Wise Acres

by Dale E. Basye

  “The rest of my team … are they, you know …?” she managed.

  “Come,” Vice Principal Carroll said as he straightened his white bow tie. “I’ll explain m-most everything as we make our way downstairs … many, many stairs. Flight after flight of fancy!”

  The children and teachers traveled along a coiling, moving sidewalk of pure sound. It was like being conveyed down a frozen river traveling in sluggish spirals inside of an ice palace. The Tower of Babble was as exquisite as it was unlikely. Milton saw distorted figures scurrying to and fro like a colony of ants.

  Lewis Carroll gazed past the blurry figures and shadows around him into some private world. “The Outer Terristories was to show you … to show everyone … the destructive power of words,” the odd, pasty-faced man mumbled. “A labyrinth of language that we jointly created as you went along. I seeded the landscape with mechanicrickets to create the tone and Retuning Forks to collect and focus the vibrations to create a mass hallucination, with my story feeding every moment.”

  “So none of it was even real?” Cookie said with her jaw dropped open like a freshly caught fish.

  Vice Principal Carroll’s face—thin, tense lips fidgeting, as if the man were constantly telling a story to himself—twitched with uncertainty.

  “Contrariwise, if it was so, it might be, and if it were so, it would be, but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

  “That’s insanity,” Marlo countered. “Plus you didn’t answer my question. About the others.”

  The vice principal seemed to stiffen at the utterance of the word “insanity,” like some sea creature that had washed up on the shore and was prodded with a stick.

  “You w-were all dreaming, in a w-way,” he stammered. “Imagine that, everyone dreaming everyone, at the same time, the s-same dream! Such p-power! Such f-force!”

  Vice Principal Carroll shrugged and smiled.

  “The others. The stricken striplings stripped of all embellishment. Their demise, I suppose, depends upon how deeply they believed they would be undone,” he said matter-of-factly. “I honestly haven’t a clue!”

  Annabelle gasped. “Flossie’s leg! It’s coming back!”

  Flossie looked down at her leg. The words were indeed fading.

  “It’s sort of prickly,” the girl said with cautious delight. “And like it’s filling up inside.”

  “With what?” Marlo asked.

  Flossie shrugged. “Leg stuff.”

  Mack Hoover extended his hand. “Me too!” he exclaimed, stretching out his half-hand/half-really-boring-poem.

  “Your hand is filled with leg stuff?” Mordacia asked.

  “No, my hand! It’s coming back!” Mack said.

  The memory of the events leading to the whiteout slowly uncrumpled in Milton’s mind, like something written on binder paper that had been balled up and thrown in the wastebasket.

  “What about Mr. Basye?” he asked. “I remember him and the snark slamming into the Tower of Babble. Why did everything go all white?”

  Vice Principal Carroll grew twitchier than usual. “Mr. Basye expired in a run-on death sentence,” the man replied evasively. “It was as if he thought that all of this was in his mind … as if he was the storyteller, not I. And when he disappeared, so did everything—briefly—in the immediate vicinity. Luckily I was able to salvage my prized Weisen hammer—”

  That weird hammer, Marlo thought. The one I read about in the Absurditory …

  “But what was once all white is now perfectly all right.”

  Vice Principal Carroll clapped his hands and glanced down the shimmering corridor of sound. “But enough of my achievements. Please, King Nimrod. Captivate us with the particulars of your greatest achievement!”

  King Nimrod grew taller in his emerald-festooned cloak and crimson robe embroidered with gold, as if his flattered vanity had added a few extra columns of vertebrae to his haughty spine.

  “It would be my pleasure,” the man purred. “The Tower of Babble”—King Nimrod extended his muscled arms outward grandly—“is quite simply the greatest building ever constructed.…”

  “Brag much?” Marlo whispered to Flossie.

  “My attempt to build the greatest city while alive—Babel—didn’t go so well, as you may have heard. It all started back with Noah.”

  “Noah?” Milton replied, remembering the kindly, ancient man he had met in the Furafter. “How could he have anything to do with this?”

  King Nimrod’s hands balled into fists. “The Big Guy Upstairs told Noah to help spread mankind out—horizontally—and fill up the earth. I got it into my brilliant mind that our Creator was intimidated by human possibility or—more specifically, my possibility. So I built my throne upward. I, King Nimrod, would have a throne to rival the mightiest God in heaven! If the Big Guy Upstairs were to send down another flood, my subjects and I would be safe above the waters.”

  “How did that work out for you, Nimrod?” Miss Parker asked with a wink to Mr. Wilde.

  “King Nimrod!” he roared before taking a quick breath to regain his composure. “But yes, ma’am, my first tower was undermined by Him Truly, after he sent his angels down to confuse the tongues of my construction crew so that one could not understand the language of another.…”

  The eyes of the king glittered with his own perceived glory.

  “It was then I vowed to use language against the Almighty Himself! Unlike brick and mortar, quarreling, squabbling … these are endlessly renewable resources! See for yourself.”

  The king gestured to a servant—a lovely, dark-haired woman. She knelt before what looked like an ear embedded in the wall and whispered into it.

  “What’s she doing?” Cookie asked.

  “She’s spreading discord,” King Nimrod replied. “Like a bee spreading pollen from flower to flower, my servants here pollinate each of our millions of mouthpieces.”

  “Mouthpieces?” Mack replied. “But those are ears.”

  “Yes, and those are connected to jabbering mouths on the outside of the tower, each with its own sharp, waggling tongue arguing ceaselessly in its own unique language. By whispering antagonistic remarks into the earpieces, we maintain the argument that keeps this place standing.”

  King Nimrod gazed with white-hot pride at his handiwork.

  “I’ve constructed the tallest structure ever conceived, one that pierces the very fabric of heaven!”

  “H-Heaven!” Milton sputtered.

  “Yes, the tip of the center steeple,” King Nimrod said, grinning behind his thick plaited beard, “the uppermost spire of my throne tower—just below the Tomiary—crosses the lower reaches of Cloud One by exactly one centimeter. So, technically, the Tower of Babble reaches Heaven!”

  Milton shook his head in disbelief. King Nimrod was like a spoiled child marveling at his stack of blocks, thinking that he could attain Heaven by physically touching it, rather than receiving it as a reward for a virtuous life. He looked up. The smudgy orange-purple sky of Wise Acres seeped into the tower through the smeary, sonic walls.

  Somewhere up there is Heaven, Milton thought as he and the others were scooted along the humming corridor of sound. Where either Marlo or I could actually end up, depending on who wins …

  30 · FOR THE SAKE

  OF ARGUMENT

  THE MOVING SIDEWALK brought the group slowly closer to a throbbing pulse of noise coming from below. It was a booming blend of music and the commotion of a thousand conversations.

  “We’re here,” King Nimrod said as he strode forward.

  The sonic sidewalk deposited them at the mouth of a spacious concourse, alive with noise and activity. It was like a great, glittering ice chamber, carved from arctic arguments, supported by glittering beams of sound.

  Music poured forth from speakers set upon a tremendous ring, like the kind used for boxing and wrestling. An electric banner reading THE WAR OF THE WORDS was attached to a long, slender beam above a huge metal gong. Dancers, dressed as letters of the a
lphabet, gyrated and high-kicked on the ring to the thumping music.

  Surrounding the ring were throngs of people, chattering blithely beneath huge billboard-sized viewing screens. On each was a grid split into twenty-six boxes.

  “That’s … us!” Marlo gasped.

  Every Spite Club member’s face occupied one of the boxes, with those lost in the Outer Terristories dimmed, to show that they were no longer in competition. Beneath each face was a rolling ticker of numbers.

  Of votes, Milton thought, judging from the long stream of restless numbers. The top half was devoted to Team One, with Milton in the upper left-hand corner. The bottom had Team Two, with Marlo up front. Her box seemed brighter than the rest, her numbers slightly higher than Milton’s.

  With its shimmering shapes and cat’s cradle of sonic spires, this place—at the convergence of the three towers that gave the Tower of Babble its trident shape—was a perfect example of geometric precision. It looks like a crystal palace, Milton thought, which makes sense, since crystals adhere to the rigid rules of mathematics, as do sound waves.

  Two podiums stood at either side of the ring: stark, black, and somehow foreboding. The ring itself looked like the scene of a crime that had yet to be committed. A sophisticated network of lights, cables, and sound equipment was suspended from scaffolding above. Dozens of Vice Principal Carroll’s bumbling, red-eyed Orb-Servers milled along the periphery, capturing the event from a variety of angles.

  The dancers reorganized themselves until they spelled out a name. The unfortunate dancer dressed as an “O” had to do double duty, running around the name in circles to the beat.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Milton said.

  VAN GLORIOUS

  Applause broke out like a raging epidemic of noise. Onto the stage stalked a tall, gangly young man with long blond hair, expensive sunglasses, pouty lips, and stubble that never seemed to quite become a beard.

  “Van Glorious!” Cookie gushed, thoroughly smitten. “Action hero, rapper, clothing line, cologne …”

  “Pain in the butt,” Milton added.

  Marlo nudged her brother with her pointy elbow. “Hey, the guy helped us in the Furafter, right?” she said. “Helped us prevent a religious ratings war up on the Surface.”

  “Right, but you didn’t have to put up with him,” Milton replied. “He has an ego like an especially needy black hole.”

  A loud, thumping rap beat boomed as Van postured on the stage, singing into his headset.

  “We’ve got a War of the Words. We’ve got a War of the Words.

  Kids pecking at each other like a flock of birds.

  We’ve got a War of the Words. We’ve got a War of the Words.

  Keepin’ arguments fresh: not shakin’, not slurred.

  Here’s Team One.

  Their diction is great.

  Have you heard these kids? They can enunciate!

  Milton’s got brains.

  Moses? Well versed.

  Roberta’s gotta tongue that she can put in reverse.

  Rakeem has got esteem.

  Mordacia, she can shout.

  That Moxie girl? She kinda freaks me out.…”

  One of the Orb-Servers waddled up to Moxie for a reaction shot. The girl clicked her silver tongue and struggled to free herself from her straightjacket while Van climbed up on the scaffolding.

  “Do you like sass?

  Then here’s Team Two.

  That Marlo’s got sauce: should we share a fondue?”

  Marlo smiled as the handsome star blew her a kiss. A pair of laser lips alighted from Van’s face, darted across the audience, and fluttered onto Marlo’s lips. Milton shook his head.

  “That was meant for me, you know,” Milton said, recalling the time he and his sister had switched bodies, and Milton had ended up as Van’s unofficial assistant/attendant during his blockbuster run as Teenage Jesus.

  “That Flossie is shrewd.

  Big Mack can dismay.

  Wanna synonym, boy? Then your man is Roget!

  They got a tough cookie.

  And that Cookie can spell.

  No one’s better with the letters than that girl Annabelle.

  But now I gotta go.

  We’re runnin’ out of time.

  Didya know that some words you just can’t rhyme?

  Like orange.”

  The music stopped abruptly and the stage went dark. The crowd shrieked and applauded. Rakeem shook his head.

  “Vanilla’s mic is rusty,” he grumbled. “I’ve heard better rhymes in Dr. Seuss’s waiting room.”

  King Nimrod and Vice Principal Carroll walked through the crowd and were helped into the ring. The king outstretched his massive arms.

  “Welcome to the Tower of Babble!” he boomed. “I am honored to be this event’s magnanimously magnificent host, in this bustling bastion of language!”

  Vice Principal Carroll leaned into the microphone of the other podium. “Thank you, good K-King Nimrod!” the vice principal said with his soft, clumsy voice. “Before we continue, I’d like to explain our little whiteout. That was not, as the rumors persist, a technical difficulty. It was, instead, an ingeniously inventive advertisement from one of our sponsors, Pearly White Toothpaste: Go From Yellow to Hello! For a Rapturous Smile, Open the Gates of Your Mouth Wide with Pearly White!”

  Milton turned to Marlo. “Didn’t Vice Principal Carroll say that the snark smacking the tower only affected things in the immediate vicinity?”

  Marlo shrugged. “Search me … actually, don’t, or I’ll punch you in the throat.”

  A pair of the king’s heavily muscled guards pitched the children one by one up into the ring. The vice principal cleared his throat and stared down at a small stack of index cards.

  “As we’ve heard with our valiant contenders today,” Vice Principal Carroll said, “language itself can indeed b-bite back. In fact, there were many moments when I feared our contentious crew had lost its way. Yet, if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there. And so here they are!”

  He extended his arms toward the children hovering by the ropes, kindling a blazing roar from the audience.

  “And now, ladies, gentlemen, lovely muses …”

  Vice Principal Carroll nodded to the left side of the auditorium where nine breathtakingly gorgeous women wearing flowing white gowns were lounging on luxurious fainting couches. One woman, Milton noticed, seemed to be stroking a white fuzzy animal.

  “Lucky?” Milton muttered. “No, it can’t—”

  “… angels, demons, and everything in between,” the vice principal continued. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was”—Vice Principal Carroll dropped his index card—“whoops!”

  Milton swallowed as the man bent over to retrieve his fallen card.

  “Remember that early draft of the Bible we found in the back of Wise Acres?” he muttered to his sister. “And all that Bibley stuff you found in his Absurditory? About the true name of God being the way …”

  Yahweh.

  “Yahweh,” Milton mumbled, pulling out one of the index cards he had in his pocket. “It says hewhaY, which is ‘Yahweh’ backward. That’s it.”

  “That’s what?” Marlo asked.

  “The original Hebrew name of God used in the Bible,” Milton answered. “Yahweh.”

  “No way.”

  “Yes way!” Milton said. “But how would just saying it change reality at all?”

  Marlo stared at Milton with her wide violet eyes.

  “What if he really did it? What if that crackpot cracked the code of all Creation?”

  Milton studied the eccentric man behind the podium, grinning mysteriously, like a cat that just lapped up the last of the cream. The vice principal seemed to disappear behind his Cheshire grin.

  “Then the Terristories wasn’t just a show … it was to show what he could do!” Milton said as Vice Principal Carroll leaned into his microphone.

  “I bring you the second ac
t of our three-act play on words … The War of the Words!”

  31 · DEBATE FOR DE-TRAP

  THE CROWD OF deceased all-too mortals, demons, and various angelic beings roared. Their bulging eyes glittered like stars in the inky blackness surrounding the spotlit ring. They waved signs over their cheering and jeering heads, such as USE YOUR OUTSIDE VOICES! DISH OUT THE BEEFS and CHILDREN SHOULD SEETHE AND BE HEARD!

  An old man sat by the side of the ring at a table set with more rusty old microphones than a rusty old microphone showroom.

  “I’m Howard Cosell,” said the man in a staccato, nasal tone, his salt-and-pepper hair seemingly molded directly to his head. “And welcome to the maim event: where whip-smart whippersnappers will butt heads and lash tongues to see who is the king of sting, the queen of mean, and the undisputed ruler of refutation.”

  Milton, Marlo, and the other children were backstage, being dressed and groomed before they headed out to lock horns and wage verbal war with one another. A bald, round man in a bright pink leisure suit—Mr. Dior, on loan from his uglification and school-picture-taking duties in Limbo—fussed over the boys and girls, smoothing their hair, going a little nutso with the gel, and fitting them with padded, tailored black suits.

  “What’s with all of the padding?” Cookie complained as she examined herself in the mirror, sashaying back and forth. “What is this, the eighties?”

  “Eet is your No-Flak Suit,” the man said elegantly in his smooth French accent. “To help minimize zhe damage from zhe flak you will be hurling at zhe one and other.”

  Milton spent several minutes wrestling with his purple tie before realizing that it was a clip-on. He buckled his belt and marveled at the crease in his pants. A shriveled, shrewlike demon went about the dressing room, picking the children’s doffed clothes off the ground (and picking through the pockets, Milton noted, helping itself to spare change, gum, lip balm, and the occasional scrunchie).

  Those index cards, Milton thought as he grabbed his torn tweed pants from the floor just before the demon servant swept them away. He yanked out the cards and stared at the pictogram.