“Right, we’ve arrived and we’re in position,” Corfe said. “I circled the block on the way, and it looks quiet. We’re going to connect through now.”
“Everything’s quiet here in the lab too. I guess everyone’s holidaying as we hoped. I’m coupled in, ready to go.”
“Fine. We’ll see you inside. Signing out.” Corfe looked across at Michelle. “Okay, let’s go.”
They climbed back between the seats to the rear section of the van. Corfe drew a curtain across the front and turned on the interior light to reveal banks of equipment and screens, two operator positions on one side, and one on the other, and a regular seat facing rearward behind the partition. He motioned Michelle into the station nearest the rear doors and moved himself into the one next to her. “There won’t be any need for you to couple in to begin with,” he said as he flipped switches and tapped keys to activate the equipment. “You can work in conjunction with Kevin from here. I’m patching the video from one of the mecs already in the office to that monitor up there.” He indicated one of the screens, then handed Michelle a regular telephone headset. “This carries Kev’s audio channel, so you can talk to him. This other screen will let you follow what I’m doing from the mec I’ll be controlling. I’ll be on the same audio circuit as you and Kev. Want to check it out?”
Michelle put the set on her head while Corfe was attaching his own coupler collar and headset. “Hello, Kevin? This is Michelle testing. Can you hear me? . . .” Moments later she nodded. “Yes, he’s there. We’re through.”
The inside of the van disappeared, and Corfe was in a colorful, cartoon-like visual world, facing a signboard showing a hierarchy of system menus and labeled boxes. He pointed at a diagnostic branch and ran a quick test of vision and motor functions, then entered audiosys to make the connections.
“Can you hear me, Michelle?” he checked.
“I’d hope so. You’re sitting right next to me.”
“I meant through the phones.”
“Yes. You’re okay.”
“Do you read, Kev?”
“Roger.”
“Okay. . . .”
And Corfe was in darkness, entombed in a clinging plastic shroud. He freed his arms, worked them up over his head, and with some wriggling and tugging opened the top of the bag. He pulled the folds low around him and stepped over them to emerge into a shadowy vault of looming shapes and rectangles that he recognized as the storage space below the worktop at the back of the secretaries’ area in Garsten’s office. There was more movement in the bag, and the second telebot-size mec appeared—similar to the one that Corfe was occupying, but with different accessories. Corfe held the folds of plastic aside while it emerged fully. “Everything okay, Kev?” he asked.
“Check,” Kevin’s voice said on the audio.
“Still with us, Michelle?”
“I’m here. The pictures on the two screens are coming through pretty clear too.”
“Good. Let’s start by getting everything laid out where we can see it, and do an inventory.”
Corfe walked to the edge of the cupboard’s wooden base and jumped down to the floor. Kevin followed, dragging the plastic bag, now relieved of its major load. The carpet was like a field of closely packed tussocks of coarse gray grass, making the going bumpy. They stepped up onto the skating rink of plastic mat behind the nearer of the two desks, and passed beneath an office chair, looming above them like a gigantic tree of tubes and girders. Here would be as good a place as any to establish base camp, Corfe decided.
They laid out the remaining contents of the bag and took stock. There were: a half-dozen specialized mecs, ranging in size from a quarter-inch, to one of the new Keyboard Emulator models that Corfe had described at Taki’s; a standard keyboard plug, with two feet of lightweight cable coiled like a hose; a miniaturized recharging unit with power cord; a selection of lines, pulleys, and attachment slings; assorted tools; a six-foot steel measuring tape.
The first thing, they had agreed, would be to get Kevin and Michelle working on the computer files while Corfe went off to look at entry points for the reinforcements. To operate the computer they would first have to plug in the KE mec, which required getting it up onto the desk. They stood looking up at it, towering over them like a hangar for zeppelins. There was no quick way up. They already knew that, of course.