by H. L. Burke
She unshouldered her pack and fished out a pair of goggles. Adjusting them so they sat comfortably over her hair, she turned the dial on the side. They had several settings—from simple night vision to limited x-ray—but right now she needed the one that would detect electro-magnetic fields. She scanned the area around her. Yep, the streetlights had a gentle glow around them through the lenses. They were still operational. She turned to the wall. The whole thing glowed like a theater marquee.
“What the heck?” She stepped closer. The gray-green glow followed the ivy in web-like patterns. She bent closer. What she’d mistaken for plants, she now realized were wires, ornately designed to mimic ivy, but definitely man-made. She touched a leaf then yanked her hand back at the bite of electric shock. The leaf quivered, sending a pulse of energy through the wires, like a message zipping through a pneumatic tube. Still active, but dang, that leaf feels real. Ignoring another shock, she broke off the leaf and crushed it between her fingers. The green scent of chlorophyll rose to her nostrils. She dropped it in surprise. “Sparks and shocks, it is real.”
Nyssa continued walking down the sidewalk. Whoever had set up this security system had somehow incorporated biological and man-made components. She’d heard such things theorized, but no one had even come close. At least she’d thought they hadn’t.
“How to get over without triggering an alarm, then?” Getting down on her haunches, she opened her satchel, dug out a pair of rubber gloves and slipped them on. Nyssa touched the wires again. No pulses went out. She smiled. Rubber gloves, rubber soled shoes. Just have to be careful not to touch anywhere where I can cause an arc.
The rubber gloves helped her grip the wall as she climbed. Towards the top, the ivy net thinned. With a great huff of breath, she pulled herself onto the wall and to her feet, balancing for a moment.
A large overgrown garden stretched below her like a jungle. A hedge maze lay at her feet, and beyond that a rectangular pond reflected patches of gray sky but with a slight tinge of green. Nyssa aimed for the top of the nearest hedge and jumped.
Branches crunched beneath her, but she caught hold, swung, and landed in a crouch on the garden path. For a moment, Nyssa listened. Nothing stirred, not so much as a bird. Her heart pounded painfully. It’s the exertion of the climb, she assured herself. She dabbed with her sleeve at the sweat beading on her neck. You’ve been in worse spots. Places with guard dogs and men with guns. This place is as dead as dice. Nothing safer to rob than a grave, if you can push past the creep factor.
Straightening, she peeled off her gloves and tightened the satchel’s straps. “What would Mr. C think if he could see me now? What’s the verse? The shepherd comes in by the gate, anyone entering any other way is a thief. Well, that’s me, a thief. Call it asset recovery if you want. You’re not fooling anyone.” She shook her head.
Hedges rose like walls before and behind her. She’d gotten a quick but conclusive glance at the maze from above and knew which way to head. Right, left, right, right, and I should be out of here.
Knee-high grass and patches of nettles swiped at her legs, making her glad she’d worn her thick, wool leggings rather than the more fashionable silk stockings. Spiderwebs and bits of abandoned birds’ nests stuck out of the greenery. She navigated to the front of the maze. Through the arched gate, an overgrown lawn stretched to the edge of the pond. She could smell the rancid water from there. Taking the open space at a run, she aimed towards the side of the house, not the main entry.
A thick layer of green scum topped the pond. Nyssa wrinkled her nose and steered away from it, towards a line of poplars creating a windbreak between the house and the garden.
A faint buzzing tickled her ears, like the drone of an engine. She froze in the shadow of the great trees. A horseless carriage back on the road? No, it’s coming from the other direction. From the house.
The noise grew louder. Clicks and the grinding of metal on metal now stood out over the steady buzz. Then it faded again, as if the source had passed her position and continued on.
The hairs at the back of her neck prickled. This is your last chance to turn back, go to the police. Nothing here worth risking your life for … but sparks and shocks. What is that noise?
She pushed through the low branches of the poplars and bit back a scream. A man loomed before her, nearly eight feet tall. She stumbled against the tree trunk. The man didn’t move.
Nyssa blinked. The shape was a man, but that height wasn’t, and it wasn’t moving. Emerging from the safety of the branches, she eyed the figure … the green, leafy figure. She shook her head. “Topiaries. Of course.”
The man was only one in a line of carefully pruned bushes, shrubs, and trees. To his left was a dragon breathing a blast of leafy fire, to his right a stately unicorn. Nyssa touched the leaves.
If no one were tending to these plants, they wouldn’t maintain these shapes.
On the other side of the yard of “hedge art” loomed the faded, gray mansion’s wall. So close. She stepped out.
Whir, clatter, clack, grind, whir …
Nyssa flattened herself against the bushes. The smell of hot iron singed her nose. A construct like a great, rusty oil barrel but with wheels and two long metal arms tipped with pruning shears, rolled by. It paused at a topiary, snipped at it several times, then rolled to the next. Another set of blades rotated beneath its body, swiping the neatly trimmed grass. Nyssa rubbed her eyes.
Ignoring her, the robot continued past, from bush to bush, clipping and trimming.
Fully automated. Not even needing maintenance, I bet. Swell set up. Albriet’s right. If we could put a couple of those in the coal mines, it could save a lot of lives. There might be some value to this mission after all.
She fiddled with her goggles. The robot glowed consistently, but she could see no other electronic fields. From the state of the rest of the garden, it was probably the only machine currently operational on the outside. Kind of sad, really. Doomed to complete the same basic task, appreciated by no one, until it rusts and falls apart.
Nyssa darted across the lawn, the sound of the robot’s pruning fading in her wake.
Chapter Four
Nyssa scanned the outside of the mansion, switching her goggles between x-ray and field detection. Within the exterior walls, wires crisscrossed in complex patterns, but they didn’t appear to be live. At least this portion of the house didn’t have any power.
Feeling relatively safe, she pulled herself up onto a decorative ledge below a first story window. Grime caked the glass. She rubbed at it with her sleeve but succeeded only in smudging the pane. I wonder if the whole house is powerless. The garden wall security might be tapped into the same power as the street lights. Kind of ironic, a multi-millionaire, genius inventor stealing electricity.
Without power for any alarms, the entry process became stupidly simple. She took out a small screwdriver and inserted it between the window and the sill. After a little wiggling, the latch snapped. She pushed it open and surveyed the room. Leather chairs faced each other, ready to host a cozy after-dinner conversation. Still no electricity, though a video-screen sat in the middle of the far wall, framed by bookshelves.
Looks like a Dalhart 2. Mr. C would be impressed.
The videophone and the chandelier seemed to be the only things wired for electricity. What she was looking for wouldn’t be here. Confident in the lack of security measures, she dropped down onto the dusty carpets of the sitting room.
Nyssa shut the window and latched it. She closed her eyes, listening. Silence. No whirring wheels or hum of generators. No distant footsteps or whisper of voices.
Opening her eyes, she swept her finger across a side table. Dust coated everything. “Yeah, this place hasn’t been lived in for years.”
A pair of large double doors beckoned from across the room. Nyssa pushed them open, and the rusty hinges screeched, the sound sharp as a woman’s scream. A hall stretched into darkness. She flipped the dial on her goggles one more n
otch, bathing everything in a sickly green tint. Curtains lined both sides of the passage.Strange for an interior hall.
She brushed the gray cloth back. A goggle wearing face gaped back at her, and a strangled cry escaped Nyssa's lips. The face flinched.
Nyssa flushed, resisting the urge to slap herself. It’s just a plain old mirror. She found a cord and pulled until the entire wall of curtains slipped away. Mirrors, mirrors, mirrors. They were displayed like portraits, each inside elaborate, gilded frames.
“Professor Dalhart must’ve been quite vain.” Nyssa stared at the various angles of herself, using the reference to pick several twigs out of her hair. “Something’s off about these. I mean, why would anyone need so many?” She traced the edge of the nearest frame, and something gave beneath her fingers. A button?
She knelt for a better view of the frame’s underside. Wires ran from it into the wall. Clearly this had some sort of electronic function, but there was no power to test it. Prying with her fingernails, she pulled out a control panel, hidden behind the frame.
Her lips curled into a grin. “It’s a computer system. If I can just get it to power on …” That the records Albriet wanted could be here, literally at her fingertips, was almost too good to be true. Computers weren’t a particular skill of Nyssa’s, but electronics were electronics. “You just need juice, don’t you, boy?” She lovingly wiped the dust from the buttons.
The wires had to be hooked to something. A set up this elaborate probably had its own generator. If I can get that online and boot up the system, I’m home free. Albriet must’ve been lying about losing people in here. It’s not scary at all. Just old and dusty.
The hall wound past several rooms, some with doors cracked open. Glances inside revealed dining rooms, parlors, and even an expansive ballroom, but nothing to suggest the technological payoff Nyssa needed. Scuffs in the thick layer of dust on the floor, though, indicated others had been here recently. She stooped and examined the footprints: men’s shoes, at least three different sets … at different times, based on the thin layer of dust over one set that wasn’t on the others.
“What happened to you?” Her voice sounded hollow in the silence. A slight echo responded, and she shivered.
Another large pair of double doors opened up before her, revealing a massive foyer. Sunlight filtered in from a blue glass window, illuminating a crystal chandelier which would’ve been brilliant if not for the ever-present dust. A sweeping staircase led to an upper story. At least one pair of footprints headed in that direction, but the more recent ones continued down the hall. A door of dark oak with a family crest carved into the upper panel sat at the end of the passage.
“I’ll check that out first.”
Her footsteps tapped, no matter how she tried to muffle her movements. Of course, in this cursed silence, even the swish of her skirts sounded like a windstorm. She reached for the brass door-handle then stopped. The square of floor right before the door lacked any dust. Nyssa stepped back and fiddled with her goggles. The door looked like a black void on her x-ray vision.
“Shock it. Must be a lead panel. Something’s in there.”
Thin lines surrounded the square of un-dusted flooring. Nyssa had seen something like that before. She took out a spool of wire and formed it into a long hook. Poking forward with this extension, she jiggled the handle. Nothing. The handle resisted turning.
“Locked. And probably wired.” She sucked in her bottom lip and took out her new lockpicks. Ideally, touch and sound were the main tools of lockpicking, feeling and hearing those tumblers click into place. Now she needed to stay back a step, though. She unbent the wire and maneuvered it into the keyhole, trying to feel what sort of lock it was. It seemed fairly simple. Nothing she couldn’t foil with a simple bump key. Increasing the magnification on her goggles, she dug out the needed tools. She focused on the lock. Scratches marred the area around the keyhole. She wasn’t the first person to try this.
Threading her wire through the hole in the top of the bump key, she attached it firmly to the wire-arm. She stood a yard back from the door and guided the key into the lock. So far so good.
“I need something heavy and expendable.” She hurried back to one of the sitting rooms. A brass bust sat on the mantle over the empty fireplace. “Perfect.”
Hoisting the heavy artwork up, she brought it back to the door. She gave the wire-arm a twist then tossed the bust. It crashed into the door, hitting the bump key squarely. Something snapped. The square of floor fell away. The bust clattered down into a hole, and a rancid smell rose from the chute beneath. Nyssa gagged. A grinding noise rumbled through the floorboards, and the trapdoor slammed shut again.
Nyssa felt cold. She knew that smell. It reminded her of when a rat had died beneath her floorboards at the reform school, except stronger. She tried not to think of what lay at the bottom of that chute.
Shaking off her disgust, she gave the wire arm another twist. The door creaked open. Nyssa hopped over the trapdoor, unwilling to trust it with her weight. She shut the door behind her to block out the smell.
She scanned the room, flipping through the various settings on her goggles. “Jackpot.”
Bookshelves lined two of the small room’s walls, but the third, the one directly in front of her, had three more mirrors. A keyboard rested on a platform beneath the middle mirror. A barely perceptible hum tickled Nyssa’s ears, and in “field detection mode” the mirrors all had a yellow luminescence.
“Still live.” She strode up to the center mirror and looked for a switch. A small, silver lever rested to the right of the frame, clearly set to on. She toggled it. Nothing happened.
Nyssa scrunched her nose. Power definitely flowed to the mirrors, but the computer wouldn’t respond no matter how much she tapped on the keyboard. “Must be another switch somewhere.”
She traced the edges of the mirrors. Multiple wires ran to the center mirror. They twined together before disappearing under the rug. With her goggles on x-ray, she followed the wires across the room to where the bundle ended, unplugged, beside a socket.
“Always the simplest answer.” She chuckled as she inserted the ends of the cords into the port.
There was a click and a whir, and blue light flooded the room.
“Who are you?” a mechanical voice, a bit like the chime of a music box but deeper, rose from the mirrors. Nyssa jumped.
“My name is Nyssa.” She swallowed. “You can see me?” She stepped closer, squinting at the now glowing mirrors.
“The mirrors allow me to observe the interior of the house. I should be able to see every room, but only this monitoring station seems to be active.” The voice sharpened. “Did you disable the others?”
“No, in fact, I think I just enabled this one.” She backed up a step. Shock me, did I just turn on the security system? That has to be the biggest blunder in the history of cat burglary.
The door latches snapped into place with a loud click.
Nyssa bolted for the door, her hand fumbling at the knob. It wouldn’t move.
That blasted computer is tied into the locks somehow. How can I disable it? Technically I'm not a thief. Can I convince it of that? Would it know Albriet? Or Rivera?
“How can I trust you?” The glow from the mirror vibrated in response to the voice emanating from it. “You aren’t on the Creator’s staff. I know them all. Where are they? Where is the Creator? How did you get in here?”
“Look.” She faced the mirrors again. “I don’t know where anyone is. This place has been abandoned for years, and Mr. Rivera sent me to see what happened to Professor Dalhart.” She scanned the room for a way out. The wires she’d just plugged in rested a few feet from her. Bingo. Easy fix. She slid one foot towards them.
“What do you mean, abandoned? How long have I been offline?”
She moved her other foot closer. Her toe nudged the wire, and the mirror flickered.
“Wait! Don’t! Please.” The computer’s voice turned to a wail.
“I see what you’re doing. Don’t unplug me. I need to know what happened. The last time I was online, there were two dozen people working here, as well as the Creator. How can you not know what happened to them?”
Nyssa hesitated, shifting from foot to foot. Keeping herself well in reach of the plug, she answered. “I’m not sure. Mr. Rivera hired me because no one has come out of this house in nearly four years.” Except the insane maid, but no telling how the computer would process that information.
“Four years? And the Creator? Is he alive?”
“Professor Dalhart? No one knows. That’s why I’m here. I’m supposed to recover his files … and find out what happened.”
The second thing might not have been an official part of her mission, but it had been on her mind, and she hoped it would placate the security program.
“Look, I think we may want the same thing,” she continued, “to figure out what happened to Professor Dalhart and his research. Can you help me?”
Something rusty shifted in the wall behind the mirrors, and the door to the room unlocked again. Nyssa’s muscles eased.
“I’m mostly concerned about the staff. Their well-being is my responsibility.”
She considered bolting for the door again, but this machine was her best chance at success. He … it … for some reason it felt like a he … had to know everything about the house. “So you’re not a security system?”
“No. I have access to the automated system, the closed circuit cameras, alarms, and other measures, or at least I used to. Still, my primary functions are the domestic and archival systems. I should have sensors and communications ports around the estate, but for some reason, I can’t see out of this room. Let me do a quick diagnostic scan.”
Nyssa stood before the mirror. On the surface her reflection gazed back at her, but beneath, within the layers of glass, flashed streaks of silver and blue.
