The Secret of Zoom

by Lynne Jonell

  “This is great,” he said. “I can’t believe this.”

  Christina gazed at the chickens as they goose-stepped their way across the screen. She couldn’t believe it, either. With any luck, she would never have to deal with mathematical poultry again.

  She showed him how the program worked. “For starters, you can do my last three assignments. I skipped them.”

  She ran the vacuum while he began the first problem, cleaning her room to keep Nanny from getting suspicious. Now and then she helped Taft navigate the computer screen; he picked it up very quickly. But when she bent to change the vacuum bag, she heard footsteps on the stairs.

  “Shh!” she hissed. “Quick! Under the bed!” She lifted the scalloped edge of her quilt to let Taft scoot beneath. No one ever came upstairs—well, hardly ever. Why did someone have to come tonight?

  She smelled her father’s pipe in the hall. There was a knock at her door. Christina scrambled into her computer chair. “Come in!”

  “Well!” Her father, sounding pleased, put a hand on her shoulder. “Doing math, are you?”

  Christina faced the screen, feeling her eyes glaze over as she looked at the numbers. “Just a little,” she said, pushing a button at random.

  Dr. Adnoid bent over. “But surely you’re farther along than this?”

  “I just thought I’d do some review,” Christina said in a hurry, turning the monitor off. She swiveled to face her father, hoping fervently that he hadn’t come to help her with math or, worse yet, question her about an escaped orphan. “How was work today?” she asked, in an attempt to head him off.

  Her father’s eyebrows drew down slightly. “Work was fine.” He set a large green scrapbook on Christina’s desk and pulled out a tape measure. “Here, let’s see how tall you are this year.”

  Christina stood up, eyeing the bulky album as her father stretched the tape measure from her toes to the top of her head. She had seen that book before. Once a year, her father opened it and wrote down her weight and height and anything else he could measure. It all struck her as remarkably pointless, but since it didn’t happen often, she tried not to complain.

  “Four feet, eight inches—very good. You’ve grown two inches since last year.”

  Christina made an effort to be interested in this information. “Two inches doesn’t seem like much.”

  “You’re in the sixty-fifth percentile for height for girls your age. That’s about half a standard deviation above average—perfectly normal. Now, your weight . . . let’s see.” He walked Christina to the bathroom scale and noted the figure. “Hmmm. Only fifty-second percentile for weight. You need to take in more calories. I’ll tell Cook to add oil to your broccoli.”

  Christina resisted this suggestion. “How about if I just eat more ice cream?”

  Dr. Adnoid shook his head. “Trans fats. Too many. Now, what about your shoe size?”

  Christina sat kicking one foot while her father measured the other with calipers. “Is it really important to write all this down?”

  “Well . . .” Her father straightened. “Perhaps not. But your mother”—he paused to clear his throat—“she began this book when you were a baby, and I know she would have wanted me to keep it up. So I have done my best.”

  Dr. Adnoid fished a large handkerchief out of his pocket, rubbed at his eyes, blew his nose with a protracted honk, and tucked it away. “Now, then. What else can we write about you that’s interesting?” He picked up the book and sat down heavily on Christina’s bed. “Dental work, perhaps? Did you have any cavities this year?”

  The springs creaked under Dr. Adnoid’s weight, and a small surprised grunt came from beneath the bed. Christina coughed loudly to cover it and slid her foot under the bed frame, nudging a thin brown hand back into the shadows.

  “Or how about math grades? Those might be exciting!”

  Christina suppressed a shudder and cast around in her mind for something her father could write that wouldn’t lead back to the dreaded subject of numbers. Suddenly she knew.

  “I have perfect pitch,” Christina announced with relief.

  Dr. Adnoid sprang up, his face pale. “Who told you that?”

  “Mrs. Lisowsky,” Christina said, surprised. “My music teacher. I was singing for her today, and that’s when she found out.”

  Dr. Adnoid gripped the edge of the desk. “I’ll call Mrs. Lisowsky at once,” he muttered. “She can’t be allowed to spread such rumors. I only hope she hasn’t mentioned it outside these walls.”

  He whirled to face Christina. “You mustn’t tell anyone. Do you hear me?”

  Christina nodded. She heard him, all right. She just didn’t understand.

  “And don’t sing anymore,” Dr. Adnoid said as he hurried out of her room. “Not one note. It’s dangerous.”

  THE door clicked shut. “All clear,” Christina said in a low voice.

  Taft rolled out from beneath the bed in a wreath of dust, rubbing one shoulder. “I wish your dad hadn’t sat down so hard.” He looked at her accusingly. “I thought you said no one ever came up here.”

  “Sorry. Hardly anyone ever does.” Christina looked at the green scrapbook her father had forgotten. “Why do you suppose he was so worried about me having perfect pitch?”

  Taft shrugged. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He doesn’t want you going to the mines with the other orphans.”

  “But I’m not an orphan!”

  “That wouldn’t matter to Lenny Loompski. If he knew you could sing, he’d find a way to get you.”

  Christina grabbed the sides of her head in frustration. “And who is this Lenny Loompski? I thought it was Leo!”

  Taft glanced around the room. “I’ll tell you, but let’s go to the attic. Your father might come back.”

  “All right.” Christina lumped a blanket under her bedspread in what she hoped was a lifelike manner and turned out the light. Then, sock-footed, flashlight bobbing, they slipped into the closet and up the ladder.

  The attic wasn’t quite as dark as before. The moon had risen and was shining in flat trapezoidal stripes through the vent in the wall. Its pale light glanced off the curved cylinder of the telescope, still on its tripod on the broken chair, and spread along the wooden floor.

  “Hey!” Taft reached out to touch the telescope’s smooth barrel. “I’ve never seen one up close. Let’s look through it!”

  “Later.” Christina lifted the tripod down from the chair and set it aside.

  Taft’s eyes were shadowed. He hunched one shoulder. “I suppose you don’t want a dirty orphan touching your things.”

  Christina stared at him in dismay. “I didn’t mean that at all. I just wanted you to tell me about Lenny Loompski first.”

  “Oh.” Taft’s shoulder relaxed. “All right, then.” He sat down on his pallet and curled his knees to his chest. “Leo Loompski was one of the famous Loompski brothers, and the founder of Loompski Labs. And he built the orphanage, too, for a public charity.”

  “Everyone knows that,” said Christina, still grumpy at being misunderstood.

  “And he was a great scientist, and he had all these ideas, and so he set up his laboratories here so he could try to see if any of his ideas worked. I guess he liked it here by the Starkian Mountain Ridge, or something. And I think one of his brothers lived here.”

  “I know all that. What about Lenny?”

  “Hang on, I’m getting there. So anyway, Leo wanted to work on his theories and inventions, but it was taking more and more time to manage Loompski Labs and the orphanage, too, so he asked his nephew Lenny—”

  “I knew it had to be a relative!”

  “—his nephew Lenny,” repeated Taft, glaring at her, “to run the orphanage. Listen, if you want to tell this, just go ahead.”

  Christina sighed. If all kids were this touchy, she wasn’t sure she wanted to meet any more. “Go on.”

  Taft tucked his chin on his arms. “So Lenny ran the orphanage, and later he started to help manage Loompski Labs,
too. Leo was busy in his private lab somewhere, doing experiments of his own, and he was happy to let Lenny give the orders. Then after a while people just never heard anything about Leo anymore. Nobody knew where he’d gone. And now Lenny runs the lab and the orphanage and probably the mines, too, if they really exist.”

  Christina leaned against the wall, watching him. “How do you know all this?”

  Taft lifted both shoulders. “I hear things. They talk, over at the orphanage.”

  Christina was silent for a moment. “Have you ever seen Lenny Loompski?”

  “Oh, sure, all the time. He drives up to the orphanage in this long black car, and we have to say how happy we are to see him. And how he’s going to win the Karsnicky Medal someday.” Taft’s foot tapped against the floor. “So can we look through the telescope now?”

  Christina nodded. “Let’s take it out onto the roof.”

  Taft gazed at the face of the moon and the town of Dorf, and after that he wanted to look at the orphanage. Christina helped him patiently with the focusing knobs, and then sat down on a low balustrade, looking up at the looming rock of the Starkian Mountain Ridge.

  It rose above the tops of the trees, sharply etched in the moonlight, and Christina wondered if the truckload of orphans had really gone right up to the top. Maybe she could look through the telescope and find out.

  “I want a turn, Taft,” she said.

  “In a minute.”

  Christina waited a minute, then two. “Come on.”

  Taft stepped away from the telescope, his face unhappy. “I found some lighted windows, but the shades were all pulled. I couldn’t see anything, really.”

  “What were you hoping to see?” Christina put one eye to the telescope, still aimed at the orphanage, and closed the other. A dimly lit rectangle sprang into view, crisscrossed with mullions and brighter at the bottom. As she watched, a shadow passed behind the window and was gone.

  Taft gave a half shrug. “I thought I’d check on Danny. You know, see how he’s doing.”

  “Danny? Is that the guy with the big head? The slow one?”

  “He’s not that slow,” said Taft quickly. “You just have to tell him things more often, is all. And he understands more than people think he does.”

  Christina glanced at him.

  “He understands that I’ve gone away, for one,” said Taft, very low. “I hope he doesn’t try to follow the truck. He’ll only get in trouble.”

  Christina swiveled the telescope to face the Starkian Ridge. Was it possible to see where the garbage truck had gone? No—not when she couldn’t even see the road.

  Still, it was interesting to look at the ridge in the moonlight. The high edge of rock was like a black paper cutout against the lighter sky. There were large, high-flying birds that lived up there—harriers, they were called—and sometimes during the day she had heard their distant cries. It was a lonesome sound that fit with the bleak, windswept peaks, and she had always wished that someday she could climb the Starkian Mountain Ridge and see the harriers for herself.

  Christina lifted her head with sudden realization. Now she could! Now she had a tunnel that led straight into the forest. She could go tomorrow, during Nanny’s nap. If she returned before supper, no one would miss her at all.

  Taft tapped her on the back and she gave up the telescope, shivering a little in the cooling air. Off in the distance, a car engine growled as it changed gears, and headlights cast faint twin beams that showed in gaps through the trees. Christina looked up at the ridge and rubbed her arms for warmth.

  Were the orphans really breaking rocks up there? And why didn’t any of them ever come back?

  Christina frowned. Something else was bothering her. Did her father know what happened to the orphans? He certainly seemed worried enough about her ability to sing on pitch. And the man in front of the orphanage had been just as interested in the orphans’ ability to sing, though Christina couldn’t imagine why. To help Lenny Loompski, was all the man had said.

  But if Lenny Loompski was the manager of Loompski Labs, then he was her father’s boss—wasn’t he?

  Christina brushed her bangs out of her eyes with an impatient hand. It was all too confusing, and she didn’t want to think about it anymore. She was getting the feeling she always got when she looked at those dancing chickens with the numbers in their beaks—as if her brain had frozen solid.

  She tapped Taft on the shoulder, and he gave up the telescope at once. Christina was just thinking that his manners were improving, when he tapped her again.

  “What?” Christina was annoyed. “Can’t you let me look one minute?”

  “Shhh!” Taft put up a hand in warning. “Listen.”

  Christina straightened. A car’s headlights glowed, closer now, and the smooth grumble of a well-tuned engine reached their ears.

  She shrugged. “That’s just some scientist driving home late from the laborator—”

  The ridge above them bloomed with sudden orange light, as if a firework had gone off behind the highest rocks.

  Two seconds later, there came a muffled boom. The house beneath them trembled slightly. Above the Starkian Ridge, a clot of harriers lifted, scattered, and came flying over the treetops in a flurry of beating wings. One, slender and dark against the moonlit sky, wheeled over Christina’s house with a cry like that of a frightened child.

  And on the forest road a long, black shadow flicked off its headlights, took the turning to Christina’s house, rolled smoothly past the iron fence, and stopped at the front gate.

  THE ridged wing of a stone gargoyle was cool and rough under Christina’s hand. She stood on the rooftop without moving, looking down on her father as he emerged from the house into the night. Beside her, Taft took a soundless step back into the shadow of the roof’s peak.

  The moon shone silver on Dr. Adnoid’s hair and the tops of his shoulders. He walked slowly down the brick path to the gate, where a long black car waited.

  “Yes, Mr. Loompski?”

  An elbow pushed out of the driver’s window, followed by a forearm encased in a pinstriped sleeve. A meaty hand splayed on the car’s door. “Wilfer, my man. Good of you to meet me.” Lenny Loompski’s jovial voice carried clearly in the still night air.

  Taft looked at Christina. “Wilfer?” he mouthed, his eyebrows expressive.

  Christina frowned at him. Her father’s first name might be odd, but it was no weirder than Taft.

  “But what’s this I hear about you requesting an inspector?” Lenny Loompski’s voice was suddenly less friendly.

  Dr. Adnoid cleared his throat. “I was thinking it was time we had someone look in on the orphans—you know, to make sure we’re in compliance with the child labor laws.”

  The silence from the car had an incredulous quality.

  “I just want to make sure they’re safe. Working with zoomstones can be tricky, you know.”

  Zoomstones? Christina glanced at Taft, but he looked as confused as she felt.

  “Wilfer, Wilfer, Wilfer.” The shadowy figure in the car shook his head. “You amaze me, you really do. I would have expected more loyalty from you.”

  “It’s not a matter of loyalty, sir.”

  “Who promoted you to head scientist? Who got you into this house after Uncle Leo disappeared on one of his wild-goose chases? Who pays you, Wilfer?”

  “You, sir, but—”

  “Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

  “Of course not, Mr. Loompski, but—”

  “You keep saying ‘but,’ Wilfer. Those orphans are getting the very best of care. They receive the finest schooling, with the most advanced teaching methods—”

  Taft expelled a small breath in a sound of disgust.

  “—they are given pleasant and healthful outdoor tasks—”

  “Collecting garbage!” whispered Taft, his voice outraged.

  “—and up on the mountain, all they do is sing. The acoustics are quite fine up there, you know, with those rocks all around.
You might almost say that we have an orphan choir. It’s an extracurricular activity, so to speak.”

  Dr. Adnoid’s feet scraped on the walk as he shifted his weight. “If all that’s true, then why would you have any objection to an inspector?”

  Lenny Loompski’s thick fingers began to tap the car door, one at a time.

  “And as long as we’re speaking frankly,” said Dr. Adnoid, his voice growing stronger, “I’d like to do research on Leo Loompski’s theories again. He brought me here to help him unlock the secrets of the Starkian Ridge—to explore the far edges of quantum mechanics, to do the noble work of adding to the world’s scientific knowledge—”

  Lenny Loompski chuckled. “Not much money in that racket.”

  “—but you! All you want is to turn Loompski Labs into a factory for cheap fuel! We scientists aren’t even allowed up on the ridge anymore—there are electric fences and warning signs everywhere—”

  “For the protection of the orphans, of course,” Lenny said smoothly.

  “Zoom is highly unstable—you know that—and I’m not convinced that you have every safety measure in place for the children. I think it’s about time an inspector came to check things out!”

  Up on the rooftop, Christina barely avoided cheering aloud, and Taft gave a vigorous nod. But on the ground, the silence was ominous.

  Christina’s father fumbled in a pocket for his pipe. There was a sound of a match striking and a little glow of flame. For a moment, in the brief flickering light, Christina caught a glimpse of Lenny Loompski’s flat, pale face, his cheeks like two slabs of ham.

  “You seem upset, Wilfer.” The voice from the car had a soothing tone. “Maybe you need a little vacation. I hear there are some truly exciting spots in the . . . Middle East, perhaps?”

  Dr. Adnoid’s shoulders stiffened. A scent of tobacco rose in the air as he took his pipe from his mouth. “I don’t need a vacation, Mr. Loompski. I’m just asking for an inspec—”