I snorted. “No, but if that works, I say we turn around and go join CLAD because I don’t think I want be associated with an organization that has that kind of security.”
I keyed in the 2, 3, and 4, then we both looked over at the water, hoping it was about to start bubbling as the bridge rose to the surface, but definitely also hoping it wasn’t.
It didn’t.
“Score one for Chimerica,” I said under my breath. Then I looked up at Rex. “One-one-one-one?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know if that would be all that much better.”
“Whatever the password is, if we guess it, someone needs to be fired,” I said as I keyed in the digits.
We looked over again, but again nothing happened.
“What now?” Rex asked.
“I don’t know. There’s a good chance it’ll lock us out if we get it wrong a third time.” I was still soaking wet, but I didn’t relish the idea of swimming across to the other side.
“Right. So having come to it, maybe we won’t be crossing this bridge after all.”
I screwed up my face at him, then kneeled down and studied the keys up close. “The three is smudged,” I said.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning it’s been pressed a lot. Meaning it’s probably part of the password.”
He knelt down beside me. “Good thinking. Any of the others?”
Several of the others had smudges on them, but none were as pronounced as the 3. “I don’t know,” I said. “Could be. Not as much though.”
“Maybe it’s three-three-three-three.”
“Could be. Should we try it?”
He shrugged and looked around. “What else are we going to do?”
I pressed the 3 once, twice, three times, and as I was about to press it again, a voice came across the water: “Stop!”
We turned and saw Sly standing where the road emerged from the water on the other side. “See?” he yelled. “This is what I get for not making you two ride in the back.” He went over to the pylon next to the road and pressed a few buttons. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
The bay started to bubble, and over the sound of gurgling water, I shouted back, “We need to talk.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
Where’s Dymphna?” I asked as we got out of the truck.
“She’s gone,” Sly said as he entered the code and the bridge sank once more under the water.
“Gone?” I said.
“Let’s go inside.” He motioned for us to precede him up the steps. As we approached the house, I saw a large box truck parked on the far side. I hated the thought of driving something so big and top-heavy down that narrow road. “She’s gone because she’s a genius and she knew that since I hadn’t insisted that you two ride in the back of the van, there was a chance you would come back. And a chance you’d be followed. We couldn’t risk her being here if that happened.”
The inside of the house was clean and seemed mold free. The windows were intact, and there were lots of them: north and south looking out onto the bay; west looking back at the salt marsh; and east, across the bay toward the barrier island that separated it from the ocean.
It was unfurnished, apart from a bedroll in the corner and a trio of folding chairs in front of a bank of windows.
Sly turned one around so it was facing the others and sat in it, gesturing for Rex and me to sit, as well.
I sat, and the chair creaked ominously under me.
Rex laughed. “Seems like a nice little chair. I think I’ll spare us both the embarrassment of flattening it.” He leaned against the wall and slid to a seated position on the floor.
Sly leaned forward and looked at him with his eyebrows raised. Rex turned to me and said, “You tell him.”
It took me ten minutes to explain what had happened the night before, what we had observed that morning, how we had put all those things together, and what we thought about it. Sly interrupted me once: when I first said, “Roberta,” he said, “Roberta? Ugh. What the hell was she doing there?” I found that extremely gratifying.
Other than that, he just listened, taking it all in. When I finished, he sat back in his chair, nodding slowly. “Huh,” he said. “So, what do you think we should do about it?”
“I think we need to find out what it means, for sure. I thought Chimerica would be interested in looking into it.”
He nodded again. “Yeah…okay. It sounds weird, but it’s probably nothing.”
“Probably nothing?” I said, annoyed at being dismissed so readily. “If that chicken carcass made those people sick, they could be out in the world making other people sick right now.”
Sly seemed to be making a point of not looking at me. “Well, it sure would help if we could get hold of that carcass you think made those people sick. So we could see what it’s infected with.”
“I tried to get it, but Ogden took it and said CLAD would test it. I assumed Chimerica would be better able to do that, right?
“Are you kidding? Absolutely. That’s Dymphna’s specialty. Or one of them.” He shrugged. “Well, I guess let’s see what CLAD comes back with and then we’ll have a better idea of what we should do next.”
“If that thing is infectious, if it did make those H4Hers sick, it could be spreading as we speak,” I said. “We need to tell someone, whether or we have the bird or not, right?”
“Um…sure,” he said.
I glanced at Rex and then back at Sly. “You don’t sound very sure.”
“No, no, it’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“No, you’re right,” he said. “I’ll tell my superiors.”
“By your superiors, do you mean Dymphna?”
“No.” He laughed. “I’m just kind of her local point person, while she’s in the area. I’ve worked my way up a little, but there’s a few levels between me and the governing council.”
Rex nodded, like he understood the hierarchy. I didn’t—and I didn’t laugh, either. “Right,” I said, “but maybe we could tell her about it anyway.”
“Yeah, okay,” Sly said. “I’ll see what I can do. And you’ll let me know what you hear from this Ogden guy. When are you going to talk to him?”
I looked at Rex. “I guess we’ll head over there now.”
He nodded again, then turned to Sly. “Are you going to be here later?”
“Nah. I’m headed back to the city, to New Ground. I need to talk to Jerry.”
As Sly walked us back out to the truck, he said, “You mentioned to Dymphna that Ogden said CLAD has some kind of plan to bring down the Wellplant network?”
“Yeah,” I said. “But I think he was just blowing smoke, trying to make himself and CLAD seem important.”
Sly shrugged. “Maybe. But if you can find out anything more about that, Dymphna wants to know.”
“Okay.”
He went over to the keypad and started keying in numbers. “Three-three-one-three, by the way,” he said.
“So now you trust us?” I said, as the bridge once again rose to the surface.