Nothing.
"Okay, on to Plan B," and then to C and D and E, etc, until our time ends.
There was the sound of something very old breaking apart. The vault door shifted under Dixie Mae’s hand and she jumped back. The curved plug slowly turned, and turned, and turned. After some seconds, the metal plug thudded to the ground beside the entrance ... and they were looking down an empty corridor that stretched off into the depths.
For the first quarter mile, no one was home. The interior decor was not LotsaTech standard. Gone were the warm redwood veneers and glow strips. Here fluorescent tube lights were mounted in the acoustic tile ceiling, and the walls were institutional beige.
"This reminds me of the basement labs in Norman Hall," said one Ellen.
"But there are people in Norman Hall," said the other. They were both whispering.
And here there were stairways that led only down. And down and down.
Dixie Mae said, "Do you get the feeling that whoever is here is in for the long haul?"
"Huh?"
"Well, the graders in B0999 were in for a day, and they thought they had real phone access to the outside. My group in Customer Support had six days of classes and then probably just one more day, where we answered queries–and we had no other contact with the outside."
"Yes," said NSA Ellen. "My group had been running for a month, and we were probably not going to expire for another two. We were officially isolated. No phones, no email, no weekends off. The longer the cycle time, the more isolation. Otherwise, the poor suckers would figure things out."
Dixie Mae thought for a second. "Victor really didn’t want us to get this far. Maybe–" Maybe, somehow, we can make a difference.
They passed a cross corridor, then a second one. A half-opened door showed them an apparent dormitory room. Fresh bedding sat neatly folded on a mattress. Somebody was just moving in?
Ahead there was another doorway, and from it they could hear voices, argument. They crept along, not even whispering.
The voices were making words: "–is a year enough time, Rob?"
The other speaker sounded angry. "Well, it’s got to be. After that, Gerry is out of money and I’m out of time."
The Ellens waved Dixie Mae back as she started for the door. Maybe they wanted to eavesdrop for a while. But how long do we have before time ends? Dixie Mae brushed past them and walked into the room.
There were two guys there, one sitting by an ordinary data display.
"Jesus! Who are you?"
"Dixie Mae Leigh." As you must certainly know.
The one sitting by the terminal gave her a broad grin, "Rob, I thought we were isolated?"
"That’s what Gerry said." This one–Rob Lusk?–looked to be in his late twenties. He was tall and thin and had kind of a desperate look to him. "Okay, Miss Leigh. What are you here for?"
"That’s what you’re going to tell me, Rob." Dixie Mae pulled the email from her pocket and waived the tattered scrap of paper in his face. "I want some explanations!"
Rob’s expression clouded over, a no-one-tells-me-what-to-do look.
Dixie Mae glared back at him. Rob Lusk was a mite too big to punch out, but she was heating up to it.
The twins chose that moment to make their entrance. "Hi there," one of them said cheerily.
Lusk’s eyes flickered from one to the other and then to the NSA ID badge. "Hello. I’ve seen you around the department. You’re Ellen, um, Gomez?"
"Garcia," corrected NSA Ellen. "Yup. That’s me." She patted grader Ellen on the shoulder. "This is my sister, Sonya." She glanced at Dixie Mae. Play along, her eyes seemed to say. "Gerry sent us."
"He did?" The fellow by the computer display was grinning even more. "See, I told you, Rob. Gerry can be brutal, but he’d never leave us without assistants for a whole year. Welcome, girls!"
"Shut up, Danny." Rob looked at them hopefully, but unlike Danny-boy, he seemed quite serious.
"Gerry told you this will be a year-long project?"
The three of them nodded.
"We’ve got plenty of bunk rooms, and separate ... um, facilities." He sounded ... Lord, he sounded embarrassed. "What are your specialties?"
The token holder said, "Sonya and I are second-year grads, working on cognitive patterning."
Some of the hope drained from Rob’s expression. "I know that’s Gerry’s big thing, but we’re mostly doing hardware here." He looked at Dixie Mae.
"I’m into–" go for it "–Bose condensates." Well, she knew how to pronounce the words.
There were worried looks from the Ellens. But one of them piped up with, "She’s on Satya’s team at Georgia Tech."
It was wonderful what the smile did to Rob’s face. His angry expression of a minute before was transformed into the look of a happy little boy on his way to Disneyland. "Really? I can’t tell you what this means to us! I knew it had to be someone like Satya behind the new formulations.
Were you in on that?"
"Oh, yeah. Some of it, anyway." Dixie Mae figured that she couldn’t say more than twenty words without blowing it. But what the heck–how many more minutes did the masquerade have to last, anyway? Little Victor and his self-terminating thread ...
"That’s great. We don’t have budget for real equipment here, just simulators–"
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Ellens exchange a fer sure look.
"–so anyone who can explain the theory to me will be so welcome. I can’t imagine how Satya managed to do so much, so fast, and without us knowing."
"Well, I’d be happy to explain everything I know about it."
Rob waved Danny-boy away from the data display. "Sit down, sit down. I’ve got so many questions!"
Dixie Mae sauntered over to the desk and plunked herself down. For maybe thirty seconds, this guy would think she was brilliant.
The Ellens circled in to save her. "Actually, I’d like to know more about who we’re working with," one of them said.
Rob looked up, distracted, but Danny was more than happy to do some intros. "It’s just the two of us. You already know Rob Lusk. I’m Dan Eastland." He reached around, genially shaking hands. "I’m not from UCLA. I work for LotsaTech, in quantum chemistry. But you know Gerry Reich. He’s got pull everywhere–and I don’t mind being shanghaied for a year. I need to, um, stay out of sight for a while."
"Oh!" Dixie Mae had read about this guy in Newsweek. And it had nothing to do with chemistry. "But you’re–" Dead. Not a good sign at all, at all.