by Lauren Child
And so they began, Ruby learning the key movements that she would practise again and again, until they became instinctual – the various ways to trip and throw and spin people to the ground when they came at you. Half the work was memorising the Japanese names for each move.
After they had practised for three hours Hitch said, ‘Kid, I think you’re a natural.’
Chapter 31.
The Lemon
RUBY HAD BEGUN THE DAY BY LYING IN BED VISUALISING HER AIKIDO MOVES. She already knew them by heart, but what she was striving to do was to think herself into them so they became second nature, part of her.
Ruby hadn’t really been in the mood for school and the day had dragged, though it had to be said she wasn’t exactly relishing the prospect of what was to come once the school bell rang.
‘So look, since you’re grounded and we can’t hang out after class then maybe we can hang out before?’ said Clancy.
‘You mean early?’ said Ruby. ‘Super early?’
‘I mean when people get up,’ said Clancy.
‘But I get up a half hour before school,’ said Ruby. ‘Why would I waste perfectly good sleeping time?’
‘I thought you were turning over a new leaf?’ said Clancy.
Ruby thought about this. ‘OK, that’s true. So where do you want to meet?’
‘At the Donut Diner, that way you only have to walk seven minutes around the corner.’
‘OK,’ said Ruby.
‘Early?’ said Clancy.
‘How early?’ asked Ruby.
‘6.30?’ said Clancy.
‘Too early, make it 6.45,’ said Ruby.
Clancy looked her in the eye. ‘Who are we kidding? You’re never gonna be there.’
‘I will – have a little faith, would you,’ said Ruby.
‘I’ll try but I doubt it will make any difference.’
‘OK, look, here’s what I’ll do,’ said Ruby. ‘If when I’m out taking the Lemon home tonight—’
‘What, you’re babysitting again?’
‘Yeah, my folks signed me up for ongoing baby duty; they figured it’s the best way to make me suffer, and they’re right,’ said Ruby. ‘So if when I’m out I think there’s a chance I might not make it in time for 6.45, I’ll leave a note in the tree and tell you what time I’ll be there.’
‘Why don’t you pick up the telephone?’ said Clancy.
‘Because it’s more fun,’ said Ruby, ‘plus you’re doubting me so you deserve to climb a tree.’
‘You’re not normal, you know that?’
‘And proud of it. Look, I gotta split, but I’m telling you to be there 6.45 and don’t be late unless I write otherwise!’
Ruby took the bus to Cedarwood Drive and instead of going home walked up the Lemon drive and rang the doorbell.
Elaine looked very pleased to see her; she was covered in baby food, most of it in her hair.
‘I’m having such trouble getting him to eat, Ruby, he’s so picky. I keep making these super-flavoursome meals, but he spits them right out.’
‘That’s because little kids can’t handle too much flavour. They have way more taste buds than adults and so the flavours can be too intense for them,’ said Ruby. ‘You have to think bland.’
‘Wow Ruby, how do you know so much about babies?’ said Elaine.
‘I don’t,’ said Ruby. ‘I know stuff about stuff and this is just something I read about to do with the human tongue. So is he ready to go?’
‘Almost,’ said Elaine, who then began pointing out all the various equipment that the baby would need for his two-hour excursion with Ruby.
‘Now this is his milky and this is his muslin.’
‘What’s it for?’ asked Ruby.
‘Oh, that’s for sucking,’ explained Elaine.
‘What, that rag? Kinda gross,’ said Ruby. She caught Elaine’s puzzled expression. ‘I mean cute. Super cute.’
‘I know,’ Elaine smiled. ‘And this is his cuddly, and this is his baby food and this—’
‘You know what Elaine, don’t worry, I’ll figure it out, or he’ll tell me. Let’s go, Lemon.’ And before Elaine could fuss about another thing, Ruby and the stroller rolled out.
Ruby pushed Archie Lemon up Flaubert Street. He was making strange gurgling sounds and was occupied with the task of trying to stick his foot in his mouth. Ruby peered down at him. ‘Is that a happy sound?’ she asked. He smiled a gap-tooth smile and tried to grab Ruby’s hair. ‘Boy are you ugly Archie.’
He gurgle-giggled and Ruby resumed her stroller pushing.
Ruby was finding the minding of baby Lemon boring to say the least and she felt anyone who could string some kind of a sentence together – better still, actually say something interesting – would be preferable company. She considered calling Mouse or Red, but with a baby in tow how much fun was it going to be? If she took him to the Diner he was bound to grizzle and she would most likely end up standing outside on the sidewalk jiggling him. So instead she struck out in the opposite direction.
Flaubert took her north of her immediate neighbourhood, and if she kept walking she was unlikely to bump into anyone she knew. There was something about pushing a small kid around that made her feel not quite herself and for this reason she didn’t especially want to see anyone from Junior High. She had narrowly missed bumping into Elliot and Del, but they had been so busy chatting they hadn’t seen her.
It was as Ruby was pushing the stroller across the street that Archie let go of his squirrel bean toy for the sixth time.
‘Jeepers, Archie, you can’t do that in the middle of a street,’ Ruby chided, ‘you’re gonna get us flattened into pancakes.’
She reached for the toy and a car honked its horn at her. ‘What do you expect me to do, man?’ she shouted. ‘I have to grab this squirrel, don’t I?’
She scooped it up and stuffed it in her pocket and was about to continue on her way when something made her freeze right where she was in the middle of the road.
What she saw was a young man in a bright red woollen hat looking up at the giant billboard attached to the old piano factory. Ruby followed his gaze. The billboard was an advertisment for Taste Twisters, widely advertised but not so easy to get a hold of it seemed. In fact, apart from the one empty bottle she’d seen roll out of the garbage can, not available anywhere as far as Ruby could tell. But today it wasn’t the ad that Ruby was struck by – it was the way the man was gazing at it. Not just reading it, but searching it, like he was trying to figure something out. A horn tooted, and the driver shouted, ‘Hey, kid! Are you crossing or what?’
Ruby began hurriedly pushing the stroller across the street and bumped it back onto the sidewalk, all the while keeping the man in her sights. He didn’t notice her; he was just staring up at the billboard. Ruby yanked at the hood on her parka, pulling it close around her face, and zipped the coat so only her eyes and nose were visible. The man in the hat was still stood there staring intently.
Ruby bent down and pretended to adjust the straps that held Archie in his seat.
‘What is he seeing?’ she whispered. Archie blinked.
Ruby watched as this man pulled a small book – a notebook or diary perhaps – from his jacket pocket, took out a pen, wrote something, looked at it, wrote something else and then took out another book and began flicking through it. If the book had a title then Ruby couldn’t read it – her eyesight was not up to that. Quite suddenly, the man stuffed the book back into his jacket, turned and began walking at speed in the other direction.
‘Come on Archie, I think we should tail him.’
It was easy tailing a person when you had a baby in tow; no one expected to be followed by someone pushing a pram. ‘You know what Archie, I suddenly get the point of you.’
They had been walking for around fifteen minutes when the man stopped, turned around, took maybe ten steps and walked into the Little Seven Grocers store.
What is he doing?
Ruby quickened her pace, almos
t to a run. Archie liked that and was making those gurgly happy noises babies make. When she reached the store, she peered in through the window. She saw the man’s red hat; the guy seemed to be looking for something. Soon enough he found it and, bottle in hand, walked to the counter. The boy at the till looked at the price, rung it up, then the man handed him some coins and headed for the door.
Ruby squatted down next to the stroller and pretended to be securing the rain cover over baby Archie.
From this vantage point Ruby was able to clearly see what happened next.
The man prised the metal cap from the bottle and sniffed the contents, as if he wanted to know exactly what was in the drink – as if reading it – then once he was done, he raised the bottle to his mouth and sipped the contents. Again, not like a person who was thirsty but like someone who needed to understand something.
He placed the bottle on the wall, scribbled something in his book and then – just like that – hailed a cab, stepped inside and was moving off into the traffic.
There was no way Ruby was going to get Archie, stroller and all, into a taxi in time to tail him.
Darn it!
Now what?
What she did was walk into the store and search the refrigerator, but they were all out of Taste Twisters.
‘To be honest, I didn’t even know we stocked it,’ said the young man behind the counter, ‘but then I only usually work Saturdays so there’s a lot I don’t know.’
‘OK, well thanks,’ said Ruby.
‘We have Fruitzees, have you tried them? They come in lots of flavours and aren’t bad, not too sweet.’
‘Thanks but no thanks.’
Ruby pushed Archie back out of the store and eyed the Taste Twister drink still sitting there on the wall.
She walked over to it and picked it up. Then, with great caution, she brought it to her nose and sniffed. It smelled of lemons, perhaps a hint of mint, but mainly lemons. She considered tasting it but stopped short.
What if it’s poisoned, she thought. But how could it be? The man drank some, didn’t he? Well, you thought he drank some but what if he was bluffing? What if it was all an elaborate trick to get people drinking some deadly drink and next thing you know you drop to the floor like some swatted fly?
She examined the bottle. Same twisty shape she had dimly seen when Sheriff Bridges was picking her up. The label with that same picture of the kid and the winding words coming out of its mouth like a twisty straw and the name, TASTE TWISTERS. And in smaller type below: LOOK OUT FOR THE WHOLE RANGE OF TASTE TWISTER DRINKS!
She looked through the bottle at the reverse of the label. There was no company information, no address, just a strange logo. It was like something from the wall of the dojo Hitch had taken her to – a mandala, or a prayer wheel.
Under this were the words: FOUR GREAT TASTES SINCE 1922.
That was peculiar phrasing, Ruby thought. You’d expect it to say four flavours, not four tastes.
Ruby reached for the little metal bottle top, but just as she did so, Archie sneezed, Ruby jumped and the lid went spinning across the street and rolled inconveniently down a drain grate.
‘Thanks, buster.’
So instead, Ruby took the bottle and stuffed one of Archie’s clean sucking rags into the neck of the bottle to stop the drink spilling out.
‘Why do you suck these things anyway, Lemon? It’s kinda gross, you know that?’
Archie just stared back at her. ‘And didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to dribble?’ said Ruby. ‘You do that a lot, you know?’
She began walking fast, heading for the subway station.
‘Should I dump you back? No, you’re not due home for a while yet. You’re gonna have to come with. You’re not authorised, but I don’t see you blabbing.’
The baby smiled, like he understood.
‘You gonna keep that tiny little mouth shut?’
Archie gurgled.
‘I’ll take that as a “yes”.’
Chapter 32.
The littlest recruit
RUBY BUMPED THE STROLLER DOWN THE SUBWAY STEPS, through the turnstile, onto the train, seven stops to Crossways, and off again, up the steps into the brightly lit Dime a Dozen supermarket, and headed to aisle 17.
Buzz’s usually blank expression gave way to one approaching mild alarm.
‘Is Blacker in?’ asked Ruby.
‘No,’ said Buzz.
‘Can you get a message to him?’
‘No,’ said Buzz. ‘Agent Redfort, you can’t bring that in here.’
‘Are you referring to the baby or the stroller?’ replied Ruby.
‘Both, neither are permitted, it’s against protocol,’ said Buzz.
‘So it’s come up in the past? Agents asking if they can bring a stroller in?’
‘No,’ said Buzz.
Ruby rolled her eyes. ‘What do you want me to do, abandon a baby in a supermarket?’
Just then the elevator doors drew open and out stepped Hitch. He looked at Buzz, at Ruby, at the baby, and said, ‘There you are kid, I wondered where you had got to, we’re going to need to get the small guy’s prints, just so we can eliminate him from our suspect list,’ he turned to Buzz. ‘Sorry for the inconvenience, if you wouldn’t mind printing a pass for our tiny guest, Buzz, I will escort Ruby, baby and all, to my office.’
Buzz nodded, and three minutes later a pass was printed and handed to Hitch. Once the pass was firmly in Archie’s small grasp, Hitch ushered them both into the elevator.
‘Kid, just what do you think you are doing?’ asked Hitch.
‘I got something to show SJ,’ said Ruby.
‘You think she hasn’t seen a dribbling baby before?’
‘Not him, this,’ said Ruby holding up the bottle of Taste Twister.
‘OK,’ said Hitch slowly, ‘but what is it?’
‘Lemonade I think,’ said Ruby, holding it up to the light.
‘Lemonade?’
‘I think it is, but I can’t be sure.’
‘You are asking one of our laboratory experts to take a look at what you think is a bottle of lemonade?’
‘I just want her to make sure that it is lemonade, no funny business I mean.’
‘What would the funny business be?’
‘I don’t know, poison maybe.’
‘I’m not sure I’m seeing the big picture here so why don’t you save it for SJ and I’ll go and see if we can find someone to watch the small person. I have to stop by the gadget room first.’
‘So you are authorising me to seek assistance from the lab technician?’
‘I’m giving you clearance. Now hand over the little guy.’
Ruby looked concerned. ‘You’re gonna need to make sure he doesn’t get his teeth into anything that can’t stand chewing, ’cause believe me everything ends up in his mouth and I don’t want to be held responsible.’
Ruby walked on down to the laboratory, knocked on the purple door and entered the shiny white lab. SJ was looking down a microscope at a small something in a glass Petri dish.
‘Hey,’ said Ruby, ‘do you have a minute?’
‘You have something for me?’ called SJ, not looking up.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Ruby holding up the bottle.
‘Is that lemonade?’ asked SJ.
‘Could be?’ said Ruby.
‘OK, I’ll take a look and you can explain why I should be interested,’ she said.
So Ruby explained about the man in the scarlet hat and the billboard and SJ went about her tests.
‘I still don’t exactly see why this is of interest to Spectrum,’ said SJ.
‘Call it a hunch,’ said Ruby.
‘I think LB would call it a waste of resources,’ said SJ, ‘but I won’t mention it.’
‘I appreciate your discretion,’ said Ruby.
An hour later and Ruby had her answer. ‘Nothing in this but some sugar, some lemon juice and a little carbonated water.’
‘And no poison?�
�
‘No poison,’ nodded SJ, ‘unless you count the sugar.’
‘You sound like my mom,’ said Ruby. ‘She’s got it in for sugar.’
‘Well, she has a point,’ said SJ. ‘Sugar has a profound effect on the brain, the whole body actually. You should see what it does to the liver. I can show you pictures?’
‘No thanks,’ said Ruby.
‘Do you want me to store this?’ asked SJ, pointing to the bottle.
‘I’ll take it,’ said Ruby. ‘Maybe it’s nothing but I might wanna have another look at the label, just to be sure, thanks anyway.’
‘My pleasure,’ said SJ, turning back to her Petri dish. ‘See you next time.’
And Ruby went off in search of her charge. He wasn’t difficult to find. There was a lot of noise coming from the gadget room and it seemed Hitch had decided to leave Archie with Hal, the innovations man. What Ruby saw when she walked in were a lot of agents of varying ranks all gathered and peering at baby Lemon who was now wearing someone’s hat.
Everyone was so distracted that no one spotted her walking between the glass gadget drawers, peering in at the high-tech hardware. She stopped when she noticed a tiny video camera. The label said it was motion activated, had a long battery life, was easy to operate and very reliable. Ruby could think of someone who would most certainly appreciate it.
This is a dumb thing to do, Redfort. She knew it, but then she thought about Clancy’s face and how happy he would be; she could already see his arms flapping. Quickly she palmed the little surveillance device, then slipped it into her pocket.
Ruby collected the baby, much to Hal’s disappointment. ‘He’s kinda entertaining, you know,’ he said.
‘Are you for real?’ said Ruby.
As she was wheeling Archie back towards the elevator bank, she saw a familiar figure coming towards her. ‘Is this the latest recruit?’ said Kip Holbrook.
‘Could be,’ said Ruby. ‘I don’t think he would do too well on foraging though, boy is he ever a fussy eater.’
‘I don’t think you exactly excel at that either,’ said Holbrook.
