“Next you’re going to tell us they taste like chicken!” Lynette lashed out, her flesh continuing to crawl.
Forrest could see her hysteria beginning to spread to some of the other women, so he signaled for Price to come into the cafeteria.
“Oh!” Lynette said, growing angrier. “So now I’m going to be treated like a fucking head case, is that it?”
“Honey, please try to calm down,” Price said. “This isn’t going to help anything, and no one is going to make you eat anything you don’t want to eat.”
“I want out!” she said, continuing her harangue. “Give me my share of the food and let me the fuck out! I’m sick of living on top of each other down here anyway! At least out there I’ll be able to fucking breathe!”
Forrest remained calm, seeing Emory and the other men gathering outside the doorway, Emory clearly ready to physically subdue Lynette if Forrest so much as crooked a finger.
“Lynette, are you sure that’s what you want?” he asked her with a stern military bearing. “Because I will load you up right now with all the food you can carry. You’ll actually be doing the rest of us a favor. Because you won’t be able to carry even a fraction of what you’ll eat should you choose to stay. I’m even willing to supply you with a weapon. But remember one thing: I will not let you back in when that food runs out.”
Lynette’s irate bluff had been called, her punk card drawn, stamped, and given back to her just that fast, and she was suddenly afraid that she might now be expected to make good on her threat. She could already see Ulrich’s cold blue eyes cutting into her, the faintest hint of a sinister smile on his face.
So she did the only thing a woman of her breeding knew how to do in such a situation; she sat back down and began to bawl, and Price went to her, pulled her to her feet and walked her down the hall.
The rest of the women sat staring at Forrest, unsure what to say or even think; the prospect of having to subsist on rat meat was a lot to digest.
“In response to Lynette’s supposition,” Forrest said with a smile, “I did have the pleasure of eating a few of these delectable animals during my time in the military, and yes, they do taste a little bit like chicken, particularly with a dash of Tabasco.”
Andie laughed, and that seemed to break the tension.
“Don’t we have to worry about them making us sick?” Karen asked.
“Like Jack said,” Dr. West joined in at last, “these animals will keep themselves as clean as their environment will permit. But they’ve got bad bladders, so they tend to pee a lot, which will make keeping their environment laboratory-clean something of a challenge. And while a ra—the animal—is capable of carrying diseases that are communicable to people, we’re hoping our animals are at minimal risk. This is because they’re all the progeny of the same original breeding pair—which were local animals living in the fields around the silo, rather than some New York City sewer drain.”
Later that night, Forrest was sitting in Launch Control with his feet up, smoking a cigarette. He and Ulrich were reminiscing about their younger days of whiskey drinking and womanizing and other forms of youthful wickedry. It was taking all of his self-discipline not to check on Melissa, who had yet to emerge from the silo, or envisioning her falling from the top deck to the bottom of the silo in a freak accident. If Laddie hadn’t been with her, he’d have long ago checked on her.
He was about to finally give in to his fears when she at last stepped into Launch Control. Laddie came trotting around the console and jumped up to put both of his feet into Forrest’s lap, whining and licking his face.
“Oh, so she’s not all she’s cracked up to be, huh?” Forrest said with a smile, rubbing and squeezing the dog’s face.
Melissa was smiling more brightly than he had ever seen her smile as he watched her put a single sheet of paper on the console in front of Ulrich.
A B C D E FG H I J K LM N O P Q RS T U V W Y“See that?” she asked.
“That’s the first cipher example I showed you,” Ulrich answered, noting her unmistakable glow. “The first one I checked the code against. The first cipher any cryptographer would check it against.”
“And they know that,” she said. “That’s why they’re using it. They’ve been hiding their cipher right in plain sight.”
“What are you talking about?” he said, noting the proud grin on Forrest’s face now. “Are you saying you’ve cracked the damn thing?”
“I’m saying more than that.” She put another piece of paper down in front of him.
0 9 8 7M N O P Q R S T U V W YE F G H I J K LA B C DAny group of three numbers beginning with a digit lower than 7 is either a space or “gibberish” intended to throw off the cryptographer.
G R E E T I N G S
924-913-024-024-812-824-012-924-811-636-
?
F R O M H A W A I I
025-913-013-011-404-925-036-712-036-824-824
?
Ulrich studied the cipher, matching each letter for himself against the cipher. “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch!” he said, seeing the other papers in her hand. “And this works throughout? You’ve deciphered every conversation I copied down?”
“Yep! And you were right—you can memorize a cipher pretty fast. By the time I got to the last few pages, I didn’t have to look at the cipher anymore.”
“Well, let’s see the other sheets,” he said enthusiastically.
“Whattaya give me?” she asked, hiding the pages behind her back.
“Jack, tell your wiseass kid to give me those papers.”
“You’re on your own,” Forrest said, rocking back in the chair with his hands behind his head. “She begged you to help her with that damn thing for months and you kept blowing her off. Now you want her to just hand it over? I think she’s entitled to something from your private stash.”
“What private stash?” Melissa asked, instantly scandalized, her eyebrows raised.
Ulrich glowered at his friend. “You got a big mouth, Forrest.”
“I want something from your private stash!” she said, dancing around the console to hide behind Forrest.
Ulrich got slowly up from his chair, eyeing them both. “You two may have the upper hand tonight,” he said, moving toward the spiral staircase, “but the tables will turn.”
He spiraled down and out of sight.
“What’s he got down there?” she asked in a whisper.
Forrest smiled and shrugged.
Down below, Ulrich worked the combination on a big red steel case with TOOLS spray-painted across the lid in black.
A few seconds later they heard the lid slam, and Ulrich slowly reemerged with a vacuum-sealed silver package in his hand. The package was about the size of a slice of French toast, and he offered it to Melissa with a veiled smile.
She reached for it, but he held it tight. “Give me the papers.”