by Paul Tobin
“You don’t know much about science, do you?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Octopus. No. I don’t. But in my defense—”
“What is a coordination compound?”
“Beats me.”
“Describe the life cycle of a black hole.”
“Life cycle?”
“What is complexity theory?”
“The theory that these questions are too complex for me?”
It was at that moment that I heard Nate’s voice. Before, I’d been hearing it, but with that muted sound—distant, unimportant. Suddenly, he was as clear as if he was sitting right next to me, which would make sense, since he was. Even better, he spoke a sentence that, until he said it, I hadn’t even come close to understanding how very much I wanted to hear.
He said, “Delphine, would you like to electrocute that robot octopus?”
“Yes,” I answered. It was by far the easiest question I’d heard in the last few minutes. As soon as I answered, the glass of my window tinted almost to black, but there was a red spot about the size of my hand, and on it were the words “Press here.”
I pressed there.
There was an immediate zzzzackity-zack sound, and our car was briefly surrounded by a burst of blue light, sort of like if the entire car had suddenly emitted a burst of electricity that fried all the circuitry in the mechanical octopus and made the members of the Red Death Tea Society use words considered much worse than “piffle,” spilling the tea they’d been drinking and then shivering as the effects of the electrical burst made them spark and their hairs stand on end, and then they both fell over, totally unconscious. It was, in fact, exactly that type of a burst of light, because that’s what happened.
People on the sidewalks were gasping in surprise, some of them moving quickly onward and others rooted to the spot. A woman on a motorcycle stopped and took off her neon-green helmet to see better, but then put it right back on, probably nervous about everything that was happening. One boy in his teens (wearing a Crimson Pterodactyls basketball jersey: Go team!) fell over when his dog ran around and around him, barking, accidentally wrapping the boy’s legs tightly together with its leash. The boy fell over and the dog, a husky, starting barking at him with a query in his voice, as if the dog couldn’t understand what was happening, making the two of us basically even.
Nate calmly drove forward, away from the unconscious cult members, driving beneath the manhole cover that was somehow and for some reason still hovering about twenty feet in the air.
“What the piffle was all that about?” I asked.
“They’re confused by you,” Nate said. “They can’t understand that we’re friends.”
“Why is that so hard to understand?”
“Because all they really understand is science. And tea. Since we became friends, they think you must have immense scientific knowledge, or else there wouldn’t be any reason why we’d hang out together. They can’t understand that I just like being with you.” He reached out and gave my hand a squeeze.
“You like being with me?” I said.
“Of course!” Nate said. His eyes darted around a bit. He looked nervous. He’d looked completely calm when we’d had assassins on our car. “You’re funny. And you’re … the way you … umm. I guess I … umm.”
“Yes?” I said.
“It’s remarkable,” Nate said. “But I don’t think I’m smart enough to express how you make me feel.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Nate, I could do without being attacked by giant cats or cult members, but, otherwise, I like being with you, too.”
For the record, Nate blushed for the second time that day, and there was an icky stain on my window where the mechanical hypno-octopus had been stuck. These two facts are only related in one way.
Both of them made me say, “Hmm.”
chapter
5
“What’s next?” I asked Nate. We were in Plove Park, having a picnic. Well, honestly, we were just eating a whole bunch of doughnuts, but it sounds less disgusting if I say we were having a picnic.
“We’ll have to wait on Susan Heller,” Nate said. “Which means on to Plan B: we’ll scan the others. There’s Vicky Ott, Jaime Huffman, Marigold Tina, and Kip Luppert.” Nate looked at his phone and added, “I’m tracking Jaime Huffman right here in the park. He’s on the other side, near the stream. Hey, are you going to eat that one?”
He was pointing to the last of the powdered strawberry-filled doughnuts. I had been going to eat it, but I’d already had two of them and there are limits, probably, to how many doughnuts I can eat. I pushed it closer to Nate.
I said, “I thought we had to scan Jaime’s goldfish. Not Jaime. Wouldn’t the goldfish be at his house?”
“Normally, yes,” Nate said. He frowned. “Another anomaly, though. I’m tracking Jaime and his goldfish here at the park.”
“That’s strange. I don’t know a lot of people who take their goldfish out for walks.”
“No. Goldfish can’t walk, anyway. Except for one time last year, on a Friday the thirteenth, when I temporarily gave legs to a goldfish.”
“That’s a story I’ll admit interests me, but mostly I’m too terrified to know. Listen, I’ve been thinking, I have lots of friends, and they could help us. If we need to find all of these six messages of yours, wouldn’t it be better to have several teams searching for them? I could call Liz. Stine. Ventura. Lots of people!” Because it was such a smart idea, I made the exact gesture that circus performers make when they somersault off the high wire to land in a cannon that shoots them up and over the tiger cage to land on an elephant’s back, the gesture that acknowledges the thunderous roar of the applause.
“No,” Nate said. He frowned, which is not the same thing as applause and not at all worth being shot out from a cannon.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because if everyone knows about Proton and the Red Death Tea Society, it will cause too much panic.”
“If you’re worried about panic, perhaps you could not make giant cats? Just an observation, and … seriously, my friends are good at keeping secrets, or else we’d all be in detention every day, instead of usually just me. Anyway … we could tell them that it’s just some scavenger hunt, although in that case we’d probably have to give a prize to the winners. Incidentally, I think it would be best if the prize was cake, since I plan on winning.” I made my circus gesture again and stared meaningfully to the vast audience (meaning Nate) and waited for the applause.
“No,” Nate said. Perhaps he was confused about applause?
“Gahh,” I said. “Why not?”
“Dog nose,” he said, which did not … in my mind … clear things up.
I said, “Did you know that your explanations always need explaining? What’s this about dog noses?” Nate did a slow gulp. He put down the powdered strawberry-filled doughnut even though it was only half-eaten, which is practically a crime. His shoulders had hunched over and his lip was trembling. He looked like a circus performer who had somersaulted off the high wire and into a cannon that shot him almost, but not quite, over the tiger’s cage, and was now trying to avoid engaging in conversation with a tiger that had not expected visitors.
“Nate,” I said. “Talk to me.”
“Dog noses,” he said. “Remember when I smelled that you would be my friend?”
“You put on a mechanical dog nose and sniffed my arm, so, yeah … I kinda remember that.”
“I can’t tell you how happy I was. I don’t … I don’t really have friends. The science has never been right.”
“I’m not science, Nate. Friends aren’t science.”
“Everything is science. Trust me.”
“I do trust you, but that doesn’t mean that even a genius can’t be wrong. Maybe life is science, but living isn’t science. It’s not numbers.”
“Maybe,” Nate said, entirely unconvinced. “But what I do know is that other people would make me nervous.”
“Okay,” I said
, also entirely unconvinced. Though, in a way, I did understand his anxiety. Nate’s world was one of talking dogs, endless numbers, and giant cats, where my world was one of Liz and Stine and my other friends. Maybe Nate would need as much time to adjust to the thought of friends as I did to adjust to a giant cat?
Not that I’d adjusted.
In fact, I was entirely not adjusted, and I wanted to un-adjust the giant cat into being a normal cat, and it was time to do something about that.
I said, “So, shall we go find Jaime? Scan that goldfish? Make that formula?”
“Uh-oh,” Nate said, looking past me. I grimaced. I have to tell you, I broke out into a sweat. I was starting to realize it’s never a good thing when Nathan Bannister says uh-oh. When my mom says uh-oh, it’s usually because she forgot to pick up something for supper, or because one of her clients is calling with a problem, or something like that. When Dad says uh-oh, it’s usually because his favorite team lost the game in some horrendous (he thinks) or humorous (I think) way. When my best friend Liz Morris says uh-oh, it’s usually because there’s extra homework, or she stayed at my house for too long, or she accidentally sent a photo of her pretending to be a monkey to everyone, rather than to me, like she meant to do.
But I was starting to realize that when Nate says uh-oh, it’s usually because something catastrophic is about to happen. Giant robots raging out of control. Or giant monsters raging out of control. Basically, giant things raging out of control.
“W-what’s w-wrong?” I asked. Yes, I stuttered.
“Here comes Bosper,” he answered. He pointed, and, sure enough, Bosper was chugging on over to us across the park, running as fast as his little terrier legs could carry him.
I said, “Oh. Whew. That’s a relief!”
“Why?”
“Because I thought it was something bad.”
“It is bad! Bosper would have never left home when he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Proton. This means Proton got away from him, and there’s a giant cat raging out of control.”
“Oh.”
“Nate and girl!” Bosper said, charging up to us. I frowned, looking around to see if anyone else had heard Bosper speak. Nobody had. The nearest people were at least thirty yards away, practicing acrobatics. They were members of Penelope Spider’s Vaudevillian Circus. They were yelling “Hep!” and “Ha!” and “Hee-yooo!” as they did their routines, so they couldn’t possibly have heard the terrier’s voice.
“What’s wrong, Bosper?” Nate said as the dog came to a near-tumbling stop, huffing and panting.
“Cat on the street!” Bosper said.
Nate said, “Proton got away?”
“Bosper is not chewing on things!”
“Okay. Good,” Nate said. “We’ve talked about that. But back to Proton—what happened?”
“Men with tea made lights that go wooo-wooo!”
“Hmm, I think I understand what you mean about men with tea, but … lights that go wooo-wooo?” Nate was confused. I was, too. Lights don’t really do anything but shine. Unless … wait.
“Do you mean like a police car siren?” I asked. “Flashing lights and a siren? Wooo-wooo?”
“Is good!” Bosper said. “The Delphine girl is right! Car go by! Wooo-wooo!” He was jumping around in circles, overly excited in the manner of terriers. Then he made a sharp little noise from his rear. He immediately stopped jumping.
“Bosper farted,” he said. The dog sounded sad.
“I do that all the time,” I said. “Perfectly natural!” Bosper brightened up.
“There were men with tea?” Nate said, almost to himself, but the terrier immediately started racing around him, excitedly barking in agreement.
“And … they drove a car by the house?” Nate asked the dog. Bosper barked in reply.
“With sirens and lights going?” Nate asked. Bosper barked again.
“And Proton chased after it?” Nate said. This time, he really wasn’t asking a question. He’d already figured out what had happened.
Now talking entirely to himself, Nate said, “Hmm. I’d calculated that the laser pointer would keep Proton occupied, but I hadn’t factored the possible intrusion of other interesting light sources. The Red Death Tea Society played on Proton’s natural curiosity to lure him from the house. And now, thanks to them, I’ve unleashed a giant cat on the city. Unfortunate. But an interesting problem.”
“Yes,” I told Nate. “An interesting problem.” I tried not to squeak.
“Were humans eating doughnuts?” Bosper asked, sniffing at the bag.
“Help yourself,” I said, watching Nate. He was deep in thought. I could almost see the gears turning in his head. Meanwhile, Bosper’s entire head was in the doughnut bag and he was murmuring about lemon filling. Dang it. I hadn’t known there was a lemon-filled doughnut. Now it was too late.
“We can’t let the Red Death Tea Society get away with this,” Nate said. “Forget about the formula for now. We have to save the town.” His eyes fixed on mine. His gaze was determined. He began to smile. I could see in Nate’s eyes that he had devised a brilliant plan. Because he is a genius.
He said, “Delphine?”
“Yes?”
“Have you ever dressed up as a mouse?”
So, an hour later, I was dressed as a mouse. In the middle of a parking lot. Nate was on top of a grocery store but in contact with me via our cell phones. Bosper was sitting on the pavement next to me, looking alert and happy, wagging his tail. It was hot in my costume. I was nervous. I was practicing my mouse squeaks, which was not difficult to do because I was currently bait for a giant cat, and that made me feel … squeaky.
Luckily, the grocery store was closed for renovation, so there weren’t very many people around. Just some boys skateboarding on the far side of the parking lot, trying tricks, frequently falling, occasionally taking photos of me. They waved a couple of times. I waved back. It never hurts to be friendly. It would hurt, though, to be eaten by a giant cat.
I mean, it would have to. Right?
I kicked a bottle along the pavement. It let out a little of my tension, so I kicked whatever else I could find. A beat-up soda can. An empty egg carton.
Bosper made a sharp little noise.
“Bosper farted!” the dog said. “But that’s okay!” He wagged his tail.
I said, “Can you sense Proton?”
“Maybe sometimes probably not!”
“Reassuring,” I told him. It was difficult for me to see, because I was wearing my red goggles underneath the mouse head. Nate had felt bad about that, saying he hadn’t ever thought to design a mouse costume that could detect invisible cats. A clear failing on his part.
“Run through this plan again?” I asked into my phone.
“I’ve been filling the air with the odor of catnip,” Nate told me. I could barely see him atop the grocery store. He waved a hand. I waved a big mouse paw. There was an incense burner the size of a microwave oven in the middle of the parking lot.
He said, “Proton will be drawn by the scent, and then he’ll see you. And he’ll definitely want to pounce. I mean, what more could a giant cat want than a giant mouse?”
“And what more could I want than to be pounced on by a giant cat?”
“Really?”
“Umm. No. Nate, that was sarcasm. You really need to learn about it. What I was saying is … What’s going to stop Proton from eating me? I mean, your plan better not be something about catching Proton while he’s napping after his meal.”
“Oh. I see what you mean. Don’t worry, I have a string theory net.”
“Which is?” Why did I even have to ask this question? Did Nate think I knew all about string theory nets? I looked down to Bosper and asked, “What’s a string theory net?” He just started barking.
Nate said, “Oh. Well, the universe and all matter is composed of combinations of a certain substance. String theory says that these elementary particles are not zero-dimensional objects, but instead—
”
“Hey, Nate? Kind of in a mouse costume here, waiting to be attacked by a giant cat. Can I get the abbreviated version?”
“Oh! Sure. Basically, my string theory net—”
“Which you have tested.”
“Uh, so … basically my string theory net—”
“Basically your extensively tested string theory net, right?”
Nate said, “I’ve theoretically tested my string theory net, yes.”
I sighed and told him to go on.
“Well,” he said. “The net is based on the fundamental connection between elementary particles. I needed something really strong to trap Proton, and it would take the power of a thousand million suns to rip this net, because—”
“Good enough.”
“Yeah. Because—”
“No, Nate. Good enough.”
“Seriously, Delphine. You have to hear this, because it is positively awesome. In order to rip my net, you’d have to—”
“Do you want to put on the mouse costume?”
Nate said, “Uh, no.”
“Then do what the mouse says. And, you know what? Now I know why it is that mice are always running around. I’m really nervous being a mouse.”
Bosper, meanwhile, was still barking. I had to raise my voice, and it was difficult to hear Nate through the phone. I knelt down to the terrier and said, “Can you be quiet for a bit, Bosper? Nate and I are trying to talk.”
“Okay, good dog!” Bosper said, wagging his tail. “But Bosper should be barking.” With that said, Bosper (with obvious effort, and a frown) quit barking, and I went back to my phone conversation with Nate. I was telling him that as soon as I saw Proton I was going to run, and Nate was telling me how that was perfect, that I would lead Proton into the trap, and he was telling me where he’d set up the net, so that—
Wait a second.
I looked down to the terrier.
I said, “Bosper, why should you be barking?”
“Because cats are sneaking up!” he said.
I screamed something in return (it wasn’t really a word, more just the noise a mouse makes when a cat is sneaking up on it) and I started running in circles. I dropped my phone into my back pocket and ran faster, because running faster was something I really wanted to do. Unfortunately, Olympic runners don’t wear mouse costumes to a race. Why? Because they do not help.
