The Walls Have Eyes (20 page)

“There's plenty of room for negotiation,” Dr. Granville said. “As it stands in our agreement, the prototypes can work in your lab as long as they agree to be chipped so they can't escape.”

“I expected that,” Rudy said. “I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about the children.”

“Those will be yours, to continue the experiment. The Secretary guarantees it.”

“You call that a great settlement, to condemn them to the life of a lab rat? You didn't live it, Malcolm. I did.”

Dr. Granville threw up his hands. “Would you please just think like a scientist? Stop trying to disown your work! You weren't just a lab rat; you were the youngest, brightest deputy lab head this nation has seen. You did great work for the scientific community. These past four years have been a legacy any director would be proud of. Don't let someone else take credit for your achievements.”

Martin stiffened. Deputy lab head? Lab director? His astounded glare met Rudy's gaze.

“Oh no!” he shouted. “You're one of them!”

“Shut up,” William hissed.

“No, he is! He's one of those lab guys. He's a baby killer! Come on, Chip. We're getting out of here.”

“I'll put in a good word for you,” Dr. Granville called as Martin headed for the door. “I hope we meet again. You two,” he said to Rudy and William, “need to stay here. That mystery bot is headed for trouble.”

Martin charged out onto the long balcony. A low glass wall prevented him from falling into the tree-filled atrium far below.

“Chip, I think I'm gonna be sick,” he gasped.

“Please wait for your path,” squawked a lime green parrot. It fluttered to a perch on the rail beside him. “Your path is being programmed and will be here shortly.”

“Stuff the path!” Martin yelled as he ran off.

“That was very rude,” the parrot complained.

The balcony ended in a narrow bridge. Martin was positive they hadn't crossed it, and he was equally sure he couldn't possibly bring himself to step onto such a flimsy structure. “Which way was that elevator, Chip?” he asked. The German shepherd turned and dashed off the way they had come.

“That was very rude,” the parrot repeated, flapping up from the railing as they ran past him.

“Sorry, okay?” Martin told him.

He collided with William at the office door. “Martin, wait,” she said.

“Let him go,” Dr. Granville urged. Martin shoved her out of the way and sprinted off.

He found the golden elevator doors, but the elevator wasn't there. Martin leaned over the railing and saw it a dozen floors below him, making its unhurried way up the side of the wall. Rudy and William ran up while he was waiting. He backed into the closed elevator doors as Chip barked at them.

“Get away from me, you baby killer!” he said. “I can't believe I trusted you!”

Rudy's handsome face was pale. “My work wasn't like that,” he said.

“How dare you judge him!” William shouted. “You domedwellers live off us. You take our work, and you give back nothing.”

“Yeah, well, at least we don't kill little kids,” Martin said.

“You don't do anything but sit on your hands,” William snapped. “You buy our blood and sweat and eat it for dinner.”

With a melodious tone, the elevator doors opened. Martin threw himself inside and tried to close the doors, but Rudy and William followed him in. Barking and whining, Chip backed into a corner. “Ow! Ow! Okay,” Martin told the dog. “Stop that! It's loud in here.”

The elevator ride felt endless. The beautiful atrium floated past as they glided down the wall. Martin studied the scenery and tried to pretend he was alone.

“I understand how you feel,” Rudy said. “I'm not defending my lab. But I'm not a monster. I focused on positive outcomes. The eradication of deformity, genetic damage, hereditary disease.”

“Did you kill babies?”

Rudy hesitated. “I fought for a reduction in experimental subject terminations. Under my tenure as deputy, the initiation of terminal tests dropped seventy-two percent. My technicians euthanized only to manage suffering.”

“But did you kill babies?”

“That wasn't my goal.”

“So what?” Martin said. “I don't care about your goal! The point is, kids died, and you
helped
. You did help, didn't you?”

Rudy sighed. “Yes, you're right. I did.”

They descended into a canopy of green leaves, and the garden where they had enjoyed refreshments was around them once more. The elevator doors opened, and Martin threw himself out.

“Then get away from me, you baby killer!”

William followed him down one of the garden paths. “That's not fair!” she cried. “He made a big difference. We had outdoor recreation, sing-alongs . . . some of us even got jobs!”

Martin stopped, and then stumbled as Chip barreled into him. He turned around to face her. “Oh, big whoop, a sing-along. That makes it all just fine.”

“His team eradicated twenty-three different genetic diseases,” she shouted. “Twenty-three diseases that killed people! Doesn't that matter to you? What would you know about it, anyway, you ignorant, outmoded reject? Our lab did important work!”

Rudy came up beside her and laid his arm around her shoulders. “What about Emilia?” he asked.

William's face froze into an expressionless mask. She jerked away and stood silent.

“I understand how this sounds to you,” Rudy said. “I'm not going to defend my work to you, because parts of it aren't defensible. But all I want now is to help you, to help your sister, to help all of us. I have a plan. I need you to trust me. We have to get your bot to Central.”

Martin reached the edge of the garden and located the grand hallway that led to the packet rails.

“We already did it your way with my bot,” he shouted. “And I don't care what you need, I
don't
trust you!” He sprinted down the long, curving ramp and rounded the corner into the reception area.

A maroon packet stood on the rails where the little park bench transport had been. The golden sunlight dripping through the thick green glass burnished its shabby sides. Two men in gray suits stepped up beside him.

“Remember us, kid? The A and Z guys?”

Martin turned to run, but strong arms wrapped around him, and Chip melted with a whisper into a silver pool of gel.

“Chip!” Martin shrieked. He tried to kick away the reset chip that clung like a burr to the gel, but Abel pulled him back.

“Ow! Hey, Zebulon, check this out. His clothing is trying to punch me!”

“Let go of me!” Martin howled. “Give me my dog!” But his hands met with a click behind his back.

“Okay,” Abel said, taking a step away, “you're handcuffed, and I'll beat the crap out of you if you make a move toward that dog. Now you just tell your shirt or whatever to stand down.”

Martin's blanket, rippling with excitement, stood out from his shoulders like a giant saucer, daring anyone to come within reach. Abel bent beneath its flared canopy and pulled away the silver pancake that was Chip. The blanket reached out a corner and snapped him on the side of the head.

“I think it's one of those medical units,” Zebulon said, inspecting it. “If so, it's got about two seconds to remember
its lifesaving mission. After that, it meets our circuit board shredder.”

The blanket gave one last heave in their direction. Then it deflated like a tired exercise ball.

“You're under arrest, Blanket Boy,” Zebulon said. “Felony assault on the Secretary of State. You broke a bone in his hand. It's a good thing we decided to consult with Dr. Granville about that weird bot of yours. When we heard a dog had showed up half an hour before us, we knew it was our lucky day.”

Rudy and William came around the corner. They saw the two agents and stopped.

“Sir, I apologize,” Zebulon told Rudy, “but your new lab rat is going to have to come with us. Petition through channels if you want him back, but we can't make any promises.”

Rudy stared at him in surprise. “You—you know who I am.”

“Yes, sir, you're a lab deputy, about to become a lab head, and we have plenty of respect for that. We're willing to believe that you didn't know the identity of this young felon. Now please stand back, and don't tell us anything we don't want to hear. Come on, kiddo.”

The first thing Martin saw when they hoisted him into the packet car was the glass candy dish he had given Mom. He turned and head-butted Abel.

“Where did you get that?” he howled. “It isn't yours!”

Abel held him off. “Settle down, kid. We've got more than that to show you.”

Zebulon pushed past Martin. He flopped Chip's silver pancake onto the tightly looped green carpet of the car. Then he slashed into the gel with a pocketknife.

“What are you doing?” cried Martin, writhing and kicking, while Abel held him back.

“A little bot surgery.” Zebulon plunged his fingers into the slice and rooted around on the circuit board. “There it is,” he announced as he withdrew a little gray chip. “Dr. Granville was right. It pops right off.”

Martin kicked him in the leg. “Murderer!” he wailed.

Zebulon jumped to his feet and brandished the chip. “The patient is resting comfy. But he's not going to fool bots anymore. His days of being an Ursula are over.”

Before Martin could react, Zebulon yanked him past Chip's rubbery pancake and pulled open an inner door.

“Check out your new home, kid. We've got our own television in here, and a show you won't want to miss.”

The second room was smaller than the first. Painted an ugly gray and carpeted with the same pea green loops, it held no furniture beyond the modest television that hung from a bracket in the corner. The gray walls were battered, and metal rings protruded from them at various heights. Zebulon pushed Martin down into a sitting position and snapped his handcuffs into one of the rings.

“Now take a look at this,” he said as he stepped over Martin's feet. “There's a new game show on. It's called
Break Out
, and the fun thing is, its contestants don't know they're on a show. They think they're getting rescued, and their little band of buddies is trying to fight its way out of the complex.”

“It's all people can talk about right now,” Abel said, stopping in the doorway. “Even though members of the band die every day, the audience loves the whole theme of hope. And there's
a couple of characters who've gotten really popular. Everybody says they're so cute together.”

Zebulon clicked on the television. But he didn't watch it. He was watching Martin's face.

The set of the new show was dim and full of dramatic shadows. A soft light came from the walls themselves, checkerboards of large square plastic panels. Many of the squares were as dark as black glass, but others were backlit in gentle pastel colors, so slick and smooth that they reminded Martin of hard candy: cherry, green apple, orange, lemon, grape, blue raspberry. Their multihued light was faint, and it cast a changeable twilight on the faces of two people walking by.

The man's voice was low and gruff. “Do you think we'll make it out of here?”

“I don't know,” the woman said tremulously. “But I'm not sorry. I'm not! I'm just glad to be here with you.”

The colored lights of the panels washed across their faces as they walked, one second crimson, the next second purple. It leant a surreal quality to them, as if they had never been part of real life, but had lived their lives as extras in a late-night movie. “Oh, Tris,” the man groaned. He stopped to wipe his eyes, and the woman clasped him in a fierce embrace. They kissed in a nimbus of golden light.

The broadcast stopped. The two people froze in midkiss. Zebulon stepped in front of the television set.

“Well, kid? What do you think?”

Martin could manage no more than a whisper. “They're my . . .
parents
?”

Zebulon nodded. “And I think you care about what happens
to them. So I think you're going to tell us what we need to know. Who gave you that bot? What were you supposed to do with it?”

Rudy pushed his way into the inner room. Behind him, Martin glimpsed William's frightened face.

“He doesn't know anything,” Rudy said. “I can swear to that.”

“Sir! We're going to have to ask you to leave,” Zebulon told him, but Rudy donned one of his charming smiles.

“You were listening in on my consultation with Dr. Granville,” he pointed out. “So you know I'm the one who said I knew what was going on. You're in over your head, and I want to help you. I know Director Montgomery well.”

Abel glanced sidelong at Zebulon. Zebulon frowned at the carpet. “Okay, sir, we're listening,” he said.

“That Alldog bot is a decoy. A fake. A trap.”

“For what purpose?”

Rudy's smile grew broader. “To trap the two of you.”

Martin thought the agents would laugh at this, but they didn't. Abel's watery eyes grew solemn.

“Think it through,” Rudy said. “You know the Secretary likes to execute agents regularly. It deters anyone who might want to make trouble, and the Secretary views the deterrence of crime as part of an agent's job. Now, it's been a number of months since the last showcase execution, when Xantham went to his sticky end—”

“Yorick,” Abel interrupted in a quivering voice. “You're forgetting about him.”

“Ah! Yorick. Quite right, thank you. But that was some time ago—”

“Five months.”

“—and the Secretary needs to maintain discipline. So he takes some no-name politician offline, wraps him up in a dog suit, and tosses him in the suburbs to be the toy of a random child. When odd things start happening, he pretends to know nothing about it, and an Agency investigation starts.”