Tape Escape

by Cameron Macintosh

  Oscar just wags his tail as I run toward him. It doesn’t take long to figure out why. There’s a huge cooling duct at the end of the lane, blowing hot air out of the station and onto our faces.

  “Sorry, Oscar,” I say with a smile, “I never should’ve doubted you.”

  With hot air blasting against our backs, we stand still and wait for the Recapture Squad to reappear. It only takes them a second or two to tumble into the laneway opening.

  “Captain Selby,” I welcome him. “Nice of you to drop by - but you forgot to bring flowers. Very disappointing.”

  Selby doesn’t take any chances. “No flowers for a weed like you,” he laughs.

  He lays his finger on the web gun trigger and fires it right at us. The next few seconds are some of the most glorious moments of my life so far. The web spouts out of his gun, but it doesn’t come anywhere near us. It’s barely taken flight when the hot air from the duct blows it right back at him. The web branches out so widely it falls over the entire Recapture Squad and pins all four of them to the ground. They squirm on the concrete like a sackful of overgrown eels.

  “We thought you might like it here,” I say, as Oscar and I edge past them. “You’ve always been extremely full of hot air!”

  “There’s plenty of heat coming your way, Booth,” he growls. “After all the Home has done for you...” Strangely enough, his words don’t make me or Oscar feel guilty at all.

  We’re about to go into the station and relax in the waiting lounge when Oscar’s tail suddenly pricks up. He’s staring at a sign on a doorway across the road. I can just read it from here:

  Dr. Ivan Grizzlowe, Expert Forensic Musicologist

  Maybe our trip to the ground hasn’t been for nothing after all.

  I look down at the time display on Oscar’s back. It’s twenty past five. Chances are, Doctor Grizzlowe’s already gone home, but it can’t hurt to try.

  We cross the road, knock on the door, and wait. Ten seconds go by and there’s no answer. I try again and wait another twenty seconds or so — still nothing. I knock once more, and a few seconds later we hear footsteps on the other side of the door. I tidy my clothes and stand as tall as I can before the door swings open and we come face to face with a round-bellied man who looks about sixty years old.

  “Yes?” he croaks.

  For a moment I can’t speak back. He’s an oddlooking man. His ears are almost as big as his hands. His eyebrows hang down over his eyes like fat gray caterpillars. All in all, his head looks like a moldy white pumpkin.

  “Good afternoon, Doctor,” I say. “Could we come in, please? We have something that might be of interest to you.”

  I’m about to lock up,” he grumbles. Can you come back in the morning?”

  “I’m afraid not,” I insist. “We’re here on urgent museum business.”

  He looks at me and Oscar down the length of his nose. “I would have expected the museum to send someone slightly ... older to see me.”

  “I understand that, sir, but ...”

  “Good evening to you,” he says abruptly. And he starts to close the door firmly in our faces.

  “Would a lost David Snowie recording be of interest to you?” I yell.

  All of a sudden, the door stops moving. Dr. Grizzlowe’s strange head slowly peeps back around the edge of it. “David Snowie?” he says. “Did you say David Snowie?!”

  “Yes. I really think you should give us five minutes at least.”

  Dr. Grizzlowe looks me up and down in silence for a few seconds. “Alright ... But only five minutes. Come on through.”

  We follow him through the doorway into a long wooden hallway. All along, the walls are covered with photos of famous pop stars and musical instruments. The biggest one is a framed photo of Lady Chacha, a colorful pop singer from the early 21st century. The last photo before we go up a flight of stairs is a framed portrait of a pinkhaired man in a green space suit. Underneath it, the words David Snowie, Songwriter Of The Year, 1987 are impossible to miss.

  My stomach gurgles as we follow the doctor through a doorway on the right wall and into a cramped office. There’s a big wooden desk in the middle of it, and glass cupboards full of musical instruments along every wall.

  As we stumble into the room, Dr. Grizzlowe waves us into the seats on the door side of the desk.

  He plops into a chair behind the desk and slides on a pair of thick green glasses.

  “So, what do you have for me?” he asks.

  I place the case on the table and flick it open. The doctor’s eyes widen as he sees the cassette tape and the supermarket scanner cradled inside. “Strange looking implements,” he says. “What are they?”

  “Just watch and see, Doctor,” I reply, a little snappily.

  I slide the cassette tape out of its plastic sleeve and hold the scanner against the exposed tape at the bottom of it. Oscar jumps onto my lap and puts his tail into spin-mode, and just as it did back in the storeroom, Mr. Snowie’s voice comes flooding out of the scanner.

  Dr. Grizzlowe’s eyes triple in size. He grabs the edges of his desk and starts shivering. “This is astonishing,” he says. “Absolutely astonishing. Nobody has heard these songs in nearly four centuries. Please, young man - louder.”

  I push the scanner’s volume all the way up to 10 and notice that Dr. Grizzlowe actually seems to be drooling a little bit. Blobs of saliva splash onto the desk as he leans forward, drinking in the sounds like it’s the first time he’s ever heard music. I play him the first song all the way through, and then the second. And then we all listen together as the interviewer starts an in-depth conversation with Mr. Snowie.

  “Absolutely ... extraordinary,” says Dr. Grizzlowe, with an odd look on his face. “Please, a closer look at this, er .”

  “It’s called a cassette tape,” I say.

  “Yes, of course. The cassette tape.”

  I don’t really want to let it go, but I know I can trust Dr. Grizzlowe. He’s an expert in the field, after all. I slide the cassette tape across the desk. As soon as it’s close enough, he snatches it up and clamps it tightly against his chest with his long spindly fingers. His unusual behavior does make me feel a tiny bit uneasy.

  “It seems to be an authentic recording,” he says. “But to be absolutely certain, there’s one little test I need to do on a machine in my laboratory. Would you excuse me for a few minutes, while I run this ... cassette tape through an authentication device?” I look down at Oscar. He looks up at me. We both read the strange expression on each other’s faces. But surely, this is a necessary step - whatever it takes to prove to the museum that we really have found a true treasure.

  “Sure,” I say. “We’ll just wait here. Take as long as you need.”

  Dr. Grizzlowe hurries out of the room. We hear his footsteps trailing off toward the back of the building.

  Five minutes pass. I watch the time readout on Oscar’s back as six minutes pass, then seven. After ten minutes, a troop of jellyfish start wrestling in my stomach.

  “This test seems to be taking a while,” I say to Oscar. “It must be pretty complicated ...”

  After another five minutes, the jellyfish in my stomach are just about choking each other. Surely the doctor should’ve come back by now.

  We stand up and poke our heads into the hallway. I can’t hear Mr Snowie’s singing voice. I can’t hear any noise at all.

  Oscar and I step out into the hallway and walk as quickly and quietly as we can toward the back of the building. There’s only one more door, at the very end of the hallway. I knock on it, but there’s no response.

  This time, I don’t bother waiting. I grab the door handle and press down. Thank heavens, it hasn’t been locked. I push it open and tiptoe into a huge room full of filing cabinets, broken instruments, and old music-playing machines.

  I call Dr. Grizzlowe’s name loudly. Once again, there’s no reply.

  Oscar starts to buzz a nervous buzz that matches the feeling in my stomach. We walk through t
he room and I almost trip on an old tape reel. I call the doctor’s name louder and louder, but we still don’t hear a word back. The further in we go, the more it becomes clear we’ve made a very, very big bungle.

  When we get to the back of the room, I get the proof I really wasn’t wanting. There’s a door in the corner, and it’s wide open. It leads out onto a small deck with a stairway that spirals down into a dark alleyway. We run down, getting dizzier and dizzier with each twist. The whole way down, I keep yelling Dr. Grizzlowe’s name.

  Not surprisingly, he doesn’t yell back.

  CHAPTER 5

  Sky-High Thief Hunt

  For all we know, Dr. Grizzlowe’s already zooming across town on a crowded zip-coaster, but there’s no time to stand around feeling sorry for ourselves. We sprint down the alleyway and out onto the nearest street. At the end of the alleyway, Oscar waves his nose in the air.

  “What is it, Oscar?”

  For a moment he looks around, confused. Then his eyes glow bright red and his ears point to the left. Before I know it, I’m chasing him down Trebb Street, dodging another wave of after-work business people. It’s okay for Oscar - he can weave between their feet, but me - I’m puffing like an out-of-tune Zlog-wing engine. We finally halt at the crossing on Harold Street, and I see why he’s in such a hurry. On the other side of the road, there’s Dr. Grizzlowe, running for the Skyburb Up-station with a very familiar-looking object in his hand.

  As we wait for the lights to change, we watch him push into the line for the Skyburb that’s just docked - Skyburb 4b. The lights seem to take forever to change. As Dr. Grizzlowe pushes his way to the front of the line, Oscar’s legs start spewing out steam. Spurred on by my anger, mine almost do, too.

  When the lights finally change, we sprint across the road, just as Dr. Grizzlowe disappears from sight. The moment we reach the outer barrier of the Up-station, Grizzlowe steps into an aircell and its glass door slides shut in front of him. As the engine hisses, he drools all over himself, and before we have time to tell the staff there’s a thief in the station, he zooms upward and vanishes into the sky. We watch his cell getting smaller and smaller as it flies up the zoom tube and disappears into the rusty basement of Skyburb 4b.

  “Come on, Oscar,” I screech. “We’ve got to get up there too!”

  I pick Oscar up and push through the crowd.

  “Typical shadie,” says a woman. “No manners at all.”

  “Look at his clothes,” laughs the boy with her. “No wonder they have to steal a free ride.”

  Oscar sprays both of them with gloopy green fluid from his 3D printer as we tumble over the top of the barrier. At that very moment, Skyburb 4b hisses and groans and detaches from the docking station. And then it floats upward, as Skyburb 12 moves in to take its place.

  “Leaping labra-bots,” I cry to Oscar. “What are we going to tell Jessie?”

  Oscar howls at the sky as I look up at the timetable display. The next docking time for 4b isn’t until 7:45 p.m. — another two hours from now!

  “Oh well, at least we know which Skyburb he’s hiding in.”

  Oscar sighs. The screen on his back lights up and displays four words:

  ”Skyburb 4b population: 90 000.”

  I gulp, then sigh as we watch 4b drifting away in the windy brown sky.

  CHAPTER 6

  Best Nose in the Business

  Two hours later, we’re back at the docking station, first in line for the next cell to Skyburb 4b. By now, the crowds have thinned out. We don’t have to soak anyone in gloop to get to the barrier.

  As soon as 4b docks and the aircell door slides upward, we jump in and press the Up button. The ground rushes away from us. Looking down, the city’s so bright with streetlights and glowing signs, you’d hardly know the sun had set half an hour ago. It only takes our cell a few seconds to come to a stop at the bottom end of 4b. We jump out of the cell and take the express-ca-lator up to street level.

  I’ve never been to 4b before. It doesn’t look too different from Skyburb 9, except that it seems to have more robo-dogs on its streets and more grime on its buildings. Everywhere I look, I see kids on rusty zoot-scooters and adults in grimy work clothes.

  Oscar ignores them all. He drops his nose to the ground and walks around in circles, sniffing furiously.

  “Can you sniff any whiff?” I ask.

  Oscar shakes his head and looks down at the ground with his tail between his legs.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “We’ll walk around for a while. You’ll pick something up, I’m sure.”

  Pretty soon, we find ourselves on Rovers Road, the main road that seems to run right through the middle of the Skyburb. It’s a hive of hometime activity. Above our heads, passengers zoom past on the zip-coaster. Alongside of us, humans and their electronic helpers walk homeward with quick steps. As we walk along, Oscar sniffs the ground like he hasn’t noticed a single one of them. Every few minutes he looks up at me with a slightly worried expression on his face.

  “It’s okay, Oscar,” I say. “Just keep snuffling with that sniffer.”

  After an hour of walking and sniffing, I’m really starting to worry. Beagle-bots have the best noses in the business. If Oscar hasn’t picked up Grizzlowe’s scent by now, maybe he never will ... or maybe it’s my fault. Maybe I didn’t do quite as good a job of fixing his nose as I thought I did.

  At 9:35 p.m., we flop onto a park bench. Oscar has never looked so sad.

  “Don’t worry, pup,” I say. “If you can’t smell him, no other beagle-bot in Bluggsville could smell him either.”

  I really mean it, but that doesn’t seem to make Oscar feel much better.

  “Let’s call it a night,” I say. “We’ll come up with a new plan after we’ve both had a rest and a snack. We always do, don’t we?”

  Oscar sighs and gives my leg a soft nudge as we turn around and head back toward the Skyburb Down-station.

  We’re halfway along Rovers Road when Oscar stops dead in his tracks and drops his nose to the ground.

  “Oscar!” I yell. “Have you got something?”

  I look ahead in the direction of his sniffs and see someone very familiar running from one side of the road to the other over the zebra crossing. Even by streetlight, there’s no mistaking him — I can see those caterpillar eyebrows from here!

  “You’re the best, Oscar,” I say with a smile. “Let’s give that thieving weasel something to really Grizzlowe about!”

  We sprint along the footpath toward him. It’s hard to keep an eye on him through all the people on the street, but when we’re just a few meters from the zebra crossing, Oscar darts off to his right and leaps onto a brick fence. He latches his legs onto a drainpipe and stars hauling himself up the side of a building.

  I look up, expecting to see Grizzlowe’s face in a window or a staircase, but straightaway my heart sinks. All I can see up there is a rusty robo-rat on a window ledge, twelve floors up ... and Oscar tiptoeing shakily across a horizontal power pole to get closer to it. I gulp - beagle-bots aren’t known for their sense of balance, and it’s extra windy up there too!

  As Oscar wobbles in the breeze, I climb over to the drainpipe and pull myself upward. The drainpipe’s made of metal, but it’s rusty enough not to be too slippery.

  By the time I reach Oscar’s power pole, the wind’s hitting me so hard I have to hug the drainpipe tight just to stay up there. Oscar’s having an even harder time - he’s stopped in the middle of the power pole, clinging on with all four paws.

  “Stay there!” I yell. “I’m coming to get you.”

  Oscar squishes into the smallest ball he can. I can see the tension in his paws as he squeezes even tighter. With the wind blowing my hair all over my face, I lift myself up the last few meters until I reach Oscar’s power pole. I lean over and onto it, and wrap my body around it like a hungry python. Then, I pull myself toward Oscar, centimeter by centimeter. The whole time, I’m trying not to look down at the street, twelve stories below us.


  I’m only a meter or two away from Oscar when I hear a squeak, and then a bark. Up ahead I can see the robo-rat scuttling up another drainpipe. The sudden movement is more than Oscar can resist. The next thing I know, he’s running along the power pole like a circus pro. Somehow, he reaches the other end and makes a leap for the drainpipe on the side of the building.

  My heart stops as he flies through the air and crunches into it. Unfortunately, it seems to be more slippery than the power pole - he can’t get any grip on it. A moment later he’s sliding down the drainpipe toward a steaming garbage disposal unit at the bottom of it.