by Lynne Jonell
Taft ran off at once. Christina lingered. “Do you,” she said, tracing a welt on the couch with her finger, “do you cough like that very often?”
“Oh, now and then. But don’t worry, sweetheart.” Beth Adnoid laid a thin hand on Christina’s arm. “When Lenny does supply drops, he brings medicine.”
Christina looked down. Her arm felt hot where her mother’s hand touched it. Her mother had a bad cough, her breathing was too quick, she had a fever . . .
“How often does Lenny bring supplies?” Christina asked abruptly.
Beth Adnoid’s eyes were shadowed. “Oh, often enough. Now go take your turn at the bathroom, and then you can stretch out on one of the couches. You must be tired to death.”
Christina was tired. She stood in front of the packing-case cupboards, waiting her turn with the bucket and soap. She wasn’t used to staying up until the middle of the night.
Supper seemed a very long time ago. Were there any snacks in the cupboards? She lifted the flap over the first packing case and then the second. The third. The fourth.
Taft emerged from behind the cases with a clatter and set down the bucket. “I saw where your mother must have sent the messages from. There was this crack in the rock big enough for a test tube, but not much more—what’s the matter?” he asked suddenly.
Christina jerked her chin at the packing cases. She couldn’t speak.
Taft’s gaze swept over the empty cupboards, bare of everything but dust. He jammed his hands in his pockets and whistled.
Christina pressed her lips in a straight and furious line. No wonder her mom and Leo were so thin. Lenny Loompski was starving them.
“I’m feeling much better now,” said Beth Adnoid. She sat up, swaying slightly. “I was just wondering, Christina . . . do you think that plane would carry me, too?” The lamp’s flicker caught at her eyes, and they gleamed. “I know you must be tired, but if I could get out tonight, I could go straight to the police and tell my story. We could get your father released and by morning we could have the whole town up in arms against Lenny, and rescue the orphans, as well.”
They tried it at once. Her mother wedged herself into the back seat, her legs dragging over one side, her eyes feverish and bright. Christina, desperate to get her mother home where there was food, sang the notes in order and got in the cockpit. She thought as hard as she could in her tired state—but the plane wouldn’t even lift enough to hover.
Taft pointed to the control panel, which now read WARNING! WEIGHT LIMIT EXCEEDED!
Beth Adnoid struggled to her feet, wheezing. “Well, it was worth a try. Tomorrow, Leo can make some modifications. Or we could somehow use two planes—”
“Stay here and rest, Mom. I’ll ask him!” Christina ran to the tunnel where the fleet was kept, but Leo had climbed into a plane in the second row and fallen asleep, snoring gently. Though it was clear he had made the plane for someone his size—and he was very small for a man, hardly bigger than Taft—Christina thought it was still a tight fit. Maybe he had intended the planes for children? Or maybe it was just easier to work on a smaller model. Someday, if his mind steadied again, she would ask him.
“Wow!” Taft lifted a lantern off its hook and held it high.
The small perfect planes stretched back into the darkness of the cave, looking like a patch of large silver watermelons that had sprouted wings. The red leather seats were free of dust, the windshield glass was clear and spotless; even the spare fuel canisters were in their holders near the tail. Christina was careful not to bump them as she went to shake Leo’s shoulder.
But Leo proved impossible to awaken. Christina gave up and turned to Taft. “I could fly out now, by myself. I could find the police station and tell them everything.”
“They won’t believe a kid, though.” Taft frowned. “And they’d probably call Lenny to come and get you, anyway. He had a court order, you said.”
Christina whirled and stalked across the sandy cavern floor. “Well, at least I can fly to my house and get a sack of food. They’re hungry, Taft!”
Taft followed, looking troubled. “Except your mom will never let you go. She’ll say it’s too dangerous.”
Christina glanced at her mother, who was stooped over, unfolding two extra quilts on the red couches. “That’s why I’m not going to even ask her,” she said, very low.
“Not going to ask me what?” Beth Adnoid turned, and put a hand on the wall to steady herself.
Christina froze. Her mother must have ears like a rabbit. “Um . . . sorry, but we couldn’t wake Leo up,” she said at random.
“That’s all right. We’ll ask him to modify the planes in the morning. What was it you wanted to ask me, though?”
Christina’s imagination failed her. She looked at Taft.
Taft grinned. “I was actually wondering something. If this was Leo Loompski’s private lab, why doesn’t it have electricity?”
Christina cast him a grateful glance.
Beth Adnoid sat down at the edge of Christina’s couch and took off the rubber bands that held her daughter’s hair in braids. Christina stiffened automatically—she hated having her hair combed, Nanny always yanked too hard—and then relaxed in surprise as her mother began to brush with gentle, rhythmic strokes. This was actually kind of nice. If only her mother’s hands weren’t so terribly warm . . .
“We had it in the main laboratories, of course.” Beth Adnoid smoothed Christina’s pale hair and parted it in the middle. “The aboveground buildings where I worked with your father were wired for electricity. But the zoom was so powerful an energy source that, whenever we managed to activate it, there would be a sudden surge of localized power and all the electrical circuits would blow.” She turned aside to cough, from deep in her chest.
Christina remembered how the lightbulbs had fizzed and gone dark in the tunnel, but she was more concerned about her mother. Shouldn’t she be lying down?
“In the end,” continued Beth Adnoid after a moment, braiding up one side, “we had to use such extremely small amounts of zoom in our experiments that Leo got frustrated—”
“And he built the underground labs so he could work on more zoom at a time, and he used oil lamps because they wouldn’t go out, I bet!” Taft stretched out on one of the couches.
Beth Adnoid finished Christina’s second braid and wrapped the end with a rubber band. “I helped him. I know about rocks, you see, and it was clear that this was a site of a former volcano—and honeycombed belowground with lava tubes.”
“Lava tubes?” Taft poked his nose out from his brown striped quilt.
“You might call them caves, or tunnels.” Christina’s mother set down the brush as if it was suddenly too heavy. “You’re in one right now. Lava flowed through here long ago. Then when it drained out, the empty tunnel was left.” She drew a gray patchwork quilt up under Christina’s chin with fingers that trembled. “But enough questions. Growing children need their sleep.”
“I’m practically asleep already,” said Taft.
“Me, too,” said Christina.
“Good night, darlings,” said Beth Adnoid.
Christina lay still, reveling in the new sensation of being tucked in and hugged. She wished she could just go to sleep like a regular girl and let her mother take care of everything.
But the sound of coughing echoed suddenly from the washing area. Christina waited, tense under her quilt, until it was over. No, she couldn’t rest.
She turned to Taft and spoke under cover of the quilt. “Listen. We’ll fly out as soon as she’s sleeping. I bet I can find some cough medicine in the bathroom cabinet at home.”
“And then let’s find Danny and bring him down here.”
“Food first,” whispered Christina. “If we brought him down here but there was no food when he got hungry—”
“Okay,” Taft said reluctantly. “Quiet now—she’s coming back.”
Christina nodded. And then she felt the touch of a warm hand on her hair and heard the sound
of her mother’s voice, singing a familiar lullaby. She shut her eyes . . . she would only pretend to sleep . . .
CHRISTINA woke to a hand shaking her roughly and Taft’s voice insistent in her ear.
“Hurry! We don’t have much time!”
She opened her eyes. Far above, the hole to the sky showed the dull gray of the hour before dawn. She fought her way out of a tangle of quilt and stumbled to the plane she had used the day before, parked near the rest of the fleet.
“Sing soft,” said Taft.
Christina didn’t need reminding. But as the plane bloomed into its final, muted chord, Leo Loompski lifted his rumpled head from the second row.
“Where are you going?”
Taft put a finger to his lips. “To get food,” he whispered. “Since Lenny didn’t bring you any.”
Leo sat up, a small man with confused eyes beneath wispy hair. “Lenny?” He gazed at the luminous violet plane, his eyes reflecting its glow. “Are you going to see my nephew?”
Christina, in the cockpit of the plane, sat perfectly still. Would he wake her mother? Would he tell them they couldn’t go?
But Leo just dug in his pocket. “You need a wrench. For fixing.”
Christina took the proffered wrench. It clinked against the jackknife in her back pocket.
“But what do you want us to fix?” Taft asked gently.
Leo stared at them both, his eyes more focused than Christina had ever seen them. “Lenny needs fixing. Go. Fix him now.”
As they neared the top of the cavern, they heard voices.
Christina circled around the dim, gray light that washed in through the opening and hovered in the shadows, beneath a hanging lump of rock. The plane’s humming was drowned out by the sound of an idling engine nearby, and the arguing voices were deep and loud.
“But I’ve got the winch on the back of the truck,” said a voice that Christina thought she had heard before, “and the supplies all ready. Just let me lower the food, at least.”
“No,” snapped the second voice—which was clearly Lenny Loompski’s.
“But that’s the second supply order you’ve canceled!”
Christina recognized the first voice now—it was the yard boss from the orphanage. She glanced back at Taft. He sat rigidly, his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears.
“So?” Lenny’s voice held a shrug. “I supplied everything Uncle Leo and Beth Adnoid wanted for years, but not once did they give me what I wanted. Nothing I could submit for the Karsnicky Medal! Nothing I could use to make zoom into fuel!”
“But the scientists at the main lab just figured that out.”
“Right. So what do I need these two for? Nothing, that’s what.”
There was a pause. “What are you going to do? Starve them to death?”
“I’m not starving them. I’ve just . . . lost interest in feeding them.” Lenny’s voice sounded annoyed. “Anyway, what business is it of yours, Crumley?”
“Er . . .”
“If you feel that sorry for them, why don’t you join them? I can lower you on the winch right now.”
“Boss, I never said—”
“You’re paid to do as you’re told and keep your mouth shut, remember? Now turn off that truck and leave it.”
“Yessir.”
The idling engine was cut. Suddenly everything was much quieter.
“Hey,” said Crumley, “do you hear somebody humming?”
Softer, softer, softer, thought Christina in a panic, and the plane’s hum diminished to the merest breath of sound.
“I don’t hear anything,” said Lenny. “Come back to the guardhouse. We just got in our first order for zoom, and I want to go over the procedure with everyone.”
Lenny’s sentences began to break up, coming to Christina’s ears in fragments.
“Tonight . . . visitor . . . doesn’t know . . .”
Lenny’s voice faded into an indistinct murmur. The sound of footsteps died away, and a door slammed in the distance. Christina edged the plane up just until her head cleared the rim, and she and Taft looked out.
Directly before them was a large pickup truck, backed up to the hole. The predawn air was gray and murky, but there was enough light for Christina and Taft to see that the pickup was loaded with food.
“Jackpot,” whispered Taft.
Stay, Christina thought. Good plane. She took off the helmet, stood on her seat, and climbed out over the lip of the cone. She slid a little—the cone sloped—and stopped herself against the truck’s rear right tire, which smelled of asphalt and rubber. She peered around it to the guardhouse at the bottom of the hill. A window showed the silhouettes of Lenny and the bristle-haired boss, backlit by yellow light, as they sat down and leaned toward each other.
“Look, there are even gunnysacks!” Taft was already up on the truck’s flatbed, poking amid the stacked boxes and baskets. “We can pack them with whatever we want!”
Christina was filled with a powerful sense of satisfaction as she scrambled onto the pickup. She would be able to get food to her mother and Leo, lots of it, even sooner than she had thought. And the truck would block them from the view of anyone who looked out the guardhouse window.
“Hey!” Taft stopped in the midst of loading a gunnysack with bread and fruit. “Why don’t we make more than one trip? There won’t be room for me in the plane anyway, if the food’s in the back seat—”
“And while I’m unloading, you can be filling another sack!”
Christina flew down into the cavern with the first sackful of food, flushed with triumph. In a few more trips, they’d have enough food to last them for weeks—time enough for Leo to design and build a plane that could carry more weight. And then—why, then her parents would be reunited, the orphans would be freed, and Lenny Loompski would be thrown behind bars, where he belonged.
Yes, everything was going perfectly. By the time her mother woke up, the cupboards would be completely stocked with food.
And medicine? Christina flew softly past her sleeping mother and blew her a kiss. It would be in one of the boxes on the truck. The question was, could she find it in the dark?
“I’ve been thinking,” said Taft. He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead; while Christina was gone, he had filled six gunnysacks and lined them against the side of the truck. “Why not bring Danny down, right now? Once we get enough food, I mean.”
Christina climbed onto the open tailgate and dug in the first box she came to. Was that a bottle of cough medicine? She held it up and squinted in the gloom. No, only mustard.
“I know we can’t rescue all the kids yet,” Taft went on. “But Danny needs me. I could go find him and send him down in the plane with you.”
Christina ripped open the next box with her pocketknife. “That won’t work. Once he sees you again, do you really think he’s going to get in a plane and let me take him away from you?”
“But I’d explain—”
“You’d have to explain over and over again, and he would make a fuss. And he’s never been in a plane, I bet. He might be scared. He might yell.”
Taft looked at his feet. His shoulders slumped.
“Of course,” Christina said, “he’d go with you.”
Taft looked up.
“If you were flying the plane,” she continued, warming to her idea, “he’d go with you in a heartbeat, no fuss at all.”
Taft frowned. “I can’t fly, remember? I tried.”
Christina felt inside the second box. Duct tape, pens, scissors, paper. Cough medicine had to have been on the supply order—where was it? “You can fly,” she said briefly, opening a third box. “But you have to believe you can, first. It’s just like me and math.”
“Math is different,” said Taft. “Anyone can do math.”
Christina sat back on her heels, exasperated. “Well, I couldn’t. And you’ll never focus your thoughts enough to fly, either, until you stop focusing on how you can’t.”
Taft looked doubtful.
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br /> “Come on, try it. You can practice without Danny, and while you fly the food down, I’ll try to spot where he is.” Christina jumped off the truck. “Here, let me have your shirt—and let’s cut off your shock collar. I can tape it together around my neck. Then if somebody sees me, I’ll look like just another orphan. Now get in the plane, and put that helmet on—unless you don’t want to rescue Danny.”
Taft climbed into the plane, protesting all the way. “Listen, Christina, it’s different for me. I really can’t fly this plane—it won’t let me. I bet it can tell I’m just an orph—”
“Stop saying that!” Christina saw with fury that his shoulders were beginning to hunch. “You’re brilliant at math, and you didn’t panic in the cave even when the flashlight died, and you’re my best friend, and Danny’s, too.” Christina knelt at the edge of the hole and glared down at Taft, shivering bare-chested in the plane’s front seat. “You’re not just an orphan, you’re Peter Taft. Now think! Think hard! Think GO!”
There was a whoosh of air and a swirl of violet light as the plane beneath her took off with a jerk. Christina suppressed a whoop—he’d really done it!—and turned to look around the edge of the truck.
Yes, the two silhouettes were still in the guardhouse window—and now they had been joined by more, all lifting glasses and drinking. They looked as if they were settling in for a long, long time.
Even better, Christina found the cough medicine in the fourth box. She wanted to make sure Taft took it in his very next load, so she set it front and center on the tailgate of the truck, where he would be sure to see it.
She couldn’t help but feel a little proud of herself as she prowled the ridge, looking down at the orphans’ camp below. She had figured things out, she had made her own plans, and now she was even going to rescue Danny.
But Danny was nowhere to be seen.
For sure he wasn’t among the sleeping orphans that lay about the smoldering embers of the fire. The length of his body and the size of his head would have made him easy to spot.
