Operation Sherlock

by Bruce Coville

  Immediately the doll—dressed in diapers and a bonnet, and known to her owner as “Baby Pee Pants”—opened her glass eyes. She crossed and uncrossed them, waited thirty seconds, then reached out to poke the doll next to her. “Hey, Blondie,” she growled, in a voice that would have been better suited to a truck driver, “time to wake up!”

  The second doll—a twelve-inch-tall beauty with blue eyes, waist-length blond hair, and a hot-pink bikini plastered onto a figure that would have been grotesque in real life—yawned and stretched. “Time to move it, Mr. Pumpkiss,” she said wispily, nudging the teddy bear that sat on her right.

  The bear’s nose twitched. “Buzz off, Blondie,” it snapped.

  Despite its words, the bear pushed itself to a standing position.

  “Ready?” asked Baby Pee Pants.

  The other two toys nodded. Moving in unison, all three took a step forward.

  Immediately they fell off the shelf and crashed to the floor.

  Still in perfect synchronization, the toys said a word their owner’s parents would have preferred she not even know, then climbed to their feet and began marching across the room. “Captain Wendy,” they chanted. “Calling Captain Wendy! Time to wake up, Captain Wendy!”

  When they had made their way across the floor—which was like a doll-sized obstacle course, given the mess that covered it—they ran into the side of Wendy’s bed and fell down again. After repeating their curse word, they began trying to climb the sheets, crying, “Let us up! Let us up, Captain Wendy!”

  Wendy Wendell opened her right eye and glared at the toys. “Lemme sleep,” she growled.

  “Let us up! Let us up!”

  “Chips!” exclaimed Wendy, pushing herself to her elbows. “What did I do to deserve this?”

  The toys responded, as they had been programmed to: “Life is rough, Captain Wendy.”

  “And then you die,” added Baby Pee Pants in her truck-driver voice.

  “Right.” Rolling onto her side, Wendy pulled the sheets over her head.

  “Let us up! Let us up!”

  With a sigh Wendy reached down and scooped the toys onto her bed. This cued them to give her five minutes of silence.

  When the time was up, the bear began to sing.

  Ray Gammand dug his spoon into the strawberry jam and scooped an outrageous amount onto his English muffin. “I don’t like it here,” he said. “I want to go home.”

  “For heaven’s sake, Ray, give the place a chance,” replied his stepmother. “We got here after dark last night, and you haven’t been outside yet this morning. How can you possibly know if you like it or not?”

  Ray looked at her suspiciously. “I thought you didn’t want to come here, either.”

  Elinor Gammand shrugged. “I didn’t. But I lost that fight. Do you think I should hold a grudge about it? Your father had good reasons to accept this assignment, so I figure I just have to make the best of things.”

  Ray scowled. “I don’t want to live on an island.”

  “What did you think Manhattan was?” asked the new Mrs. Gammand, trying to hold in her smile.

  “Well, at least it had a city on it! I hate this place. You can’t even get a cell phone signal here!”

  “I suppose you’d better just go back to your room and sit,” said Ray’s stepmother, wiping a smear of jam from the side of his mouth. “After all, there’s no point in going out to explore a place you hate.”

  Ray sighed. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get Elinor to put up with his nonsense. “I guess I can cope with it,” he grumbled, shoving the last of the muffin into his mouth and grabbing his basketball. “I’ll see you later.”

  Elinor Gammand let the smile she had been holding in blossom. It was quite dazzling, one of the things that had led to her becoming the second Mrs. Gammand. Then her face went serious again. “Don’t forget what your father told you.”

  Ray looked puzzled. “He told me lots of things.”

  “Security is tight. So pay attention to the signs and don’t go where you shouldn’t! Also, be back by eleven-thirty. Dr. Hwa has scheduled a big meeting where we’ll meet the other scientists and then tour the base. For heaven’s sakes, try not to be late for a change. This is an important meeting.”

  “Okay,” said Ray.

  He didn’t really mean it. By eleven-thirty he planned to be on his way back to Manhattan.

  “Too much blue,” said Trip Davis to his father.

  Elevard Crompton Davis looked out at the early morning sea, then back to the easel he had set up on the bluff above Anza-Bora’s eastern shore. “You’re right,” he said glumly.

  Trip smiled.

  “Look, Trip, I appreciate the advice,” said Mr. Davis as he opened a tube of brown paint and smeared some onto his palette. “But the truth is, you’re starting to drive me slightly mad. I know there are some other kids here. Why don’t you go look for them?”

  Trip’s smile faded. “I don’t like meeting new people.”

  His father paused, then wiped his brush on a rag. “I can understand that,” he said at last. “But let’s face it—it’s new ones or no one.”

  “I didn’t ask to come here,” said Trip bitterly.

  “Neither did I!” snapped his father. They looked away from each other. “Your mother…”

  “I know,” sighed Trip. “Mom-the-computer-genius has to do this.” He turned away. “I’ll be good,” he muttered. “She’ll never know how mad I am.”

  Turning back to the scene he was trying to paint, Mr. Davis noticed a pair of redheaded kids strolling by on the beach below. “Look, Trip,” he said. “Why not see if you can get to know those two?”

  No answer.

  “Trip?”

  No answer.

  Cromp Davis turned away from his painting. His son was gone.

  The dark-eyed woman gazed through her kitchen window, watching her son, Hap, work in the backyard. She felt another pang of the guilt that had nagged at her off and on since she and her husband had decided to stay on Anza-bora Island after most of the base personnel were shipped back to the states.

  She bit her lip. The boy appeared content; tinkering with the engine of his dune buggy was one of his favorite things to do. But she was a mother, and could see beyond mere appearances. As she watched, every once in a while Hap would look up from the engine and stare out to sea. Though the salty breeze rustling through his blond hair gave him a carefree appearance, his eyes were dark and brooding.

  He looks so handsome, she thought. And so lonely. It’s hard to believe he’s only thirteen. She pulled the curtain shut and went to her favorite chair. Did we make a mistake staying on like this?

  “Where better to raise a boy than on an island?” her husband had kept asking when they were trying to decide whether to accept Dr. Hwa’s offer. “The world is going crazy. This is a safer place to be.”

  Despite her husband’s claim that he wanted to remain on Anza-bora for Hap’s sake, the woman knew the real reason he wanted to stay was that he himself loved isolated places, and considered living on a nearly deserted island close to heaven.

  While they had many things in common, in this matter, Hap and his father were very different. Not that Hap would ever admit it. As soon as he figured out his father wanted to stay (and it hadn’t taken him long to do so), nothing could have gotten him to say he wanted to leave.

  The woman smiled. Hap and his father. Her two men.

  She heard a sound in the yard and returned to the window just in time to see the nearly silent dune buggy disappear over a low ridge of sand. She stood looking after Hap for some time, her fingers worrying the edge of the curtain. Maybe the new people, the scientists, would have some youngsters he could make friends with.

  She certainly hoped so.

  “This place is hot,” said Roger Phillips as he trudged along the beach.

  “And sandy,” said his twin.

  “And stupid!” added a third voice.

  It came from the leat
her bag the twins had been passing back and forth all morning.

  Rachel grimaced. “I don’t know why you wanted to bring him along. He’s a pain in the neck.”

  “Nobody loves me!” wailed the voice.

  Roger ignored it and returned to the question he and Rachel had been discussing. “So—how are we going to get out of here?”

  “We could pretend to catch some horrible disease,” suggested Rachel. Before Roger could answer, she shook her head, vetoing her own suggestion. “No, that’s no good. The doctors here are bound to be better than that school nurse who used to send us home all the time. They’d figure us out in nothing flat.”

  “We could build a raft,” suggested Roger, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together, as he did whenever he was engaged in intense thought.

  “That would be dangerous,” said Rachel.

  “And slow,” agreed Roger sadly.

  “And stupid,” added the voice from the bag.

  Suddenly they heard a plane overhead. Struck simultaneously by a single thought, the twins began to run.

  Standing on his basketball, Ray Gammand thrust his fingers through the fence and stared hungrily at the airplane sitting on the runway. The robots were almost done unloading it. Before long it would be leaving. And he couldn’t figure out how to get on to it.

  He clutched the wire in frustration. He had been stopped at the gatehouse by a robot guard demanding that he insert his ID card into a slot in its chest. Since he had no ID card, the “electronic creep” (as Ray now thought of it) had refused to let him pass.

  “It’s getting harder and harder for a kid to get away with anything,” said Ray mournfully.

  “I know just what you mean,” replied a deep voice beside him.

  Ray was so startled he almost fell off his basketball. Tightening his grip on the fence, he turned his gaze sideways.

  Standing next to him was a tiny, snub-nosed girl dressed in a grubby sweatshirt that hung nearly to her knees. Her blond hair was gathered into two bunches that dangled at the sides of her freckled face, and her blue eyes danced with mischief.

  But it was her size that immediately endeared her to Ray, who had never forgiven his body for choosing his mother’s genes for height instead of his father’s. He still couldn’t believe the unfairness of a universe that would allow someone who loved basketball and had a father who was seven feet tall to stall out in his own growth pattern before he even reached five feet. Ray considered anyone shorter than himself a potential ally. This girl was short enough to make him want to open immediate diplomatic relations.

  “So—you thinking about hopping a quick flight back home?” she asked.

  Ray blushed, a rosy tone that showed even through his dark skin.

  “Nice cheeks,” said the girl. “But dangerous. You give away too much information when you do that. Anyway, I figure the airplane is out. But maybe if we work together, we can come up with some other way to blow this popsicle stand.”

  “Popsicle stand?”

  “Rinky-dink place; in this case a small, stupid island.”

  “You want to get out, too?” asked Ray.

  “No, I want to stay here and rot, but I was thinking of taking a short vacation first. Why don’t you get off that basketball before you fall and break your neck?”

  Ray stumbled off the ball. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Wendell.”

  He blinked. “That’s a boy’s name.”

  “So my parents were mixed up. Actually, it’s my last name. My first name is Wendy. My initials are even better. My mother and grandmother have the same name, so I’m WW III—just like the next war.”

  Ray frowned. Though he tried to ignore current events, the rumors of war that had been circulating for the last year had made even him nervous. “I don’t think that’s funny. Anyway, your mother couldn’t have been named Wendy Wendell before she got married!”

  “I come from a family of strong-minded women. We always keep our own name when we get married.”

  “Terrific,” said Ray, trying to figure out if this kid was for real. “So what do people call you?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Wonderchild.”

  Ray was silent.

  “Look, it wasn’t my idea. It started with my parents. They used to call me their ‘little wonderchild.’ But I don’t think you should hold a kid responsible for her parents’ minor insanities, do you?”

  Ray shook his head.

  “Anyway, once I got to school, the meaning changed. My teachers couldn’t believe I was for real. They used to wonder if I really was a child.”

  Ray found himself sympathizing with the teachers.

  “So how about you, Ray. What do—”

  Ray blinked. “I never told you my name!” he said suspiciously.

  For an instant Wendy “the Wonderchild” Wendell looked confused. The look was quickly replaced by a mysterious smile. Putting her finger beside her nose, she winked and said in a deep German accent, “Ve haf our little methods, ja?”

  Ray looked around for help.

  Tripton Duncan Delmar Davis glared down at the pair of redheads blocking his path.

  “This is pointless,” said the girl.

  “And stupid,” replied Trip.

  “Hey!” cried a voice from inside the leather bag the girl was carrying. “That’s my line!”

  “Shut up,” said the girl, slapping the bag.

  “Look,” said the boy next to her, who was obviously her brother. “There’s room for two, but not for three. It doesn’t make any sense for Rachel and me to split up—”

  “Then stay together,” said Trip. “I was here first.”

  A flicker of annoyance passed over the redhead’s face. He began rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. He started to speak, but his words were drowned out by the sound of an engine starting up. The doors of the robo-truck they were standing beside slammed shut and the vehicle began to roll toward the airfield gate. Trip grabbed for it, but his fingers slid off the smooth metal.

  “There!” he said bitterly. “You made me miss my best chance to get out of here.”

  The three youngsters watched the automatic vehicle they had been fighting over roll up to the plane. Trip imagined himself scrambling out of the truck and through the plane’s cargo doors. He was sure he could have done it without getting caught. A few hours of quiet hiding, tucked behind some boxes, and he would have been out of this place.

  He realized he was holding himself so tensely his shoulders were starting to ache. How he longed to go home!

  Shaking his head, he turned sadly away.

  The redheads started to follow him.

  “It was a crazy idea anyway,” said the boy to his sister. “Dad would have been worried sick.”

  True, thought Trip, imagining how his own parents would have reacted if he had succeeded.

  “Besides, he probably would have figured out where we had gone and been coming after us in a few hours,” said the other redhead with a sigh.

  Scuffing along ahead of them, Trip nodded his head. That, too, was equally true for his parents. He slowed his footsteps just a bit.

  “But I did want to go home,” said the boy, who was now just a few steps behind Trip.

  “Where’s home?” asked Trip, without looking around.

  “Cambridge,” said the girl. “We had a great house just a few blocks from Harvard.”

  Trip stopped and let the twins catch up with him. “I went there with my mom once,” he said. “I liked it. I’m from Philadelphia, and…” He paused in mid-sentence. From the corner of his eye he had spotted something wrong.

  In an emergency the human brain can work faster than its owner can consciously think. That’s what happened to Trip at that moment. Before he could figure out what he had seen, a message from his brain made him grab each of the twins by an arm.

  To their surprise, Roger and Rachel found themselves being thrust toward the ditch at the edge of the road.

 
“Duck!” cried the stranger.

  As the three youngsters hit the dirt, a deep booming began to shake the air above them.

  Gamma Ball

  Smoke was still rising from the site of the explosion when Ray Gammand and the Wonderchild came pounding up to the newly formed crater. On either side of it the twisted ends of a metal fence looked like a tangle of dead branches.

  The rest of the fence, undamaged, ran on as far as they could see in either direction.

  “Plasmagoric,” said Wendy, peering into the blackened pit. It stretched some thirty feet from side to side, and seemed a good fifteen feet deep. “That must have been the mother of all firecrackers!”

  Glancing to their right, the Gamma Ray noticed an enormously tall boy with close-cropped brown hair. He was flanked by a pair of redheads who came up to about his shoulder. Behind them, even taller than the brown-haired boy, loomed his own father, Dr. Hugh Gammand.

  “Come on,” said Ray. Grabbing Wendy by the hand, he made his way through the group of scientists and guards converging on the site of the explosion. “What happened?” he asked when he had reached his father’s side.

  “Something blew up.”

  Wendy began to laugh. Ray looked disgusted. “Thanks for the news flash, Dad.”

  Dr. Gammand shrugged. “Ask a stupid question…”

  “That’s what my mother always says,” whispered Trip Davis to the Phillips twins.

  “But what was it?” insisted Ray.

  “A guardhouse,” said a tall woman who had come up behind them. She had a prominent, hawklike nose. Her white lab coat set off the thick braid of glossy chestnut hair that reached nearly to her waist.

  “Ah, Dr. Clark!” said Ray’s father.

  “Morning, Gammand,” said the woman, nodding her head. “This your son? He has your eyes, if not your height.”

  Ray decided that he disliked Dr. Clark.

  “What was it guarding?” asked the red-haired boy standing nearby.

  “I beg your pardon?” said Dr. Clark.

  “The guardhouse,” said the boy. “What was it guarding?”