Fallout (14 page)

“My time, my dignity, and maybe a little self-respect,” Sambit said, realizing Lyrica was still waiting for an answer, “since I already know how this one ends.”

“How does it end?” she asked.

“With a helicopter picking him up in a few days and leaving me behind.”

“I’m going to enjoy seeing him prove you wrong,” Lyrica declared. “Now, let’s see if we can get a better reading from the steam generator. We need conclusive evidence of our theories if we want Tucker to buy into them.”

Chapter 9

“
T
HE
shower is ready,” Derek said an hour later when he walked into the room where Sambit and Lyrica were working. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’ll get you clean. I made a sign to put on the door when someone is using it so they don’t get interrupted. It’s hanging on the paper towel dispenser inside the door. Did anyone think to ask for more paper towels and toilet paper with the supplies?”

“I did,” Lyrica said. “They were delivered along with your robots about ten minutes ago.”

“Oh, good!” Derek said. “New toys!”

He disappeared before Lyrica could say anything else.

“I swear he’s schizophrenic,” Sambit said with a shake of his head. “Too many personalities running around inside one body.”

“You mean dissociative identity disorder, and he doesn’t have that,” Lyrica said. “Bipolar, maybe. Probably borderline ADD, but I lived with DID in high school. He doesn’t qualify.”

“I’m sorry,” Sambit said, not knowing what else to say.

“My parents took in foster kids stuck in the system,” Lyrica explained. “We had one kid stay with us for a couple of months until it became obvious she needed more psychiatric help than we could give her. She went into a home, and I never did hear what happened to her after that. It was freaky the way you never knew who was going to walk out of her bedroom, but it wasn’t just different moods. It was different people. They had different names. All variations on her name, so at first I thought of it as a nickname to fit the mood, but then we realized she didn’t remember things that had happened when a different ‘person’ was in charge. I really hope she got help, because she was a sweet girl, just really, really troubled. Derek isn’t like that. And think of it this way. You’ll never be bored with him.”

“Because I’ll never be with him,” Sambit said. “Let’s get back to work. I want a shower, and the sooner we get this done, the sooner I can take one.”

To his relief, Lyrica dropped the matter and turned back to the readings they were analyzing.

Sambit’s stomach growling interrupted them two hours later. “I guess we ought to eat lunch,” he said, rubbing his noisy belly.

“Probably,” Lyrica said. “You find Derek. I’ll heat up whatever field rations they sent us this week. That way we aren’t all tramping through the break room and disturbing the night shift.”

“There’s got to be a better solution to that too,” Sambit said.

“I know,” Lyrica agreed. “If we can get things truly stable, I think it’ll be time to clear some offices and closets to make some private sleeping space. Derek was talking about building partitions and working on a switch so we could turn on the lights in half the room at a time instead of all of them coming on, and while that’s a very generous offer, it’s a temporary solution. I’ll think about it over lunch. If nothing else, I can donate my office. It’s not very big, but if we moved the desk out, I think we could put two cots in there. Tucker said they were trying to get trailers for us, but there’s no guarantee when they’ll be able to get trucks in here or how long it will take to get them shielded from radioactivity.”

“And in the meantime, we’ll keep making do,” Sambit said. “Just having the shower will be a huge improvement.”

“I agree,” Lyrica said. “Go find Derek. I’ll bring lunch back in here.”

Sambit whistled for Fido, figuring he could see where the dog came from and find Derek that way. Sure enough, Fido stuck his head curiously out the door of one of the larger offices. Sambit walked over to him, stopping at the threshold to look at the chaos inside. Packing was strewn all over the place with circuits and gears and tools in nearly as much disarray. Derek sat on the floor in the middle of it with the carcass of a robot in his lap, the insides torn open as he used a soldering iron on a bit of circuitry. Without looking up, he reached to the side and grabbed another item, adding it to the contraption in his hands. He worked like that for several more minutes, not looking Sambit’s way.

Sambit knew Derek was good at what he did. They wouldn’t have brought him in otherwise, and with a robot he’d designed and built himself, but watching Derek work showed Sambit a side of the other man he hadn’t seen before. All the defense mechanisms were off, all the mood swings were gone, and in their place was a serious, confident, capable man who thought nothing of tearing into a multimillion-dollar robot and gutting it like it was junk so he could add this modification or that one. Having seen Number Five in action, Sambit had no doubt the modifications would be improvements. Perhaps even improvements over Number Five, since Derek was making them with this situation in mind instead of simply because he wanted the robot to be able to do a particular task.

“So is that Number Six?” Sambit asked.

Derek looked up and smiled, the expression so open and full of joy that Sambit thought he might be seeing the real Derek for the first time. “No, and there wasn’t a Number One through Four either. It’s a film reference. This is… whatever its name is on the box over there.”

“You didn’t even look?” Sambit asked, amused.

“It didn’t matter,” Derek said with a shrug. “It was a collection of parts I could plunder to make a robot that can do what we need it to do. I was thinking about it, and if I solder the exterior instead of just fastening it with screws, it would be waterproof and we wouldn’t have to stick it in garbage bags every time it went out. We could just hose it down when it came back in.”

“What about if you need to get inside to work on it again?”

“I’d have to cut open the solders, but I can do that. It wouldn’t be pretty by the time we were done with it, but it would save time in the short run, and that’s the real goal, isn’t it? To use the robots to get the situation under control enough for people to come in and do their jobs again?”

“That’s kind of cold,” Sambit said.

Derek shrugged. “I build robots to go on space missions. They’re tools that we’ll use as long as they’re functioning, and then they’re space junk. I came to terms with that a long time ago. The Mars rovers have sent back amazing footage and results from the planet’s surface, and I’d like to think they still have some usefulness left in them, but they won’t ever be coming home. Not in my lifetime anyway. It’s rather pointless to get attached.”

“I guess so,” Sambit said. “You seem to have some affection for Number Five.”

“Yes, but it’s my robot. I get to take it home with me the same as I do Fido. That’s different.”

“I suppose,” Sambit said, only partially sure he saw the difference. Either way, the robot was Derek’s creation. “Lyrica is getting lunch ready if you’re hungry.”

“Food would be good,” Derek said. “I’ll have to work on the robot some more this afternoon, but maybe tonight I can start figuring out the wiring in the break room so we can keep half the room dim while the other half has the lights on.”

“Lyrica suggested we empty some of the unused offices,” Sambit said. “That would provide darkness and privacy.”

“I’ll move furniture,” Derek said. “Just tell me what to move and where to put it.”

“We’ll have to ask Lyrica,” Sambit said, “but we can do that during lunch, maybe.”

“Let’s eat, then. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can get our work done, and you can take advantage of the new shower.”

“It will be nice to be clean.”

“And when you’re done, I can take advantage of you,” Derek added with a wink.

“You’re incorrigible,” Sambit said with a sigh, ignoring the zing of reaction that went through him.

“No, adorable,” Derek said, resting his arm around Sambit’s shoulder as they walked toward the control room. “You know I am.”

Sambit wanted to argue, but he would have been lying.

“
W
E
’
RE
done for the day,” Lyrica declared a few minutes after seven. “We’ve been on since seven o’clock this morning. Bad enough that we have to work twelve-hour shifts. We aren’t working extra.”

“Not in here, anyway,” Derek said. “Sambit told me you wanted to clear some offices so people could sleep more easily. If the night shift is coming to work in here, they aren’t moving desks.”

“We could do it tomorrow,” Lyrica said.

“We could,” Derek agreed, “but you know what will happen. Tucker will have a list of things for us to do, and we’ll get dragged into that, and tomorrow night we’ll be having this conversation again. Let’s just do it now, or at least do one office. Even if we put all three of our cots in there tonight, it’ll be better than having the night shift traipse through our ‘bedroom’ to get coffee or food.”

“I wouldn’t complain about a night of uninterrupted sleep,” Sambit said. “I haven’t had one of those since before the hurricane hit.”

“There we go,” Derek said. “Decision made.”

The look Lyrica sent him spoke volumes about what she thought of his motivations, but Derek ignored it. He didn’t have to tell her she was right. Sambit would be more comfortable in the darkness and quiet of an office. Therefore Derek would make it happen.

“So which office can we empty out?” Derek continued when Lyrica didn’t immediately give them instructions.

“I guess we’d better start with mine,” she said. “I’m not really using it at the moment since I’m in here doing all the work instead of supervising it and writing reports. If it turns out I need my computer for something, we can set it up elsewhere. Even in the break room once that’s no longer sleeping quarters.”

“Lead the way.”

Lyrica showed Derek and Sambit to a small office at the end of the hall opposite the break room. “It’s not much,” she said, “but it’s a start.”

Derek looked around the room. The desk took up the majority of the space, with file cabinets against one wall and bookcases on the other one. “Is there anything sensitive in your desk?” he asked. “Anything that would need to stay locked up?”

Lyrica shook her head. “Anything sensitive is either in my computer behind several passwords or it’s in the plant manager’s office. The master key doesn’t even open that office, only his key. We can put my desk wherever and it’ll be fine.”

“Let’s move the computer first,” Derek said. “Where do you want it?”

“In the control room, I guess,” Lyrica said. “That’s where I’m most likely to need it at the moment.”

“Sam, you get the monitor and I’ll get the CPU. Lyrica, can you get the various cords? You can set it all back up in there while we move furniture, right?”

“Yes, I can set up my own computer,” Lyrica said, her voice betraying exasperated good humor. “I’m not helpless or stupid.”

“I’m sorry,” Derek apologized immediately. “I didn’t mean to imply you were, but I work with some brilliant people at NASA who can use a computer to do anything you could possibly want but haven’t the slightest idea how to deal with a loose cord. IQ over 150 and not enough common sense to fill a thimble. I stopped assuming people could do something just because they should be able to do it a long time ago.”

“Apology accepted,” Lyrica said. “Just don’t do it again.”

They unplugged her computer and moved it into the control room. Derek and Sambit left her to set it back up, and returned to her office. “I think if we pull it out into the hall, we can push it against the wall and it won’t block the emergency exit,” Derek said. “What do you think?”

Sambit took a rough measure of the desk with his hands and started back out the door into the hallway. Derek moved just enough that Sambit could get by, but not so much that their bodies didn’t brush. Sambit shot him a sharp look, but Derek just smiled innocently and shifted so Sambit would have even less space to get back into the office when he was done.

“What are you doing?” Sambit asked, trying to push past Derek.

“Getting close to you,” Derek replied, pinning Sambit momentarily. “I’ll need a shower when we’re done moving furniture. Want to join me?”

“I’ll take one when you’re done,” Sambit said primly.

“Where’s the fun in that?” Derek asked. “Come on, Sam. Live a little.”

“It’s Sambit, and I live plenty. Just because I’m not jumping at the chance to jump you doesn’t mean I’m not living.”

“I just call it the way I see it,” Derek said, stepping back and letting Sambit into the office. His body protested the lack of contact, but he ignored it. He wouldn’t gain any ground by pressing the matter now, and if he bided his time, Sambit would get used to his advances and shrug instead of rejecting them. Then he could pounce.

“I think the desk will fit in the hallway,” Sambit said, completely ignoring Derek’s attempts at flirting.

Derek moved to one side of the desk, lifting it experimentally to see how heavy it was. “There’s no way we can move this without taking the drawers out. I can barely lift it, much less carry it.”