Jack and the Geniuses

by Bill Nye

  Ava reached across the table and laid her palm flat on the surface in front of Britney. “Really, I’m sorry about our brother. He reads way too much.”

  “There’s no such thing as reading too much.” The legs of her chair creaked as Britney pushed back from the table. “Besides, I’m intrigued, Jack. I’ll play your game.”

  One other player was all I needed. But where to start? I thought for a moment. “So, Hank, in her e-mails she said she’d discovered something big, right?”

  “She’s prone to grand proclamations,” Hank answered, “but she was quite adamant that this was a major find. She said it was even bigger than science.”

  “Nothing is bigger than science,” Matt said. He looked to Hank for approval. He’d been doing that a lot lately. But Hank didn’t notice.

  “So let’s say she did find something major,” I pressed.

  “Like what?” Ava asked. “What was she searching for?”

  “Creatures,” Matt said.

  “What kind of creatures, you ask?” Hank said. Nobody actually asked, but that never stopped Hank. He tapped his boot on the linoleum. “Anna has spent decades searching the globe for new, extreme forms of life. She has scoured mountain peaks, deserts, coral reefs. This is her latest stop. So, imagine that the floor here is the seafloor. Our table”—he gave the wooden surface a few knocks—“is a layer of ice. And everything in between?”

  “Water,” Ava said.

  “Very, very cold water,” Matt added.

  “Right, exactly.” Hank swept his hand across the table, accidentally knocking over a pepper shaker. “This wonderfully thick layer of ice covers the entire Ross Sea, between this island and mainland Antarctica.” Now he moved his hand in a circle below the table. “Anna has long been interested in this hidden world between the ice and the seafloor. This is where she has been searching for new creatures. When she said she had a breakthrough, I guessed she’d found a new species.”

  “But she didn’t say, right?” Matt asked.

  “I heard she came back from her last expedition pretty excited,” Britney said.

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “Monday. Then last night, Tuesday night, she disappeared.”

  “See?” Hank said, pointing at me. “She hasn’t even been gone for a day!”

  “Right, right,” I said. “But what if she found something amazing, and someone wanted to steal it or something?”

  “Scientists don’t work that way,” Hank said.

  “Sure we do,” Britney countered. “We’re just as competitive as other humans.”

  “Was it you? Did you do it?” I asked.

  Matt started to apologize for me. “Jack doesn’t mean—”

  “No, no, that’s fair,” Britney replied. “But I didn’t have anything to do with Anna’s disappearance.”

  “How do we know that?” Ava asked. Both Hank and Matt looked surprised that she was on my side.

  “Three reasons. First, she’s a woman. Female scientists are rare down here. We take care of each other. Second, Anna and I study completely different fields. I wouldn’t have any reason to steal her work.”

  “And third?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t here,” she said. “I was a hundred miles away. I got back right before you arrived.”

  “Those are pretty good answers,” Ava said with a shrug.

  I agreed. But I wasn’t going to let Britney off completely. “Okay, so maybe you’re not the lead suspect. But if not you, then who would want to harm Anna?”

  Britney leaned back and looked around the room. “Golden?”

  “Which one is he?” I asked.

  She tipped her glass in the direction of a man with curly, shoulder-length blond hair that he tucked repeatedly behind his ears. A bright orange jacket was draped over the back of his chair. “His real name is Franklin Golding, but everyone calls him Golden because he’s the golden boy. He’s on the cover of a different science magazine every other month. He has found more strange forms of life down here than anyone. And he knows he’s good. The guy won’t even wear a Big Red like the rest of us. He has his own custom-made, bright orange jacket.”

  “I wonder if it fits better through the shoulders,” Hank remarked.

  A small, bearded man set a bowl of ice cream in front of Golding. The scientist didn’t even thank him. I detested “Golden Boy” immediately. But that didn’t make him guilty. “Who else?” I asked. “Was she working closely with anyone?”

  “Levokin,” Britney said. “But he always seemed kind of harmless to me.”

  “Levokin,” Ava said. “Is that Russian?”

  “Yes. Evgeny Levokin. He was part of the team that came down here with Anna.”

  “A Russian villain?” Matt said. “Isn’t that a little too obvious?”

  “Is he also a biologist?” I asked.

  “More of an inventor, I’d say. He developed an amazing new wet suit for divers and researchers like Anna.”

  Hank was staring at the ceiling again. “Levokin, Levokin. The name is familiar. An inventor, you said? Yes, yes. I believe he’s competing for the Clutterbuck Prize this year.”

  “Whoa,” Ava said. “Back up to the wet suit. Do people actually swim in this water?”

  Hank pointed his fork at her. A noodle hung off the end. “That’s one of the ways they explore the underwater world. They use small remote submarines, as well, so Shelly will fit right in, Ava, but human divers are essential. The problem is that they cannot dive for long because of the extreme cold.”

  “How do they even get down into the water, if it’s frozen over?” Ava asked.

  “In some cases, they drill holes through the ice shelf to access the water,” Britney answered. “But sometimes there are naturally occurring holes that—”

  “Seal holes, right?” Actually, I knew I was right; I’d read about them. I was just pretending to be humble. “Seals pop up through them to breathe. But the holes can close and freeze up again pretty quickly.”

  “Valenza!”

  “Excuse me?” Hank said.

  “Victor Valenza,” Britney repeated, lowering her voice to a whisper. “He’s been diving under the ice down here for ten years. A few times a year he even jumps in without a suit on, just for an instant, to show off. He’d have to be a suspect,” she said to me. With one hand flat on the table, she raised her index finger and pointed at a dark-eyed, round man sitting on the other side of the room. His cheeks looked swollen. His gray hair was cut short, and one ear appeared to be slightly higher than the other. Either that or he was just leaning to one side.

  “Why him?” I asked.

  “He held all the diving records: most dives, longest dive, deepest dive . . . all of them. He was the best diver down here.”

  Ava turned her head slightly. “Was?”

  “Until Anna,” Britney said. “I heard this new wet suit Levokin designed is unbelievable. When she’s wearing it, she can stay down longer and do more dives per day than Valenza would even dare—”

  “Henry Witherspoon!”

  A fine mist of spit settled on the back of my neck. I cringed, wiped it off with the sleeve of my hoodie, and turned. Behind me stood a man with a thick gray beard and gray-blond hair. He pronounced Hank’s name “Weath-Aspin,” and if he had a neck, it was fully retracted. He quickly sucked the tips of several of his fingers, wiped them on his shirt, then held out a huge red hand that smelled vaguely like honey.

  Hank waved. There was no way he was going to touch the man’s hand. “Please, call me Hank. And you are . . . ?”

  “Daniel Perkins. Danno. I manage the desalination plant, mate. I’m going for that Clutterbuck Prize with my DP-1000. She could pull the salt out of all the world’s oceans if we needed her to.”

  “Well, I don’t think that will be necessary, Mr. Perkins, but of course I’ll consider your DS-1000 as closely as I do all the other contest entries.”

  “DP,” he said. “DP-1000. It’s ten percent more efficient tha
n anything out there. Ten percent!”

  In the history of awkward silences, the one that followed was not the longest, but it would have to rank as one of the most intense. Hank’s face paled. I considered knocking my water glass over onto Matt’s tray to break the tension. Thankfully, Britney ended our social pain. “I’d finish up your meals so you can get some sleep,” she said. “You guys have a big week ahead. You start field training tomorrow.”

  “Don’t forget Sunday,” Danno added.

  “Sunday?” Hank asked.

  “The day you’ll be announcing the winner of the Clutterbuck Prize.”

  Hank yawned. “Right. Of course.”

  Danno nodded at Britney. “So, are they going to be happy campers?”

  Did he think we were five years old? I shook my head at Ava. Britney must have noticed. “‘Happy Camper School’ is another name for the field training program,” she explained. The moment she said that, I remembered it from my reading. “It might feel nice and cozy inside here, but the world outside these walls is frigid, harsh, and completely unfit for humans. It’s one of the most dangerous places on the planet.”

  “Without Happy Camper training,” Danno added, “you wouldn’t survive an hour out there. You’d be ice cubes.”

  He was grinning. And I tried to return the expression. But what he’d said was light-years from funny. I gulped. As I stared down at the remains of my noodles, I started wondering if Min had been right. Maybe Disney would have been a better choice.

  6

  SOME KIND OF TROUBLE

  So I know Britney recommended that we rest, and I was beyond exhausted from all those flights, but sleep just wasn’t happening. On our way out of the dining room, two British scientists had asked Hank a question about climate change. That was like dangling a juicy worm in front of a starved bluefish. Hank couldn’t resist snapping up the bait. As he started to talk, Matt stayed to listen, but I grabbed Ava’s elbow and hustled her into the hallway.

  “What’s the rush?” she asked.

  “We have a little mission.”

  She stopped and held up her hands. “I’m not getting kicked out of here on the first night.”

  “You’re not getting kicked out. Besides, they can’t just send us home. We’re in Antarctica.”

  “So what are we doing, then?”

  “Research. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  No, of course not. But I was getting there. “We’re going to check out Anna’s room. To see if she left any clues that could tell us where she went.”

  Around the corner we nearly walked into a tall woman with long silvery hair. She sneered. “You two.”

  Ava held up a hand and flashed her brightest smile. “Hi! I’m Ava.”

  “Don’t try to charm me, princess,” the woman snapped. “Where’s the other one?”

  The battery powering Ava’s smile died.

  “He’s with Mr. Witherspoon,” I said. “Excuse me, ma’am, but why are you looking for our brother?”

  “Don’t call me ma’am. I am the director of this base, so you can call me Director, Your Highness, Respected Leader. But I would prefer that you not call me anything at all. I would prefer that our paths never cross again, in fact. They never should have let you three onto my island. And this Clutterbuck Prize? It’s ridiculous! An insult to real scientists.”

  “Desalination is real science,” Ava protested.

  I could hear the director grinding her teeth. “Do not talk. Right now your only job is to listen. I am looking and will continue to look for every possible reason to put you children and your friend back on the next plane to wherever it is that you came from. So I urge you to remain on your absolute best behavior. Understood?”

  Ava elbowed me to make sure I didn’t blurt out a rude response. The two of us nodded, agreeing to the woman’s terms.

  “Good,” the director said. “Now go find a coloring book or something. The very sight of you rattles my bones.”

  We waited until the sound of her footsteps faded. “I’m not a princess,” Ava muttered. Her left eyebrow rose higher than its neighbor. “Coloring books? Really?”

  “Forget it,” I said. “Let’s get back to finding Anna’s room.”

  “Fine,” Ava said. “Any idea where it might be?”

  “Well, that’s where your brilliance comes in. I don’t actually know.” If I could’ve figured out that answer on my own, I wouldn’t have asked Ava to join me. And after that fiery warning from the director, my next suggestion probably wasn’t going to go over too well. “Maybe we could . . . oh, I don’t know . . . hack into the station’s records or something?”

  Ava huffed. She looked at me as if I’d tried to insist the world was pancake flat.

  Two women turned the corner ahead, walking toward us. One had a streak of purple in her black hair, and both were wearing eyeglasses.

  “Hey, I’m sorry to bug you,” Ava said, “but is there any chance one of you might know how to find Anna Donatelli’s room?”

  The one with the purple streak motioned behind her. “One-thirty-one, maybe? She’s near us, right?”

  The other woman shrugged. She was chewing a huge wad of gum that smelled like peppermint. She tucked it into one side of her mouth. “You’re the kids,” she noted.

  We certainly weren’t elephants. “Two of the kids, anyway,” I said. “But we’re the best two.”

  After replying with disappointingly fake laughs, the two women walked on. We moved past the kitchen and toward the dorms. “In case you forgot, this whole base is run by the US government. You can’t just hack into a government computer,” Ava explained. “They’re encrypted.”

  “You hacked into Hank’s computer.”

  “Yeah, because his password was ‘ecneics,’ ‘science’ spelled backward. Anyone could have guessed that.”

  Anyone but me, apparently. I’d tried about a thousand different passwords before asking for Ava’s help.

  The door to room 131 was open slightly when we approached. I could hear someone moving around inside. As I pressed my back against the wall to listen, Ava pushed in the door, jumped aside, and yelled, “Jack, don’t go in there—that’s not your room!”

  “Who’s that?” someone asked from inside.

  Quietly impressed with my sister’s trick, I stepped into the doorway. Ava pushed me forward into the room, then followed me inside. A thin man in glasses stood beside a small desk, holding a yellow plastic trash bag in one hand and a broom in the other. I’d say he was in his twenties. Old but not ancient. His nose was long, as if someone had pulled too hard on the tip. He scratched his cheek; his fingernails were long and grimy.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I’m the Facilities Engineer.”

  “The what?”

  “The Facilities Engineer. Or F. E. for short.”

  “What’s that?” Ava pressed.

  The F. E. adjusted his glasses. “Scientists can be a sloppy bunch. I have to clean up after them so they don’t turn this place into a wreck.”

  “So you’re a maid?”

  The man glared briefly at me. “You’re the smart kids?”

  “I’m one of the smart kids,” Ava replied. “He’s just Jack.”

  No matter how many times she used that joke, it still stung.

  “This is Dr. Donatelli’s room, right?” I asked.

  The F. E. shrugged. “Don’t know, but this place was a disaster zone.” He wiped a wet cloth across the bookshelf above the desk, then showed us the shiny residue. “There are little streaks and globs of this stuff all over the place. It smells familiar, too, but I can’t quite place it.”

  The sticky stuff was hardly the worst of the mess. The whole room looked like it had been picked up and shaken by a giant robot. Books, clothes, and papers were scattered all over the desk, the floor, and even the bed. It didn’t make any sense. “I don’t get it,” I said. “She’s a neat freak.”

  “Doesn’t look that way,”
Ava said.

  I turned and whispered, “No, remember? Hank said she’s super, super organized. Britney mentioned that, too.”

  “So?” Ava said quietly.

  “So she didn’t make this mess. Someone was going through her things.”

  “You don’t need to whisper,” the F. E. said. “I have very acute hearing. Typically this room is very clean, though. I hardly had to do a thing the last time I came in here.”

  At the desk, Ava picked up a power cord. “This goes to a laptop.”

  “Wow,” the F. E. said, “you truly are brilliant.”

  Ava scowled at him. “Where’s the laptop?”

  The F. E. shrugged. “I haven’t seen it,” he said. “But enough with all the questions. I have a fun game for you two to play. Which one of you can clean this room faster?”

  Ava cupped a hand to her ear and cocked her head to one side, as if someone was speaking to her through a hidden earpiece. Now, just so we’re clear, the fake spy-phone was totally my move. I always used it when we were caught in boring conversations. But I played along. “Is that Hank?” I asked.

  She paused, as if she was letting the caller finish. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m sorry, sir. We’d love to help. But we’ve got to go.”

  We hurried out of the room, then stopped a few doors away. “What’s the big deal with the power cord?” I asked.

  “Nobody travels without them,” she said. “Remember? Batteries don’t last down here. It’s too cold. Plus the prongs were bent, like someone ripped it out of the socket.”

  “So?”

  “So whoever did this was in a real hurry. I think someone stole her computer.”

  A trashed room. A stolen computer. Maybe our absent scientist really was in some kind of trouble.

  Ava stared up at an emergency-exit sign. She slipped her backpack off her shoulders, set it down on the floor, then reached in and scoured the contents. Pulling out a small black device about the size and shape of a golf ball, she peeled something off the outside, then asked, “Can you give me a boost up to that sign?”

  “What is that?”