When Porliche returned after dark, Nin and Sparks were seated at different table, each alone in the pub. Nin waved her over and pushed out a chair with her good leg. “Any luck?” Nin asked.
“I keep finding things but so far nothing to either substantiate or refute the discovery.”
“Too bad.”
“What’s up with you and Sparky?”
“Things are not good between us.”
“Shocking.”
“He has no concept of sexual freedom. He is upset that I tried to play with Quan last night.”
“He is not unusual in that way, I would guess,” Porliche said as she struggled for words.
“Quan was difficult to get going last night. I can’t get Palf to give me a second look. I must be losing it.”
“Palf keeps putting his hand of Quan’s butt. Quan does not seem to mind,” Porliche observed. “I think the two of them are andro-erotic.”
Nin gaped and sputtered softly and then issued a soft sighing phonation through her nose, lips closed in contemplation. “I bet you’re right. That would explain why Quan could not keep it up, so to speak. I was hoping for so much more.”
“So is he still a virgin?” Porliche asked with a twinkle.
“It’s hard to say. Maybe. Probably. I don’t know. It depends on your definition. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Porliche laughed. “That’s hard to believe.”
Nin, after a little pause, joined her in laughter. “OK, it’s pretty stupid.”
“What do you think about breaking in to the museum?”
“Palf said he’d meet us at two in the morning outside the parking lot, those of us who want to come. Quan is going, with dreams of the biggest PhD thesis in decades and job offers from all around the globe. Sparky said he’d go. So it’s just for you and me to decide.”
“Wow.”
“I’m not going. I’m already wounded.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Porliche said, hesitating.
“If they get caught, we’ll get arrested by the fascists as well. This is a country of Neanderthals.”
“You’re probably right. I might as well join ’em.”
“Dress warm. If you get caught, you’ll want a lot of clothing. Otherwise, you’ll never warm up after spending a lot of time naked. They do thorough searches,”—she placed quotation marks with her fingers—“especially of young women.”
The thought itself made her shiver.
At about two in the morning, Porliche and Sparks huddled in the pines in the dark near the access road and the parking lot. He started his third cigarette, inhaling the first drag with satisfaction. A branch snapped nearby. They stiffened.
“Anyone here?”
“Quan?” Porliche whispered back.
“Yeah. Me and Palf are here.”
She walked in the direction of the voice. Sparks followed.
“Put out your smoke, you idiot,” Palfrey commanded. “Are you trying to get caught?”
He flicked the burning end into the underbrush and crushed it with his foot. The unburned part he placed in a pocket.
“I have good signal,” Palfrey said, looking at a small tablet computer. “I’m going to give us about ninety minutes inside as soon as the human watchman drives around here. He should be here anytime now.”
Five minutes later, a truck came down the access road and drove around the parking lot. It stopped near the museum entrance. A person in a heavy coat climbed out and tested the door. It did not open. The watchman pulled the hood of the coat back and shook long hair loose. In the dark, it looked like a woman. She flicked on a flashlight and looked quickly around. She waved to the truck, and a man exited. She pulled a badge on a lanyard around her neck and touched it to a pad. A click. She opened the door, and she and the man entered. In the shadow inside, it appeared that they embraced with hungry passion.
“You’re kidding,” Palfrey said.
“How long is this going to take?” Quan asked. “I’m freezing.”
“Give me a minute,” Palfrey said. He focused on his computer, tapping and pointing. “She just deactivated the interior cameras. I’ll just reactivate in a second. There we go.” The three men watched the screen for ten minutes.
“Now’s a good time to page her, don’t you think, fellas?”
“Please,” Sparky said. “Watching hippos mate is making me sick.”
“They’re both pretty heavy,” Quan said.
Palfrey did something on his tablet. “Ha. Perfect timing. She really doesn’t want to answer. But she does. Such a shame to interrupt at the crucial moment, but life is hard. It’ll take a couple of minutes to get dressed.”
“He’s big everywhere except where it counts,” Sparky said.
“A small fallacy,” Palfrey said.
Porliche laughed. She had been shivering a few meters away, avoiding looking at whatever it was they were all so intently watching. A few minutes later, the couple lumbered from the building and into the truck and sped off.
“That was a good thing,” Palfrey said. “If there is any hint of suspicion that there was a break-in, they have the recording of the guard and her consort.” He tapped a few more times. “OK, our ninety minutes is down to seventy. Let’s get started.”
He led them from the trees to a side entrance. It was unlocked by the time they arrived, and they quickly entered. They found the passage to the Bunker. Just outside the entrance, Palfrey stopped.
“This is the tricky part,” he said. He started working on his computer again.
“What tricky part?” Porliche asked.
“I’ve never had to deactivate a guard-bot before. I can—I’ve just never had to do it.”
It took several minutes, much longer than Porliche expected, before he stopped tweaking and walked into the corridor. Antoinette stood motionless, a couple of dim lights indicating she was charging or something.
Quan took down the yellow tape as Sparks turned the lights on. Palfrey inspected the front and sides of 23. Sparks plugged the power source into the wall socket. He andadjusted and confirmed the settings on the transformer. He pulled the cable to the rear of the box and looked out of the narrow passage at Palfrey, Quan, and Porliche. “Say when,” he said.
Palfrey looked at the others. “Now.”
He attached the cord and threw a switch. Some LED lights lit. There was no indication of any signal ever received. “Nothing so far,” Quan observed.
Sparks came out from the rear of the machine. After a brief inspection, Palfrey pulled a memory wafer from a shirt pocket, inspected it, and attempted to insert it into the first slot. It would not go.
He placed it in the second and watched it disappear. The “DATA TXFR” message displayed. He took out a second card and repeated the process with the third slot. The same thing happened. He used the same chip to test slots four and five. After Palf removed the chip, he pondered. He tried to insert the unused memory chip into the first slot again without success.
“I wonder why this first writer doesn’t work. Probably too old.” He checked his watch. “We have half an hour. Maybe we should just shut it down and get out with plenty of time to spare.”
Antoinette lit up with an array of flashing lights.
“That can’t be good,” Sparks said.
“What the hell?” Palf started furiously tapping on his computer.
Antoinette rolled away from the wall. “BREACH! BREACH! Unauthorized access!” it screeched.
“Power down the machine,” Palfrey called out.
Sparks took a step to get behind the machine. Antoinette fired, striking him behind the knee. He shrieked in pain and fell to the ground.
“Foil!” Palfrey said. Quan pulled a roll of aluminum from his backpack. He moved slowly away from the machines and toward Palfrey as he pulled a meter-long strip out. “You’ll need gloves.”
Quan donned gloves slowly.
“Damn!” Palfrey kept punching his screen. “The bot sent a message. We’re screwed.”
Antoinette fired at Palfrey, but the projectile hit the foil with a rattle and tap.
“Ouch!” Quan said, his teeth bared.
Sparks stood on one leg and tried again to get behind the box. Antoinette fired two bolts at him, striking both buttocks. Sparks jerked and began to scream before he started seizing and fell to the floor, teeth clenched, foam oozing out of his grimace.
Suddenly, Antoinette spun and rolled down the corridor, firing bolts in random directions.
“We have a minute at most,” Palfrey said. “Then she’ll be back with a vengeance. Pull the power. I’ll grab Sparks.”
Quan went to slip behind the machine. Porliche halted him with one hand. With the other, she placed a thumb above and a finger below slot one. Slowly, a memory wafer emerged. When it was free, she gingerly and with reverence removed it.
“History,” Palfrey uttered with the reverence of a crusader finding the Holy Grail. The chamber echoed with tiny explosions. All but Sparks blinked in disbelief.
“Who knows how many years this has been here?” Quan asked.
“If we’re lucky, it’s got the recording of the signal from two thousand years ago.”
The explosions stopped, and the whirring noise of Antoinette’s wheels grew louder. Lights appeared from the darkness. Palfrey grabbed the limp form of Sparks and dragged him away. Quan held the foil up and walked backward, shielding all of them. Antoinette fired half a dozen bolts, five of them hitting the aluminum, Quan holding on despite the pain. The last one hit Quan in his right lower leg. He screamed and dropped the protection. Antoinette drew closer. Palfrey was through the door, and Sparks’s legs crossed the threshold. As Quan bellowed in pain and collapsed, little Porliche put her arm around his waist and pulled him through the doorway. The final bolt was aimed at Quan’s heart. It hit Porliche’s forearm instead. The door closed as Porliche tripped over Sparks’s feet and pulled Quan on top of her.
Grimacing, she quickly sprang to her feet and pulled to ensure the door was latched. Palfrey continued pulling the unconscious Sparks down the hall. “Get up, Quan!” she yelled.
“I’m hurt.”
“You could be dead if you don’t get moving. The bitch is pissed off.”
Quan was shocked at her language and pulled himself to his feet. “You’re bleeding!”
Porliche wiped blood from her arm. “I’ve had worse,” she said.
“Come on,” Palfrey called. “We need to get out of here! Security is coming!”
Quan tried to stand, but his leg gave out. Porliche supported him on the injured side, and he hobbled quickly up the hall. Palfrey opened the door to the museum and closed it quickly as a bolt hit the door. “We are so screwed,” he said. “There’s another guard-bot in the museum. They may shoot to kill.”
“One?” Porliche asked.
“Yeah.”
“See what you do with your pad.”
“We’re trapped in here. There’s no way out.”
Porliche looked up. The ceiling was dotted with LED lights that she had thought looked like stars. “Lean against the wall and let me get up on your shoulder.”
Sparks took a deep, noisy breath. Palfrey did as she directed. She stepped on his thigh, his forearm, and then his shoulder. She pushed on a ceiling panel, and it gave way. She moved it away, and the lights within it extinguished. She poked her head into the small space. “I’m going to see if I can get to the soffit from here. If I can, I’ll get outside and divert the attention of the guard, and you should be able to get out the side door in a few seconds.”
“I don’t think you’ll be able to get out.”
“You don’t know me well.” Porliche disappeared into the narrow space. She poked her head back through the opening. “Are there guards outside?”
“No. Security will be coming in trucks with humans, dogs, and bots.”
“When?”
“You’ll hear ’em approach.”
She pulled away and crawled toward the side of the building where attention to appearance was less. It was pitch-black, and she had to feel for safe places to place her hands and knees. It was not long before she came to the outside wall. She removed a batt of insulation. There was a tiny opening. She took her coat off. She squeezed her head and one arm through it and almost got stuck. Her injured arm and chest were too big. Undeterred, she pulled back and, with her functional arm, pushed and twisted flimsy supporting struts to weaken the area. She bent some aluminum sheets, enlarging the hold then dived back in. She kept pushing, twisting, adjusting and squeezing, pushing the pain back as she had learned to do until her top half popped free. She hung upside down with her hips still in the building and her injured arm flailing limp below her. She managed to pull her coat through and drop on the ground. She pulled the rest of her body out, hung on to a beam for a second before she dropped the three meters to a hard landing on gravel. No injuries other than the bloody burn on her forearm and a few scratches she found with a quick self-assessment.
She ran to the front door and pounded. Lights approached, and she soon made out the form of a guard. She moved away, picked up a rock, and threw it at the door, hitting the solid frame, not glass. The bot fired a bolt that hit the pane and died there. She heard the side door open, a welcome sound of escape. She threw another rock, but the guard-bot wheeled about, presumably in search of the escapees. Porliche bolted with all the speed she could muster.
Palfrey had Sparks on his shoulders in a fireman’s carry. Quan hopped, touching the toes of his injured leg as they hurried away from the building. Porliche latched the side door as it was hit with another bolt. It gave her an unpleasant buzz, but she quickly caught up with the trio. They hurried along the side of the road until the sound of engines and a hum of a hovercraft became audible. They moved into the woods where movement was a lot slower. Several vehicles passed with bright lights piercing the forest in search of intruders. None slowed or stopped. A few minutes later, they returned to the roadway and made good time back to the lodge.
By the time they arrived, Sparks was moaning and moving. Quan’s leg was functioning almost normally. They stopped outside, not wanting to be seen by the young woman at front desk. Porliche approached slowly, leaving Palfrey panting and sweating and the two injured men improving. The woman was not at the desk. Porliche knew the front door would signal the clerk. She went to a side door, which opened with her access key. She went back to the lobby. Dark hair was visible in the office, apparently resting on the desk, asleep.
Porliche went out the side door and guided the trio into the lodge. She fished through Sparks’s pocket and found a room key. Palfrey helped him stagger to the room. Porliche opened the door. Nin sat up in bed, in alarm. She wiped sleep from her eyes and squinted in the light that Porliche turned on.
“What happened?” Nin asked in alarm, pulling the sheets up over her chest.
“Sparks caught a few bolts,” Palfrey said as he dumped him into the bed next to Nin. Nin slipped out naked and quickly put on a robe.
“You got caught?”
“Kinda,” Porliche said. “If we were, we would not be here.”
“We will be,” Palfrey said. “We left the power on to 23. No one but us was working there. The guard-bot will ID us. We’ll be apprehended before sunrise.”
Sparks moaned.
“Are you OK?” Nin asked.
“I need a drink.” His speech was slurred.
“He’s fine,” she said. “Back to normal.”
“Here’s the card,” Porliche said as she extended it to Palfrey. “You and Quan should get to work on it right away and away from here. This is our only chance of staying free.”
Palfrey took it. “Did you get hit?” Palfrey pointed at her arm.
“It was nothing.”
He left the room, rejoining Quan, who had stayed in the hall. Hope hung on these two strange men.
“You found something,” Nin said.
“That wafer thing was in the machine. If we’re lucky, and I mean real lucky, it’ll have the signal information, Palfrey will read it, the government will embrace it, and we’ll go home.”
“That seems like asking a lot.”
“One chance in a million.”