And the excavs were getting harder and harder to pull off. The security dados were arriving after only a couple of hours now.
In fact, there were rumors that Tylee was going to shut down the excav operations completely.
Then one day it happened. As she and the other excav team members arrived triumphantly at Mr. Pop with their latest discovery, they found Tylee standing at the entrance waiting for them, arms crossed.
“What is it?” Olana said.
Tylee’s angular face showed no emotion. “You have all done fine work,” she said. “Every reviver appreciates your service. But the time has come.”
“Wait a minute!” Bart said.
“I’m sorry,” Tylee said. “It’s just too dangerous.”
“It’s just a matter of adjusting our tactics!” Olana added. “We just have to—”
Tylee held up her hand, cutting them off. “The decision has been made. We’ve worked too hard to accumulate all of this.” She made a sweeping motion with her hand. “We can’t jeopardize it just to add a few last trivial items.”
“Trivial seems like the wrong word,” Bart said combatively.
“In fact, Tylee, I hadn’t had a chance to mention it,” Olana added, “but in our last find, there was another map. It refers to several ‘important items.’”
“What items?”
“It doesn’t say, but—”
“Then it could be anything, couldn’t it? Things that seemed important a hundred years ago sometimes don’t seem so important today,” Tylee said.
Elli spoke for the first time. “But sometimes they do.”
Everyone turned and looked at her. They weren’t used to hearing her speak. “Pardon me?” Tylee said. “You have something to add?”
Elli wasn’t sure quite why she’d spoken. The necklace that Press had given her felt uncharacteristically hot against her skin. “I don’t know exactly,” she said timidly. “It’s just—I feel as though this one’s important.”
“You feel?” Tylee said sharply.
Elli flushed. She really had no logical explanation. “I don’t—I just feel like we should really find out what’s there.”
“You keep saying that you feel. Do you have any evidence? Do you have any information?”
Elli said nothing.
“All right then,” Tylee said. “It’s settled. I’m sorry. You have all done magnificent work. But now our movement must pass into a different phase.”
Tylee turned briskly and walked away, her heels clicking sharply on the concrete.
The team members stared glumly after her.
“It’s not right,” one of the diggers said after Tylee had disappeared.
“I knew it was coming,” Olana said. “But you always think there will be one more, you know?”
Heads nodded.
“There will be,” Elli said softly.
NINE
It took Elli several weeks to work up the courage. Several weeks and a certain amount of planning. Among the many documents held in the warehouse were old maps of the city. She had to study them for a long time before she was completely sure. But eventually, she found what she was looking for.
One day she saw Bart working in the warehouse. She approached him and said, “What happened to the last map we found?”
Bart shrugged gloomily. “Who cares? We can’t use it anyway.”
“I think we can,” Elli said.
“Olana and I already tried talking to Tylee,” Bart said. “We about got in a fistfight. Tylee just won’t back down. No more excavs. Period.”
Elli could feel her pulse thrumming in her ears. She couldn’t believe what she was about to say. But she managed to stammer out what she’d been thinking for weeks. “So we go anyway,” she said.
Bart’s eyebrows went up. “What!”
“So we go anyway.”
“You’re talking about—” He paused, and his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “You’re talking about an unauthorized excav?”
“Why not?”
Bart looked around nervously. “Look, there are a lot of things that go into an excav,” he whispered. “Any one mistake could lead the dados back here. And then all our work would be for nothing. I supervise the dig. Olana organizes the excav—the timing, the location, and all that stuff. And the driver—well, he works directly for Tylee. We break everything up like this so that if Blok security ever captures somebody, they can’t give up all our secrets.”
“Yes, but—”
“Only Tylee and three drivers know the location of this warehouse. Even Olana and I enter and leave wearing blindfolds. Without one of Tylee’s drivers, we could never find our way back here.”
Elli took a deep breath. “I’m not so sure of that.”
“The drivers are absolutely loyal to Tylee.”
“We don’t need them.”
Bart narrowed his eyes. “You know someone who can get us in and out of here?”
Elli nodded.
“Who?” Bart demanded.
Elli’s voice was so soft, she could barely be heard.
“Me,” she whispered.
TEN
When Elli had been swept into the warehouse after the pit collapsed several years earlier, the wall had been quickly rebuilt. But after she started living in her broom closet, she noticed that the air in the closet had a different smell from the rest of the warehouse. It was an earthy, oily smell. Not bad—just different.
And it came through a vent in the ceiling.
After a while it occurred to her that the air was coming from the tunnel she had been propelled through by the mud.
She pretty much forgot about it—until the idea popped into her mind of doing the unauthorized excav. If she could get to the tunnel…well, the tunnel must lead somewhere. Right?
So she had looked at the old maps of the city and found what it had to be. Many years earlier the city had had a subway. Eventually the subway had been shut down and sealed up. But the tunnels were still there. There had to be a way to get in and out of them.
Elli felt the strongest compulsion she’d ever felt in her life. She had to go on this excav. She had to.
One night, after all the workers at Mr. Pop had left, she crawled up through the vent. As she shinnied on her belly through the narrow concrete shaft, she giggled to herself. Imagine me, a little gray-haired cleaning lady, sneaking through an air shaft like some hero in a movie!
She didn’t really even feel scared. It was an adventure!
After only twenty or thirty feet, she ran into a grimy old metal grate. She shined her flashlight through it. On the other side was a dark, tiled tunnel. She pushed the grate open, slid onto the dirty floor and looked around. On the floor below her, half buried in mud and debris, were rusting old tracks leading off into the distance.
Yes! This might work!
She began walking. Within an hour, she had found what she needed.
On the day of the excav, the team members had furtively slipped into Elli’s little broom closet.
Then Elli had led them through the ventilation duct, and through a maze of underground tunnels. Eventually they looked up and saw a thin beam of light coming from a tiny hole at the top of a very long, dark shaft. A rusty iron ladder led to the top.
“We’ll climb to the top,” she said. “At the top you’ll put your blindfolds on. Olana has arranged for a driver to pull a van up next to a certain manhole. The driver doesn’t know where we’ve come from, who we are, or what our mission is. He’ll be there at exactly ten seventeen a.m. The traffic light will turn red, and he’ll stop. We’ll have eight seconds to get into the van. I’ll lead you out of the shaft and into the van. Don’t make a move without me. Clear?”
The other members of the team looked at one another wonderingly. They had never seen this side of Elli Winter. She had always been a nice, quiet middle-aged lady who had an odd knack for finding buried boxes.
“You’re a woman of many surprises,” one of the diggers said. He p
oked her teasingly in the forehead. “What else have you got hidden in that head of yours?”
Elli felt a flush of pleasure. It was silly, this strapping young boy making a fuss over her. But still, it was nice.
She looked at the watch she had borrowed from Olana. “Let’s go,” she said.
Three hours later they were digging. It was an idyllic spot. Small forested mountains rose from each side of a flat, meadowed valley. In the middle of the valley, a small river babbled over smooth black rocks. It was spring, so the grass was full of beautiful yellow flowers that stretched off as far as the eye could see.
But the ground where they were digging was a hard-packed clay, full of rocks. It was miserable work, slower than Elli had hoped.
The necklace around her neck felt hotter here than it had ever felt. Something important was buried in this ground. Elli felt more sure of it than anything she’d ever felt in her life. But the hole was getting deeper and deeper. And they still hadn’t found anything.
Finally Olana said, “This is one of the deepest holes we’ve ever dug. Are you sure it’s in the right place?”
“As sure as I can be, dear,” Elli said.
“I’m getting nervous,” Olana said. “This is taking too long. And we don’t have any watchers to give us advance warning.”
As if on cue, Elli’s shovel struck something. It made a thump, rather than the clang of shovel on rock.
“We’re there,” Bart said.
They began to dig furiously. Elli could see that this was not a normal box. Usually the boxes were made of metal. This was made of some kind of unusual plastic.
“Five more minutes and we’ll have it,” Bart said.
Then Elli heard something that made her skin crawl. A sudden intake of breath.
“Oh, no,” Olana whispered. Then a louder shout. “Run!”
“Go!” Bart said. He interlaced his fingers, so that the two younger diggers could plant their feet on his hands and climb out. They were gone in seconds. “Come on!” he said to Elli.
“You next,” she said. “You’re taller. You can pull me out.”
Bart didn’t have to be asked twice. Elli simply bent over at the waist, and he used her back as a step, bounding out of the hole. Then he reached back in.
Elli looked up at him for a moment. She could hear the swoosh of the helicopter blades now. She wanted to go. In fact, she was completely terrified. She knew that the dados would be there very soon. But at the same time, she had to keep digging. She had no choice. Elli shook her head at Bart.
“Run, dear,” she said softly.
“Are you crazy?” Bart shouted.
“I have to keep digging. Go.”
“Run!” somebody shouted again.
Bart looked at her incredulously. She turned away and began digging. She heard pounding footsteps as Bart sprinted away toward the tree line.
She could hear the chopper getting closer, the whine of its engine piercing as a dental drill. She had never been more scared in her life. But she kept digging.
All this time she had been feeling drawn to come here and dig. But she’d never really thought about what was in the box. Something important—important to the movement, important to the revivers, important to Mr. Pop.
But now the security dados would have it. They’d take it back to some faceless building owned by Blok. There would be a brief review by some sour little man. And then a dado would take it to some dirty furnace and burn it. Whatever it was.
She managed to get the shovel under the lip of the box. Tilting the shovel handle back, she forced the box up, free of the hard clay. At least let me see it, she thought.
She snuck a glance over her shoulder. The security chopper was racing up the valley, its belly swaying back and forth as the aircraft tracked the gentle bends in the river.
Maybe there was time. With a herculean effort, she hoisted the box out, tossed it over the lip of the hole. Then she used the shovel to propel herself up onto the grass.
The chopper was hovering above her now. She looked up, but could see no faces, no signs of human life. And in fact, she knew, there was no human life up there. Just dados—mindless machines, intent on their mission.
The downdraft from the chopper blades whipped at her hair and clothes. The air was full of yellow flowers, ripped from the ground by the prop wash.
She bent over the box, flipped the lid open.
Above her, she heard a loud noise, like zippers being opened. As she looked up, she saw what it was—the sound of the dados sliding down long black ropes that hung from the belly of the aircraft.
Four dados slid toward the ground. All of them tall, hard faced, bulky. All of them armed with gold stun guns. Their faces showed no mercy.
“Lie down, citizen!” one of them shouted. “Lie down and lace your fingers behind your head.”
For a moment Elli thought, Well, maybe I should. It’s all over now anyway, right?
But instead, she reached into the box.
ELEVEN
From the top of the hill, Olana watched through the binoculars.
“What a shame,” Bart said. “I guess that’s the end of the road for the cleaning lady, huh?”
Through her fieldglasses Olana saw the small gray-haired woman reach into the box. Then she stood up. There was something in her hands—an odd-looking stick that glinted silver in the bright sun.
The security dados were moving slowly toward her, forming a loose circle around her. They had not even drawn their stunners. Four dados against one small middle-aged woman—it was no contest.
“What’s that in her hand?” Bart said.
“I’m trying to—” Olana broke off. The surprise of what happened next was so great that she was speechless.
As the first dado approached, Elli lunged suddenly. Olana’s eyes widened. The odd silver stick simply passed into the dado’s chest, as though it were made of butter.
The dado crumpled—a puppet with its strings cut.
For a moment no one moved. Olana was barely able to make out the expression on Elli’s face. The little woman looked shocked. The dados too were clearly taken by surprise. Whatever the silver stick was, it was not like any weapon they had encountered before. They weren’t programmed to respond to it.
Apparently, Elli’s moment of shock passed quickly. She immediately started chopping through the air with the silver stick, waving it wildly around her. It passed straight through the neck of the next dado. The second dado too went down. It hit the ground and didn’t move.
These dados were top-of-the-line combat models. They were built to adjust to changing circumstances. They clawed for their stunners.
One of the dados fired, missing narrowly. Elli dodged, brought her stick down on his arm. The hand flew off, still clutching its stunner. Before the dado’s limp body could fall, though, the little woman had grabbed it. Using the body as a shield, she staggered forward, the downed dado absorbing shot after shot from the last dado’s stunner.
Realizing that it wouldn’t be able to shoot her as long as she was holding its fallen comrade, the surviving dado simply charged at Elli. She chopped at him with her silver stick. But this time he was ready, blocking it with his stunner. Evidently the silver stick could pass through the body of a dado—but not through the metal stunner.
Using his sheer bulk, he slammed Elli backward. The silver stick fell from her arm, bounced, slid into the pit.
“No!” Olana said. “No, no, no!”
“What happened?” Bart said.
Olana lost track of the cleaning lady for a moment as she staggered out of the binoculars’ range of view. Then all she could see was a flash of cheap gray material falling into the pit. Elli’s coat.
Olana scanned the area looking for a sign of the cleaning lady. She was gone.
“They shot her, I think,” Olana said. “She’s in the hole now.”
The surviving dado cautiously approached the hole, its gold stunner extended. Olana sighed. Well, it was an
amazing performance. Elli had offered up her life to give the rest of the team a chance to get away.
“We’ve got to go,” Olana said. “While we’ve still got a chance.”
“Wait,” Bart said. “Just wait. Another ten seconds. We owe her that.”
Olana lifted the binoculars again. Just in time to see a flash in the bright sunlight.
The silver stick came pushing up out of the hole. The dado tried to dodge—but it was too late. The silver stick sliced right through its chest.
The dado fell like a rag doll.
Olana stared.
“What?” Bart said, straining to see what had just happened.
“She did it!” Olana said wonderingly. “She—”
But it wasn’t over. The small woman clambered out of the hole. The dados were all down, but the chopper was still functioning. It had landed a short distance from the hole. When the fourth dado fell, its engine began spooling up as though it were getting ready to take off.
“Look out!” Olana shouted. “The chopper! Get the chopper!”
But Elli couldn’t hear. The sound of the chopper drowned out her voice. Olana wondered if she saw the gold stunner protruding from the nose of the chopper. It wasn’t aimed at her. But if the chopper got airborne, it could swing the stunner around at her.
“Elli! Run!”
Apparently, Elli noticed the threat at the same time as Olana. But instead of running away, she ran toward the chopper.
Elli reached the aircraft just as its wheels cleared the ground, and she jumped awkwardly, just barely landing on the craft. What was she doing?
The chopper bounced, then lifted up. Slowly the aircraft gained speed and began to scud across the ground. Suddenly a dark shape flew from the door.
It took Olana a moment to identify the dark shape. It was Elli. The little woman fell for what seemed an eternity—though it was probably only a fraction of a second. Olana screamed as Elli hit the ground hard, then lay motionless.
The chopper slowed, then turned. In horror Olana realized the big gold stunner was now swinging around toward her and the others in the group. The chopper kept turning and turning. The gun grew closer and closer.