by Lauren Child
Buzz pointed out a small, silver object.
THE BREATHING BUCKLE.
To be used underwater. Slip buckle off belt, place between teeth, and breathe comfortably for twenty-seven minutes, two seconds.
WARNING! NO RESERVE AIR CANISTER.
GETAWAY SHOES.
Depress green button on base of left shoe to convert to “roller shoes.”
Big deal, thought Ruby, a kid at my school has those. But then she read on.
Depress red button on base of right shoe to activate power jets. Maximum speed ninety-one miles per hour for a distance of approximately seven miles.
WARNING! CAN CAUSE FEET TO OVERHEAT. AVOID USE ON RUGGED TERRAIN.
Kinda small, aren’t they? mused Ruby. Must be for some woman with feet like a kid.
She moved to the next cabinet: displayed inside was an elegant, cropped cape-jacket. It was white with a fur-edged hood, and had one large, shiny glass button.
LADIES’ PARACHUTE CAPE.
Push button to activate chute.
WARNING! TO AVOID EARACHE, ENSURE HOOD IS UP BEFORE EMBARKING ON AIRBORNE DESCENT.
“We don’t use that anymore,” said Buzz, glancing over her shoulder. “None of our female agents will be seen dead in it. Apparently it’s out of style.”
Ruby didn’t agree at all. What did Buzz know about fashion anyway? The woman looked like a walking mushroom. As far as Ruby was concerned, this was one cool-looking cape.
Buzz moved on, pointing out various tiny lifesaving survival gadgets and deadly lifesaving weapons — all disguised as ballpoint pens, brooches, miniature radios, hats, umbrellas, sunglasses, car keys, and a thousand other things.
However, what really caught Ruby’s eye was the watch. It was in a glass drawer contained in a special cabinet with a notice that said, for display only — do not remove. The watch face had cartoon eyes, and the eyes followed the hands. The second hand had a fly at the end of it that ticked steadily around the dial. That fly again. For a split second it triggered something in her memory. Autumn leaves whirled through her mind and a strange dark feeling lurked but she couldn’t grasp hold of it. And then just like that it was gone.
The watch strap was brightly striped and fastened with an interesting clasp and the face was colored enamel with chrome surround. It was desirable simply because of the way it looked, but of course there was more to the watch than its appealing appearance. The label said, THE FLY, ESCAPE WATCH and in red letters underneath, it said, STRICTLY DO NOT TOUCH.
But how could Ruby resist? While Buzz was on the far side of the room, busy reading out the specifications of some much less interesting gadget, Ruby slipped the watch off its stand and popped it on to her wrist — it was a perfect fit.
She pressed the winder and out shot a titanium cable, barely visible to the naked eye — it had a hook on the end and was clearly designed as a sort of climbing device. Ruby could see that by twisting the dial you could make the cable longer or shorter depending on how much you needed. What she couldn’t immediately see was a way of unhooking the hook and retracting the cable — which was unfortunate because seconds later the door opened and Ruby heard the sound of softly padding feet. Bare feet.
LB.
Ruby stood very still and smiled a big smile. She hoped LB wouldn’t notice what had happened, and she hoped that if she did then the smile might go some way to softening LB’s reaction.
This, it turned out, was a wrong assumption.
“Redfort, if you must grin like an idiot, please don’t direct it at me,” drawled LB. She clearly hadn’t noticed Ruby’s predicament, and launched into a conversation with Buzz. Ruby wrestled with the cable — she finally managed to unhook it and even managed to find the retracting device just before Buzz signaled to her that it was time to take the exam. Unfortunately there was no chance to replace the watch back in its drawer.
Buzz was in a hurry. “Just push that drawer shut,” she said. “Once we leave the room everything locks automatically.”
Ruby knew if she was caught with the watch then her agent assignment would certainly be over. There was nothing else for it but to stuff it deep into her jacket pocket. Maybe there would be a chance to return it later — after she took the test.
No one need ever know.
THEY WERE MET IN THE CORRIDOR by an uptight-looking man in a self-conscious sort of suit.
“Ruby . . . Redfort?” he said, reading from his clipboard as if there was a whole group of schoolchildren waiting to take a secret agency test.
Ruby looked around. “Well, I’m pretty sure she’s called Buzz,” she said, nodding at Buzz. “So I guess that would be me.”
The man sniffed. “Follow me, would you.” He was very uptight. He could only be about twenty-three and was dressed in a pathetically showy way. All hair product and bleached teeth but no style.
Ruby caught sight of his identification badge. “Miles Froghorn?”
“That’s Frohorn,” corrected the man. “The G is silent.”
He led her down a series of orange through yellow through ochre corridors. Ruby trailed her fingers on the shiny gloss paint and the man snapped his head around. “Please don’t touch.” Ruby opened her mouth to speak but the man held up his hand. “No questions please.”
Boy, is this guy a prize potato head.
They continued in silence until he stopped, opened a door of uncertain color — commonly described as sludge — and pointed to a desk in the middle of an empty room. He then placed a pile of papers on the table. “Here’s a pencil. You have one hour and one minute. You are required to give only one answer, any erasing, any changes of mind, will be seen as a wrong answer. If you have an urgent need to go to the bathroom, suppress it. Any questions? Good, I didn’t think so.”
“Yep, Mr. Froghorn, just one actually.” (She ignored the silent G thing.) “Have you ever considered moving into the hospitality industry because boy, I really think you might be wasting those great people skills.”
Froghorn looked at her, all beady eyes and defensive — like a cobra. Or was it a jackal?
“Do your test, little girl, fail it, and then I’m sure an adult will drive you home. A few people here might rate you, but you need to be aware that you are no Bradley Baker and you never will be.”
“Just who is this Bradley Baker?”
But Froghorn wasn’t about to explain. When he exited the room he slammed the door so hard the sound echoed down the corridor.
I must remember that silent G, said Ruby to herself.
Ruby picked up her pencil and took a look at the papers in front of her. There were thirty-seven problems and one hour and one minute to solve them in. That meant just ninety-nine seconds on each one. She glanced at the clock and began reading.
(1) You have to take three criminals back to the County Jail: Alexei Asimov, Carlo Carlucci, and Walter Trunch. You have to cross a river on the way, and the boat only takes two people at a time. The trouble is that if you leave the criminals together, Asimov will kill Trunch, and Trunch will kill Carlucci. How can you get them safely across the river?
She smiled. Geez, that was easy — just thirty-six to go.
(2) You have seven gold bars. However, one of them is a counterfeit and weighs less than the others. You have a set of balance scales but you may only use them twice. How do you identify the counterfeit gold bar?
Boy, if all the questions were going to be this simple the time was really going to drag.
Now, this was more like it — question three was one of those questions that keep highly respected mathematicians up all night. Ruby furrowed her brow — for about twenty-eight seconds, then she grinned.
Oh, I get it.
When Froghorn walked back into the room, he found Ruby hunched over the test papers, chewing her pencil.
“Oh, dear, you seem to be stuck — too hard?” asked Froghorn, barely able to contain his mirth.
“Well, it’s just I’m sorta confused.”
“Never mind, litt
le girl, it is a very difficult test — tricky for children to make sense of.”
“Oh, that’s a relief because this question didn’t make any sense at all.”
He looked over her shoulder.
(25) Spectrum agents Bret and Emily and Chuck are all driving to a Clairvoyants concert. They set off an hour before the concert. Bret takes route A which is twice as long as Emily’s route B but the average of their two routes is the same as Chuck’s route C. Trouble is Bret gets lost and goes 10 miles out of his way, meaning he ends up traveling as much as the combined distance Chuck and Emily travel. Assuming they all drive at 40 miles an hour, how late is Bret for the concert?
“I have to admit, less able people do find that a tough one.” He smiled meanly.
Ruby looked at him, all big-eyed innocence. “Oh, that’s not the problem. I get that the answer is fifteen minutes — it’s just I don’t get why anyone would travel for over an hour to go see a lame band like the Clairvoyants.”
Miles Froghorn’s mouth twisted into a mean little O. He snatched up the papers and stormed out of the room. Ruby wished she could tell Clancy about this super sap. She could just see Clancy’s expression, mouth wide, eyes blinking — boy, would she love to tell him all this.
While she waited, Ruby amused herself by doodling unflattering pictures of Froghorn in the back of her notebook — they were pretty good actually.
Twenty-five minutes later there were footsteps in the corridor and Ruby was relieved when it was Hitch who walked into the room and not the Silent G.
“Ready to go, kid?”
Ruby nodded.
Hitch motioned to the door. “Come on, then, let’s get out of here before Froghorn sees those unpleasant little cartoons you did of him.”
“Hey, how did you know about that?”
“I was watching you on the monitor. Not bad, you have a talent for caricature.”
“Thanks,” said Ruby. “Clancy and me are thinking of publishing our own comic book.”
“Good for you,” said Hitch.
They walked in silence for about fifteen seconds before Ruby blurted, “So?”
Hitch gave her a blank look.
“So, how did I do?” said Ruby.
“Oh, that,” replied Hitch. “Yes, well done — thirty-six out of thirty-seven. Not bad.”
“I got one wrong?” said Ruby, dumbfounded.
He winked. “Nah, kid. I’m just messing with you.”
Ruby stopped walking. “So you’re saying I passed? I musta passed, right? I mean thirty-seven out of thirty-seven, that has to be a pass.”
Hitch looked at her. “Don’t get your underwear in a twist kid. You passed.”
She tried to keep her cool but still, she had just passed the ninety-nine-second test; anyone would find themselves smiling about that, wouldn’t they?
When they stepped inside the elevator, Ruby asked, “So who is this mystery Bradley Baker guy?”
“Bradley Baker?” replied Hitch. “He’s no one.”
There were a lot of things Ruby didn’t know about Spectrum but one thing she was already sure about was that Bradley Baker was not “no one.”
*TO TAKE THE 99-SECOND TEST, GO TO WWW.RUBYREDFORT.COM
HITCH LED RUBY TO A RAINBOW-COLORED office where Buzz was sitting. Her desk was a circle and she sat in the middle surrounded by telephones — each one a different color.
“Now what?” said Ruby.
“Now you wait here, good as gold until someone tells you otherwise,” said Hitch firmly.
“What am I waiting for?” asked Ruby.
“LB,” he said. “She wants to brief you — so don’t go wandering off, kid. Sit tight. That’s a rule, remember?”
Ruby did sit tight — for all of twenty-nine seconds. And then she had an idea. This might just be her chance to return the watch before anyone knew it was missing.
She looked over at Buzz, who seemed to be waiting for one of the fifty-two phones to start ringing.
“So that’s why you’re called Buzz,” said Ruby.
Buzz looked baffled.
“The phones, people always buzzing you?”
“No,” said Buzz. “That’s not why.”
It didn’t take long before one of the telephones did start to ring, the yellow one. Buzz picked it up and started talking in Japanese. That’s when Ruby stood up and signaled that she urgently needed to take a trip to the restroom.
“It’s OK,” she mouthed silently. “I know where it is, I’ll be fine.”
Buzz bit her lip anxiously and pointed at her watch to indicate “Don’t be long.”
Ruby opened the door and walked speedily down the corridor until she got to the restroom. She went in, took off her sneakers, and placed them in one of the stalls. This way if anyone were to come in, what they would see would be Ruby’s feet. She then silently slipped back out and ran softly up the corridor, remembering to turn right when she reached crimson, and left when it dissolved into cerise. The door, she remembered, was about halfway down. Now for the code. She recalled how Buzz had looked at her watch before she had punched in the numbers.
I’ll bet that’s it.
She pulled the Fly Escape Watch from her pocket, checked the dial, and punched in the exact time.
The door clicked open. Too bad I gotta return this watch, it’s coming in kinda handy.
As she walked, the lights in the display cases popped on around her, the gadgets gleaming under the glass, like jewels at a jewelers. She went over to the drawer where the watch belonged and was about to open it when something caught her eye. It was a silver whistle — it looked like a dog whistle but the label was smudged. Maybe it was the ribbon, maybe it was the fact that she had always wanted a silver dog whistle, but Ruby found that she couldn’t resist slipping it over her head and looking at her reflection in the glass.
She blew into it — no sound at all. Surely it wasn’t just a dog whistle? She blew into it again and again, still nothing. In her frustration she started blowing and inhaling in the way that one might suck air in and out of a harmonica.
“Must be broken,” said Ruby out loud, but her voice seemed to be coming from far, far away.
Wow, so it’s a voice thrower. She inhaled again. “Hello,” she said. This time her voice sounded as if it was coming from right behind her. She experimented some more — there were four little holes in the whistle, and whichever one her finger covered determined the direction her voice came from — north, east, south, or west of her. Point the whistle up — her voice was thrown above her.
It was precisely at the moment she called out the words, “I’m over here!” that someone else decided to enter the room.
Ruby quickly ducked down behind the cabinets.
“Did you hear that?” said a voice she didn’t recognize.
“Hear what?” said a second voice.
“Hey, these lights shouldn’t be on.”
“Must be something wrong with the sensors.”
“You think? Unless of course . . .”
“What? Someone set them off? Should I call security?”
Ruby froze.
Oh, boy, now I’m in trouble.
She was almost about to give herself up when the first voice said, “Well, either that or go get some bug spray — could be a large spider. You know how many spiders set off alarms and sensors? I’ll tell you, a lot.”
“Really? Must have been a pretty elephant-sized spider.”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared of spiders.”
“Not scared,” said the second voice, a little aggravated. “Just don’t like ’em is all.” Ruby could hear the footsteps moving toward her.
Darn it, she mouthed silently as she tucked the whistle inside her T-shirt. Now she had managed to steal two things. She made herself very flat and began to crawl forward on her stomach. She could just about squeeze her way under the cabinets and make it to the door. Once in the corridor she sprinted as fast as she could to the restroom and retrieved her sneak
ers.
When she returned to her seat in Buzz’s office she was flushed and perspiring.
“You know, you don’t look so good,” said Buzz.
“Yeah, well, I don’t feel so good,” said Ruby sincerely. “But give me a few minutes and I’ll be OK.”
“So long as you’re sure.” Buzz looked concerned; she wasn’t used to queasy kids. “Well, if you’re really certain you’re OK,” she said warily, “LB wants to see you. I’ll walk you to the waiting area outside her office. Don’t go anywhere, don’t touch anything. In fact, don’t move until LB comes to get you.”
“Sounds like fun,” said Ruby.
No one was around, which gave her a good chance to snoop about. On the walls were big colorful paintings, all of them abstract. Some of them made your eyes ache to look at them.
LB must be a fan of op art, thought Ruby. Her mother sold a lot of this kind of work at her modern-art gallery, and Ruby knew that it was usually very expensive. One entire wall was painted with concentric circles in colors that seemed to buzz and vibrate. Ruby stared at it so hard that she eventually lost her balance and fell forward. Putting her hands out to save herself, she unwittingly pressed a hidden catch, and what had looked like a wall sort of became a door and swung open.
Oops.
There in front of her was a room completely empty but for hundreds of black-and-white photographs, which covered the walls from floor to ceiling. Photographs mainly of people: people and cars, people up mountains and in jungles, people on elephants, people canoeing down rapids. One picture particularly intrigued her. It was of a youngish boy, sitting at the controls of an airplane and smiling at the camera. She guessed he must be the son of one of the agents. There was another of him scuba diving.
Lucky kid, she thought. Up high on the far left was a picture of a man looking a huge crocodile in the eye. He was making a stupid face, his eyes were crossed and he appeared not even slightly bothered by the reptile. The man looked familiar but even with her glasses on Ruby couldn’t quite make out who he was or where she had seen him before. Curiosity getting the better of her, she dragged a chair from the lobby and climbed up to take a closer look.
