Chapter 25
Of course, I couldn't go see Li Lin-fa right away. For one thing, I had no idea what sort of schedule she and Lily were on, and it sounded like showing up at the wrong time would definitely be a no-no. So, I asked Wizzit to let me know when she was available, and then I did my best to put the matter out of my mind.
It turned out to be easier than I thought. Maybe I was just tired of worrying all the time, or maybe it was that this was something to look forward to rather than to dread, but as I walked down the hallway to my room, I began to think of any number of ways I could pleasurably pass the time until I could see her.
For once, I didn't feel like training in the gym. Instead, I sat down at my computer and spent some time sending out an e-mail to my folks. I could tell them more about what I was doing now that they knew I was a Prime, but I still didn't want to put too much in writing, so I took extra care with what I wrote. And I sent a quick note to Joy, thanking her for letting me stay there and letting her know that my friends had all noticed that I appeared much more relaxed after my time away.
Next, to assuage my growing sense of guilt, I sat down at my piano keyboard. Hearing Joy practice for hours on end had reminded me that I had fallen way behind on my own practicing; "The Dying Poet" and I were barely on speaking terms these days, the f-sharp minor fugue was still lurking in a corner waiting for me, and it had been forever since I had gone back to play some of my favorites. And of course, one always has to work on scales -- all forty-eight of them, plus the chromatic -- plus the twenty-four major and minor arpeggios. Always. My mom has trained me well.
I had spent a few contented hours drilling, practicing, and just playing for fun when Wizzit said, "Trevor, your presence is being requested in the weapons room."
Shelley had temporarily cured me of asking dumb questions like, "Did they say what they wanted?" Instead, I just wandered over there to find everyone except Shelley and Angela gathered around a table filled with all kinds of funny-looking gadgets. Bill was at the head of the group, holding a belt that looked exactly like one of our Prime belts, except it was white rather than black.
"Very stylish," Mike was saying. "D'you have the shoes to go with it?"
Bill grinned at him. He looked tired, I thought. "This is a Unity belt," he explained. "I thought you would all like to see our first working model. Nicolai and I finished work on it just about half an hour ago."
"Why is it white?" Trina asked.
"Let me guess," I said. "It was the closest you could get to bland and colorless, right?"
Nicolai smiled. "You read my thoughts, Trevor. The Unity field presents no perceptual bias, so it would not be appropriate to assign a color to it. White light comes the closest to describing its effects, so the belt is white. And whoever wears the belt will be code-named Unity White."
"That certainly rolls off the tongue better than Unity Bland or Unity Colorless," Toby quipped.
Mike asked, "Does it actually work?"
Nicolai shrugged. "As far as we know. We have run every test we can think of short of having an actual human try it. We are planning to do that shortly."
"It's going to behave differently from our usual belts and bracelets," Bill put in. "For one thing, our standard blurring effect is going to be impossible to implement. That's normally a very basic, very low-power feature, and, in theory, it could be done with any number except unity. The lack of perceptual bias with the Unity belt, though, means that we could block either all light emitting from the immediate area of the belt, or no light at all."
"But if it blocks all light," Trina asked, "wouldn't that mean that Unity White will appear to be black?"
"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" Bill chuckled. "But we can force the belt to emit its own light energy, same as we do for your force shields; it just can't favor any one color over another. It will have to be an even mix of all the colors. Unity White will appear to be a white, featureless blob -- another reason for the name. And for much the same reason," he went on, "voice distortion will be impossible as well. The voice will have to come out unaltered or not at all. No selective filtration will be possible."
Mike tugged absently on his ear. "That part doesn't sound too bad, though. This Unity character would be able to make use of our Prime-to-Prime communications, right? He just wouldn't be able to talk to anyone except one of us."
"That is correct," Nicolai agreed. "Not without revealing his or her undisguised voice, which would be inadvisable."
"To the world at large, Unity would appear to be mute," Bill added. "And camouflage mode is out, too, by the way. Normally, our force shields implement camouflage mode by sending out a three-hundred-sixty-degree, real-time image of what's on the other side, but that type of visual control will be impossible with the Unity field. It will just be able to send out an undifferentiated white light."
"I don't know, this whole Unity thing doesn't seem like such a good deal for the person who wears the belt," I commented. "You've got just the bare minimum of a disguise, and no invisibility; you've got no verbal communication with the outside world; and you have no force shield -- I presume that means no healing comas as well, right? And no weapons? They'll be more helpless than Junior Prime Pink ever was. Maybe this thing's going to be more trouble than it's worth."
"Could be," Bill admitted. "We're still in the early stages, though. With luck, we may be able to resolve some of the worst problems. And Unity White won't have to be a combatant to be helpful; he or she could be strictly for support and not necessarily involved in the action."
"Whoever has the belt will certainly have to be kept well protected," Padma said.
"Or be able to take good care of herself," I said, thinking of Lily and CKFZC.
"Do we have a candidate?" Toby asked. "Who's going to wear the damn thing?"
"Shelley, Wizzit, and I have been giving that some thought," Bill said. "We certainly don't want to take any of our active Primes out of the lineup, and all the Emeriti, including myself, are strictly part-time, so in the short term, the only logical choice would be . . ."
"Shelley!" we all finished in unison.
He gave a half-hearted grin. "For obvious personal reasons, I can't say I'm enthusiastic about the idea," he said, "but I don't see what choice we have."
Mike looked around the room. "I'm not hearing any objections."
"Did I hear my name?"
That was Shelley herself, of course, who was entering the weapons room with my sister in tow. "Angela and I finished up early with Lily today," she explained. "Evidently, even attack dolls have to work hard to keep their figures; she said she was planning to spend the next four or five hours in her gym."
Bill was beaming at her. "You're just in time to try out the Unity belt," he said. He held it out to her. "Nicolai and I finished it up not too long ago." And for Angie's benefit, he recapped his explanation of the belt's weaknesses and limitations.
Shelley wrapped the belt around her waist and engaged the clasp, not bothering to slip it through the belt loops in her shorts. "I activate it like normal?" she asked.
Bill nodded. "That's right. Your code name will be Unity White."
"Got it." Shelley squared her shoulders, set herself, and said, "Unity White, activate!"
Nothing happened.
Bill frowned and stepped around the table toward her. Padma said, "Bill, you might want her to remove her Prime Gold bracelet."
"Ah! Well spotted, Padma," Bill replied. "That would indeed interfere." He held out his hand and received Shelley's bracelet as she slipped it off her wrist. "Okay, try it now."
"Unity White, activate!"
Again, nothing happened.
Bill's frown deepened. "There must be a mistake here somewhere." He grabbed a device off the work table and knelt down in front of Shelley. Holding his device up to the belt buckle, he began making a series of adjustments.
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After a moment, Shelley shook herself, laughing. "You're tickling me, hon."
"Sorry. Let me try just this one thing . . ." He fiddled with the belt for another minute, then sat back on his heels. "All right, one more time."
"Unity White, activate!"
Well, it didn't work that time, either, nor any of the next four or five times he had her try it. Eventually, Mike clapped him on the shoulder and said, "You know what? It's probably best if we let you work on this without an audience. Let us know when you've got it working, would you?"
With that, he walked out of the weapons room, followed by Trina, Toby, me, and Angie. By that time, both Bill and Nicolai were so absorbed in what they were doing, I don't think they noticed that we were leaving. As I stopped at the door to let Angie go ahead of me, she gave me a wan smile. "Hey, big brother," she said.
"Hey, little sis." I gave her an extra-warm answering smile, mainly because I was feeling a little guilty. See, I had heard her voice in the kitchen that morning as I stepped out of Shelley's office, and I had purposely changed my route to avoid seeing her. I mean, I get along okay with my sister and all, but at the time, I was not in the mood to have yet another female offer me sympathy.
Regardless, she stepped through the doorway, then waited for me to join her. She hooked her arm through mine and began walking down the hall with me. "Look, I feel bad about, you know, that whole Lily thing," she said.
"Don't worry about it. There wasn't a whole lot you could do, was there?"
"No, but . . ." She sighed. "To be honest, Trev, I just don't know about Lily."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, that first day, when you had to deactivate in order to calm her down, I felt so bad for her. She was obviously scared to death, right? And then the day I went out with Shelley that first time, she seemed better. Still scared, but better, and while we were there, she really seemed to warm up to us. Of course, I knew that she and you . . . well, everybody knows how you feel about her . . . and so I wanted to make friends with her. I really wanted to like her. But I have to say, big brother, I don't like her." She shook her head. "I don't . . . I don't trust her."
"I hadn't noticed anything that . . ." I began.
"Of course you haven't," she interrupted me impatiently. "And I can think of two big reasons why not." I started to protest, but she laughed and went on, "Sorry, I didn't mean those two big reasons. You're not that much of a Neanderthal. Not that they're even all that big. Not as big as . . ." She nodded ahead of her at Trina, who was walking hand in hand with Mike a short ways ahead of us. The two of them and Toby were engrossed in their own conversation and weren't paying any attention to us.
She went on, "What I meant was, when she was around you, she was all 'Oh, Trevor, I'm melting in your arms' and 'I'm giving you my prettiest smile because I really want you to like me and protect me', and you were so caught up in it, you wouldn't have noticed if a truck had run you over."
"So you're saying she was faking it?" I asked coolly.
Angie thought for a minute, then shook her head slowly. "No. I think most of it was real enough, but you have to admit, Trev, that towards the end, she was really coming on to you. Trina was right; she was trying hard to get you interested in her. Pure self-preservation is what it was, I think. I can't really blame her for it -- I mean, maybe she wasn't even aware she was doing it -- but still . . ."
I studied Angie for a moment. I didn't like hearing this, but I knew my sister pretty well. She didn't get catty. Well, not seriously catty, anyway. She had all the self-confidence in the world, and she just didn't get jealous of other girls. She wouldn't be saying stuff like this to me if she didn't have real concerns. "So what's the other reason?"
"The other . . . ? Oh, right, the other reason you wouldn't have noticed anything. Got it. That's because I didn't even start noticing anything until just a couple days ago, that first day I went out there with Shelley. That was the day Lily threw her hissy fit and said she didn't ever want to see you again."
"How did that happen, anyway? What set her off?"
"Heck if I know," she said, shrugging. "Shelley said something to her about how you couldn't make it that day, but that you would be there the next day. I think she meant it to be comforting, but then Lily got all upset and begged her never to bring you back."
I stopped short and turned to look at my sister. Something had occurred to me. "When was this? What time?"
"What time? Umm, let's see . . . Lily was still eating breakfast when we showed up, and then she wanted to do one of those healing things she does, so . . . about an hour after Shelley and I got there, I guess."
That made sense. "That must have been when Wizzit decided to send me off to Joy's house," I said. "He must have hustled me out of HQ the way he did so I wouldn't get that particular bit of bad news. He did say something about not wanting me to break anything expensive."
Angie shrugged again. "I guess so. Anyway, Shelley had to smooth everything over by promising Lily you wouldn't bother her any more, and that was the end of it." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "But you know, I don't think she was as upset as she made out to be. She was scared -- plenty scared -- but . . . I don't know. Something seemed off about that whole thing."
"Why would the idea of me coming to see her make her scared?" I asked. "I mean, I'm the one who kept her calm before."
Angie shook her head. "Not a clue, big brother. But ever since then, she's been acting strange, almost like she's hiding something. And whenever we're alone, just her and me, she's been asking odd questions."
"Odd like how?"
"Like, where did we store our weapons? Where did we stay when we weren't in the lair with her, and was it possible for her to go there too? Did you, Trevor, stay with the rest of us, and did you have any other attack dolls that you controlled? Like I said, odd questions."
I frowned. "And Shelley hasn't picked up on any of this?"
"See, that's the thing. I think she's trying to play Shelley, kind of like she played you that first day, only she's being a lot more subtle about it."
"She's trying to get Shelley romantically interested in her?" I asked incredulously.
Angie laughed. "Yeah, that's the part I can't figure out. I think we both know that Shelley doesn't swing that way."
"It's possible that Lily doesn't realize that Shelley is a woman, though," I pointed out. "She's only ever seen her as Prime Gold. After all, you thought Shelley must have been a really cute guy when you first met her as Prime Red."
"Ah! Good point; I hadn't thought of that. Oh, and thanks a lot for reminding me, by the way," she added, rolling her eyes. "That wasn't embarrassing at all."
"No prob, little sis," I said, grinning. "Gotta keep my Annoying Big Brother certification current, you know."
"At any rate," she went on, "there haven't been any doe-eyes or throwing herself into Shelley's arms or anything like that, but yeah, she's definitely been playing the Teacher's Pet game. She's really good at it, too, which is probably why Shelley hasn't noticed anything."
"Sounds like you've had some experience with that."
"Hey, I earned every A I got in school," she said hotly. "Just because I saw some other girls try it doesn't mean I did!"
I chuckled and put my arm around her shoulders. "I know," I said soothingly. "And I'm the luckiest guy in the world to have a sister as smart and pretty as you."
"Yes, you are," she sniffed.
Attack Doll 5: The End of Lily Lee Page 26