Donna shook her head. “Don’t say it.” She thought for a moment while the other two waited. “We don’t have to sneak out. Let’s propose it to Dr. Marlowe. Ask that we be permitted to spend some time in Piñon Pine.”
“It would be under her control, if she even considered it, which she won’t. We have to be on our own, make our own rules. If we did it under someone’s supervision, we wouldn’t have the variables we need,” Corliss said.
“I like it,” Mayfair said quickly, and looked at Donna.
“Look, having the courage to violate the rules and do this is already a step out of the maze,” Corliss said. “Right?”
Donna looked down at her food. “I’ve got to get to the math lab. I’m doing a problem in topology.”
She stood and picked up her tray. She started to turn away, then stopped to turn back to Corliss and Mayfair.
“You’d better think hard and long about this. You could lose everything.”
“But that’s the question, isn’t it, Donna?” Mayfair asked. “What does everything mean to you?”
Donna pursed her lips and then took a deep breath and walked away to deposit her tray.
“Even if she doesn’t come along,” Mayfair said, “we still go?”
Corliss nodded. “We plan, and then we go.”
They rose together. Maybe it was just her imagination, but when Mayfair looked at Dr. Marlowe across the room, she thought she was staring particularly hard at them. For a wild moment, she wondered if their conversations were bugged. She looked at the plain table at which they had sat.
“Wait,” she said, and forced her fork to fall off the tray.
She bent down to pick it up and searched the underside of the table. As far as she could tell, there was nothing there, nothing she could see.
Corliss knew what she was doing. “We’ll know pretty soon if our conversations are bugged in this place, won’t we?” she asked when Mayfair stood.
“How?”
“The ditch, Mayfairy. It will be filled in,” Corliss said, and started away.
Mayfair smiled, looked at Dr. Marlowe, and then headed out of the cafeteria, too.
Corliss and she didn’t see each other again until dinner. For a few moments, they questioned whether Donna was going to join them at their table. She looked their way, hesitated, and then turned to talk to Kelly Boson before she started toward them.
“How has your day been?” Corliss asked her as she sat.
“Dr. Martin singled me out for a compliment in math. He said I had solved the problem with a unique approach, something he has never seen or thought of. He wants me to move deeper into quantum physics now.”
“Terrific,” Mayfair said. “You sound like you’re going to be extra busy.”
“No, not any more than usual,” Donna replied. She looked at Corliss and then at Mayfair. “You two were just teasing this morning, right?”
“Actually, no,” Corliss said. “I’ve done some private investigating, research. Once when I had left the Darwin Trail before you two had arrived, I took a shortcut back. Didn’t quite finish the run. It brought me out on the southeast rear of the building. I had a flash of memory this afternoon thinking about it and realized there are no cameras on that section, an older section. The door goes to the cafeteria and the kitchen pantry. Used for deliveries, I guess. Also, there are no motion lights.”
“That doesn’t sound too bright,” Mayfair joked.
Donna didn’t even smile.
“We could slip out that door and head back to the fence, to the ditch, easily, and we can return the same way. I say we take our first exploratory trip tonight. It should take us about forty-five minutes to get down to the mall. We’ll spend an hour or so and return,” Corliss summed up.
Donna seemed to freeze in her chair.
“I wonder what I’ll wear,” Mayfair said. “You guys will have to help me choose from my pathetic wardrobe.”
“I haven’t much money,” Donna said. “We don’t need money here. Why go to a mall?”