by Mark Crilley
“Don't worry, honey,” said Jim. “We'll get him. We've got all day tomorrow.”
“Something really strange is going on,” said Linda. “Did you see his eyes? Not the right color. It's like there's a temporary chemical imbalance or something. I've seen it somewhere before, but I can't remember where….”
“How about this, honey. We'll have some dinner. Get Billy set up for bed. Then we'll put in one more shift, and if things don't go our way, we'll have a fresh go at it tomorrow morning. We've got loads of options left. There is the ribblavator. The ultrasonic pulse-darts. And we haven't even touched the semilethal weaponry yet.”
Linda coughed, took a deep breath, then reached down and picked up her glove. “Okay.”
One more shift, thought Billy, and they'll have a fresh go at it tomorrow morning. One more shift. A few more hours at most. Then they'll go to sleep.
They all sat down for a quick meal of tandoori lamb and freshly baked flatbread, then retired to a tent set up for them by Ravi Goswami and his men. As soon as Billy was safely in his sleeping bag, Jim and Linda went back to the Taj Mahal for another round with the orf.
Several hours later they returned. They exchanged a few whispered words about how poorly their second shift had gone, changed clothes, and went to sleep. The tent became very, very quiet.
Billy was wide awake.
He had, in fact, never really gone to sleep in the first place.
He waited until his parents were snoring, then slipped out of his sleeping bag, quietly unzipped the tent, and crept out into the cool night air.
Am I really going to do this?
He had it all worked out: he'd sneak into the Taj Mahal, snag one of Mom and Dad's weapons, find the orf, and shoot it right in the gums. If Ravi was right about the whole Achilles' heel thing, the orf would keel over, end of story. If he was wrong…well, the orf was bound to be knocked out for a minute or two. Billy could escape and sneak back to the tent. Tomorrow morning his parents would be none the wiser.
And who were they to boss him around, anyway? They'd been absentee parents all his life. They had no right to tell him what to do and what not to do. Where had they been when he'd won first prize at the X-Sports Challenge in front of Dave's Cycle and Fitness? Or when he and Nathan had jumped off the Flawatamee Bridge using their own homemade bungee? They hadn't been in Piffling, that was for sure. And even if they had been, come on. His parents were out there risking their lives every day. Why shouldn't he take those same chances?
Billy dropped to his hands and knees and began crawling in the direction of the Taj Mahal.
Keeping low to the ground in case any guards were watching, Billy continued to make his way toward the Taj Mahal, which took on a strange blue glow in the moonlight: its minarets stately and sparkling, its archways shadowy and mysterious.
Man, I wish Nathan could see me now. Or even better, a few minutes from now, after I've got my hands on one of those weapons. Too bad I can't get someone to take a picture.
He had only covered a few yards when he heard something.
What the—
He stopped.
Footsteps made a soft pat-pat-pat ting sound some ten or twenty yards ahead of him. He rolled under a nearby hedge just in time to avoid being seen by one of Ravi's men, a guard on patrol. He was tall and muscular, wearing a gold-braided cap and an olive green uniform. He had a walkie-talkie in his hand and what looked to be a gun in a holster attached to his belt.
Jeez, thought Billy. I've got to be more careful. I could blow my cover before I even get started.
When the guard was a safe distance away, Billy cautiously resumed his crawl toward the Taj Mahal. He'd covered a good thirty yards when suddenly a second noise so faint it was barely audible came from somewhere behind him.
He stopped.
The sound stopped. Not that the night was entirely quiet. Far from it: crickets chirped in the hedges on either side of him, and cicadas droned somewhere in the distance. A breeze whistled through the trees, rustling leaves and causing branches to creak. But the sound he thought he'd heard—the sound of someone moving—had stopped.
He slowly turned his head and scanned the garden path behind him.
Nothing.
My mind's playing tricks on me.
He kept moving.
The sound resumed, louder than before.
He stopped again.
Silence.
Then…
… it started again.
Billy's heart was pounding. He broke into a sweat.
It's one of Ravi's men. He's been following me the whole time.
The sound was getting closer. It was almost right on top of him.
How am I going to explain this? He's going to wake up Mom and Dad and I'll be under surveillance for the rest of the—
Something brushed his leg.
Billy whirled around and found…
…a lizard. A big, yellow lizard.
“Orzamo!”
She was sitting there just a few feet away from him: eyes squinting, claws scratching against the concrete. Billy let out a long sigh of relief.
“Orzamo, you can't come with me. Go back to the tent.” Billy made a shooing motion with his hands.
Orzamo puffed up her lower lip and shook her head. She was projecting a very different vibe from what Billy was used to: as if she knew she outranked him when it came to AFMEC affairs and could no longer be expected to just take his orders with a wag of her tail.
Billy made a short mouth fart.
“Oh, all right. But listen,” he said. “You've gotta stay quiet. The whole time, no matter what. Deal?”
Orzamo growled and drew her mouth down at the corners. She carried her head high, and Billy sensed that he needed to start talking to her in a different way.
“Okay. Let's try this again.” Billy ran a hand through his hair. “If you want to come with me, there's nothing I can do to stop you.”
Orzamo widened her nostrils and produced a brief snort, as if Billy's statement went without saying. It suddenly dawned on Billy that Orzamo was the one calling the shots in this situation.
“You're not going to try to stop me, are you?”
Orzamo remained quiet. She had evidently not ruled out blowing the whistle on Billy.
“Oh, come on, Orzy. You wouldn't squeal on me. Would you?”
Still quiet.
Billy searched Orzamo's eyes, trying to understand what was going on behind them.
“You're on my side, Orzy. You've gotta be. I mean, you never approved of Mom and Dad leaving me home alone all the time, did you?”
Pieces were sliding together in Billy's mind: things Orzamo had done—and hadn't done—from the moment he'd seen his parents on TV.
“You… wanted me to find out about AFMEC.”
Orzamo glanced away. Billy knew he was on to something. “I mean, maybe not consciously. You tried to stop me but…you didn't try as hard as you could have. You'd been against Mom and Dad keeping me in the dark all these years. So when the time came for me to have a chance at figuring everything out…”
Orzamo had turned back to face Billy. The faintest trace of a smile was forming on her lips.
“…you let it happen.”
Orzamo nodded ever so slightly, ever so slowly.
“Okay, Orzy. You let me make the phone call. You let me find out about AFMEC, and creatches, and everything else. The only reason I'm here where I am—doing what I'm doing—is because of you.”
Orzamo glanced back toward the tent. Billy could see that she was torn between her orders from Mom and Dad and her devotion to Billy: not as a pet, but as a friend.
“I can't turn back now. I gotta go fight this orf. My mind's made up. So let's do it together, right now. You and me.”
Orzamo stepped back and cocked her head, as if Billy had gone one step too far. Her eyes were squinted almost to the point of being closed, and her brow was furrowed with indecision.
“Come on, Orzy. Please. We
can do it. I know we can. And when we do, Mom and Dad'll be blown away. I mean, they'll be so impressed they'll wish they'd let us start battling creatches together ages ago.”
Orzamo let out a long, low bleating sigh: a sound that indicated that—for the time being, anyway—Billy's persuasive powers had prevailed. She followed it up with a defiant snort, though, which Billy took as a warning not to push things too far.
“Thanks, Orzy,” he said. “You and I are gonna make a great team. I know it.”
Orzy rolled her eyes.
Billy smiled. It dawned on him that Orzy's coming after him was actually a stroke of good luck. Her demi-creatch powers were going to be a big help when it came to fighting the orf.
Billy took the lead and the two of them made their way toward one of the red poles outside the Taj Mahal: the imperm barricade. Billy had been thinking about this obstacle and had an idea for getting around it.
He stopped well short of the pole and pried a branch from a nearby bush. Reaching out his arm, he pointed the branch in the air near the pole. Nothing. He leaned forward, jabbing the branch beyond the red pole to the other side. Nothing.
“Hm. Some barricade.”
But when Billy jabbed the branch just a little farther he felt it hit something. There wasn't a sound, but the branch stopped moving forward, as if he were jabbing it into a wall. And yet there was no wall: only air.
“Whoa.”
Billy dropped the branch and carefully extended his arm in its place. Sure enough, his fingers splayed into the air, as if they were spreading out on a smooth, hard surface.
Yet he felt nothing against his skin but air.
“Awesome. It really is a force field.”
He moved his hands across the strange invisible surface and watched with amazement as his fingers splayed again and again, making him look like some kind of pantomime artist. The imperm barricade was one of the coolest things he'd ever seen. Or not seen, that is.
Cool as it may have been, the barricade was something Billy needed to get past. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the penlike device his mother had given him earlier.
“The red button,” his father had said. “Not the black one.”
“Hope I'm right about this.” Billy clicked the black button, then put his hand out. To his great disappointment, the barrier was still there, just as solid as before.
“Maybe I need to double-click it.”
He double-clicked the black button. But again his fingers splayed into the air, unable to budge even a fraction of an inch beyond the barricade. He tried everything: triple-clicking it, clicking it five times, ten times, twenty times. But no combination of clicks seemed to have any effect on the invisible barricade.
I should have known, Billy thought. They wouldn't give me the power to shut down the barricade. Why would they?
He was playing around with the idea of digging a hole underneath the barricade—something that would take many more hours than he had available—when it occurred to him that there was one thing he hadn't tried.
He pushed the black button down and held it down. Then he carefully extended his arm until the tip of the pen was close enough to reach the invisible barrier.
When it reached the imperm barricade, a tiny blue spark shot out from the tip of the device, followed by another, and another. Finally there were so many sparks shooting out, it looked as if the pen was creating a glowing blue splotch in midair.
Billy pulled the pen back and found to his astonishment
that the splotch stayed right where it was. It was if he had drawn on the surface of the invisible barrier with glowing blue ink. It slowly lost its luminescence, though, and within several seconds it was gone.
Billy looked behind him to see if any guards might be alerted to his presence. Fortunately all the guards were far enough away that even if they looked in his direction, their view would be blocked by a nearby hedge.
He pushed the black button again and extended the pen to where it had been before. This time he moved it: sure enough, a glowing blue line formed in the air. He moved the pen around until he had drawn a neat little circle in the air, then quickly stuck his hand into the middle of the circle.
It went through.
Yes!
As the circle vanished, Billy pulled his hand back out. When he reached back to the same spot a second later, the barrier was whole again.
So that's it, he thought. A pen for “drawing” a temporary passageway through the barricade. Perfect!
He drew another circle and counted the seconds it took for the line to disappear.
Seven… eight…nine… that's it.
“Ten seconds,” he whispered to Orzamo. “We've gotta move fast.”
Billy checked one more time for guards.
Oh, you've gotta be kidding me.
One of the guards—a big, burly one with glasses and a handlebar mustache—was heading straight toward him. There was still enough of the hedge in the way to keep Billy hidden, but with every step the guard took Billy's cover grew smaller.
“All right, Orzy,” Billy whispered. “It's now or never.”
He pushed the black button, drew a large circle in the air—slightly larger than a garbage can lid—and jumped through as soon as it was complete.
“Now, Orz!” he whispered as loudly as he dared.
Orzamo hesitated. The circle was already starting to disappear.
“Now!”
Orzamo leaped through the hole a second before it vanished. Billy grabbed her and rolled under a hedge on the other side of the barricade.
The guard stopped and looked around. He said something in Hindi and pointed a flashlight in their direction. Billy held his breath. So did Orzamo. For a good thirty seconds there was nothing but the sound of crickets.
“Hmf,” grunted the guard after a moment, and continued on his rounds.
That was close, thought Billy. But we're past the barricade now. With any luck that'll be the last guard we see until we come back out.
Billy and Orzamo stayed under the hedge for a couple of minutes, breathing deeply, waiting. Then they continued on their path to the Taj. Ducking in and out of shadows, checking every minute or two to make sure they weren't being watched, they soon arrived at one of the huge arched entrances.
The interior of the Taj was cold and dark. Moonlight poured in through the carved marble latticework of one of the entranceways, casting spidery shadows on the floor. In the few spots where light hit the walls, exquisite floral designs crafted from inlaid stones—agate and lapis lazuli—glittered like jewels.
It was dead silent.
Billy's eyes immediately fell on a large tool kit set against one of the walls.
Bingo, he thought. Creatch-battling stuff.
He tiptoed over and read the words on the outside of the case:
MAGNETIC-FUSION PLASMATRON
MODEL NO. 5560-XQ7
“Dad mentioned this. One of the nonlethal weapons. Still, if I pop the orf a good one in the gums with this, it's bound to do something.”
Billy tried to open the case. No luck: it was held shut by a heavy padlock.
“Orzamo,” Billy whispered. “Any idea how to open this thing?”
Orzamo looked nervous, as if this was breaking one rule too many.
“Come on, Orzy. If we're going to sneak down to go after that orf, we've gotta have a weapon.”
Orzamo groaned a bit, cast her eyes to the heavens, then placed her jaws gingerly around the edges of the padlock. She paused, twisted her neck, and…
K'CHIK
The padlock popped open.
“Wow,” said Billy. “You're good at that.”
Orzamo winked and cocked her head back proudly.
Billy opened the tool kit. Most of the space inside was occupied by a device that looked an awful lot like one of those oversized plastic toy pistols that shoot water by the gallon. It was much more sleek and polished, though, as if composed of the carbon fiber material used to make st
ealth bombers.
Billy picked it up. It was surprisingly light. There were several handles and a spherical container near the front filled with a purplish liquid that sloshed around as he turned it over in his hands.
“What does it do?”
Orzamo shook her head. She looked even more nervous than before.
Billy raised it to eye level and tried to get a feel for how to take aim with it. It was tipped with a small cylindrical tube and a strange dispenser that looked like the spout of a watering can.
“Only one way to find out.”
He pointed it at the floor and cautiously pulled the trigger. VOOOOSH!
A bolt of purple fire shot out and ricocheted around the interior of the Taj like a miniature comet. Billy ducked, praying no one would see it from the outside. A few seconds later the fire bolt finally dissipated, and Billy inspected the spots where it had hit the floor and walls. There were some minor singes, but nothing serious. He figured it was unwise to try a second test shot.
“This is just the thing we need,” he said as he tucked it under his arm. “One blast in the gums from this baby and that orf will be out cold.”
Orzamo sighed. Still, she didn't seem to object to having a means of self-defense.
“Okay, now we've got to find the hole,” said Billy. “The one Ravi pointed to on the video monitor.”
They crept from one wall to another, finding ornamented surfaces wherever they turned, each with its own Arabic calligraphy, its own red and green flowers of inlaid stone. A chill ran down Billy's neck, and he had the sensation of being alone in a cemetery after sundown. The Taj was, after all, a mausoleum, and in the dead of night it was no longer the photogenic tourist destination it had been in the daytime. It was more like a chilly, sinister crypt.
Then, deep in one of the darkest shadows, they came upon the hole. It was four feet wide and five feet tall. Billy recalled the size of the orf from the illustration he'd seen.
It must be able to compress its body to move through tight passages.
The hole had been burrowed through a spot where the walls met the floor. Its edges were jagged, with tiny cracks extending several feet into the ornate surfaces surrounding it. Ravi was right: this hole would cost a small fortune to repair.