by Mark Crilley
They arrived in downtown Agra and rumbled onto a road that followed a wide, slow-moving river on their left. As they inched their way down the traffic-clogged street, Billy caught his first glimpse of the Taj Mahal, its domes and minarets tinged by the morning sunlight. A flock of birds no larger than specks passed before one of its archways, serving as a crude measure of how massive the building really was. But it wasn't the size of the Taj Mahal that impressed Billy. It was the perfection of it: the smooth surfaces, the flawless symmetry.
Billy tried to imagine the hairy, black-tentacled beast from The AFMEC Guide to Ground Creatches lurking somewhere deep within the walls of this beautiful building. It was hard to picture.
Finally they reached the front gates, which were blocked by barricades and a small army of policemen. A mustached guard stepped to their window and Linda spoke to him in his own language, babbling on and on as if she were a native of India instead of Indiana.
“Your mom's a real whiz when it comes to Hindi,” Jim said.
Linda said something that made the policeman hold his sides and laugh.
“So how many languages does Mom speak?”
“What, fluently?” His father made a face as if he was going to try to count, then just gave up. “Twenty. Thirty. I don't know. Lots. Lots and lots.”
“So Mom's the brains of the operation,” said Billy with a grin.
Jim laughed loudly. “Well, I'm no moron, kiddo. But, yes, your mother's got me beat when it comes to languages and memorization. Me, I focus more on the hands-on stuff: repairs when equipment breaks down, that sort of thing. But that's not all I fix. Sometimes creatch ops don't go as smoothly as we'd like. I'm the guy who patches things up with the local authorities. With a place as revered as the Taj Mahal, I'll be working overtime to reassure folks that everything will turn out okay.”
“So will everything turn out okay?”
“We haven't wrecked a Wonder of the World yet,” said Jim with a chuckle. He was trying to sound casual, but Billy could tell his father was nervous. He had to be under a lot of pressure, trying to remove a creatch from such a famous piece of architecture.
The guard waved them past, and Jim parked the van inside the Taj Mahal compound. As they got out, Billy noticed that the BUGZ-B-GON logo had disappeared from the exterior of the van. In its place was Hindi lettering that matched what he'd seen on signs and shop windows as they came into town.
“Local-color camouflage,” Jim explained. “You should see what the van looks like when we're in the Caribbean.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Clikk!” Another mustached man—this one short, fat, and nervous-looking—trotted across the courtyard to greet them. “Thank you for coming here on such short notice. I am Ravi Goswami, local Indo-AFMEC relations.”
Jim and Ravi shook hands so hard it looked as if they might break something. “Glad to meet you, Ravi. And call me Jim, why don't you, since we've got two Mr. Clikks here today. Meet Billy.”
Billy immediately found his hand snapped into Ravi's. “Ah, this must be your son. Carrying on the family business, are you?” Ravi's voice went up and down like a children's song. “Maybe you can help us with this pesky creatch of ours.” He meant it as a joke, but judging from the panicked expression on his face, Billy figured he wouldn't turn down help from anyone at this point, twelve-year-olds included.
Jim grinned and waved a hand toward Linda. “Ravi, you already know my wife, don't you?”
“Ah yes, Mrs. Clikk,” Ravi said, shaking Linda's hand no less forcefully than he had the others'. “We are still indebted to you for your help with those dreadful naggatroffs in Calcutta two summers ago.”
Linda smiled modestly. “You had the situation pretty well under control, Ravi.”
“Ha!” Ravi pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his brow. “Half the population would have been eaten alive if not for you.” He turned to Billy. “Thank heavens your mother was able to dispense with those naggatroffs before they got to the outskirts of the city, before anyone even saw them. The people of Calcutta will never know how lucky they are.”
“What are naggatroffs?” asked Billy.
“You don't want to know, my boy,” said Ravi, scrunching his face up into a look of pure revulsion. “One-third serpent. One-third hippopotamus. One-third enormous, angry lobster. If I never see another it will be too soon.”
Billy's parents nodded sympathetically.
“I was so impressed with how your mother handled those wretched beasts,” Ravi continued, “that I told Mr. Vriffnee: ‘For the Taj Mahal it must be the Clikks and no one else.' He was strangely resistant to the idea of sending you, actually….”
Jim clapped his hands and began to roll up his sleeves. “Well, Ravi, sounds like you've got an orf around here with our name on it.”
“Of course, of course. Step right this way.”
They walked through a red sandstone gateway, Orzamo trotting along beside them, and entered a vast, carefully manicured garden on the other side. Beyond the garden, mirrored in a long shallow pool of water, was the Taj Mahal. Billy had seen photographs of it dozens of times, but it still made his jaw drop.
“Wow,” he said.
It stood on a vast platform with interlocking squares like a gigantic chessboard. Four slender minarets—one at each corner of the platform—soared well over a hundred feet into the air; the pinkish tinge Billy had seen earlier had now been cast off in favor of a shimmering yellow-white, the color of polished ivory.
“Wow,” he said again.
The Taj Mahal was like a humongous jewel box, with at least half its surface chiseled into designs both delicate and startlingly precise: many-petaled flowers, gracefully curving vines, and inlaid stones of red and green. There were verses from the Koran surrounding every arched entranceway, so intricate and intertwined they looked more like illustrations than words. On top of it all was the huge onion-shaped dome, crowned by a brass finial that rose several more stories into the sky, glittering as it caught and reflected the morning sunlight.
Billy's parents weren't even looking at the Taj Mahal. Their attention was devoted to a series of black-and-white video monitors arranged on a folding table. Billy stuck his head between his parents' shoulders to see what was going on.
“Unfortunately,” said Ravi, pointing to a monitor, “the cameras have not provided us with a direct view of the creatch. But here you can see a pile of bones from some animals he dragged in with him.”
“Goat bones,” said Billy.
“That's what it looks like,” said his mother, nodding approvingly.
Billy's chest puffed out.
I could get pretty good at this. If I keep it up, maybe they'll let me go on the creatch op.
Linda pointed to a different monitor and turned her attention back to Ravi. “How about this hole here?”
Ravi winced. “That.” He shook his head. “That is where the creatch has burrowed through the walls and made a home for itself. The cost of repairs …” He rolled his eyes and made a fluttering gesture with his hands: money scattering to the winds. “…I don't even want to think about it.”
Jim turned to Linda. “Well?”
Billy watched his mother's face as she turned from one monitor to another. She put a finger to her lips and adjusted her glasses. Then she pulled a pad of paper from her back pocket and began scribbling on it like a doctor writing a prescription.
“We'll start with a phased-in program of tranquilizers. Floxodril to begin with: three canisters every ten minutes for two hours. If that doesn't work, we'll move up to gremadril. Then borradril.”
“Uh, Mom,” said Billy. “That book said tranquilizers don't work with orfs.”
Linda turned to Billy. For some reason she looked less impressed with Billy's show of knowledge this time. She actually looked a little irritated. “No, Billy. It says that some Affys have reported success with tranquilizers, while others haven't. That doesn't mean we shouldn't begin by giving them a try.”
I
'm only trying to help. Jeez.
“Look, son,” said Jim, “we appreciate your enthusiasm. Really we do. But your mother knows a wee bit more about creatch battling than you do, don't you think?” He chuckled, but the message was clear: Zip it, young man.
Billy sighed.
Jim turned to Ravi and patted him on the back. “Leave this to us, Ravi. The Taj Mahal will be de-creatched by sundown.” Ravi's eyes lit up. “Tomorrow afternoon at the latest.” Ravi clearly preferred the earlier estimate, but he smiled and bowed anyway.
“Thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Clikk,” he said, saluting them as if they were generals. “All of India is counting on you.” He walked away slowly, somehow looking worried even from behind.
“All right, Billy boy,” Jim said, “time for Mom and Dad to go to work.”
Linda handed Billy a small device about the size and shape of a ballpoint pen. There were two buttons on the side: one black, one red. “Your father and I are going to set up an imperm barricade. It's a sort of force field that prevents anyone from entering or leaving the scene of a creatch op. If you need us, press the red button. That'll send us a signal and we'll be out here as soon as we can.”
“The red button,” Jim said, raising his index finger. “Not the black one.”
Billy leaned over and whispered conspiratorially. “Psst…Dad, come on. Help me out here. Let me come along. I'll be careful.”
Jim Clikk refused to play the game. He spoke loudly and clearly: “I'm sorry, Billy. Your mother and I are in agreement. We're not talking about skateboards and mountain bikes here. This is dangerous stuff. You're only twelve years old. I didn't take part in my first creatch op until I was seventeen.”
Billy turned to his mother. “Please, Mom. Just let me help you set up your equipment.”
“Sorry, Billy. These devices are extremely dangerous in inexperienced hands. Trust us. This is for your own good. There'll be plenty of work for you to do later when the cleanup operations begin.”
“Cleanup operations?” Billy groaned. “I've heard about that. It's what they make Affys do when they get demoted. What is it, like a mop and a bucket?”
“You've got to start somewhere, son,” said Jim. “Your mother and I did a lot of mopping up before we took part in any creatch ops. Your time will come. Be patient. Now run along and have fun.”
I can't believe this. They're treating me like a five-year-old.
Jim patted Orzamo on her furry terrier head. “Show Billy some of your tricks, Orzy. And I don't mean rolling over and playing dead.” Jim gave Billy a wink.
Linda mussed Billy's hair. “Don't take it too hard. There'll be plenty of time for creatch battling when you're older. Why, I wouldn't be surprised if you were authorized as a creatch op assistant by this time next year.”
Billy briefly considered a variety of things he could say that might help him get his way. The expressions on his parents' faces seemed to shoot the words down before he even said them.
Forget it. They're not going to budge on this. Maybe I'll get a chance later on. Or maybe…
…a chance will present itself.
Billy nodded and played the obedient son. “Okay. Let me know if you need anything.”
“That's the spirit,” said Jim, giving Billy a soft punch in the arm. “Get to know Ravi, why don't you? I've heard he makes a mean cup of chai. It's half the reason we accepted this job.” Another Jim Clikk wink.
The day crawled by. At first Billy had fun playing with Orzamo. She was able to do all kinds of amazing things: scale walls like a spider, change the color of her fur, breathe puffs of smoke. But Billy's eyes kept returning to the Taj Mahal, where his parents were lugging various pieces of equipment they'd pulled from the van: long harpoon-shaped weapons with flashing lights on the sides, metallic contraptions covered with dozens of spindly mechanical limbs, and one thing that looked like a cast-iron lawn mower with a satellite dish attached.
After about half an hour Billy saw his parents set up a circle of red poles in the gardens around the Taj Mahal, one every twenty or thirty feet. Linda waved and called out to Billy: “We're switching on the barricade now, Billy.” A moment later there was a brief flash of electricity, like lightning coming from the ground instead of the sky. “Don't go anywhere near the red poles. Those are the barricade markers. If you try to cross the barricade …” She paused as she considered which words to use. “Well, at best you'll look pretty stupid. At worst, you'll end up flat on your back in the nearest hospital.” She waved once more and disappeared through one of the arched entrances.
That was the last Billy saw of his parents for several hours. They stayed inside the Taj Mahal, and anyone looking at the building from the outside would never have suspected that anything unusual was going on within.
There were sounds, though. Rattling noises. Low electric hums that rose and fell like ambulance sirens. Smells, too: pungent, smoky odors that drifted across the gardens and made Billy more curious than ever. At one point a tremendously loud bang echoed across the gardens, sending birds whirling into the sky.
“What are they doing in there?”
Orzamo made a tired bleating sound, suggesting it was of very little interest to her. She tried to get Billy's attention by causing a pebble to levitate.
“Cool,” said Billy. But he wasn't really focusing on Orzamo. He was thinking of the Taj Mahal. Wishing he could be on the inside, battling the orf with his parents.
Ravi came by and invited Billy to join him for a cup of chai in his tent. Billy accepted and killed some time shaded from the worst of the afternoon sun, sipping the super-sugary tea and listening to Ravi tell tales of what must have been every creatch op on the subcontinent for the last five centuries.
Between stories, Ravi mentioned something he'd once heard.
“It is said that all the orfs in India have a hidden Achilles' heel. A weakness that, if properly exploited, is guaranteed to kill them.”
Billy nearly spilled his chai. This was important.
“Where is it?”
#x201C;Right here.” Ravi raised his upper lip and pointed to a spot at the center of his gum line.
“The gums? Just above the front teeth?”
“That's right. You need only tap that spot with your pinky and an Indian orf will fall unconscious, straightaway.”
“You're kidding. How is that possible?”
“Well, it makes quite a lot of sense when you think about it,” said Ravi. “It's a part of the body that is only rarely exposed. Evolution evidently saw no need to provide much protection for it.”
Billy examined Ravi's face. This was no joke: he looked as if he really believed what he was saying.
“How do you know all this stuff, Ravi? Are you an expert on creatches or something?”
“Oh no,” said Ravi with a laugh and a wave of his hand. “I'm no expert. But my grandfather knew a man whose friend was once an Affy-in-training. He never made it to full Affy status, mind you. But he learned a thing or two before he returned to normal society, I can tell you that.”
Billy thought this over. The guy had been an AFMEC insider: a pretty reliable source of info.
“The gums,” said Billy.
“Yes, yes: the gums. But you've got to hit them directly in the right spot. An inch too far to the left or right and all your efforts will be in vain. Not only that”—Ravi raised his eyebrows mischievously—“but you'll also be eaten. For anyone so foolhardy as to try jabbing an orf in the gums deserves to be eaten, don't you think?”
Ravi laughed loud and long, his belly shaking in big, quivering waves. When he had recuperated from the fit of giggles that followed, he immediately launched into another tale.
Billy had stopped listening, though. He was thinking about the orf. About the Achilles' heel. And about his mom and dad—wondering if they knew about the story.
I'll bet they don't. It wasn't in the book. It was probably something this Affy-in-training guy figured out on his own. It could be a shortcut to defe
ating the orf.
Ravi kept talking. Billy kept thinking.
I mean, the pinky-tapping bit is ridiculous. But what if you had a weapon? What if you were able to fire something into that spot?
As Ravi's stories continued unabated, Billy convinced himself that he was on to something.
I've got to give it a try. If I could defeat the orf on my own, they'd make me an Affy right away. They did it for that Ana girl. They'd have to do it for me. They'd have no choice.
Billy waited until Ravi had finished his latest tale before rising and excusing himself. “Thanks for the chai, Ravi. It was great.”
“You're more than welcome, my dear boy,” said Ravi as Billy reemerged into the late-afternoon sun. “Next time I'll tell you about the flame-throwing floggle-bats of Bombay. They made the naggatroffs seem like dinner party guests.”
Billy spent the rest of the day coming up with a plan. Mom and Dad aren't going to work all night. No way. Not after all that time in the Philippines. They're going to need sleep. And when they do…
Noises and smells continued to come from the Taj Mahal, but Billy saw nothing of his parents until sundown, when they trudged out into the garden, dirty and exhausted. Their jumpsuits were covered with green stains.
“We nearly had him there, Linda,” said Jim. “When you fired the magnetic-fusion plasmatron at him and I got the graggler net around one of his tentacles…”
“What's a plasmatron?” asked Billy.
“A very handy piece of hardware,” said Jim. “It shoots a bolt of purple plasma that inflicts serious pain with every direct hit. Five good blasts and most creatches are out cold. It's about this big”—he set his hands three feet apart—“with a plasma receptacle here, and—”
“I thought for sure the borradril would do the job,” said Linda as she tugged a glove off and threw it on the ground. She seemed preoccupied with the mission and not in the mood to hear Billy's father sing the praises of their equipment.
She doesn't know about the Achilles' heel, thought Billy. Otherwise they'd have defeated the orf by now.
