Eric was still sounding dazed when Corfe finished. Clearly he was struggling to absorb it all. "My God, I can't . . . How sure are you? I . . . You're right. There's nothing more you can do about Kevin. Ohira will take care of it. . . . You need to try and find where Michelle is. Do you have any ideas?"
"No, but I'm trying to use the van's couplers to link into the mecs that disappeared from Garsten's office. If I can figure out where they are, my guess is that's where she'll be too."
"Yes . . . yes, of course. Try that," Eric agreed.
"I haven't had any luck from where I am now, which is west of Bellevue, coming to the bridge. I don't think she's this side of the lake. So I'm going across to the city now to try from a more central location."
"Maybe we can try talking to the police again, too, when I get back," Eric said. "They might listen more to both of us—especially if you get something before then. I'll probably be about another hour. I've tried calling the firm again, but there's still no answer from Kevin."
"I'll call you back if there's any news," Corfe said.
"Okay, Doug."
Corfe cut the call, started the van again, and pulled back onto 520, heading westward toward the Evergreen Point Bridge.
The flatbed tractor-trailer heading north on I-5 was passing the Lakeview exit south of Tacoma. In one of the hollows on top of its load of timber planks stacked in bales, the KJ-3 swayed precariously, a dab of color among the pine. While they were passing through the dead zone where the two mecs aboard the KJ-3 temporarily died, Kevin had briefly reactivated Tigger to let Eric know that his situation hadn't changed, but he had learned little new apart from that Eric was an hour away and driving riskily for the conditions. Then the truck came within the lab's signal range, and its two stowaways resumed functioning.
Once more at the controls as Lancelot, Kevin primed the fuel and got ready for startup. Coordinating the two mecs would be trickier this time. There would be no run-up to takeoff speed since they were moving already—and in any case there wasn't room. A step of sawn endgrain buttressed the plane's tail, and ahead of it the slope of the boards led up into the full force of the truck's slipstream. The best he could hope for would be a catapult launch at maximum power, trusting that the air flow would create enough lift to hold the plane until the motor took over. Kevin wasn't sure if he had figured out the aerodynamics accurately, but he was about to find out now. This was about as close to Neurodyne as they were going to get.
He switched channels to become Dreadnought, already standing outside, hanging onto the airscrew for balance on the lurching mountainside of wet wood. Wind roared through gaps in the timber higher up; unseen wheels sizzled on the roadway far below. He straightened up, worked a foot tighter into the crack that he had found for anchorage, and jerked down hard with both arms. . . . The motor fired first time.
Channel select, back to Lancelot.
The plane was already trying to lift and break loose—he had visions of being swept into the wooden step behind. . . . Need maximum thrust now to clear. What about Dreadnought? . . . The wings were lifting, catching air stream. No time! . . .
Full throttle, ride the flow. An invisible river of wind hammered up under the flimsy plane, snatching it away. It veered to the right, went into a nose-up stall, and pitched down toward the southbound highway. Kevin fought to steady it, holding a power dive until he felt he was up to flying speed again, and pulled up just in time to avoid a swerving pickup coming the other way in the fast lane. He eased into a climb, moving closer to the timber-laden truck again and rising past it. He had a brief glimpse of Dreadnought standing motionless among the topmost planks, and then it disappeared behind the wing. Kevin picked out the landmarks that would guide him to Neurodyne, banked into a turn to bring them sliding slantwise around behind the airscrew spinning in front of him, and then leveled out.
He wasn't sure what he intended to do now that he no longer had Dreadnought. Lancelot's only role in his plan had been to fly the plane to get Dreadnought to Neurodyne in order to turn the computer off. Almost certainly, Lancelot wouldn't be big enough.
However, one thing at a time, he told himself. At least he was still on his way.
It wasn't any of Ollie's business to know what was going on, but sometimes you couldn't help wondering. It seemed that the woman they'd picked up at Garsten's was another lawyer who had been somehow remote-controlling a break-in from the van into Garsten's computers. Lawyers! They were no different from the rest, he told himself. Next thing, they'd be shooting each other in back alleys too. Ollie wasn't sure what the other woman who'd been at the company that morning had to do with the kid they were supposed to bring in from Tacoma, but according to Kyle she was Payne's girlfriend. What was this kid doing on his own on some other company's premises that were supposed to be closed for the holiday, anyhow? Probably, he'd sneaked in to fool around with stuff he'd been told to stay away from, Ollie guessed. It sounded like some rich people's kid. Ollie decided he might quite enjoy this. He didn't like smartass, spoilt-brat rich kids.
"This it?" Royal said from behind the wheel. "Gowan Avenue—just past the construction, right?" They had slowed down and were passing a stretch of road with barriers and warning beacons, mounds of earth, and stacks of concrete pipe sections waiting to be laid. Silent earth movers and other machinery stood off the road to one side. Ollie consulted the sketch and directions that Andy Finnion had scrawled.
"Should be a gate with a sign somewhere along here," he confirmed.
They came to it almost at once: neurodyne. That was all it said. Royal pulled over and picked up the car phone. The lots in the office park were practically lost among the trees in the rain just starting to fall. "Let's just check it one more time." They had called Neurodyne's number on the way in. Royal listened for perhaps ten seconds, then shook his head. "There's nobody answering today. Okay, let's go."
They drove in through the gate and stopped outside the main entrance. Royal produced the keys that Andy had given him. Ollie read the directions for when they were inside: "Stairs up to the second floor. Corridor left. Third door on the left." They got out of the car. And that was when they became aware of the odd droning sound coming from somewhere in the direction of the Interstate, still distant but getting closer.
They exchanged puzzled looks. "What the hell's that noise?" Royal said.
"Dunno. . . . Chainsaw?"
"Not unless someone's running with it. . . . Anyhow, that's gotta be someplace up in the sky."
They stood outside the doors, scanning, looking more perplexed. Suddenly Ollie pointed. "There!"
They watched in astonishment as a toy airplane, yellow and red, came out from among the treetops. Their puzzlement turned to alarm as the plane descended toward the gateway, clearly heading for the Neurodyne building. Then it was just nose and wings with a tail fin behind, coming straight at them like fighters on strafing runs that Ollie had seen in war movies. He yelped, ducked, and without thinking pulled his gun from the hip holster at the back of his jacket.
But there were no bullets, and the toy plane veered and turned away. Then it swooped and made another pass, uncannily as if the pilot were checking them out—which was stupid, of course; what was in there to do any checking? Then it circled. Somebody, somewhere was presumably figuring out what to do.
Royal was standing tensed, his head jerking first one way then another, scanning the surroundings. "Where are they? Who's got the button for that thing?"
"I don't see anybody."
"Whoever it is has to be around here somewhere."
"What the hell are they doing?"
"How should I know?"
And then the plane climbed away over the parking area, turned above the gate, and headed back toward the building. Its engine note rose; it lined itself up, came in on a dive over the heads of the two men watching open-mouthed below . . .
And crashed into one of the second-story windows.
Kevin squirmed from beneath the motor and the wre
ckage of the nose, now crushed back into what had been the cabin, and clambered out over broken spars and shredded fabric. The rest of the plane was tilted almost vertically above him like an upended airliner, its nose inside the shattered window pane, crumpled wings impaled among jagged fingers of glass. He climbed over shards piled like smashed icebergs, and stopped at the edge of the sill to check his bearings. He was in the Test Lab, where he'd intended; there, a short distance away in one of the development couplers, was his real body—where the awareness that he was experiencing at this very instant was actually located. It was still an eerie sensation, even if hardly new. But there was no time for dwelling on things like that now. The two men with the blue car—who could only be henchmen of Payne's—were only a short corridor, a flight of stairs, and the thickness of the front doors away. But what was Lancelot supposed to do? Moving the spring-loaded On/Off switch would be like trying to turn the gun turret of a tank.
Still without a plan, he ran along the window sill until he could jump down onto the lab bench by the wall, and crossed its acreage of jungle-vine wires and tools standing like cranes to the far end. The rack containing the processors and DNC hardware that he was using was now standing immediately across from him. But a sheer chasm plunging hundreds of feet to the floor separated it from the bench. It was like looking across a Manhattan avenue at a skyscraper, except that it was built from gigantic planes of metal with exposed galleries of green, glasslike walls, and connected to other parts of the city by traceries of cable hanging in fantastic inverted arches. Beyond the rack, he could see himself in the coupler, serene and unmoving, with no visible hint of the turmoil raging within. He ran along the end of the bench frantically, searching for a way.
A bridge! A power conduit led from a service panel at the back of the bench to a distribution box mounted farther along the wall. About halfway along, a bundle of communications cables coming up from below grazed the conduit and then bent to run horizontally into the rack of equipment that Kevin needed to get to. He leaped, scrabbled at the top of the conduit with his arms, but started to slide on the painted metal. Then his fingers found the edge of a seam, and his grip held. He hauled himself up onto the conduit and followed it to where it passed above the cables. There, he faced a jump down, the height of a house. He judged the fall carefully and launched himself off, landing among the cables. A curving bow of trunklike cords hanging in space descended before him, then rose again toward the steel cliffs.
Through the empty building he heard the doors downstairs bang open, and raised voices echoing. He forged ahead, down to the lowermost part of the bridge, then up toward overhangs of green-gold beryllium alloy. Footsteps clattered in a distant stairwell.
Kevin passed through a gate in a castle wall made of metal, into a courtyard lined with enormous cylindrical shapes and colored sculptures. Beyond, he moved through parallel canyons formed between planes of city blocks standing on edge. He recognized electrical couplings and connections all around him, but there was no indication which of them might be vital. In any case, the circuits were like tramlines, the wires as thick as mains plumbing, connector leads like armored power cable. There was nothing that he could hope to break or budge. He came to the edge of a precipice and stood looking around helplessly. The floor that he was standing on vibrated like a catwalk in a ship's engine room. He looked down.
Below him, a shiny, convex, black wall bulged out from beneath a steel bridge clamped to the structure by bolts that stood up like telephone poles. Silver pipes ran from terminal posts the size of fire hydrants to cylindrical forms outlined vaguely in shadow. He was inside the power subsystem. The pipes he recognized as wires from the mains transformer secondary winding, feeding the rectifiers and d.c. supplies for the entire cabinet.
There was only one thing he could do. Measuring the distance, stretching his arms and legs out wide to bridge the gap, he jumped. . . .
And his world changed to the Test Lab at normal size, with the echo still ringing in his ears of an explosive bang somewhere near his head. His senses took several seconds to readjust to the different dimensions of acoustics and feeling. Then he began fumbling at the headset, his limbs cold and cramped from being still for too long. An acrid smell touched his nostrils. Smoke was wafting from the power control rack of the cabinet next to him where the mec had fried, carried by silent cooling fans freewheeling to a halt. He struggled out of the DNC collar and stood up.
They came through the door from the corridor when he was halfway across the lab, one in an overcoat, the other in a gray parka. "Hey kid, it's okay. We just wanna talk," one of them called. Kevin wasn't persuaded and didn't stick around to debate the point. The one in the gray parka was waving a gun.
He ran between the benches and equipment cubicles, through the connecting doors to the Training Lab, and out into the corridor. Not to the center of the building, he told himself. They could come back out through the doors from the Test Lab and cut him off. He went the other way, to the emergency stairs at the end of the building, stopping on the far side of the door to uncoil an armful of hose from the fire point and drape it around the door handle and supply valve nearby. Guessing that it might gain him maybe half a minute at most, he raced down the stairs. Muffled thuds and sounds of the door being shaken came from above; then the sound of footsteps running back inside the building to the main stairs. Kevin reached the emergency exit, pressed the bar, and emerged outside the building.
He ran to the corner, from where he would have to cross the front parking area to get away. The blue Ford that the two men had come in was parked out front, and for a moment Kevin thought of going for it. But there wasn't time. He didn't have enough driver's confidence to be sure of a quick getaway—even if the keys were there, which he doubted. He sprinted instead for the gate.
Halfway across the parking area, he heard the main doors of the building being thrown open. "Hey! . . . Hey, you! Stop! I told you it's okay. We just wanna talk." Kevin ran, not looking back, convinced that the gate was receding as fast as he approached. He heard car doors slam behind him, then the motor starting. Even if he got to the gate, he thought breathlessly, what then? There were acres of empty office park out there and nobody for a mile. He'd be overtaken in minutes whichever way he ran. Gasping, his chest pounding, he ran anyway. What else was there?
But the gate did get closer. And as Kevin came to it, who should he see but Taki on the other side, waving him on encouragingly. A hallucination, he decided. Warning of imminent terminal cardiac collapse. But Ohira's car was there too, with Ohira standing by it talking into a phone. Only then did Kevin become aware of the deeper, throatier chugging, growing louder than the sound of the car engine gaining on him from behind. Only as he swung through the gateway did he see the earthmover coming the other way, black smoke puffing from its standpipe, manned by two of the innumerable relatives.
Royal, his foot hard down, didn't see it at all until it was too late. The Ford went through the gate with its tires squealing—there was a metallic clang-gg-gg, followed by the rending of crushed hood and a hiss of stove-in radiator—and was pushed ignominiously back in again by the huge blade. The earthmover halted, barricading the gateway.
Kevin leaned an arm on Ohira's car and stood panting and shaking as the strain and sudden exertion after hours of being immobile took effect. Taki walked up to him and grinned.
"Knock-knock."
"You wouldn't dare," Kevin wheezed murderously.
Ohira nodded in satisfaction and came back from the gate. "So you listen next time when I say you need help, okay?" He clapped a hand lightly on Kevin's shoulder and indicated the car. "Get in. My cousins will take care of those two. Now we have more work to attend to."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Lincoln followed the Cadillac south on the Interstate when they reached the city, passing a few blocks from where Michelle lived on the east side of Lake Union. They exited west, passing the Naval Training Center at the southernmost tip of the lake, and then hea
ded north along the west shore until they came to a white building near the water's edge, with palms and colored lights in the windows, and a large, neon-bordered sign declaring it to be the "Shoals." Michelle knew the place: an exclusive marine club opened a year or so previously on Westlake, frequented by the local celebrities and millionaires, actual and aspiring. Despite her proximity across the lake, it wasn't a social scene that had ever held much appeal for her personally.
The cars drew up at a chain-link gate to one side of the building, and Garsten said something to an attendant in the box. The windows of the Lincoln were tinted one-way, making it pointless for Michelle to have tried attracting attention. The gate opened, and they drove through a short access road to a quay running along the rear of the building. A maze of piers and jetties with boats at their moorings stretched away in both directions, masts swaying and lines flapping in the breeze that was building up. Immediately in front of them, a large, sleek motor yacht, easily the most impressive of all those in sight, was berthed stern shoreward, alongside one of the docking piers. A sign above the fishing cockpit looking down on the swim platform at the stern read: Princess Dolores.
The two cars parked among a scattering of other vehicles in slots along the service quay. Michelle's guards ushered her out, and they joined Vanessa, Garsten, and Finnion from the Cadillac. Michelle remained mute, resigned to whatever lay ahead. It was clear that nothing she might have to say was going to alter anything, and her reserves of energy were at an ebb. They walked out along the dock, Vanessa and Garsten ahead, Finnion and Kyle following with Michelle between them, and the two spooks bringing up the rear. Finnion had a folder of documents that he had brought from Microbotics. One of the escorts behind was carrying a large leather briefcase that Garsten had taken from the Cadillac.
A gangplank led up from the dock to the fore part of the vessel, and a set of steps provided access amidships. There seemed to be some kind of consternation around the steps. A half dozen or so people were standing around on the dock, with much hand-waving going on, and raised voices; more figures, similarly excited, were visible above on the deck. As the arrivals approached, three girls who looked to Michelle like hookers—high-class and expensively turned out, to be sure, but none the less mistakable for that—came down the steps carrying shoulder purses and garment bags, preceded by a crew member in a white mess-jacket. Vanessa and Garsten led the way through without ceremony and began ascending to the boat. Snatches of words reached Michelle's ears from either side as she and the others followed.
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