by Matt London
Maybe Rick could pass off his involvement in Evie’s scheme as an unwilling accomplice. Play dumb to the fact that she was waging a secret war against Winterpole, one of the most powerful institutions in the world.
But who would believe that lie? Kid genius Rick Lane, play dumb? Never.
As they sat on the sofa, it became clear that Evie had no clue how hot the water they were in was. While Dad struggled to scratch an itch under his squid-cuff, she was talking Mister Snow’s ear off about injustice and the unassailable character of their bird-thief father.
“You have no right to punish us!” Evie shouted. “There’s no crime in trying to free your father. We’ve done nothing wrong.”
Except the Winterpole inspector did have the right to penalize trespassers, hackers, and spies. All of which Rick and Evie were. So technically, according to Rick’s calculations, they had done fourteen or fifteen things wrong.
Mister Snow took a sip of their mother’s favorite tea. He had said, “Sorry, miss, just doing my job,” so many times he had given up on it, and now he pursed his lips and stared into his teacup without a sound.
For over an hour, that was how they sat, with Rick panicking about his fate, Evie protesting the system, and Mister Snow generating enough kinetic energy with his pursed lips to power a small battery.
The Winterpole officer jumped out of his chair when his pocket buzzed. He pulled out his flip phone and answered the call. “Agent Snow here. Yes. Yes. What?! But, Director, I—no! Hrrr . . . yes, Director. I understand.” He closed his phone with a defiant snap.
“You really don’t need to punish my children,” Rick’s father explained to the Winterpole agent. “I will make sure they are severely scolded.”
“I am afraid that will not suffice,” Mister Snow said. “However, Headquarters has just informed me that because your children are minors, we cannot penalize them as I would like. So, alas, Evelyn and Richard will not be visiting the prison at this time. Shame.” Mister Snow paused for a moment, as if taking in this devastating news once more. Then his face brightened. “But you are their guardian, and your crimes are already well documented, and you are not a minor—although your behavior sometimes leaves me wondering—so we will be adding to your punishments on behalf of your children.”
“What? No!” Evie exclaimed.
“You can’t do that,” Rick said forcefully.
Mister Snow ignored them. “Consider this your final warning, Mister Lane. I have activated the electromagnetic-pulse function on your squid-cuff and set it to a two-foot radius. Like all EMPs, this one will fry any electronic devices it comes in contact with. No computers. No electricity. No outside communication.”
“No video games?” Rick asked, horrified.
Mister Snow’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Rick’s father. “If you or your children make any attempt to contact Doctor Evan Grant, we will not hesitate to send you to the Prison at the Pole.” The inspector finally glanced in Rick and Evie’s direction. “This is for their own good. And besides, I don’t even think that dangerous man is alive anymore.”
Rick abhorred violence, but he had half a mind to take a swing at Mister Snow. He stayed his hand, knowing it would only get his father in more trouble. “Now that you have ended our search and trapped my dad, are you going to call off that robo-bird you have following us around?”
“What are you talking about?” Mister Snow asked. “That big robot who flies your tree is your bird.”
“Not 2-Tor, the other one. The little pink one we saw spying on us.”
“I have never heard of such a device. Perhaps you imagined it, the way you imagined that I would not catch you. I always will, Richard Lane. Remember that.” The Lanes walked Mister Snow to the door as he continued to berate them. “Do as you’re told, or you’ll be out in the cold,” he snickered, amused with himself. “Hey! That kind of rhymed!”
They shut the front door behind Mister Snow as he hurried to his hovership, leaving Rick and Evie standing as close to their father as they could in a show of support. Unfortunately, “as close as they could” meant that they were actually more than two feet away. Any closer and his squid-cuff would destroy their cell phones.
MISSION FAILURE, EVIE THOUGHT, WATCHING FROM THE LIVING ROOM WINDOWS AS MISTER SNOW’S hovership disappeared into the clouds. Winterpole was too powerful, and now the risks were too great. Even she, who had sworn she would not rest until she stood on the solid earth of the eighth continent, had no options left. If she kept up her quest, her father would surely be sent to the Prison at the Pole. As it was, he had already sacrificed so much—his freedom, his inventions, everything.
She moved to give him a comforting hug, but he backed away.
“Wait, wait! Don’t come any closer,” he said urgently. “The EMP!”
The cockatoo perched on a bookshelf nearby screeched in frustration on its owner’s behalf. The cacophony filled Evie’s ears. Rick expressed his feelings in the opposite way, pushing his chin against his chest and brooding quietly.
“Kids, listen to me.” Dad knelt down so they were all at eye level. “You can’t worry about the risks, not now, after you have already come so far. No matter what happens to me, you must continue your search. You must find Doctor Grant and build the eighth continent. It’s the only hope we have of getting out of this mess.”
“We think we know where he is,” Evie said. “He’s apparently building an island in the Arctic Circle.”
Clapping his hands with amusement, her father said, “Ha! Evan, you dog. Of course he is. Great minds, after all. This is the good news we needed. Come with me down to my lab. I have something to show you both.”
The front door opened, and 2-Tor poked his silver domed head through, carrying a tower of wildly colored suitcases between his wings. “Doctor Lane! I have urgent news to convey to you.”
“It’s all right, 2-Tor,” Evie’s father assured the robot. “Rick and Evie have told me everything.”
2-Tor wailed, “No! You don’t understand. It’s much worse than any of our setbacks.”
The frantic tone in the robot’s voice worried Evie. “What is it, 2-Tor? What’s wrong?”
“It’s dreadful, just dreadful news.”
“Did Winterpole come back?” asked Rick.
“Is the Roost broken again?” asked Evie.
“No!” 2-Tor lamented. “It’s your mother, children. Madam Lane has returned from her business trip.”
Evie’s father looked at 2-Tor, then at the luggage he was holding. Mom’s luggage. Dad’s eyes went as wide as optical discs. “Kids, you have to hide me, quick! She can’t see me with this stupid squid around my leg.”
“See you?” Rick repeated. “You mean you still haven’t told her about the arrest or the Eden Compound . . . or any of this stuff? I don’t believe it. At this rate, there isn’t going to be anything left of Lane Industries when we grow up.”
“In all of our phone talks the opportunity never arose.”
Rick gritted his teeth. “‘Never arose’?! How does getting arrested and being imprisoned in your own house never arose?”
“Never arise,” Evie corrected.
“Quiet, Evie,” Rick snapped, shoving his sister.
“Hey, knock it off!” Their father’s cheeks reddened. “The truth is, I was waiting for the right moment.”
“We can fight about this later,” Evie replied, displaying an amount of grace that surprised even herself. “Right now, we need to sneak Dad down to his workshop and look for a way to conceal his squid-cuff. If Mom finds out what we’ve been up to, we’ll wish we’d been sent to the Prison at the Pole.”
It wasn’t that Mom was terrible. She was the best Frisbee thrower Evie had ever seen, she could ski like a pro, and she used to read them the greatest bedtime stories—each one was like a performance. But as the CEO of Cleanaspot, the world’s third
-largest international soap manufacturer, she was also a mega-powerful businesswoman. These days, she was always traveling and working. Just last week she was in Dubai consulting with hotel magnates about how to improve laundry procedures. After solving the problem of the sheikh’s sheets, she was off to Prague for the European Bubble Festival, of which Cleanaspot was a major sponsor.
Evie, Rick, their dad, and 2-Tor crept down the stairs, careful not to make a sound. Every time 2-Tor’s joints squeaked, Evie winced, and she wished she had actually listened all those times her dad had told her to clean him.
Through the ceiling, they heard Mom’s voice giving her cell phone a stern lecture. “Catherine, for the last time, this is UN-AC-CEPTABLE. I want those sud reports on my desk by Monday morning, or we are all going out with the wash. Is that understood? . . . Good. Have a great weekend.”
They heard Mom walk into the kitchen, and so they sped back up the stairs and into the front hall, where she had just been.
“Quick, hide me!” The kids’ father ran to the hall closet and opened the door. Four wetsuits, a surfboard, and two fifty-pound bags of birdseed tumbled onto the floor.
Evie’s mom burst into the room. “George! What are you doing?”
Evie’s dad pulled his foot under the bags of birdseed to conceal the squid-cuff. “Melinda! Hi! Welcome home! Nothing! Just helping the kids clean out the closet.”
She glanced at Rick and Evie briefly before returning her attention to their dad. “Hi, kids. George, we have that dinner at the International Lodge with those investors from the Soap Syndicate in forty minutes. Why aren’t you dressed?”
“Oh! Um . . .”
“Did you forget?”
Evie’s father swallowed hard. “No, uh, of course not! Just lost track of the time.”
“Well, hurry up! I’m going to shower. We are leaving in ten minutes.” She hurried up the stairs.
Rick, Evie, and their dad exhaled a collective sigh of relief.
They scrambled down to the workshop, where on the flatscreen Geneva’s 110th annual bon bon–eating competition was playing. Evie’s dad kept clear of the television so that he wouldn’t torch it with his squid-cuff. “Rick,” he said, “run over to my laptop. Pull up the file ‘EC Zero to Zero-Point-Five’ and transfer it to your portable hard drive.”
“You got it, Dad.”
Suddenly, Mom’s face appeared on the TV screen. Her hair was wet, and she was in a towel. A foamy toothbrush hung out of her mouth. In a panic, Evie’s dad stuck his foot in a tool chest.
“George!” Evie’s mom said around the toothbrush. “What are you doing down there?”
“Sorry, honey! Just showing the kids a new video game I developed!”
“We don’t have time for that! This is UN-AC-CEPTABLE. Go put on your suit.”
Evie’s father looked nervous. “Sure thing, honey! Just a minute.”
The image on the screen went back to people stuffing their faces with chocolates.
Minutes passed as Rick worked out how to transfer the file their dad had sent him to find. Evie paced, agitated. Their dad stood perfectly still in the middle of the room, trying not to get too close to his computer equipment or any other electronics in the workshop.
“Got it,” Rick said at last, raising his portable hard drive like the triumphant knight raising his sword in The Saga of Salma. “What is it?”
“That’s my half of the Eden Compound,” their dad explained. “When you find Doctor Grant, he should be able to reassemble the formula using his half. Hopefully, he can make enough of the compound to create the eighth continent.”
Evie’s mom burst into the room. She looked ravishing, wearing a flowing emerald ball gown that matched the earrings she was struggling to fit through her ears. In the second it took Evie to look at her, her dad had thrown a greasy white sheet over himself like a blanket, once again hiding the squid-cuff.
“George!” Evie’s mother said. “We are going to be so late.”
“Cough! Cough! Oh, Melinda. I don’t think I can go. I think I ate some bad, uh”—he glanced at the television—“bonbons yesterday, and I feel like a goat cheese salad left out in the sun. I don’t think I can do anything tonight.”
“Oh, you poor dear!” She stepped toward him to feel the temperature of his forehead with her hand.
“No, Melinda! Wait!” Her husband tried to stop her, but it was too late. She entered the EMP’s invisible two-foot radius, and her cell phone exploded, blowing a hole in her purse. Lip gloss, old receipts, and her pocketbook tumbled to the floor.
“What on earth?” she asked, the wrinkles on her forehead at full attention. “My phone! Oh, dear. Maybe this is a sign I shouldn’t attend the banquet.”
“No, go!” George insisted desperately. “I’m okay. It’s an important meeting. I’ll put myself to bed.”
“I don’t know, sweetie. Are you sure?”
Evie took a closer look at her father. The edge of the squid-cuff had begun to peek out from the bottom corner of his blanket. “Yup, definitely sure,” he said.
“Oh, uh, okay, if that’s what you want.” Evie’s mother headed to the door, then hesitated. “I’ll get you some chicken soup before I leave. Feel better, honey. Have a good night, kids.”
“Bye, Mom!” Rick and Evie chorused.
When she was gone, Rick turned to Evie. “We need to fess up to Mom. This whole thing is a bad idea. Maybe we should just give up on the eighth continent. Maybe it’s not worth it.”
“Maybe you need to pull yourself together,” Evie snapped at him. “Think of all the trouble you’ve already gotten into. You want that to be for nothing? Winterpole is using Dad to keep us in line. Don’t think they won’t make note of what we did on your permanent record.”
Rick gasped. “Einstein’s ghost! My permanent record? I almost forgot about that. Evie, what are we going to do?”
“We are going to build the eighth continent. That’s the only way we can keep Dad from going to the Prison at the Pole. He stole that bird. We broke into Winterpole Headquarters and hacked their data system. We tampered with their records. Well, I tampered with their records. But we can’t turn back now. We have to build the eighth continent, and we can’t let Mom find out about it.”
Rick had the most horrified expression on his face, like a grotesque statue in a haunted house.
Evie shoved him. “It’s not that bad. We’ll be fine.”
But Rick wasn’t looking at Evie. He was looking over her shoulder, where their mother was standing in the doorway, her head steaming even more than the bowl of chicken soup in her hands.
MRS. MAPLE’S OFFICE WAS THE EPITOME OF MODERN DESIGN AND CONTAINED ALL THE THINGS a precise woman like Diana’s mother desired. A fine Swiss cuckoo clock adorned each wall, and a tremendous model of Winterpole Headquarters, carved of crystal clear ice, dominated the center of the room.
Mrs. Maple had several important meetings to attend that day, which left Diana and Vesuvia alone to do their homework.
“And so,” Diana said, finishing up an algebra problem, “if you divide both sides by two, you’re left with just x on this side, and six over here. X equals six. See?”
Vesuvia flipped her tablet onto the coffee table. It bounced off and landed on the floor. She stretched like a cheetah after a big meal. “Uggggchh! My brain is exhausted from listening to you. Thank polyester I’m done with math.”
Diana scratched the back of her head awkwardly. “Heh-heh. Yeah. Um, Vesuvia? Now that I’ve finished your homework, do you think I could get started on mine?”
“I have a better idea,” Vesuvia said, swiping the tablet from Diana’s hand and flinging it into the ice sculpture, where it struck with a wet crack! “Let’s play Bribe Your Mom’s Coworkers for Information about the Lanes.”
“That’s a long name for a game,” Diana observed.
&nbs
p; “Don’t be a know-it-all, Diana. They’re ugly. Now, we still don’t know how the Lanes intend to make the eighth continent, and without that information I can’t build New Miami.”
Vesuvia was right. Diana had not seen Rick and Evie since they rode by her mother’s office window two days earlier. Since then, Vesuvia had embedded herself at Winterpole Headquarters, scouring the facility for any information that would provide answers about the Lanes’ plan for the eighth continent. Now the weekend was almost over, and they were still no closer to solving the puzzle.
“Come on, Diana!” Vesuvia nudged her. “We need to know what they were looking for when they snuck in here.”
Diana shrugged. “I guess I could ask my mom for permission.”
“Sigh!” Vesuvia heaved aloud. “My way is much more fun. Who doesn’t like to get paid to not do something? Daddy pays me fifty thousand US dollars a month not to drown my new puppy in the kitchen sink. It’s awesome! And the joke’s on Daddy, because I don’t even want to do that again. After the first time, what’s the point?”
Diana wanted to be horrified by this statement, but she had been friends with Vesuvia long enough to expect such twisted things to come from her mouth.
“Come on. Let’s go!” Vesuvia hopped up, brimming with excitement. “Carry my tablet.”
Diana picked it up. A few glass shards fell out of the screen. She showed Vesuvia the spiderweb of cracks. “I think it’s broken.”
Vesuvia groaned. “Be sure to file an official complaint. They put no effort into making those things last. All the time they break for no reason. Now. Onward! To the Bribe Zone!”
Diana had suggested that they begin their search at the guard barracks, where the uniformed troops who patrolled the halls of Winterpole Headquarters hung out when they weren’t on duty. Winterpole guards gossiped like, well, like anyone with a watercooler or an Internet connection, to be honest. It was possible that one of them knew something about Rick and Evie’s plan.
