Kingdom Keepers V(81)

“Yeah, right. That’s why you look so familiar.”

“I get that a lot.”

“Why do you know so much about sabotage?”

“I watch too much TV.”

“A funny guy, huh?”

“Not as often as I’d like,” Maybeck said. “I’m hoping to move off trash duty and onto the Walt Disney Theatre stage. I’d like to do stand-up.”

“Why do I get the sense that you haven’t given me a straight answer since we met?”

“I’m a man of mystery,” said Maybeck.

“I have to get back and report this.”

“If it’s not part of the fireworks, what then?”

Tim considered the possibility long and hard. He finally spoke. “Then we’ve got trouble.”

* * *

The ship’s corridors and public spaces were ghostly with so few passengers aboard. The stewards were about the only people in the long corridors that accessed the hundreds of staterooms on each level. They moved along with bundles of fresh linens in their arms and smiles on their faces. Philby said hello to several on his way to the central stairs. He reached the Radio Studio and used his key card to enter. It took him only a matter of minutes to send a signal to the DHI server, the timer set.

It was something of a risk to take: crossing over with no backup to help him return. But Finn’s contact, Storey Ming, had explained her discovery. He knew his earlier instincts were correct: now was the time to act.

She had uncovered two staterooms that currently had Do Not Disturb signs on their doors and had teenage boys registered among the occupants. Philby felt sidetracked by this pursuit of Finn’s—he wanted to check out the ship’s refrigerators while the kitchen staff was lighter because of the cooking being done on the island.

But the Keepers were all for one and one for all; he wasn’t going to break that vow. Not now.

Finn wanted to identify the “football type” who had failed to appear in the photograph taken outside. Philby could not deny his own curiosity: it reeked of a possible hologram. And if a hologram, an OTK.

He met up again with Storey outside the gated entry to the Deck 11 staterooms.

“All set?” she asked.

“Yes. I think so. I’m going to lie down now,” he explained. “Wait for me outside the break room. I’ll need you to stand guard.”

“No problem,” she said.

Thirty minutes later, a boy appeared in the empty break room. Philby reached out and touched the leg of a table. He loved 2.0.

As he opened the door into the companionway, there was Storey. She hurried over to him.

“You look totally real.”

“I am real,” he said. “I just happen to be a hologram.”

“Can I touch you?”

“I don’t do tricks,” he said. “But you can try once we’re alone in the elevator.”

Soon after, the elevator doors closed behind them. She reached for Philby, her hand passing through his.

“I still can’t…How exactly do you…”

“Pretty cool, isn’t it?” he said.

“My hand passed through you, and yet you pushed the button for six.”

“Correct. That’s life as a DHI.”

The doors opened.

Storey led the way down the port side companionway that ran nearly the entire length of the ship. More than eight hundred feet of hallway—almost three football fields long. They passed several grinning stewards hard at work and reached the first of the two staterooms she’d identified.

“If someone’s coming, knock,” he said.

“Then what?”

“Move one stateroom forward. Stand where you can screen me coming through. I’ll join you.”

“Shouldn’t we at least knock or something before you go in there?”

“Do Not Disturb,” he reminded.

“You want the element of surprise.”

“Don’t ditch me,” he said, stepping up to and through the door like some kind of ghost.

Inside the room, the drapes were pulled, limiting the light. Philby stepped forward cautiously. Door to the toilet. A second door to the sink and shower. Sliding doors of the closet to his right. He didn’t need to wait for his eyes to adjust. As a digital projection, all such adjustments came at the speed of light. The 2.0 update increased optical and audio sensitivity up to eightfold. He was no German shepherd, but he could see and hear more clearly and at a greater distance than any human being.

He sensed and saw a boy asleep on the fold-down bunk bed across from the couch a fraction of a second before he picked up on the woman dozed off on the stateroom’s queen bed. Leaning back, she’d dropped an e-book into her lap.

The scenario that presented itself had nothing to do with Overtakers. A sick boy, his mother keeping a close eye on him. Furthermore, from what Philby could see, the boy hardly looked the football type. He was more like twelve than fifteen—far more likely a figure skater than a fullback.