The Sacred Vault_ A Novel - Andy McDermott [78]
The rapid prototyper was inside. He lifted it out, closed the case and set the machine on top of it, pouring the glutinous liquid into the tank. As soon as it was full he switched on the machine, darkly cursing as it ran through a self-test mode, the laser head whining along its tracks. Thirty seconds, wasted. Finally it was ready.
He inserted the memory card and pushed the start button.
Two beams flickered across the tank, the liquid hardening where they crossed. The laser head slowly moved along the machine’s length. A ghostly shape took on form beneath it. A hand, wraithlike and insubstantial.
And two-dimensional. The prototyper built up objects layer by layer, the lasers gradually focusing higher as they moved back and forth. Each layer was less than a millimetre thick, so making something substantial enough to trick the handprint scanner would take time.
Time that was running out.
Eddie looked round the vault. The simplest way out would be to set off the alarm by dropping something on the floor; the guards would open the door to investigate. But they were armed, and he wasn’t, and even if he got past them he didn’t fancy his chances of escaping the building. A man in a skin-tight bodysuit carrying a large book made of gold would be hard to miss.
What else could he do? He glanced at the hole in the ceiling. No way out there without the suction cup.
But there was something else he could use . . .
While Rad and Karima kept watch on the monitors, Matt went up on deck. He regarded the UN building for a moment, hoping Eddie would get his arse in gear, then looked downriver. At this time of night, water traffic was minimal, the lights of other vessels standing out clearly even from a distance.
He recognised the pattern of one of them.
The Harbor Unit boat.
It was over a mile away, and in no hurry to reach them. But it was definitely coming back upriver. He jumped back into the cabin. ‘We’ve got a problem!’
‘We’re not the only ones,’ said Rad, jabbing a finger at the laptop.
On the screen, one of the guards had just stood.
‘Gonna do the rounds,’ said Jablonsky. ‘Don’t let Mario distract you from the monitors, huh?’
Vernio waved a dismissive hand. ‘Nothing’s happening - he’s hardly moved.’
Jablonsky glanced back at the screens. Eddie was still at the desk. He turned in the direction of the reading area . . . then changed his mind, deciding to check the other side of the archives first. He could look in on the Englishman at the end of his patrol.
Which wouldn’t take long.
14
The object in the prototyper’s tank was now almost finished - and somewhat disturbing. Eddie could easily recognise it as Nina’s right hand, a small childhood scar visible at the base of her first finger . . . but it had no colour, a translucent, boneless mass like some primitive deep sea creature.
The fingers were complete, loops and whorls discernible in the lifeless flesh. The laser head whirred back and forth over the thickest part of the hand, the ball of the thumb, as it added the final layers. Eight minutes had gone, and it still wasn’t finished. Karima had warned him that one of the guards was patrolling, but there was no point worrying - there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
The scanner whined back to its rest position - and stopped. The prototyper bleeped three times. Done.
Eddie gingerly touched its end product. The ‘hand’ was soft, rubbery, almost but not quite like flesh. It was also hot. He dipped the digital thermometer into the liquid. Over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. He kept it in place, watching the display. The figure dropped by a tenth of a degree, then another.
He carefully lifted the hand out of the tank. It flopped grotesquely as it emerged from the thick liquid. He used a wipe to clean off the excess goo, then checked the temperature again. 99.1°F. Almost down to human body temperature. He didn’t know how far above or below the norm the temperature sensor in the handprint scanner would accept, but doubted it was more than a few tenths of a degree.
He typed in Nina’s security