Invisible now, he stepped into the corridor. Behind him, Tamara closed the door almost all the way, leaving it open just a crack so she could see what was happening. The guard had just finished looking around the intersection and was walking back toward the conference room. Toby ran past him, making no effort to soften his footsteps. The guard turned toward the sound, swiveling as Toby passed him. Toby stopped a few feet away, turned, cupped his hands, and shouted, “I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU PERSONNEL TO EXIT THE PREMISES.”
The guard stepped forward, waving his hands at the air. He reached to his belt and unclipped a walkie-talkie. As he raised it to his mouth, Toby stepped forward, grabbed the antenna, and yanked. The walkie-talkie came free of the stunned guard’s hand. Toby turned and ran with it.
“Hey!” shouted the guard, pursuing the floating walkietalkie around the corner.
Behind him, Tamara quietly swung open the conference room door, turned left in the corridor, and sprinted toward the EXIT sign, followed by Micah, who was followed by Drmtsi, who was followed by Vrsk.
After fifty feet, they ran past another door, on the other side of which was the surveillance station. Inside this stuffy, dimly lit room was a wall-mounted bank of television monitors connected to the hidden cameras in the conference room. In front of the monitors was a long table with a speakerphone on it. Gathered around this table were agents Turow, Iles, and Lefkon, along with some other officials. None of them were looking at the monitors, which was why they hadn’t noticed that the conference room was now empty. Instead, their attention was focused on the speakerphone, from which came the voice of a CIA linguist, who was heading the team trying to translate the recorded conversation between Drmtsi and Vrsk.
“I’m afraid it’s a very obscure dialect,” she was saying. “We’ve only been able to translate a fragment. We’ll keep working, though.”
“Well, tell us what you’ve got so far,” said Turow. “We need something, anything.”
“To be honest,” said the linguist, “all we have so far is ‘cheese.’”
“‘Cheese?’” said Turow. “As in, ‘cheese’?”
“Cheese,” said the linguist.
Turow rubbed his weary face with both weary hands.
“Well, that’s a big help,” he said.
“We’re doing the best we can,” snapped the linguist.
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Turow, pressing the DISCONNECT button. He looked around at the others. “Cheese,” he said.
“Maybe it’s a code,” said Lefkon.
Suddenly they heard shouting in the hall. All eyes went to the monitors, which showed an empty conference room. Lefkon yanked the door open; they all ran outside. To their left was the source of the shouts: the guard. He had chased his walkie-talkie around the corner and then down the corridor, where the invisible Toby had hurled it. He had then run back to the conference room, yanked the door open, and saw that it was empty. Meanwhile, Toby was racing down the corridor after his friends. He passed the surveillance-room door just as the agents opened it; in fact, Lefkon nearly ran into him as she burst from the room.
At the moment, the feds were all looking left toward the guard. He was standing at the doorway to the conference room.
“They’re gone!” he shouted.
“Where?” shouted Turow.
“There!” shouted Lefkon, who had just spotted the running figures at the far end of the corridor.
“Call security!” shouted Turow, sprinting toward the figures. “Lock it down NOW!”
Lefkon ran into the conference room and grabbed the phone; the guard was shouting into his walkie-talkie. Moments later, a recorded voice boomed down the corridor, saying, “WE HAVE A CODE MAGENTA SITUATION. REPEAT, THIS IS A CODE MAGENTA SITUATION.”
At the far end of the corridor, Tamara, Micah, Vrsk, and a red-faced, huffing Drmtsi reached a T-junction. To their right, they saw men running toward them; to their left was a door with a sign that said EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY—ALARM WILL SOUND. Tamara sprinted toward it and slammed into the bar. The door banged open, and an alarm began emitting a shrill beep beep beep. Tamara stopped and looked around. Night had fallen; she was in an alley in the rear of the building, and it was lit by the harsh glare of a security light. Along the wall next to the door was a large green Dumpster.
Micah burst through the door followed by Vrsk, who was followed by the flagging Drmtsi. Pounding down the corridor toward them were a half-dozen men.
“What now?” said Micah.
“I don’t know,” said Tamara. “Where’s Toby?”
“Here!” said a voice next to them. “Close the door and give me a hand with the Dumpster!”
Micah slammed the door shut, then he and Tamara ran to the Dumpster and grunted, trying to move it in front of the door. It didn’t budge.
“Help us!” shouted Tamara at Drmtsi and Vrsk. Vrsk said something to Drmtsi in Krpsht, and the two men ran behind the Dumpster and pushed. Slowly it began to roll on its creaking wheels. Just as it reached the doorway, the door slammed open, but the Dumpster kept it from opening more than a few inches.
“Push it toward the building!” shouted Toby. He and the others shifted positions and tried to push the Dumpster against the door. But the men inside were also pushing, and they were stronger; the Dumpster was moving back, and the door was opening. The men were going to get out.
“You guys run!” said Toby. “I’ll hold this as long as I can. They can’t see me.”
Tamara and Micah looked at each other, unsure about leaving Toby. Meanwhile Drmtsi was saying something to Vrsk.
“Looking out!” Vrsk shouted at the kids. “Is danger!”
Toby, Tamara, and Micah turned to the two men, who were reaching into their pants. The Dumpster, shoved by the men inside, creaked and shuddered as it was pushed toward them. The door was almost open enough for the men to slip through. Inside, somebody shouted “One…two…” as the men prepared for one last coordinated shove.
“THREE!” shouted the voice. As the men heaved into the door, Drmtsi and Vrsk pulled their hands out of their pants and hurled two globs of smerk through the opening. Instantly, the air was filled with a stench that smelled like a cross between a rotting buffalo and a sewer explosion, only worse. From inside, there were shouts of surprise, followed by yelps of terror.
“GAS ATTACK!” shouted a voice. “IT’S A GAS ATTACK!”
There were more shouts and the sound of pounding feet as the men fled back down the corridor.
“What was that?” said Micah to Vrsk.
“Is smerk,” said Vrsk. “Cheese.”
“Whoa,” said Micah.
“Smerk?” said Drmtsi, preparing to reach back into his pants.
“No thanks!” said Micah and Tamara hastily.
Toby pressed his iPhone and made himself visible. “Come on,” he said, trotting away from the building. “We gotta get to Hubble.”
“Right,” said Tamara, trotting behind followed by Micah. “But which way is Hubble?”
“I have no idea,” said Toby. “But we can’t stay here. They’ll be coming back.”
“Excuse me,” said Vrsk, who was also trotting behind and followed by the huffing Drmtsi. “Did you say Hobble?”
Toby glanced back. “I said Hubble,” he said.
“Yes,” said Vrsk. “Hobble. Is this Hobble Middle School?”
Toby stopped short and turned around. “You know about Hubble Middle School?”
Vrsk nodded rapidly. “Yes,” he said. “Is where we are going also.”
“Why?” said Toby.
Vrsk exchanged a few rapid Krpsht words with Drmtsi, then turned back to Toby.
“Touristism,” he said.
Toby was about to say something more when he heard shouts in the distance coming from the building they had just escaped.
“Let’s go,” he said, running away from the building toward the dark streets beyond, followed by his two old friends and his two new weird and smelly allies.
ON THE HUBBLE MIDDLE SCHOOL ball field, nearly a thousand excited people—students, teachers, parents—watched the dark night sky, waiting.
“There it is!” shouted a boy. He pointed toward the south, where flashing lights showed on the horizon. A few moments later, the crowd heard the whupwhupwhup of big rotors slicing the air. As the TranScent Corp. helicopter swooped toward the school, teachers shouted at the excited throng to keep back from the roped-off landing area, which was brilliantly illuminated by four huge portable spotlights.
Soon, the chopper was over the ball field. It hovered for a few seconds, then settled gently onto second base, its downdraft kicking up a swirling dirt storm. The pilot shut down the engines. As the rotors wound down, the chopper door opened and the folding stairway deployed. Cheers erupted from the crowd as Lance Swingle himself appeared in the doorway, waving as he descended the stairway. The handsome billionaire looked younger than his forty-three years, his radiantly white teeth gleaming in the spotlights, his dark hair tousled by the dwindling rotor breeze.
Swingle was greeted at the bottom of the stairs by Principal Plotz-Gornett and a dozen other school officials. Then, with Swingle triumphantly leading the way, the excited crowd thronged into the gymnasium and gathered around the platform set up for the opening ceremonies of the science fair.
Swingle was introduced by the president of the school board, who read brief opening remarks in which he compared Swingle’s achievement of sending smells over the Internet with the work of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, and Bill Gates. Swingle smiled bashfully to indicate that he was unworthy of this praise, although in fact the opening remarks had been written by his vice president for public relations.
When the introduction was finished, Swingle strode to the microphone, acknowledging the crowd’s cheers with sincerely faked modesty. He then launched into his “brief” remarks.
“Thirty-one years ago,” he began, “an eighth-grade boy walked into this very same gymnasium. In many ways, he looked like an ordinary young man; in fact”—here Swingle flashed a brilliant smile—“you might say he looked like a younger version of…me.”
The crowd chuckled in recognition of the fact that the young man was, in fact, Lance Swingle. Principal Plotz-Gornett groaned inwardly and shifted on her feet; she knew from experience that it would take Swingle a good twenty minutes to get through the dull but supposedly uplifting story of how the young, ordinary-looking young man transformed himself, against great odds, into the wealthy, brilliant, handsome genius entrepreneur standing on the stage tonight.
Prmkt, listening from the edge of the crowd, was also calculating the time left before the insufferable windbag finished his speech and threw the master switch to power up the science fair. After listening for exactly five more minutes, Prmkt slipped away from the crowd. Passing between rows of silent exhibits, he walked quietly to the utility-room door, opened it, went inside, and gently closed and locked the door. He went to the laptop computer and tapped some keys, running a quick test; numbers flashed on the screen telling Prmkt that all was ready. He glanced at his watch and calculated that Swingle would throw the master switch in about ten minutes. Prmkt would then begin executing his plan.
The plan consisted of several stages. The first stage was designed to get the country’s attention—to shake the smug Americans awake and show them that the safe and happy world they lived in was only a dream. Once he had their attention, Prmkt would proceed to the next stages of his plan—showing the Americans what they had done and then delivering their punishment.
He looked at his watch. Less than ten minutes now. He rested his hands gently on the keyboard, feeling the power in the keys—keys that he would soon use to turn the American dream into the American nightmare.
THE SIRENS DREW CLOSER. Toby, Micah, and Tamara, running as fast as their tired legs would carry them, made yet another random turn into yet another unfamiliar street. Ten yards behind them trotted Vrsk; behind him staggered the gasping and utterly exhausted Drmtsi.
Toby stopped and put his hands on his knees, gulping air. Micah and Tamara did the same. The whoop whoop whoop of the sirens grew louder.
“Maybe we should split up,” said Tamara.
“Why?” asked Toby.
“I dunno,” admitted Tamara. “But in the movies, when people are getting chased, they always split up.”
“I wish they’d split up from us,” said Micah, nodding at Vrsk and Drmtsi, who had just staggered up.
“I wish I knew where we were,” said Toby.
“There’s some lights that way,” said Micah, pointing toward the far end of the street. “Hey! There’s a Starbucks!”
“Great,” said Tamara. “That narrows our location down to…the planet Earth.”
“No, it’s good,” said Toby.
“See?” said Micah. “It’s good!” He turned to Toby. “Why is it good?”
“We can ask the Starbucks people where we are,” said Toby, trotting toward the end of the street, followed by the others. In two minutes they were inside the Starbucks. Behind the counter, a young man and a young woman eyed them curiously, noting the filaments running from Toby’s hat to his shoes, and the stained and stinky clothing of the two Krpshtskanis, who were pointing to the cappuccino machine and talking excitedly in Krpsht.
“May I help you?” said the woman.
“Yes,” said Toby. “Where are we?”
The man and woman eyed each other. The woman said, “In a Starbucks.”
“I know that,” said Toby. “I mean, which one?”
“It doesn’t have a special name,” said the woman. “It’s just a Starbucks like every other Starbucks.”
“No, no, no,” said Toby, exasperated. “I mean, where is it located? What’s the address?”
But before the woman could answer, Vrsk, on orders from Drmtsi, broke in.
“Excuse my pardon,” he said. “But are you selling this?” He pointed at the cappuccino machine behind the counter.
“You want a cappuccino?” asked the attendant.
“We are wanting this, yes,” said Vrsk.
“What size?” said the man.
“What?” said Vrsk.
“We have tall, grande, venti,” the man answered.
“Tall, grande, venti,” repeated Vrsk.
“Tall is actually small,” noted Micah.
“Tall is small?” said Vrsk.
“Yeah,” said Micah. “I don’t get it either.”
“So, what size cappuccino?” said the man.
“Wait a minute!” said Toby. “We don’t want a cappuccino, okay? We just want to—”
“Listen, sir,” interrupted the attendant. “If this customer wants to buy a cappuccino, then we’re going to—”
“Excuse my pardon,” said Vrsk. “But we are to pay you with TV shopping–people’s card? Is okay?”
“What?” said the man.
“TV shopping–people’s card,” said Vrsk. “We can use to purchase this machine?”
“The machine?” said the man. “You want to buy the machine?”
“Yes,” said Vrsk. “The tall-small-grande-venti machine. We wish to purchase this.”
The man and woman glanced at each other again. Outside, a police car shot past, siren whooping. The attendant followed it with his eyes, then studied the strange group in front of him.
“Who are you people?” he asked.
“We are touristing,” said Vrsk.
Outside, there was a screech of tires. The police car had skidded to a stop about fifty yards down the street and began executing a hasty U-turn.
Behind the counter, the woman pulled out her cell phone.
“Let’s get out of here,” suggested Tamara. The three friends and two Krpshtskanis rushed out through the front door. To the right, the police car had turned and was heading back.
“This way!” shouted Toby, turning left and sprinting around the side of the Starbu
cks into a service alley. They crossed the alley and clambered over a low chain-link fence into a small darkened lot strewn with discarded tires and other junk. They stumbled through this lot onto another street, turned left and then right, trying to head away from the sound of the sirens.
But every minute there were more sirens.
After ten minutes of hard running, they stopped to catch their breath in a ragged, wheezing circle.
“Now what?” said Micah, gasping.
“I don’t know,” admitted Toby, feeling cold, tired, lost, and planless.
“Toby,” Tamara said softly, “maybe we should just give up. Turn ourselves in.”
Toby shook his head. “But then they win,” he said. “Whoever they are, whoever got us into this, whatever they’re going to do at the science fair—they win.”
“Whoever they are,” said Tamara, “they already did win. The science fair must’ve started by now. All we’re doing running around out here is making things worse and maybe getting ourselves hurt. It’s bad enough that we’re in this much trouble—how would your parents feel if, on top of all of this, something happened to you? How would they feel, Toby?”
Toby bowed his head, thinking about his parents not knowing where he was, sitting at home…
His parents. At home.
“Oh, noooo!” he wailed.
“What?” said Tamara.
“My parents!” he said. “Those guys are coming to my house!”
“What guys?” said Micah.
“The Star Wars lunatics!” said Toby. “They’re gonna rob my house tonight! I have to warn them!” He unclipped the iPhone from his belt, careful not to detach the filaments, then stabbed the ON button and moved the slider to unlock the phone.
“How do you know they’re gonna rob your house?” said Micah.
Toby, tapping the phone touchscreen with trembling fingers, didn’t answer. He finished dialing and held the phone to his ear, listening to the ringing tone, hoping he was in time.
Please, please answer.…
IN THE HUBBLE GYM, Lance Swingle was finally reaching the climax of his speech. This was the part where he stressed that even though he, personally, because of his scientific genius, had made millions and millions of dollars, science was not about money. Here he paused and, with a winning and boyish grin that he practiced in front of a mirror, added, “But don’t worry—the winner still gets the five thousand dollars.”
Science Fair Page 18