Rat Trap

by Michael J. Daley

  “Yes, yes, yes,” the captain interrupted. “We know all about that. Our problem is more immediate. So far Nanny’s happy shooting sniffers, but when they run out …”

  The mother glanced anxiously at the boy, then the father, and said nothing more. She moved to sit next to the boy, throwing a quick arm around his shoulders.

  The captain squeezed into the chair at the head of the table. “Where’s that rat doctor?”

  The door opened, revealing two security guards outside. They looked like frozen columns of water in their laser-reflective armor, except for the dark length of the big guns. The barrels glowed bright red. The guards stepped aside as Dr. Vivexian strode into the room, dragging a sack. Rat expected more of a shock on seeing him, but the camera angle made him look small and distant. Nonthreatening. The thing gliding at his heels caught her attention, but before she got a good picture, it scuttled under the table.

  Dr. Vivexian dumped the sack on the table. Blasted sniffers tumbled out, blackened and brittle. “Look at this! Look.”

  That voice! Rat’s mouth began to water. Drool leaked at the corners. The voice engulfed Rat. The voice took her back to the lab where she would do anything for a bit of liverwurst or a few smooth words of praise. The memory sickened her. She had done everything that voice asked of her—until the window and the touch of sunshine had set her free.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  COMMON CAUSE

  Blasted sniffers cascaded onto the table. One smacked Jeff’s plate. He stared at its blackened and brittle body. Its once-blue rubber dentures looked like burnt sponge. The smell was terrible.

  “Look at this! Look!” Dr. Vivexian was beside himself. “C-10 has lost nearly three-quarters of its swarm of sniffers!”

  The chief said, “C-10 must be malfunctioning to let Nanny get the upper hand.”

  “Let me point out the real malfunction here,” Dr. Vivexian sneered. “The station map you downloaded to C-10 is wrong, inaccurate, erroneous.”

  The captain said, “Well … ah … yes. There’s always a few loose ends.”

  “A few! C-10 estimates eighteen percent error. That’s incompetence. There are hundreds of areas that are simply invisible to C-10. Terra incognita. Your robot is exploiting them. My rat might be, too. No wonder C-10 can’t find either of them.”

  “Sit down, Doctor,” the captain ordered. “Your report, Chief.”

  Dr. Vivexian sat down next to Jeff. His fingers drummed the table, and when he caught Jeff looking, he gave him a searing glance. Uh-oh, Jeff thought. Someone clued him in to my pinkie-finger-for-balance joke!

  The chief said, “Normally, in a situation like this, we’d simply transmit an emergency shutdown code. But since Nanny removed the wireless command unit, that won’t work.”

  “Nor will voice command,” Bett added. “I said all the right things, but Nanny rejected every attempt at control.”

  “Why did the prowler come to your lab in the first place?” asked Dr. Vivexian.

  Jeff worried this would interest him.

  Bett said, “It was looking for the boy.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Jeff is helping me provide practical experience for my AI.”

  “So Nanny is interested in you.” The chief nudged Dad. “Maybe our first idea wasn’t so bad, hey, Greg? Send Jeff after Nanny with a big tube of liverwurst.”

  Mom exclaimed, “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “Just a joke, Jan,” Dad said.

  “Skip it,” the captain said. “I want a real answer.”

  “Right. Here’s the bottom line. We don’t have the firepower to destroy Nanny.” The chief let that sink in. “Our only hope of stopping it is to use the rogue port. That’s a kind of trapdoor. All prowlers have them. A special code opens it. We can give C-10 Nanny’s access and deactivation codes and outfit it with the necessary hardlink. Once in the clench—”

  “The what?” asked the captain.

  “Clench,” the chief repeated, grasping his hands together above the table. “It’s a maneuver used by military robots. Kind of like how old sailing ships would grapple each other together for hand-to-hand combat. I can program C-10 to do it. Once in a clench, computer speed determines who wins. C-10 comes out tops there.”

  Jeff wasn’t so sure about that. Hadn’t Nanny fooled it? Hadn’t Nanny fooled them all?

  The chief took a swig of coffee. “Problem is, how to force a fight. We need a trap. And bait. A rat would be ideal. Doctor, you don’t happen to have a spare one?”

  “Don’t be absurd.”

  The captain grumbled, “A space station full of scientists and no one working with rats!”

  It was a horrible idea, yet Jeff saw the logic of it. A rat was the only thing that could lure Nanny into a trap. What if there was one? Just an ordinary lab rat. Dime a dozen, weren’t they? Would he let one be killed to stop Nanny from threatening him again? Or Mom? Or Dad? Of course he would. It was true, but it felt wrong.

  “How long will these changes to C-10 take?” Dr. Vivexian asked.

  The chief replied, “A few hours.”

  “Impossible! C-10 cannot be diverted from the search for so long.”

  “You don’t seem to understand, Doctor,” the chief said. “If you catch that rat, you become Nanny’s target. It might even attack the shuttle.”

  “No, it won’t,” the captain told him. “I’ve ordered the shuttle to undock. It’s orbiting at a safe distance. It will remain there until this crisis is over.”

  Those words brought a sober silence to the room. The space station was under siege.

  “You have made your point, gentlemen,” Dr. Vivexian said. “C-10 is at your service. There does remain, however, the issue of baiting the trap.…” Dr. Vivexian turned his gaze on Jeff. “So what do you say, Jeffrey? Shall we end the charade now? This is what my rat was trained to do, after all, not play puppy dog to a little prankster like you.”

  Jeff almost laughed. The idea of Rat following devotedly at his heels was just too absurd.

  “Jeff, what is he talking about?” Mom. She was the only person in the room genuinely surprised by Dr. Vivexian’s challenge. Clearly, everyone else either knew or suspected. But only Jeff could tell them how to get in touch with Rat. Dad never asked where her hiding place was. And Bett never did learn the truth.

  His continued silence finally roused Mom’s suspicions. “Jeffrey! You do know something about that rat. Tell us this minute!”

  Maybe Rat was the only one who could save them, but he didn’t have to tell them anything right now. He needed to talk to Rat first, to ask her if she would undertake such a dangerous job. It was Rat’s choice to accept or refuse.

  “It died, Mom, I’ve told you a hundred times.”

  Jeff flinched at the furious cold stare from Dr. Vivexian.

  “Now, listen here.” The captain shifted his big body uncomfortably and leaned toward Jeff. A look of disapproval showed in his squinty eyes, and something else, a kind of apology. “Lives are at stake.”

  Beep-beep. Control spoke from the intercom. “Captain, I have a voice message for you. Extremely odd, sir. It’s coming over the emergency lighting circuits.”

  “What the devil? Pipe it here.”

  One of Rat’s tricks! Jeff knew. So did Dr. Vivexian. He leaned toward the intercom in breathless anticipation.

  “Good boy, no tell.” It was LB’s voice, but no mistaking Rat’s words. “Okay now. Secret ended.”

  Relief hit Jeff dramatically. The long deception was over. It left Jeff giddy and reckless. With a few small motions of his fingers, he signed at Dr. Vivexian: “What puppy?”

  But Dr. Vivexian wasn’t paying attention to Jeff. He stared at the intercom, a mix of tender emotions softening his usually uptight features.

  “Who is that?” Mom asked.

  “My experiment,” Bett said. “LB, you’re not supposed to connect to the network.”

  “The rat made me do it. LB is speaking for the rat
. The rat has taken over. Help! Help!”

  Was that true? Jeff wondered. Or was LB just pretending to keep people from guessing where Rat actually was?

  LB continued. “Rat will help. Need truce. Terms. No capture. Return to Earth. Release free.”

  “Impossible,” Dr. Vivexian said. “I refuse.”

  “Rat is safe. Hide long time. Good luck.”

  “Wait!” the captain said. “I make the terms here. I’m sorry, Doctor, but the lives at stake outweigh your interest in that rat. If it can really stop Nanny, it deserves to go free.”

  “Whatever your authority may be here, Captain, it is against the law to release a modified into the environment,” Dr. Vivexian said. “The penalty is life in prison. Are you willing to pay that price for a rat?”

  The captain’s mouth pursed, nearly disappearing in his round face. Jeff couldn’t blame him for wavering.

  Dad cleared his throat.

  “I have a suggestion,” he said. “Same terms except one: Instead of freedom, we place the rat in the protective custody of the Modified Liberation League and let the courts decide.”

  Dr. Vivexian frowned. “That’s ridiculous. I created that rat. She is mine. You cannot put her in the hands of strangers.”

  “Sounds perfectly fair to me,” the captain said. “What does the rat say?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THE MISSION

  Rat was surprised. The captain had sent Nanny hunting for her, but now he talked about letting her go free, of treating her fairly. Rat thought fair was a word used only when talking about the boy’s silly games, but it seemed to be important even in real life.

  Still, Rat preferred cheating.

  The father was clever, but he did not know about her plan to use the escape pods. She could agree to this new term because she would not be on the shuttle when it arrived in Earth orbit. She would never end up in anybody’s custody.

  “Rat agrees,” she signed, hearing her words spoken in the conference room in the machine’s voice—another surprising and strange thing!

  Reluctantly, grumpily, Dr. Vivexian agreed, too. Then his voice softened to speak directly to her. “RR4b, you are on a mission.”

  Those words: lab words, code words. And that voice, so compelling! Combined, they unhinged something in Rat. She waited on her haunches, alert, receptive.

  The boy protested, “Her name is Rat!”

  “How very … original.”

  “I didn’t give her that name,” the boy said. “It’s her name for herself.”

  Annoying boy! Stop interrupting. Rat wanted to hear more of that voice.

  “RR4b, mission objectives require coordination.”

  Yes. Yes. Command me!

  “I must know your location.”

  Of their own accord, her forepaws swept out the signs. Appalled, Rat watched them. What was happening? She had her own plan to defeat Nanny. She did not need—did not want!—instructions from Dr. Vivexian.

  “You said that was a secret, Cousin.” The machine hesitated. “Do you really want LB to tell?”

  Wonderful machine! It saved her again. If it had obediently passed on her answer, sniffers would have overrun the lab in seconds. Rat was glad the machine did not have to hurt itself to save her this time.

  “Block voice! Print only!” she signed. What a bad rat she was being! A good rat wanted to obey. An obedient rat got treats and praise.

  “Done,” the machine said. “Cousin Rat, are you okay? Your vital signs are erratic.”

  She was not okay. She had thought she was free. But she had freed herself only from the cages, not from that voice. Dr. Vivexian still held power over her.

  Rat signed, “Send this: location secret, unnecessary reveal. Have access all data chief’s laptop. Coordinate through it.”

  Dr. Vivexian’s face clouded with puzzlement. He certainly had not expected Rat to be able to resist his command.

  The captain said with unmasked amusement, “Nice try, Doctor.”

  The speaker in the habitat cut out. Dr. Vivexian’s reply appeared in print on the screen. AS I SAID, MY RAT IS FORMIDABLE. THIS MISSION WILL PROVIDE AN EXCELLENT PROOF OF HER ABILITIES. C-10, DOCUMENT EVERYTHING.

  “Affirmative,” C-10 said.

  Rat took her first good look at this strange new ally. It stood next to the chief, linked to the laptop. It rose level with the tabletop on three sturdy legs made of piled-up sniffers. There wasn’t really a body or a head. A loose collection of sniffers at the top formed a kind of multifaceted face with eyes and a speaker.

  “Here’s a problem,” the chief said. A diagram of the underside of Nanny appeared on Rat’s duplicate screen, the smooth body pimpled with a one-inch square grid of tiny pin-holes. “The rogue port is manually keyed. I’m not sure C-10 can unlock it.”

  “Correct,” C-10 said. “This unit was not collected for that function. Eyesight and dexterity are insufficient to perform the task.”

  Dr. Vivexian’s words scrolled on the screen. MY RAT HAS WONDERFULLY NIMBLE TOES. IT CAN OPEN THE PORT.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” the boy said. “I thought Rat was just going to lure Nanny into an ambush. Now you’re saying she has to be in the clutch or clench or whatever that is with them? Nanny’ll blast her!”

  “We are still three hundred sixty-seven sniffers. We can protect specimen RR4b,” C-10 reassured him.

  A new image formed on the laptop. It showed a rat. A ball of sniffers gathered around the rat, jaws linking together to form a net. Another layer formed over that one and another and another until the ball was a solid mass of interlocking sniffers. Their glittery sides were mirror bright, perfect for deflecting laser fire. The sniffers made an armored ball, a rat tank. Rat was impressed and unnerved. Surrounded by sniffers? Sniffers meant danger. And that ball was as much a cage as it was a shield.

  Nevertheless, it would let her do the job.

  Rat tapped the fire foam tank. It rang hollow. She signed, “Tell them: Need new fire foam. Laser would be nice.”

  The boy stood up. “I’ll bring it right to you, Rat.”

  “No. No boy. Too dangerous. Send someone else. Leave supplies at rendezvous. Orders—no boy!”

  Poor boy! He looked devastated. But Rat did not have to worry he would disobey her this time. The mother and the father and even the captain would see to that.

  “This is very exciting, Cousin. LB wants to come with you, but LB can’t. LB is stuck in a box.”

  Good. The machine had already sacrificed enough.

  Rat quickly frisked the spyvest. Everything in place. Picking up the scrambler, she gave the egg-shaped shell a half twist to turn it on. When she stretched her mouth wide to swallow it, the cuts on her lips broke open. Rat licked at the few beads of blood, rich with iron taste. No blood in robots. Rat shook herself to settle her hairs and her nerves.

  “Open door,” she signed. The lock clicked and Rat shouldered her way out. Dropping quickly, she found a fiber-optic cable on the floor. She scurried along it into the glowing redness of the lab, stopped, arrested by the delicious sensation of so much space. Then her mission sense took over: Exposed! Danger! Go!

  But first she had to do something important. The machine had always been so happy, as full of fun (and just as annoying!) as the boy in his best moods. Rat missed that. She must leave a message for the boy and the scientist in case she didn’t come back.

  She hurried to the console and pounced on the keyboard. Oh, but it was wonderful to make complete sentences again. She poured out her observations and theories about helping the machine recover. She felt like a scientist!

  Rat turned to go. Wait! One more thing. She typed, “Rat is thinking of an eight letter word.”

  “Oh, good! LB loves word games. But LB needs a hint.”

  “The word begins with s-u.” Now. Go! Rat sprang straight up. In the half gravity, she sailed to the ceiling, then dropped onto a big pipe. Darting along, she heard the machine muttering to itself far below. “Suddenly … supe
rior … surprise …”

  Rat slipped into the dark air shaft. These passageways were not safe anymore. Danger could be waiting around any corner, in any shadow. She set out, all senses alert. Just beyond the junction where the branch from the lab and the living quarters came together, the air pressure changed. A little shock wave rippled the fine hairs at the base of her whiskers. Not far ahead, something was moving toward her.

  Too soon! Nanny must not find her until she had the supplies from the mother’s lab. Rat sprang into a shaft over her head, spiraled along it several feet. Waited. A fix-it robot waddled past, oblivious to Rat’s scent.

  Recalling the out-of-date space-station maps from the computer, Rat compared them to the accurate map in her head, made from weeks of wandering around. Yes. She knew routes to the lab that Nanny did not. With renewed confidence, Rat continued on. The jetpak tank on her back grew heavier and heavier as the gravity gradually built up to normal. She had made it safely to Ring 9.

  Moments later she squirmed through a narrow pipe into the space beneath the sink. The supplies were in a cleared spot near the door: a fire foam canister wrapped in a note from the boy; a pinprobe to fit the rogue-port locks; a magnetic disk with a loop to give Rat a handhold on Nanny’s super-polished body; and a mini tube of liverwurst. She took one small bite—there wasn’t room for more with the scrambler—then read the boy’s note:

  Rat,

  Everyone’s afraid. I’m afraid. No one believed me about Nanny before. Now they do. I want to help you, but I know only you can do it. Be careful! Look what happened to LB! I don’t want to make you nervous, but remember Nanny fooled C-10. I told Mom who really saved the project. Save us again, Rat! I love you. Jeff

  P.S. Sorry, no laser your size anywhere.

  Rat’s whiskers twitched. A strange hotness gathered deep inside her.

  The latch clicked. Her legs exploded her into the pipe, leaving a clatter of bottles behind.