by Mark Dunn
After they had delivered Becky to her door, the boys would continue on to the Professor’s house to see if the police had come. For several nights there was no evidence that they had. The halves of playing cards that Rodney and Wayne had discreetly placed between each of the outside doors and their jambs were always in the very same spots in which they had been left. This was an indication to the boys that no one had entered the house in their absence.
In fact, it wasn’t even necessary for Rodney and Wayne to enter the house themselves, since they could see from the outside that it remained secure.
Until, that is, the fifth night…the night that would bring this story to its close. Much had happened during the day that led up to that important night: the Professor had pronounced the new Age Altertron nearly finished. All that was required was a couple more hours of work and then the machine would be ready for testing. If the tests went well the next day, Age Altertron II could be switched on the very next night at midnight, the time at which both calamities and their corrections took place.
Most people would be safe in their beds and would not find themselves startled or liable to do injury to themselves during that transformational moment in which the correction took place. The unfortunate circumstances surrounding the loss of the first Altertron is a good example of the bad that can happen when one is up and about at that moment. Perhaps this was the reason that the unknown force chose to inflict its calamities upon the town so late at night.
Or not. (The unknown force had not otherwise demonstrated much concern for the health and well-being of the citizens of Pitcherville.)
The day had been busy and productive, and hopes ran high among the Professor’s small circle of helpers that this newest calamity would soon be a memory.
Hopes and spirits remained high, in fact, right up to 2:17 p.m., when a ringing doorbell set off a chain of events that would upend every effort to save the town of Pitcherville from this latest calamity and from those who would use it to their own sinister advantage.
Rodney and Wayne and the Professor did not hear the doorbell because of the noise being made by Wayne’s pneumatic hypersonichammering and Rodney’s dyna-turbonic drilling. And, besides, the cellar was a very tightly sealed room with no windows and its only door hidden in a broom closet. It was hard for them to hear anything down there.
The only person who did hear the ring was Aunt Mildred. She was upstairs in her bed listening to her radio program. Like most of the very old residents of Pitcherville, Aunt Mildred had grown weaker over the last few days, as if her body were giving up in its struggle to keep its occupant alive until the calamity could be reversed. A great number of older Pitchervillians, in fact, were now drawing very close to their final hours, their super-aged bodies ready for permanent and eternal retirement.
Aunt Mildred could not have reached the door in any reasonable amount of time. So she lay there in her upstairs bedroom and wondered who the visitor was. If his reason for coming was important, he would, no doubt, come back, and if it wasn’t he wouldn’t.
Or there was a third thing that could happen. The visitor could break the door down. Which he proceeded to do with the help of two police officers.
Such activity tends to make a fairly loud noise and a reverberation in all the walls of a house, and so down in the cellar Wayne had every reason to ask, “Hey! Did either of you feel that?”
“Yes I did,” replied the Professor. “It is probably the transducer oscillating too low. Take it up to 7.8.”
Upstairs, Aunt Mildred not only felt the vibrations of her front door being knocked down, she also heard it, and quickly grew frightened. She sat up in bed and pulled the covers up to her chin (in that way frightened people in beds often do, believing that the sheets and blankets will serve as a good shield against bedroom intruders.)
“Miss McCall! Miss McCall!” came a man’s voice from downstairs.
Aunt Mildred didn’t know if it would be wise to keep silent or to let the home invaders know where she was. Thinking they would find her eventually, she saved them a little trouble and directed them to her bedroom. “I’m up here! But please bear in mind that I am not inviting you up here to hurt me!”
A couple of moments later, three men entered the room: Police Chief Lonnie Rowe and two of his officers. There was also a woman with them, Miss Carter, who had been hired to assist the police department in a special operation that had begun that day. You see, it was Miss Carter’s job to help the women centenarians (that is, those women who had reached the age of one hundred or older) gather up their things so that they could be transported to the brand new city nursing home.
“The new nursing home is finished already?” asked Aunt Mildred after Miss Carter had explained everything to her.
“Yes. The mayor wanted it completed as soon as possible. It really is nothing more than our town high school gymnasium fitted with cots and footlockers. I am sorry to report that we haven’t enough cots for all of you so a few will have to sleep on pallets on the floor.”
“But I do not wish to go, Lucinda. Why do I have to go?”
“It is the law.”
“Why is it the law? What is wrong with my staying in my own home? I have people to look after me.”
“But that is the problem. Everyone is wasting too much time taking care of the old ones and cannot do the jobs that must be done in our town. We have had no milk deliveries or egg deliveries for three days. The barbershops and beauty parlors are all closed. And there is no one at the filling stations to pump our gas and check under our hoods. My own grandmother, to give you an example, requires constant care. Now all of you will receive care together in one large group. It is very economical this way. Now gather up your things. You are permitted a small piece of luggage and one shopping bag.”
As Miss Carter was helping Aunt Mildred up from the bed, Lonnie asked, “Where are your nephews? Are they not here?”
“No, they are with the Professor.” Aunt Mildred didn’t mean to say that. It just slipped out.
“And where is the Professor? We’ve been looking for him for several days. We know he isn’t at his house anymore. Do you know where he’s gone?”
Aunt Mildred shook her head.
“Well, when you see one of your nephews or the Professor, you should mention that the playing-card-in-the-door trick hasn’t worked since 1932. We’ve been visiting his house every day this week. We’ve been all over it, looking for clues to where he could have taken his laboratory. We’ve found no clues yet but we did find something that might be of interest to the Professor. We’re surprised that he hasn’t missed it yet.”
“What is it?”
“I am not at liberty to tell you.”
“May I leave a note for Rodney and Wayne to tell them where I’ve gone?” asked Aunt Mildred, as she put one of her several tubs of night cream into her one allowable shopping bag.
The new police chief nodded. “You may also add the fact that there is now a warrant for your nephews’ arrest.”
“For doing what?”
“For obstructing the law by helping Professor Johnson move his laboratory to a secret location. And as of this afternoon for harboring a fugitive.”
“What fugitive?”
Police Chief Rowe laughed. “Well, Professor Johnson, of course. As of this afternoon he is officially a fugitive from the city nursing home. Mayor Stovall is not a man to be taken lightly, lady.” Downstairs in the cellar, Wayne was about to put the cover housing over the Age Altertron II, which, when properly contained, looked like a large console record player with the doors shut. There was a bank of knobs and buttons inset into its front, and a number of antennas of various lengths sprouting from the top and from both sides. “Do we need to do another inspection, Professor, or is everything okay?”
“It is fine as far as I can tell,” answered the Professor, “and ready for testing to begin first thing in the morning. What is it, Rodney? Is something wrong?”
Rodney chewed upon his l
ower lip for a moment. He was thinking. “Well, I see the primary beam deflector and there is the secondary beam deflector, but there is no tertiary beam deflector. Your diagram shows that it should be right behind the capacitor.”
“My boy, you’re exactly right. Did we not install it?”
Wayne shook his head. “It isn’t there.”
“Could we actually have left it behind?” The Professor stroked his several-day-old whiskers (which were still not much more than his several-day-old whiskers (which were still not much more than year-old men). “Yet the room was totally empty when we left—not a paper clip, not even the smallest triode prong.”
The Professor thought for a moment, pacing in his chair by moving his feet back and forth. Then it hit him. In that next moment he knew: “Because the tertiary beam deflector wasn’t in the laboratory. I had taken it from the rubble of my first ruined machine and put it into the pocket of my lab coat.”
“Why would you want to do that, Professor?” asked Wayne.
“Oh, I intended to spend the rest of the night scavenging all of the parts that I could use again, but exhaustion overtook me in just the short time it took to deposit the deflector. I suspect it is still in my coat pocket, which I am certain is still hanging in my bedroom closet.”
“I’ll go and get it,” volunteered Wayne.
“Let me go with you, Wayne,” said Rodney. “One of us should serve as look-out for the other in case the police show up.”
“Be careful, boys,” said the Professor, easing back into his chair.
Rodney and Wayne climbed the cellar stairs, opened the door that put them into the hallway broom closet and then the second door that opened onto the hallway itself. “Aunt Mildred!” Wayne called up the stairs. “We have to go to the Professor’s. We’ll be back soon.”
No answer.
“Aunt Mildred! Are you sleeping?”
“Now Wayne, what did I tell you about asking questions that
can only be answered one way?”
“Well, ‘No, I’m not sleeping’ was the answer I was looking for.” Not hearing that answer, the boys climbed the stairs to look in
on their unresponsive great aunt. The room was empty. Aunt Mildred was gone. But her radio was still on. The new mayor of Pitcherville was giving another of his speeches. He was saying, “… know that this is for everyone’s good. Our oldest citizens will be well cared for and there is no cause for concern. You may visit your loved ones on alternate Sundays from 2:15 until 2:30 in the afternoon. Anyone attempting to circumvent this law will be subject to immediate arrest and prosecution.”
“They have taken Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney.
“Along with all the other old people, I’ll bet. All of them, except
for Professor Johnson. What are we going to do, Rodney?” “Get the tertiary beam deflector from his coat pocket and hurry
back here as quickly as we can. I am sure that once we tell the
Professor what is happening, he will not want to wait until
tomorrow night to activate the new Age Altertron. We can run our
tests tonight and be ready to flip the switch by midnight.” Wayne nodded. He noticed a sealed envelope at the foot of the
bed. “What’s this?”
He picked it up. Though the handwriting on the outside was
crabbed and hard to read, it looked as if it were addressed to Rodney
and him.
Wayne tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter that was
inside. He read it aloud to his brother:
My dear Rodney and Wayne:
No doubt you realize by now what has happened to me.
I will miss you, dear boys. Please take good care of yourselves. Eat your vegetables. If you sprinkle some cinnamon on them they will taste even better.
By the way, there is a warrant out for your arrest, so you might want to go back to you-knowwhere and stay there!
Love,
Aunt Mildred
“We can’t go to the Professor’s house now,” said Rodney. “If Lonnie isn’t waiting for us just outside, he’s probably lying in wait somewhere along the way, ready to ambush and arrest us.”
“Then we should go back down to the cellar like Aunt Mildred says.”
“And then what, Wayne? Sit around and do nothing without the tertiary beam deflector?”
“Maybe the Professor can tell us how to make a new deflector.”
“And how long will that take when we’ve never worked with such small components before?
Wayne shrugged. Rodney sat down on the bed. He took the letter from his brother’s hand and turned it over in his own hand, thinking of his great aunt.
“Smell the letter,” said Wayne.
Rodney took a whiff of Aunt Mildred’s scented letter.
Cinnamon, to remember her by.
CHAPTER THiRTEEN
In which Wayne finally gets to drive the Professor’s car and you the reader finally get to the end of this book
Petey and Grover would be the decoys. They would come out of the McCall house looking as much like Rodney and Wayne as they were able (considering that Petey was shorter and Grover was wider). They would wear fedora hats with the brims tilted down and hiding their faces in shadow and would mount Rodney and Wayne’s bikes and then ride slowly to the Professor’s house by the street route. The boys hoped somebody would be watching the McCall house and would take the bait. Then Rodney and Wayne could slip out and go the opposite way on foot, taking a circuitous route that wound through several backyards, and down a drainage ditch and through City Park. If they were quick enough and their friends Petey and Grover slow enough Rodney and Wayne would beat their friends to the Professor’s house and would be in and out, deflector in hand, before anyone else arrived. This was the plan.
And the plan worked. At least the first part.
An unmarked car, which had been parked a block from the McCall home, now began to shadow Petey and Grover as they steered their bikes slowly down the street, both boys wobbling a little because their older heavier bodies sat differently upon the light Schwinn cruisers. Rodney and Wayne made very good time with their foot route, which required some fence scaling and some ditch crossing that taxed their new-old muscles and tired their newold lungs.
As planned, the twins arrived first at the Professor’s house and quickly stole through the back gate. They entered the house through the back door to what had earlier been the Professor’s laboratory. The old house was dark, but they did not dare turn on any of the lights.
Stumbling a little in the darkness Rodney and Wayne made their way to the stairs and then up to the Professor’s bedroom. While Rodney stood just outside the closet, Wayne stepped inside and closed the door so that he could turn on the flashlight he had brought, and no one would see its light from outside the house. “Gee, there sure are a lot of lab coats in here!” remarked Wayne in a muffled voice from inside the closet.
“Then you’ll have to look through all the pockets,” said Rodney to the closet door. “The deflector shouldn’t be hard to find. It’s about four inches high and two inches around. Be careful not to prick yourself on the connectors.”
After a moment, Wayne said, “I can’t find it. There’s nothing in any of these pockets but a couple of peanuts and a piece of paper.”
“Pull out the piece of paper.”
“Can I have the peanuts too, Rodney? I’m kind of hungry.” “The paper, Wayne. What’s on the paper?”
“It’s probably nothing. Wait. It’s something.”
“What does it say, Wayne?”
“It’s a letter to us!”
“Is it from the Professor?”
“No.”
“Who else would put a letter to us into the Professor’s lab coat pocket?”
“Who do you think, Rodney?” Wayne read the note aloud to his brother:
Hi Monkeys,
Guess what used to be in this pocket? Something important, I’ll bet. And how do
I know this? Because of how carefully the Professor cleaned it before he put it in here. And how do I know this? Because I was watching him from a dark corner of the lab after I had quietly let myself in on that fateful night. Didn’t you think it was strange that the door was locked the next morning? I locked it. I was going to tie up the Professor and then take an axe to his precious Age Altertron. I didn’t want any sudden witnesses.
My father sent me, you see. He even paid for the axe.
But guess what? I didn’t have to do anything since your friend, the brilliant man of science, did such a good job destroying that machine himself. My father got his wish sort of. But I got a lot more. I could hardly keep myself from laughing as I crawled through the darkness to let myself out through one of the back windows.
But now it doesn’t matter. You can know everything. And the most important thing you should know is that your precious gadget will be waiting for you whenever you want to come see me at City Hall. Come there during my office hours and let’s do some business together.
Sincerely,
You Know Who
Wayne flicked off the flashlight and stepped out of the closet. “Jackie doesn’t want to do business with us, Rodney. He just wants to arrest us.”
“You could be right, Wayne. Unless maybe he wants to work out some kind of deal: if we tell him where the Professor is, he’ll let us go.”
“And then he’ll probably make sure that the Age Altertron II gets chopped to pieces. That won’t be any kind of a bargain, Rodney.”
“You’re right. Our freedom in exchange for losing everything and everyone we care about: Aunt Mildred, the Professor. And the next calamity that hits this town just might be our last. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Come on. We have to get out of here before Grover and Petey arrive.”
Wayne glanced out of the Professor’s bedroom window and down at the front gravel drive. The decoys had just ridden up on their bicycles. A car was pulling up behind them. “Uh oh. Too late.”
