"Aw shit, Aldridge! What'd you think? That I'd kill the guy?"
"You sure as hell beat him up!"
"That weren't nothin'. I get a call every other night about a scrap worse'n that between my own men!"
"What's going on?" they heard, and everyone turned to the door to see Gray.
"We caught this rat bastard tryin' to load an optical disk into a drive," Hoblenz said, picking up the disk and tossing it to Gray. "It's got control codes on it."
Gray walked up to the man. "Is that true?" he asked in a low voice.
The man looked down, then nodded. "Why? Who do you work for?"
"CIA," Hoblenz said. "'Least that's the version he gave before the good Dr. Aldridge here arrived. And it's the damnedest thing. We heard her bangin' on the door like the Gestapo, but when we hit the plate the damn thing wouldn't open. We had to use plan B — the ten gauge."
"Was there a power outage?"
"Nope," Hoblenz said. "Those pneumatic hoses were as full as an Irishman's bladder."
"It didn't want Hoblenz to stop torturing his prisoner," Laura said.
"I wasn't torturin' him! I was just askin' him kinda rough."
"Get this man on the plane with the others," Gray ordered.
Hoblenz seemed outraged. "When they land, sir, the spooks'll just snatch him right up."
"I don't care. I want him gone. The last flight leaves in an hour." He looked over at Laura. "Janet packed your things. There's a car outside with your suitcase. I hope you don't mind."
"Don't mind what?"
"I'm going to have to ask you to leave, too, Laura."
"Leave! Why?"
"I'm evacuating everyone. There are three jumbo jets down at the airport. I'm sorry, but you've got to go."
"Are you leaving?"
"No, but you are."
"Who all is staying?"
"Just me, the security people, my management team, a few others. Everybody else has to go."
"All the nonessential personnel, you mean." She felt the blood rush to her face in a mixture of anger and embarrassment. Hoblenz and the others stood around in awkward silence. "Why the sudden change?" she asked, a bitter smile thinly masking the pain she felt. "Yesterday, you were piling people in here, Joseph. Today. you're shipping them off! A little bit flighty, don't you think?"
"Please, Laura, just go."
"At least tell me why I'm getting kicked off the goddamned island!"
"It's not safe here."
Even the prisoner seemed interested in the confrontation. "I get it," she said, nodding her head.
She bit her lip to forestall the quiver. Gray was silent.
"Jesus! Of course I'll leave! I don't know why I didn't leave on the first day!" She tore out of the conference room, brushing past Gray, Filatov, and the soldiers. She felt humiliated, her face glowing hot and tears welling up in her eyes, angering her further. Thankfully, the control room was already empty.
Laura stopped at a console, meaning to say a quick good-bye to the computer. There was no keyboard, just a series of buttons and trackballs and a headset with one clear lens hanging down in front of the right eye. On the screen was a confusing array of unrecognizable windows. Laura abandoned the effort and just walked out, feeling guilty for not trying harder to find a terminal.
She hadn't realized how late it was, but it was almost dark outside. The winged door of a car rose into the air with a hiss. Her suitcase was in the back seat. "The fucking airport!" she said angrily once inside, and the car took off. The Village was totally deserted.
The sun was failing, and everyone left on the island was indoors.
Not so much as a thank-you, Laura thought bitterly. Not a job well done. Not… anything!
The car headed out of the Village, wheeling onto the undulating, curved road that ran through the jungle toward the airport.
Laura wondered if she would ever see the island again. This world may not exist much longer if the rest of the earth had its way. Laura wondered if she would ever see Gray again.
She cringed at the fleeting glimpse of a spider's legs as they flashed in front of the windshield. A crashing explosion of sounds preceded the gut-wrenching flight through the air of the tumbling car.
The screeching and tearing of metal and the violent jerks of her body against the seat restraints went on forever as she waited helplessly in anticipation of the end.
All was still. Laura lay on her side. She had been in a car that had gotten into an accident, she remembered. Slowly, she came to her senses. The car lay on its side, and she was still strapped inside it.
It was nearly pitch-dark outside.
When she moved, there was no great pain, just dizziness. A flashing light sparkled through the smashed but largely intact windshield. The tree line ahead was lit in time with the blinking light of her car's headlights. She undid the seatbelt and slowly struggled out of the wreck of the electric car. The broken headlights continued their flashing strobe as she leaned against the chassis to steady herself.
There was something in the headlights' glare. A twisted lump of gray metal lay on the ground just beside the road.
The steady, building roar of a commercial jet's engines on takeoff disturbed the otherwise surreal silence of the crash scene. Laura saw the airplane rise into the air above the trees, its red and green lights illuminated against the dark sky. She wondered how long she'd been unconscious. A second jet roared off, and shortly after that a third — taking away the last of Gray's departing employees.
Laura's suitcase lay on the ground beside her, and she picked it up and stood there in a daze. All was still again save the blinking of the lights. Without knowing what she was doing or for how long the moment had lasted, Laura realized she was staring at the lump of metal in the headlights' beams. From the size of the object she knew it wasn't some part broken off of the electric car. It was too big.
She headed toward the crumpled metal, her light suitcase gripped firmly in hand. A spidery leg was lying on the ground next to the main piece. It still seemed to be connected.
The leg moved suddenly, and Laura jumped back. From a few feet away she watched as the leg rose into the air in a slow and graceless arc. Its progress was chronicled in a series of still images shot by the headlights' strobes. The leg pressed down against the ground and rocked the dismembered mechanical body pathetically onto one side.
It was a Model Seven — only one of its four legs still attached.
Its "head" stared up at Laura. She walked over to it and knelt, laying her hand on its smooth metal panels. It was twisted and mangled and rent with great gaping wounds. Cables dangled loose. Precious liquids dripped onto the soil with hisses and bursts of smoke from where they landed.
The robot's long leg began to move again. This time it rose into the air above Laura. She kept her eye on the spider's limb, which slowly descended toward her. She caught only snapshots of the leg's descent in the flashes of light from her car, and there were too many gaps in the illumination for her to feel secure about the aim of the leg. But somehow Laura wasn't frightened. Its motions were too slow, too weak.
The wheel at the end of the leg was inserted into the tool belt the robot wore at its waist. When the leg came out it was bare.
The robot plugged it into another slot and pulled out a three-fingered hand.
The overturned Model Three's faulty lights blinked on and off and on again. Three short blinks, followed by three long, followed by three more short.
Morse code! Laura realized, a chill spreading instantly over her body. She remembered it from some long-ago movie about a passenger ship that sank. Dot-dot-dot, dash-dash-dash, dot-dot-dot—"SOS." It was a distress signal, and it was meant for her.
The Model Seven hand wobbled and shook at maximum extension as it groped for a panel on its body. The increasingly spastic robot succeeded finally in opening the door to a compartment.