Nicole was in the cafeteria on her afternoon break when it began. She had forced herself to go with Shirley Ferguson, though her stomach was tied in knots. With tremendous effort she managed to smile and respond at the proper places and tried to avoid looking at the clock a dozen times a minute.
“Nicole?” Shirley’s voice penetrated her thoughts. “Are you all right?”
“Oh, yes. Yes, I’m fine.”
“You look pale. Are you sure you should have come back to work this soon? You haven’t been yourself all day.”
A wave of panic went flooding through Nicole. Shirley was a whiz on the computers and a steady and reliable Monitor, but definitely not one of Central Control’s more perceptive lights when it came to interpersonal relations and interactions. If Shirley had noticed her distracted state, she was flirting with disaster with the Major and Travis. The Major had interviewed her relentlessly when she came on shift. “Why did you come to the stadium out of uniform?” “Why were you going to resign?” “Why did you break off your engagement with Travis?” “What changed your mind about resigning?” “What if you falter in the Monitoring Room in the next crisis?” She had answered him honestly wherever possible, telling him everything except the decision to join Eric. She had satisfied him, and he agreed to allow her to continue as a monitor, but she knew she was on probation and would be watched closely.
Suddenly the public-address system blared out through the cafeteria, the feminine voice high-pitched and clearly excited. “Attention, all personnel. Attention, all personnel. We have a Stage One Alert. All personnel report to your duty stations immediately.”
“Stage One!” Shirley exclaimed as they both raced for the door. “That’s a full-scale emergency. What’s happening?”
It’s Eric! Nicole nearly shouted out loud, her heart soaring with relief. But she just shook her head quickly and broke into a trot toward the Central Monitoring room.
When they reached the room, Travis was already there, a phone in one hand, staring at the monitoring board above the blue-and-orange computer consoles. Three lighted panels were blinking brightly.
Three! Nicole stared. If they had removed three implantations at the same time, they’d be slowed down considerably and highly vulnerable to capture.
And then, even as she slid into her chair, the big board clanged sharply and a fourth set of flashing letters began to wink on and off.
WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER 116543, DONALD LEON BROWNLEY, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. DONALD LEON BROWNLEY IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER.
“Four now!” Travis shouted into the phone, then spun around to Shirley and Nicole. “Eric’s back. They’ve removed four implantations. Nicole, I need a tracking on where they were when the wrist computers were severed.”
“Right.” Her fingers began to fly across the terminal keyboard.
“Shirley,” Travis barked, “pull up personal data files on each of these people and stand by.”
“Yes, sir.”
At Nicole’s command the computer searched its massive brain with breathtaking swiftness and fed the data to the screen. For one split second, she thought about delaying the data for Travis in order to give Eric even a small margin of time, but then she rejected the idea. Eric had specifically warned her against doing anything that would give her away. Even as the letters began flowing across her screen, she called out to Travis. “Richard Dawson was at the Kooska Mill and Lumber Company, 345 Green Street. That’s in the northwest sector.”
“Kooska!” Travis shouted, stabbing his finger at the flashing lights on the board. Nicole looked to where his finger pointed and saw the next two names, Stanley R. Kooska and Darla B. Kooska.
“Check the last one, check Brownley.” Without waiting for her response, Travis picked up the phone again. “Units Two and Four, Code Three to 345 Green Street. Watch for any vehicles or personnel fleeing the vicinity.”
He turned back to stare at Nicole’s monitoring screen, where the impersonal brain was spewing out the information on Brownley’s location at the time of severance. But before it had finished, another sharp clanging shattered the silence.
WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTERS 124667, 124668, 137125, AND 138976, CHARLES KEITH METCALF, DAWN JOANN METCALF, LISA RAE METCALF, AND JAMES CHARLES METCALF, HAVE BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCES NOW INITIATED.
Travis swore softly, the first profanity Nicole had heard since she was a small child. But it wasn’t Travis that had her shocked attention. She too stared at the screen. A whole family. Four at the same time. And that was in addition to the other four. But before she could comprehend what that meant, the flashing lights on her screen reverted to the message on Brownley’s tracking.
Travis, looking over her shoulder, burst out with another expletive. “Brownley’s somewhere else!”
“Yes,” Nicole answered with a cool precision that in no way revealed the exultation sweeping through her at that moment. “This time it’s in south central sector, 1461 Page Lane. That’s the home of—”
“The Metcalfs!” Travis exclaimed. “That means they have two operating teams.” Again he began to bark orders into the phone, sending additional teams racing to the second site.
“Captain Oakes,” Shirley broke in, “I have the data files on the first four.”
“Good. Read them out to me.”
Before she could speak, the door to Central Monitoring flew open and the Major strode in, his face red. He stopped and stared at the flashing board. “What?” he shouted. “Eight!”
“Yes,” Travis said quickly, “done in two different locations. I’ve got teams on the way to both places right now.”
“I can’t believe this!” the Major shouted.
“Shirley is giving us a run-down on who’s been operated on.”
“Proceed,” he snapped, not turning away from the screen.
“Richard Dawson,” Shirley began to read in a timid voice, “age twenty-five, male, Caucasian, single, born in Toledo, Ohio, came to Shalev—”
“Yes, yes,” Travis prodded. “Just give us his name, age, and occupation for now.”
“He’s a medical student, presently in his internship at Shalev General Hospital.”
“A doctor!” Travis cried out. “Who’s he doing his residency under?”
“I don’t have that here. Just a moment.” She punched some keys. “Dr. Chester Abernathy, sir.”
“Abernathy!” the Major exploded. “I should have known.”
“What about the others?”
“Stanley R. Kooska is forty-seven and owns his own lumber mill. His wife does their bookkeeping. Brownley is a chemistry professor at the Technical College and is also a partner in the Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer Company.”
“I have the Metcalfs,” Nicole said. “Care to guess who the other partner in Flathead Chemical and Fertilizer is?”
“So,” the Major said, stepping back to glare at the monitoring board, which was now nearly covered with flashing lights, “they’re tapping their close associates. That’s how they choose their next victims.”
“But why take the whole family?” Travis said, staring at Nicole’s screen.” The girl is sixteen, the son eighteen. Why take them?”
“I can answer that,” Nicole replied. “I heard them one night on the radio. They said they’d take only single men or whole families, in case you tried to apply pressure through their relatives.”
“Thus providing a very close and tight-knit group,” the Major added.
“The teams should be arriving at the two locations any moment now,” Travis said. “Maybe we’ll catch them.”
“Don’t count on it,” the Major snapped back at him. “Eric’s no dummy. He knows how swiftly we can pinpoint the locations. He’s got some kind of transportation away from the site, and he’ll fix them up someplace else.”
“They must have found additional heavy-duty bolt cutters,” Nicole volunteered. “All four of the Metcalfs were cut so close to the same moment that the computer registered them all at the same time.”
“Yes,” the Major said. “But now they’re going to have to fix their people up. They have eight bleeding people; they’re not going to be easy to hide.” He glanced up at the clock. “Nicole, how long ago was it when the first person was severed?”
She punched a button again, recalling Dawson’s profile. “Dawson was cut at 3:13, nearly eight or nine minutes ago.”
“Okay,” the Major said. “They can’t have gone far. Travis, tell your men to start cordoning off both sectors. Once they are secure, begin a house-to-house search. I want every garage, every basement, every possible hiding place covered.”
“Yes, sir.”
The phone rang sharply, and Travis snatched it up. “This will be the first team reporting in now, sir.” He jammed the phone to his ear and barked, “Captain Oakes speaking…Yes, put him on.” He covered the mouthpiece. “It’s Captain Burton from Serenity. I—yes, this is Captain Oakes. Hello, Cal, what is it?”
And then his face blanched. “What?” he shouted. He listened for a moment longer, then stared at the Major. “Burton is in Serenity’s Central Monitoring Center, Major. They’ve just had five wrist computers severed there. All of them are people from Eric’s village.”
By 6:30 that evening, Central Control looked like a castle under siege. Orange-uniformed men and women rushed here and there, their faces drawn, stopping to share the latest shock of news in hurried whispers. The call from Serenity had come in at 3:22 P.M. At 3:29, Travis’s first group commander called to report that the Kooska Lumber Mill and surrounding areas were deserted. At 3:31, his second commander reported that the house on Page Lane was likewise empty except for some bloodstained sheets and four wrist computers and implantation chips on the floor. Neighbors reported that a brown van had driven off swiftly a few minutes before the Guardians arrived.
At 3:44, Captain Burton called again from Serenity to report six additional removals, all family members of the previous five.
At 4:17, Shalev General Hospital sent in a fire alarm. A small blaze had started in the basement laundry. It was quickly contained, but ten minutes later a shamefaced corporal rushed into Central Control to report that while he and his men were downstairs fighting the blaze, two men in orderlies’ uniforms entered Cliff Cameron’s room, stunned two Guardians into unconsciousness, and disappeared with Dr. Cameron.
At 5:11, the monitoring board clanged again. WARNING! WARNING! WRIST COMPUTER G2632, JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN, HAS BEEN SEVERED. TERMINATION VOLTAGE SEQUENCE NOW INITIATED. JOSEPH PAUL JENSEN IS NO LONGER READABLE VIA WRIST COMPUTER. TERMINATED SUBJECT WAS A MEMBER OF THE GUARDIAN STAFF. Shirley Ferguson went white. Joe was a corporal on the city patrol, and he and Shirley had been dating steadily long enough that the office had been buzzing about a potential marriage. With a long face but soaring heart, Nicole called that bombshell to the Major, who had gone to his office with Travis to try to get ahead of the escalating crisis.
At 5:15, even as Nicole was still trying to find out where Joe Jensen’s duty station had been, a call, almost incoherent, came from the sergeant in charge of a road checkpoint leading north out of Shalev. A large truck covered with a tarp had pulled up to the checkpoint. Just as the sergeant and one of his men yanked back the tarp to reveal a mass of people huddled in a hollowed-out pile of lumber, a man with a stun gun had sprung from the thick underbrush on the side of the road. That was surprise enough for the sergeant, but worse still, one of his own men had joined the stranger in attacking the other Guardians. When the sergeant came to, his tires were flattened, his radio shattered, two of his men were still unconscious, and the third had fled with the truck and the people. The traitorous Guardian? Corporal Joseph P. Jensen.
And finally at 5:57, a patrol near Hungry Horse Dam called in to report they had found the abandoned lumber truck hidden in a stand of pines. Numerous horse tracks were found around the truck and disappeared into the forest.
Even Nicole was reeling by the time the Major burst back into the Monitoring Room at 6:30, Travis at his heels. The Major seemed under perfect control again now, but Travis was looking hounded, his face strained and lined with weariness. The Major came straight to Nicole and thrust a paper into her hand. “I want this to go out on all wrist computers immediately.”
“Yes, sir.” She cleared her terminal and pushed the keys that would set her up for a general broadcast to all citizens of Shalev. Only then did she look at the paper. Her eyes widened, and she looked at the Major.
“Send it.”
“Yes, sir.” Her fingers punched away even as her mind pictured the effect this was going to have throughout the city.
ATTENTION, ALL CITIZENS. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, SHALEV IS UNDER A STATE OF EMERGENCY. RETURN TO YOUR HOMES AT ONCE. ALL WORK AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES ARE HEREBY TERMINATED FOR THE EVENING. SERVICES AND ACTIVITIES OF A CRITICAL NATURE THAT ARE EXEMPT WILL BE NOTIFIED IMMEDIATELY. ALL OTHERS MUST BE IN THEIR HOMES BY EIGHT P.M. FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THIS ORDER WILL TRIGGER THE PUNISHMENT MODE IN YOUR WRIST COMPUTERS. REPEAT, AUTOMATIC PUNISHMENT MODE WILL RESULT FOR ALL CITIZENS FOUND OUTSIDE THEIR HOMES AFTER EIGHT P.M. UNLESS ON EXEMPT STATUS. A GENERAL ANNOUNCEMENT AND FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE GIVEN ON THE TEN O’CLOCK NEWS THIS EVENING.
When she was finished, the Major nodded. “Nicole, there will be a special meeting for all section heads at 9:00 P.M. in the general conference room. I’d like you to be there. Also, I want you to contact the president of the AFC, the mayor of Shalev, all city council members, the editors of both papers, and the directors or presidents of both the radio and television stations in Shalev. They are all to be in attendance. This is not optional.” He spun on his heel and strode out, Travis right behind him.
“Wow!” Shirley said softly, leaning back in her chair.
“Yes,” Nicole answered. “Wow indeed!”