This woman did not approach the floor, but withdrew from it, leaning back among the shadows that had hidden her thus far. She did not want to talk to the men. Shed come to see Captain Sally, though the captain did not know it. Now that the fireworks were finished, this woman took her leave exactly as shed arrived: in silence and darkness, with a widows veil to hide the smile that spread coldly across her face.
But she had not gone unnoticed or unrecognized.
In the back row, seated beside the stenographer, a man collected his belongings, sorting his papers and straightening them before slipping them into a satchel, as if he were any other clerk wrapping up his business.
He was no clerk. Nor was he a congressman, senator, or any other party to the CSA.
As he retreated from the seat hed borrowed from an absent legislator, he mentally composed the telegram hed send within the hour.
KATHARINE HAYMES IN DANVILLE STOP PLEASE ADVISE
One
A second window broke upstairs.
He rejected the reflex to look up at the basement door. Looking at the basement door would not tell him anything he did not already knownothing he could not discern from the sounds of motion upstairs. Two intruders, at least. Entering from the western side of the building. Not close yet; not even in the correct wing of the disused
hospital space. But coming.
He had time, but not much.
Gideon reached for a large glass knob and turned it carefully, but as quickly as he dared. He checked the dial again. Its needle careened farther to the right, fully in the red, but fairly stable. The lever on the left would activate the printing apparatus upstairs. He pulled it.
He needed an answer, and he needed it now.
The mighty computational engine strained and hummed, its gears and chains struggling against the request. At the rear a fuse fizzled and popped, but did not blow; a circuit objected with a fit of sparks, but held steady; a row of lights flickered, but did not go out.
Now Gideon looked up at the basement door. He stared at it. Hard. And he willed the system to work the way he told it toplease, just this once , if never again.
Three seconds passed. He knew because he counted.
Click.
Whir.
A blue-green glow sparked to life on the machine as a thin line of watery light pooled through the crack where the bottom of the door met the top stair.
Yes, Gideon breathed, but he did not smile. Turning on the apparatus was not the hard part. It was the first hard part.
The printer was far too large to share the basement with its companion device, which occupied two-thirds of the downstairs floor space. Ordinarily this was a source of great irritation for Gideon, who wouldve been much happier to have everything in one room, or at least on one level, preferably at a quarter of the present size. But just this once, it was a good thing.
So long as everything worked. And sometimes, it didnt.
The lines, wires, tubes, and lumpily soldered joints that connected the two machines were strung through holes in the ceiling and floor, carrying more information at a greater speed than any such wires were ever expected to bear. They twitched, sparked, and jerked as electricity surged from the master device, depositing Gideons answer into the printers circuits, where the information sorted and arranged itself.
And then the printing apparatus began to translate the electric and magnetic impulses from the mechanical brain in the basement onto paper.
The nimble, spindly lead keys clacked slowly at first as rows upon rows of them rallied for the task, pressed themselves against ribbons of ink, and banged down on the paper receipt with sticky gravitas. Then the rhythm rose in volume, the noise soaring into something loud and rumbling, like the gravelly grunt of a diesel engine.
A tremendous roll of paper, bought from the Washington Star-News, unspooled within the printers belly. The apparatus dutifully pressed its message on the newsprint, and through a slot that emptied into a basket it spit out paper covered with whatever the brain downstairs commanded.
He grabbed his grandfathers coat off the back of a chair he never had time to sit in, and donned it with a fast hitch of his shoulders. He also seized a cast bronze plaque created as a gift by former president Abraham Lincolnnot for sentimental reasons or because the plaque was as valuable as the coat, but because it praised and identified Gideons greatest creation.
A series of heavy blows battered the door to the laboratory upstairs, but Gideon was finally smiling. He already had a planplans were never the problem. Time to execute them was more often the difficulty.
He dashed up the stairs in a hurried tiptoe that muffled his steps, opening the basement door with care to keep it from squeaking.
Whoever was trying to get inside through the reinforced main door had discovered his folly, or so the scientist assumed. That particular portal was lined with lead, and fastened to the wall with hinges made to hold a firehouse door.