Ambush

by Sigmund Brouwer

  Stupid space pilot. Earth to here. That was my dad. I’d never known before that it was my dad who’d had such an impact on Ashley. Neither of them had talked about it.

  “No matter,” Dr. Jordan continued. “All’s well that ends well. And you’re back under my control again.”

  “No. You can brainwash a person only once.”

  There was a loud slapping sound. Ashley drew in a sharp breath but didn’t cry. Did he just hit her? If so, it made me so mad that I wanted to run up Dr. Jordan’s face and yank out all his nose hairs. But if he found the ant-bot …

  “You think you are so smart,” Dr. Jordan said. “But when the ant-bot disappeared, I knew it had to be you or that wheelchair kid. And when I got reports about stolen food … I finally decided it had to be you. Somehow alive. Especially with the other kid unable to tell me a thing about the ant-bot. Now open your hand, and show me what’s inside.”

  Everything for me swayed as Ashley lifted her hand. I was glad to be tucked under the fabric of her jumpsuit sleeve.

  “Turn around,” Dr. Jordan barked. “I said, turn around!”

  More swaying movement.

  Ashley yelped.

  “The transmitter!” Dr. Jordan said. He must have ripped it from her neck-plug. “I thought as much. Which tells me you have been using the ant-bot. So where is it?”

  Silence.

  “Where is it?” It sounded like Dr. Jordan had his teeth gritted.

  Silence.

  “I could cheerfully put you on the surface and watch the air get sucked out of you,” he said. “That space torpedo was one of a kind. Now the ant-bot. Together that’s about 30 billion dollars’ worth of science. Just because suddenly you decide you have a conscience. Now tell me where it is!”

  More silence.

  Without warning, everything shifted violently. It felt like I was in the center of a massive earthquake.

  I heard Ashley gasp. Dr. Jordan was shaking her.

  “Where is it?” he shouted, losing control of any calm in his voice. “What have you done with it?”

  Ashley said nothing.

  Just as suddenly, the earthquake stopped.

  “We’re going to my office,” he snarled. “If it’s on you anywhere, my scanner will find it. And if it’s not there, I’ll find a way to make you talk.”

  CHAPTER 18

  From the ant-bot’s perspective, it was a strange, strange world.

  The walk from the power plant to Dr. Jordan’s office wasn’t a walk for me. I was a hitchhiker, hidden beneath Ashley’s wristband. It felt like I was on the end of a giant pendulum, slowly swinging back and forth with the movement of her arm. Every few seconds I’d jab her skin as hard as I could, hoping she’d feel it and know I was still with her.

  “Let go of my arm!” she told Dr. Jordan.

  “Not likely,” he said. “Don’t waste your breath.”

  Dr. Jordan might have thought she’d wasted her breath, but I knew it was Ashley’s way of telling me what was happening.

  Neither of them spoke for a while after that.

  This late at night, even if the scientists and techies weren’t being held hostage in the meeting room, the dome was usually very still. The fabric of Ashley’s jumpsuit muffled whatever other sounds were there, like the fans and the hum of the dome’s power plant.

  Altogether it was a weird experience.

  I might have enjoyed it, but I was desperately thinking of what to do once we got to Dr. Jordan’s office.

  The first thing, obviously, was to get away from Ashley. All Dr. Jordan needed to do was sweep a scanner in the air within a couple of feet of Ashley, and it would give him a beep-beep-beep confirmation of the ant-bot’s location.

  But how could I get away?

  The jump would certainly smash the ant-bot. After all, it would be no different than taking my regular-size robot body and leaping off a cliff over half a mile high.

  I doubted I’d be able to crawl up her arm and then down her entire body to the floor in enough time.

  So I’d have to depend on Ashley. Which was why I kept jabbing her wrist to remind her exactly where I was.

  I shouldn’t have worried for even a second.

  As soon as Dr. Jordan pushed her into his office, she hit the light switch. The diffused, bluish light that made it through the fabric of her jumpsuit became totally black.

  “Let go!” she shouted. “Let go!”

  Again my world became swirling, rocking, confusing. I had a sensation of falling, which stopped instantly a heartbeat later. What was happening?

  “You tripped me!” Ashley shouted. “I think I broke my wrist when it hit the floor.”

  She means that for me. To let me know the floor is nearby.

  “Get up, you stupid girl.”

  I propelled the ant-bot forward and fell again, very briefly.

  Floor!

  It was still dark. I didn’t know what direction I was headed, but I moved as fast as the tiny robot wheels would let me.

  Seconds later the light snapped on again.

  My video lens caught movement, and instinctively I spun hard right.

  Something gigantic came down, thudding to the floor with vibrations that wobbled me. A short gust of air blew me forward.

  I’d just missed being squashed by Dr. Jordan’s foot! It would have destroyed the ant-bot’s computer without warning and probably scrambled my own brain circuits.

  I wheeled as hard as I could toward the nearest wall, which seemed like a vertical cliff miles high. When I reached the base, I found plenty of room beneath the baseboard to hide.

  I waited.

  “Please don’t tape my wrists to this chair,” Ashley said.

  “Shut your mouth. No amount of begging will stop me.”

  Again, Ashley was trying to help me by letting me know what was happening. She was one gutsy girl.

  She and Dr. Jordan were in the center of the room. But what could I do to help?

  “Hey,” Ashley said, “why is the satellite feed hooked up to your computer? Isn’t that supposed to be in the director’s office?”

  “You have too many questions.”

  “Does this mean you’re the only one who can contact Earth?” she asked. “That’s the only satellite feed under the dome, isn’t it?”

  “Silence!” Dr. Jordan barked.

  Ashley knew Dr. Jordan would get mad. So why had she talked about the satellite feed twice?

  I answered my own question by remembering what she’d told me earlier. “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…. He believes public pressure will make the Federation do what he wants.”

  One hour left before the first execution.

  Ashley was trying to tell me that the only way of reaching Earth was through the satellite feed here in this office.

  Which meant if I could destroy the satellite feed, Dr. Jordan would have to wait before executing anyone.

  But that was a big, big if for a small, small ant-bot….

  CHAPTER 19

  I followed the base of the wall at full speed, reached a corner, and kept going as fast as I could in the new direction.

  In a full-size body, it would have taken only three steps to reach the desk on the other side of Dr. Jordan’s office. In the ant-bot, it seemed like half a mile. By the time I completed the journey, Dr. Jordan had returned with the scanner to search Ashley.

  Although from my perspective it was too far to see into the middle of the room, I knew the scanner was not much different from the metal detector wands I’d seen in movies.

  “After this,” I heard Ashley ask, “what next? How do you get back to Earth? How do you know you won’t be arrested?”

  Computer cables hung from the desk, falling in loose coils on the floor. To me the cables looked like massive tr
ee trunks, with the surface rough enough for me to climb them. So I reached up with one of the ant-bot’s tiny arms and began climbing.

  “How are you going to get away with this?” Ashley persisted. “I thought you were much smarter.”

  Arm over arm, I pulled myself upward. Rawling had once trained me for this in my regular-size robot.

  I guessed Ashley was asking Dr. Jordan questions to distract him. She didn’t know what I was doing, but I’m sure she wanted to delay him.

  “I mean,” she continued, “you can’t stay on Mars forever. And you’ll be arrested as soon as you step off the shuttle.”

  I kept climbing. I didn’t expect Dr. Jordan to respond.

  But he did. I guessed he was probably too vain to want a girl Ashley’s age to think he was stupid.

  “There’s plenty of places I can hide on the Moon-base,” he said. “And that’s where the shuttle will make an unexpected stop. From the moon, I can take any number of daily flights back down to Earth.”

  The Moon-base, I thought. It had been established 10 years before the Mars Project. With short shuttles making it easy to deliver supplies and work parties, it now covered the size of a city, while the base on Mars was still little more than the original dome.

  I heard the beep-beep-beep of the scanner. I was three-quarters of the way up the cable.

  “Aha,” Dr. Jordan said. “Hidden in your hair!”

  “That’s a hair clip,” Ashley said. “I can save you the trouble. I don’t have the ant-bot.”

  “Nice try,” he replied.

  I reached the top of the cable. The ant-bot wasn’t tired, of course, because robots never tire. They run until the power pack is depleted. I hoped that either a robot this small was very efficient or that Ashley had charged the power pack recently.

  “Told you,” Ashley said. “Hair clip.”

  That let me imagine the scene in the center of the room. If her arms were taped to the armrest of a chair, Dr. Jordan would be leaning over her, disappointed to find only a hair clip.

  I scurried across the desk in the shadow of the computer. It was like walking along the bottom of a massive building.

  The scanner beeped again.

  “Another hair clip,” Ashley said.

  I ran beneath the shell of the computer. It was much dimmer, but I could look up and get enough light through the tiny cooling vents. There was a gap in the underside of the computer shell. It would allow me to climb into the computer, except the underside was too high for me to reach. Like a person standing beneath a ceiling.

  And even if I got in there, what could I do to short-circuit it?

  That’s when I realized I had asked exactly the right question.

  Short-circuit.

  Safely hidden, I surveyed the top of Dr. Jordan’s desk. There was a pen, looking like a log to me. And a paper clip.

  The pen was almost right beside the computer. I scampered out and pushed one end. I felt very much like an ant as half of the pen slowly rolled beneath the computer.

  “How do you know that someone else didn’t take the ant-bot?” Ashley asked from the center of the room, her voice echoing weirdly. “Because I can tell you that I don’t have it.”

  “No one else but you or the wheelchair kid can use it.”

  “What if someone decided to use it as proof of the existence of your secret military program? What if the right people on Earth somehow found out that you’ve taken billions and billions from government programs?”

  I heard the sound of a slap.

  “Is that what you do when you don’t have a good answer?” Ashley asked. “Hit people? Like that proves you right?”

  Ashley could only be doing this to distract him. Maybe she’d seen over his shoulder and noticed my little movements on the desk. If that was true, I didn’t have much time. I scrambled back from the edge of the bottom of the computer and went for the paper clip. I wrestled with it and managed to drag it under the computer.

  “Tell me where you’ve hidden Project 3,” Dr. Jordan hissed.

  I lifted the paper clip, balancing it on end. Twice it nearly fell. But I managed to push it up into the gap. It leaned against the edge of the gap, and I was able to climb onto the pen. One big shove and the paper clip fell into the base of the computer.

  “There’s nothing you can do to me,” Ashley said with determined defiance.

  “Really?” Dr. Jordan asked.

  With one hand I was able to grab the edge of the gap and pull myself up. With the other hand I pushed and let the ant-bot topple inside. I was now in the guts of the computer, armed with a paper clip.

  I froze as I heard Dr. Jordan’s next words.

  “Fine,” he said to Ashley. “You’ll talk when I bring the wheelchair kid in here and show you how painful I can make life for him.”

  “Tyce? How can you hurt Tyce?”

  I frantically wrestled the paper clip.

  “Very easily. See you in a minute.” He laughed cruelly.

  “Sit tight while I’m gone.”

  I heard the door shut behind him.

  “Tyce?” Ashley called out frantically a few seconds later. “Did you hear that? You need to leave the ant-bot!”

  I was too busy with the paper clip to answer.

  CHAPTER 20

  I opened my eyes in the darkness of the storage room.

  How long before Dr. Jordan arrives from his office on the other side of the dome?

  I didn’t waste any time. First I reached behind me and disconnected the transmitter from my neck. I dropped it down the back of my jumpsuit again. All I could do was hope Dr. Jordan didn’t decide to search me again. But there was no point in trying to dump it. Without the transmitter, Ashley and I had no chance at all.

  Seconds later the door opened without warning. It was Dr. Jordan. With the security guard beside him.

  “Take him,” Dr. Jordan commanded. “And follow me to my office.”

  “It’s very simple, Ashley.” Dr. Jordan paced back and forth in front of both of us. He had taken me into his office and sent the security guard back to help watch the other hostages. Ashley was still in her chair, taped by the arms to the armrests. I was in my wheelchair, helpless as always. “You tell me where you’ve hidden Project 3, or your friend Tyce becomes the first hostage to be executed.”

  Dr. Jordan pointed at the satellite feed attached to his computer. “It will make for a spectacular news story—don’t you think? People will be riveted to their 3-D sets for television history. He’s young, he’s in a wheelchair, and not only was he the first person born on Mars, he’ll be the first to die on Mars.”

  Ashley turned her head and stared at me. Her face twisted with horror and dread.

  “No,” I said. “You can’t tell him.”

  “Best of all, Ashley,” Dr. Jordan continued, “you’ll be right here watching it live.”

  Dr. Jordan moved to his desk and picked up a neuron gun. He pointed it at my wrist, which rested on the armrest of my wheelchair.

  Then he smiled and squeezed the trigger.

  There was no sound, nothing for the eye to see. But the electrical impulses hit me instantly, disabling the nerve endings of my left wrist and hand.

  I couldn’t help myself. I lifted my other arm and yelled.

  My left hand and wrist hung uselessly.

  “How was that?” Dr. Jordan asked Ashley. “Would you like to see more?”

  “Please don’t shoot him again,” I heard Ashley beg above the pain that seemed to roar in my ears. “Project 3 is in the top drawer of your desk.”

  I lifted my head as if it had been jerked by a puppet string. I stared at her in shock that she’d told him. The last thing I’d done with the ant-bot before waking in my own body was scurry from the computer to the edge of the desk and drop in that drawer. Was she betraying me again?

  “You’re lying to me,” Dr. Jordan told her.

  “No, I’m not. Your own office is the last place in the world you’d look.”
>
  Slowly Dr. Jordan moved to his desk. He opened the drawer and bent over to see better. A second later he plucked something out and balanced it on his palm. He looked at it against the light. “It really is the ant-bot,” he said, grinning. “Clever. Very clever. Too bad you didn’t remain one of us.”

  “You’ve got what you want,” Ashley said. “At least let us join his mom and dad now.”

  Dr. Jordan’s grin widened. “Hardly. It’s time for Tyce’s execution. And if they don’t release the prisoners on Earth, a half hour later you’ll follow. After all, why waste good scientists and techies when I can get rid of the two who have made my life the most miserable over the past week?”

  “No!” Ashley shouted. “I told you where to find what you wanted. You have to—” She stopped shouting as Dr. Jordan pointed the neuron gun at her.

  “That’s better. Noise gives me such a headache.” Before facing the computer and satellite feed, he spoke to me one more time. “Time to make you a television star. It will be a performance to die for.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Normally the person contacting Earth sat in a chair in front of the satellite feed, a simple black box with a small video lens.

  But Dr. Jordan shoved the chair aside, returned for me, and pushed my wheelchair forward until I was a couple of feet away, staring directly into the eye of the camera.

  “This will be so simple,” he said. “You’re a sitting duck. Perfect height to catch all the expressions on your face.”

  “I feel sorry for you,” I said.

  It caught him off guard. “You feel sorry for me?”

  “You think you’re winning, but in the end you’re going to die too. Because no one lives forever. When it’s your turn, you’ll have reason to be afraid of dying.”

  During the oxygen crisis, I’d finally been able to believe the most important thing a person can learn. Dying doesn’t mean the end, so dying isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a person. Not when God is waiting.

  He sneered. “Spare me that faith nonsense. No one has power over me. I’ll do what I want for as long as I want. And that will last for years and years after you’ve turned to dust.”