Lost Past (23 page)

             
For two days they took turns staying up to record the blackouts, but they weren’t in one of the five key patterns. They were all awake when there was an unusually long blackout, causing Wilson to ask her with annoyance, “What’s this one mean?”

             
“They’re rebooting.”

             
“You’ve lost control then.” His voice gave away his annoyance, and telepathy confirmed he wasn’t acting.

             
“Maybe.
Maybe not.
You haven’t heard of Little Bobby Tables, have you?”

             
“What?”

             
“They probably are using the old database for names of people, entertainment menus, and so on. I put code in the database as names, which they won’t see unless they go through by hand. They won’t do that because there are something like 60,000 people here.”

             
“Less now,” said Wilson. Linda forgot about the deaths.

             
“It doesn’t matter. I hid thousands of copies of the code. If someone watches a show, the code will activate. If the computer tries to update the list of names, ditto. They can wipe the computers all they want, but unless they erase their database, it’ll still be there.”

             
“They could go through by computer and find the code.”

             
“Oh, I’m sorry. It never occurred to me they might use a computer. We are doomed.” She realized they didn’t know if she was serious or not.

             
On the third day without computer access, someone came to change clothes. “Things must be getting back to normal,” Wilson said. But brief random blackouts started up again in a few hours.

             
The next morning, while looking over the times Wilson listed, Linda asked, “Are you sure?”

             
“It means something?” he asked her. She wiggled her ear
with her hand
and he talked about something else.

             
When the power went out again, she whispered to them, “Five blackouts of five minutes each with ten minute breaks, means there are more cases of the flu.”

             
“What else have you programmed for?” Wilson asked. Linda told them.

             
“Wake up.” Cara shook Linda.

             
“What?”

             
“Two messages,” Cara whispered in her ear. “They’re coming for us, and Hernandez and his clones are free.”

             
Linda was barely out of bed when the door opened, showing Hernandez. He looked at Linda and said, “Come with me.” Wilson and Cara made a move to follow, but Hernandez said, “Her only.”

***

             
Arthur found a small board and a marking pen similar to the one
Ghorxal
Bud
used to communicate with John. They planned, writing in English, and covering the writing so that no cameras would see it,.

             
“They know we are conspiring,” Arthur wrote.

             
John just shrugged. They might have found a way to communicate in secret without revealing that they were communicating, but that would take time. As it was, John found it frustrating and began to understand the
mouthless
Plicts
’ need for sign language.

             
Although it was easy to decide what they wanted, they had trouble deciding what to do. They wanted to return to Earth with Linda, Cara, and Wilson. They wanted to be left alone on Earth, but knew they wouldn’t be. John didn’t relish the spotlight, although he realized Arthur was used to a mild version of it. But Arthur was known and respected for his scientific ability, not for having be
en abducted by aliens. It wouldn’
t be a pleasant change, and Arthur briefly commented on that.

             
John worried he had a more serious problem. In America, he was an illegal alien, and more alien than most illegal aliens. He had fraudulently obtained a driver’s license, a passport, and even, according to Arthur, voted. Any prosecutor could easily convict him of enough charges to put him in jail for a very long time. His heroism with regards to the school bombing would help, but his ex-wife’s participation in the bombing might wipe all of that goodwill away. His saner self felt these wouldn’t be significant problems, but with little to do, he couldn’t help wondering.

             
In spite of those problems, he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life living in a base of rebels who would lose if they wiped out their opponents.

             
Although they mapped much of the upper floor of the rebel base, their uncertainty about their goals made them cautious. John followed
Vigintees
news, after Arthur arranged for it to be automatically downloaded and transferred to the computer John used. It was
announced that Wilson, Linda, and Cara had violated their trust and were imprisoned. No details were forthcoming. The news claimed that the frequent blackouts were a product of the tampering of the three from Earth, and that a reboot would solve their problems.

             
“Would it?” John asked Arthur.

             
“Not if I know Linda.”

             
“Is she that good with computers? I know she’s majoring in computer science, but that doesn’t make her an expert.”

             
Arthur leaned back and gave the smile that John learned foreshadowed his telling him something he once knew. “Linda was very angry when Natalie disappeared. When you came, you helped a great deal, but you told me she needed to do something that was challenging and gave her a feeling of control. I found someone to teach her computers and he was very good. He told me she was his most brilliant student. She thought of it as recreation, but changed her major in college from math to computer science in her freshman year. She hacked for fun. It was a challenge controlling her.”

             
John could see Arthur’s tremendous pride in Linda. He wondered if Linda knew about it. “How did you control her?”

             
“Me? I couldn’t control her. She resented Mary. I had very little influence.”

             
“Let me guess. I controlled her. How?” John sometimes was a bit annoyed at Arthur’s pleasure in telling him about his lost past.

             
“You and
Takeuti
. He wasn’t only a computer expert; he was extremely ethical. Neither of you tried to control her computer activity, just teach her ethics. It worked, and her lapses were minor.”

             
“Or well hidden?” John suggested.

             
“Perhaps.” John felt Arthur’s acceptance of that possibility was more to avoid an argument than agreement, because he immediately went on. “I arranged an internship for her with an anti-terrorist group trying to hack foreign computers and she learned a lot from them too. They tried to persuade her to quit college and work for them permanently. She went back every summer, which was good for her.”
             

             
“Did this man,
Takeuti
, continue to teach her?” John’s fluency with the name suggested he’d heard it before.

             
“Sporadically. Actually, he threw problems her way. Only they weren’t invented problems, but real problems. She knew it, and they both benefited.”

             
John wondered if Linda had any time for a social life. Arthur may have said he couldn’t control her, but he seemed to do a good job through intermediaries.

             
Arthur spent his time on the computer, doing some unspecified research into
Plict
society. When John once chided him for his seeming indifference to his daughter’s situation, Arthur characteristically said, “Why dwell on it? I can’t change anything and you give me updates.” He pulled out the tablet and wrote, “What I’m doing now may help.”

             
“How?”

             
Arthur explained that food for the
Vigintees
was grown in special areas on isolated islands to minimize the possibility that the crops would escape into the ecosystem. Without animals to eat them, the food would be in danger of taking over from the native plants. The food was processed on these islands.

             
“I can’t tell when it started, but someone siphoned off some human food a few years ago. It stopped after about four years.”

             
“It’s a miniscule amount,” wrote John. “A small percentage of the whole, making it
possible it’s just an error.”

             
Arthur shook his head.

             
John helped Arthur with the search, not feeling anything would be accomplished. After a frustrating day of looking at invoices and ships’ manifests, they worked out where the food went. It was in an isolated community called
Aipot
. John researched how to get there. It was
coastal
, but mountain ranges made it basically inaccessible except by sea
or air. It appeared to be part
ly a retirement community for
Plict
who liked isolation. There was some fishing and agriculture, but all the products were sold locally. There was no tourism and the inhospitable coast and tiny dock would make it hard to sneak into.

             
“They don’t export anything, but they import food and various products. Where do they get their money?” John wrote. Arthur shrugged, not bothering to speculate.

             
The world had an equivalent of Google Earth and John was looking for a way to come in overland. Arthur looked over his shoulder and pointed to a spot.

             
Forgetting secrecy, John said, “That’s well inside the boundaries.”

             
“Zoom in,” Arthur said.

             
When John complied, he said
to
Arthur, “It doesn’t look right.”

             
“It’s green.” The vegetation on the
Plict
world was purple.

             
They spent the afternoon arguing, writing on the tablet. John wanted to try to escape, but Arthur wanted to take his findings to the Buds. “They won’t be grateful,” John wrote.

             
“We have to do it by cooperating with them,” Arthur said, not bothering to write the words.

             
“Why?”

             
“Because you won’t do it any other way. If a
Plict
, mouthed or
mouthless
, gives you an order, you will obey it.”

             
“I’ve been planning an escape,” John protested.

             
“Escape is easy. We take a couple of pieces of pipe and bang the heads of the
Plict
who guard each entrance. We might kill them, but I have no moral problem killing anyone holding me prisoner. You wouldn’t be able to do it by yourself and I won’t do it.”

             
John tried to imagine doing it, and the very thought appalled him. He could no more kill a
Plict
than he could kill a baby. “It doesn’t make sense,” he said.

             
“It makes perfect sense. All
Vigintees
are genetically manipulated to worship
Plict
. In your case, they modified your genes to give you immunities to allow you to work on Earth, but they didn’t quite anticipate what you would be like. They wanted you to be the perfect agent, loyal to them and intelligent enough to understand all of human society. When they realized they gave you too much
of
a social conscience and it wasn’t limited to
Plict
, they created Hernandez. He seemed to be the perfect agent, since he didn’t have an overly active conscience. They cloned him before they realized what he was like.”

             
Later, John asked, “Why did they kidnap Natalie? I didn’t think telepathy would be that valuable.”

             
“Telepathy is very valuable if you don’t talk. They thought if they understood telepathy, the Buds might not need sign language.”

             
John couldn’t find anything useful to do. He was a psychiatrist with no patients. He certainly didn’t understand
Plict
psychiatry. He wondered why he hadn’t studied it.

             
Arthur’s words came back to him. He was loyal to the
Plict
and loyal servants don’t pry. Even now, it seemed to be an intrusion to map the hallways of their prison.