Free Strangers in the Night by Raymond S Flex Page B

other factor in play, Mitts had to give Heinmein some credit for at least attempting to save his life.
    And, to tell the truth, that knowledge rankled him.
    How was Mitts ever supposed to repay a gesture like that?
    When the singing reached its climax, and then gave way to clapping, Mitts realised he was still staring at the doorway.
    Still staring at Heinmein.
    And that Heinmein was clapping along.
    Mitts turned back to his birthday cake.
    As he cut the cake, he thought about how Heinmein was the only one who could possibly have an inkling of what he had planned.
    Heinmein was the only one who could possibly stop him.
     
    * * *
     
    Mitts waited until the fluorescent strip lights had faded down in their imitation of night. He flipped on his torch as he always did. He shone its yellowish circle of light into the gloom.
    Normally, he would lie propped up in bed reading into the early hours. Seeing as he had worked his way through all the novels his family had brought into the Compound in the first place, he had started to make a habit of digging into a small room toward the edge of the Restricted Area.
    One which had a series of manuals; technical handbooks.
    At first, when Mitts had set foot across the threshold of that room, breathed in the slightly acrid smell of glue from book bindings, felt the cool tingle of the air conditioning up against his skin, it had been like he was trespassing.
    For some reason— sometimes —he felt his mind swimming back to those earlier fears.
    Back when he had thought that at any second a group of heavily armed security personnel might come busting in through the blast doors.
    Bringing them all down in a rain of semi-automatic rifle fire.
    Actually, when Mitts had thought about his feelings in crossing over into that room in more detail, he realised that he had believed it to be a part of the Restricted Area kept under close guard by Heinmein.
    He supposed that Heinmein frequently visited the room, for tips on whatever problem he might have been facing that particular day.
    Having said that, though, Mitts had never actually come upon Heinmein on his frequent visits to the impromptu library.
    And neither had Heinmein said anything to Mitts about his visits here.
    So Mitts thought himself in the clear.
    Over the time he had resided in the Compound, he had gone through manuals detailing electrical engineering, basic plumbing and other skills which he never would’ve been capable of learning off his father.
    Back home—back in another life—his father had been an accountant.
    There wasn’t much use for accountants now.
    Once Mitts had grappled with those skills, he turned his attention to the books on physics, chemistry, biology; all of those subjects which’d bored him to death at school, but which now, in the Compound, with no other stimuli, seemed fascinating.
    One of the books had even contained a map of the Compound itself.
    He had torn out the page and shoved it into his jeans pocket.
    Mitts grasped the rubber grip of his torch tightly, feeling the texture of the rubber squeeze against his skin. He shone the light over the latest book he had been leafing through:
    A Practical Introduction to Machine Coding
    It was one of the last books in the library.
    It’d only taken him seven years to get through a thousand, or so, books.
    For the past couple of years, Mitts had been reading up on computer skills. Learning all the basics. Several times, he had stolen into those emptied rooms which contained dozens of computers. And although all of them had been dead—there was no power allocated to those rooms, and the computers’ circuitry had been long ago fried—he would practise the lines of code in the books, his fingers flurrying over the keypad as he copied the written commands.
    Committing them to memory.
    The way Mitts liked to think of it, computer programming—for him—was sort of like constantly completing a three-dimensional puzzle within his own mind.
    And it was a perfect means