John glanced out of the window again, and saw nothing. “Come on!” he said softly, and slapped the top of the television set. Outside, the driver stood up; he put the handkerchief back into his pocket and walked toward the car door.
The tape finally stopped at the beginning, and as John was about to play it, he heard the door open. He immediately scrambled down onto the floor again, his heart beating hard in his chest, but as far as he could tell, nobody got into the car.
He sensed that something was up; there was an air of anticipation coming from the direction of whoever it was who had opened the door. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a car fast approaching. He got to his knees and peeked out through the window as a second limousine screeched to a halt.
He watched as a very beautiful Asian woman climbed out of that limo and walked toward the school. Her driver got out of the vehicle too, and walked toward the car he was in. He was trapped!
He wanted to die. Suppose he was caught in here; what would that look like? What would they do to him? What an idiot he was! What a stupid, stupid idiot! The thoughts cascaded around his brain like water sloshing in a bucket, and all they did was make him feel worse about an already bad situation.
He hit the button and the tiny television slid back into its hideout as he scrambled hurriedly down onto the floor. He had learned absolutely nothing; as a spy he was totally and utterly inept. He needed to do something, create some really neat diversion that would get both drivers to look the other way so he could slip out of the door and off to freedom. Try as he might, he could think of nothing.
The passenger side door opened and the two drivers climbed into the front of the limo. “What the hell is going on down here, Steve?” said the young driver who had just arrived, a punkish-looking young man with hair that stuck out in all directions.
“Well, Jack, it’s like this,” said Steve, a tanned Adonis with a tiny intellect. “They were up to something last night. I could tell because I was sitting out here in the car and this low rumble started up that made me feel like I was coming apart at the seams.”
“But what is this place? Isn’t it a school?” Jack asked.
“Sure, it’s a school, but there’s something else going on. I don’t know what it is yet, but I’ll know soon enough. I’m working with Hunter now, and he knows everything,” Steve bragged.
“Well, I’ll tell you this,” Jack volunteered, “She had me run every red light between here and Manhattan, and she kept asking if I could go any faster, even when I was doing seventy.”
As John lay looking up at the roof and listening, a hand appeared over the top of the seat. His heart thumped so loudly he was sure they would hear it, so he tried holding his breath, but it didn’t make a difference.
“I think we need a drink, man,” Steve began to feel around for the drink tray directly above John’s nose.
“That sounds like a great idea,” Jack replied.
John reached over and pushed the button, and the drink tray slid out just as the hand grasped for the bottle. He sighed softly as the bottle disappeared over the seat, then he watched the hand come back and grab two glasses. These two knew even less than he did; they were complete morons, and even worse they seemed to be settling in for a party.
“What do you think they’re up to in there?” Jack queried.
“I don’t know,” Steve said in a suspicious tone, “but I’d sure like to be a fly on the wall.”
It was weird, John thought, those last few words became the only thing that existed in his whole universe. He actually felt time begin to slow down almost to a stop. Fly on the wall. He examined each word, scrutinized each letter; they became huge sculptures that he stood beneath on a bleak and desolate landscape. He heard nothing more, only the blood pumping through his ears, and then he vanished in a cloud of particles.
***
Suddenly he was flying; he swooped, he dove, he looped the loop, and the wind whistled around him—it was like being on a roller coaster ride without the car.
He sat on a flower; he could see everything perfectly from a thousand different angles. It was a very peculiar feeling because he could see behind and in front at the same time and it took a strange shift in mental focus to concentrate on one or the other, but neither ever went away.
He flew around a coffee cup, over an inkwell with a pen, and over that flowerpot with the flower in it again. It was exceedingly odd; time was completely disjointed—huge chunks of it went missing as he kept finding himself in different places.
Hey, wait a minute, what the heck is going on? he thought to himself. He rolled into a steep climb that took him straight up in the air, and he very nearly got diced to death passing through a ceiling fan.
He landed and made his way toward a shiny metal band wrapped around the stem of the fan. Walking was extremely awkward because he had four more legs than he normally had, and he kept tripping over them. As he approached the convex surface of the metal, he saw the whole room, but it was broken up into a thousand facets, each one containing the same image. He shifted focus to just one of the facets, and behind and below him he saw three people sitting at a table. He wondered why he had never noticed them before; the exceedingly strange was expanding exponentially into the ludicrously absurd!
He pushed his face closer to the mirrored surface and what he saw filled him with revulsion. He had huge eyes shaped like disco balls, and a monstrous face covered with tiny hairs. He found it hard to pull himself away from the hideous visage staring back at him, but he finally managed it by absorbing himself fully in the scene below.
Amelia Moon stared at the image on the videotape and felt a pang of regret. “If it wasn’t for this stupid child, the experiment almost certainly would have been a success,” she enthused. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the idiotic Doctor Leitz staring at her like a puppy; he had no idea his days were numbered. “And as far as I’m concerned, we have to run the experiment again. I need conclusive proof that we have achieved the scientific equivalent of the alchemist’s secret.” She needed to be sure she would see her beloved Doctor Angstrom whole again, and immortal, like a god.
Peering down at them from the ceiling fan John encountered a problem; he didn’t think flies had ears. He could feel the slightest variation in the movement of the air around him, and he could see in a billion directions at once, but he couldn’t hear a thing. He decided to get a closer look, so he took off from the fan and began to fly around them in a circle.
“So, Doctor Leitz, do you agree with my summation?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he concurred. “If it weren’t for the introduction of a foreign body, we would now be celebrating the success of my brilliant technological breakthrough.”
“And are you confident this is indeed the scientific equivalent of the Stone of Knowledge?” she pressed.
“Yes, my brilliant innovations have created equipment that acts just as the stone once did.”
Miss Moon pondered his enthusiasm as Leitz became preoccupied with a fly that buzzed between them. Hunter, who had been silent up till now, stared at him quizzically.
“Are you okay, Doc?” he asked.
Doctor Leitz had turned around to follow the movement of the fly. “I hate flies and I’m wondering how it got in here.”
“Let’s get back to business,” said Miss Moon. “Although the death of a child is unfortunate, we cannot let it stand in our way, and we need to run the experiment again to assure ourselves that it was the success we believe it to be . . . agreed?”
She watched Leitz as he turned from her distractedly and followed the movement of the fly. “Doctor Leitz?” she ventured.
“Suppose the kid’s not dead,” he said, turning back to her with a puzzling, calculating look on his face.
“That’s preposterous!” said Hunter, “He was totally creamed.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, addressing Doctor Leitz and trying to ignore Hunter’s outburst.
“I mean
these are the facts. This experiment is a complex set of mathematical equations that allow us to manipulate matter.”
“Okay,” she said.
He moved closer to her and lowered his voice. “Therefore, we must also hypothesize that being human and having a brain, if an individual passed through the experiment unscathed, he would inherit the ability to manipulate his own molecular structure at will.”
She stared at him in disbelief and turned to Hunter, who shrugged his shoulders. They were deep into uncharted territory without a map, and anything seemed feasible at this moment.
“How do you arrive at this conclusion, Doctor Leitz?” she asked.
“Before we began this meeting,” Leitz whispered, “I checked the absentees for today. There was one: a boy named John Smith.”
“Well, he wouldn’t be here if he were dead!” Hunter offered.
“I am sure he’s not dead,” said Doctor Leitz.
“Well then, we should find him and have a word with him,” Miss Moon added.
At that moment the fly buzzed between them, landed on the table and began crawling around. They all stared at it. “He may not be that far away,” Leitz postulated. “For obvious reasons this building is sealed tight; we never get flies in here; they are simply too dangerous.”
Hunter and Miss Moon looked at each other curiously.
“I’m not sure I believe it,” Hunter said.
“No. But then again,” Miss Moon continued, “we have opened Pandora’s Box, haven’t we?”
John stood in the middle of the table looking up at the three of them, and through his fly vibes he had the strangest feeling they were looking down at him.
“We should try to take him alive,” Hunter whispered.
“Are you buying into this then?” asked Miss Moon.
“Of course he’s buying it,” Doctor Leitz shot back, “because it’s true. Now, on the count of three, let’s get him.”
Caught up in the madness of the moment, she complied and prepared to jump the fly.
John’s fly vibes were now working overtime; he felt the urgent need to take off, and he wasn’t at all sure why. He buzzed his wings and suddenly hands were coming at him from every direction. He launched himself into the air and with some pretty tricky aerobatics, he narrowly avoided being crushed to death.
“There he goes,” Hunter cried out. “After him!”
Miss Moon watched the two men leap up from the table in hot pursuit of the fly. However much she felt that Doctor Leitz’ assumption may be correct, she surely wasn’t running around the room chasing an insect.
John flew for his life; it is strange to be so small and have giants chasing me, he thought. He flew around the room, unable to find a way out until he spied the door. He banked down toward the handle, and beneath it his escape route presented itself.
Doctor Leitz and Hunter scrambled for the door handle as John disappeared through the keyhole. They ripped the door open and rushed into the room beyond.
A stunned secretary stared at them as they tumbled in.
“Did you see a fly go this way?” Doctor Leitz blurted out.
She gazed at them silently, blinking, until Leitz laughed nervously. “Of course you didn’t, just a joke,” he said.
Hunter laughed out loud in support of the lie and slapped his partner in crime on the back, knocking the wind out of him. The two men turned and reentered the meeting room, breathing heavily and feeling ridiculous.
Miss Moon watched them return with a cold eye, and for a long time she stared at them both in silence. Deep inside she felt a hint of satisfaction, for she had very nearly joined in with the idiocy until common sense had prevailed and steered her back to sanity. “We shall say nothing further about this incident,” she whispered. “As far as I am concerned, it never happened.”
Hunter was pleased; his collusion in the affair was forgotten, his slate was wiped clean and he was guilt free. Doctor Leitz, on the other hand, was convinced he was correct and nothing on earth could change that conviction. He gazed back at Miss Moon; she was beautiful all right, but beauty always hides danger. Beautiful or ugly, human nature is always focused on one thing: getting its own way. “Forgive me, Miss Moon,” he lied, “I don’t know what came over me.”
She smiled at him; he had given her what she wanted and she was happy. “Mr. Hunter,” she said with authority, “You will find the boy, if he is still alive, and bring him in. Meanwhile, Doctor Leitz will prepare to run the experiment again.” She was satisfied, sanity had prevailed and things were back in order.
***
The secretary had returned to her work, mystified by the strangeness of the intrusion, when suddenly a teenage boy fell down from the wall and crashed to the floor. She knew that she saw what she saw, but somewhere deep in the back of her mind, she was already beginning to erase the memory.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked John with authority.
“I’m not sure,” John replied, rubbing his head.
My job should not involve this level of mystification, she thought. Life was complicated enough, and she definitely wanted to ignore the last ten minutes of it.
“Well, you’re not allowed in here, get out,” she said forcefully. The sooner she got rid of him, the sooner she could forget the whole unfortunate incident.
John scrambled up from the floor, smiled at her confidently and left the room. She turned back to her computer, sighed deeply, shook her head, and began typing.
***
John slipped out of the office and out of the school without being seen. Outwardly, he looked like any normal teenage boy walking down the street, but inwardly he was seething in complete and utter turmoil. He knew nothing more now than he did when he had climbed into the back of the limousine, apart from one obvious and undeniable fact; he had been a fly, and at the same time he had been himself.
It horrified him to think that at any moment he could change into something else. He wanted to go away somewhere and hide, but there was nowhere to go to get away from himself, because wherever he went he would be there. There was only one thing he could do; he had to learn to understand the nature of change, and perhaps how to control it. He had to come to terms with his mysterious new talent, because it obviously wasn’t going away, and at the same time he needed to conceal it from the world.
He was acutely aware of the fact that nothing would ever be the same in his life again. The safety and comfort of childhood was over, and any thought he’d ever had of being normal had ebbed away on the tide of time. He was alone, utterly and completely alone, as we all are. Even standing in a crowd, we stand alone.
Chapter 7
THE DATE
It was a Saturday morning for those who dealt in days of the week, but for the birds it was another sunrise and an opportunity to compose an entirely new dawn chorus. Maple Street was indeed lined with maple trees, a fact the birds found extremely convenient because the trees provided them with ample perch room from which to conduct their operatic warbling.
This morning the human accompaniment was the usual—the paperboy, the mailman, and the odd early morning riser off to play golf. But when a black truck appeared and parked across the road from number 414, the chorus hesitated momentarily, as if factoring in this strange new instrument.
Outwardly, the truck displayed its reason for being as: SID’S PLUMBING. But inwardly it was a different story entirely; the truck was actually full of video equipment, and out of a tiny hole in the D of SID’S name poked a tiny camera lens.
Inside the truck Hunter sat at a console manipulating a joystick that moved the camera around. He focused it on the door of number 414 and leaned back in his chair, admiring his handiwork on one of the many TV monitors that lined the wall above him.
The stakeout was his stock in trade; he was an aficionado of the practice. Long ago he had learned that a really successful stakeout could not be accomplished sitting in the front seat of a car drinking coffee and eating donuts for days on end. The
downside was obvious; you could be seen, and the longer you sat there the more obvious you became, until you stuck out like a sore thumb.
This stakeout, on the other hand, was his carefully designed masterpiece. There were video cameras to record all the action so that nothing was missed even if he dozed off. There was a freezer full of TV dinners, a microwave, and even a toilet, so he never had to leave the truck.
The door opened and Steve entered from the driver’s cab wearing a false mustache. “I don’t see why I have to wear a disguise, Mr. Hunter. Nobody around here even knows me!”
Hunter turned to him and smiled. “That’s true, and that’s the way it will stay, because if anybody ever asks any questions, you will just be the guy with the mustache from SID’S PLUMBING. Now make some coffee, we may be here for a while.”
Hunter sat back in his chair and opened the newspaper; he’d forgotten more about the spy game than Steve would probably ever learn. Of course it was his duty to pass on the knowledge he’d gained, but the youngsters of today just didn’t have the juice he’d had when he started out.
He blamed it on a lot of things: the educational system, the divorce rate, the idiotic television programs, and the constant bombardment of advertising. They all contributed to the lackadaisical manner of today’s youth.
But this boy—this John Smith—if he truly was capable of doing what Doctor Leitz had hinted at, could turn the art of espionage on its head. Perhaps with his guidance the boy would become the best there ever was; who knew?
He gazed at the paper: more trouble in the Middle East, more trouble in the Far East, more trouble at home. Opportunity is everywhere, he thought.
***
John had been coaxed into consciousness somewhere in the second movement of the bird’s sunrise symphony. It was the moment the birds stopped singing that had awoken him, and when he heard a truck stop outside, he leapt out of bed.
The Subatomic Kid Page 6