by Henry Clark
“It is. But the diversion you created in the hazmat safety room sent the guard scurrying to the far end of the complex. He’s searching for you right now in the lobby restrooms.”
“It’s not like we planned that,” said Freak.
“No. Miranda planned it. As I’ve said, she is a brilliant strategist. And she has quite a bit of confidence in the three of you.”
“The woman doesn’t have a head,” I pointed out.
“As long as we’re here,” said Double Six, ignoring me, “we might as well gather a bit of intelligence. You’ll have to be quick about it, though. Freak, your arms haven’t recently been pulled from their sockets, and you have a good head for heights. Could you lean over the edge of the platform, look under it, and tell me if the octagon-shaped light is glowing red, green, or amber?”
“That’s important?”
“Very.”
“And you can’t sense it yourself?”
“The floor is lead-lined. I have trouble sensing things through lead.”
Freak knelt down at the edge of the platform, hooked one leg around one of the railing posts, and leaned forward. We immediately heard a sound like marbles bouncing around in a pinball machine.
“All of my change just fell out of my pocket!” Freak declared, sounding quite annoyed.
“Whoopsie,” said Double Six. “Do you see the light?”
“Yes,” said Freak. “It’s amber.”
“Good. Then there is still time. I recommend you get out of this place as quickly as you can.”
After he pulled himself back to floor level, Freak stood up and muttered something about being out a buck seventy, not to mention his lucky two-headed coin.
No one spotted us as we climbed down the catwalk ladders and snuck out of Rodmore. Hellsboro, compared to the places we had just been, seemed downright friendly.
CHAPTER
18
Riddles After Dark
We had a meeting in my backyard that night after supper. I had taken two adult-strength aspirin, and my shoulders felt better. We sat around a small, circular table with Double Six balanced upright in the table’s center. Stevie Shuck’s cat, Mucus, kept weaving in and out of our legs.
My aunt was home, watching us from the kitchen window as she washed some dishes. Seeing her there made me feel good. I knew where she was. I knew she was safe. As soon as I walked in, I’d hugged her. I’d given her the camera with the pictures of the portal and asked if she’d get the film developed for me. She had promised she would do it the following day, and I hugged her a second time, just because.
“Double Six?” I said. “Hello?”
Double Six had not spoken since our escape from Rodmore. I’d tried to have a conversation with it several times, but it hadn’t responded. I was afraid it was broken.
“Guernica? Are you there?” I persisted. “We have some questions we want to ask.”
“Then perhaps you should get yourselves a Magic Eight Ball,” Double Six said, sounding put out. “I am not a toy to be played with.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have made yourself in the shape of a domino,” suggested Freak. “Are you mad at us for some reason?”
“I am attempting to resume my original mission. Tracking you and observing you. The original parameters of the mission did not involve two-way communication.”
“Maybe we could talk to Miranda instead,” Fiona said eagerly.
“It upsets Miranda to talk to the living. It makes her long for a flesh-and-blood body. She only spoke to you today because you were in danger.”
“Would she talk to us again if we went out and played in traffic?” I asked, gesturing toward the road. A car went by with a couple of kids from school in the backseat. Fiona made a halfhearted attempt to hide her face behind her hand, then thought better of it and gave the faintest of shrugs.
“I think it best if you concentrate on helping Alf set up the house for the crayon auction,” said Double Six. “That is our best chance of luring Edward Disin into the open. More questions at this point will only confuse the issue.”
“Were you in River’s pocket when he and I were in the laundry chute?” Fiona demanded.
The domino was silent, but I nodded to Fiona. I had kept the domino on me ever since Alf had told me it was a good-luck piece.
“So Alf knew we were there,” said Fiona.
“Alf knows only those things I choose to tell him,” said Double Six. “He was unaware you were listening.”
“What about Miranda?”
“She knew you were there.”
“So she was speaking for our benefit? She might have said things that weren’t true, just because she knew we were listening?” Fiona picked up the domino and held it in front of her face. “Is Miranda planning to take over my body so she can live again or what?”
“Miranda briefly entertained the notion,” Double Six admitted. “It was originally Alf’s idea. He’s upset with himself that he ever thought of it.”
“Is he? Really?” said Fiona sarcastically. “How can we trust him?”
“Guernica doesn’t even trust him,” added Freak. “Why should we?”
“Because when Alf wrestles with his conscience, his conscience usually wins,” said Double Six. “Few people are entirely good, just as few are entirely evil. This is what sometimes makes choosing sides so difficult. At some point, you will have to trust somebody. It is important that you use your own judgment. Guernica, if I may refer to myself in the third person, trusts Alf. It’s just that his agenda and mine are not always the same.”
Fiona tossed the domino back on the table. She didn’t look convinced.
Mucus jumped up on my lap, as if Fiona had just thrown a cat toy. I scratched him behind the ears and dropped him back on the ground.
After a moment, Double Six said, “I will answer one question from each of you. If you are having problems deciding who you can trust, perhaps some honest answers will help.”
“Assuming they’re honest,” said Freak.
“You have my word that they will be.”
I started thinking about what my one question would be. I had so many, it would be difficult to choose. Freak had no such problem. He immediately said, “Why didn’t Alf just tell us all about Indorsia and the portal and the whole enslavement-of-mankind thing to begin with?”
“Would you have believed him?”
Freak blinked. “No.”
“Having seen what you saw today, do you believe it?”
“After what we’ve seen today,” admitted Freak, “it would be hard not to.”
Fiona and I nodded.
“Alf would never have sent you into Hellsboro,” Double Six continued. “Miranda and I, however, understood you would never be convinced unless you saw things for yourselves.”
“You didn’t send us there,” said Freak.
“No. But I could have stopped you before you ever left Bagshot Road, simply by informing Alf. He has too much concern for your safety. He feels the less you know, the safer you’ll be. When you see him tomorrow, please do not reveal what happened today. He would know I fudged the domino’s telemetry. He would start to question my decisions, and that would only serve to put him in a weaker position with regard to his fight with his father.”
“How long ago did Alf and his father come here from Indorsia?” Freak asked.
“That is a second question.”
“Actually, it’s part B of my first question,” explained Freak.
Double Six was silent for a moment. Then it said, “Alf arrived in August of 1952. The portal opened in a mine shaft forty feet below the surface of the earth, under what is now Rodmore Chemical. His father followed a few hours later, thinking he was at the head of a small army.”
“He should have sent a scouting party through the portal before he came through.”
“He was in the grip of Compulsive Completist Disorder. His judgment was impaired. That was the whole point of inflicting him with CCD.”
> “How old is Alf?” asked Fiona, and immediately put both her hands on her mouth and went all wide-eyed. “No! Wait! That wasn’t my question!”
“Yes, it was,” decided Double Six. “Alf is one hundred eighty-one. His father is two hundred ten.”
“She asked their ages, not their weights,” said Freak.
“Alf is one hundred eighty-one years old. His father is two hundred ten,” responded Double Six. “Because of their mastery of the biological sciences, the Indorsian ruling class—the Royals—can live for as long as eight hundred years, although the final six weeks are almost always spent in a nursing home. This is why the Royals look upon twelve-year-olds as mere toddlers, and why Edward Disin may be lulled into a false sense of security by your presence at Underhill House. He won’t even see you as things with minds of their own, and this may give Alf the advantage he needs. From here on in, whenever you go to Underhill House, make yourselves as conspicuous as possible. No more hiding under the trees. The time for that has passed. I believe the final question is River’s.”
I wanted to know so many things. I wanted to know if the damage done to the world’s population by cell phones and food additives was permanent. I wanted to know if getting Edward Disin arrested would really be enough to stop him. I wanted to know why only fifteen of Indorsia’s sixteen continents had been colonized.
“Did the doghat known as Shepherd kill my parents?” I asked.
Double Six was silent for a moment. “From the records I have been able to access, I believe the answer is yes,” it finally said. “Shepherd was overzealous. He realized your parents were too smart to work for Rodmore Chemical without discovering the company had a hidden agenda, and they were too righteous not to do something about it once they figured it out. Shepherd acted on his own. Edward Disin already had his eye on your parents as possible recruits for his inner circle. He was furious when their car went over the cliff.”
“They never would have joined him,” I said.
“I did not know them. But based upon my acquaintanceship with you, I will agree. No, they never would have.”
“This guy has to be stopped,” declared Freak. “I want him to pay for my sister, and your parents, and Fiona’s twin, and all the people who used to be our neighbors!”
“And your dad,” said Fiona gently.
“Yeah,” said Freak, “he should pay for that, too.”
“I spent some time recently in a stuffy hazmat suit in close proximity to a mouse,” Double Six announced somewhat unexpectedly. “At one point that mouse even used me as a stepping stone as it climbed up River’s body on its way to say hello to River’s head.”
The three of us stared at Double Six.
“Does this have a point?” said Freak.
“I suspect a bit of mouse-scent still lingers on me. I mention this as a possible explanation for what I am ninety-nine percent sure is about to hap—”
Double Six never finished. Mucus jumped up on the table, caught the domino in his jaws, and sailed off in the direction of the rhododendrons. Freak knocked over his chair as he jumped up in pursuit. Fiona and I scrambled after him.
Mucus shot like a furry comet across Freak’s front yard and veered into his driveway. As we rounded the corner of the house, we could see something rustling along the edge of the big blue tarpaulin that covered the backyard firewood stack. Freak raced to the stack and started pulling the tarp from it. Puddles of rainwater on the tarp’s surface flew off in a fine spray.
Freak had the tarp half off the woodpile and was searching the erratically stacked wood for a hidden cat when Freak’s father suddenly stood up from a lawn chair on the far side of the pile. Water was trickling down his face. His eyes looked like they were about to bug out of his head. He pointed a beer can at Freak and shouted, “Whaddya think you’re doin’?”
Freak barely gave him a glance. “Looking for Mucus!” he said.
Freak’s father moved faster than the cat had. He came around the woodpile with his hand raised like he might strike Freak, but he tripped over a log and went sprawling. He lurched to his knees and struck out at the air in front of him.
“Don’t you ever talk to me that way again!” he bellowed, slurring most of the words.
Fiona and I stepped forward, standing protectively on either side of Freak, making sure his father could see his son had friends.
“This doesn’t concern you,” he growled. I half expected his snout to elongate and his teeth to grow. I wanted to explain to him that Mucus was the name of his neighbor’s cat, and that Freak wasn’t being disrespectful. I started to speak, but Freak caught my eye and shook his head.
I kept my mouth shut, but Fiona didn’t. She blurted, “He didn’t do anything!”
Freak’s father ignored her. He staggered to his feet, waved at the wood his son had scattered, and said, “You can stack this back up later. Now get in the house!”
Freak bolted in through the back door. Mr. Nesterii looked at us and sniffed. “You two should go home now,” he said, following his son into the house and slamming the door behind him.
The noise spooked Mucus, who emerged from the woodpile, still with Double Six in his mouth. The cat scooted under the fence and headed into Hellsboro.
CHAPTER
19
Escape from the Cell
Sunday was chilly and bright. I met up with Freak and Fiona at the Underhill gate shortly after twelve o’clock. The gate snapped shut behind us as soon as we were in. I looked back through the iron bars and watched a big black car drive slowly by. It might have been tourists looking for a glimpse of Hellsboro. People sometimes came looking. It didn’t take long for most to realize that watching an underground fire was about as exciting as watching a submarine race from the beach.
I couldn’t see any bruises on Freak, so I thought maybe his father had calmed down once the two of them had gone into the house the previous night. Fiona and I had lingered, pressing ourselves against the back wall of the house, listening for sounds of an argument. We hadn’t heard any. I was impressed that Fiona had stood up to Mr. Nesterii. I was ashamed that I hadn’t.
“You did enough heroic stuff for one day,” Fiona had consoled me after I confided in her. “You can’t expect to be a hero all the time.”
“I don’t see why not,” I’d said. River Man was always supposed to be there when you needed him. He always got his feet wet. He always waded right in.
The three of us walked up the center of the driveway, no longer caring if we were seen from above, and Alf met us at the servants’ entrance. “Good. You wore old clothes. I can guarantee you’re going to get dirty.”
He led us through the house. At one point I thought I heard the sound of an ax striking wood. I spun around quickly, but saw nothing. Freak and Fiona didn’t seem to notice.
A set of double doors in the main entry hall opened into a large room with many French doors along one side and a cobweb-covered chandelier hanging from the center of the ceiling. Furniture draped with dusty bedsheets lined the opposite wall. The room was almost as big as the gymnasium back at school. A hundred people could have danced in it easily.
“This was a grand house in its day,” said Alf. He was wearing blue jeans and a gray pullover sweater with a bit of white T-shirt visible at the neck. He looked like someone you might run into in downtown Cheshire.
“You’re wearing twenty-first-century clothing,” I observed.
“It’s how I usually dress,” Alf acknowledged. “The clothing I was wearing when I first met you I found in one of the cedar closets upstairs. Possibly belonged to Underhill’s father. I thought wearing it might convey a feeling of lovable eccentricity.”
“It didn’t.”
“I sensed as much.”
In the center of the ballroom were three stepladders and a table covered with cleaning supplies. “We have until Saturday to make the ballroom presentable,” Alf reminded us. “I also want the foyer cleaned and then furnished with some pieces I’ve found in
the attic. If you spread the work out over the next six days, we should be in good shape by the night of the auction.” Alf turned to Fiona. “What kind of response are we getting to the auction invitations?”
Fiona’s fingers tap-danced on her phone until her e-mail showed up. She turned the screen so that Alf could see it.
“WaxLips is coming,” she informed us. “He wanted to know if there would be refreshments. As soon as I said yes, he confirmed he would be here.”
“I suspect,” said Alf, gently taking the phone from her and thumbing through the entries, “whoever Lips is, he or she lives fairly close and will be attending solely for the food. I see the Rochester Toy Museum will be sending a representative. They seem a bit annoyed that telephone bidding will not be allowed. And—ahh! GORLAB appears to be a sheik of the Unaligned Emirates. That could easily be Edward Disin, traveling in disguise as a wealthy Arab toy collector.”
“We haven’t heard from Alecto yet,” Fiona said.
“I am sure we will, considering how enthusiastically she was bidding when the auction was online. Good work.”
Alf started to hand the phone back to Fiona, but Freak intercepted it, turned his back to Fiona, and began scrolling through her mail.
“GIVE ME THAT!”
“I want to see the GORLAB thing,” Freak started to explain, but Fiona was all over him. She grabbed the phone, but Freak wouldn’t let go. He yanked one way, she yanked the other, and one of her yanks sent the phone flying through the air. It hit the floor and disappeared beneath one of the bedsheet-covered pieces of furniture. Fiona threw herself down on the floor in front of it and flailed her arms under it in a desperate search. She found nothing. Not even dust bunnies.
“YOU’VE LOST MY PHONE!” she screeched.
“You’re the one who lost it,” Freak corrected her.
“It was remiss of me not to have taken it away myself,” I heard Alf say under his breath. “What was I thinking?” Then, in a much louder voice, “I’m sure it will turn up! Searching for it will be good motivation to clean the room thoroughly. Why don’t you get started? I’ll be back in a bit. I have to call a man about some balloons.”
