DOUBLE KNOT (20 page)

NINETEEN

Arts and Crafts were only mildly successful. We were working against the clock so
it was a hack job. Because we only had two minutes. Then we had to rescue No Hair
before DeLuna was out of the changing room and hot on our trail. My best guess was
we’d have a half hour. If Arlinda managed to trap him.

If.

“Strips, you think?” Fantasy stood in the middle of the salon twirling one of the
long-lost carving knives. “Like a turban?”

“Hoods.” Mother had a butcher knife. “And then we’ll cut eye holes.”

“I don’t care,” I said, “as long as we don’t suffocate.”

We wouldn’t let Jess have a knife for fear she’d fall (asleep) on her own sword, so
she and I stood back as Mother and Fantasy hacked through the lifeboat, leaving deep
slices and slashes in the salon’s silver rug. Jess and I watched from the safe distance
of a white linen sofa, where I was deep in
The Compass
. The ten-man raft being destroyed was made of a PVC-based synthetic rubber fabric
encapsulated in polyurethane with a reflective Mylar coating. The Mylar coating would
blind the cameras. We were fashioning hats from the lifeboat so the surveillance cameras
would see a bright orb of unidentifiable light instead of people. With the exception
of Mother, who the
Probability
system didn’t know, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that bells, whistles, and sirens
would sound the minute we stepped out of 704 and we’d never get to No Hair. Unless
the cameras couldn’t see us.

“It’s actually a life raft,” I said. “Not a lifeboat.”

Mother wielded her butcher knife. “What’s the difference?” She passed me a short cape
of silver and white plastic. “Try this on.”

I dropped it over my head. It wasn’t as large as a bath towel, but it weighed five
times as much.

“Bind your die moles, Dapith.”

“WHAT?” I couldn’t hear her through the Mylar. But I could sure hear myself.

“EYE HOLES!” she said. “FIND YOUR EYE HOLES!”

We donned our hoods and felt our way to the door, Mother in the lead, because (she
was the only one with all her faculties) we were incapacitated under our raft smokescreens.
It didn’t help that I had a cat with me under mine. I expected Anderson Cooper to
shriek in protest as soon as I put it on, and because there was no way for the sound
to escape, we’d both be deaf.

We came out from under the Mylar to reconsider. Getting out of 704 might be the hardest
thing I’ve ever done in my life.

“Davis, leave your cat,” Fantasy said. “DeLuna can’t get in here. We have the only
V2 that opens the door.”

“We don’t know that,” I said. “He could have ten V2s that open the door. And how do
we know he won’t come down the bulkhead? Mother and Arlinda got down it.”

“He’s too big,” Mother said.

“So, you know Max?” Jessica asked her.

“No, but if he’s man-sized at all, he can’t get down the wall.”

“He’s a slimy little bastard,” she said.

“I’ll be dog,” Mother said. “Why in the world did you marry him?”

Jess opened her mouth to answer, I interrupted. “Could we possibly talk about this
later? Can we focus? Please? We’re on a rescue mission and Anderson Cooper goes where
we go.” If something happened and we couldn’t get back in, I didn’t want my cat locked
in 704 alone. “And we need to get going.”

“Where
are
we going?” Fantasy was dabbing at her eyes with her sweater. “With Anderson Cooper.”

“To the data center.”

“Who?” Mother asked.

“I’ll explain on the way. Put your hats on.” The Mylar headgear might or might not
keep us alive. I couldn’t breathe, see, hear, or navigate again as soon as I flipped
it over my (cat) head.

“This present dong fork!”

I think the words came from Fantasy. I couldn’t really tell, because just then, I
bumped into the foyer wall. “WHAT?” I blasted my own eardrums to bits.

Fantasy pulled off her hat. “THIS ISN’T GOING TO WORK, DAVIS!”

“Dough boy,” I barely heard Mother say.

I heard a loud thump and tossed back my hood to see Jess sliding down the foyer wall.

“It’s too dark under there for her,” Mother said. “Put her out like a light. And where
are her
clothes
? Are we really going to let her walk around in her red underpants? I swear she had
clothes on yesterday.”

I was too tired to think.

Mother wasn’t. “My sun hats.” She shuffled off in her Traveltime Cloggers. When she
returned, we (woke up Jessica) draped our camo hoods over Mother’s big sun hats, which
gave us air, audio, and much less limited vision. We stood at the door.

“Go ahead,” Fantasy said.

I pointed Poppy’s V2 at the door. I pushed the power button.

It asked for Poppy’s thumbprint.

“What?” Fantasy asked. “Go ahead. Open the door.”

I looked at her from under my life-raft spy-hood sun hat. “I can’t. We have to have
Poppy’s thumbprint.”

In the end, it was Mother. She said, “Oh, good grief, you big babies. Where’s the
butcher knife?”

We were all going to hell. Me, Mother, Fantasy, and Jess. Straight to hell.

As we ran toward the elevator bank I put the V2 in phone mode and dialed Bradley Cole’s
cellphone from the safety of outside 704.

Nothing. It didn’t even ring.

In the elevator, I read the last message Poppy sent from her V2:

Babe, we’re covered on this end. Everything is good here, except I’m going crazy.
These people are so stupid I don’t know how they sit up and feed themselves. I’m going
dark now. See you in George Town.

I wondered if Jessica knew, or cared, about Poppy and Max, and I decided I wouldn’t
waste one more second feeling bad for Poppy. Or her thumb.

* * *

Designed by a team of geniuses at Tufts University near Boston,
Probability
’s computer system was unmanned. An interdisciplinary squad of big brains designed,
built, and installed the autonomous system that ran itself and
Probability
. In ten years, all computer systems will be run by computers instead of humans, and
on this ship, the future was now. Somewhere—Boise or Bakersfield or Baton Rouge—a
human sat at a desk insuring everything digital hummed along as it should aboard
Probability
, but the onsite system was not operated by nor did it recognize humans.

The good news: It was almost midnight. When we made it to the Orlon Deck, the lowest
level on the ship, storage and maintenance, where both the submarine holding No Hair
and the unmanned computer system were housed, it was deserted. We didn’t have to go
to the trouble of incapacitating anyone. We arrived, via a freight elevator, without
incident. Lots of commentary and complaining, but no incidents.

The bad news: Hacking a system like
Probability
’s would be about as easy as catching a shooting star, and Computer Services was fore,
at the front of the ship, while the submarine, and No Hair, were aft. The back. A
football field away.
The Compass
, for all the information it had, didn’t specify what lay between Computer Services
and the submarine. It was either no man’s land or so boring the editors of
The Compass
didn’t think anyone needed or wanted to know.

“Is this it?” Fantasy’s whispered words bounced off spooky dark walls.

“It must be.” We were somewhere under the world, standing at dark glass double doors.
Behind them, I could see multicolored lights racing up, down, and all over nine-foot-tall
metal server cabinets. The cabinets went on forever. And ever.

“Davis, we’re burning daylight,” Mother said.

“My feet are so cold.”

Mother turned to Jess. “Whose fault is that? You need shoes, clothes, a hairbrush—”

I put my hand on the door. “We need in and out of here as quickly as possible. Of
the million things I’d like to do, we only have time for one.” Nods all around. “Everyone
ready?” I pushed through.

Probability
’s computer system surely ran the world. For as far as we could see it was servers
and routers and switches topped off with an intricate acrylic pipe cooling system.
Computer Services was, like the rest of
Probability
, so far ahead of its time.

“Keyboard, keyboard!” I called out. “A monitor, a station, a keyboard! Find me a keyboard!”

We shot off in four different directions. Jess won. “So, over here!”

We raced.

I passed Anderson Cooper to Fantasy. Fantasy held Anderson at arm’s length like she
was covered in spiders.

The operating system was Linux. I went to the default Grub boot menu by holding down
the shift key, then patched directly to a boot shell prompt from there. I was in.
The time it took to pull up the facial recognition software from the system menu,
because it was so extensive, was excruciating, made even more so because everyone
was breathing down my neck. The surveillance software was digiCam, easy to navigate,
and two minutes after I pulled it up I had myself, Fantasy, and Jess deleted from
the system. Poof. We were gone. We had a way in and out of 704, we had guns and ammo,
we had a phone, and now we had anonymous mobility all over the ship. To celebrate,
I sailed my life-raft hat through the air.

“Hey!” Mother snapped. “That’s my new sun hat.”

“Are we done here?” Fantasy was ready to give Anderson back.

“Not just yet.” I was still over the keyboard. I found Max DeLuna’s profile. I asked
digiCam to find him to see how close he was. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind he was
looking for us, but he wouldn’t find us in the system because I’d just wiped us from
it and he’d never think to look for us on the Orlon Deck. But if he’d made it to 704,
we wouldn’t be able to go back. We’d be sleeping between server cabinets in Computer
Services. The system pinged his V2, found him, and my mouth dropped open. I couldn’t
believe it. “Look at this.”

“What?” (All three of them.)

I checked the time. “He’s still locked in Arlinda’s changing room.”

Jess squealed with delight.

“How is he still in her changing room?” I wondered aloud. He’d had all the time in
the world to escape. “Why hasn’t he called anyone to let him out?”

“The pilot,” Fantasy said. “Why hasn’t he called her yet?”

A very good question. I asked digiCam to locate Colby Mitchell. Her profile popped
up.

“She’s such a craybitch,” Jess said.

“Who?” Mother asked. “What?”

“Crazy bitch,” Fantasy interpreted.

“Craybitch.” Mother tried it on for size. “I know a few of those.”

I asked digiCam to find her. It couldn’t. Colby Mitchell was either in her stateroom,
which I doubted, not on
Probability
, which I also doubted, or somewhere completely out of DeLuna’s V2 reach, which I
suspected. Otherwise he wouldn’t still be locked in Arlinda’s changing room. It made
no sense she wasn’t here. I asked digiCam if Colby Mitchell had
ever
set foot on this ship. Yes, she had. Boy, had she. The system couldn’t pinpoint her
exact location just then, but the evidence of her boarding a week ago with the ship’s
crew piled up on the screen. So much footage, it would have taken the rest of the
night to watch it. Colby Mitchell and the late Poppy Campbell, dressed in stateroom
attendant uniforms, starred in scene after scene moving in and out of 704, the submarine,
and the casino, setting
Probability
traps. I froze the screen on a surveillance shot of them clinking glasses at a bar
table Friday night, the night before we sailed. They were laughing. At us.

“Let’s go,” I said.

My posse followed me out. One of them barefoot.

* * *

Prospect
1000
didn’t look like a submarine at all. It had submarine features, primarily its underwater
operation capabilities, but it looked like a mini
Probability
. Diesel powered, max submersive speed of five knots,
Prospect
held a crew of six, had seating for thirty-two day passengers, and five-star overnight
accommodations for six. With an operating depth of a thousand feet,
Prospect
was built for
Probability
passengers who wanted to explore the deep silent subsea in complete luxury. It was
sixty-five feet long, twelve feet wide, weighed seventy-two tons, and had one airlocked
door.
Prospect
was bulletproof, bombproof, and a perfect prison.

Storage and supplies—crates of romaine lettuce and baby carrots inside walk-in coolers,
wrapped pallets of a thousand folded
Probability
pool towels, hundreds of sealed cases of liquor—marked our path from Computer Services
to
Prospect
. The ceiling was dark and low, the floor cold and slick, and eerie florescent drop
lights swayed above us, casting odd shadows. Jessica DeLuna’s grip on my arm got tighter
and tighter with our every echoed step, and she would surely rip it off before we
reached the submarine. We passed a section of replacement deck furniture, the large
cage of a workshop, complete with electric drills and power saws, and at the end of
the path we stood in from of an eight-foot-long glass aquarium. Inside the aquarium,
a thousand live lobsters tried to climb and claw the glass walls, and behind the aquarium
was a dark blue industrial rolling steel garage door.

The entire time, maybe fifteen minutes that felt more like fifteen hours, we didn’t
see a soul. In a way, it would have been less terrifying to have happened on someone
we had to explain our (predicament) (Anderson Cooper) (Jess in her undies) presence
to. It would have been less frightening to have been challenged, detained, forced
to pull a gun on someone. As it was, while we made our way to
Prospect 1000
at the other end of the ship, we felt like the only people in the world. By the time
we made it around the lobsters to the rolling garage door, we’d moved in on one another
so tight we were traveling as a huddled unit. I didn’t realize it until we stopped,
but Mother, on my right, had wrapped a protective arm around my babies and was holding
on with all her might.