The cat.
The cat’s body had essentially been cut off from its brain, but the brain was still alive.
And he’d actually seen Amy’s body, with the brain missing from her skull.
Josh nearly jumped off the bed when he heard a soft tap at the door, followed by Hildie Kramer’s voice. “Josh? It’s Hildie. May I come in?”
Josh’s mind raced. What should he do? Should he ask her all the questions that were suddenly churning through his mind? But what if she knew what had happened to Amy?
What if she’d helped Dr. Engersol?
He had to pretend he hadn’t figured out anything at all! If she knew what he was thinking …
He got off the bed and went to the door, opening it a crack. Hildie, her eyes looking worried, reached out to push the door farther open. “Are you all right, Josh?”
Josh, shaking his head, took a step backward from the door, letting Hildie come into the room.
“I–I just don’t feel very good, that’s all,” he said, his voice faltering under the housemother’s gaze.
“Of course you don’t,” Hildie said in her most soothing tones. “And I know how you must feel right now. Amy was one of your best friends, wasn’t she?”
Josh nodded, saying nothing, but his eyes remained fixed on Hildie. Why had she come up to see him? Was she really just worried about him, or was it something else?
“I thought you might want to talk about it a little,” Hildie explained, seating herself on the bed and patting the spot next to her in an invitation for Josh to join her. “Finding her like that was a terrible thing to have happen to you.”
Josh stayed where he was. “I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just — it’s just hard to get used to Amy being dead.”
Hildie nodded sympathetically. “And I guess we didn’t really know Mr. Conners very well, did we?”
Josh hesitated, then managed to shake his head. “I guess he was just being nice to me so Amy would trust him.” Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Hildie’s reaction to the words he’d made himself say.
Was it only his imagination, or did she seem to smile just a little bit?
“It’s terrible,” Hildie sighed. “But things like that happen sometimes.”
“But Amy—”
“Amy was a wonderful little girl,” Hildie said. “We all loved her, and none of us will ever forget her.” She hesitated just a moment, then looked deep into Josh’s eyes. “Have you called your mother yet?”
Josh shook his head.
“Wouldn’t you like to?” Hildie asked.
Josh took a deep breath. “I–I don’t know,” he stammered. “I’m afraid if I tell her what happened, she might make me go home.”
“And you don’t want to go home?”
Josh shook his head again. “I want to stay here,” he said. “I like it here.”
Hildie held her arms out. “And I like having you here,” she declared. “And I think maybe you could use a hug right now.” She smiled at him. “I certainly know I could, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have it from than you.”
Josh felt another icy chill of fear go through him.
She was lying.
There was something in her voice, or her eyes, that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
She didn’t want a hug at all. She just wanted him to think she did.
But why?
And then, in an instant, he knew. What she really wanted was to find out if he’d actually give her a hug, or if he was already so suspicious of her that he’d avoid it.
Forcing tears to come into his eyes, he made himself run to Hildie Kramer and throw his arms around her neck. As her own arms closed around him, a shudder ran through his body, but it wasn’t a shudder of grief for Amy Carlson at all.
It was a shudder of fear for what Hildie Kramer might have done to her.
And might do to him, too, if she knew what he suspected.
That night, long after he should have been asleep, Josh MacCallum was at his computer.
All evening he’d been thinking about the idea that had come to him in the minutes before Hildie suddenly appeared at his door. The more he thought about it, the more the idea grew in his mind.
If he was right, then somewhere, buried deep in the computers that were all over the campus, there would be files that were used to keep Adam’s brain — and Amy’s, too — alive, despite the fact that their bodies were dead.
All he had to do was find them.
But how?
His eyes fell on the virtual reality apparatus that had been issued to him when the new computer had been installed in his room the day he’d enrolled in the artificial intelligence seminar.
The same apparatus that Adam Aldrich had been so interested in.
Could he somehow use it to search the files of the computers?
He began setting it up, using his modem to tap into the large mainframe that was housed in the A. I. lab in the new wing next door. He called up the directories of the various virtual reality programs that were stored there, and studied the list.
The third one from the bottom caught his eye.
“Microchip.”
What could that be? Some kind of trip inside the computer?
Or maybe not a trip. Maybe a new way of operating the computer!
His pulse quickening, Josh began running the program, then put on the virtual reality mask, headphone, and glove.
A strange world opened before his eyes, a world composed of shimmering images of strange mazelike corridors. Josh felt as though he’d been dropped into the middle of the maze. Everywhere he looked, paths led away from him, paths that led into other paths, interconnecting, crisscrossing, twisting around each other in a pattern far too complex for him to understand.
He turned his head, and the illusion of changing his perspective within the maze was perfect. And yet in every direction there were only more paths, more turns of the maze.
He reached out with his gloved hand. On the screen, only inches from his eyes, another hand appeared, a hand that seemed to react as if it were his own. Now he could touch the walls of the maze.
He moved his hand close to one of the surfaces. As it approached the shimmering wall, he felt a tingling, as if a charge of electricity had run through him.
Something changed, and the pattern of pathways before him shifted.
He touched another wall, and everything shifted again.
Switches.
Everything he touched was a switch, and every switch he touched caused a series of changes to take place.
It was like the interior of a computer chip, where masses of information were stored in digital form, accessed, arranged, and rearranged by nothing more than millions and millions of electronic switches.
He began exploring the maze, touching his fingers first to one wall, then to another. With every touch, the pattern changed once again, but after a while Josh began to see a form to the pattern, began to find ways to make the patterns repeat themselves.
Then, from behind him, he heard a voice.
Jeff Aldrich’s voice.
Josh spun around, forgetting the mask in his shock at hearing Jeff’s voice, expecting to see Jeff standing at the door of his room.
But what he saw was more of the electronic maze that seemed to spread away to infinity all around him.
