Forever Begins Tomorrow

by Bruce Coville

  Impatient with his failure to solve the mystery, he set aside Dr. Ling’s folder. It was one of the seven that made up their stack of “prime suspects”—people who:

  (a) had been at the meeting where Rachel was bugged

  (b) stood less than five feet seven inches tall

  (c) had black hair.

  He picked up the next folder, the one for Dr. Armand Mercury. He was leafing through the impressive list of Dr. Mercury’s accomplishments when the main terminal began to beep.

  I wonder who that is? thought Roger as he crossed to the keyboard. He was assuming, logically enough, that it was one of the gang, calling in with an important message.

  He was wrong, and the unexpected words that scrolled up on the screen when he punched in the display code struck him like a bolt of lightning.

  Roger and the Robot

  Rachel took a deep breath. Though she missed the frosty air of home, December nights on Anza-bora were glorious. Filled with a tang of the ocean, the warm air seemed to carry hints and whispers of faraway places and adventures, dreams but vaguely glimpsed in the secret moments of the night.

  The sound of the surf pounding against the shore only added to the effect. And when she looked up at the star-filled sky, the southern constellations so different from the ones she had grown up with, it was as if she had crossed a boundary into some other world.

  Nights back in Cambridge had never held this much magic. There the lights of the city obscured the stars, and the air smelled more of people and cars than of ocean and waves.

  She moved a step closer to Hap, enjoying the warmth of his presence. He leaned closer, and for a moment she thought he was going to put his arm around her.

  The mood was shattered by the sudden appearance of Roger, racing down the road as if his tail was on fire.

  Rachel groaned. She really wasn’t interested in another emergency right now.

  “Hey!” cried Hap. “Slow down, good buddy. What’s going on?”

  “I can’t stop now!” panted Roger. “Follow me and I’ll explain on the way. Damn Dr. Hwa for taking away our dune buggies anyway!”

  And with that he was off.

  Rachel glanced at Hap. He gave her the merest of shrugs, then sprinted away in pursuit of her brother. Cripes! she thought. Here we go again!

  Enough of a realist to know complaining was useless, she took off after the boys.

  “Where are we going?” she heard Hap pant as he drew abreast of Roger.

  “Warehouse One. Our mysterious friend has called for an emergency meeting.”

  “Did he, or she, say what for?”

  “Yeah. To tell us Black Glove’s name!”

  “Trap!” cried Rachel.

  Roger skidded to a halt. “What?”

  “This stinks worse than liver,” said Rachel, thudding up beside him. She was holding her side, which was throbbing from the sudden exertion. “It’s got to be a trap.”

  Roger swore. “I was so excited I didn’t even think of that. But you’re right—it does smell like a trap.”

  Hap sighed. “So now what do we do?”

  “We keep going,” said Roger. “Only we do it with a little more intelligence than I started out with. We can’t afford to pass up the chance that this might be for real.”

  “We can’t afford to get our butts caught in another trap, either,” responded Hap. “Frankly I’m a little tired of risking my life for the general good and not getting any thanks for it.”

  “Not your life,” said Roger. “Mine. Our friend was specific—only one person goes in. And since I was stupid enough to be planning on it anyway, I should be the one to take the risk.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Hap. “You don’t think we’re going to let you go in there alone, do you?”

  Roger smiled. “You don’t have much choice. The safest way to do this is for the two of you to stay outside to cover me. If something breaks loose, try to get me out. If I don’t come back in a reasonable amount of time, one of you go for reinforcements.”

  “Roger!” said Rachel.

  “Yeah?”

  Rachel looked into her brother’s eyes, then shrugged. She knew him well enough not to bother trying to talk him out of this. She knew, too, that in his place she would do the same thing. It was one of the shared traits of their twinhood: Given a choice between caution and curiosity, they went for curiosity every time. If they had even the slightest chance of learning Black Glove’s name, there was no way they were going to pass it up, not even if it meant real danger—or even worse, that they would miss the satisfaction of solving the puzzle.

  “Yeah?” repeated Roger.

  Rachel smiled at him. “Have fun.”

  And then they were off again.

  The three youngsters crouched in the shadow of a scrub pine. About fifteen yards ahead of them, along a path mottled with moonlight and darkness, lay the entrance to the warehouse.

  “Do you have a control panel with you?” whispered Hap.

  “Right here,” said Roger, patting his shirt pocket. Ever since he had learned to use the override device Wendy had designed to let them control the island’s ferocious security robots, he had made it a point never to go out without one.

  “I wonder if our mysterious friend is aware of those robots,” said Rachel.

  “I would expect so,” said Roger. “It doesn’t seem like there’s much that goes on around here that he or she is not aware of. But our friend may also be planning on me putting it out of commission.”

  “We have to do everything!” said Hap.

  It was hard to tell if he was disgusted, amused, or both.

  “I think do is the operative word here,” said Roger. “As in, I’d better get doing—which in this case means get moving.”

  With that he slipped away from them as silently as a bubble on a breeze.

  Hap smiled in approval. He remembered how clumsy Roger had been at tailing people when they first met. They had spent a lot of time together to work on that skill since then. It was clear to Hap that his training efforts had not been wasted.

  The same thought crossed Roger’s mind as he moved from shadow to shadow, looking for any sign of danger. Yet even though his senses were hyper-alert, he had found nothing to indicate a trap by the time he reached the building.

  Moving cautiously, he tried the door.

  Locked, as he expected.

  That was no real problem. The doors were sealed with a lock that was opened by a pushbutton pad located on the wall just to the left of the knob. You needed to know the combination to get in, of course. Either that, or you needed an electronic key like the one the Gamma Ray had developed with his father’s help. (Roger often wondered if Dr. Gammand had any idea as to what kind of uses his son put the little “science projects” they worked on together.)

  After taking the device from his pocket, Roger placed the cup-shaped sensor over the keypad, then waited for it to read the combination and play it back.

  Fifteen seconds later the door swung open.

  Roger stepped through, trying to move as soundlessly as possible. He patted the robot control unit again, just to make sure it was still in his pocket.

  The warehouse was almost pitch black. The moon had disappeared behind a cloud, so even the skylight provided virtually no illumination. Only the dim red glow of the mandatory EXIT signs gave him a sense of space and direction.

  Wishing he had taken the time to grab a real flashlight, Roger twisted the outer edge of his watch to activate the glow ring. The effect was minimal, but he could see enough to avoid running into things.

  Looking ahead, he thought he saw a flash of light. He held his breath, waiting to see if it repeated itself.

  There! That had to be their friend—or their enemy, if this was indeed a trap.

  Suddenly Roger wished he had not been in such a hurry, after all.

  Who was waiting for him in the darkness?

  Moving slowly, silently, he began to work his way toward the lig
ht.

  It flashed again, closer now.

  Roger tried to swallow, found his mouth was too dry; his throat had closed up on him. He wondered if he would be able to talk—or cry out for help—when he came face-to-face with whomever he was approaching.

  He took a few more steps, stopped when he saw the light flash—it was much closer now—then started again. Another flash and he could make out the dim outline of a short figure.

  A shiver rippled down his spine. Black Glove was short. Could this be him?

  Roger suddenly understood what it meant when someone said their blood ran cold. He felt as if his whole body had been plunged into ice water. Part of him wanted to turn and run. Another part, stronger, demanded he see this through. After all, Anza-bora had more than one short person

  Now they were only a few feet apart. Suddenly the mystery person stopped. “No closer!” said a hoarse whisper. “Shine a light under your face. I want to see who you are.”

  Roger hesitated for an instant. It had not occurred to him that their friend might be as nervous as he was. “I don’t have a very good light,” he said softly. “See if this—”

  He was interrupted by a hideous shrieking. Tearing out of the dark, splitting the silence, it froze him where he stood. It took only an instant to realize it was coming from one of the guard robots.

  “Don’t worry!” he called, fumbling for the control unit. “I can take care of this.”

  But their mysterious friend had already slipped into the darkness.

  “At least tell me who Black Glove is!” cried Roger. Then the robot came roaring around a corner just ahead of him, and he had to turn his attention to the problem at hand. Nothing fancy required here—no need to make the robot do anything but stop in its tracks.

  He pushed the appropriate button.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed it again, then screamed.

  The scream was involuntary. The robots were designed to inspire fear. Even when you knew what they looked like, the sight of one of them racing down on you out of the darkness, its red eyes flashing, its demonic face lit with a hellish glow, was enough to scare the bravest man.

  Roger tried the button one more time, then every other button on the control panel.

  Nothing happened.

  He tossed the panel aside and ran for his life.

  The robot was faster. In seconds it was close enough for several of its tentacles to come snaking out and grab him. Closing around his arms, they snatched him off the floor.

  Roger’s scream of terror was almost loud enough to drown out the sound of his bones snapping in the robot’s grasp.

  The Severed Connection

  When Roger opened his eyes, he saw the concerned face of Dr. Celia Clark peering down at him. Her thick braid of chestnut hair, dangling past her prominent nose, came perilously close to tickling his ear.

  Is she our secret friend? he thought in astonishment.

  Suddenly he realized that he was no longer in the warehouse. He tried to move, then shouted in pain as a lance of fire shot up his arm.

  “You’re lucky you were still unconscious when I set it,” said Dr. Clark softly. “The effect of bones being snapped back into place can be downright nauseating.”

  Roger looked down and groaned. His right arm was encased in a pristine plastic cast. “What happened?” he asked weakly.

  Dr. Clark smiled. “You had a close encounter of the worst kind with one of Sergeant Brody’s robots.” Roger dropped his head against the bed as the events of the evening began drifting back into his memory. The movement made him wince as another bolt of pain shot along his arm and into his shoulder.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, nodding toward the cast. Dr. Clark shrugged. “Multiple fracture of the wrist, lower radius, and ulna. A few years ago you might never have played piano again. But with the new marrow-enrichment techniques, it just means you’ll be slowed down for a while.”

  “Well, I’m glad I’ll be able to play the piano when this comes off,” said Roger, who was never able to resist a joke, no matter how old. “I never could before!”

  Dr. Clark smiled. That was exactly the reaction she had been hoping for. While it was clear to her trained eye that her patient was still in shock, it was also obvious that the trauma in the warehouse had not driven him into a shell, as she had feared it might.

  Roger heard angry voices in the hall outside. He recognized one as his father’s.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  Dr. Clark glanced at him as she inserted a long needle into a vial of clear liquid. “I think your father’s having a fit. Brace yourself. This won’t hurt long.”

  “What is it?” asked Roger, eyeing the needle nervously.

  “Painkiller,” replied Dr. Clark as she plunged the needle into his shoulder.

  “Ouch! How’s it supposed to work—by making my shoulder hurt so much I forget my arm?”

  “Don’t be cranky. If you had been at home minding your own business, none of this would have happened to begin with.”

  Roger was working on a suitable response when Rachel poked her head through the door. “Can we come in?”

  Dr. Clark nodded, then turned to busy herself cleaning up some equipment. Hap and Rachel slid into the room and came to stand by Roger’s side.

  “How is it?” asked Rachel, nodding toward his arm.

  “Sore.”

  Rachel’s response was interrupted by another outburst from the corridor.

  “Boy, your dad is really on a rampage,” said Hap. “He’s chewing Hwa and Brody up one side and down the other.”

  Roger grinned.

  “Don’t get too cocky,” said Rachel. “I think we’re next—and that includes you, O wounded warrior. He is not a happy pappy.” Leaning closer to him, she whispered urgently, “So did you find out who it is?”

  Roger shook his head. “We were interrupted before we even started to talk.” He glanced around. “How did I get here, anyway?”

  Hap looked grim. “As soon as that robot started screaming, or whatever you call that noise they make, we came running into the warehouse.”

  “Both of you?”

  “Of course!” said Rachel.

  Roger shook his head. “That wasn’t the plan…” His voice trailed off as he caught the haunted look in Hap’s eyes. He could almost read the thoughts going through his friend’s mind: I should never have let him go in there alone. I should have been with him.

  “Hap,” he said firmly. “Listen to me: Other than the fact that it might be you lying here now instead of me, it would not have made a bit of difference if you had been there. And since you’re the best physical specimen we have, it’s just as well it was me anyway. So drum that crap about guilt out of your head right now, okay?” He stared into Hap’s eyes, willing him to understand that what he had just said was true.

  The moment of tense silence was broken when Hap shrugged and said, “Okay, I believe you.”

  He didn’t entirely, of course. But he felt better for what his friend had said.

  “Then go on with the story,” said Roger.

  “There’s not too much more to tell,” said Rachel. “About the time we hit the door every light in the place came blazing on, and Brody came rushing in with some of his men.”

  Hap actually smiled. “You should have seen the look on the sarge’s face! I think he figured he had caught some real desperado. Then he spotted you hanging from that robot’s arms looking like you were dead, and he knew he was going to end up in the soup one way or another. His jaw almost hit the floor.”

  Roger laughed.

  “It wasn’t quite so funny at the time,” said Rachel solemnly. “I didn’t know what shape you were in, either.”

  Roger winced at the pain in his sister’s voice.

  “But you should have heard her after she figured out you were still alive,” said Hap proudly. “I’m surprised she didn’t blister Brody’s skin right off him. ‘Mindless brute’ and ‘gutter-c
rawling slime bag’ were the nicest things she had to say.”

  “I was upset,” said Rachel, blushing a little.

  “What I can’t understand is why this happened to begin with,” said Roger. “I checked the battery in that robot control unit just two days ago. There’s no way it should have been down so soon.”

  “The battery didn’t fail you,” said Rachel. “They changed the robot’s programming.”

  “Wonderful,” said Roger. “I was a victim of technology. How did you find that out?”

  “We heard it while the grown-ups were yelling at each other,” said Hap.

  “Dr. Hwa’s dragging out everything he can think of to try to quiet Dad down,” added Rachel, by way of explanation. “It turns out that after Wendy commandeered the whole fleet of robots during the Euterpe caper, Brody decided something had to be done.”

  Hap chuckled. “The sarge couldn’t stand the idea of us telling his robots what to do.”

  “Never mind the fact that if she hadn’t been able to do that, I’d be an orbiting corpse right now,” said Rachel. She made a sound of disgust. “If Brody worried as much about real security problems as he worries about us, this island would be a lot better off.”

  “Sergeant Brody is a meathead,” said Dr. Clark, who had been listening to the last part of this. “You kids are nice and visible, so he spends his energy on you. The idiot wouldn’t know a real spy if he fell over one.” She walked back to the examination table where Roger was lying and held out a white tablet. “Here. Take this.”

  “What is it?”

  Dr. Clark sighed. “I sometimes think if I ever have children I would prefer the kind who are so stupid it never occurs to them to ask questions. This is a newly synthesized hormone that will make your bones knit faster. Do you want it? Or would you prefer to live with your cast for a full six weeks?”

  “I was just curious,” said Roger, reaching for the tablet.

  “So was Alice. And look where it got her: stuck down a rabbit hole.”