The second jeep pulled up beside theirs, the two sets of headlights bathing the tunnel in their glow. The soldiers not manning the jeeps' weapons climbed down. The engines were shut off and all was quiet.
Laura leaned forward. "What's going on?" she asked Gray.
Hoblenz led three men toward the tunnel entrance. Two others took up positions just in front of and behind the two jeeps, facing away.
"He's checking out the tunnel," Gray replied.
Hoblenz and his soldiers quickly disappeared into the dark maw. Laura kept glancing at the jungle to her right. She couldn't shake from her head the image of being grabbed, or the physical feeling that image evoked — the feeling of being dragged deeper and deeper into the mud and muck of alien terrain. Of clawing at the ground as she was pulled into a world whose border rose ominously inches away.
"I'm gonna stretch my legs," Laura said, unbuckling her seatbelt to climb out.
"Stay in the jeep," Gray said tersely, his eyes, like those of the two men standing at the jeeps' roll bars, fixed intently on the tunnel opening.
She sighed and rebuckled her belt, leaning away from the edge of civilization. Her nerves were taut, and she drew a deep and calming breath.
The world around her seemed frozen in time. The man at the gun beside her was bent over his weapon. The soldier at the front of their jeep stood motionless with his rifle half raised. Gray's head was still — his eyes focused on the mouth of the tunnel. Laura felt like she was in virtual reality, and the program had been halted with the Pause button. She found herself nervously looking for some sign of life around her. The soldier behind their jeep slowly raised the butt of his rifle to the hollow of his shoulder — the sights rising to his goggles. He was ready, but he had nothing at which to aim.
The tunnel erupted with stunning bursts of gunfire. Laura clapped her hands over her ears, her heart clenching tight and rising into her throat. Then there was silence again. She felt every beat of her heart against her chest. Two, three, four… A giant spider skittered out of the tunnel, its head bowed low and its legs taking short but furious steps.
The soldier who stood beside Laura fired — the night erupting in thudding bursts from the heavy weapon mounted above her on the jeep's roll bar. Bursts of flame erupted from the robot's torso and from the concrete facing of the tunnel mouth just behind. But the robot raced down the road undeterred — straight at the two jeeps blocking its path.
In a flash the Model Seven was upon them. Laura ducked as the leg slammed down onto the jeep's hood. It climbed right on top of the vehicle. The weapon above her fell silent as its crewman collapsed, guttural grunts venting from his chest. The jeep rocked with the pummeling blows. Glass shattered and a man screamed.
With one last press downward on the jeep's suspension, the robot was gone. The soldier beside Laura rose to his feet, turning his weapon around to point down the road.
The night again exploded with a machinegun-like string of booms.
The smoking, empty shell casings spun wildly out of the weapon's ejector. Every muscle in Laura's body was tensed, and her palms were jammed hard onto her ears.
She felt a hand rest lightly on her shoulder. She looked up. "It's gone," Gray said, his words almost lost against the ringing in her ears.
The two soldiers stood at the roll bars with their weapons pointed down the hill after the Model Seven. The windshield of the second jeep was shattered, and the man atop it was bareheaded and bleeding from the stubble of his hair. The soldier guarding the rear climbed up to dress his comrade's wound while the injured man's eyes remained glued to the missile's sights.
Gray got out and helped the soldier in front to his feet. The two men then headed up the road toward the tunnel — their rifles raised to their shoulders and ready.
Laura unbuckled her belt and followed, the branches and leaves scratching at her in the narrow space beside the jeep. Almost forgetting, she went back and got her rifle. She had to run to catch up with Gray at the mouth of the tunnel.
The steely odor of gunfire wafted from the dark shaft ahead.
From out of the faint haze, however, she saw Hoblenz's small group approach — two soldiers lending support to a third, who hopped on one foot in between.
"Is he all right?" Gray asked Hoblenz when they emerged.
"What?" Hoblenz shouted, cocking his ear to Gray.
"Is that man hurt badly?" Gray asked in a raised tone.
"How bad?" Hoblenz replied too loudly, turning to peer into the bright headlights of the battered jeeps.
"No!" Gray shouted, shaking his head. "I was asking about him!" He pointed.
Hoblenz just shook his head, cupping his ear with his fingertips. "I can't hear a thing!" he yelled. He turned to Laura. "Don't ever get in a firefight inside a tunnel!" he advised.
The two men helped the wounded soldier hop by. "He's okay!" Hoblenz yelled. "Just fractured his leg a little!"
"What happened?" Gray practically shouted.
Hoblenz shrugged, working his jaw as if to clear his ears. "Damn thing just freaked out. We musta scared it. Walked right up on it from behind."
"What was it doing in there?" Gray asked.
"Well, it was right at the opening on the other side. It looked like it was keepin' an eye out up toward your house. It was pressed to one side, a coupla legs up over the rail on the sidewalk."
"Wait a minute!" Laura interjected. "If you came up on it from this side, and it got startled, why'd it come running out this way? Why didn't it run out the other end of the tunnel away from you?"
No one replied, but in the glances Hoblenz and Gray exchanged Laura guessed the answer. The Model Seven was more frightened of what lay beyond the tunnel than of the puny weapons of the humans behind it.
"Let's go," Gray ordered, and they mounted the jeeps.
Hoblenz took the lead, pulling slowly off the sidewalk and up to the mouth of the tunnel. He hesitated there, searching through the smoke into the semidarkness ahead. He then let the clutch out and jammed his foot on the accelerator.
The jeep passed into the mountain. Instead of open air all around Laura there was now concrete. The enclosure focused her, channeled her concentration like a funnel. There was no threat from the other side anymore. All her attention was directed now on the road — on the tight beams their headlights cast along the curving wall not thirty feet ahead.
All at once, they burst out into the open. Laura savored the liberating night air. Gray's mansion rose over the low stone wall on the right, visible only as a dark mass blotting out the starry ocean horizon behind it. The tires squealed as they turned through the gates — the two jeeps careening into the courtyard at high speed. With one long screech they both skidded to a stop. Hoblenz and the unwounded men raced toward the front door, and Gray and Laura loped up the front steps behind them. Everyone had their weapons raised.
Once inside the foyer, all was quiet. The soldiers lay prone on the marble floor. In the dim light Laura could see that the [garbled] into the dark corners and doorways all around.
"Which one is Janet's room?" Hoblenz whispered.
"I'll go get her," Gray said, and he dashed for the stairs.
"Miller, Delucia — go!" Hoblenz barked, and the two men ran off after Gray.
When the three men disappeared at the top of the stairs, all was still again.
"Why don't we turn on the lights?" Laura asked, her low voice sounding like a shout in the silent foyer. Hoblenz didn't bother to answer her question. "No, really," she persisted. "They can see us with those thermal things. We're the only ones who can't see in the dark."
Several moments passed, then Hoblenz shouted, "Hopkins! Hit the goddamn lights!"
When the lights came on, they revealed an absurd scene. The burly soldiers all lay on the marble floor of Gray's magnificent foyer.
Laura, on the other hand, leaned casually against a thick column just inside the front door. Hoblenz was the first to rise, and the others quickly followed.
; Janet's voice came from the upstairs hallway. She apologized profusely for all the trouble she had caused and was escorted out to the jeeps by a soldier. Hoblenz then led a team of three others to check the rooms on the first floor. They worked quickly and in good military fashion, their backs to the hallway wall before they spun into the rooms with their weapons leveled. When Hoblenz returned, there was a faint sheen of perspiration on his brow. "We've checked everything on this floor but the kitchen. If somebody'll tell me where the hell it is, I'll clear it, too."
"We'll all go," Gray said, leading them to the nearly invisible door set flush with the wall by the dining room.
Instead of the usual squeaking from her running shoes on the polished floor, Laura heard a gritty crunch. "Hey," she said. "You know, there's sand or something on the—" The kitchen door burst open, and Hoblenz and his soldiers scattered. Gray grabbed Laura and pushed her off to the side. Gunshots rang out as a Model Eight waddled out of the kitchen. It stood still for a moment despite the gunfire peppering its chest, then skittered across the marble, almost losing its footing.
The robot walked awkwardly under the hail of bullets, heading into the study with a stiff-legged gait. It was gone before Laura even remembered that she held a rifle.
"Cease fire!" Hoblenz shouted, and there followed a silence that seemed startlingly abrupt after the thunder of the ferocious weapons.
A great crash from the study was followed only by the tinkling of glass and the ringing in Laura's tortured ears. Hoblenz and Gray led the group to the study door. The window and large parts of the frame on the wall behind Gray's desk were gone. The fence that enclosed a small garden outside lay on the ground, and the jungle branches beyond it still shook.
"Lord God Aw-mighty," Hoblenz said. "I think that one got a hold of some PCP."
"Come on," Gray said, and he headed to the kitchen. Weapons were raised and ready to fire, but when Gray turned on the lights, it was clear the kitchen was empty.
It was also a complete mess. Food from the walk-in refrigerator and freezer was all over the floor. Every cabinet was open, its contents in disarray. The walls on which pans usually hung from hooks were empty, the shiny copper cookware strewn about the floor like toys in the robots' tactile rooms.
Gray reached down amid the mess and picked up a black sliver of what looked like rock. He held it in his fingers and twisted it in the air. It crumbled easily. He carefully prodded the debris on the floor with his toe and found several other shards of black rock. The kitchen was filled with loose black dirt that crunched under the soles of Laura's shoes.
"What's that," she asked.
"Lava stone," Gray said as he knelt on one knee, rubbing the black dust between his fingers. He rose, and everyone followed him back to his study.
Hoblenz stuck to his side and said, "Do you mind me askin' what's goin' on?"
"That lava stone has been drilled," Gray replied as he rounded his desk and sat. "The robot we just ran into tracked in the cuttings. Since they've got the run of their own facility, they must be drilling toward something else. The only other facility in the mountain is Krantz's nuclear lab."
"Jesus," was all Hoblenz said.
Gray picked up the telephone and dialed quickly. Cold wind drifted in through the shattered window. "Laura," he said, motioning her over to the terminal on his desk, "You log on and find out what the computer knows about any tunneling. Mr. Hoblenz you get on that one over there," he said, pointing to another computer beside the sofa. "Pull up a schematic. I want to know how close the Model Eight facility is to the nuclear labs at the closest point."
"Phil," Gray said into the receiver, "I'm going to put you on the speaker." He punched the button so all could hear. "Where the hell are the Model Eights right now?"
"They're all over the reactor. They've apparently broken out a portable recharger — one that we had for remote construction sites — and managed to power it up. They can move that charging station around — tie up to electrical substations and not have to go all the way back to the mountain for a recharge."
Laura looked down at the screen and read,
"This is Laura. There was a Model Eight in Mr. Gray's house."
"Laura," Gray said, interrupting Griffith's report, "Ask about the drilling."
She typed, "Do you know anything about what's going on in the Model Eight facility?"
"What about the nuclear lab?"
"Mr. Gray wants me to ask you about drilling. Have you detected any drilling?"
"Could Model Eights drill through to the nuclear facility?"
Laura turned to Gray, who was bent over the computer screen beside Hoblenz.
"There!" Hoblenz said, pointing. "One hundred and eighty meters from that air shaft in the nuclear facility to this room here in the Model Eight facility. What room is that?"
"It's a… a tactile room," Gray said.
Laura's screen lit up again.
"The computer says a boring unit might be missing," Laura reported.
"Ask the computer how long it would take that unit to drill a tunnel through one hundred and eighty meters of lava stone."
Laura typed in the question.
Gray appeared behind Laura to read the response. "Mr. Hoblenz?" he said. His tone caused Laura to look up. Hoblenz paused at his computer and did the same. "Do you have any explosives handy?"
Hoblenz made a face. "Not on me, but there's a little somethin' in the jeep."
"Get it."
Hoblenz sent one of his men for the explosives and told the others to leave them alone. He closed the door behind them, leaving only Gray, Hoblenz, and Laura in the study. "You mind if I ask what you had in mind, sir?"
"I intend to go down to the Model Eight facility."
"I thought you might say that. I've got a problem. There's a certain etiquette to bein' a mercenary. I could order my men down there, and they'd go. But this is a situation where it wouldn't be right. I gotta ask for volunteers."
"That's fine. I'm not ordering anybody to go down there," Gray said, heading for the door.
43
Hoblenz and three volunteers stood by the elevator with weapons at the ready. They would go down first and establish a secure perimeter.
Gray, Laura, and two other soldiers would follow. The elevator's motor was whining loudly, but Gray said it would be several minutes before it arrived.
"One thing I don't understand, Mr. Gray," Hoblenz said. "What is it those Model Eights plan on doin'. I mean, so they grab the nuclear devices what the
n? A coupla laser-guided bombs oughta put the reactor outa commission. That gives 'em a few days of charge left. And even if they set all those devices off, we're so isolated out here it wouldn't do a damn thing other'n make the evening news. And blowin' this island to kingdom come would be kind of self-defeatin'. So what gives?"
"I don't know," Gray replied. "Have you ever played a game of chess against a computer whose depth of search for potential moves was severely limited? For all you know you're playing a tournament-level player, then all of a sudden it loses its queen to a pawn. But you have to stop and think. It's then when the danger for you is greatest. Did it just make an incredibly ignorant mistake, or is it up to something that, in your rush to exploit, you'll miss?"
Hoblenz thought for a moment, then frowned. "I'm sorry I asked."
Laura jumped in. "So we're going to blow up their tunnel? That's what this is about?"
"We're heading down there to see what's going on," Gray answered. "If they're exhibiting any dangerous behavior, then we blow their recharging units and exits."
Hoblenz looked over at Gray now, and so did several of the soldiers. Laura was missing something they all seemed to know.
"What?" she asked. "What is it?"
Gray lowered his head before responding. "We programmed these robots to value self-preservation very highly. They feel hunger when their charge is low. They starve to death when it runs out. The charging units are life to them." He looked up at Hoblenz. "We'd better plan on blowing all of them at the same time, and we'd better be near the exits when they go."
The elevator bell dinged. Half a dozen safeties clicked off. The doors opened. The elevator was empty.
Hoblenz and his three men strapped themselves in, holding their weapons in their laps at the ready.
"See ya in hell, boss," Hoblenz said, and the doors closed.
Gray's eyes remained fixed on the doors for some time after the elevator departed.
"What about Hightop?" Laura asked. "Would you let him die, too?" Gray shrugged and looked away. "Has anyone asked him what's going on?"
"He won't talk. They've got this code of silence. Like I told you, they're developing a society… and they're emulating me."
Society of the Mind Page 51
