Operation Sherlock (12 page)

That done, the spy scurried back to the door, peeled off the black gloves, stuffed them into the pocket of a white lab coat and slipped out of the refrigerated area.

Now Black Glove made no effort to stay quiet, to avoid being seen. Without the transmitter to conceal, being seen was no problem—especially if anyone who might spot you would instantly recognize your familiar face, and automatically assume that you were here for a good reason.

 

The Mad Messenger

With barely a word to Dr. Remov, the gang went barrelling out of his house and down the road.

Despite their speed, when they arrived at the house to which their new friend had directed them, they found that whoever had been using its terminal had already fled.

Even so, it wasn't long before Dr. Remov was proven correct in his belief that the mysterious messenger had been in action again. When Trip Davis arrived home that night, he found the message light blinking on the terminal in his bedroom. Nervously he punched in the code to call up the message. The words
Someone knows what you did!
flickered onto his screen.

He was not surprised when they disappeared before he could get his parents to come in and see them.

“A stakeout,” said Trip the next morning as he paced back and forth in the Phillipses' living room. “That's what we need. A stakeout.”

“I'd love a steak,” said Paracelsus. “If I could eat.”

“I'd settle for a burger,” said Wendy. “But what are you really suggesting, Trip?”

“A constant watch on that house, to see who comes and goes.”

“Sounds tiring,” said Rachel. “Why don't you come here for a minute?”

Leading the others into the computer room (with Trip carrying Paracelsus, who begged not to be left behind), Rachel ran her fingers over the keyboard. A few seconds later the map Dr. Remov had shown them appeared on the screen.

“You've got to teach me how to do that,” said Wendy.

“It's a simple code.”

“I don't mean how to call up the map. I mean how to remember things that way.”

“That's a simple code, too. It's a tag system. Anyone can do it with a little training. It has more to do with practice than with intelligence.”

“I'm intelligent,” said Paracelsus. “Alas, it's all a fraud.”

“Which one of you programs that thing?” demanded Ray.

“Why?” asked Roger.

“Because one of you has a sick sense of humor, and I want to know who it is!”

“It's a secret,” said Rachel. “Now listen. As I see it, we have two choices. We can set up a stakeout at the house, which would be boring and time consuming. Or we can set up something right here so that as soon as the light for that house begins to blink, we'll hear an alarm. Then we can shoot over and try to catch our mysterious messenger in action. I figure if two of us go sign out a pair of dune buggies, we could get from here to that abandoned house in just a couple of minutes when we need to.” She frowned. “That's another mystery we need to figure out.”

“What?” asked Ray.

“Why we can still sign those things out after what happened yesterday,” said Wendy, remembering the conversation she had had with Mr. Swenson the night before.

“Exactly,” agreed Rachel. She turned back to the terminal. “Of course, there's a chance this might not work. But it seems more productive than a stakeout. And if it doesn't do the trick, we can always go to Plan B.”

“What's Plan B?” asked Ray.

Rachel smiled. “A stakeout.”

“Sounds fine to me,” said Trip. The others quickly agreed.

“Great,” said Rachel. “Wendy and I will go get the dune buggies. You guys can set up something to monitor the screen, then get back to work on Sherlock.”

“SETBACK!”

The word was written in large, shaky letters that covered an entire page of the fanatic's journal.

Jaws clenched, eyes steely, she stared at the page for a while. Then she turned it over and began to write in smaller letters at the top of the next page:

“My plans have been delayed. This is upsetting, but not entirely bad. After all, the reason for the delay is of my own doing. I have broadened my goals, and as a result, it will take me longer than I had expected to complete my preparations.

“The delay will be worth it, for the end result will be far greater than I had initially dared to dream.”

She paused and stared straight ahead. The room was dark, the wall bare. But to her fevered eyes it was like a movie screen, where the action she was considering could be played over and over again, savored in all its fearful glory.

It started with a package—a simple package no bigger than a man's head.

A package placed in just the right location.

And then there was the timer. It would tell the package
when
to do its job.

And then there would be the explosion, a slow blossoming of fire and terror that would rip through the island, breaking it into a billion tiny pieces. So many pieces they could never be put back together again.

The fanatic could picture it down to the last detail.

“It's a good feeling, this knowing what one has to do. I am at peace with the world now. I actually feel happy, knowing I will do something important before I die.

“And I
will
have to die to accomplish this. Everyone on the island has to die. It took me a while to realize that. But the truth is that simply destroying the computer is not enough. It could be built again. Instead I must destroy the fools who would create such a monstrosity to begin with.

“So my bomb must be far more powerful than I first realized, lest this devil machine have a chance to be born again.

“For that reason, I see now that this delay is not really a setback at all, but a step forward. It is upsetting only because I am so eager to carry out my holy task. But I can wait, I must wait, until I can make sure that the bomb is great enough, powerful enough, to do what must be done…”

“Hi, guys!” yelled Paracelsus, when Wendy and Rachel came through the door. “I'm watching the screen for you.”

Rachel gave her brother a questioning look.

“I put him in front of the monitor,” said Roger. “Then I got him to focus on the red circle that represents our friend's computer. Then I programmed him to yell bloody murder if it began to blink.”

“Bloody murder!” yelled Paracelsus.
“Bloody murder!”

The group ran into the room where Paracelsus was keeping watch.

“Heh-heh-heh,” chuckled the bronze head. “I just wanted to see if you were paying attention.

“Roger!” cried Rachel and Wendy together.

“What are you looking at me for?” asked Roger, his face the picture of wounded innocence. “It was Paracelsus who called you in here.”

“Yeah,” said Wendy, “but unless there's been some great breakthrough in programming that will let him think for himself, it was you who put the words in his mouth.”

Roger smiled. “Guilty as charged. But I'd like to point out something: You all reacted just as I expected you would.”

“What do you mean?” asked Trip.

“You ran in here.”

“So?”

“So what good does it do us to run in here?
What we should do when Paracelsus sounds the alarm is head straight for the dune buggies so we can catch the mad messenger before he or she has a chance to get out of that house again. If that had been a real alarm, the time we wasted running in to check the screen might have meant the difference between catching this guy and losing him.”

“You've got a point,” said Wendy reluctantly. “Yes,” said Paracelsus. “But the way he combs his hair covers it up.”

“What did you use to program him?” asked Ray. “Old joke books?”

“As a matter of fact, we did,” said Rachel. “At least, one of us did.” She looked at Roger meaningfully.

“It's part of the chatter factor I mentioned,” said Roger.

“That brings up an idea I had for Sherlock,” said Trip. “I call it the random factor.”

“Sounds interesting,” said Wendy. “What do you have in mind?”

“Well, we're going to make this a highly logical program, right?”

Everyone nodded their agreement.

“Okay, that's fine as far as it goes. But it seems to me that that very logicalness might be one of the limitations of a thinking machine. One of the things that makes humans different from computers is the way our brains are built. A computer has a massive memory, and it can get at anything in there—but usually only in a very structured, very formal way.

“Now think about the human brain. We have a massive memory, too, only we don't always realize it because we can't always get stuff back out when we want it. According to my father, everything we ever experience is stored away in part of the brain called the subconscious.”

“I thought your mother was the scientist,” said Roger.

“She is. My father is an artist. But if you don't think artists are interested in the way the brain works, you've got another think coming. Dad has spent a lot of time studying creativity—which is what I was coming around to.

“The problem with human memory is we can't always get at stuff when we want it. It's like having files in your computer that you can't access. But what does happen down there is that things scramble around, kind of bumping into each other. That's why your dreams are so weird, such a jumble of images. It's also one of the ways fresh ideas are born: the under-brain putting old things together in new ways.

“That's why some of the most brilliant thinkers get their best ideas in dreams. The things running around down in the bottom of their brains have connected in some new and exciting way.”

“What does this have to do with the computer?” asked Wendy.

“Well, why can't we program Sherlock that way? Should we have him use logic? Of course. But how about programming him to try illogical solutions to problems, too? He might just end up being brilliant!”

No one said anything for a moment as they tried to digest what Trip had been telling them.

It was Paracelsus who broke the silence.

“Bloody murder!” he screamed. “Bloody murder!”

The kids pulled their dune buggies to a stop about a hundred yards from the house. Even though the engines were almost completely silent, they didn't want to chance the sound of a wheel on gravel alerting their quarry.

“Trip, you and Wendy circle around to the far side of the house,” said Roger. “Let's not lose this dude through the back door.”

The two of them, one towering over the other, moved quietly but rapidly through the long row of bushes that bordered the back lawns of the abandoned houses.

Roger glanced at Ray and Rachel.

They nodded their readiness.

As he began to lead them forward, Roger found himself wishing the group had thought this through a little further. What were they going to do with this character if they caught him? Should they actually go into the house and try to detain him? Or would it be enough just to try to get a look at whoever it was and then go to Dr. Hwa?

Roger supposed if someone was fooling around with the computer, Dr. Hwa should know about it. On the other hand, he didn't like the idea of asking anyone else to handle their problems.

Yet they had no idea whether this person was actually dangerous or not. Were the threatening messages just a prank-or the work of some dangerous lunatic?

The muscles in Roger's shoulders were so tight he was afraid he would get a cramp. His palms were soaked with sweat. Flanked by Rachel and Ray, he stood looking at the house for what seemed an eternity. What if the message sender had already left?

Before Roger could decide whether they should go into the house, the matter was taken out of his hands.

The front door swung open and the boy named Hap, the dune buggy driver Trip had nearly collided with the day before, stepped out. “Well,” he said with a smile. “It's about time. I wondered when you were going to catch me!”

 

Explanations = More Mysteries!

The babble of voices that greeted Hap's casual reaction to being discovered made it impossible to think. Trip and Wendy arriving from the other side of the house only added to the confusion.

“All right, all right, everybody shut up!” bellowed Roger at last.

In the silence that followed he took a step toward the other boy, eying him warily, as if he still expected him to run—or even attack.

“Hey, I'm not going anywhere,” said Hap. “You caught me, fair and square.” He spread his hands and laughed. “Now the question is—what are you going to do with me?”

Roger scowled. What
could
they do with him?

Tell his parents? They didn't even know who his parents were. Of course, they could turn him in to Dr. Hwa. But it would be better if they could handle the situation on their own. “We're not going to do anything with you,” he said at last. “We just want some answers.”

“Fair enough. I'll trade you answer for answer.”

“No,” said Roger. “Right now you owe us a few.”

Hap shrugged. “We'll see. Why don't we go inside where we can all sit down?”

Roger glanced at the other members of the gang and realized they were waiting for him to make the decision. He looked back at Hap and wondered if this was a trap of some kind.

“Coming?”

Roger decided to take the chance. “All right. Lead the way.”

The inside of the house had been stripped when the officer who last lived there had left the island. With no furniture the empty rooms seemed unusually large—and slightly eerie.

“Too neat,” said Wendy, looking around. “I prefer a healthy dose of clutter.”

A flicker of annoyance passed over their host's face. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the floor. Nobody moved.

The boy shrugged, then lowered himself so that he was sitting cross-legged on the floor.