Ralph felt something slide sickeningly under his gut. They did something to me, he thought. Without my even knowing it. Something in my brain is different. That’ll teach me. “Well,” he said weakly. “I guess I don’t have that much to lose. But I don’t know anything about computers—how am I supposed to get the damn thing unlocked?”
“There’s a radio circuit built in here.” Spencer lifted the device out of the briefcase. “See? A signal can still get into a field that small. I’ll be able to give you instructions.”
All three of them lurched forward as Mendel brought the van to a halt.
The empty briefcase slid from Spencer’s lap and fell to the floor.
“Sorry,” said Mendel, shutting off the headlights. “There’s Sarah.”
After a few seconds of peering into the darkness in front of them, Ralph could perceive the outlines of a car. It was several yards ahead of them in a corner of a deserted parking lot. One of its doors opened and Sarah’s silhouette headed toward them. She was carrying a small bundle in one hand.
Mendel and Spencer got out of the van as the figure approached. Ralph followed them and stood, tensed against the coldness of the night air. For the first time, he noticed the towering building the lot surrounded. The Muehlenfeldt Center, thought Ralph. It hung over them like a sheer mountain face, though its base seemed more than a mile away. The rest of L.A. was faraway and silent.
“It’s all set,” said Sarah. “The service elevator’s unlocked. That goes straight to the sixtieth floor. Here.” She held the bundle out to Ralph. “Put this on.”
He shook it out and saw that it was a pair of dark-colored coveralls.
ZENITH JANITORIAL SERVICE was lettered on the back.
“Where’s Gunther?” said Mendel.
“There was a note on his door,” said Sarah. “He’ll be here in a little bit.”
Ralph fastened the last button on the coveralls, then shook his pants leg farther down inside them. He listened to Spencer’s instructions, then, without saying anything—all his muscles felt tight but somehow good—he stepped out into the lot’s blue illumination and headed for the tower.
“Hey, this is a broom closet.” Ralph released the switch on the bottom of the device and waited for Spencer to answer. He had been ignored by the real janitors on his way up to this level and had had no trouble finding the right door. Now he stood in the little room’s darkness, surrounded by faintly odorous mops and cleaning compounds. His shin hit a metal bucket on wheels and something inside it clattered.
The device he carried in his hands snarled, then a tinny version of Spencer’s voice emerged. “ . . . course it’s a broom closet. Here it’s a broom closet. Stop wasting time.”
Ralph squatted down and balanced the device on his knee like a tray.
He grasped the two coils of wire in his hands and twisted the knob in the center with one finger and thumb. He felt a tiny sensation he recognized from the times at the base’s line shack, and the space became filled with a dim fluorescent light.
Setting the device on the floor—carpeted now instead of bare cement—he looked around. The room was the same size but the mops and cleaning supplies were gone. In their place was only a small panel jutting out from one wall, with a metal chair in front of it.
He picked up the device and sat down in the chair with it in his lap.
“Okay,” he said, thumbing the switch on the bottom. “Here it is.”
Somewhere, he thought, a computer is dreaming all this. The idea seemed to chill the room.
Spencer’s voice crackled into the silence. “All right. Give me the layout.”
Carefully, starting from one corner of the panel, Ralph described the controls. When he was done he sat back and waited.
After several minutes, Spencer spoke again. “Most of those dials are dummies,” came the voice from the flat metal box. “Some of them are alarm triggers. Here’s the real ones you’ll have to adjust. Count over three from the top right-hand corner. The second red one. Turn it . . .”
The directions went on for some time. Between the turning of knobs on the panel and other adjustments, there was no time to think. Finally, Spencer’s instructions ceased and Ralph sat back in the chair, lifting his hands from the panel.
“Looks good,” said Spencer. “Our tap on their computer shows the unlocking process nearly completed without any slips. Two last adjustments, though. These two knobs are spring-loaded, so you’ll have to hold them in the positions I give you until the Master Historical Program has finished printing out.”
Ralph found the knobs described and turned them against the slight resistance of the springs. He looked up and saw that a tiny red light at the top of the panel had blinked on.
“That’s it. Perfect.” Behind Spencer’s voice could be heard a mechanical chattering, like a rapid typewriter. “The printout’s started. This is going to take a little while so just relax and keep those knobs in that position.” The voice clicked off, leaving Ralph in silence.
After a few seconds, the bridge of his nose started to itch but he ignored it. I wonder if Senator Muehlenfeldt ever comes here. An image came into his mind of the old man—on television and in the newspapers the tangled eyebrows were like snow on a weathered cliff-face—bent over the control panel as though it were some kind of altar. Maybe, thought Ralph. Who knows what somebody with all that money does? Spencer might even be right about him. Who could know?
The red light continued to glow as more time passed. His arms began to ache from being held in one position for so long. In the van—hidden in a dark corner of a parking lot in the real world—the members of the Alpha Fraction were right now huddled around some piece of equipment, reading the printout as it extruded and coiled on the floor. A secret history was passing through him, as unreadable as his heartbeat. First thing, he thought, when I get out of here, is to get my hands on that printout.
The light went out, its red facets dying into black. Ralph held the knobs in position, waiting for Spencer’s voice. The device resting in his lap remained silent. He glanced down at it, feeling a slow crawl of seconds across his back. A suspicion of something having gone wrong coiled around him and tightened.
He jerked his hands from the knobs on the panel and pressed the switch on the device’s bottom. “Spencer?” The box was still silent when he released the switch. “Are you there?” he called, pressing it again.
There was no answer. The chair fell over as he pushed away from the panel and stood up. He grasped the device’s two wire loops and twisted the dial. A metal bucket slammed into a row of mops in the darkness, knocking one over and striking Ralph on the shoulder.
Carrying the device in one hand, he closed the broom closet door behind him and ran down the corridor to the service elevator. The unmarked doors flicked past the periphery of his sight. Panting, he pressed the button and heard the faint whine of the pulleys bringing the elevator to him.
The doors finally drew open, revealing one of the squadron of real janitors, resting his weight on the chrome handles of a floor-buffer. The man glanced at Ralph as he scrambled on, then yawned and looked away.
At the ground floor, Ralph squeezed through the elevator doors as soon as they were partially open, and ran across the building’s loading dock towards the rear exit. “Hey!” Alarmed, the janitor with the buffer called after him. “What’s going on?”
Under the harsh blue lights the lot stretched forever. He finally sighted the van’s shape, hidden in the lot’s unlit corner, and ran toward it.