Miri tore her gaze away from the array of chittering faces. "Each of these cabinets has mice cells arranged twenty by thirty by ten. So there are nine more arrays behind this one we're looking at. Hear the crunching noise? Smart-Aleck's friends are wrapping up some of them for shipment."
"But where?" None of the mouse cells were moving.
"That must be in back "
There was a sound like a goblet breaking. Colored mist floated down from the crystal forest. It barely wet his face. But Miri was standing right beside the cabinet. He reached out and drew her back. Above them, the rest of the fluidics shattered. There was the faint scent of unwashed socks. Robert moved them farther back, stepping on the broken glass. "Miri, that could be nerve gas."
Miri was silent for a second and then her voice piped up confidently: "They're trying to scare us. This part of the lab isn't designed for simple poisons." But Robert remembered the shipping cartridges just arriving here. We were suckered into stopping at this cabinet .
Miri slipped out from behind him and ran around the cabinet. "Ha! There is a transport tray back here." By the time he caught up, she was hosing the tray with aerosol glue. Tiny motors whined, unable to load from the cabinet. Miri reached out, patted the almost invisible boundaries of the gel. After a moment the crunching sounds within the cabinet came to an untidy stop. "Nothing's going out from here!"
They stood, listening and now the familiar sound of cargo prep came from all over the cavern.
"How many mouse arrays are there, Miri?"
"Eight hundred and seventeen when I cached the lab description." She looked up at him. "But there's no way Smart-Aleck's friends could be using more than a few arrays. There's too much security and too many other projects down here" The sounds of packaging grew louder. Dozens of cabinets were playing the game of Come Stop Me. Miri stepped back and gazed into the distance. The lab was a miniature city, its alleys laid out in a rectangular grid, stretching off into the dark beyond their single street-lamp. "I've got a good map, but what can we do, Robert?"
Robert looked at her map. "I came through here with Tommie. We set down gadgets by particular cabinets."
"Yes! Which ones?"
Robert looked again at the map floating in the air before him. The place was a maze, and the cabal had come in from a different direction. "I, uh " In 2010, Robert had gotten lost in a shopping-mall parking lot. After an hour, he still couldn't find his car; he'd ended up at mall security. That had been the first undeniable encounter with his mental decline. But the new me shouldn't have trouble remembering ! "The nearest is two rows thataway, then jog right."
They raced past two aisles, then over one to the right. Almost all the cabinet doors were open, their transport trays working to prep cargo. Miri waved at the pneumo tubes that branched above the cabinets. "But see, nothing is actually shipping from here. Where's the next place?"
And they were running again, off toward his best guess.
Ahead of them something loomed against the ceiling. The GenGen launcher.
Miri skittered to a stop, and began shaking her spray can. "Which one, Robert?" All the cabinets around her were behaving like suspects.
"It's still two more rows, then five cabinets down."
"But I thought you said never mind." Miri walked past two more rows. Robert followed.
She looked up at him.
"I I'm not sure." He glared over the tops of the cabinets, trying to orient on the launcher, trying to force memory.
She hesitated and then touched his arm. "It's okay, Robert. Sometimes, you can't remember. But things will get better for you."
"Wait," he said. "I'm sure this is right." The pneumo tube behind the nearest had just received a shipping cartridge. Mouse boxes were rolling on board.
"So that means, um" and Miri's hand slipped from his arm. She looked around and then up at him: "Where are we?"
Maybe it hadn't been nerve gas. Maybe it was something worse. And Miri got the bigger dose . Above the cabinet the pneumo hatch had closed. There was a pillowed thud and the cartridge sped away.
Another cartridge pulled into the siding above the cabinet. Another batch of mice rolled to meet it. It was out of reach, But I still understand what has to be done . Robert looked down at Miri and did his best to smile and lie. "Oh, we're just on a tour, Miri. How about it, would you like to climb on top of that cabinet?"
She looked up past him. "I'm not a little girl, Robert. I don't climb on other people's property."
Robert nodded, and tried to hold his smile. "But Miri, this this is just a game. And if we can stop the white thing with your, your game gun, then we win. You want to win, right?"
Now that brought a smile, full of pert intelligence. "Of course. Why didn't you say it was a game. Huh. This looks like some kind of bioscience lab. Nice!" She looked at where the transport was sliding the mouse boxes along. "So what do you want me to do?"
Once she's up there she'll forget all over again . "I'll tell you when you get up there." He lifted from beneath her arms. "Reach up! Grab the edge and I'll push."
Miri giggled, but she did reach up, and Robert did push. She slid through the gap beneath the siding. Her spray can was just inches from the transport tray.
"Now what?" her voice came down to him.
Yes, now what? You go to all the trouble to do something, and then you forget the point. Only this time, he knew the point was something very important. Robert flailed, beginning to panic. "Cara, I don't know "
"Hey, I'm not Cara. My name is Miri!"
Not my sister, my granddaughter . Robert stepped back from the cabinet and tried to make sense: "Just shoot the spray can at the moving things, Miri."
"Okay! No problem."
A sound that was pain spiked into his head. Over the cabinet, he had a glimpse of a strange hole that split the side of the UP/Ex launcher. Nothing to do with Miri ! The thought had barely registered when he was slammed backwards.
Array One was in the GenGen launcher! The stealthed launch vehicle had a good chance of making it out of the the U.S. cordon. Array Two? Alfred's cameras showed that his strategy with the Gus was working. Somehow they had found the one Mus cabinet that really mattered, but his improvised gas attack was taking effect. The two were moving with a kind of aimless uncertainty.
He had time to prep the second load; he could get both out!
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>USMC elint has detected ballistic launcher power-up in the labs! What can that be, Alfred?</sm>
Damn USMC. Alfred's analysts hadn't thought American electronic intelligence would be so sensitive.
Vaz > Braun, Mitsuri: <sm>It's just bad luck. The GenGen launcher is cycling through its nightly calibration. </sm> That was a lie, but Alfred had his story ready. He launched a flurry of faked analysis, showering conclusions across Keiko and Gnberk's teams. After the fact, he'd blame the launch on a resurrected Rabbit.
Mitsuri > Braun, Vaz: <sm>But will the Americans believe that?</sm> She popped up some windows, her best estimate of just when and how the USMC might respond to the launch prep.
No time for the third cartridge. The GenGen launcher was loaded, the capacitor within forty-five seconds of launch. If only the Americans would just dither a bit.
Vaz > Braun, Mitsuri: <sm>I'm finished with cleanup. Heading for rendezvous.</sm> Alfred took a last glance around. In fact, all his checklists were finally green. Across the room, the Orozco boy was sleeping peacefully. He would remember nothing of tonight, and his personal log had been artfully corrupted.