by Henry Clark
A humming noise that had been barely noticeable got louder the farther along we went. On our right, we passed doors labeled TANKS, SPOOLS, and BINS. Then we passed one labeled MEN.
“Finally!” Fiona sighed. “The next door should be—”
She ran ahead to the next door and stopped in front of it, staring. When Freak and I caught up with her, we read the door’s nameplate: HAZMAT SAFETY.
“This should be the ladies’ room,” Fiona said indignantly.
This door didn’t have a knob. Fiona examined the wall and pushed a button she found near the door frame, and the door slid open. It was dark inside, but she found the light switch, and when the lights sprang on, she screamed. All three of us did.
A dozen men were lined up against the far wall, facing us.
They were wearing bright red rubber suits and space helmets. Their heads all hung down like they were being scolded for bringing home a bad report card. It took us a moment to realize the suits were empty and we weren’t facing a row of men after all. The suits were hanging off a row of pegs. Each suit had the hazmat—hazardous materials—symbol on its chest.
A conference table stood in the center of the room, surrounded by a half dozen folding chairs. High up on the wall hung a sixty-inch TV screen. As far as I could see, there were no toilet stalls.
“Right!” snarled Fiona. She killed the lights and pushed us out on the balcony. Then she headed back the way we had come.
“I’m using the men’s room,” she announced as we caught up with her. “You guys are going to stand guard.” She pushed Freak to one side of the men’s room door and me to the other. She opened the door and went in.
“What, exactly, are we guarding?” Freak asked me.
“If you try to go in there, I’ll stop you,” I explained. “If I try to go in there, you stop me.”
“What if Coyote is in there already?”
We looked at each other.
“Nah,” said Freak, dismissing the idea. “Coyote would have just lifted his leg against one of the walls.”
The door swung open and Fiona came out.
“That was fast,” said Freak.
“Do guys,” said Fiona, “go to the bathroom in some weird way I may not know about?”
Freak looked at me. I looked at Freak. Neither one of us wanted to answer the question.
“Possibly,” said Freak.
“I don’t mean urinals,” Fiona said, rolling her eyes. “I understand urinals. My aunt has one she uses as a planter. What I mean is, there’s nothing you guys do that requires lying down inside of a six-foot pipe, right?”
Freak and I pushed open the door labeled MEN. We found ourselves in a narrow room. On either side of a central aisle, two long metal cylinders were nestled horizontally in plumbing that connected them to the wall. They were a little like sewer pipes, and a little like coffins. At the foot of each cylinder was a dimly glowing glass lozenge about the size and shape of Fiona’s cell phone.
“You don’t think there might be… men in them?” Fiona wondered.
“Because it says MEN on the door?” Freak didn’t sound as sarcastic as he might have.
“Because the people of Indorsia are more advanced in the sciences than we are, and these are just the right size to have human beings inside,” I said, trying to encourage Fiona.
“You mean, like, frozen?”
“Or in suspended animation.”
Freak shook his head and walked over to the nearest cylinder. It was windowless, with no way to see inside. He thumped it with his fist and it sounded hollow. As soon as he thumped it, the glass lozenge on the end flickered briefly. I thought I saw numbers appear on it, but they came and went so quickly it was difficult to tell.
“I don’t think there’s anything in these. I think the name on the door is somebody’s idea of a joke,” said Freak, although he sounded far from positive.
“They’re probably tanks for some sort of chemical storage,” Fiona decided. She twitched uncomfortably. “This is not the room I wanted. This cold air is not helping.”
We returned to the balcony. I looked at my compass, pivoted on my heel, and resumed walking toward the glistening wall. Once again, I arrived there a few moments before my friends.
“I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s frost.”
The entire huge wall was covered with ice crystals. And it wasn’t a thin coating. It was thick, like a refrigerator freezer when the defrost isn’t working. I leaned in close and studied it.
“I triple-dog-dare you to put your tongue on it,” said Freak.
“Don’t even joke,” I said. “This makes no sense. The other side of this wall has to be Hellsboro. Hot, stinking Hellsboro. This wall should be sizzling.”
We looked over the balcony. Thirty feet below us, on the cavern’s floor, a line of boxlike machines stretched across the wall’s base. I counted ten of them, each about the size and shape of a washing machine and each giving off a loud hum. Red lights along their tops got brighter and dimmer as the humming got louder and softer. I held my compass out over the closest one. The needle spun like an airplane propeller.
“I think,” said Fiona, very deliberately, “we’ve found the portal.”
“It’s a little big to take a picture of,” I said, pulling my cheap cardboard camera out of my pocket. I looked through the viewfinder. All I could see was ice.
“I don’t suppose that thing has a wide-angle lens,” said Freak.
“I don’t even think it has a flash.” I peered at the camera. “But it does have three pictures left.”
“Great,” said Freak, without much enthusiasm. “How about taking a picture of the washing machines down there on the floor?”
“Good,” said Fiona. “Then we can prove to the authorities we found a Laundromat. That’ll bring ’em running.”
I cautiously leaned over the rail, taking care not to touch it, and snapped a picture. I was right. The camera had no flash.
“Two to go,” I said.
“We should be farther back,” said Freak. “We need a picture to show how big this thing is.”
Retracing our steps, we walked back along the balcony until we were opposite the door marked HAZMAT SAFETY.
“Let’s try one here,” said Freak. “Any farther away and all it will look like is a shiny wall.”
I didn’t think the picture would come out, and, even if it did, I didn’t see how it would prove anything. I took it anyway.
“There’s one left,” I said. “How about a picture of you and Fiona standing at the rail and pointing?”
“This isn’t our trip to the Grand Canyon,” said Freak.
“If there are people in the shot, it will show how big the wall is,” I explained.
Freak and Fiona posed. Fiona fluffed her hair out. Freak frowned.
As I snapped the shot, I heard voices behind me. We froze and listened.
The voices came from the far end of the balcony, where the only stairway out of the place was located. As we watched, a figure emerged from the doorway to the stairwell. It was a man dressed in camouflage fatigues. He came out of the door backward, talking to someone following him. He didn’t see us.
We dived for the HAZMAT SAFETY door and scrambled inside.
The voices got louder as they approached. It sounded like more than one conversation, implying at least four people were in the group. Suddenly one voice rang out louder than the rest. “I’m going back to see what’s keeping Jackal. You go on ahead. We’re meeting in Hazmats. Fourth door down.”
They were coming to the room we were in.
The room had only one door.
We were trapped.
CHAPTER
14
The Anger of the Avatar
The man in fatigues walked in, followed by a woman wearing a jumpsuit. She looked like a superhero from an unpopular comic book. The man stared at us. He scratched the side of his nose and sat down in one of the folding chairs. The woman looked in Freak’s face,
adjusted a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead, and sat down next to the man.
We were hanging on the back wall, pretending to be empty hazmat suits. The faceplates on the helmets were reflective. We could see out, but it was difficult to see in. The woman had used Freak’s faceplate as a mirror.
Freak and Fiona were standing on the floor with their shoulders hunched forward, making it look like their suits were hanging from the wall pegs. I was too short to do this convincingly, so my friends had hoisted me up and attached the back of my suit to one of the pegs. I dangled like a book bag on a clothes hook. My feet were a good three inches off the floor. I was not comfortable.
The suits had sealed themselves after we fit ourselves into them. I had been afraid we would suffocate, but there turned out to be some sort of air system that automatically switched on after a few seconds. It hissed filtered air at us every time we inhaled. I was afraid I might sound like Darth Vader. If I did, nobody seemed to notice.
Another woman walked in, dressed in a lavender business suit. She was followed by a short, redheaded man in a cable-knit sweater.
“Why can’t we be in Conference Room B?” complained the lavender lady, taking a seat next to the guy in fatigues. “Conference Room B has a window.”
The others ignored her. They took seats around the conference table with their backs to us, facing the TV screen. After a couple of minutes another man entered, closing the door behind him. He was bald and wore a white turtleneck with a green sports coat.
“I just got word,” he announced. “Jackal has been detained. We will be starting without her.”
Suddenly the face of a bulldog appeared on the TV screen. It was smoking a cigar. It reached up with a paw, took the cigar out of its mouth, and said, “Have a seat, Shepherd. We haven’t got all day.”
The guy in the turtleneck quickly sat down. The bulldog’s eyes swept the length of the table, as if he could actually see the people seated there. I tried to figure out where the camera was and decided it was a little black dot I could just make out on the TV’s upper edge. The bulldog looked pretty convincing, although I could tell he was a computer-generated image, an avatar, aping the movements of the real person on the other end of the conference call.
“We are now at T-minus eight days,” said the bulldog. “Things are proceeding according to plan. I will meet with the others later today. You five, however, warrant special attention.”
The five sat up a little straighter.
“Bernese,” said the bulldog. “Report.”
Lavender Lady stood up. “The first eight trials have been very successful. The ninth and final trial will take place on Wednesday at twelve seventeen PM. The targets will pat the tops of their heads with their left hands and rub their stomachs with their right for six seconds, and then rub the tops of their heads with their right hands and pat their stomachs with their left for six seconds. Then they will sing the first three verses of ‘Anything You Can Do’ from the musical Annie Get Your Gun, males singing the male part, females the female. It will be our first attempt at a duet, sending separate signals to the target brain based on gender.”
“Excellent,” said the dog. “After the final trial, we will know if our control of the targets is complete. Then, in the first practical application of the mind-control module, the targets will search out anybody who does not have a cell phone, wrestle the phoneless person to the ground, and hold a cell phone to the side of the phoneless person’s head long enough for us to establish control.”
I suddenly realized I was not alone in my suit. I felt something nibble on my ankle. Then it started crawling up my pants leg. I almost jumped off my peg.
Bald Guy raised his hand and, without waiting to be called on, said, “Scientists are starting to realize cell phones cause increased electrical activity within the brain. What if they manage to figure out what’s going on?”
“Did people stop smoking just because they figured out smoking kills people?” The bulldog shrugged. “No. If news gets out that cell phones are dangerous, everybody’s going to be texting their friends to tell them about it. That’s how these people think. Between the increased electrical activity in people’s brains and the mind-control nannies these same people have been ingesting in many fine Agra Nation® food products, we will soon have a slave population numbering in the billions. And then it won’t be long before most of the population of the Earth is working fifteen hours per day in our shipyards, building the fleet.”
Something was scurrying around inside my underwear. I twisted and turned, trying to shake it back down my pants. If anybody had turned around at that moment, they would have seen one of the hazmat suits dancing like a toddler needing to pee. I hoped the bulldog was too focused on his conference to notice.
“Couldn’t we just strangle the phoneless?” suggested Jumpsuit Woman. “The idea of wrestling them to the ground and holding a phone to their heads seems somewhat awkward to me.”
“And that”—the bulldog nodded—“brings us to the reason the five of you are at this meeting, while the others are not.”
I decided it was a mouse in the suit with me. This actually calmed me down, because I like mice. I have two at home, Bud and Lou, that I keep as pets. But this mouse had found its way into my shirt, and it was scrambling around on my left side, where I happen to be ticklish. I started desperately squirming and shaking. Fortunately, the suit was baggy enough that I had some wiggle room. I especially didn’t want to draw the attention of the woman who thought the phoneless should be strangled.
“All of you,” said the bulldog, “have one thing in common.”
I couldn’t stop myself from twisting back and forth. I convulsed. I shook the suit off its peg. And I fell on the floor in a heap.
The bulldog stopped speaking. He stared down at me from the screen. The five people at the table turned in their seats and looked at me. I didn’t move. The mouse slipped into my helmet and licked me on the lips.
The five looked back at the bulldog. He cocked his head as if to say, Well? and Bald Guy got out of his seat and nudged me with his foot, and I watched, terrified, as his hand descended toward my faceplate. His hand passed behind me, where it grabbed a hook built into the back of the suit, and I was hoisted up until my feet left the floor.
I figured this was it. Bald Guy was going to twist off my helmet and then twist off my head. I felt as helpless as the mouse, who was dangling excitedly from the tip of my nose.
Bald Guy hung me back on my peg.
He shook the suit so the arms hung straight, then walked back to his chair.
“I keep forgetting how heavy those things are,” he said.
He’d assumed the suit had fallen of its own accord. He hadn’t realized there was a kid in it. I let out a sigh that knocked the mouse sideways.
“That,” said the bulldog, “is exactly the sort of thing you’re all in this room for.”
The bulldog’s face clouded. The pupils of its eyes turned red. It bared its fangs and its incisors appeared to grow larger.
“As we approach the culmination of the plan, I find myself having to decide the fates of those who have served me over the years. Some will become my trusted lieutenants. Others will not.”
The bulldog’s snout grew longer, until it was no longer a bulldog. Its hair grew black and shaggy, its head became monstrously big, its jaws gaped wide and dripped with strings of saliva.
“You have all done a workmanlike job over the years, but all of you, at some point, HAVE DISPLEASED ME!”
The dog was now an enormous wolf. As he roared out the final three words, he lunged out of the TV screen at my throat. I jumped. So did everyone else in the room.
I realized, after almost having an accident that would have required a change of underwear, that the TV was a 3-D set that did not require 3-D glasses. You just had to be viewing it from the proper angle to get the 3-D effect. Apparently, everybody in the room had been positioned correctly. All of us were shaking.
>
The wolf withdrew into the screen. He appeared to look directly at the woman in lavender.
“You, Bernese, were responsible for the final formula of the chemical that enabled us to start the Hellsboro coal-seam fire. You assured me it would not prove toxic to human beings. And yet it turned out to be a carcinogen.”
“I-I was working to a deadline. W-we had no time for tests—” Bernese stuttered.
“SILENCE!” roared the wolf. “Your incompetence caused unnecessary deaths! Because of you, there will be fewer people working in my shipyards!”
“Doberman approved my formula,” Bernese protested.
“Yes,” agreed the wolf. “And that is why Doberman is here with us today as well.” The wolf glared at the man in fatigues, who hunched his shoulders and looked down at the floor. “You always were a blockhead,” the wolf informed him.
“And then there’s Dalmatian,” said the wolf, turning his attention to the woman who was keen on strangling the phoneless. “Assigned to convince a certain politician not to do an inspection tour of his state’s largest Agra Nation® packing plant. Instead, the man completely disappears and is now presumed dead! He vanished while riding a Ferris wheel!”
“I wasn’t spotted,” said Dalmatian. Somewhat ironically, I thought.
“Nevertheless. You forced me to replace one bribable pawn with another. It was not convenient.” The wolf found the bulldog’s cigar and took an angry drag on it. Smoke swirled around his head.
“And you, Coyote,” continued the wolf, almost purring as he looked at the redhead, “might try to explain to me what became of multiple millions of dollars earmarked over the years for security improvements here at Rodmore.”
Coyote laughed nervously. “Boss, the place is surrounded by Hellsboro. What better security could you want?”
“Oh,” said the wolf, looking at the hazmat suits hanging at the back of the room. “Security can always be improved. I asked for an army of flame-throwing robots patrolling the perimeter. Where are they?”
“North Korea.”
“North Korea?”
“They had a really big demand for flame-throwing robots there, and we were able to get a good price when I sold ours. We can build replacement robots for Rodmore and still turn a profit—”
