“Well,” I told him, sobering, “I didn’t have time to copy all the records. I was about to be caught any second.”
“So you don’t have them?” he asked. His voice was light, but I knew him well enough to hear the question’s weight.
“No,” I said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I sort of do.”
“Sort of?”
I took a deep breath.
“Well, I didn’t have time to copy them, so…I just memorized the first page of their charts. You know, it has their name and birthday, admittance date, classification, a summary of their symptoms—” I broke off, because now he was laughing. “What? Is that okay?”
“Yes, that’s perfectly satisfactory,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “You can write it all down for me later.”
“Later? But aren’t we going to—isn’t this for a job or something?”
“Of course,” he said, still smiling. “But not until next week.”
“Next week?” I repeated. “Then why—”
“Preparation, my dear,” he said.
And he walked away with my stack of papers, leaving me completely in the dark.
§
When we climbed out the dark, grimy tunnel at last, the Driver was waiting for us. He doused us with buckets of water before letting us in the car, and when I asked if that would damage the guns, everyone laughed at me. I was used to jokes going over my head, but at that point, after everything I’d been through to pull off this job, it was no laughing matter to me, and my frustration heated up the late fall evening as we piled into the car.
Then on our way home, we stopped on the Manhattan Bridge and tossed the guns into the East River. At that point, my simmering exasperation boiled over.
“Okay, fellas, what the hell is going on?” I said.
They all looked at each other as if asking who was going to tell me until the Ghost finally spoke up.
“Have faith,” he said, squeezing my hand, “and patience. All will be revealed.”
I turned to snap at him about exactly how much patience I had left, but the sincere kindness in his face cooled my annoyance back down. It wasn’t his fault, after all. If the Gang hadn’t filled me in on the job, it hadn’t been their idea; it had been Alger’s. And if Alger had made that decision, well, I might not like it, but I’d learned to accept that what he’d told me was true: he never did anything that wasn’t necessary. The Ghost was right—I’d just have to wait and find out why.
When we got home and filed into the house, Alger was sitting in the living room, holding a small circular metal object with the satisfaction of a cat licking its paws after a meal.
“I take it all went well?” he asked brightly.
The Gang murmured shades of “yes” and passed around congratulations.
“And for you also, I see?” the Ghost asked Alger.
“Indeed,” Alger answered. “Thanks to your help, gentlemen, I had time to speak with the patient, and I found what I needed.”
That’s when the last piece fell into place. The charts. The alarm and the evacuation. Throwing out the guns. Alger’s absence. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The Gang said their goodbyes and went their separate ways for the time being. After a stunt like this, we’d have to lay low for at least a little while. But as soon as the door closed behind the Doc, I turned on Alger and let the questions start pouring out.
“So our whole job was just a distraction?” I demanded. “So you could talk to a crazy fella?”
“Precisely,” he said, unsurprised by my outburst. “Did you really believe I was an arms merchant?”
I wouldn’t know what you are, I thought—but I kept that, at least, from spilling over.
“But why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, even more annoyed to hear myself sounding like a child who’d been left out of a game of checkers.
“It was too great a risk,” he answered without missing a beat. “I couldn’t take the chance you wouldn’t give it your all if you knew it was only a diversion. Or that you’d refuse entirely if you were angry at me.”
“But everyone else knew.”
“You’re not everyone else, Victoria,” he said. “You aren’t in the same position as the boys. I’ve attempted to give you the training and the experience you wanted, and certainly the arrangement has been mutually beneficial on many occasions, but you aren’t in my employ. You’ve no obligation to me.”
“But you know I’d do anything for you,” I said, sitting down next to him on the sofa as my irritation started to fade. “And besides, I want to be one of the Gang. I don’t want to just tag along to learn, I want a job of my own. If that means being the distraction sometimes, it’s fine by me, as long as I know what’s going on.”
He sighed, crossing one foot over the opposite knee and flipping the piece of metal in his hand across his knuckles.
“Yes, well, I suppose that’s understandable. And I ought to have anticipated it,” he said—not quite an apology, but close enough. “If it helps, the distraction you facilitated this evening helped me accomplish something rather significant. Something I’ve been attempting for quite some time.”
I sat up straighter, my curiosity chasing off the last of my annoyance.
“This is your secret project?”
He raised an eyebrow.
“My what?”
I shrugged.
“I know you’ve been working on something. Whatever you’re getting those journals for. Is this related to that?”
Alger smiled, shaking his head.
“Woe be unto the man who underestimates you,” he said. “Yes, it’s related to the journals. They contain information that helped lead to the patient I spoke to this evening, who assisted me in locating a component of what I’ve been looking for.”
“Well, what is it?” I asked impatiently.
He held up the piece of metal he’d been toying with, which looked like a notched coin.
“If what he told me is to be believed,” said Alger, “it’s a key.”
“A key to what?”
In an instant, he made it disappear.
“Something very important, which I haven’t acquired yet,” he said. I opened my mouth to ask more questions, but he stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. “I know that isn’t a satisfactory response, but the object containing the lock that corresponds to this key is exceedingly complicated, and I believe we’ve both been through enough tribulations today. I promise you’ll have your explanation soon, but it simply can’t be tonight.”
He must have seen the mutinous look in my eyes, and he responded to it with the half-smile that made all my complaints freeze on my tongue.
“Chin up, my dear,” he said. “Being a member of my criminal enterprise simply means you’ll have to learn to take no for an answer.”
Chapter 10—Just Like Starting Over
By the time R7 had found Professor Percival Gregory’s office at the New York Technical Institute (mostly by following the trail of cringing, cowering graduate students), she was back to feeling more like herself—or at least, the self that she’d become used to these days. It was well past 9:00 a.m., but the professor didn’t seem to be there yet, so she let herself into his office and dropped into his desk chair. Nearly an hour later, she discovered that she’d dozed off when she woke with a start to the sound of yelling from outside the office’s back door.
“You idiots!” shouted a man’s voice, with intense exasperation and an upper-class British accent. “How many times do I have to explain it? First the wire, then the weights, then the current, and then attach the Jacob’s Ladder.”
“But what’s it supposed to do?” she heard a shaking voice ask.
“How should I know? Just run it for five minutes, then touch it and tell me what happens.”
He was a barrel of laughs, R7 thought, putting her feet up on the professor’s desk and lighting a cigarette as she listened to his approach. And something was funny about his step, she
noticed. It was slower than it ought to be, and not quite even: one side was heavier than the other, and there was an extra sound—a cane, she realized, cataloguing the information with the rest of what she’d gathered about him.
The footsteps stopped just outside the door. She heard him fiddling with the knob and swearing, and then at last he opened it. For a few seconds, he was so surprised to see that someone had had the impertinence to break into his office that he just stood there staring, giving her a chance to size him up. He had the glasses and the slightly disheveled hair, the inevitable tweed suit and sweater, and the lab coat she’d imagined the second she’d heard his voice. But much less predictably, he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, despite the MD and PhD the wall displayed so prominently. He was certainly much too young for his cane—which probably explained the anger that stormed like a hurricane in his face and voice alike.
Speaking of which, if she’d read him right, he was going to start yelling any second now.
“Who the bloody hell are you?” he exclaimed, right on cue. “And what in God’s name—”
R7 cut him off by reaching into her bag, pulling out the antenna, and dropping it on his desk with an unceremonious clang.
“I hear you study robots, Professor Gregory,” she said, taking a long drag on her cigarette. “Do you know what this is?”
Curiosity immediately replaced the rage on his face, and he closed the door behind him and hobbled over to the desk. Irritably shoving R7’s feet aside, he picked up the metal object.
“An antenna, obviously,” he answered, fumbling in his desk for a set of tools and beginning to take the thing apart. “Where could you possibly have come by this?”
R7 smiled in spite of herself. He was the real thing.
“A robot,” she said with a shrug. “Can you tell me how it works?”
“Of course I can,” he scoffed, instantly distracted from considering how she’d encountered a robot. “In theory, it should be used to control them remotely by an operator, and...” He trailed off, putting down the bits of metal he’d extracted from the antenna, and looked up at R7. “Von Krauss,” he said.
R7 tilted her head to one side and put out her cigarette on the base of a desk lamp. This was just too easy.
“Who?” she asked.
“Ludwig Von Krauss,” Professor Gregory said. “Ludwig and I used to play chess, not that he was any good at it. He sent me a design for these ‘robots’ a few months ago, but I never imagined he would actually attempt to build them. Not in the least because they were complete rubbish—except the alloy he wanted to use. Hand me that hammer.”
R7 glanced around until she found the steel claw hammer sitting on the file cabinet, which she handed over. He picked it up and slammed it into the antenna two or three times, leaving barely a mark.
“Impressive,” she said. That explained why throwing a car at it hadn’t destroyed it. “But if it’s so sturdy, why are they ‘rubbish?’”
“Isn’t it perfectly obvious?” R7 shook her head, and Professor Gregory let out a vexed sigh. “They need the antenna to function. Removing it disables them, and once they’re out of range of the operator, according to Ludwig, they’ll simply stop because the antenna can’t receive the operator’s signal. Ludwig thought it would ensure that the operator could maintain control, but I told him he was—”
“What’s the range?” R7 said, seizing on the vital information.
He was startled but seemed pleased that at last she’d asked a good question.
“Ludwig predicted it would be about five miles. So I’d guess between two and three, at best.”
“So if we find it, we might find him—if he’s the operator—nearby,” said R7, thinking. “Could you use that signal to find him?”
Professor Gregory looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, and he nodded approvingly.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I imagine the frequency of the signal is encrypted, so I’d have to decode it, but—well, yes, then I believe I could.”
He watched her thoughtfully, the wheels clearly already turning in his head—torn between curiosity about her and his desire to start working on the robot problem immediately, she guessed.
“I’ll just leave the antenna with you, then,” said R7, making the decision easier for him as she slid out of his chair. “Is that okay?”
“I...well, yes, I’d prefer that, actually,” said the professor. “Ah, who did you say you were, again?”
She smiled, feeling a hint of completely unwanted affection for the cantankerous young genius. Damn you, G3.
“I didn’t,” she said, reaching across the table to straighten his lab coat. “See you around.”
Chapter 11—Beautiful Like Me
The day after we robbed St. Charles, Alger disappeared again, without explaining anything else about the key. I wasn’t surprised, but I still wasn’t happy. I was even less happy when his absence lasted longer than his usual couple of days. After almost a week, the low hum of my frustration had grown into an insistent refrain of worry, and my feet pounded out its rhythm as I paced the apartment and waited. By the time I heard his light, quick footsteps coming down the hall, relief drowned out anything else I might’ve felt. I hurried to the door and pounced on him when he opened it, throwing my arms around his neck.
“You’re back!” I gushed.
“I trust that’s not unexpected,” he said, laughing as he waited to be released.
That’s when I realized he was keeping his hands hidden behind him. So I let go and backed away, letting him through the door, and raised one eyebrow at him.
“And? What’s this about?” he asked, mirroring the expression I’d been mimicking.
“You tell me,” I said, hands on my hips. “What’s behind your back?”
“Oh, that.”
He took his right arm out from behind him with a flourish, presenting me with a single, exquisite, dark red rose.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
Confusion poured into my mix of emotions, all flooding over into a blush the color of the rose, and I started to wonder what I usually did with my hands. I searched my mind for the date, but finding it didn’t make things any clearer.
“But, I don’t—I mean, today is…December first. The—the day we met,” I said. “I—you know I have no idea when my birthday is.”
“Of course,” he said, unperturbed as usual. “But surely you’re as entitled to a birthday as anyone else, wouldn’t you say?”
“Um…I guess so,” I answered.
“Then why not make this yours? You ought to be”—he appraised me for a moment—“seventeen? Does that sound acceptable?”
I nodded and took the rose, holding it with both hands to keep them busy.
“It’s beautiful,” I whispered.
“It reminded me of you,” Alger said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if it weren’t the exact kind of comment I’d been coveting since I’d first laid eyes on him.
While I smiled dumbly, he revealed his other hand, which held a small black bag.
“This is also for you,” he told me.
I put down the rose delicately on an end table, like it might disintegrate, and we sat down on the living room sofa as I carefully opened the bag. Inside was a wispy swath of fabric that matched the rose and my blush, and as I pulled it out, feeling the soft silk slide through my fingers, I discovered that it was a dress. I looked up at Alger, confusion winning out over everything else.
“I…it’s…but, why?”
“Its purpose is the real present,” he said. I tilted my head to one side in a question. “If you’re to have a role of your own in my little association of ne’er-do-wells,” he said, “then this is the equipment you’ll need.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
“Equipment?” I said. “I…don’t understand.”
“I’ll explain everything in the morning,” he promised. “You’ll need your rest if you’re goin
g to be awake in time for the auction.”
Then, without warning, in one fluid motion, he kissed me on the cheek, stood up, and walked away.
After staring confusedly after him for a moment, I scrambled off into my room and tried on the dress—which fit perfectly, of course. Preparation. But I couldn’t help puzzling over what on earth could involve me, the dress, and an auction. On the other hand, did it matter?
It reminded me of you, I heard him say.
Whatever this plan was, I liked it already.
Well, that’s what I thought, until he woke me up at seven the next morning. An hour later, as I scowled at the object of my adoration over a steaming cup of coffee, I still wasn’t feeling very receptive to plans that involved my doing anything whatsoever. But by then, I was awake enough to remember that I was curious.
“Okay,” I grumbled about halfway through the cup. “Tell me.”
Alger refilled my coffee, the sat down at the kitchen table with me and held out his hand. In his palm was the notched coin.
I looked sharply at him, my morning fogginess burning off in an instant.
“You remember this, I presume?”
“Of course,” I said. “The key.”
“Well,” he said in that deliberately calm voice, “I may have found the object it opens.”
He was actually excited, I realized, seeing the spark in his sharp eyes.
“So what is it?” I asked.
He flipped the coin across his knuckles and tapped it on the table. Anyone else might’ve thought he was distracted, but I knew he was considering how much to tell me.
“It’s a box,” he finally said. “An exceptionally complicated puzzle box, you might call it.”
“And…it’s valuable?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Or rather, what’s in it is valuable. In fact, I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration to say that the contents on the box are the most valuable commodity in the world.”
I felt my eyes widening, and I gulped coffee to try to make my brain work faster.
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