“Mrs. Tretower,”said Dr. Maxxim, as he cut thick slices of pork roast for each of the diners. “I feel terrible that we haven’t had you over for dinner before. I’m afraid I’m not much for keeping up with the social graces.”
“You’re just like your father,”said Mrs. Tretower. “And call me Pearl. I haven’t been sitting around my house alone anyway. I’ve spent most of my years since retirement traveling. Now that Austin is here though, I’m looking forward to a little relaxation.”
Austin looked up, but didn’t say anything.
“I can tell by your accent, Mr. Toulson, that you’re from Great Britain,”said Astrid. “Is this your first time in the states?”
“Oh, I don’t think we need to bore these good people with my resume,”said Toulson. “And call me Charles. Don’t worry though. You and I will have plenty of time to get to know each other. I’ll be coming to school with you tomorrow.”
“Oh goodie,”said Astrid, without enthusiasm.
Chapter Thirteen: Mr. Charles Edward Toulson
After dinner, Mrs. Tretower took Austin home, but not before Astrid had invited him to come over again soon so they could go swimming. Once company was gone and the three Maxxims were cleaning up the dishes, Astrid confronted her parents.
“I don’t want a bodyguard.”
“Sometimes things don’t go just the way we want, Astrid,”said her father. “It’s high time you understood this, if you don’t already.”
“But I don’t need a bodyguard.”
“I’m afraid you do,”said Mrs. Maxxim. “The FBI thinks that it was Robot Valerie who these particular kidnappers were after…”
“Well there you go,”said Astrid. “Have Mr. Toulson guard her body.”
“You do know you’re famous, don’t you Astrid?” Astrid turned around to see Mr. Toulson standing in the doorway.
“Not really famous,”she replied.
“Yes, famous, really. You’ve been on the cover of major magazines, people know your name. People in the public eye must take extra precautions. You’ve been lucky up until now, due largely to Maxxim City being such a close-knit little town but you can’t afford to take chances. Those men may have been after your robot, but they would have enjoyed quite a bounty if they had been able to deliver you to their employers. There are plenty of people in the world who would do just about anything for a few million dollars.”
“Million?” Astrid’s eyes opened wide.
“Yes. Million.”
“Hmm,”said Astrid, thinking. “Who do you think hired those guys?”
“The FBI think it was the Chinese,”said Toulson. “I think they’re right. The Chinese have a huge network of spies who focus on industrial espionage.”
The conversation gave Astrid a lot to think about that night as she sat in her room and practiced her oboe. She continued thinking about it as she watched the glowing stars that appeared on her ceiling after the light was turned off.
The next morning, Mr. Toulson was waiting for her in the kitchen.
“Your mother left early,”he said. “She ordered me to make sure you ate something. Have some toast.”
He pushed a plate with two slices of buttered toast across the counter toward her, and then picked up a piece from his own plate and took a bite.
“I thought you Brits sliced your toast up into soldiers, Mr. Toulson”said Astrid.
“We do all kinds of silly things with our toast, most guaranteeing that it will be cold when eaten. I prefer the American way: stacked, buttered, and hot. And call me Charles.”
Mr. Toulson’s vehicle was a large black van. The back was lined with plush seating for about a dozen people. While it had large windows running the length of the van, they were darkened so that they appeared completely black from the outside. Toulson climbed into the driver’s seat, while Astrid found a seat in the back. Their first stop was next door to pick up Toby.
“I’m not getting in that thing,”he said, and only relented when Astrid gave him a pleading look.
Christopher and Denise felt much the same way about the vehicle, though the two Valeries didn’t seem to mind. This might have been owing to the fact that they had the shortest distance to ride in it. They didn’t drive to the monorail station though, but went through the gate and onto the Maxxim Industries campus. Toulson drove them all the way to Rachel Carson High School, twelve miles from their homes.
“We can’t even take the monorail?”asked Christopher, as he climbed out.
“Mr. Toulson believes…”Astrid started.
“Charles,”Toulson corrected her.
“Charles believes this is safer.”
“Safety or no safety, Astrid, tomorrow I’m riding the monorail. It’s my favorite part of going to school.”
This was saying something, because it was well-known that Christopher enjoyed just about every part of school.
Over lunch, which was roast beef tenderloins with potato sauté, artichoke hearts, candied walnut and goat cheese salad, and strawberry sorbet, Astrid’s other friends rebelled too.
“Christopher is right,”said Denise. “There’s really no reason for any of us to have to take that prison van to school. Once we get on the monorail, we should all be safe. The Maxxim campus is one of the most secure places in the world.”
“I don’t know about that,”said Astrid,“but maybe I can get Charles to just bring us to the station.”
Austin, who as usual arrived late with barely enough time to eat his lunch, had a different opinion.
“If you don’t mind going out of your way to pick me up, I’ll ride with you, Astrid.”
After school, the other kids rode home on the monorail, while Astrid informed Charles that she was going to the R&D building. As expected, he insisted on driving her there. On the way, she made her case.
“Mr. Toulson…”
“Charles.”
“Charles, I understand you are here to protect me, but I need to be able to live my life. These are my high school years—the most important years of a person’s life. Can’t you protect me without segregating me from all my friends?”
“I do understand, Astrid,”he said,“but the fact of the matter is that I don’t work for you. I was hired by your mother and she decides how I do my business.”
“I see,”said Astrid, thinking that she had to have another talk with her mother.
Once she was in the lab, leaving Toulson in the outer office, the girl inventor forgot all about her personal problems and focused on theoretical ones. She had been mulling over something in her mind for days. If she could create an advanced ceramic using some of the elements in Astricite, she might be able to create a substance that was both very strong and very light, as well as being resistant to heat. She set about at her chemistry table mixing several variant compounds for testing.
“Hello Astrid.”
Astrid looked up to see Mr. Brown wheeling in a cart covered with a tarp. She glanced at the clock on the wall and saw that it was almost time to go home for dinner.
“What do you have there, Mr. Brown?”
“Voila,”he said, whipping the tarp off the cart.
Sitting there was something that looked like a motor scooter without the wheel wells. Instead of a motorcycle seat, it had a small bench seat just in front of a little trunk. It was the body of a hoverbike.
“I love it,”said Astrid. “You went with nostalgic after all.”
“Yes. The other designs were much more sleek and aerodynamic—we can still make those—but after hearing you tell Denise about it being a hoverbike instead of a hovercycle, this just seemed more appropriate.”
“I love it,”Astrid repeated. “It’s kind of retro fifties chic. I love the headlight.”
“I didn’t know how much extra power you were going to have,”said Mr. Brown. “Originally I didn’t include one, but if you have the available batteries it might come in handy.”
“Well, it looks plenty big enough for the sensors, gyroscopes, and servo mo
tors, but I don’t know about the hoverdisks. I might have to see if I can reduce their size without losing power.”
“Astrid, your dad spent a year getting them to where they are now. Do you really think you can improve on his work?”
She shrugged, casting a glance to her ceramics project.
“Can you help me get it up on my workbench?”
The two of them easily lifted the hoverbike body up onto the counter where Astrid would be able to work on it.
“I’m getting ready to head home,”said Mr. Brown. “Would you like to join me for a ride on the monorail?”
He bowed with a flourish, making Astrid giggle.
“Sure.”
“That won’t be necessary,”said a voice from behind them.
“Sorry Mr. Brown,”said Astrid darkly. “I’ll be going home with my bodyguard.”
She introduced the two men and they shook hands. Then she left the R&D building and rode home to Maxxim City in the black van. Along the way, she looked out the window at the monorail tracks high in the sky. Even though Mr. Brown would be walking the last part of his trip home, she imagined that he wouldn’t be much later than they were going to be. Later at dinner, as she was sitting directly across the table from Charles, Astrid broached the subject of security again with her mother.
“I don’t really think I need to be driven around in a prison van,”she said. “The school and my lab are both on the campus grounds with excellent security. Wouldn’t it be better if Charles just guarded the house?”
“No,”her mother replied simply.
“Well, maybe he could just drive me to the monorail station.”
“We have gone over the security plans very carefully with Mr. Toulson, Astrid. You’ll have to accept that we know best.”
Astrid glanced at her father, but he avoided her eyes. She decided right then and there that her mother and Mr. Toulson needed a lesson in just how hard watching a teenage girl could be.
Chapter Fourteen: The Great Escape
The next morning, Astrid was ready. She was sure she had all the escape experience she would need, having already escaped from a car trunk and having watched both The Great Escape and Chicken Run several times each. She packed everything she would need into her backpack and left her room, heading not downstairs to breakfast, but to the music room. The northern portion of this large room, where she sometimes played her oboe, was directly above the kitchen.
In the far wall was the small door that opened to the dumbwaiter. The dumbwaiter car was down on the first floor, so she had to pull the rope to raise it up. As she did so, it squeaked slightly. She carefully removed a tube of Teflon lubricant from her backpack and applied it to the squeaky pulley. When the car reached her level, she climbed up into the box.
Closing the door made it pitch black inside the shaft. She pulled a cap equipped with tiny lights in the bill from her backpack, put it on, turning on the lights. Working as quickly as possible, she used the rope to lower herself, past the opening to the kitchen on the first floor, all the way down to the basement.
The basement was huge and it was dark, illuminated only by the lights in Astrid’s cap and a small window near the ceiling on the west wall. The entire room was a maze of stacked ancient wooden crates containing nobody knew what. The whole place was just as creepy and scary as Astrid remembered from her childhood.
Along the north wall, not far from the stairs to the first floor was an ancient boiler that hadn’t worked since probably before Astrid’s father was born, and right next to it was a coal chute—a sort of metal slide that led to a small door outside. In the past, coal was dumped down the chute to be used in the boiler. Astrid carefully climbed up onto the empty coal bin. She paused when she thought she heard a noise and turned to look, but the light from the bill of her cap showed nothing more than an old crate under the stairs labeled“Antarctica Expedition 1928.” She had worn her grippiest shoes, knowing how slippery the chute was. Carefully climbing up the smooth, slanted metal, she stopped at the top and jimmied open the latch. As she crawled out onto the grass, she congratulated herself not only on making it this far, but surviving the frightening basement.
It was a long way from the Maxxim home to the monorail station, and if Astrid was going to make it all that way without Mr. Charles Edward Toulson catching her, or even worse being spotted by her parents, she was going to have to go some other way than her usual path with her friends. Fortunately Astrid had planned her route. Between the Maxxim and Bundersmith backyards was an alley and in that alley was a cement slab with a metal door in it. It was all flush against the ground so that vehicles, like the recycle truck, could drive over it. Inside that door was a stairway that led down to an underground passage. Passages such as this one crisscrossed the town, providing access to electrical and information systems.
When Astrid arrived at the metal door, she found, as she had expected, no doorknob or lock. There was a recessed handle and a magnetic card swipe. She wasn’t sure, but she suspected that somewhere there was a computer logging who swiped their Maxxim Industries ID cards in what devices, and had someone been looking for her, they might discover her location by following this digital trail. The girl inventor had planned for this too. Before going to bed the night before, she had programmed a new key card for herself using the pseudonym of Jose Dumas. Swiping this new card, she stepped down into the darkness, closing the door behind her.
The underground passage was a cement hallway, not too much bigger than the hallways in an average home. Along the ceiling ran water pipes and electrical conduit. Astrid pulled out her phone and checked the time. She hadn’t allowed herself as much time as she should have. She would have to hurry if she was going to reach the monorail the same time as her friends. Thankfully, this corridor was a straight shot downhill to Main Street.
Astrid jogged down the tunnel. It was easy going. The floor sloped gently downward. After about two hundred yards, a cement staircase descended two dozen steps. Beyond the steps, several of the water pipes that ran along the ceiling had small leaks in them. Astrid avoided the dripping water, but now there was a small rivulet running down the center of the tunnel. Suddenly she tripped and went sliding face first across the rough cement.
Getting to her feet, she looked back to see that a small cement curb running along the wall had jutted out just enough to catch her toe. Examining herself, she found that her hands were scraped and the front of her school uniform was splattered with less than completely clean water. Her new cell phone had fallen out of her pocket too and had gotten wet. When she picked it up and wiped the water off, she saw that the screen was scratched.
“Bother,”she said, but she also noticed that if she didn’t hurry she was going to be late for school.
She continued on, picking up her pace a bit, but careful not to trip again. The little curb jutted out every fifty feet or so. She passed several sets of steps leading upward, but since the corridor continued to slope downward, she knew that she had not yet reached the business district. Finally the floor leveled out and she came to another set of stairs. She climbed up and swiping her home-made security card again, found herself in the alley just behind the Malt Shop.
Running toward the monorail station, she was disappointed to see the train leaving. Without checking the time again, she knew that this was the train her friends were taking on their way to school. There would be another arriving in the station in ten minutes, but not riding with her friends sort of defeated the whole purpose of her daring escape.
She took her place among the people going up the escalator to the train platform, most of them Maxxim employees on their way to work. No one paid particular attention to her. Once on the platform, she sat down on a bench to wait for the train. She took several deep breaths and tried to relax.
“That was a lot of effort to go to,”said a voice behind her. Astrid turned to see Toulson standing like a tall, black shadow.
“What exactly were you trying to prove?”
; “I’m not a criminal,”said Astrid. “I don’t deserve to be treated like a prisoner. And just because I’m only fourteen doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have a say in how I live my life.”
“That was well thought out,”said the bodyguard. “I wasn’t aware of those tunnels. You won’t be able to use them again though. I’ll have them wired for security or perhaps sealed up completely.”
“There are plenty of other ways for me to escape,”said Astrid.
“I doubt that.”
“Are you certain, Charles?”
Toulson thought for a moment.
“No, I’m not certain,”he said. “Perhaps we will have to come to some kind of agreement.”
“We can talk about it after school,”said Astrid. “Here comes my train.”
Toulson boarded the train and sat next to Astrid. They made the journey to Rachel Carson High School in silence. Once at school, she had just enough time to stop by the program one team room, where she had a clean shirt in her locker, since the one she had on was spotted with water mixed with cement dust. Her jacket was scuffed too, but there was nothing she could do about that. She slid into her desk in English Composition class with just seconds to spare.
Over lunch, which was roast beef merlot, stewed potatoes and carrots, dirty rice, and banana cream pie, she told her friends of her adventures. They stared open mouthed as she described going down the dumbwaiter and through the underground tunnels, amazed less that such a thing might be done than by the fact that it was Astrid, who had never pulled anything remotely sneaky in her life, who had done it.
“That’s the scariest thing anybody I know has ever done,”said Denise. “Imagine running through a dark underground tunnel.”
“All tunnels are underground,”Christopher pointed out.
Astrid Maxxim and Her Amazing Hoverbike Page 7
