The Walls Have Eyes (23 page)

Beside him, where the President had stood, a pair of circuit boards clattered to the ground.

Martin seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He could only stare.

Rudy laughed. “Who gives a free pass to a bot? It could only be another bot. No one else thinks about the feelings of a machine. And the orders came through at the highest level, too. Which bot gives orders at the highest level? The President, of course.

“Welcome, Mr. President. We're looking forward to your new administration.”

“But—,” Martin whispered.

The Secretary of State collapsed back into the leather chair. His little eyes bulged, and his fat hands tugged at the knot of his tie.

The Ursulas moved in their morose, unhurried fashion to form a protective half circle around Chip. The one nearest to the front plucked Agent Abel out of line and pointed at Martin's handcuffs.

“We think you should let him go,” she advised Abel, her eyes as patient and pessimistic as if he were a toddler whose potty training had gone awry.

“Urk!” gasped Abel, dangling helplessly in her hands. Zebulon released Martin, and the Ursula turned Abel loose.

“But—,” Martin said. He got no further. That appeared to be as far as his mind could go.

“Ding-dong! Hello in there. May we interrupt?”

A young man and two women flounced into the room. They were bots, of course; no one else could have such perfect skin. The young man wore a black tuxedo and a highly mobile expression. The two women wore little black dresses and high, strappy heels, and no expression at all.

“Attention! Attention!” the young man called, clapping. “Who is Mr. Ronald Bailey?”

The Secretary sat wheezing in his armchair. “Ursula,” he mumbled. The young man, turning in a circle to survey the room, quickly picked him out.

“Mr. Bailey!” he exclaimed, rushing up to the Secretary. “It
is my great,
great
honor to inform you that you have been appointed to our nation's brain trust. Girls! Get over here! Help him to his feet.”

The two female figures minced over to the Secretary of State. “Ursula,” he gurgled as he dropped his coffee cup in his lap. His face had turned dark purple.

“Please come with me, sir,” the young man urged, but the Secretary appeared to have lost the power of movement. The females had to haul him from his chair and carry him bodily from the room. The young man in the tuxedo followed them out, brooding as obsessively over his quarry as any collector bot Martin had seen.

The members of the room gave a sigh of relief.

“I don't understand,” William said. “Why didn't he want to join the brain trust?”

“The brain trust is a computer,” Zebulon told her. “A big computer bank composed of hardware, software—and wetware.”

“So?” she asked.

“So . . .” Zebulon paused and gave her a tight smile. “So your body doesn't join the brain trust. Just your brain.”

Martin missed out on the first flurry of activity around the new President. Rudy sent him off with an aide to take a shower and get a change of clothes. “And then you can come with us to bring back the Wonder Babies,” Rudy told him. “You'll be able to rescue Cassie, just like you wanted to do. That'll be a good thing, won't it?”

Martin thought so, but he wasn't sure. He wasn't sure about anything. He followed the aide blindly, with no idea where he was going, and hallways swung around him like scenes from a game module. His blanket insisted on turning into terry cloth and washing his hair for him, and his spirits were so low that he didn't object.

After he had cleaned up, the aide led him out to the black marble packet bay, and he boarded an elegant packet car rigged up to be a traveling conference room. Around a big cherrywood table sat Rudy, William, and two dozen agents: two dozen Abels and Zebulons, in every stage of life and health.

Rudy waved him in, and the agents blinked at him. All those watery eyes made him feel strange. “Director Montgomery,” Rudy said, “this is the boy you've been hearing about,” and an old, bald Zebulon with a large belly reached across the table and shook his hand.

Agency Director Montgomery's little trout mouth had disappeared into loose jowls, and he kept his hand on his paunch as if he had a permanent stomachache. “The man of the hour,
eh?” he said genially to Martin. Martin just stared helplessly back at him. He couldn't think of anything to say.

“Why don't you follow me,” Rudy suggested as he led Martin through the packet car. “There's a nice little bedroom back here, and this will be a long trip. The agents and William and I will be hashing through a lot of unfinished business. Why don't you just get some sleep?”

Martin collapsed onto the bed without protest and felt his blanket tuck him in.

Their packet arrived at the ruined city in the middle of a massive evacuation effort, with medical technicians hurrying back and forth from the big building's filthy basement. The little children were in pitiful shape. Many of them were too weak to walk. The stench in the dark rooms made Martin's eyes burn.

While the rest of Cassie's class went into a hospital car, Rudy arranged to bring Cassie back to Central in their packet. Martin walked by the stretcher that held his little sister and kept bumping into people and tripping over things. Cassie had her eyes closed, and she had a plastic tube stuck in her arm, and Martin hated the whole world.

Inside the packet, the medical technicians set her stretcher down in the little bedroom. “Run along,” they told Martin. “We need to get her comfortable for the trip.”

“I can help,” he said.

“You can help by getting out of the way.”

Martin wandered to the doorway of the conference room. Rudy stood there talking to a prototype he didn't know. Eight or nine agents lounged about, looking bleary-eyed and
drinking coffee. Montgomery was drinking from a small bottle of Scotch.

“But this time is different,” Rudy was saying, and his words were quick with excitement. “This President has seen it all, things the schemers at Central would never have let him see. Their plan to hold power blew up in their faces.”

Martin stepped into the room. “He's not the President,” he said.

They all stared at him: Rudy; the prototype, whose cheek had a nasty, infected gash; and eight or nine variations on Zebulon's snub-nosed face, all giving him the same blank look.

Montgomery popped an antacid into his mouth and sank down onto a chair. “What do you mean, he's not the President?”

“He's Chip. He's my dog,” Martin said. “He's just being President for now to get us out of trouble, like he's been a security bot and things. But he always changes back when he's done, and that's what he's gonna do this time. He'd hate being President, and he loves being my dog. Dr. Granville said so.”

One of the middle-aged agents laughed. “You think being the President's like trying on a new suit?” But Rudy put his hand on the man's shoulder, and he fell silent.

“Of course he loves being your dog,” Rudy said. “Our last President reasoned that the drive to be a dog is so powerful, it would override the drive to be a politician. He thought he would never see Chip arrive to take over his rightful place because a dog loves being a dog. And in any other home in any other suburb, his plan probably would have worked. But because of who
you
are, it failed completely.”

“Me?” Martin said. “I didn't do anything.”

Rudy turned to the others. “This boy here,” he said, pointing at Martin, “has an insatiable desire to find out all the things his fellow citizens want to hide. And he receives this special bot, this dog-President bot, in the middle of a suburb full of secrets. From the very start, Martin doesn't let his bot be a dog. Right away, he starts demanding that it be the President.”

“Really?” Montgomery said. The agents stared at Martin. Their collective stare had tremendous force.

“I didn't,” Martin protested. “I just wanted him to be my dog.”

“Did you?” Rudy said. “Think back to what you asked him to do: open locked doors, identify and disable bugs, investigate injustice, use his security clearance to override alarms and commandeer transports, use his executive powers to interrogate and command bots. Martin, your personal quest for justice and your need to secure your family's safety took you beyond the limits of a normal boy. In order to help you, your bot had to go well beyond the powers of a normal dog.”

“That's amazing,” the prototype murmured.

“It's brilliant!” Montgomery said.

Martin shook his head but couldn't speak.

“This nation owes you a great debt of gratitude,” Rudy said gently.

Martin turned and stumbled out of the room.

A lamp glowed on the bedside table in the small bedroom, and the last technician exiting the room passed him on the way to the door. Cassie lay there wrapped up in a white sheet, with a strap around her middle to keep her safe once they started moving. Martin sat down on the bedside table and stroked her
hand, the one that had the plastic tube in it. Her fingers were grubby and sticky. And so little.

“Hey, there,” he whispered.

Cassie opened her eyes. They were dull, but they found his face, and one grimy dimple deepened.

She stirred, and her tongue clicked as she opened her mouth. “Thought you were a dream,” she muttered in a rough voice. “A ha . . . ha . . . llu . . .” But the word was too long, and she was too tired. She gave up without finishing.

Most of Cassie's curls were squashed into a dirty shell around her face, but he liberated one and gave it a tug. “Not a dream,” he said in a low voice. “A nightmare, maybe.” And she gave a little smirk.

“Bright,” she muttered, squinting at the solitary bulb. “Hurts my eyes.”

“Yeah, well, close them,” Martin said. “Get a little rest. I won't go away.” And he held her sticky hand as the packet car started up and began to sway from side to side.

After a minute, he felt a tickle at his neck. His blanket had reached down a corner to touch Cassie's arm. It crept off his shoulders and flowed over her small form. Then it gave a shiver and burst silently into deep, downy fleece, like a thousand dandelions turning into fluff.

Cassie snuggled her cheek into the fleece with a sigh, and Martin gave the blanket a grateful pat. “She likes pink,” he whispered to it. “Bright pink.” And the blanket flushed to the rosy hue of strawberry Kool-Aid.

Several hours later, Martin woke up to the sounds of people yawning and groaning. The packet car had stopped. He lifted
his head from Cassie's blanket and discovered that he'd slept folded up like a metal chair. His back wasn't all that happy about it.

A big hand shook his shoulder—for the second time, he realized. He looked up to find Ursula standing over him.

“He needs to see you,” she said.

They climbed the steps to the golden door and went through the hall of murals to the rotunda. Taking a left under the bland stare of the Savior of Our Nation, they made their way down a corridor lined with fanciful pillars painted like trees beneath a blue sky ceiling. I wonder what the deal is, Martin thought, with all the paintings of the sky indoors. Can't people just walk outside to look at a cloud?

It was daytime, or perhaps revolution time, and crowds of people were standing around. They pointed and muttered behind their hands as Martin went by. Everyone at Central seemed to point and mutter.

Ursula preceded him through a paneled door. “Here he is, sir,” she announced.

The new President—that is, Chip—sat staring down at the table in front of him. He was a lean, handsome man with black hair and a rangy appearance. A ferret-faced man paced to and fro beside his table, but the President didn't look up to acknowledge him. The rest of the Ursulas clustered nearby.

“You're his handler, right?” the ferret-faced man said as he rushed up to Martin. “Well, all I can say is, it's about time! We missed last night's broadcast, we're supposed to go on in thirty minutes, and just look at the state things are in! I ask you, how are we supposed to work with this material?”

“Are you talking to me?” Martin asked. “What's the problem?”

“Fashion, for one thing,” the man said bitterly. “Look at that rumpled sport coat! It doesn't even fit. Now, I've got some great designs here to show you. We were thinking maybe a dark taupe with narrow lapels and a blue polka-dot tie: a bold departure from the past, a new administration.”

“What's wrong with black and tan?” Martin said. “He's always looked great in black and tan. And he's got the sense to know that ties are stupid.”

At this encouragement, the new President looked up at Martin. Martin discovered that his eyes were still Chip's eyes, beautiful and dark.

“He's got sense?” said the ferret-faced man. “I don't mean to upset you, but his speechwriters aren't picking up on a whole lot of it. He won't repeat his speeches back. In fact, he won't say a word!”

Hope flared for an instant in Martin's heart. “He doesn't talk?” he said.

“No! All he does is vibrate away to his bot bodyguards and give us these long, soulful looks. It's like he thinks we're going to read his mind.”

“I always know what he's thinking,” Martin muttered.

“Six thirty!” the man said sharply. “We have a country to run here, people. Sit right down there and order him to say his speech like a good boy for the cameras. This nation will not be run by a mime!”

Martin pulled out a chair and sat down across from the silent man, trying to think what to say.
Tell me what to do
, Chip's dark eyes pleaded.

“I got Cassie out of that nasty place and brought her here,” Martin said. “It was a long way back, and she was asleep. I didn't have anybody to talk to—you know, I always talk to you—but I tried to come up with a plan on my own. What I thought was that since we did what we were gonna do, since I rescued Cassie and you let them know to get Mom and Dad off the hook, we could drop all this and grab some supplies and go off on our own. Maybe to the grassy area we passed in the hopper car, or maybe that cool pink desert, if we could find some water and I could get a new backpack.” He paused. “Anyway, that's what I wanted us to do.”