Then from the silent darkness around me came a tiny voice, floating near my head. “Tyce,” it said from thin air, “listen to me without speaking!”
CHAPTER 14
My head and neck froze, but my eyeballs went side to side and up and down.
“God?” I whispered. “Is that you?”
After all, I had been praying to God. But somehow I hadn’t expected him to answer. Why would God want to talk to me out of all the people in the universe? On the other hand, maybe the voice was just my imagination. Was I going crazy, locked up in this dark room?
“Quiet!” the tiny, floating voice said quickly. “Don’t bring the security guards in here!”
It has to be God, I thought with a quick intake of breath. “But you could stop them so easily that—”
“Quiet, Tyce! Listen! I don’t have much time!”
“Okay,” I whispered, feeling weird talking to God like this. Had I lost my mind?
A much louder voice interrupted. From outside the door. One of the security guys. “Kid, what do you want?”
“Huh?” I asked.
The door opened. It was night, and most of the dome lights had been dimmed. The guard stepped halfway into the storage room, which meant he almost filled it. “What do you want? Is it time for your bathroom break?”
“No,” I answered.
“What’s going on then?”
“Just talking to myself.” Was I just talking to myself? Had I imagined the voice?
“Well, knock it off,” the guard grunted, then slammed the door shut.
The silence returned to the darkness. I waited and waited, wondering if I would hear the voice again.
It came. Floating in the air. “See? Told you not to make any noise. Are you ready to listen?”
If it was God speaking, he didn’t have to point out that he was always right. But I wasn’t going to say it. Not if it would bring the guard back and prove God right again.
“Tyce, take out the robot pack. Set it on the floor.”
If I do that and the guard walks in …
“Take out the robot pack. Set it on the floor.”
I was losing my mind.
“There is hardly any time left. Do it!”
Slowly I leaned forward. The robot pack had been digging into my lower back for so long I was grateful to pull it loose. I hesitated, then finally leaned over and set it on the floor. This is crazy. Really. If the guard walks in and finds it …
I waited for the voice to say something else. It didn’t. I couldn’t risk speaking again, so I couldn’t even ask what was happening.
“Finished,” the quiet voice said a few minutes later. “You can take the robot pack again. Don’t wait until midnight. Plans have changed. Instead, count to 2,000, then get into the robot body. And don’t panic. Remember that. Don’t panic at what you see.”
Panic? “But—”
“Shhh. I’m gone.”
I waited for more.
Nothing came.
I began to count. I stopped counting briefly and did some math. Sixty seconds in a minute. So 2,000 seconds was roughly … half an hour.
That’s all I needed to wait to find freedom beyond the wheelchair and this dark, cramped storage room.
Finally I finished counting and leaned forward in my wheelchair. With difficulty, I reached behind me and fumbled with the connections until the robot mini-transmitter was securely attached to my neck-plug.
I hoped Ashley was the one who’d left the note and the robot mini-transmitter for me. I hoped she’d be near the robot when I took control of it.
But along with all my other worries, I now had one more.
What was there not to panic about when I finally got into the robot body?
CHAPTER 15
Normally I’d be in the computer lab for any robot control activation. Rawling would insist on a checklist. He’d tell me it was just like flying, and preparation and safety had to be first.
He’d strap my body to the bed so I wouldn’t accidentally move and break the connection. He’d warn me against any robot contact with electrical sources. He’d remind me to disengage instantly at the first warning of any damage to the robot’s computer drive since harm to the computer circuits could spill over to harm my brain. And then he’d blindfold me, strap my head in position, and soundproof me.
This was different. I’d never used the mini-transmitter that Ashley did. Good thing it didn’t need to connect through the antenna sewn into my jumpsuit. Dr. Jordan, of course, had ripped out that plug.
I assumed this mini-transmitter was programmed to her robot, and the controls would be similar to mine.
I assumed, too, that she—or whoever had left the note and mini-transmitter—was waiting near the robot to meet me as soon as I began to control the robot body.
In other words, very, very soon I’d find out who’d left the note and mini-transmitter for me.
I closed my eyes and leaned back. I hit the power button and waited for the familiar sensation of entering the robot computer.
In the darkness and silence and intensity of my concentration, it came.
I began to fall off a high, invisible cliff into a deep, invisible hole.
I kept falling and falling and falling….
I’d expected to see the walls of minidomes, the floors, the roof of the dome. I’d expected to see a person—hopefully Ashley.
Instead, the images sent to my brain were unreal and bizarre.
Two large, dark caves filled my whole vision. Below those caves were two horizontal rows of huge, shiny, white, rectangular rocks. They seemed to be stuck into the face of a weird, smooth mountain.
What scared me the most was that the mountain began to move. And when the mountain moved, it roared! A hot wind rushed ahead with the roar.
I remembered the warning given to me by the tiny, floating voice: “Don’t panic.”
That warning was the only thing that kept me from screaming in fear.
I watched the mountain move more and told myself that none of this was actually happening to me in the wheelchair, but to a robot body. I told myself the robot body digitally translated the sound waves and the sensation of heat and the pressure of the wind, which my brain retranslated as actual events. I was safe, even if the robot body was not.
It helped. But only a little.
Suddenly the ground beneath shifted and thrust me upward!
Two gleaming balls, white with dark centers, filled my vision.
I couldn’t help it. I spun and turned and fled. Right off the edge of a cliff.
I screamed as I fell. My vision became a swirling blur. I knew I had to disconnect before the robot body smashed to pieces and destroyed the computer drive.
But I didn’t have time. Just as suddenly the ground appeared beneath me again. I bounced but stayed upright. Before I could relax, the ground moved horizontally, carrying me away from the roaring windy mountain of twin black caves and shiny rocks and monstrous gleaming balls.
When the ground stopped moving, I looked around. The ground was pale, with grooves leading in all directions. A dark, long bridge stretched upward toward the mountain of caves, shiny rocks, and gleaming balls. Each side of the mountain was covered with long, black fabric.
Except now I was far enough away from that mountain to make sense of it. It wasn’t a mountain. It was a face. A giant human face. The dark caves were nostrils. The two horizontal rows of shiny rocks were teeth. The monstrous gleaming balls were eyes. The black fabric hanging on each side of the mountain was hair.
That meant …
I looked at the ground beneath me and the long bridge stretching up toward the face.
That meant I was sitting on a hand. And the long bridge was an arm. I had run the robot body off the hand, and the hand had caught me and shifted me back away from the face.
Impossible! How could a human be that big? Unless my robot was …
I stared for several more seconds, and the face began to make more
sense to me. I knew that face.
My voice squeaked, high and tiny, as I spoke a single word. “Ashley?”
CHAPTER 16
Ashley. Not dead but alive.
Very alive.
I stared at her like I was seeing her for the first time. Of course, with her looking so huge to me, I kind of was seeing her for the first time.
“Ashley,” I said again, still in shock. To me, my voice sounded like it did during the terrible months when it broke into a high pitch when I least expected it. “You weren’t in the Hammerhead! How did you get out?”
She opened her mouth. Again I was hit with a loud roar.
This time, however, I knew what it was. Ashley’s voice. I made an adjustment, and the roar dropped in volume.
“. . . tell you about that later,” she whispered. “We don’t have much time. With all the hostages together in one spot, they’re using infrared detectors to search the dome.”
Infrared detectors. Looking for body heat. With 200 people wandering around the dome, it would have been impossible to spot her. But now …
“Move to the power plant,” I squeaked. “It throws so much heat you’ll never be seen against the backdrop.”
“Tyce,” she said patiently, “I am hidden near the power plant.”
I looked around, trying to make sense of my surroundings. But I couldn’t. Sitting on the palm of Ashley’s hand, everything was so gigantic to me that it was totally distorted.
I took a moment to appreciate what it meant to control a robot this tiny. I glanced down at the robot’s legs and arms and hands. All of it looked identical to a full-size robot. I wiggled its fingers, spun a quick circle. It worked the same too. The only difference was its size.
“Wow,” I said to Ashley.
“Wow?”
“This is a great robot!”
“Should be,” she said with a tight smile. “It only cost about 15 billion dollars to develop. You’re the size of an ant right now. In fact, that’s what it’s called. An ant-bot.”
I had plenty of questions for her. How did she know about the development costs? How had she gotten control of the antbot? How did she know they were using infrared to search for her? How had she survived the crash of the Hammerhead space torpedo? And how had she arrived back on Mars?
“Look,” Ashley said. “On Earth, the scientists see unlimited uses for people like you and me. Once we’ve learned the controls of a robot, we can handle just about any machine designed on the same principles. Aircraft, submarines, space torpedoes, ant-bots. Basically, it’s like being able to use human brains to control equipment by remote control.”
“An ant-bot, though. What good is that?”
“Are you kidding?” she said. “Medical procedures. Think of how easily an ant-bot could do small-scale surgery. Computer repair. Anything that’s too delicate for human fingers, the ant-bot does no problem.” She frowned. “But that’s not why Dr. Jordan wanted it designed. He’s just interested in robots as weapons.”
Yes. The Hammerhead space torpedo.
Her tomboyish grin finally appeared. “What’s great is that I’ve been using it against him. I’ve been able to do a lot of spying. That’s how I know he thinks I’m still alive and is going to search with infrared. That’s how I was able to get past the security guys who were guarding you in front of the storage room. And later when I talked to you it was because I had sneaked past the guards in the ant-bot to get into the room where you were prisoner.”
It was very weird, sitting on the palm of her hand and listening to her speak.
“At first, Tyce, when I used the ant-bot to get you the note, I thought it would be better to let you get into my big robot. But this afternoon Dr. Jordan locked it away. You wouldn’t have been able to get out. So I risked talking to you and reprogrammed your mini-transmitter to activate this robot. I needed to be able to speak to you, and I couldn’t while you were being held prisoner.”
In that minute I decided I was never going to tell her I’d thought she was the voice of God. I could figure it out now, at least. She’d hidden herself near the dome’s power plant, then used her own mini-transmitter to control the ant-bot. She’d raced in the ant-bot to the storage room where I was hidden and told me to set the mini-transmitter on the floor. Then she’d done the reprogramming so I’d wake up in the ant-bot instead of the regular robot. That’s when she gave me the new instructions to wait 2,000 seconds—the half hour it took her to get the ant-bot back here to the power plant. Once the ant-bot was close to her again, she’d ended the control, lifted the ant-bot onto her palm, and waited for me to begin controlling it.
“I’m impressed,” I said, “that you knew where to hide the mini-transmitter for me.”
“You’re my best friend,” Ashley said. “How many times have I waited for you to go all the way across the dome instead of using the nearest bathroom? It was easy for me to guess that you’d eventually get there.”
My ant-bot face was not capable of smiling, but inside, I had the world’s biggest grin. Best friend. I like the sound of that.
“So if we don’t have much time,” I said, “what are we going to do?”
“I’ve done my count,” she said. “Altogether, there’re only six security guards. That’s all they need, because the guards have weapons and the scientists and techies don’t. If we can get both our robots working together, we might have a chance to fight the guards.”
“Robots working together?” I said. “How? Your robot’s locked up.”
“Easy,” Ashley said. “Get your robot to unlock it.”
“My robot is 10 miles away.” I paused, thinking of the cave-in. It looked like the only hope of rescue was in first stopping Dr. Jordan and Blaine Steven. “I can get it here in 20 minutes, but I’ll still need to get it inside the dome. Someone would notice for sure.”
She nodded. “I’ve thought of that. If we can get the hostages to create a distraction, we’ll use it to bring your robot through the air lock.”
“Big if,” I said. I was finally getting used to my squeaky voice. “All the hostages have got to know exactly when to start a distraction. How do you do that?”
“The hostages are gathered in the meeting room. Easier to guard them that way. We sneak the ant-bot in and tell one or two. They’ll tell the rest.”
Although it was a great idea, I nearly laughed. When the ant-bot crawled onto their shoulders, how many of them would think the voice of God was whispering in their ears? “So, you and I just need to figure out the timing on all this.”
“Yes,” Ashley said. “And soon. Dr. Jordan has sent a message to the World United. If the prisoners on Earth aren’t freed within another hour, Dr. Jordan is going to execute a scientist here under the dome. He’s going to send live video coverage of the execution by satellite feed, so the media will get it and broadcast it across Earth.”
“What!”
“And Dr. Jordan says he’ll execute someone else every half hour after that until the Earth prisoners are freed. He believes public pressure will make the Federation do what he wants.”
“Tell me,” I said. “Please tell me Dr. Jordan is not your father.”
Ashley took a deep breath. “No. And that’s a whole other story. There’re 24 of us, not including you.”
“Twenty-four. On Mars?”
“No. I was the one they picked to send here. I was supposed to help Dr. Jordan. Because they didn’t think you’d help once you knew what they wanted.”
“They?”
“I don’t have enough time to tell you everything right now. Dr. Jordan is not a scientist. He’s high up in the military and part of a secret group of men with power and money and military control. They’re the ones who set up the experiments on the 24 of us. They want to overthrow the World United and—” She stopped.
Without warning, my world turned black and swirled and shifted again.
It took me a second to figure it out. She had closed her hand around the ant-bot, then mo
ved her hand quickly.
But why?
An instant later, from the darkness inside her closed hand, I understood.
“Dr. Jordan!” Ashley said. “How did you—?”
“You foolish, foolish girl!” Dr. Jordan hissed. “I’m going to make you pay for all the grief you’ve caused me.”
CHAPTER 17
I pushed ahead, bumping into the solidness of Ashley’s fingers. A crack of light gave me guidance, because she wasn’t pressing her hand together very hard. I buzzed toward that crack of light.
“I knew we’d find you eventually,” Dr. Jordan said. “The dome isn’t big enough for you to hide forever.”
There wasn’t enough room to squeeze through her fingers. I reached out and jabbed as hard as I could. Her fingers opened slightly, and I burst through. Her hand was cupped, and I was able to make progress up the inside of her wrist.
“It’s not right, what you’re doing to the scientists and techies.” This was Ashley’s voice. “Your fight is on Earth, not here.”
The fabric of Ashley’s jumpsuit loomed in front of me like an ocean of blue. I grabbed it and pushed up, then slid underneath, letting the fabric of her sleeve drop.
“My fight is anywhere it takes to win.” Hidden as I was, Dr. Jordan’s voice still reached me clearly. “You of all people should know that.”
“I don’t believe in your fight anymore.”
“Obviously,” he answered. “But the rest do. And they are all I need.”
The rest. He must mean the others that Ashley told me about. What was it they believed and she didn’t?
“Tell me,” Dr. Jordan said in a silky voice. “What exactly was it that made you so soft?”
“I’m not soft,” she said after a pause. “I can finally see the difference between right and wrong.”
“It was that stupid space pilot and his talk about faith and God, wasn’t it? I knew I should have kept you in solitude all the way from Earth to here. Ever since then you’ve been acting like you’ve heard the voice of God or something.”
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