Kingdom Keepers V(111)

Her mind was supposed to be on locating the crate and determining its contents. Instead, she was thinking how smart Philby had been to tell her to change into the Cast Member costume of shorts and polo shirt before going to sleep. Where Finn was a boy with the big ideas, Philby was the one with the picky little suggestions that turned into practical solutions. Why had no one brought up Philby’s slipping away from the four of them? Why had she kissed Finn? It was going to ruin everything. Who was she supposed to talk to about it?

She spotted a security camera on the wall up ahead. She waved into it and gave a thumbs-up, hoping he might be smiling back at her from wherever he was watching. But then things grew darker as she passed the stairway he’d described. Darker still as she stepped into the wings of stage left. Then her head split in two.

In her left ear, the sound of panting.

In her right, voices.

From the overhead stage lights came a burst of red light. Then blackness. A warning from Philby? she wondered. Or someone fooling with the lights? Trusting Philby, she made herself solid, stepped into one of the side curtains, and twisted inside it as if wrapping herself in a towel, leaving enough of a crack to see out.

Two people in a hurry—girls, not women, she thought—appeared downstage, disappearing behind other curtains. A moment later, the panting grew louder, and two awkward-looking dogs followed on their heels, also disappearing back there. Not dogs, she realized: hyenas.

Avoiding the hyenas, she headed for the stairs, following the voices. Men’s voices bubbled up from down there. The presence of the hyenas made her believe she was on the right track. They’d been used on Deck 4 as patrol dogs. Here, they had to be guarding the mystery crate. Why their apparent handlers had been running from them, she didn’t know. It had not looked like playing, but pursuit. Like so many other questions that arose from being a Keeper, she couldn’t explain what she’d seen and didn’t have time to think about it. Survival depended on having her full senses at her disposal; she could ill afford distraction.

The metal stairs were as steep as a ladder, with a handrail for balance. She arrived to the bottom landing careful to keep herself in full hologram, expertly in control of her emotions, using 2.0’s enhancements to push back the potential effects of her fear.

Like Finn and Willa, Charlene had perfected her ability to compartmentalize her anxiety, so that now, as she entered a dark and narrow companionway, she remained analytical and calm. A lighted doorway ahead on her left proved the source of the voices.

She peered around the edge into a surprisingly large area, its walls and ceiling crawling with pipes and wires. It looked like a room in her school’s basement, a place only janitors went. There were Day-Glo orange caution triangles on the walls and yellow hash marks on the floor designating safety areas. It was not just pipes and wires on the ceiling, but rubber tubes—hydraulics. And now she realized the heavy, gated platform at the far end was an elevator of some kind. They were below the main stage; it and three smaller lifts serviced trapdoors in the stage overhead. Large props and actors could come and go through the floor during a show. This in turn explained all the safety warnings.

There on the center lift stood the wooden crate like an obelisk around which several workmen were gathered. They appeared neither concerned nor excited; if anything, they teetered on the edge of boredom. It occurred to Charlene that either they didn’t know what was in there, or whatever was in there was not that big a deal.

She summoned her courage, took a deep breath, and entered the room.

“Everything go okay here?” she asked one of the men in the blue coveralls.

The man leaned back on the inverted plastic tub he used for a stool and waved his hand. “Not a problem.” He was Indonesian or Indian with a thick, singsongy voice. “Our straps are not of the proper length. We could double them up, but the commodore said it is not regulation. There may be some in galley storage. If not, we are to use regular lines. Not a problem.”

She strode up and circled the crate, her senses on full alert. Philby would want to know everything. Its corners were screwed shut, not nailed. The plywood was thick, though new. It still held the sweet pine smell of freshly sawed lumber. The holes cut into its top and bottom were covered with a fine black mesh. From within came the heavy sound of a creature breathing. There was a cluster of four bolts on opposite ends of the crate’s narrower sides. If structural, they represented two ends of a bar, suggesting whatever was inside was heavy. It would take a beast to break the lumber apart.

A beast, she thought. In darkness. A bar across the top.