Part 6 (1/2)
”I went home early. The only one I told was Terri, my replacement,” Grace recalled.
”Did anyone else see you there?” Katie asked.
”Lots of people work there,” Grace replied.
”Who did you talk to?” Kayla asked.
”The tattoo nurse, and Terri,” Grace recalled.
”And Dr. Harriman,” Mfumbe said.
”Yes - I already told you about him.” Grace turned to Kayla, who hadn't been there for her first debriefing. ”He's a very strange man. For some reason he was upset that I'd gotten the bar code tattoo.”
Grace could tell from the stunned expressions of everyone around her that she'd said something significant. But what was it?
”You spoke to Jonathan Harriman, the inventor of the bar code tattoo?” Allyson reiterated. ”Actually spoke to him? Does he know you?”
”He always remembers my name,” Grace said. ”But it's not like we've ever had a real conversation. Not until today.”
”Can you get in to talk to him tonight?” Kayla asked.
”I have clearance,” Grace confirmed, unsure of where this was going. ”Although they might have cancelled it.”
”I wonder if he's still there,” Allyson said. ”It's already six.”
”I could call Terri,” Grace suggested. ”The front desk is manned until eight and then it goes to voice mail. I trust her to tell me what's going on.”
”Here,” Jack said, pulling a phone out of his pocket. ”This one's secure.”
She punched in the number for the GlobalHelix front desk and waited as the phone rang one, two, three, four, five times. ”That's odd,” Grace told the others. ”We never let the phone ring more than three times.”
Grace tried the call again, and this time let it sound seven times, still with no success. ”Strange,” she remarked, giving up.
”Someone should get out there and see what's going on,” Katie suggested.
But Grace wasn't through. There were still things she wanted to know.
”What about the prophecy?” Grace asked. ”Can you tell me about that now?”
”After we talk to Jonathan Harriman,” Katie replied. ”He might have information for us about the prophecy, information about your family. If anyone knows, it's him.”
”Hey, Eric,” Jack said, turning toward the covered vehicle behind him and gripping the edge of the tarp covering it. ”This might be a great chance to take the new swing-lo for a test run.”
”This is it ... my baby ... the swing-lo,” Jack said as Eric and Grace climbed into the craft. ”Of course, Allyson has made a lot of improvements since I showed her the first prototype a while ago. What a piece of junk that was, compared to this one.”
”And this one is still not the end product, we hope,” Allyson added, joining them. ”All these dials and switches have to go. I mean, it's so old-fas.h.i.+oned.”
”Hey, I was working with sc.r.a.p metal out in the desert,” Jack defended his design. ”I was using car parts. Give me a break.”
Allyson smiled and pushed him playfully. ”Just saying, we can get something a little slicker going here.”
”We're going to have to hit our mysterious business backer for more money before that can happen,” Jack replied.
Grace kept her gaze on them and wouldn't look at Eric, who sat beside her in the swing-lo's driver's seat. Her emotions about him were wavering between disappointment, anger, and feelings of betrayal; she'd been so sure he was paying attention to her solely because he returned her feelings. The idea that she was only his a.s.signment - that otherwise he wouldn't even have noticed her - was humiliating.
When she looked at him, she felt embarra.s.sed and furious. She couldn't bear to meet his eyes. But she'd been told to ride in the swing-lo with him and meet the others at GlobalHelix. She didn't feel she was in a position to say no. If this is what it would take to get her family and her life back, she couldn't say no.
Grace also held mixed emotions about traveling in the s.h.i.+ny metallic disc in front of her. It had no more than a twelve-foot diameter. At its center was a seat well where two people could sit side by side. In front was a very high-tech computer control panel.
”It works on magnetic repulsion, and it's going to be the next big thing,” Jack told Grace. ”Eric here is my test pilot.”
Jack gave her a quick history of the swing-lo. Although magnetic repulsion had been around for a while - high speed trains in j.a.pan ran on it, as did the Bullit-Buses and Bullit-Trains in America and Europe - he had done something no one else had yet managed to do. He had amplified the force so that his swing-lo could actually fly.
”This idea of personal flying vehicles isn't new,” Allyson added. ”Guys like the physicist Nikola Tesla were working on it back in the early nineteen hundreds. He even had funding from John Jacob Astor and everything. They predicted it was how people would commute, but they never made it work. Now, over a hundred years later, we think we've got it.”
”It's just a tiny bit unreliable,” Jack admitted with a quick grimace. ”But we're almost there.”
”In what way unreliable?” Grace asked nervously.
”You'll be safe,” Allyson a.s.sured her. ”We're just playing around with the alt.i.tude.”
”Put this on and make sure you're belted in,” Eric said when they sat side by side in the vehicle. He handed her the same helmet she'd worn on the motorcycle.
Kayla, Mfumbe, and Katie headed back to their own motorcycles, but Allyson and Jack remained, watching as Eric switched on a series of b.u.t.tons and toggles. ”This is prototype five,” Eric told Grace, speaking in a friendly tone, as though nothing was strained between them. ”You should have seen the first one; it looked like a hunk of junk because Jack had only sc.r.a.p metal to work with. Now with the funding, he can buy some decent lightweight materials.”
”I should be out looking for my family, not fooling around with some s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p,” Grace fretted. She knew there was supposed to be an element of fun in all this. But what right did she have to be on an adventure like this when they were missing?
”We are searching for them,” Eric said. ”We're going to see what Jonathan Harriman can tell us. He said he would contact you, right? Well, there's no way for him to do that now. So we have to do it for him. You'll get around a lot faster with us than on your own. And if you relied on the Global-1 cops ... believe me, you'd get nowhere.”
Eric pushed another b.u.t.ton and the swing-lo elevated abruptly to about five feet off the ground. Jack and Allyson came alongside. ”We've made some big innovations, Eric. You can put the roof bubble up now and she goes a lot higher. There's a gauge to the right that will tell your elevation above sea level. If you get the chance, see how high she'll go.”
”How high is too high?” Eric asked as he strapped on his helmet.
”We don't know,” Allyson admitted. ”But the craft will start to shake when you're too high.”
”Oh, swell,” Eric quipped sarcastically.
”Just bring it back down and the s.h.i.+mmying will stop,” Jack a.s.sured him. ”But don't keep it shaking too long.”
”Why? What will happen?” Eric asked.
”Just don't do it and everything will be fine,” Jack insisted.
With a nod to Jack and Allyson, Eric pushed the throttle forward and the swing-lo whirred forward, traveling toward the wide garage door from which they had entered. Grace gripped her seat anxiously. She found it strange to be traveling so close to the ground, and yet not be touching the earth.
The garage door had been opened, and now the craft entered. Immediately the doors shut and the elevator car began traveling upward. When it b.u.mped to a stop, the door on the opposite side opened. Eric turned on headlights that illuminated the area around them. Instead of using the narrow alley the motorcycle had come down on the trip in, Eric steered to the left and came out into a gated children's playground.
”Going up,” Eric warned as the swing-lo lifted above the fence and sailed over it. ”Jack's big invention is a mechanism that amplifies the magnetic repulsion coming from the earth many times over,” he explained. ”It's a totally clean fuel, and the thing can really fly.”
Grace nodded as she peered over the side. As long as they were talking about the machine, she could bear the sound of his voice. But that was about it. They were flying at about ten feet in the air, still needing to stay to the roadways rather than flying above buildings. ”We're heading down again,” Eric reported. ”If I stay close to the road, people just think this a funky new car, some kind of experimental hybrid. They don't even notice that the thing isn't actually on the ground, especially now that it's dark.”