Doctor Who_ Blue Box - Kate Orman [67]
‘I suspect that the components only became dangerous around the time of the auction,’ said the Doctor. ‘The auctioneers probably tampered with them before selling them.
I doubt they realised what they had on their hands.’
We crammed back into the Travco (Bob had started to refer to it as the ‘white elephant’). I volunteered to drive again, knowing they’d speak more freely amongst themselves if they thought I had my mind on the traffic. But they weren’t in a chatty mood. Peri announced she wanted something to take her mind off of things, so she sat cross-legged on the narrow bed, going through another pile of printouts with her highlighter pen.
‘Doctor,’ she said, ‘Have a look at this.’
She passed it forward to the Doctor in the passenger seat.
He hunched over it, running a finger down the columns of figures to the data she had marked.
‘How very interesting,’ he said. ‘Our Miss Swan seems to have developed a sudden interest in security equipment.’
‘Looks like she bought half a dozen security cameras and an alarm system,’ said Peri.
‘Now, what does that tell us?’
For a moment they looked like teacher and pupil. Peri answered, ‘Swan is keeping the final component at her own house.’
The Doctor nodded. ‘I should have realised at once. She could haye hidden it anywhere. But she’s beginning to withdraw into herself, losing her trust in everyone else – not only trust that they are on her side, but trust that they can do anything as well as she can. She has become the only person she can rely on.’
‘Is that good or bad?’ said Bob. ‘I mean, from our point of view. If she’s paranoid, does that make her more isolated and vulnerable, or more careful and dangerous?’
‘Perhaps a little of each, said the Doctor.
Three
We pulled into the parking lot behind my apartment building in Arlington at around six o’clock that night. I went up first, then flashed the lights a couple of times to let them know it was OK to come on up.
Peri looked around dubiously. My flat is a bunch of horizontal surfaces covered in stacks of books and newspapers and in-trays made out of cereal boxes. ‘You sure nobody’s been searching in here?’
‘Relax. I have my own filing system. If they’d moved one piece of paper I would have spotted it right away.’
‘Where can we set up, Chick?’ said Bob, who was clutching his much-travelled Apple in its protective cardboard box,
I unplugged my IBM Selectric typewriter and hauled it off my writing desk with an ‘oof’. Everything else had to come off as well, to make enough room for the computer and its peripherals: the stacks of paper, my Walkley award, the statue of a raven on a branch. I relocated it all to the kitchen counter, where Stray Cat was stealing leftovers from a dirty dish. She gave me a cynical look and one of her monotone meows.
I phoned for takeout while Peri took a shower and borrowed some of my clothes. (I had to stall her long enough to hide the porno wags in the bedroom.) She emerged from the bedroom in high boots, a cowboy shirt, and jeans that were slightly too tight. She stopped towelling her hair, and gave Bob a meaningful look.
He sniffed at his tuxedo tee. ‘God, I better change this thing,’ he said. He pulled it up to reveal another T-shirt underneath that said FLEX YOUR HEAD and went back to the keyboard.
I put Ghost in the Machine on the turntable. It seemed appropriate.
‘Hey, Doctor,’ said Bob, a few minutes latet ‘Come and have a look at this.’
The Doctor grabbed a kitchen chair and sat down next to him at my desk. He gazed over Bob’s shoulder at the screen.
It was literally gibberish – a great block of random characters. I could see from the headers that the computer in Swan’s kitchen had sent all this garbage to her email account at the office. Bob tapped the keys. There were more of the gibberish messages.