floors, moving from room to room as if in search of its friend. Yesterday, Josh had let the cat into his own room, but it had stayed only long enough to determine that Amy wasn’t there, then slipped out the door and continued on its quest.

Now it was on the fourth floor, mewing plaintively.

Josh paused, watching the cat. As if sensing his interest, the cat mewed once more, then disappeared.

From where he stood. Josh could just see the top of Dr. Engersol’s door. It was ajar.

Not much—just a tiny crack.

His heart raced. Did he dare go up there? What if Hildie came back up?

But he’d hear the elevator coming, and have plenty of time to get out. And maybe, if he was actually
inside
Dr. Engersol’s apartment …

He made up his mind. Glancing up and down the empty hallway, he darted up the stairs to the third floor, and then the fourth.

Tabby, still at the door, turned to peer at him, then scratched at the door in a demand to be let into the room beyond.

“Can you smell her?” Josh asked, his voice low. “Can you smell Amy in there?” His heart pounding, he reached out and pushed the door wider.

The cat darted in.

A moment later Josh followed. His eyes scanned the room, falling almost instantly on the computer terminal that sat on the desk near the window.

Dr. Engersol’s computer.

Moving quickly, Josh crossed to the terminal and began tapping at the keyboard.

This time, no demands for security codes appeared.

He started searching through directories he’d never
seen before. In the third directory a file name caught his eye:

GELAB CAM

His mind instantly translated the file name: George Engersol Laboratory. Camera.

Using the mouse on the desk, he placed the cursor over the file name and clicked twice.

A window opened at the top of the screen and an image appeared.

Josh stared at it in silence, for what he was seeing was a laboratory he’d never seen before at the Academy, filled with equipment that, though he had no idea of its use, still made his flesh crawl.

Instinctively, he knew that he had found Adam Aldrich and Amy Carlson.

Far to the left he could barely make out the Croyden computer in its separate room, but at the end of the room he could see two tanks, each of which had a monitor on the wall above it.

One of the monitors was blank, but the other one displayed an image of Adam Aldrich.

Gathered around a desk near the tanks were Dr. Engersol, Hildie Kramer, and Jeff Aldrich.

It looked as though they were arguing about something.

Sound!

There had to be a sound system, too!

Frantically, Josh set to work, searching for the files that would activate the microphones and speakers he was already certain were there. For if Adam had been able to talk to him through the virtual reality program, he must be able to talk to Engersol as well.

All he had to do was find the right files and activate the right programs.…

Far below, in the laboratory, Adam Aldrich spoke, formulating the words in his mind, digitizing them and transmitting them to the Croyden as easily and with as little
thought as it had once taken him to turn the pages of a book, or run down a beach while he yelled at Jeff.

“We’re being watched.”

Engersol’s head snapped up from the screen he’d been studying.

“Watched? By whom?”

“Josh,” Adam said. “He’s at your desk, and he’s been watching us.”

Engersol froze. For a moment his rage toward Hildie Kramer threatened to overwhelm him. Had she really been stupid enough to leave his apartment door unlocked? “Go get him, please, Hildie,” he said, forcing himself with each word to keep his voice level, his rage under control. “Bring him down here.” He would deal with Josh now, and with Hildie later.

   In the apartment on the fourth floor Josh had finally discovered the program that would allow him to access the sound system in the laboratory, and his blood ran cold as he heard the last words spoken by Adam and Dr. Engersol.

He stared at the screen, paralyzed. What should he do? What
could
he do? She’d be here in twenty seconds. And even if he could get out of the house, where could he go?

She’d call the security department, and within a minute there would be people looking for him everywhere!

But he had to do something! He reached out to turn off the monitor, but suddenly the image on the screen went blank, replaced a second later by a new image.

Amy.

Josh stared at it in awe. Could it really be her? But she was dead!

No!

Only her body was dead. But she was still alive.

As his eyes remained glued to the screen, he heard a sound in the background.

The elevator.

Hildie was coming.

Josh was about to bolt from the apartment when suddenly Amy grinned at him. And then she spoke, her voice
tinny through the small speaker in the computer’s component tower, but nonetheless distinct.

“Don’t worry,” she said.

The screen went blank.

And the elevator drew closer.

T
he car came to a halt at the top of the shaft. Hildie’s A foot, driven by the cold fury that imbued every fiber of her body, tapped impatiently as she waited for the door to slide open.

Nothing happened.

The angry scowl on her face deepening, Hildie jabbed impatiently at the Open Door button.

Still the doors refused to open, but she heard a voice coming over the small emergency public address speaker mounted in the car’s roof.

Amy’s voice.

“Have you ever been trapped in an elevator?” she asked.

Hildie gasped, partly from the surprise of hearing Amy’s voice, partly from a sudden chill at the words she spoke.

“Amy?” she said. There was no response.

Hildie jabbed once more at the Open Door button. Again nothing happened. Her brief chill of fear driven back by her fury, she jabbed at it yet again.

Amy’s voice filled the car once more. “If you want to talk to me, use the phone.”

Hildie fumbled with a small metal door set into the wall of the car just below the control panel. Inside she found a telephone receiver, which she jerked off the hook and
pressed to her ear. “Amy?” she demanded, her voice grating. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Amy spoke again, her voice coming not through the speakers this time, but through the phone itself. “Do you like being trapped in the elevator?” she asked.

Hildie thought quickly. She’s a little girl, she reminded herself. This is her idea of a joke. “I don’t suffer from claustrophobia, Amy,” she said. “Small places don’t bother me at all.”

“Really?” Amy asked. “What about falling? I’ve always been terrified of falling.”

Suddenly the floor dropped out from under Hildie as the car fell a few inches, then came to a sudden stop. She staggered, lurching against the wall, catching herself with one hand before she fell. “Amy, what are you doing?” she demanded. “This isn’t funny!”

“It’s not supposed to be funny,” Amy replied, the teasing tone disappearing from her voice. “It’s not supposed to be any funnier than what you and Dr. Engersol did to me!”