The Creature Department

by Robert Paul Weston

  They all stared at drawing, which suddenly took on a rather more sinister appearance.

  Professor von Doppler frowned. “It’s a terrible idea! What on earth made you think the creatures in my department would want to build something so . . . so . . . appalling?”

  Charlton paused. A look of confusion passed over his big, one-eyed face. “Doesn’t everyone want to be trim and sleek and . . .” Charlton trailed off, not knowing what to say next.

  “Seriously,” said Leslie, stepping forward. She put one hand on the side of Charlton’s distended potbelly. “I agree with Elliot. You look way cooler as a cycloptosaurus.”

  “I do?”

  Leslie nodded.

  “Maybe,” said Charlton, unconvinced. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. All my Knoo-Yoo-Juice is gone.” He explained how Monica Burkenkrantz had discovered the truth about him and how the Five Ghorks had smashed all his bottles of the precious liquid that had kept him in the form of Chuck Brickweather for so long.

  “This is all I have left now.” He took out a single bottle of Dr. Heppleworth’s Knoo-Yoo-Juice. It was barely filled halfway. “Monica and the ghorks were so surprised when I turned back into my old self, I had just enough time to escape. The only place I could think of to run was down here to these tunnels, but now I’m completely lost.”

  The professor reached up and patted Charlton’s arm reassuringly. “I know you don’t feel like you’re worth much in your natural form, but I have a feeling you’d be a good hand at rickum ruckery.”

  “Rickum what-ery?”

  Professor von Doppler smiled. “Come work for me and I’ll show you.”

  “You mean in the Creature Department?”

  The professor nodded. “But you’ll have to stop drinking that stuff.” He put out his hand, as if to take the bottle from Charlton.

  The cycloptosaurus, however, wasn’t ready to give it up. “Thanks for the offer,” he said, “but I’ll need some time to think about it.” He slipped his one last bottle of the potion back into his bag.

  “Fair enough,” said the professor. “But at least come up to the department and have a look around. Once you get to know a few creatures, I’m sure you’ll find there’s a lot to like.”

  Charlton agreed. He would join the Creature Department (at least for the afternoon).

  “Great!” said Leslie, clapping her hands. “Now that we’re all friends, can we please leave the secret underground dungeon?”

  “She’s right,” said Elliot. “There’s only one hour before we have to present at the shareholders’ meeting. But don’t worry.” He held up the one rocket boot he was carrying. “When we get these working, we’ll knock their socks off!”

  “If we get them working,” said the professor.

  CHAPTER 27

  In which the professor gets a hug and Elliot and Leslie make an unconventional choice

  When they returned, the four of them were greeted with resounding cheers from everyone in the Creature Department. They were overjoyed to see the professor again. The celebration was short-lived, however, because the intangible essence to power the rocket boots was missing. There was only one way to find it.

  In the Abstractory, the Preston Brothers set the rocket boots on the countertop (right beside the little bell, just as Reggie had done before with his smelly old galoshes).

  “Y’all designed these puppies yourself, didn’t you, Professor?” asked Patti Mudmeyer. She didn’t quite approve of the boots’ inelegant pipes and gauges, to say nothing of the flaming red-and-orange paint job. “Looks like something Gügor would crumple together.”

  “What do you mean by that?” asked Gügor.

  “I think she means it looks like a rickum-ruckem job,” said Harrumphrey.

  “Please, my friends!” Jean-Remy descended from the air, alighting on the rim of the left rocket boot. “Ze meeting with ze shareholders, it begins very soon. And yet, we have nothing to show them!”

  “The essences!” Elliot called out to everyone. “We have to find the intangible essence of rocket boots!”

  Every creature dashed through the forest of bookcase-trees, snatching up any essence they thought might get the boots working.

  Logically, many thought the essence of rocket boot technology would have something to do with flight, or with simply going up. They tried elation (a jar of feathers, hovering magically inside), buoyancy (an ethereal fog that gathered near the mouth of its tinted flask), high spirits (a thick jug of something that smelled very much like rum), and triumph (a hot, bubbling, orange liquid, fizzing with a noise that sounded like applause). They combined these with many of the creaturely intangibles from the back of the Abstractory, but nothing they tried had any effect on the rocket boots.

  Next, they wondered if the crucial essence would have something to do with fire. They tried the essences of combustion (a beaker full of flames), electricity (a glass cylinder leaping with blue sparks), and radiance (a jar that glimmered with galaxies of tiny stars). These, too, failed to get even a splutter from the rocket boot engines.

  Finally, they thought they had solved it. The rocket boots were the professor’s childhood dream, something he had read about in a Captain Adventure comic book. Perhaps the character’s heroism was the key. They tried the essences of valor (a jar packed with rods of dense metal), pluck (a sticky, molasses-like syrup), kindness (a jar of warm, colorful yarn), and daring (a fizzy, carbonated soda). Sadly, none of these worked either.

  Every creature—from the Preston Brothers all the way down to the smallest pixie—was dismally disappointed. The professor slumped at the end of the counter, gazing gloomily at the beloved invention he had always dreamed of. His rocket boots just sat there, cold and inert.

  “They’re as useless as the toys that came in the mail all those years ago.”

  Gügor lumbered over to the professor. He put one arm around the man’s shoulders. “Gügor thinks you should be proud,” said the knucklecrumpler. “Even if they can’t fly, Gügor thinks they look very pretty.”

  “You would,” said Patti.

  The professor groaned and gritted his teeth. “Gügor! Not so tight!”

  Gügor released the man from his well-intentioned embrace. “Sorry, Professor. You have to forgive Gügor. He is a knucklecrumpler, after all.”

  “I understand, and you’re right. I should be proud. Thanks to Leslie and Elliot, we can present all kinds of interesting things to the shareholders.”

  “Can we?” asked Harrumphrey.

  “I know they don’t work properly,” the professor explained, “but an almost-invisibility machine, a willfully unpredictable teleportation device, and a tele-pathetic helmet are still incredible achievements. I’m sure if we present them all together, we can—”

  “That’s it!” Elliot cried. “That’s the answer!”

  “What is?” asked the professor.

  Everyone turned to Elliot, but their faces were blank. Even Elliot’s uncle was confused.

  The only one who understood was Leslie. “Just like the professor said: Put them all together.”

  “We’re on the right track,” said Elliot. “The essences of flight, flames, and heroism seem like just the things to power a pair of rocket boots, but maybe what we need is more power.”

  “He’s right,” said Leslie. “Maybe rocket boots are so incredible, only the most creaturely essences will do.”

  Elliot turned to the Preston Brothers. “Has anyone ever tried using three creaturely essences, all in one invention?”

  The brothers looked at one another.

  “Risky,” warned Lester.

  “Never been done,” said Chester.

  Nestor merely narrowed his eyes.

  “The meeting starts in ten minutes,” said Elliot. “This is our last chance.”

  So Leslie and Elliot went for one last
race through the forest of bookcases, searching for the three most creaturely essences they could find, one to represent each aspect of the professor’s invention.

  First was flight. It took several circuits through the narrowest aisles, but they knew they had found it as soon as they saw it: a plump bottle that wobbled strangely on its shelf.

  Inside was a kind of slow-motion storm. Fluffy clouds lazily buffeted one another. When their edges met, instead of thunder and lightning, the clouds glowed softly from within. Red and green and yellow. Elliot and Leslie stood for a moment, staring at the bottle and wondering what caused it to wobble.

  “There’s why,” said Leslie. “It’s not on the shelf at all!”

  She was right: The bottle was hovering above it. The only thing that kept the round glass container from floating away was a thin length of twine. It was wound around the jar and tied to an eyelet screwed into the wood of the shelf. The label said: The Joy of Discovering Creatures Are Real.

  “It’s perfect,” said Elliot.

  For a creaturely essence relating to fire, they chose one they had seen before but hadn’t fully understood at the time: The Enchantment of a Luster Bug’s Light. Inside the jar, ghostly blobs and colorful splashes of light whirled and fluttered like the creatures themselves.

  The final selection was the most difficult of all. How was heroism represented in the world of creatures? They wandered back and forth for several minutes as their time ticked away. At last, Elliot and Leslie noticed something slightly different about the very tallest of the bookcase-trees.

  “Does that one seem brighter to you?” Elliot asked.

  “It is. But why?”

  They circled the tree several times before they traced the source of the brightness.

  “There are cupboards in this one,” Leslie observed. She cleared one of the lower shelves to reveal hidden compartments. When they opened them, a glow of light seeped out. “It’s all coming from in here.”

  When they opened the third in a series of inner compartments, they found it: a darkly tinted bottled that nevertheless glowed with the light of a tiny sun. It burned with such brilliance they had to cover the bottle with all four of their hands just to read the label. It said: The Desire for Creatures to Live in Harmony with Human Beings.

  “This is the one,” Elliot whispered. Leslie knew he was right.

  When they brought these three to the counter at the front of the Abstractory, the Preston Brothers remained skeptical.

  “These are three of the rarest essences of all,” said Lester, reading the labels. He looked tensely at the other brothers. “Combining them could be dangerous.”

  “Anything could happen,” said Chester.

  At last, just as before, Nestor waited until the very last moment to speak. “I think you’ve done it again,” he said. “You’ve chosen wisely.”

  “And we have no other choice but to proceed,” said Jean-Remy. “Ze meeting, it begins any minute now!”

  So Elliot and Leslie, having selected the essences, once again did the honors. They poured a few drops (or vapors, or glimmers) of each substance into the rocket boot engines, and this time, when the professor switched them on, the gauges glowed and the lights flickered.

  “They’re working!”

  Patti Mudmeyer clapped. “Love me tender and color me Elvis! We did it!” She beamed at the professor. “So what’re you waitin’ for, Doc? I’d say it’s about time you took your invention for a test run.”

  CHAPTER 28

  In which Monica does a jig, Carl wears a rubber ninja suit, and Sir William finally remembers that thing he forgot

  Sir William Sniffledon took his seat before the DENKi-3000 shareholders. It was casual Friday, so three or four of them weren’t wearing ties. The rest, however, remained in staid blue and gray suits.

  Sir William, on the other hand, embraced casual Friday wholeheartedly. He wore faded jeans and a wool sweater embroidered with the head of a moose.

  The eyes of the shareholders darted nervously toward the end of the stage, where the chair usually occupied by Professor von Doppler was empty.

  Sir William knew exactly what they were thinking. Wasn’t the very point of this meeting to have the professor demonstrate his fabulous new invention? Wasn’t that invention supposed to save the company from ruin and defend it from Quazicom’s hostile takeover?

  Where could he be?

  “Welcome, ladies and gentlemen of the executive shareholders’ committee,” said Monica Burkenkrantz, rising from her seat beside Sir William. “I’d like to thank you all for coming today. Some of you may note that our guest of honor appears to be missing.” She looked down the table to the empty seat on the end. “Don’t worry, I have a perfectly reasonable explanation for the professor’s absence. In fact, I have here an e-mail he sent me only this morning.”

  Sir William furrowed his brow. Why hadn’t he received an e-mail?

  Monica took out her phone, reading from the screen. “‘Dear Monica, please tell Sir William I’m very sorry.’” She glanced down at him, puffing her lips in a pout. “‘But unfortunately I wasn’t able to complete work on that new invention I promised. I suppose you’ll just have to sell everything to Quazicom. Your friend, Archie.’”

  A wet blanket of silence fell over the room.

  The shareholder spokesman rose from the front row. “Well, that seals it,” he said. “Without anything new from the R&D Department, we the shareholders have no choice but to recommend proceeding with the sale of DENKi-3000 to Qua—”

  “No! Wait!”

  Suddenly (just like in the last shareholders’ meeting, thought Sir William), the grating over the ventilation shaft cracked off the wall. Those same two children came tumbling out, the girl who looked like a gothic ballerina and the boy in that rather dapper fishing vest. What were their names again? Oh, yes—Elliot and Leslie. Wasn’t the boy related to the professor in some way?

  “How did you get in here?” snapped Monica Burkenkrantz. “The security bots were supposed to turn you away!”

  “You’re the one who should be turned away,” said Elliot. “Why don’t you tell Sir William what you’re really up to.”

  Monica narrowed her eyes at the children. “I’m not up to anything.”

  “Oh, yeah?” said Leslie. “You’ve been working for Quazi-com this whole time!”

  “Because you want his job!” said Elliot.

  Sir William was astonished to see the boy pointing at him. Could it be? His own vice president working for a rival, trying to usurp his position at the head of the company? Surely, this was the important thing he was meant to remember.

  Or was it?

  He turned to Monica. “Is this true?”

  She laughed loudly. “Don’t be ridiculous! How can you believe a couple of trespassing kids who live in the ventilation system?”

  “I must admit, their entrances tend to be a bit unorthodox, but if they’re willing to crawl around in there—twice—just to come talk to me, perhaps I ought to listen.”

  “Don’t tell me you believe a couple of—”

  “Now then,” said Sir William, “what is it you want to tell us?”

  “Basically,” said Elliot, “that your VP’s a liar.”

  “It’s a serious accusation, young man. What proof do you have?”

  “That e-mail she read was a fake,” said Leslie.

  “My uncle would never want you to sell the company to Quazicom.”

  “If that’s true,” said Monica slyly, “why didn’t he come here and tell us himself?”

  “He did,” said Leslie.

  Elliot nodded. “He’s right behind us.”

  The two children stepped aside. Everyone peered into the darkness of the ventilation shaft. Slowly, the darkness brightened and—

  SWOOOSH!

  There was an expl
osion of light and the professor came flying out of the wall.

  Literally.

  Flying.

  On his feet were a pair of garish red-and-yellow boots. They spit blue-and-green flames from their soles, propelling him through the air like a—well, like a superhero from an old comic book (his lab coat even flopped out behind him, a bit like a cape).

  Finally, he hovered down, standing on the stage in front of the executives’ table.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced. “I give you my secret invention: honest-to-goodness rocket boots!”

  Sir William was stunned. He was speechless. So were the shareholders.

  “Wait a minute! Hold everything!” Monica Burkenkrantz pointed to the boots. “Those aren’t supposed to work!”

  “How, pray tell,” said Sir William, “would you know that?”

  “Because she stole them,” said Elliot.

  “But we got them back,” said Leslie.

  “Is this true?” asked Sir William.

  “N-no, of course not,” Monica spluttered. “I would never . . . why would I . . .” Her stammers trailed off and finally she said, “They can’t work. Rocket boots are impossible!”

  Professor von Doppler smiled at her. “Don’t look at me,” he said. “It’s all thanks to those two trespassing kids from the ventilation shaft.”

  Monica stomped her foot on the stage. “But how can a couple of kids get them to work? We tried everything when we had you locked up down in the caves, hooked up to the . . . to the . . . uh . . .” She realized she had said too much.

  Sir William was beginning to believe the two children. “When you had the professor hooked up to what?”

  “The cerebellows,” answered the boy in the fishing vest. “They were trying to steal his ideas.”

  “Who’s this ‘they’ you’re talking about?” asked Sir William.

  “Her and the boss of Quazicom,” said Leslie.