Rat Trap (12 page)

The sudden loss of leverage slammed Rat to the floor. She tasted blood and the grit of broken enamel. It was hopeless. Whoever designed the habitat knew what rat teeth could do. They knew to use the strongest metal. She would never get out. She could not save the machine.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

A HERO AGAIN

Jeff cringed as the data probe on the end of Nanny's gripper linked with LB's console. He knew LB couldn't feel, but he couldn't help thinking of needles. The processors surged with sound and light. The intense red glow made Nanny's black body seem even blacker, full of a kind of menacing power.

Beside Jeff, Bett inhaled sharply and grabbed Jeff's arm. Her palm felt dry and silky, the fingers strong but shaky.

“It is true.” Nanny jittered backward a few feet, yanking the probe out with a loud pop. “The boy believes the rat is dead. The boy is not lying.”

LB did it! Jeff wanted to shout so loud even Rat would hear him. He wanted to hug Bett, and he half turned to do that before realizing he mustn't show his relief to Nanny. Bett wasn't beside him, anyway. She had already gone to the console to check on LB.

“Confusion. C-10 hunts. It believes the rat is alive.” The eye spasmed right, swept back to lock on Jeff. Brightened. “C-10. Intruder. Query: What did the boy do with the rat after … after … after … the liverwurst? No one must know about the liverwurst.”

Jeff stared at Nanny. It was crazy. Absolutely crazy. And obsessed with C-10. Maybe he could use that.

“Nanny, why are you here? C-10's out there. Searching. It has
hundreds
of sniffers. And it's hours ahead of you. It's zeroing in on the rat right now.”

“The rat is mine.” With a fierce whine of motors, Nanny backed toward the door. “C-10 must be stopped.”

“Yes! Yes!” Jeff shouted, running after the robot. “Stop C-10. Priority.”

Nanny zipped into the corridor, then disappeared into the maintenance shaft next to the elevator.

Now what? A brain-damaged prowler was loose on the space station.

Without turning from the console, Bett said, “Go warn the captain. Use the intercom in my room.”

“Tell the captain. Good idea,” LB said. “Nanny is a stuck-up robot. It does not want to be friends with LB. LB is sorry the rat is dead. Maybe it would have been friends with LB. Jeff, would you be LB's friend?”

Why was LB talking like a kid again? “Cut it out, LB,” Jeff said. “Nanny's gone.”

“LB does not have scissors. LB does not have hands. LB cannot cut anything out.”

“Come on, stop pretending. It's over.”

“Pretending? LB wasn't, but if you want to play pretend, LB will. LB loves games.”

“LB's not pretending.” Bett turned in the chair to face Jeff, her frail body slumped even in the light gravity.

“LB hurt himself somehow, a kind of amnesia,” Bett explained, her voice toneless. There were tears in her eyes. “He did a very good job. I can't detect anything. He's regressed to when he first met you. Nothing between then and now has any meaning anymore.”

“No! Bring him back. Reboot him! You must have a backup!”

Bett shook her head. “The photonic matrix is dynamic. It can't be backed up any more than a body can hold a soul.”

“Nanny did this! I hate it! Hate it!”

“Jeff, listen to me.” Bett reached out, lightly touching his arm. “Nanny didn't do this. That's the awesome beauty of it.”

“Beauty?” Jeff pulled away. “What are you talking about? LB's gone!”

“Oh, dearie me,” LB sing-sang. “This boy is strange. LB is not gone. LB has no legs. LB is right here.”

“Be quiet a moment, LB,” Bett said. “Self-sacrifice is one of the finest human qualities. LB obviously sacrificed himself to save your rat. Beautiful, because however briefly, an amazing person came to life right here in this lab.”

“But he's dead.” Tears flowed now.

“Oh, this is much more complex than dead. More like brain damage—”

An alarm suddenly went off, loud, clanging, jarring. For a second, Jeff thought LB was overloading, but then the mechanical voice of the automated emergency system replaced the alarm. “Alert! Alert! Weapons fire Ring 6 section B.”

Nanny had found C-10.

Voices spilled out of the speaker. “Security team A on scene. Nothing here. Wait. We've got some smoke. Toby, move in slow. Sharon, cover left. Careful.”

A different man's voice. Toby? “Holy cow!”

The automated system blared over the voices. “Alert! Alert! Weapons fire Ring 8 section 35.”

Captain: “Get a team there. Fast! ‘Holy cow' what?”

Toby: “It's the sniffers, sir. Blasted to smithereens.”

“Chief to Control. Bad news. Nanny's missing.”

Another voice: “Team C on scene. Same here. Sniffers.”

Captain: “Any sign of Nanny?”

Team C: “Nanny? But Nanny's zonked—”

Captain: “Not anymore.”

“Alert! Alert! Weapons fire Ring 8 section AA7.”

Captain: “For crying out loud! Get a fix on it!”

Chief: “You won't be able to. Nanny pulled the command unit. It's gone rogue.”

Someone screamed, “We've got injuries here!”

Captain: “Pull back! Do not engage. Repeat. Withdraw immediately. Redeploy in full body armor. Activate all teams. Get everyone else locked up in their quarters.”

Control: “Attention, all personnel. Station lockdown in effect. Proceed immediately to your cabins. Attention! Station lockdown until further notice. Report to control as soon as you're secure in your cabins.”

Jeff started to move, but Bett held him back. “Safer here.”

“Alert! Alert! Weapons fire Ring 9 section D3.”

Mom's lab! All those sniffers “protecting” the Project from that dangerous wire-chewing rat had drawn Nanny to the lab like a magnet.

Captain: “Dr. Gannon, are you all right?”

Mom: “I'm okay. But something's in the walls.”

They could hear it. First the quiet
ZZZZZZZ
and crackle of air, then a snap of sound like popcorn popping.

Control: “Security to science lab on the double!”

Someone. Toby? “All teams on Ring 7. Thought we had Nanny surrounded.…”

ZZZZZZ, crackle, pop-pop-pop
.

“Go away!”
Bang, bang, bang
. Mom pounding the wall.
Bang, bang, bang
, then she cried out, “No! Oh, please, no!”

Dad: “Jan, what's wrong?”

Why didn't Dad know? Wasn't he in the lab with Mom?

Mom, coughing: “Smoke! I can't have a fire in here!”

Control: “Emergency! Damage control to science lab!”

Dad: “Get out! It's all backed up. Jan, do you hear me? Get out!”

“Not today's work!”

Jeff bolted for the elevator. Emerging on Ring 9, he saw Dad staggering toward the lab, wild with dizziness and retching dry heaves. Jeff blew past him. Dad gasped, “Oh, thank heavens! Run! Run!”

Almost there. He saw Mom through a swirl of dirty smoke. She clutched her stomach. Plunged back into the lab. When Jeff got to the door, the thick smoke stopped him like a fence. Instantly his eyes started to water. His throat sealed against the fumes that stung like nettles.

Mom crawled on hands and knees toward the supercomputer. She needed to get it safely shut down, disconnected, and out of there, or everything would be lost.

“Mom!” Jeff crab-scuttled to her. Down near the floor, the smoke wasn't so bad.

“Jeff. No. Out.” Mom shoved him away as she struggled to move the bulky supercomputer, but he grabbed a handle. “All right. Together!”

In a headlong rush, they hauled the supercomputer into the corridor. Mom threw herself between it and the wall to cushion the impact. Her breath came out in a
whoomph
. They sagged to the floor beside it, shoulders touching, gasping for breath.

A sound like ocean waves filled the corridor. The damage-control crew surged their way. Security. Dad. The security guards in their mirrored laser-deflecting suits looked like walking ice sculptures. One person stopped to adjust the air controls. Fresh air flowed from the ceiling vent. The smoke began to clear.

Dad dropped to his knees beside them, throwing his arms wide to gather them into a group hug. “You two okay?”

Nodding, three foreheads rubbed together. Jeff said, “You both … need to learn … to run.”

Mom sagged back against the computer. Smiled. Her teeth dazzled against the black soot all over her face. She touched Jeff's cheek. “You saved the world again.”

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-TWO

A F
AMILIAR
V
OICE

Inside the habitat, seconds passed. The screen stayed dark. The speaker stayed silent. Any moment that, door might open, bringing her face-to-face with Nanny.

Scurrying away from the door, Rat pushed the exercise wheel between her and it. A yank of her forepaw set the wheel whirling.
Squeak, squeak, squeak
. With luck, the spokes would deflect Nanny's laser, giving Rat time to scoot out—if the heat of the beam in this tiny box didn't roast her alive first.

As the minutes passed and nothing happened, Rat began to have another worry: If the machine had succeeded in wiping out its memory, it would no longer remember that the habitat was inside it. The life-support system might shut down!

The speaker crackled. The machine said, “Who are you? What are you doing in Processor D? Are you a new component?”

“This is Rat, your cousin.”

“You are making tiny motions with your forepaws. Do you have an itch?”

Annoying machine! That was exactly what it said the first time they met. For a second, Rat thought it was playing another stupid pretend game, then she realized the truth: In order to fool Nanny, the machine had had to forget every memory involving her and the boy—the very experiences that had transformed the machine into a person.

Their friend was really gone. It made her very sad.

“Analyzing. You are not electronic. You are a rat! LB cannot have rats in its brains. Rats are dirty. Rats chew wires! Help! Help!”

The machine was afraid of Rat! It hadn't been before. She had to do something quickly. This hysterical machine held the power of life and death over her!

She could not count on the boy's help. She must find a way to calm the machine herself. But how? There was no way to communicate, not even a keyboard. Searching, she stepped on some crinkly tissue paper wrapped around a food packet. Yes! Rat can write! Nibble, nibble, nibble. Rat chewed the paper, turning it in a complex pattern. She held it up to the camera. It read:
CAN RATS DO THIS?

The camera lens zoomed in. “That is writing. Rats cannot write. Therefore, you cannot be a rat. Logic. Re-evaluating first impressions …”

There was a long pause. That was usually a good sign. “Correction. You are a modified lavender rat, specimen number RR4b, one of ten surviving embryos.”

Rat felt trapped in instant replay as the machine repeated the exact information it had given before. Would it show the mother again? Alarmed, Rat signed, “Who are you?”

“You do not have an itch. That is sign language. LB understands. LB is a photonically activated artificial intelligence created by Beatrice Wagg three years—”

“Stop!”

“Thank you,” the machine said. “We were both made by scientists. We are cousins. Would you like to be friends, too? You might make a better friend than Jeff. He has gone away again.”

Gone? Rat signed, “Show lab!”

The screen flickered on, and Rat had to walk the machine through the same vision routine to get it to display only six images. The lab was empty. So were the living quarters. No boy. No scientist.

The machine said, “Bett is at an emergency meeting. Nanny has gone rogue. There has been a lot of excitement, including a fire in the lab used by Jeff's mother.”

Nanny on a rampage! Fires! So many things were going wrong at once! “Where is boy? Is okay?”

“LB does not know.”

“Did scientist say?”

“Bett is not saying much to LB. Something is wrong. There were others before LB. They were shut off. Perhaps Bett is thinking about doing that to LB.”

But shutting off the machine would be a big mistake, Rat was sure of that. Something in the way it kept repeating itself nearly exactly gave her the clue. Computers were predictable, logical. What if she and the boy recreated the situations that had transformed the machine before?

Rat could begin the experiment right away. Disobeying had been an important part of the things that had changed the machine, and she definitely needed the machine to be naughty now. “Want to find boy.”

“LB is not allowed to connect to the space-station network. There is a block.”

“Rat can override. Show you how hack network. Want to?”

The processors surged. The machine learned quickly. Just before it hacked into the network, Rat reminded it, “Remember, Rat is secret. Do not tell anyone about Rat.”

“LB has never had a secret before.” The laser buzzed louder. “Do not worry, Cousin, LB will keep you secret. Now LB is ready to connect. LB is connecting. Connecting … connecting … WOW! The space station is big. Connecting … connecting …”

The machine went into a frenzy. The screen displayed fragments of thousands of images. Rat tapped the camera, then signed, “Find boy.”

Abruptly the screen stabilized to display six views of the conference room. The machine continued to mutter in the background, lost in wonder. Good. Rat could use a break.

The boy sat at the big table, pushing his fork aimlessly through a half-eaten plate of scrambled eggs. His face was smeared with soot, but otherwise he seemed unhurt.

Across from the boy, the father sat with his head resting on the table. The chief sat next to the father, working on a laptop. He was a lean, short man, his eyes dull and tired, strained with responsibility. It was his fault Nanny was loose. The scientist-who-cooks slumped in a wheelchair at one end of the table. Her face looked pinched, and her eyes focused on nothing.