The Winter of the Robots (6 page)

“Oliver? Your best friend?”

“Oh, right.” I got dressed in yesterday’s jeans and sweatshirt and headed downstairs. Oliver was waiting in the foyer, still wearing his coat.

“What’s going on?”

“You must not have got the message,” he said. “I’m going to see Dmitri. He’s asking for us. I figured you should go, too.”

“Yeah, sure.” Shoveling would have to wait. So would breakfast. I stepped into my snow mocs and grabbed my coat. “Is your mom giving us a ride?”

“No. Peter is.”

“He’s already at your house this morning?” I asked as I snapped up my coat.

Oliver gave me a look.

“Oh. Right.” We went out into the cold. “He’s a nice guy,” I said.

“He is,” Oliver agreed. “Did you tell the police anything?”

“Nah. I didn’t want to get Dmitri in trouble, especially when he’s in the hospital.”

“Me neither. Same reason.”

Peter barely nodded at me when I got in. He was bobbing his head to the beat of a Beach Boys song. I sat in the back and melted into the heated seat, thinking about beaches and sunshine.

Based on all the movies I’d seen, I expected Dmitri to be lying in bed, hooked up to a hundred machines and barely able to talk. He was actually sitting up and reading, holding his paperback awkwardly with bandaged hands.

“Oh, hi.” He put the book down when he saw us. “Thanks for coming. Sit down.” There was only one chair, and Oliver took it.

Dmitri’s face was windburned and looked scabby. I glanced at the title of his book—
Caught Stealing
. The cover showed bloody hands against a chain-link fence. “My brother got it downstairs at the gift shop,” Dmitri explained. He shifted in bed, made a pained face, and drew a deep breath. “He said it was the only book down there that didn’t suck. He was right. It doesn’t.”

“Good title,” said Oliver.

Dmitri smiled with one side of his mouth. “Yeah, I get it.”

“So you’re not going to deny it?” Oliver asked.

“No. I took your stuff. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” I said. It was hard to be mad when he was bandaged up, taking labored breaths, and wincing every few seconds.

“No, it’s not all right,” Oliver muttered.

“Um—so are you going to be OK?” I asked Dmitri.

“Mostly,” he said. “Maybe I’ll lose a couple of fingertips on my left hand.” He flexed it lightly. “And the top parts of my ears. Your skin turns black in the cold. Did you know that?”

“Read it somewhere,” said Oliver. “I’ve never seen it for myself.”

“It’s not pretty,” said Dmitri. He took another deep breath.

“We’ll take your word for it,” I said. “Did it happen in the abandoned junkyard?”

Dmitri nodded, then shook his head. “It only
looks
abandoned,” he said. “I took one of your cameras and was heading for the next one when someone got me from behind.”

“What do you mean, got you?” Oliver asked.

“I got Tased. I got knocked out.”

I thought of the bolt of blue electricity that nearly hit my heel.

“How long were you out?” Oliver asked.

“I don’t know. My memory is a little shaky.”

“How did you even find the cameras?” I asked him.

“I got lucky.” He looked at his hands, realized what he’d said, and laughed, then winced.

There were voices in the hall, coming our way.

“I’m sorry I lost your camera and your tools,” Dmitri said quickly. “But don’t go back there. That’s why I asked for you. I had to warn you. That place isn’t safe.”

“We already went back,” said Oliver. “It was deserted.”

“Look, I’ll find a way to pay you back for your stuff. Just please don’t go back.”

“We won’t,” I assured him.

A minute later, the room was full of people: a guy around twenty years old, a girl who was about sixteen, and a round-faced boy who was about ten.

“You two were at the pocket-burger place,” said the twenty-year-old. “Why are you stalking my brother?” I
recognized him. He was the one who’d confronted us at Sidney’s. Now I could see Dmitri’s face in his.

“Don’t be a jerk, Sergei,” said the girl. He turned to her, his nostrils flaring. The little boy hid behind her.

“Back off, Masha. I just want to know what they’re doing here,” he said.

“I
asked
them to come,” said Dmitri.

“Well, I never saw them before,” said Sergei. “My brother goes missing, then I hear these strangers talking about him, then they show up at his hospital room.…”

“They’re good guys,” said Dmitri. “It’s OK.”

“All right. Well, I need to talk to you alone,” said Sergei. “Masha, bring Lexy to the coffee shop. I promised him a donut.”

“But we came to see Dmitri!”

“Ten minutes! Sheesh.” Sergei waved us all out of the room. “You two, as well. Clear out for a while.”

“We’re leaving anyway,” said Oliver. “I am sorry about what happened, Dmitri.”

“Me too,” I added.

“Thanks a lot,” said Dmitri. “See you guys at school.”

“I’m going to ask if I can go it alone on the science-fair project,” Oliver added. “I hope that’s cool.”

“Sure.” He raised a bandaged hand to wave goodbye. I had a lot more questions, but Sergei was looking at us impatiently and Oliver was my ride.

“Thanks for coming,” said the girl as we walked to the elevator. “Dim doesn’t have many friends.”

“No problem.” I punched the button for the elevator. “Your name is Masha?”

“Only my family calls me Masha. It’s short for Malasha. This is Alexei.” The boy looked at us with wide blue eyes, but didn’t say a word.

“I’m Jim, and this is Oliver.”

The elevator arrived with a ding. An old man was there, in a wheelchair, with tubes in his nose and a nurse behind him with some equipment. We crowded in.

“I’m sorry Sergei was such a jerk,” said Malasha. “He’s been really stressed, worrying about Dmitri.”

“It’s understandable,” I said.

“Where did they find Dmitri?” Oliver asked.

The man in the wheelchair nodded. He was curious, too, even though he didn’t know who we were talking about.

“He was sleeping on the floor at a Laundromat. The guy who works there found him last night, curled up in a corner.”

“Is his name Ted Whaley?” I guessed, remembering the man the officer had asked me about.

“That’s him,” Malasha confirmed. The elevator stopped on two, and the nurse wheeled the old man away. He looked back at us sadly, wanting the rest of the story.

“Is it the Laundromat on First Street?” I asked. We’d walked right by it.

“That’s the one.”

“How long was he there?” Oliver asked. “He was missing for forty-eight hours.”

“We’re not sure,” said Malasha. “The guy who found him isn’t the most reliable witness.”

The elevator dinged for the ground floor. We got off as people squeezed past us to get on. Alexei started tugging on his sister’s hand and moving toward the coffee shop. “See you later!” said Malasha as Alexei dragged her away.

“Do you want to get back on Team Robot?” Oliver asked. “Since your otters are dead in the water. Um, sorry for using that expression.”

“I don’t know.” The fact that I still had to do a science-fair project was the last thing on my mind.

“You can help build the robot this time,” he said. “You’re right. It shouldn’t be just arts and crafts.”

“Yeah, but that’s what I’m good at. Remember my paper-plate turtle from second grade?”

“That turtle rocked,” he said.

We found Peter in a lounge by the gift shop, working on his laptop. He shut the screen, but not before I caught a glimpse of his Web-browser window: diamond rings against a field of robin’s-egg blue.

I knew I had to tell Dad about the cameras. The longer I waited, the worse it would be.

I decided to do the shoveling first. I started clearing out a gap between the cherry tree and the shed, careful not to dump snow into Penny’s fort. It felt good to work, and to get everything else off my mind for a while. I was halfway done when Rocky came over.

“Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” I was breathing hard from the shoveling. Clouds of white puffed from my mouth. “If you’re here to ask about the ottercams, I have some bad news. They were stolen.”

Her mouth made a little “oh” as the news sunk in. “What did your dad say?”

“Um … I haven’t told him yet.”

“He didn’t even know you took them, did he?” She reached out and took my wrist with a mittened hand, looked at me with wide brown eyes. “I should never have put you up to this, Jim.”

“You didn’t hold a gun to my head.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s not important. I can pay for half. I mean, I don’t know if I can, but I should, and I’ll find a way.”

“Thanks,” I said. I slowly pulled my arm away. “Anyway. Our project is finished.”

“Do you want to do something else?” she asked.

“I was thinking of helping Oliver with his robots. Since his partner didn’t work out.”

“Didn’t work out? You mean disappeared?”

“He’s back. We went to see him at the hospital.” I told her he’d been attacked, but not where it happened.

“If you see him again this weekend, tell him I’m glad he’s OK,” she said.

“I don’t think I will, but sure. Anyway, he’s not up to the robot project, so I told Oliver I would help him. Sorry.”

“All right,” she said, not the least bit upset. “I’ll figure out something else.”

I watched her walk home, already feeling like I’d just made a huge mistake. When I turned back toward the house, I saw a puff of yarn the size of a tennis ball bob above the snow pile and disappear again.

“Penny?”

She clambered out of the hideout. “I heard. You stole some cameras and now they’re gone.”

“Don’t even try to blackmail me. I’m going to tell Dad myself.”

“What’s blackmail?”

“Ha. If you look up
blackmail
in the dictionary, there’s a picture of you.”

“Well, I don’t want to blackmail you this time. I don’t even want
you
to tell.”

“I have to, Penny. It’ll just get worse if I don’t.”

“Jim, he’s going to be so mad. He’s going to yell. A
lot
.”

“I know.”

“If you promise not to tell, I’ll …” She stopped, unable to think of anything. She was usually on the other end of blackmail. “I’ll finish shoveling for you, and I’ll shovel the rest of the winter.”

“No deal.”

“I won’t ask you to do anything else ever again.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He’s going to kill you,” Penny whispered somberly.

“Come on, Penny. Dad yells, but he never hits anyone.”

“Nobody’s ever done anything this bad.”

“Good point. But I still have to tell him. I’m going to do it as soon as I’m done out here.”

“You are such a dummy!” Penny ran up the back path, through the door, and slammed it behind her before I could respond.

I finished shoveling and went inside to tell Dad what happened. He was pointing out something to Mom in the neighborhood newspaper, trying to talk her into something. I wouldn’t make it worse by interrupting their conversation. Dad hated being interrupted. Anyway, I might
as well enjoy my last five minutes of Internet access. I’d probably be banned from anything good for the rest of my life.

I went upstairs to the office. The computer was on, the browser logged into the camera site. When was the last time I’d been logged in? Could I really have forgotten to log out? I went closer and saw that a map was open in a separate browser. There were four pushpins in the map, each with a number. The map just showed a gray area, but I could tell what it was by the river on one side and the roads on the other: it was where Nomicon used to be.

I started to piece together what was going on.

“Penny?” I went down the hall, saw that her door was open and her room was empty.

I ran downstairs, grabbed my coat, and was out the back door before Mom and Dad could ask what was going on.

I hustled down the bike path toward the river. About twenty cars passed me before I got to the park. I expected every set of headlights to belong to Dad’s car. I ran across the street against the light. The neon kangaroo at Sidney’s was still hopping along. It would be a nice place to warm up if I found Penny.
When
I found Penny.

I walked down West Bank Road and turned left at Half Street. It was early afternoon, but the junkyard was already full of shadows.

“Penny, are you in there?” I wrapped my fingers through the fence and shook it. “Come out! It’s over! Never mind
the cameras!” I sighed, and slipped through the gap in the fence. I really didn’t want to go in there.

“Penny!” I shouted again. I spotted a small set of boot prints to my left, weaving among piles of junk. I followed them to the otter slide, then along the embankment to a stand of trees and bushes. This was where the cameras
had
been, not where they were now.

I stubbed my toe on a large metal pipe embedded in the ground. I heard claws scrambling inside. An animal darted out of the pipe and raised itself, chattering at me, daring me to take another step forward. It was about two feet tall, with glistening chestnut fur. An otter! I heard more chattering and skittering echo. Otters were nesting inside the pipe.

I backed up, crashing into someone. We both screamed.

“Penny!” I could have strangled her. I hugged her instead. “What are you doing here?”

“The camera site lied,” she said. She showed me a printout of the same map I’d seen. “I figured out where to go, but none of the cameras are where the map says they are.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I beeped the cameras,” she said.

“What?”

“I beeped the cameras,” she said. “I forget the right word, OK?”

“You mean you traced them?”

“Yes. You just click the button that says ‘locate my cameras.’ ”

I didn’t even know you could do that.

“How did you log in?” I asked her.

“I used your email address and guessed the password,” she said. “Jim, plus sign, Rocky.”

“Oh.” Was I that obvious? “I just used that because it’s for our project.”

“Sure you did. Well, the site lied, because I don’t see the cameras anywhere.”