Groups of little children huddled in the corners under the supervision of weary teachers. The children’s small white faces shimmered in the flashlight beams and reminded Martin of ghosts. He looked for Cassie, but he didn’t spot her or her friends.
The place was dank and dirty. Broken metal straps poked out from the walls and threatened to jab Martin in the eye. Dust and insect webbing cocooned ancient plastic chairs and tables, and some corridors they passed were choked with garbage. The smell of mildew permeated everything.
Children shouldn’t be in here, Martin thought. It’s not safe.
“This place looks like a game of House-to-House,” he said unhappily.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Theo said. “We’re in the bottom of a big general-purpose building. It was the biggest basement we could find, and since the building doesn’t go up too high, we’re hoping it won’t fall down while we’re here.”
“How long will that be?” Martin asked.
Theo sighed. “As long as it takes.”
“I can hear kids crying. Is Cassie okay?”
“I think so. As okay as the rest of us.”
They came through a doorway into a room lit to stark brilliance by two big emergency lights. Half a dozen of the prototypes were there, bending over handhelds or tuning machinery. William sat on a folding chair with a cup of coffee in her hand. She looked very tired.
Rudy came over to greet him. The handsome young man who ran the Wonder Baby school still looked dynamic, even in a wrinkled T-shirt. “I’m glad to see you looking so much better,” he said. Martin didn’t remember having seen him earlier. He wondered if Rudy had played a part in his ketchup-bottle delirium.
Rudy waved him to a seat, and the prototypes pulled their chairs into a ragged circle around him. He noticed William eying his blanket cape and felt a blush warm his cheeks. The blanket obligingly ventilated itself into a charming panel of lace.
“Thank you for alerting us to the danger of the red packet,” Rudy said. “I knew it was too conspicuous, but we’ve faced so many problems in the last forty-eight hours that we haven’t been able to do anything about it. I’m glad to see you again, but you may be sorry you’ve joined us. Central is closing in fast, and I’m afraid we’re out of options.”
“I’m really sorry about that,” Martin said. “See, I came here to ask for help.” He described Mom’s strange illness. “At least can you tell me what’s wrong with her?”
“It’s an old identity microchip,” Theo said. “She’s about thirty-five, isn’t she? Maybe a little older.”
“The last of the identity chips,” Rudy agreed. “They started out as standard issue, but no one ever went outside the domes, so they seemed like a waste of money after a while. They were phased out in the seventies, but for a few years, the lab was still putting them in about a quarter of the newborns. Your dad seems to be fine, but I’m afraid your mom had the bad luck to get one.”
“What does it do?”
“It’s transmitting. Those chips stay quiet in the suburbs or in the game show complex because they stay in touch with a base transponder. A set number of days after the chip goes out of range, it begins to transmit at an amplified volume. Each time its host moves, it transmits its new location. Your mom is fine as long as she stays still, but when she moves, it transmits, and that interferes with the functioning of her brain.”
Martin felt as if he were suffocating, and the room tilted and spun. “But you can fix her, right? I mean, I broke her by bringing her out there, but it’s not forever because someone can fix her—right? Because she can’t stay like that, with something wrong in her brain. She can’t stay like that!”
“Sure, we can fix her,” Theo said. “Don’t worry, Martin. Those chips aren’t too hard to knock out. I can go do it, Rudy. I know the town he’s talking about.”
“It’s risky,” Rudy said.
“Oh, I don’t think so. Who bothers to listen to those old frequencies these days? If they did listen in, she’ll be gone by the time I get there, and I’ll just turn around and come back.”
Martin’s heart was pounding. “But you can’t leave, Theo. What about Cassie? She’s in trouble too! You gotta fix this.”
Rudy paused. Then he gave an encouraging smile. “That’s where maybe you can help us.”
Martin could see what was coming. It all fell into place. He was caught, trapped, just like Mom and Cassie were trapped. None of them had a choice.
“You wanna mess with my dog.”
Rudy nodded.
“Listen, is this even gonna matter?” Martin asked. “How do you think Chip’s gonna help?”
Rudy leaned forward in his folding chair and laid a hand on Chip’s ruff. Chip rolled a nervous eye at Martin. “Honestly, I don’t know,” Rudy said. “William has some theories. But you’ve seen the influence Chip has had on bots, even bots with high security clearance. And the fact is, we don’t have anything else to try. In another couple of days—Well, never mind. Let’s just say that the situation is critical.”
In another couple of days, Martin thought, the Wonder Babies will start dying. They don’t have enough to eat or drink, and they’re already getting sick. Jimmy, baby Laura . . . Cassie, too. In a week, my little sister might be dead.
He swallowed the lump in his throat. “What do you need to do to Chip?”
“We’ll look at his boards,” William said. “And then we’ll—”
“No, you won’t,” Theo interrupted. “You’ll take him to Malcolm. You know it’s the right thing to do. With a little luck, you can get there and back in a day. The school can survive that long.”
William’s eyes lit up. She noticed Martin looking at her, and a blush crept across her pale cheeks. She said, “Malcolm Granville knows more about bots than anyone else in the world.”
But Rudy was frowning. He stopped petting Chip and straightened up. “Why Malcolm?” he said. “You think we can’t handle this ourselves?”
Theo stared him down. Martin hadn’t seen her look so serious before. It was as if the rest of them had vanished, and only she and Rudy were in the room.
“I think you need Malcolm’s advice,” she said. “About the bot, and about other things too. Before this is over, you should hear what he has to say.”
“I’m not dragging my oldest friend into this,” Rudy said stubbornly.
“If I know Malcolm, he’s already in it,” Theo said. “Do this for me, Rudy, if you won’t do it for yourself. And take William with you. See if he’ll keep her there.”
Martin felt weak and dizzy. His head was starting to pound. “What are you people talking about?” he cried. “What does this have to do with my dog?”
“I’m sorry, Martin,” Rudy said. “Theo thinks we should take your bot to Dr. Malcolm Granville, the head of the Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. She’s right; if anyone can, Malcolm will know how to make Chip function properly.”
“He does function properly,” Martin whispered.
Rudy’s handsome face was earnest and sympathetic. “I know this is hard for you,” he said. “I wish we had another choice. But I know you want to help your sister, and this is the best thing to try. I won’t ask you to do the wrong thing, I promise. I need you to trust me.”
Martin swallowed. Then he nodded.
“Okay. I trust you. Chip, we’re gonna go find out what you are.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The meeting broke up. Theo had Martin describe the house she was looking for. “I’ll tell your mom hello,” she said, tousling his dirty hair. Then she enveloped Rudy in a big bear hug.
She’s saying good-bye, Martin thought. She doesn’t think she’ll see him again.
Rudy told William to find some clean clothes for Martin and herself, as well as put together some supplies. Martin staggered after her, so tired that he could barely stay on his feet. “I think I can get us a gallon of water to wash in,” she said. “You look bad. I’ll get you one of our energy drink
s.” Martin wondered if she was being sympathetic or sarcastic.
Not long afterward, the two of them were peeking out a rubble-choked exit at the rosy light of dawn outside. Quick footsteps behind them announced Rudy’s arrival. He was wearing a crumpled brown sport coat and trousers, and he carried an attaché case. “William, you had to settle for jeans, I see.”
William wrinkled up her nose. “All the T-shirts were too short to be dresses.”
“Chip looks great, as usual,” Rudy said with a smile. “And, Martin, you cleaned up pretty well. Still got the medical blanket. That’s a smart idea. You never know when you’ll need it.”
“It isn’t that,” Martin explained as he followed Rudy through the opening. “It’s just that I can’t get it to go away.”
Rudy laughed. “You must be the perfect patient.”
The sun had barely risen by the time they reached the packet rails. Rudy dug into a drift of trash and soil beside a tarsmeared rail tie and found a small metal cube. Its cover flipped back to reveal an outlet. He produced a battered orange box with a short wire from his attaché case and pushed the wire into the cube.
A small panel on the orange box lit up:
Rudy held down the large gray button below the panel.
“Stop westbound,” he ordered.
The panel responded:
And it began to blink.
“Can’t we take the red packet?” Martin asked. “Or will they be looking for it?”
“We have to pass cameras,” Rudy said. “I think they’d spot it. Now we wait, but we need to wait out of sight.” And he led them a few feet away to crouch behind an odd section of solitary wall. “I checked the schedules. We’ve got a possible carrier coming through at seven thirty and another at ten after nine. We won’t know if they’ll work until one of them stops. This box only works on a certain kind of car.”
“What kind?” Martin asked.
“That’s right, you’re a packet chief’s son,” Rudy said. “Maybe you know about these cars. In the early days of the steel domes, the packet chiefs didn’t have bots to do their work, so they and their crews used these boxes to go out and work on the lines. The old engineers, the packet drivers, had just been replaced with artificial intelligence engines. These cars still have a seat and a window in the front where the engineer used to sit.”
“I’ve seen cars like that,” Martin said. “They’re really scruffy. Trash trucks, cement mixers, stuff like that.”
“That’s the kind. This morning sends a gravel car and a chicken hauler our way. We’ll see how lucky we get.”
Rudy gazed at the rails with an unreadable expression on his face. When he noticed Martin watching him, he roused himself and smiled. Martin remembered Cassie saying that the head of the Wonder Baby school tried to keep the little children from worrying.
That’s how I wanna be, Martin thought with a surge of admiration. He’s so smart he’s like a superhero, but he acts like it’s no big deal.
The sun crept up the sky, and birds began to fly overhead. Chip sniffed around in the dirt. Martin watched his dog with an uneasy feeling in his stomach. William was watching Chip too.
“Can you tell us about your bot?” she asked. “We should learn as much as we can.” So Martin told them every extraordinary thing he could remember his pet doing. Bragging turned out to be a bittersweet pleasure.
“So, what do you hope Chip turns out to be?” he asked. “What’s he gonna do to save the Wonder Babies?”
William plucked a nearby wildflower and began stripping off its stiff leaves.
“He’s probably a very high-ranking military bot,” she said. “He gave orders to the freight bots, and to a military officer bot . . . even to all twelve Ursulas at once. That means he may be able to command an entire battalion of soldiers, and then we could use them to fight for us.”
Chip dug into the dirt to find a cool patch of ground. Then he lay down on the sandy earth with a sigh.
“I dunno,” Martin said. “He doesn’t seem very military to me. Sure, he talks to bots, but it’s not like he orders them around. And he felt really bad when he had to kill those three wild dogs.”
William’s brows knit together into a scowl. “The toy chips in him are blocking his potential.”
“Maybe,” Rudy said. “Or maybe he’s confused about his canine identity, and he tried to apply the sanctity-of-life clause to dogs as well as humans. Bots aren’t supposed to kill humans without special orders. Maybe he thought he shouldn’t kill a dog, either.”
“If he isn’t military,” William said, “then he might be a very expensive modified bot, something a criminal gang ordered up. The most powerful modified bots can turn into one-machine armies. They can bring down every computer within miles, and that includes the computers on weapons and guided missiles. We could jam Central’s spying bugs, and they wouldn’t know which way we went.”
“Like a bot superhero,” Martin said. “I kinda like that. Chip, are you a one-bot army?”
Chip rose, rooted around in his bed of cool dirt, and sneezed explosively. Then he wagged at Martin.
“Chip has the right idea,” Rudy said. “This kind of speculation is pointless until we get to Malcolm. He’ll be able to tell us what’s going on.”
A jackrabbit sped by them, and Chip jumped to his feet to chase it. William got up and walked back and forth, squinting at the sun. Martin discovered a sandy cone of the sort that held the wonderful bug he’d found before, and he dug out its inhabitant to show William.
“It’s in the family Myrmeleontidae,” she told him. “Order Neuroptera. They eat ants. They grow up into winged insects like a little dragonfly, with clavate antennae and four transparent, similarly shaped wings.”
Martin shook the soft bug back onto the ground. “I just like how they scoot backward,” he said.
“Almost time,” Rudy called. “I should warn you two”—Chip trotted up with a piece of broken board—“that is, I should warn you three. This AI won’t be very nice.”
“Not nice?” William echoed, puzzled.
“No. To put the AI together, they took scans of an old packet car engineer. He was pretty upset about being replaced by a machine, and it comes through the AI.”
With a squeal of brakes, a hopper car stopped by the orange box. “Get inside,” Rudy told them.
Martin ran up to the packet and pulled open a narrow door at the front. An ancient bench ran across its width, covered in crackled mushroom-colored vinyl. In front of the bench was a panel of gauges and controls. Over the panel’s top arched a sloping glass window.
“Get in! Get in!” Rudy yelled.
William climbed into the cabin. When she sat down on the vinyl seat, it disintegrated in a puff of cheddar-colored dust. Martin climbed in behind her. Next came Chip, hampered by his efforts to bring his broken board along. When Rudy saw them all safely inside, he pulled the orange box from its receptacle and threw himself in after them. By the time he pulled the door shut, the packet was already accelerating.
“Good work!” Rudy said. He hunted among the gauges, located another metal cover, and plugged the orange box into the outlet underneath. The box turned into a speaker, and the members of the boarding party discovered that the AI was already talking.
“Useless brats!” it fumed. “A waste of perfectly good oxygen that could be used in fuel combustion. I guess you think it’s some great dream of mine to haul your butts around. Well, guess what? You’re wrong!”
“We appreciate your stopping for us—,” Rudy began.
“Like I had a choice!” the AI yelled.
“—and we’d like to know if you’ll be passing Branch Line 185.”
“What am I, your Magic Eight-Ball?” the AI snapped. “Ask again later.”
“What’s he talking about?” Martin muttered to William. William gave a shrug.
Rudy blew out his breath in a sigh. Then he tried again.
“Today’s schedule tells me you pass Branch Line 185. Please s
top and let us out at that junction. If the schedule is incorrect, and you aren’t passing there, please take us as close as you can.”
“‘Take us as close as you can,’” whined the AI. “As if I don’t already have a job involving a very important batch of gravel that needs to reach its destination as soon as possible! ‘Take us around the country, Mr. AI. Show us all the sites.’ The only place you’re going to is the bottom of a hole, and the only thing you’ll see there is sixteen cubic yards of crushed limestone aggregate pouring down out of the sky!”
Chip leaned forward and vibrated at the orange box. The AI subsided.
“Nobody told me I had a rail yard engineer on board. It’s good to meet an old-timer. I used to work Roseville, myself. We’ll be passing BL 185 around fourteen thirty, and I’ll stop and let you off. I hope that helps.”
“That sounds perfect,” Rudy said.
“Stick a sock in it!” snapped the AI. “I’m doing this for the engineer, not you gas-exchanging carbon-based bacteria breeding farms. I better not hear another word.”
For a long time, they obeyed him. The scenery shifted and changed. They passed mountains, then flat fields covered with waist-high grass that bent in silvery swaths before the wind. Martin craned his neck to catch every detail as the vast land rolled by.
Chip was in the way. He was too big for the narrow seat. He sat bolt upright for a while, but his piece of board kept bumping into Martin’s head. Then he tried to lie down, but there wasn’t any room. At last, he clambered into Martin’s lap and curled up as tightly as he could. His pointy elbows dug into Martin’s thigh and sent Martin’s leg to sleep almost instantly. His back end overflowed onto Rudy, and his board poked William in the ribs. As he gnawed the board, shavings and splinters showered down onto William’s jeans.
While Chip chewed, Martin poked patterns into the dog’s thick, fuzzy coat, smoothing out cones like the houses of the little backward-scooting bugs. I may not get to do this again, he thought unhappily. His mind sent him pictures of a future Chip, turned into some blank-faced soldier bot. He shook them off. Rudy says to trust him, he thought. I’ll trust him. I won’t worry about this.