Forever Begins Tomorrow (10 page)

“Well,
I
think it's time for a break,” said a pleasant voice behind them.

“Hap!” cried Rachel. “We didn't hear you come in.”

“I've been out enjoying the night. I came to see if anyone wanted to join me.”

Rachel felt the tiniest hint of a blush tinge her cheek.

Roger looked from his sister to Hap, then back again. “Go ahead, Rach,” he said. “I've got some more programming I want to do.”

Rachel flashed her twin a grateful smile, then headed for the door.

“Romance,” said Roger when the room was empty again. “Phooey!”

He returned his attention to the computer. After another hour or so he grew weary of the work and decided to switch jobs. Crossing the room, he lifted the cushion from a dilapidated armchair to reveal a black glove, and a stack of file folders.

He examined the glove first, as he had so many times before. Smooth leather, a little worn; the size seemed about right for someone shorter than five feet seven. The only other mark on the glove was a slight bulge at the base of the second finger.

He was tempted to slip his own hand inside, in the bizarre hope that the glove might somehow communicate with him.

Roger snorted at himself for being so ridiculous. Anyway, his hand was too large for the glove. And he didn't want to stretch it out. He was convinced that somehow it held the answer.

He sighed and allowed himself a momentary twinge of loneliness as he put down the glove and removed the folders from their hiding place. He would have been happier if his twin had stayed here to work with him, rather than opting for a walk in the moonlight with Hap.

“Oh, Roger,” called a voice to his left. “Can we go home now? I'm getting tired.”

Roger glanced at the bronze head sitting on a stack of papers at the end of the table. Sometimes he wished he had never started programming Paracelsus with specific messages to tease and annoy his sister. Rachel had turned the game around, and it was getting to be a pain in the neck.

“Roger, answer me!” demanded the automaton.

“No, we're not going home! I've got too much work to do.”

He picked up the first folder on the stack. It was the top-secret personnel file for Dr. Bai' Ling. Roger recognized that the odds on Dr. Ling being Black Glove were pretty slim. On the other hand, her folder was more fun to read than most of the others. And she did match their two clues…

“You are
not
taking very good care of me,” said Paracelsus. “I need my beauty rest, you know. I've a good mind to turn you over to the SPCA.”

“Will you shut up?” cried Roger. “And what's the SPCA got to do with it? Wait! Wait! Forget I said that!”

It was too late. He had triggered the response mechanism.

“The SPCA,” said Paracelsus severely, “is the Society for the Prevention—”

“—of Cruelty to Automatons,” finished Roger, speaking in unison with the machine and cursing himself for falling into Rachel's trap.

The simple solution, of course, would have been to shut off
this
automaton's power source. But he always felt guilty when he did that—almost as if he was committing a murder.

Roger shuddered as he imagined the blast of contempt he would collect from his father if he ever admitted to
that
feeling!

He returned to the stack of files, which they had pulled from the main computer with a highly sophisticated password program written by the Wonderchild. He thought again how glad he was they had managed to print them out before Rachel's unfortunate slip of the tongue a few months back had revealed the program's existence. Her disclosure had prompted Dr. Remov to write new security measures into the mainframe, making it impossible for them to continue using Wendy's program.

Roger had faith that, given time, the Wonderchild could crack the new security shields. But time was part of the problem right now. So he was just as glad they had these printouts—despite the fact that if anyone ever found out about them it would probably cause a crackdown that would make their recent session with Dr. Hwa look like a pep rally.

Impatient with his failure to solve the mystery, he set aside Dr. Ling's folder. It was one of the seven that made up their stack of “prime suspects”—people who:

(a) had been at the meeting where Rachel was bugged

(b) stood less than five feet seven inches tall

(c) had black hair.

He picked up the next folder, the one for Dr. Armand Mercury. He was leafing through the impressive list of Dr. Mercury's accomplishments when the main terminal began to beep.

I wonder who that is?
thought Roger as he crossed to the keyboard. He was assuming, logically enough, that it was one of the gang, calling in with an important message.

He was wrong, and the unexpected words that scrolled up on the screen when he punched in the display code struck him like a bolt of lightning.

 

Roger and the Robot

Rachel took a deep breath. Though she missed the frosty air of home, December nights on Anza-bora were glorious. Filled with a tang of the ocean, the warm air seemed to carry hints and whispers of faraway places and adventures, dreams but vaguely glimpsed in the secret moments of the night.

The sound of the surf pounding against the shore only added to the effect. And when she looked up at the star-filled sky, the southern constellations so different from the ones she had grown up with, it was as if she had crossed a boundary into some other world.

Nights back in Cambridge had never held this much magic. There the lights of the city obscured the stars, and the air smelled more of people and cars than of ocean and waves.

She moved a step closer to Hap, enjoying the warmth of his presence. He leaned closer, and for a moment she thought he was going to put his arm around her.

The mood was shattered by the sudden appearance of Roger, racing down the road as if his tail was on fire.

Rachel groaned. She really wasn't interested in another emergency right now.

“Hey!” cried Hap. “Slow down, good buddy. What's going on?”

“I can't stop now!” panted Roger. “Follow me and I'll explain on the way. Damn Dr. Hwa for taking away our dune buggies anyway!”

And with that he was off.

Rachel glanced at Hap. He gave her the merest of shrugs, then sprinted away in pursuit of her brother.
Cripes!
she thought.
Here we go again!

Enough of a realist to know complaining was useless, she took off after the boys.

“Where are we going?” she heard Hap pant as he drew abreast of Roger.

“Warehouse One. Our mysterious friend has called for an emergency meeting.”

“Did he, or she, say what for?”

“Yeah. To tell us Black Glove's name!”

“Trap!” cried Rachel.

Roger skidded to a halt. “What?”

“This stinks worse than liver,” said Rachel, thudding up beside him. She was holding her side, which was throbbing from the sudden exertion. “It's got to be a trap.”

Roger swore. “I was so excited I didn't even think of that. But you're right—it does smell like a trap.”

Hap sighed. “So now what do we do?”

“We keep going,” said Roger. “Only we do it with a little more intelligence than I started out with. We can't afford to pass up the chance that this might be for real.”

“We can't afford to get our butts caught in another trap, either,” responded Hap. “Frankly I'm a little tired of risking my life for the general good and not getting any thanks for it.”

“Not
your
life,” said Roger. “Mine. Our friend was specific—only one person goes in. And since I was stupid enough to be planning on it anyway, I should be the one to take the risk.”

“Now wait a minute,” said Hap. “You don't think we're going to let you go in there alone, do you?”

Roger smiled. “You don't have much choice. The safest way to do this is for the two of you to stay outside to cover me. If something breaks loose, try to get me out. If I don't come back in a reasonable amount of time, one of you go for reinforcements.”

“Roger!” said Rachel.

“Yeah?”

Rachel looked into her brother's eyes, then shrugged. She knew him well enough not to bother trying to talk him out of this. She knew, too, that in his place she would do the same thing. It was one of the shared traits of their twinhood: Given a choice between caution and curiosity, they went for curiosity every time. If they had even the slightest chance of learning Black Glove's name, there was no way they were going to pass it up, not even if it meant real danger—or even worse, that they would miss the satisfaction of solving the puzzle.

“Yeah?” repeated Roger.

Rachel smiled at him. “Have fun.”

And then they were off again.

The three youngsters crouched in the shadow of a scrub pine. About fifteen yards ahead of them, along a path mottled with moonlight and darkness, lay the entrance to the warehouse.

“Do you have a control panel with you?” whispered Hap.

“Right here,” said Roger, patting his shirt pocket. Ever since he had learned to use the override device Wendy had designed to let them control the island's ferocious security robots, he had made it a point never to go out without one.

“I wonder if our mysterious friend is aware of those robots,” said Rachel.

“I would expect so,” said Roger. “It doesn't seem like there's much that goes on around here that he or she is
not
aware of. But our friend may also be planning on
me
putting it out of commission.”

“We have to do everything!” said Hap.

It was hard to tell if he was disgusted, amused, or both.

“I think
do
is the operative word here,” said Roger. “As in, I'd better get doing—which in this case means get moving.”

With that he slipped away from them as silently as a bubble on a breeze.

Hap smiled in approval. He remembered how clumsy Roger had been at tailing people when they first met. They had spent a lot of time together to work on that skill since then. It was clear to Hap that his training efforts had not been wasted.

The same thought crossed Roger's mind as he moved from shadow to shadow, looking for any sign of danger. Yet even though his senses were hyper-alert, he had found nothing to indicate a trap by the time he reached the building.

Moving cautiously, he tried the door.

Locked, as he expected.

That was no real problem. The doors were sealed with a lock that was opened by a pushbutton pad located on the wall just to the left of the knob. You needed to know the combination to get in, of course. Either that, or you needed an electronic key like the one the Gamma Ray had developed with his father's help. (Roger often wondered if Dr. Gammand had any idea as to what kind of uses his son put the little “science projects” they worked on together.)

After taking the device from his pocket, Roger placed the cup-shaped sensor over the keypad, then waited for it to read the combination and play it back.

Fifteen seconds later the door swung open.

Roger stepped through, trying to move as soundlessly as possible. He patted the robot control unit again, just to make sure it was still in his pocket.

The warehouse was almost pitch black. The moon had disappeared behind a cloud, so even the skylight provided virtually no illumination. Only the dim red glow of the mandatory EXIT signs gave him a sense of space and direction.

Wishing he had taken the time to grab a real flashlight, Roger twisted the outer edge of his watch to activate the glow ring. The effect was minimal, but he could see enough to avoid running into things.

Looking ahead, he thought he saw a flash of light. He held his breath, waiting to see if it repeated itself.

There! That had to be their friend—or their enemy, if this was indeed a trap.

Suddenly Roger wished he had not been in such a hurry, after all.

Who was waiting for him in the darkness?

Moving slowly, silently, he began to work his way toward the light.

It flashed again, closer now.

Roger tried to swallow, found his mouth was too dry; his throat had closed up on him. He wondered if he would be able to talk—or cry out for help—when he came face-to-face with whomever he was approaching.

He took a few more steps, stopped when he saw the light flash—it was much closer now—then started again. Another flash and he could make out the dim outline of a short figure.

A shiver rippled down his spine. Black Glove was short. Could this be him?

Roger suddenly understood what it meant when someone said their blood ran cold. He felt as if his whole body had been plunged into ice water. Part of him wanted to turn and run. Another part, stronger, demanded he see this through. After all, Anza-bora had more than one short person

Now they were only a few feet apart. Suddenly the mystery person stopped. “No closer!” said a hoarse whisper. “Shine a light under your face. I want to see who you are.”

Roger hesitated for an instant. It had not occurred to him that their friend might be as nervous as he was. “I don't have a very good light,” he said softly. “See if this—”

He was interrupted by a hideous shrieking. Tearing out of the dark, splitting the silence, it froze him where he stood. It took only an instant to realize it was coming from one of the guard robots.

“Don't worry!” he called, fumbling for the control unit. “I can take care of this.”

But their mysterious friend had already slipped into the darkness.

“At least tell me who Black Glove is!” cried Roger. Then the robot came roaring around a corner just ahead of him, and he had to turn his attention to the problem at hand. Nothing fancy required here—no need to make the robot do anything but stop in its tracks.

He pushed the appropriate button.

Nothing happened.