The Walls Have Eyes (12 page)

“Chip! No!” Martin screamed.

Chip flailed and kicked under the coating of wires. Martin saw them vanish tassel by tassel, as if they had burrowed beneath the dog's skin. Chip's terrified cries abruptly changed into a mechanical screech. His writhing form froze into bizarre poses, as if he were caught in the beam of a strobe light.

“Chip, hold on! I'm coming!”

Martin threw himself blindly from table to table, heedless of the pop and flash of seething wires. The bow wave of gray slugs reached the door and cut off his escape, but he didn't
care anymore. He wasn't escaping. He was going to save his dog. At the moment, nothing else mattered.

He jumped, misjudged the distance, and slipped. A second later, he found himself sitting on the table's bench with one leg dangling to the floor. Before he could curl it back, it touched a slug.

Pop!

A small silver buzz saw appeared to erupt from the slug and took aim at his sneaker with a metallic zing. Many short wires whirled through the air and hooked themselves onto his foot. Flinging themselves in arcs, the wires jerked their way up the laces, pulled onto his sock, and grappled for purchase on his pant leg. Then two long wires met around his ankle, and the entire flailing mass followed their lead. Before Martin could blink, they had smoothed into a silver band, as snug as half a set of handcuffs. He sat and stared dumbly at it while the army of slugs passed by him and seized upon the rocking wheels of his table.

As the uproar died down, he heard a desolate whimper. Chip!

“I'm coming,” he said, and climbed to his feet. An electrical jolt flashed through him and left him giddy.

Chip's whining grew desperate.

“Give me just a minute,” he said as he took another step. This time the world went away. It came back a little later, but it came back as ceiling tiles. Martin discovered that he was lying on his back.

Over the ringing in his ears, he heard a mechanical alarm-clock screech. Cautiously, he turned his head. Chip was
blinking in and out—dog, blur, dog, blur—with the dark rectangles of two circuit boards showing through his hazy form like shadows on an X-ray.

Martin's teeth hurt, and his whole body felt tired, as if he'd been flinging giant boulders around. A straggler slug slipped past his shoulder, and he shuddered involuntarily. It burst like a cascaron and jerked itself into a band around his arm.

“Don't move, Chip,” he muttered. “They zap you if you move. They won't let us go anywhere. Just do what I do. Take a little nap. Close your eyes for a while.”

When he opened his eyes again, the room was silent, and he was stiff from lying so long. The slug army was gone. He stared at the ceiling tiles for a few minutes. How long have I been here? he thought. He was afraid to lift his hand to check his watch.

Chip was a normal dog again. He lay on his haunches a few feet away, dolefully licking a foot. When he saw Martin glance toward him, he dropped his big head onto his forepaws and gave a breathy little whine.

“Hey, buddy,” Martin whispered back. “I'm right here. We're gonna do this together.” He closed his eyes again.

After eons, they heard firm footsteps in the hall, and Chip's ears swiveled forward. “Shh,” Martin said before the dog could bark. He turned his head toward the doorway, laying his cheek against the cool floor. A saltines packet and the end of a bitten carrot stick lay a couple of feet away.

The steps grew louder, and someone came into the room. Tabletops blocked Martin's view of all but the person's olive-gray lace-up boots. Then the boots came around the end of the nearest table, and their owner came into view.

It was a military police bot. Martin had seen them in governmental parades on the nightly news. Battalions of these gray-faced bots marched by the cameras in their uniforms of dusty green. Martin remembered the Great Battery Panic that had occurred when he was five, when faulty rechargeables had shut down the cookers and custodial bots and trash had piled up for weeks. The news had shown packet cars full of military police bots deployed to the worst-hit suburbs, hand-delivering sacks of trash to the loading bays, vacuuming school rooms, and restoring order. Martin hadn't forgiven Dad for organizing citizen's brigades to haul off their own garbage because it kept the military police from coming to help.

He'd always thought the reason the bots appeared to have no expressions under their green helmets was because that the cameras were too far away to catch them. Now he learned the true reason: the bots had no faces. This soldier had nothing but a sketchy suggestion of features on its iron gray head. It had a prominent chin and straight nose, but no mouth to speak of; a serious slant to its brows, but no eyes. Its gray hands grasped a heavy assault rifle.

“Your name and place of origin,” it barked.

Martin was afraid to sit up. If the slugs shocked him and he went into a fit, the soldier might decide to shoot him. He lay on his back and held out his hands in what he hoped was a nonthreatening gesture. “I don't know what ‘origin' is,” he said.

Chip vibrated out a message in bot-to-bot protocol. A change came over the soldier at once.

“Sir!” the soldier said. Dark blue dye swept across its green uniform like a cloud blotting out the sun. Bright ribbons
sprouted across its chest in a colorful row, gold braid rolled down its trouser legs, and its helmet engaged in some serious origami. Within seconds, the soldier stood at attention in a dark blue service cap and full dress uniform, a drill rifle with a rubbed walnut stock by its side.

“It is an
honor
, sir!” the soldier said. “I apologize for your detention. We had no warning Central was sending a delegation to this site. I'll have you out of those traps in no time.”

Martin glanced from the soldier to his dog. Chip's tail whapped against the floor. Martin felt a movement at his shoulder, and the bundle of wires there fell to the floor with a plop. In another second, the wires at his ankle did the same. Chip stood up and shook, and silver tassels flew in all directions. They skidded along benches and landed in limp little piles.

“Please allow me to assist you to your feet, sir,” the soldier said. He extended a gray hand.

“Um . . . sure, thanks,” Martin said. The hand didn't feel like he thought it would. It was cool and smooth, like a plastic milk jug.

“Lieutenant, you found one!”

A man in a gray suit stepped into the cafeteria. A second gray-suited man followed him. “No, he's not a Wonder Baby,” the second man said. “He's too old.”

“It's the A and Z guys!” Martin cried. There was no mistaking the watery eyes, snub noses, and fish-mouth frowns.

“How does he know our names, Zeb?” the first agent asked uneasily.

Agent Zebulon ignored him.

“Your name and place of origin,” he snapped to Martin. “And— Great glory! Lieutenant, why are you in dress blues?”

The soldier bot's posture was stiff with reproach. “Agent, you failed to notify my task force that we would be encountering privileged personnel. This boy represents a delegation from Central.”

The two agents turned their frowns on Martin. They looked like playground bullies, fighters who would do anything to win, even if they had to cheat. “Central's sending out kids now?” Zebulon said. “We'll just see about that.”

Before Martin could react, the agents seized his arms, and the two of them frog-marched him over to a table. They twisted him around so that the bench caught him behind the knees, and he sat down hard. A bright light flashed in his eyes, and he cupped his hands over them, blinking.

“Take a look at that,” Zebulon murmured, holding a small handheld out to Abel.

“‘Martin Revere Glass,'” Abel read from its screen. “The . . . the one with the bot! The bot in the plot!”

“That's enough, Abel. You sound like an idiot.”

“The plot against the Secretary of—”

“Shut
up
!”

“Let go of me!” Martin yelled, thrashing. “Chip, over here! Help!”

But for the first time, Chip didn't come to his aid. The German shepherd didn't seem to know what to do. He barked ferociously and snapped at the agents, but his teeth didn't make contact. When one of the agents turned and tried to grab him, he yelped and slipped out of reach.

“Stop squirming, kid.” Zebulon delivered a quick blow to Martin's chest, and Martin gasped for breath. “And you, bot, stop that barking!” Chip's howls turned to breathy whines.

Meanwhile, the soldier had been keeping up a steady stream of indignant protests. “In accordance with Battlefield Directive 182-dash-34, Central personnel are never to be—”

Abel interrupted him. “Soldier, this boy is a fugitive. He tricked you. You're malfunctioning. Shut down and perform diagnostics.”

“Negative, sir! I was informed of his clearance by the canine officer.”

Abel and Zebulon turned to Chip again. The dog crouched on his belly now, watching them with pricked ears.

“A canine
officer
,” Abel said.

“Like a canine
colleague
,” Zebulon murmured. “Or a
partner
.” His eyes took on an ominous gleam. “Good work apprehending these two, Lieutenant. We'll take it from here. Abel, not another word from anybody till we get these two in the packet.”

The soldier blocked their way.

“Do I have to remind you, sir,” the soldier said icily, “that you need a directive signed by the Special Prosecution Team to arrest a Central government official? I've radioed Central about the irregularity of this event. No one moves till we get an answer.”

Abel rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of—” Zebulon stopped him.

“Lieutenant, you—you what?” Zebulon said. “You say you've radioed Central?”

“And they've radioed back,” the soldier announced with satisfaction. “Switching to send/receive video mode.”

The gray-faced bot's brass buttons and row of bright parade ribbons dissolved into shiny blackness. In the middle of his chest, a dark square appeared. It flickered, and Martin realized with a jolt that it was a television.

A man's face peered out from the television screen, a large, florid face like a honey-baked ham. Fleshy eyelids pouched protectively around the man's brown eyes, almost closing them, and two small, neat ears tilted away from the massive forehead like the cropped ears of a Great Dane. The man's head met his body without the intervention of a neck: a black suit coat sloped out almost immediately below the little ears, and the Windsor knot of a red silk necktie sheltered beneath his formidable chin. A white headline banner at the bottom of the screen carried his title:
SECRETARY OF STATE
.

“What's going on here?” the Secretary demanded.

“Oh, crap!” muttered Zebulon.

“What's this about?” the Secretary of State said again. “Agents. Still got your hair. Young agents. X, Y, or Z batch, I'd say.”

“Sir, I'm Agent Zebulon,” Zebulon declared, stepping in front of Martin. “My junior partner here is Agent Abel.”

Martin peeked around Zebulon's pinstripe back in time to see the Secretary's tiny eyes narrow shrewdly. “The A batch is productive already, eh?”

Zebulon coughed. “More or less.”

“What's going on? An alert came through that a Central official was where he didn't belong. It's a good thing I wasn't asleep.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I
never
sleep, Agent Zebulon.”

“Yes, sir. I'd heard that, sir. I'm very sorry you were disturbed. Actually, that report came to you in error. The military bot appears to have malfunctioned.”

The soldier providing the video feed couldn't appear in his own defense, but he bristled and protested. “Negative, sir! My internal diagnostics indicate that I am one hundred percent mission ready. I can dump the codes to any handheld you wish.”

“Thank you, thank you, soldier,” the Secretary told him smoothly. “I'll get to the bottom of this.”

“The lieutenant appears to believe,” Zebulon said, “that a teenage boy is on the payroll at Central. But we'll take care of
it, sir. We'll make sure his circuit board gets the maintenance it needs.”

The Secretary of State's tone sharpened with interest. “Who's that?”

“Who's what, sir? The soldier? He's Lieutenant Bravo-Bravo-Romeo-Tango.”

“Not him, Agent! The boy. Get out of my way.” Zebulon moved aside with reluctance, and the face on the television screen drank Martin in. “A Wonder Baby. By Jove, you've got one!”

“No, sir, I'm afraid not. This is a regular older-model boy.”

“Aren't you at the Wonder Baby school? Or did Lieutenant Tango get that wrong too?”

Zebulon answered, after just a hint of a hesitation, “No, sir, he was right about that.”

The Secretary of State looked baffled. “Where the devil did that boy come from, then?”

“Well, we went to retrieve him from his suburb, sir . . .”

“Negative!” barked the soldier. “I apprehended him right here in this room.”

Impatience clouded the Secretary's expression, and a dent formed in the middle of his forehead. “Agent, answer me! Did you bring that boy here or not?”

“We intended to, sir. But there was—ah—interference. We intended to interrogate him just now, but that's when the soldier malfunctioned.”

“Intended. Intended! I don't care what you intended. Don't you even know his name?”

Zebulon paused and smoothed his pinstripe sleeves,
doubtless looking for inspiration on his cuffs. Abel shifted from foot to foot and then blurted into the silence, “Sir, the soldier shouldn't have bothered you. This kid is nobody important. Nothing for you to worry about.”

The Secretary's broad face turned red. “Ah! Thank you, young sprat, for your kind thoughts on my behalf. So I don't need to worry?”