Noble guesses that these cabinets must be full of paper, since they’re almost identical to the ones he saw in the Archive. Besides, the whole room is full of paper. All the people bustling around have armfuls of paper. There’s paper sprouting from every black machine. And great towers of paper are stacked on the desks.
“Try over there.” Beside him, the young man points at a nearby counter. “See that window? That’s the in-box.” With a beaming smile and a white-gloved salute, he steps aside to give his three passengers an unobstructed exit. “You have a nice day,” he adds. “And thanks for visiting International Mobile Equipment Identity number 709348880021743.”
Noble catches the princess’s eye. She shrugs. There’s no way they can turn back now.
So they step across the threshold and advance into the busy room, with Yestin trailing behind them.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
A woman carrying a bundle of paper is clacking along in high-heeled shoes. She nearly bumps into Noble, who dodges her just in time.
“Excuse me,” she trills. “So sorry.”
Other women are darting between desks and doors, loaded down with sheets of paper in every color of the rainbow. A loud buzz of conversation is interrupted, now and then, by a clanging bell or a banging drawer. There’s so much going on that no one seems very interested in the three newcomers, who thread their way cautiously through a network of desks toward the in-box service window.
A gray-faced man is sitting there, perched behind a brass-topped counter. He’s small and thin, with a green eyeshade strapped to his balding head. His ink-splattered shirtsleeves are rolled to the elbow; he wears a black waistcoat and has a pen tucked behind one ear. Arranged in front of him are a stamp, a small book, a silver bell, a metal spike with papers impaled on it, and a machine that’s spitting out yet more paper, in ribbonlike coils.
“Yes?” he snaps, when Noble approaches him. “How can I help you?”
“Um …” Noble clears his throat. Before he can proceed, however, Lorellina grabs his arm.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she whispers.
“Do what?”
“Turn off Mikey’s computer.” She scans Noble’s face, her green eyes blazing. “Do you trust the Kernel? Do you believe him?”
As Noble ponders this question, Yestin weighs in. “I do. I believe him.”
“Why?” Lorellina whirls around to confront Yestin, who flinches. But he doesn’t back down.
“We had computers on board our spaceship,” he quavers. “If Mikey’s computer is anything like them, we have to deactivate it, or it can’t be fixed.”
“Suppose you’re right, though?” Noble murmurs. He’s acutely conscious of the man at the window, who has just coughed impatiently. “Suppose we can’t go back to the computer once it’s turned off?”
“Then we’ll have to wait,” Yestin replies. “As soon as the problem’s solved, and the computer is working again, we’ll look for a way back in.” Seeing Lorellina’s impatient scowl, he squeaks, “At least, it will give us a chance! Once the computer’s trashed, we’ll never be able to go home!”
“Truly?” says Noble.
“Truly.”
“Ahem.” It’s the man at the window, who’s drumming his fingers. “Do you have a legitimate message, or not? Because I’m warning you—this phone plan features a spam control option.”
Noble ignores him, focusing on Yestin instead. “What about Rufus? What will happen to Rufus if the computer is turned off?”
Yestin shrugs.
The princess stamps her foot. “Why do you care about Rufus?” she exclaims. “You should be worrying about my poor cousin. What will happen to him? Or to any of those we left behind? They are all in grave peril!”
“They are,” Yestin agrees. “And the only thing we can do for them now is to send that message.”
Noble hesitates, trying to rearrange all the scattered images cluttering up his head. A past, he concludes, is difficult to organize—especially when it’s starting to grow longer. For one thing, it’s full of change. You think you know where someone fits, he muses, and then you realize that you don’t.
He’s feeling trapped and bewildered. The last time he felt like this was before he discarded Smite, back when he had no control over what he was doing. Now it’s as if his sense of independence is slipping away again. But maybe I never really did gain my freedom, he speculates. How could I have been master of my own destiny, when I never even knew what was going on?
He wonders if Rufus has been misleading him—misleading everyone—by promising freedom while withholding information.
Suddenly, the elevator door pings, causing the man at the window to lean forward aggressively. “If you don’t have a message,” he says, “then please step aside.”
“But we do have a message!” Noble blurts out. “A message for Mikey!”
“Oh, yes?” The man surveys them suspiciously. “So which one is it?”
“What?” Noble doesn’t understand.
“Which one of you is the message? Or is it the three of you together?”
“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.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Noble 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.