The Forbidden Fortress Read online

  “So then A would be twelve and B would be twenty-one,” I pointed out.

  “Exactly. Or you could do the alphabet backward or skip all the vowels or whatever. The possibilities are endless, as long as the other person knows—or can guess—the keyword.”

  Suddenly, I understood why Howard had been up all night with this book. Though he still hadn’t answered my question. “So how did you figure out who the book was from?”

  “By breaking the coded inscription in the front.” He flipped to the very first page of the book, and again I saw the square of numbers from last night. Underneath, in Howard’s messy hand, was the translation.

  “The hard part,” he said, “was figuring out the keyword. I had to try several. Of course, I should have guessed the keyword was ‘Omega,’ because . . .”

  But I had stopped listening, because the answer was right in front of me:

  Greetings, Howard Noland. I believe this will soon be useful to you. Good luck. Dr. Aloysius Underberg.

  5

  WELCOME TO GUIDANT

  THE BOOK WAS FROM DR. UNDERBERG! I ALMOST SHOUTED, I TOLD YOU so! to Eric, all the way up front. But the rest of the message baffled me. What did he mean, this would be useful?

  Howard was still speaking. “. . . I tried ‘birth,’ of course, since it was a birthday present. And ‘gift.’ But then I thought maybe this had something to do with the puzzle I solved that led to Omega City. You know, the one from Dr. Underberg’s treasure map.”

  As if I could forget. “Why didn’t you tell me this was from Dr. Underberg?” I asked.

  Howard shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

  I sighed. Sometimes, he was really impossible. “Okay. So how did you eventually break the code?”

  He shoved the pad under my nose. “I tried ‘Omega.’ See?”

  Don’t get me wrong; I was impressed by Howard’s work, but I was much more interested in knowing how Dr. Underberg had given him the book . . . and why. Was he suddenly going to start pelting us with coded messages from . . . well, wherever in outer space he’d gone to?

  No, he must have landed, sometime, somewhere. And if he had, that meant he was safe. No matter what Eric thought, that was still important to me.

  This made perfect sense. After all, the Shepherds were still out there, so of course Dr. Underberg would want to stay in hiding. Maybe he planned to communicate with us through code.

  I believe this will soon be useful . . . Maybe he could tell us what he wanted us to do with the battery! Of course! We were the ones he trusted, not Guidant. Not even Dad.

  Howard was now talking about Playfair ciphers and the difference between those and something called a straddling checkerboard. I stopped him in the middle of a whole explanation on fractionation. Apparently, if I didn’t ask, he wasn’t going to volunteer the information. “Are there any other messages from him in the book?”

  “Yes,” he said. “He starred certain chapters.”

  “What’s in those chapters?”

  Howard shrugged. “Well, I haven’t read them all yet. I always read in order.”

  Of course. “Well, um . . . can I see what he marked? Real quick?”

  Howard considered this. “Okay. But give it right back. I’ve just gotten to the chapter on ‘Key Development and Authentication.’”

  I nodded, and he handed over the book. As I checked out the table of contents, I noted that “Key Development and Authentication” was also starred. In fact, most of the starred chapters seemed to be about ciphers and keys. The stars fell off considerably after that, but I saw a few more toward the end, in the section entitled Applied Cryptology.

  “What are ‘Secret Broadcasts and Numbers Stations’?” I asked, reading.

  He snatched back the book. “I’ll let you know when I get to that part.”

  Nate looked over his shoulder and laughed. “No one tells my brother how to read a book.”

  I tried to look over at what Howard was reading, but he curled his arm protectively around the page and I gave up, sitting back and looking out the window as the green summer landscape flashed by. Okay. Howard read fast and he’d already broken one of the codes—I could wait until he figured out what Dr. Underberg was trying to tell us.

  I hoped it was something good.

  WE HAD TO unload the van when we arrived at the Guidant campus.

  The guard at the gate explained. “No gas-powered vehicles are allowed on campus, but we have a fleet of electric cars that will take you to your destination.” She waved us into a small parking garage whose roof was tiled with solar panels.

  “They really like their green energy around here,” Mom said as she parked. We grabbed our bags and walked back to the guard station.

  “I’ll need each of you to stand here,” the guard said after she took our names. She pointed at an X on the floor in front of a large computer screen. “State your name into the camera, and then press your hand against this pad.”

  Eric grinned at the camera. “Eric Seagret.” I saw the screen behind his head flash with an image of his face, what looked like a green imprint of his palm, and the waveform of his voice.

  We each took our turn giving our information to the machine.

  “You’re now ready to enter the campus,” the guard said, as she pressed the surface of her tablet. “Your handprint will serve as your digital key for your housing, entrance to the amenities, equipment rental, and transportation passes. You can also use it for all transactions—if you’re buying food, clothes, et cetera. Any questions?”

  “Yeah,” Eric said. “What do you do if you lose a hand?”

  “Don’t.” The guard smiled. “Actually, if we have handicapped guests or employees, we issue a key card. Does that answer your question, young man?”

  Eric said nothing.

  “There are six of you, so you’ll need two cars.” She pointed, and we headed over to where the Guidant vehicles stood waiting for us. They looked like normal, small silver cars . . . at least from the outside.

  “Um . . .” Nate looked into the driver’s-side window. “Where’s the steering wheel?”

  We all took a closer peek. Inside the car, where there was usually a steering column and gas and brake pedals, stood nothing.

  “Are they British?” Savannah asked, heading to the other side. “Like we have to drive on the right?” She looked at the passenger seat, but there was no wheel on that side, either.

  Nate climbed inside and pressed his hand against a panel where the steering column should have been.

  “Welcome, Nate Noland,” said a cheery woman’s voice. “Please state your destination.”

  “Cool!” Eric exclaimed. “It’s a self-driving car! Can I get in the driver’s seat? Please-please-please?”

  “Wait,” my mother said. “They drive . . . by themselves?”

  “Come on, Mom! Please?” Eric jumped up and down. He was clearly in heaven. All week long, he’d been gushing about the advanced technology at the Guidant campus, but I’d thought we’d just see stuff during our tour. I hadn’t realized we’d be using their inventions ourselves. All weekend.

  “If Nate doesn’t mind,” Mom said.

  “Knock yourself out,” said Nate, and climbed in the back. Eric hopped up front, and Howard took shotgun. It wasn’t until Savannah climbed in next to Nate that I realized my error.

  “Hey, guys?” Mom said. She was standing by the other car. “Who’s riding with me?”

  The others looked up at me from their seats. Uh-oh.

  “Coming,” I said flatly. So now all my friends were going in one car, and I was stuck with Mom. I shuffled over to the other car to find her already seated on the passenger side.

  “You can drive,” she said with a sly smile.

  I dumped my bag in the back and plopped down on the seat, pressing my hand against the panel.

  “Gillian Seagret,” the voice said, and even pronounced the G correctly. “Please state your destination.”

  Mom held up the d
irections Dad had emailed her.

  “Forty-five Galileo Lane,” I told the car. With a nearly inaudible hum, it started up, backed itself out of its parking space, and started off.

  “This is pretty neat,” Mom said, looking at the controls. “As long as I don’t put my foot through the floorboard. I wonder how it knows to brake.”

  The car cruised along at a comfortable clip, not too fast and not too slow. Sometimes it decelerated at intersections as other cars came across the road, and sometimes it surged forward. “They must know where all the other cars are, all the time,” I said.

  “I’ve read about these before,” Mom said, her grip on the door handle firm. “But I still can’t imagine how it’s safe.”

  I wanted to say, Maybe that’s because you’re a history professor and not an automotive engineer.

  Or, If you don’t think it’s safe, then what are we doing in one?

  Or, Actually, what are you doing here at all? No one invited you to talk about Omega City.

  But I didn’t say any of those things, because before I got a chance to, Mom spoke again.

  “So what were you and Howard so engrossed in during the drive out here?”

  “Oh, um, he was showing me how the codes in his book work.” I wondered if, in the other car, Howard was telling Eric how the book really was from Dr. Underberg, who seemed to be alive and well after all. Too bad I’d miss seeing the look on his face.

  “That sounds fun,” Mom replied. “Did he ever figure out who the book came from?”

  I looked down at my feet. Mom was right. It was weird to be sitting in a car with no steering column or gearbox. There was just so much space at our feet. “Actually, yes.” I looked up at her. “It was from Dr. Underberg.”

  Mom’s eyes widened. “Really? How do you know?”

  “The inscription in the front was a code, and Howard broke it.”

  Mom’s eyebrows furrowed. She looked so much like Eric when she did that. “But are you sure it was really him who wrote the coded message?”

  “I already thought it was him,” I said, “before Howard broke the code. I know his handwriting pretty well from helping Dad and then, last year, when we were in Omega City.”

  Mom took this in. “You should definitely tell your father. I know he’d love to speak to Dr. Underberg himself. He didn’t seem to think there was a chance he survived in the rocket ship, but if he’s gone into hiding again . . .” Mom shook her head. “This is all so incredible.”

  That wasn’t the only thing that was incredible. “How do you know Dad doesn’t think Dr. Underberg survived?”

  She looked up at me, blinking in confusion. “I figured if your dad thought he was alive, he never would have published the book without interviewing him. But there’s nothing from Underberg in the book.”

  Mom had read The Forgotten Fortress?

  We’d started to pass buildings, shops, and houses. From what I’d read about the campus, I knew that the people who worked for Guidant brought their families to live here full-time. They did their shopping here, and the kids attended Guidant’s state-of-the-art charter schools. The campus had gyms and sports centers and dance studios and hair salons and restaurants. It was like a little town, all built for the company and the people who lived and worked inside. I looked out the window to see the other car keeping pace with ours. Eric pressed his nose against the glass and made a face at us as their car sped by while ours slowed at the intersection.

  “Hmm,” Mom said, watching them weave through the cars. “I wonder if they have theirs on some kind of daredevil setting. I wouldn’t put it past your brother.”

  “I didn’t know you’d read Dad’s book.” I toed at the pristine beige carpet under my feet. I thought she hated everything Dad did.

  “Of course I did,” Mom said. “It stars my children.” She reached her hand across the gulf between us. “And if and when he finishes the next one, I’ll read that, too, though the Shepherds are my least favorite people on the planet.”

  Huh. I’d never thought of it like that. When the Shepherds had destroyed Dad’s academic reputation, Mom’s had gone in the toilet as well. When the Shepherds had pretended a pipe had burst so they could flood the cottage and ruin Dad’s research . . . well, it had been Mom’s cottage then, too. When the Shepherds scared Dad so bad he took us all off grid, Mom had suffered just as much as the rest of us.

  “Though I don’t know,” she said now, staring off into the distance.

  “Don’t know what?” I pressed.

  “I don’t know if he’s really going to write it.”

  “Of course he is!” I said. Dad wasn’t going to back down just because it was hard to get people to talk to him about the Shepherds. Nothing had stopped him last time. Not losing his job, not losing Mom . . .

  She shrugged. “It’s none of my business. Not anymore—at least, not unless it puts you kids in danger. But I think it’s strange. Someone came after your father for writing about Dr. Underberg. That we know. But now Sam—your dad—has published a whole book on Omega City, and no one has gone after him for it. It makes me wonder . . .” She cast me a sidelong glance. “Maybe the Shepherds didn’t care about the discovery of Omega City. Maybe what they were afraid of him finding out was something else entirely.”

  I sat back in my seat, stunned. As much as I hated to admit it, Mom had a point. Whoever it was who’d destroyed my father’s reputation after he wrote the Underberg book had been ruthless. Efficient. Relentless. But now that Dad supposedly knew who they were, shouldn’t they be threatening us even more?

  “Either way, I’ll sleep better at night knowing we’re under the same roof again.”

  I scowled.

  “I know how hard last year was for you, Gillian. It was hard for me, too. That’s why I think it’s so important that we’re all together in Idaho this fall. I’ve missed you and Eric so much. And your dad thinks it’s only fair I get time with you, too.”

  Yeah, but then who would get time with Dad? Who would help him unmask the Shepherds, once and for all? My eyes started to sting, so I turned away and looked out the window again before I did anything as stupid as crying. Mom was the one who’d walked out. She couldn’t just act like she deserved to walk right back in and pick up where she left off.

  “Oh, sweetie . . .” Her hand ghosted against my hair, then vanished as the car slowed and I saw Dad standing in the driveway of the town house, waving wildly to us.

  “You may now exit the vehicle,” said the car, but I didn’t need any prompting as I launched myself from my seat and catapulted into Dad’s arms. I felt him squeezing me into a hug against his button-down, breathed in his familiar scent, and knew I was finally home.

  6

  PLAY THE GAME

  I’D THOUGHT WE’D BE STAYING IN HOTEL ROOMS, BUT THIS WAS MORE like a mansion. Dad called it a “visitor home,” and it had three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen, dining room—and it all looked like a futuristic movie set. Every appliance was brand-new and brimming with crazy technology.

  The refrigerator kept track of what you put in it and took out of it, and warned you if you were low on things like milk and eggs. The freezer could be set to defrost food if you told it to. The microwave, stove, and coffee machine had voice controls. And that was just the kitchen. When Savannah and I went into the bathroom, we realized that we could set the tub and sink faucets to dispense water at any temperature we wanted, just by saying so, and there was a motion-activated soap dispenser, like you sometimes saw in public bathrooms—except it held shampoo, conditioner, body wash, shaving cream, and moisturizer, too. There were fans and heat lamps, and some contraption that could dry, curl, or straighten hair, which Savannah said we had to try before our talk. We were still figuring out the settings when we heard a yelp from the boys’ bathroom and Eric emerged, his face pale.

  “What is it?” Savannah asked.

  “The . . . toilet.” Eric shook his head. “Don’t go near the toilets.”

  “
Why?” I was baffled.

  Nate chuckled. “It tried to wash his butt.”

  Of course, since this was Guidant, all the rooms had tablets as well as those voice-activated thingies on the wall. We could set the temperature and lights any way we wanted, just by stating our preferences. The TVs in the bedrooms and living rooms all had personalized settings, too. Even the backyard was high-tech.

  “Guidant is dedicated to green development and sustainability,” Dad explained as we clustered around the back door. “All the homes have geothermal pumps and solar panels, to try to reduce the campus’s reliance on fossil fuel energy.”

  “That’s why the cars are all electric?” Nate asked.

  “If they really wanted to save the planet,” said Savannah, “wouldn’t they make all their employees eat vegan?”

  Eric rolled his eyes and pointed at the yard. “They don’t look like they like plants much here.”

  I saw his point. There wasn’t a single plant in the entire backyard—just a smooth surface made of gigantic, hexagonal plates of glass.

  “Not entirely true,” said Dad. “Guidant believes that normal grass lawns are a waste of water resources, so all the lawns are either artificial, so they don’t require water, or natural green space with native plants. They don’t do grass.”

  “Are those the solar panels?” Howard asked.

  “Yes, but they’re actually even more than that.” Dad grinned. “It’s called a smart court. I specially requested we get a visitor home that had one installed.”

  I looked at him, pretty sure this was more than he knew about our own house. “How do you know all this?”

  He tapped the tablet by the door. “Research, Gillian. That’s what I do. Come on, let’s check it out.”

  Eric started toward the door, then paused. “Are you coming, Mom?”

  I also cast a glance back at Mom, who was intently studying her phone screen. “No, no. You kids have fun with your dad.”

  We spilled onto the back patio, squinting a little as the sunlight reflected up from the glass and the silver surface of Howard’s Omega City utility suit.