VIOLET EYES Page 10

  The chalkboard crashed to the floor.

  The effect was even more dramatic than I’d hoped. Some advanced technology had allowed the scientists to treat the chalkboard like a two-way mirror. There was a big hole where the board had been, a three-foot crawlway equipped with cameras, and we had a picture-window view of Mrs. Jamison’s English class.

  A stunned silence descended.

  Maryanne broke it. “Holy crow.”

  “We’re being spied on,” Mr. Thrombel said. There was a restrained horror in his voice. I remembered that he had gotten married just a few months ago.

  I wondered if alarms were going off at the scientists’ headquarters yet. “It’s filming us right now. Cover it up!”

  Two nylon backpacks did the trick quite nicely.

  As per orders Wendy slipped out the door and over to Mrs. Jamison’s class. They had all heard the crash. I watched through the hole behind the chalkboard while the math class buzzed.

  I couldn’t hear Wendy’s voice, but whatever she said worked. Mrs. Jamison left the room. Carl was in the class, and when he got up to follow Wendy, a few other people drifted out into the hallway.

  Mrs. Jamison came into the math classroom and put a hand to her throat, blinking in surprise at the sight of the camera port. Apparently none of the teachers had known; I was pleased my gamble had paid off.

  When two-thirds of the English class had crowded into the math room I made a discovery. “Hey, look! There are ladder rungs on the inside of the wall.” A row of them marched up beside the space where the chalkboard had hung.

  Mr. Thrombel had long since lost control of his students; within minutes, Carl, Wendy, and a couple of other boys had climbed up the ladder to take a look. I stayed below to keep an eye on the situation.

  Mrs. Jamison was just on the point of ordering her class back to their room when Jimmy came back down the ladder, face red with excitement. “You won’t believe this, but there’s an entire attic up there.”

  From outside, the small peak to the school’s roof looked large enough only for a small crawl space. The builders must have lowered the classroom ceiling a bit and added in a few extra feet of wall between the inner ceiling and the outer roof.

  “There are ladders and hidden cameras between all the classrooms and even one by the principal’s office!” Jimmy continued. “There’s a whole room full of TV monitors up there showing the whole school!”

  About fifteen more people had to go up to believe, but I took his word for it. Spying weasels. It was all going to backfire in the scientists’ faces this time. I moved on to the next step.

  “Let’s go tell the other classes!” I yelled.

  After that it was routine. Take down the chalkboards. Cover up the cameras. Spread the word to the next class. Send a few people up the ladders to report their findings.

  In an hour the whole school was milling chaos.

  Exactly how I wanted it.

  The principal’s office was empty, all the staff having left to find out what was going on, so it was a cinch to take over the P.A. system. I got Carl to make the announcement, since his voice was deep enough to pass for a teachers. “May I have your attention, please? Would everyone in the school please go to the gymnasium? Repeat: everyone in the school, go to the gym. I don’t have any more answers than you do, but we can figure this out together.”

  A secretary rushed back inside, furious that we weren’t teachers, but I ignored her and disabled the mike so she couldn’t correct the announcement.

  Everyone was a little relieved at the hint of possible explanations, and the students were happy and excited to be taking a break from school. They all went into the gym.

  Are you watching, scientists? I wanted to yell, to scream. Are you getting nervous yet? You should be. Its too big for you to stop now; the questions have all been raised. You can’t stuff them back into Pandora’s box.

  Are you sorry you took Mike?

  You made a big mistake there, but it wasn’t your biggest one. Your biggest mistake was leaving me behind.

  The principal stood at the front of the crowd, trying to calm everyone down, but I vaulted to the stage behind him. At my signal Wendy flicked the lights off and back on. I’d learned something from Dave the Terrorist. Total darkness would have caused chaos, but flicking the lights just got the crowd’s attention.

  I raised my hands, and they fell silent as if by magic.

  “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m madder than hell,” I said. “Somebody’s been spying on us, listening to our every word, recording our every expression, and invading our privacy. Are you as mad as I am?”

  “Yes!” the crowd yelled.

  It was like working a pep rally. Not hard, really. I just let out all the anger I had felt three years ago when I realized there were cameras in my bedroom, where I undressed at night.

  “They have no right to do this to us!” To me. “Are we criminals?”

  “No!” howled the crowd.

  “Did we deserve to be treated this way? Spied on, our secrets pried into?”

  “No!”

  The principal climbed onto the stage, hands held out placatingly. “You’re overreacting.” He reminded the students what a privilege it was to be here, without actually saying where that was. How they had fought to be accepted into the “program.” It was logical that the people in charge would want some record of what happened; there was no need to be paranoid.

  Then he made a slip. “Just because there are cameras in the school doesn’t mean there are cameras in our homes.”

  The crowd hadn’t even considered that possibility yet and muttered angrily.

  My turn again. “There’s a camera in my bedroom,” I yelled. “There are cameras in yours, too!”

  Which might or might not have been true, depending on how desperate the scientists were. Had the scientists wired only the houses of the people Mike and I were likely to visit, or all of the houses?

  “There was a camera in my bedroom, too,” Wendy yelled loyally, and the crowd roared in outrage, jelling into a mob.

  I had deliberately not searched for cameras in the gym and sincerely hoped the scientists were getting an eyeful.

  I had a weapon now, and I intended to use it.

  I yelled, but the crowd was shouting too loud and didn’t hear me. I would have to act quickly to stay in control.

  I signaled Wendy, and she flicked the lights off and on again. Even then it took several tries to get their attention.

  The energy and anger radiating off the students was enormous, near the flash point. If I’d had a castle to storm I could have done it. But I didn’t know where the scientists had taken Mike. A different kind of destruction was in order.

  “Are we going to stand for this?” I yelled.

  “No!”

  “Are we going to keep quiet about this?”

  “No!”

  “Are we going to let them buy our silence, or are we going to shout our outrage to the world?”

  “Shout it!” The walls reverberated with their echoes.

  I hadn’t had a chance to ask Wendy about newspapers and freedom of the press, but I knew that in 1987 a story like this could topple a government. I only hoped the same was true in 2098.

  “Are we going to stay here and take this?”

  “No!”

  “Are we going to leave?” My voice was going hoarse, but I had them now. The power I was wielding frightened me a little even as I gloried in it. It occurred to me that Dave might have been right to be afraid of us. Since learning of Mike’s disappearance, it had taken me less than three hours to raise a mob.

  “Yes!”

  “But what will we do first?”

  My thoughts jumped straight from my brain into their mouths.

  “Smash the cameras!”

  “Break—”

  “Destroy—”

  “Crush—”

  I heard the faint wail of sirens outside and loosed the mob on the town. “The
n let’s do it. Let’s go! Go! Go!” I jumped off the stage. The crowd turned like a tide, thundering out the doors.

  The police let them go. Even if they were in the scientists’ pay and not just playing a role like everyone else, they could hardly open fire on a bunch of kids and teachers.

  The crowd dispersed, going home to smash up the cameras, leave the town, and spread their story.

  I had a feeling that Historical Immersion classes would be unpopular for a while.

  I found Wendy and Carl still by the light switches. “I have a small project,” I yelled across the stream of people. “Can you round up fifteen or so people to help?”

  We ended up with eighteen kids, including me.

  “Hey, where’s your Siamese twin?” Maryanne asked. “Where’s Mike?”

  Gone from me. Cut off. Kidnapped. In the hands of the enemy.

  I fought off the debilitating fear and twisted the truth into a tool. “Mike and I stumbled on one of the cameras last night. Some men caught Mike and took him away in a van. I’ve been hiding out ever since. That’s why Wendy crawled out the window to meet me this morning in math class.” It was always a good idea to add one bit of truth to every lie. “I need your help to get him back.” Bald truth.

  “How?” Carl asked. His face showed little, but he stood as if ready to pulverize boulders to get to his friend.

  “We need to offer them something of equal value. Something to trade. A hostage.”

  Wendy put an arm around her own neck and pointed a finger to her head like a gun. “If you need volunteers, I’m your man.”

  Her stunt broke the tension. I smiled. “Thanks, but I had something a little more breakable in mind. Something we could toss off the roof.”

  “Like what? Baseballs?”

  I smiled my hundred-candle smile. “No. Antiques. National treasures that can never be replaced.”

  A slow grin spread over Wendy’s face. “Stuff brimming with history.”

  “You got it.” I clapped my hands together. “Let’s go on a scavenger hunt. Take all the loot up to their monitoring station in the attic.” We split up at a run.

  I went with Wendy because her dad was an archaeology professor. Left to my own devices, I would probably have collected things of the approximate value of a plastic bow and arrow stamped “Made in Taiwan.”

  “Computers first,” Wendy said. “The Apple II’s in the lab are as scarce as hens teeth. Dad started drooling when he saw them. They must have robbed all the museums in North America to get twenty working models.”

  Carl helped us haul the computers up into the attic. Along the way, Wendy and I stuffed our pockets with Bic pens, battery-operated calculators, and other such junk. Even rulers that had inches as well as centimeters marked on them were worth a fair amount. Sewing machines, electric typewriters, digital clocks, microwave ovens, Beta VCRs. All the things I’d grown up with, Wendy labeled “priceless,” “rarer than rubies,” “stuff Dad would sell his soul to own.” Not all of it was real; some of the antiques were fakes or copies. All the clothing, for instance, was merely copied from old catalogs.

  Within an hour we had a veritable treasure hoard.

  “All right,” I said, stepping over a keyboard. “Time to make our demands. Anyone who doesn’t want to get arrested should leave now.”

  I thought Maryanne might break and leave, but she stood firm. “Don’t worry, Angel. We’ll get Mike back.”

  “They had no right to do this to us,” Jimmy said—a long speech for him.

  Nods of agreement. Nobody left.

  I’d always thought of myself as a brilliant outsider, valuable only for my entertaining schemes, and my friends’ loyalty touched my heart.

  I had to blink back tears before moving over to the monitors, which now showed either empty classrooms or the inside of someone’s backpack. I tapped the screens. “Whoever monitors these computers must have a way to contact their home base. Who’s good at electronics?”

  Carl raised his hand.

  “Good. See if you can get the head honcho on the line, will you?”

  Carl nodded and got down to work, fingers blurring over the keyboard. I swiftly dispatched the rest of my troops: some began moving antiques near the holes in the floor where the various ladders led down so the antiques could be pushed down the drop at any time, others stood lookout at all four of the school’s entrances and exits, the rest guarded the ladders from above. Once I finished giving orders, I returned and hovered over Carl’s shoulder. I could make little sense of what I saw on the screen in front of him.

  “Don’t worry,” Wendy told me. “I don’t know what it means either. Carl’s a hacking genius. Most Aug—” She broke off, and I politely didn’t ask.

  We waited.

  Hang on, Mike, I’m coming.

  CHAPTER 12

  “BINGO,” CARL SAID SOFTLY, twenty minutes later. “The feed is going to the local TV channel.” Another five minutes of typing, then a small frown. “I can’t trace it any farther.

  “Then well start there,” I said.

  “Coming up.”

  Wendy and I crowded around him. A slightly digitized image appeared of a man in a lab coat slurping coffee. He didn’t look as if he was working very hard, but then, how hard could it be to play tapes of old newscasts and Threes Company reruns every hour or so?

  “Can he see us?” I asked.

  “No. I covered up the camera when I first came up here.” Carl frowned. “I’m not even sure he knows we’re here. The transmission is piggybacked on the TV feed, but it’s not going to the TV station. It’s going somewhere else.”

  “It’ll have to do. Good work.” Wendy and I prepared a few props, then gave Carl the nod.

  “Going to picture and sound.” Carl clicked some buttons.

  “Hey, meathead,” I said.

  The tech slopped his coffee, staring around in all directions. He must have been facing a wall of TVs too.

  “Yeah, you with the coffee.” He looked up, and I waved at him. I didn’t give him a chance to speak. “Do you know what this is?” I stepped back and let him see one of the Apple II computers. It was plugged in, and the cursor was blinking placidly.

  “Do you know how much this is worth?”

  He shook his head.

  “Tell him, Wendy.”

  “It’s one of only twenty working models in the world. The last one that went to auction sold for nine million dollars, and that was four years ago.”

  The figure awoke a gleam of greed in his eye.

  I took one of the baseball bats we’d snitched from the gym and hit a home run on the monitor.

  “What are you doing?” he shrieked.

  I hit it again. The plastic casing around the central processing unit proved to be rather tough, so I opened it up and broke all the delicate circuitry boards.

  His mouth was hanging open when I finished.

  Maryanne and a few others looked shocked, too. They hadn’t really believed I would do it.

  But I would have done anything to get Mike back.

  “Now there are only nineteen working models, and I have all of them.”

  The technician was still gaping. I could see his tonsils.

  “I want to talk to the boss,” I said. “Not your supervisor or even his boss. I want to talk to the head honcho, the king of the hill, the man in charge, and I want to talk to him now. I will break another computer every fifteen minutes and another antique every ten minutes. Better hurry.”

  At my signal, Carl cut the picture on our end. The tech could no longer see us, and he forgot we could see him. He scrambled to find a phone. He used a videophone, but I refused to let myself be distracted. I set my watch and made Jimmy the official timekeeper.

  I had to smash a typewriter before the tech got hold of his supervisor, and it took two more computers and a sewing machine to convince her we were serious.

  “I’ll call the police,” she said.

  “The whole town is evacuating. The polic
e are busy. They’re not real cops anyway, are they? And if you do round up some authentic ones, we’ll destroy all the Apples at once.”

  The supervisor looked worried. The destruction wasn’t something she wanted to be responsible for.

  The next hurdle was harder.

  She brought in Wendy’s father, Mr. Lindstrom.

  Wendy looked as if she’d been sucker-punched when he came on the screen.

  “That’s low,” I said to Mr. Lindstrom. “Really, really low.”

  He ignored me, incredulous. “Wendy, what are you doing there? What’s going on? Where did you get all that TV equipment?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “My God, Wendy, tell me you don’t have anything to do with this … wanton destruction.”

  Silence.

  He closed his eyes, in pain. “Are you doing this to hurt me? I thought you were happy about the baby.”

  “I am.” Her head was lowered, eyes hidden in her long dark bangs.

  “Then why?” It was a cry from the soul. Mr. Lindstrom was an archaeologist, a historian; the destruction of antiques sifted painstakingly from garbage-dump graveyards was akin to murder in his eyes.

  Jimmy’s watch beeped. “Time,” he said.

  “Bring out the next computer,” I said without lifting my gaze from the screen.

  “Angel.” He looked disappointed. “This is unworthy of you.”

  “Lives are more precious than things. You can stop the wanton destruction if you want to.” I made my voice gentler than necessary. I liked Mr. Lindstrom. “They’re using you to get to me through Wendy. Don’t let them do it.” I picked up the baseball bat. “I won’t deal with anyone but the boss.”

  “I am the boss.”

  I hadn’t seen that one coming, and I choked on a laugh when I realized he wasn’t lying. “Wendy?”

  “He’s the project manager for the Chinchaga Historical Immersion Project,” she said flatly. “Do you think I would have been admitted otherwise?”

  I started breathing again. “He’s just a step on the ladder, then. He didn’t know about the hidden TV cameras.” I hefted the bat and addressed the screen. “Go get the next person up the chain.”