Robot Trouble (6 page)

“Yeah,” put in Wendy, who had never been known to blush for any reason. “When you stick a name like ‘Euterpe' on something, you have to expect people to mess around with it a little.”

“But that name is perfect for what she does!” exclaimed Dr. Weiskopf. “Euterpe was the muse of music. It's a name filled with history, with dignity; a name honored among composers everywhere. I even keyed her command system to my pennywhistle because the muse Euterpe was usually depicted carrying a flute.”

Typical scientist,
thought Hap.
Suggest we build a rocket to send his creation into space and he gets a little nervous. Start fiddling with the name of that creation and he goes bananas!

“Anyway,” continued Dr. Weiskopf, “while I appreciate your enthusiasm, the whole idea is pointless. Without the cooperation of the Space Committee, Euterpe would have no control functions, so she couldn't affect the orbits of the other satellites anyway.”

“Could she still plot them out?” asked Rachel.

“Well, yes…”

“Then you'd have a demonstration of what she could do! That's what counts at this stage.”

Dr. Weiskopf looked a little confused. “I suppose that's true,” he said reluctantly.

“Just think of it, sir,” said Roger, putting one arm around Dr. Weiskopf's shoulder and sweeping the other skyward. “Imagine Euterpe sailing through the heavens, creating beautiful harmonies to send back to earth. It wouldn't be just the control of the satellites. It would be the music—new music that no one has ever heard before. That's what she was made for!”

“It's true,” said Dr. Weiskopf, a dreamy look on his face. “That
is
what she was made for.”

“Then it's settled!” crowed Rachel. “You'll never regret this, Dr. Weiskopf.”

“I think I'm regretting it already,” said Dr. Weiskopf. He grinned impishly. “But it sounds like fun. Let's do it!”

“I found something at the lab I thought you might get a kick out of,” said Dr. Wendy Wendell II, when she sat down to dinner with her family that evening.

“What is it?” asked her daughter, Wendy Wendell III.

“Finish your tofu and I'll tell you.”

Wendy glared at her mother. “I think there's something in the constitution about cruel and unusual punishment,” she muttered darkly.

“This isn't punishment, dear,” said her father. “It's nutrition.”

“I'm not sure that would hold up in court,” said Wendy, transferring her glare to her father.

When it became clear that her parents were not going to relent, Wendy's curiosity overcame her revulsion. “There!” she said fifteen minutes later, choking down the last bite of the revolting stuff. “Now—what did you find?”

Dr. Wendell shifted her eyes from right to left, as if to make sure they were not being spied on. “A black glove!” she whispered conspiratorially.

Wendy's eyes widened.

“I found it in the hallway outside my office,” continued her mother with a laugh. “It made me think of that spy you and your friends used to claim was here on Anza-bora Island.”

She took the glove out of her pocket and handed it to Wendy.

“Thanks, Mom,” said the Wonderchild, trying not to let her voice betray her excitement and her fear. “Gee, the gang sure will be interested to hear about this!”

Then she bolted from the table and headed for her terminal.

“I can't believe it,” said Roger, when the gang had gathered at their headquarters in response to Wendy's emergency email. He was holding the black leather glove Wendy's mother had found and staring at it as if it had come from another planet.

“It could be just a coincidence,” said Rachel. “I mean, it's not like Black Glove is the
only
person in the world who ever wore black gloves!”

“True,” said Ray. “But given the climate on Anza-bora, how many people wear them
here?”

Rachel sighed. “You've got a point.”

“So you think he's come back?” asked Hap.

“Either that, or he never left,” said Roger. “Remember Dr. Hwa figured that the boat that disappeared the same night we found the transmitter meant that Black Glove had fled the island. But what if our spy simply rigged that boat so it would sail away on auto-pilot, then blow up or sink a few miles out? He could still be here!”

“If it is a
he,
” said Trip. “It could well be a woman. You certainly can't tell from the size of the glove.”

Roger turned the glove over in his hand. Aside from an odd bulge at the base of one of the fingers—and the fact that, as Ray had mentioned, no one would normally wear a glove in this climate—he could find nothing unusual about it.

The gang stayed up until late in the night talking about what the glove meant. In the end, all they could agree on was that they had to be more careful, more alert, than ever.

Close to morning the object of the gang's speculations slipped into the secret room beneath the computer center. Taking a seat at the terminal, Black Glove found a message announcing a piece of email that had been flagged by a special search program. The program had pulled the message from the hundreds sent between people on Anza-bora every day because it contained two key words: Black Glove.

It was, in fact, the message Wendy had sent to the gang after her mother had given her the black glove.

The spy's eyes widened in dismay. This had to be nipped in the bud!

Fingers flying, Black Glove began to type.

Wendy was sleeping when Black Glove's message arrived. That meant she was snoring, which meant her bedroom sounded like a small thunderstorm had just cracked loose inside it.

Competing with the noise of Wendy's snoring was Mr. Pumpkiss, her automated teddy bear. He was sitting on the Wonderchild's head, holding his toes and rocking back and forth while he sang “Melancholy Baby” at the top of his mechanical lungs.

The bear's morning concert had been triggered by a pair of light detectors Wendy had installed behind its eyes. When struck by enough light, they activated his singing. This made him a convenient alarm clock.

Wendy opened one bleary eye as the bear began a third chorus. She found herself staring at the bottom of a furry foot. “All right, Pumpkiss,” she muttered. “I'm awake, I'm awake.”

This was true, but only for a matter of seconds. Soon she was snoring again.

Blondie and Baby Pee Pants stood at the side of the bed, clamoring to be let up. Blondie was a twelve-inch tall plastic celebration of voluptuous womanhood, Baby Pee Pants a foul-mouthed baby doll. Like Mr. Pumpkiss, they had been programmed by Wendy to swing into action when the morning sun struck the photoreceptors hidden behind their glass eyes.

It was fortunate that they were mere automatons and not subject to hurt feelings, since waking their owner tended to be a thankless task. In fact, on a bad morning it could be downright dangerous.

“Captain Wendy,” called the two dolls. “Get up, Captain Wendy. We're lonely!”

“Come to me, my melancholy baby,” sang the bear, hiccuping on every fifth note.

“All right!” cried Wendy, sitting bolt upright. The bear fell into her lap, still singing. She pushed its nose, sending a signal to its electronic components that would end the concert.

She looked around her room and groaned. It was disgusting. Her parents had a robot that kept most of the house clean, of course. Unfortunately, its programming was not up to dealing with Wendy's room. Every time it came in to straighten up, it ended up rolling in helpless circles, muttering “Where do I begin? Where do I begin?”

Picking her way across the floor, Wendy located an old sweatshirt of her father's. She slipped it on, then sat down at her terminal and typed in a series of commands.

As far as Wendy was concerned, her access to the island's mainframe—to
ADAM
, she told herself, savoring the bit of classified information they had picked up from Dr. Weiskopf—was one of the few real benefits of living on this isolated stretch of sand.

However the horrifying message that now scrolled up on her monitor was enough to make her reconsider that idea.

 

Suspicion

“Put down that monster and eat your eggs,” said Mrs. Gammand impatiently. She was talking not to Ray, but to his father, Dr. Hugh Gammand.

Ray glanced up from his own eggs to see how his father would react to this command.

“Just a minute, dear,” murmured Dr. Gammand. It was the only indication he gave that he had heard his wife's complaint. Without looking up, he continued to fiddle with “Thugwad the Gross,” the hideous polystyrene creature beside his plate.

Ray was fairly certain his father actually had no idea that his breakfast was waiting for him. He smiled. While he had grown quite fond of his stepmother over the last two years, he did not always like the way she tried to impose her ideas on the household. His father had fiddled with monsters at the breakfast table for as long as Ray could remember. That was the way things were
supposed
to be.

“Is he for the new version of Gamma Ball?” asked Ray.

His father nodded and muttered something that sounded like “due yesterday.”

Since the family made a great deal of money from the royalties Dr. Gammand received for his Gamma Ball games, Mrs. Gammand turned her attention to Ray. “What do you and your friends have planned for today?” she asked, trying to keep a pleasant tone in her voice.

Ray shrugged. “The same old stuff.”

He wondered what she would say if he told her he was supposed to begin feeding information into an optical scanner designed to help them push the island's computer into awareness of its own existence.

The thought, slightly amusing, was followed by another that was deadly serious:
Just how interested
would
she be in that information?

The idea that one of their parents could be the spy trying to leak information about Project Alpha was an unpleasant possibility each member of the A.I. Gang had to face in his or her own way. Most of the time Ray's tactic was simply not to think about it. But the fact was, his stepmother was a prime suspect, if for no other reason than that she had chosen to marry his father.

The thought made him sick. What if Elinor had only married his father because G.H.O.S.T. wanted her to spy on his work?

Ray shivered. Everyone in the gang wanted to believe Black Glove was one of the “strangers”—one of the scientists none of them was related to. But the hard fact was this: the person who planted the bug on Rachel's collar their first day on the island could have been any one of the adults at that orientation session.

What if it's Dr. Weiskopf?
thought Ray suddenly.
Maybe this whole Euterpe thing is just a plot to set up a new method for getting information off the island
.

The thought depressed him. He didn't want to believe Dr. Weiskopf was capable of such a thing.

Be reasonable,
he ordered himself.
No one would go to all the trouble it took to create Euterpe just to set up a way to send information to a bunch of spies
.

The thought made him feel better. But the seed of suspicion had been planted. He knew from experience it would be impossible to eliminate it completely.

Ray's thoughts were interrupted by a cry of dismay from his father. Thugwad had malfunctioned and the little monster was now sitting in the middle of Dr. Gammand's plate, pounding on the fried eggs. The yolks were spattering in all directions, and several bright yellow spots now decorated Dr. Gammand's formerly white lab coat.

“Thugwad, you die!” cried the scientist. Snatching up his spoon, he smacked the dripping creature on top of its head.

Thugwad began beeping frantically.

Mrs. Gammand broke into helpless laughter. “Hugh, leave that poor creature alone!” she cried when she could catch her breath. “If you hadn't been fiddling with him at the table, this never would have happened!”

Dr. Gammand looked up in surprise. Thugwad fell over, landing on the toast, then began to twitch.

“Now look what you've done,” said Mrs. Gammand severely. “He's got butter all over his sensors. Go clean him up.”

“Yes, dear,” said Dr. Gammand meekly. He scooped Thugwad into his hand and stood to leave the table.

Ray looked up in chagrin. It wasn't easy having a father who topped seven feet when you were barely pushing five yourself. But Dr. Gammand's height had turned out to have an unexpected benefit: It had cleared him of any suspicion that he might be Black Glove. The one time the gang had caught a glimpse of their foe, the spy had run under a pipe that was located five feet and seven inches above the floor—and done it without ducking.

Remembering that, Ray stole a glance at his stepmother.

She was only three inches taller than he was.

Plenty short enough to have cleared that pipe.

“Do you think we've bitten off more than we can chew?” asked Rachel Phillips.

“A fine question for you to ask!” said Roger. “Who was it that within the space of an hour decided we should both capture one of Brody's robots
and
build a rocket for Dr. Weiskopf's musical one?”

The twins were walking to the gang's headquarters. It was a beautiful morning on Anza-bora Island. Sunshine streamed all around them. Not far away they could hear the roll of the breakers against the shore, punctuated by the caws of the ever-present gulls. The smell of the ocean, seasoned lightly with the fragrance of tropical blossoms, filled the air.

“Let's take the day off and do nothing!” said Rachel.

“Idle hands are the devil's playground,” replied a metallic voice from the bag Rachel carried at her side.

“Shut up, Paracelsus,” said Rachel, automatically uttering the cue to turn off the bronze head's ability to speak.

To her surprise, rather than falling silent the head cried, “Abuse! That's all I get from morning to night. It's enough to give me a headache—which is pretty serious, when you consider how I'm built!”