Mammoth

They had been walking down wide, tall, brightly lit corridors, more than big enough to accommodate a herd of elephants, which was exactly what they were for. A few zigs and a couple of zags that Matt had paid little attention to, a few doors that had opened to a key card Susan carried on a chain attached to a belt loop, and now they were in a very large open room with almost no light at all. Large shapes loomed around them. Susan took a flashlight from a hip pocket and clicked it on, then swept it around the room. The first thing the flashlight beam encountered was a full-grown giant ground sloth, rearing twenty feet above them, standing absolutely still. The thing was missing its left arm at the elbow, and from there to the shoulder the bare metal of gears and tubing of hydraulics stuck out.

"Howard has the biggest toys of anybody on the block, that's for sure," Matt whispered back. She giggled, and it delighted him inordinately that he had made her laugh. How many times in the last few years had he had to simply put out of his mind all the little things he loved about her? That, or go crazy. Now, if they could pull off this thing, maybe they could be together forever.

Or serve separate prison terms.

No use thinking like that. He followed her down winding paths between mechanical prehistoric beasts and was amazed, first, at how many of them there were, and second, how many were in for repairs or maintenance. Getting a colossus like a mechanical mammoth to walk realistically, something a baby mammoth could do within an hour of birth, was still a challenging problem in cybernetics and robotics. Howard's tech people were the best in the world, except maybe for the loyal old guard he hadn't been able to hire away from Disney, but there was a lot to go wrong.

Susan led him through the creatures. Matt was taken back to a trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York when he was very young. Many of the rooms had held massive skeletons, but newer ones had lifelike mock-ups made of rubber and plastic and fake fur, many of which moved their heads or opened their mouths. Very primitive stuff, compared to this, but an unforgettable experience for a child. They reached a second set of doors and Susan's flashlight revealed a prominent sign on it:

NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT "E" CLEARANCE

"Research and development," Susan said. She carded the door and turned the handle, which opened easily with no alarm.

"You're an E clearance, obviously," Matt said.

"Wouldn't have done me any good if Jack wasn't working with me. Somebody else would have noticed this door was being opened, but Jack should be covering that. Did you know that when Disneyland opened, you bought ticket books, and the E tickets were for the best rides?"

"Really?"

"Howard enjoys touches like that. Come on."

They entered the R&D facility, which was as dark and deserted as the repair shop. All they needed to have the thing blow up in their faces was some nerd working late, but Susan said it wasn't a problem, and he supposed the mysterious Jack knew the whereabouts of anyone with access to this room. The first thing he saw in the flashlight beam was Fuzzy. The second thing he saw was another Fuzzy. They could be identical twins. Just beyond them was a third mechanical mammoth, the same size and shape but naked, like an elephant, and with a service hatch in its side open. And just beyond that was another automaton with no skin, just metal bones and wires and a maze of tubes.

THERE was no turning back now, Jack knew. He had taken steps that he could conceal for some hours, but not forever. A record of his actions would be stored somewhere in computer memory, and he had no idea where, or how to get at it, or how to alter it, if it could be altered at all. He supposed a computer genius could do it, given enough time, but maybe not. Because, of course, one of the biggest weaknesses of any security system was the watchers themselves. They had to be watched, and at Fuzzyland that was done, as in Las Vegas, by the computers. And Jack Elk, though one of the best in the business at operating top-of-the-line security systems, was no computer genius at all.

When the call had gone out over the underground network for a sympathizer with experience and, most importantly, spotless credentials in his particular field, it would have been too much to hope for that the person they turned up would have any hacking skills. Susan had felt incredibly lucky to find any such man at all, and twice blessed to see by his resume that he was one of the tops in his field. Such men were much in demand, and when he quit his job as shift manager of the Eyes-in-the-Sky team (known to the dealers as the Fink Squad) at the Mirage and moved to Oregon, the Fuzzyland chief of security was happy to get him, and started him off, as per union seniority rules, on the night shift, which was just where he needed to be. He quickly learned the system and settled in peacefully.

Meanwhile, the network was searched for a man who didn't have to be anywhere near as clean as Jack Elk, and who was a first-rate computer genius. That man was located (and turned out to be a woman, though Jack would never know that), and given the problem of getting into the Fuzzyland security computers.

Jack spent the next months carrying a credit card-sized digicam in his pocket, snapping pictures of the layout as well as the inputs and outputs and, wherever possible, the internal wiring of the security system. He wrote down the manufacturer and model number of every piece of equipment he could get close to. He took his time, never took chances. He sent the results through the U.S. Mail and a few weeks later got back a two-inch square clear plastic chip and detailed instructions about what to do with it. A week later, in the wee-est of the wee hours of the morning, he plugged the chip into the machine where he had been told to plug it in. A red light flashed briefly on his panel, then quickly went out. He waited one minute, then removed the crystal memory chip, pocketed it, and on the way home put it in an envelope and dropped it in the first mailbox he passed on his way home as eagerly as he would have rid himself of a pound of plutonium.

Then he sat back and waited, doing his job.

Several things could have happened next.

The presence of the tiny spy could have been detected, though it was supposed to protect itself against that. In that case there would have been an investigation which may or may not have led back to Jack Elk. If it did, he would have been quietly dismissed. Nobody noises it around that there has been an attempted breach of their security.

The third possibility was what had actually happened. He received in the mail a small parcel with nine two-inch plastic cards exactly like the one he had plugged in before, which had explored the system and diagnosed the proper course of action. Each card was clearly numbered with a grease pencil, one through nine. With it was a short list of instructions, telling him where to remove the appropriate recording cards and plug in the new ones. When the operation has been accomplished, said the last part of the printed instructions, replace these cards with the originals, and there will be no evidence left in the system of just what was done, or how.

At the bottom someone had written in cursive, with a pen, Piece of cake!

And now it was time.

He looked around the room, which had fifteen stations similar to his, which was raised and behind the others, as befitted a shift manager. All the stations faced a long wall with every inch covered in surveillance screens, able to display almost every camera in Fuzzyland at one time. The pictures were constantly changing. There was no earthly reason for such a thing, Jack knew, since each operator looked only at his own twenty-four screens, but display screens were cheap and it made impressive wallpaper to show off to big shots getting a behind-the-scenes tour. It looked like a Hollywood version of a high-security installation. People expected it.