by Lynne Jonell
“To care for us, poor orphans dreary . . . to wipe our eyes when we are teeeeary . . .”
She gave a harrier’s cry. She had the plane humming.
“Oh, happy, happy, happy weeee . . .”
Root. Third.
“Will always happy, happy beeee . . .”
Fifth. Minor seventh.
“We’ll never whimper, never cry—”
The plane was droning beneath her, glowing blue, hovering. Christina sang the last high E, the note that resolved the urgent, singing chord, and the plane glowed violet and was aloft, speeding away by the power of thought. And as she skimmed the treetops, the wind in her face bringing tears to her eyes, she heard a last gallant, defiant shout—
“WE WILL BE HAPPY TILL WE DIE!”
MIDFLIGHT, Christina realized that she hadn’t thought things through.
The plane still hummed its musical chord, the violet light was magical in the dark, whooshing air, and high above, the moon shone golden—but flying had lost its first ecstatic thrill for Christina, and she was worried.
Who was she going to get help from? The only one she knew who could possibly assist was her father, and if she told him where Taft was now, she’d first have to explain who Taft was. And that meant she’d have to tell her father that she’d gone against his direct orders.
For although she had obeyed Dr. Adnoid, strictly speaking, when he said not to go into the yard—she hadn’t, she’d gone under it—she had known quite well that he wouldn’t have wanted her to do that, either. And he would be even more unhappy to know that she’d hidden an orphan in their attic, almost killed herself falling out of a tree, exploded her mother’s ring, trespassed in a locked cave, and flown a plane full of zoom up to the Starkian Ridge.
Still, what else could she do but tell him? It wasn’t as if she could leave Taft on the ridge at the mercy of the guards and Lenny Loompski, too.
An uncomfortable thought intruded, reminding her that she had once been perfectly willing to leave all the other orphans stranded on the ridge.
Well, that was before she had seen them up close. Now they had faces and names—now they were real to her, and she couldn’t forget that they were in danger.
Christina frowned and aimed the plane at the lighted square that was the orphanage yard. The entrance to the tunnel was somewhere near there. She hoped it wouldn’t be hard to find . . .
But it was impossible. Everything was the same deep, leafy dark, and she had no time to land and search.
Fine, then. Christina swooped the plane up through the trees and away, and straight toward her own house. That was a better thought, anyway. She could land the tiny plane on the roof behind the gargoyles, and no one would be the wiser.
She adjusted the helmet strap, which had loosened in the sudden turn she’d made above the tunnel, and zeroed in on the high gables of her own rooftop, dark but still visible against the moonlit valley below. Flying was beginning to get chilly. If only she had brought a jacket! She was thirsty, too, and so tired she didn’t even want to know how long past her bedtime it was.
But although the roof of her house was dark, as Christina flew closer she could see that people must still be awake, for the windows in the lower levels were bright with lamplight. In fact, the whole first floor was lit up, and this seemed very odd. It was certainly after midnight; why would people still be up?
She soared in as quietly as she could and lowered the plane gently into a flat space behind one of the gargoyles. The bottom scraped on the roof—why didn’t she ever remember to put down the landing gear? Christina glared at the control panel. Now that it was too late to do any good, it said LOWER LANDING GEAR. It said SET BRAKES, too, but she didn’t bother. The plane wasn’t going anywhere, stuck on its belly behind a gable.
She reached out a finger to push the stop button and paused. Maybe she’d better make sure everything was all right before she killed the engine. The plane would wait, idling, while she checked things out. She unstrapped her helmet and climbed over the side of the humming plane. Its soft violet light shone on the parapet, on the stone gargoyle that was still twisted open, revealing the stairs that descended to the tunnel.
Christina seized the stone wings and pushed hard. The gargoyle scraped shut, and she breathed again. If anyone in the forest found the tunnel, at least they couldn’t follow it to her roof now. She dusted off her hands and turned to the small service door to the attic—and stopped. Two police cruisers were parked at her front gate. And behind them, almost invisible behind the hedge, was another car, long and black.
“And I’m telling you, Wilfer, your synthesizer experiment is over. You know as well as I do that to extract the zoom we must have a living sound; a child’s throat or a bird’s. The resonance is all wrong otherwise.”
Christina sat at the top of the staircase, listening intently. Below, in the kitchen, Lenny Loompski’s voice was loud and emphatic. “I’m far more interested in what you’ve been working on lately, you know, the polly—pollysticky—oh, you know, the stuff they make those little plastic toys out of?”
“Polystyrene,” said Dr. Adnoid.
“Yeah, that stuff. Anyway, you did good work on that, Wilfer, I must say. The plastic soaks up the zoom and then you can transport it and it won’t explode—and better yet, nobody thinks you’re carrying anything but a little, cute, plastic—”
“No, no, we found out it was far too dangerous,” interrupted Dr. Adnoid. “The polystyrene acts as a catalyst, and if the zoom is absorbed and then melted again, it becomes a hundred times more explosive than nitroglycerin. Simply out of the question—at least until I can create an artificial sound that mimics the harriers. No matter how good an energy source zoom might be, you cannot use children for something so dangerous.”
“Why ever not? Children like to be useful.”
Christina clenched her teeth in an effort to keep silent. Kids might like to be useful, but that didn’t mean they liked to be used. Did Lenny Loompski think that little girls wanted to drag big heavy garbage cans to the curb, or that a boy like Danny would rather scrub plastic toys instead of going to school? And whatever it was that the orphans were forced to do up on the Starkian Ridge, she was pretty sure they weren’t volunteering for it.
There was a silence. “Listen, I’m sure I can manufacture an artificial sound that works,” came the strained voice of Christina’s father. “I just need a little more time. And meanwhile, I think you should try again with the harriers. Maybe if you just tethered them? I know you said that cages didn’t work, but it seems to me that you should try everything possible rather than using children—”
“You’re still concerned about the orphans, are you?” Lenny sounded amused. “You know, they’re happy working for me. Why, they actually compose poems in my honor—‘Lenny, oh, Lenny, we love him so’—you know the sort of thing. Primitive, but really quite touching—”
“I’m sure.” Dr. Adnoid’s voice was dry. “But why didn’t the cages work? You could bring the birds right down into the mines, get them close to that new vein of zoom you want to open up, and leave the children out of it. It’s too dangerous for them, anyway, underground.”
“Still, we have the most advanced safety precautions in place,” said Lenny smoothly. “And strangely enough, we’ve found that if we want the birds’ cry to have the right tone, they must be soaring free. There’s something missing in their cry when they’re restrained—something wild. But children—now their cries work best when they’re afraid. And so we find it useful to keep a certain level of fear going. Very mild fear, I assure you; almost like Halloween, you might say. Trick or treat, you know.”
Christina stiffened in outrage, remembering the garbage truck’s rusty hopper, and the small desperate faces looking out, and the steel panel crashing down. She was filled with a passionate longing to squish Lenny into the hopper with its smelly garbage and see how he liked it. Anyone who made kids afraid on purpose deserved that, and worse.
Be
sides, he was wrong about Halloween. Christina had watched through her telescope as kids in costumes went running through their neighborhoods with flashlights, and the one thing she knew for sure was that they weren’t afraid—they were having fun.
“I wish I had asked these questions years ago.” Dr. Adnoid’s voice was expressionless, but Christina, who knew him, realized with a shiver just how angry he was. “And where do you find all these orphans, anyway? I only know of one case in town where a child was left without both parents, and we sent the boy off to his relatives. What do you do, import them?”
Lenny Loompski chuckled. “There’s no shortage of unwanted kids in this world. I can name you a hundred cities right now where I could just walk in and have my pick. Not all in this country, of course, and the trick is getting them past the borders . . . but I’m not going to tell you my secrets, Wilfer. Why do you ask? Are you thinking of going into the orphan business yourself?”
“I wouldn’t touch your filthy business with a thousand-foot pole. If I had known this before, I’d have left long ago.”
“Filthy business?” Lenny Loompski’s voice grew soft and cold. “I’m not clean enough for you pure scientists, is that it, Wilfer?”
“Well, if the shoe fits—”
“Just like the garbage business is filthy, is that what you’re saying? Just like my father, Larry, wasn’t as good as his famous and important scientist brothers, is that right?”
“Now, listen—”
“Of course you didn’t mean it, Wilfer. I’m sure you understand. You have a child yourself; you comprehend the bond between parent and child . . . where is your daughter, by the way?” he added casually.
Christina held her breath in sudden terror.
“My daughter is none of your business.” Dr. Adnoid’s voice trembled.
“Are you sure, Wilfer? She could help those orphans you’re so concerned about. Their pitch isn’t always exact, sadly. We had an explosion just last night—”
“You keep your hands off her, you hear me? You try to even speak to my daughter and I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands!”
A warm feeling spread through Christina’s chest. Her father didn’t just care about her math grades, or keeping her behind a fence—he would defend her—
“Do you hear that, officer?” Lenny Loompski raised his voice. “Officer! You, there, outside! This man is threatening my life!”
Heavy footsteps sounded on the kitchen tile.
“Threatening?” cried Dr. Adnoid. “I’ll do more than threaten, you pasty chunk of bologna—”
“Now, sir,” came the officer’s voice, “there’s such a thing as terroristic threats—”
“And he’s certainly making them,” said Lenny. “Oooh, I’m so scared—”
“I’ll rip out your heart and stomp on your liver before I let you near her!” cried Dr. Adnoid, in a high, enraged voice that Christina had never heard before.
“Heart ripping, officer? Liver stomping? How much more evidence do you need that this is a truly dangerous man?”
“Sir, I’m afraid I’m going to have to take you in,” said the officer. “Now, are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use the cuffs?”
“Handcuffs? For what? Trying to protect my own daughter?” screamed Dr. Adnoid.
Christina pressed a hand to her mouth, frantic with worry. Should she go down to help her father? Should she tell the officer what Lenny Loompski was really like? Would he even believe her?
“And by the way, officer,” came Lenny’s voice clearly over the sounds of a scuffle, “I not only have a search warrant—I have here a temporary order, signed by the magistrate, to take his daughter and place her in the orphanage, if it turns out that we have to arrest him. And, tragically, that does seem to be the case.”
Christina’s heart gave a sudden beat, high and hard in her throat.
“Temporary is right, you hind end of a pork chop! This order won’t stand—what did you do, bribe the clerk? I’ll get it straightened out in the morning—you’re going to pay for this—”
“Tell it to the judge, mister,” said the officer firmly, and the scuffling sound moved from the kitchen to the front entrance and out the door.
There came a sound of thick fingers snapping and a shuffling of several pairs of feet into the kitchen.
“All right, the rest of you,” said Lenny Loompski, his voice low and forceful. “Search the house. I want that girl.”
SNICK. The trapdoor in the floor of the attic closed and latched. Christina, carrying her shoes in her hand, hurried silently across the wooden floor, bumping her mother’s rocker into motion as she passed.
For an instant she paused, hearing the sound she dimly remembered, the creak that had once matched the rhythm of her mother’s lullaby. Little one, child of mine, safely rest tonight . . .
Christina turned away. She unlatched the service door and was on the roof in two seconds flat.
She climbed into the still-humming plane, dropped her shoes in the passenger seat, and strapped on the helmet with fingers that fumbled. Her father had been willing to go to jail to keep her safe. But she had not been able to help him at all . . .
A cool breeze touched a tear on her face, and she realized that she had lifted off and was flying toward the Starkian Ridge once more.
She didn’t look back. She couldn’t bear to see them take her father away.
There was a scent of pine as Christina skimmed the treetops near the great slabs of rock. On the way to the ridge she had figured out what she should have realized before; she could rescue Taft without any trouble at all. All she had to do was swoop down in the plane. He could leap into the back seat and they’d be up and out of reach before anyone knew what was happening.
And where would they go then? And what about Danny and the other orphans?
Christina squinted, focusing on the ridge ahead. If she rescued Taft first, then together they could figure out a way to set the others free.
But to do that, she had to locate Taft and see if the guards were still with the orphans. Perhaps if she flew high enough, she could spy out the situation without anyone noticing the glowing violet craft.
She climbed higher into the night sky. A harrier soared up with her, close enough that she could see its fierce yellow eye and soft ruffled wingtips tinged with color from the plane’s violet-blue glow.
Christina glanced at the control panel, puzzled. Suddenly there was more blue than violet. The piercing high E faltered, resumed briefly, and then was lost to the chord. The plane dipped, sputtering. The blue light took on a tinge of green.
Christina stared at the dashboard. What was going on?
The green color became more pronounced. The minor seventh tone faded in a series of soft pops and then disappeared entirely.
All at once Christina knew exactly what was happening. She was running out of fuel. And unless she managed to land in a great hurry, she was going to crash.
Christina gripped the armrests, her hands sweaty. She couldn’t think about crashing—not with the zoom responding to her every thought. She had to keep focused on flying, she had to keep thinking she could make it—
The plane plunged through the night like a small chunky comet, first green, then yellow, then orange. Christina’s breaths came short and fast as the plane dove spiraling down. At the last moment, in the light of the plane’s dying pink glow, she spied a rock ledge jutting out from the cliffs. It was small and slick with damp, but it was almost flat, with room enough for the plane and a little to spare.
The plane stuttered through the mist of a thin waterfall that splashed down the rock face and disappeared into the darkness below. With the last spurt of liquid draining from the helmet, Christina remembered to put down the landing gear. The tiny rubber wheels bumped on the wet rock, the plane’s glow faded, and the melodic hum went silent.
Christina slumped with relief. She had done it!
But there was no time to waste. She had to refill the tank fro
m the canister in the back, and she had to do it at once. Who knew how long she had to rescue Taft and the others? Maybe the guards had seen the plane diving and were already climbing down the side of the cliff to investigate.
The moon gave just enough light to see by. Christina unplugged her helmet and clambered out to pull the spare canister of zoom from its slot. She popped open the fuel cap, fumbled for the funnel, and began to unscrew the canister lid with nervous fingers.
Her arm was already wet to the shoulder from the waterfall’s spray. She glanced up, annoyed—if she wheeled the plane a little farther along the edge, could she refill the tank without getting drenched?—and stopped in midmotion.
There was something glinting up there in the waterfall, caught and wedged against a lip of rock; something that stuck out and sent a fine spray curving from the cliff’s face.
Christina set the canister down and climbed back into the plane to stand on the red leather seat. The object was half hidden by the tumbling water, and yet she could see its smooth, glassy surface, its rounded tip.
It was a wonder that it had stayed stuck there all this time. Christina stretched—could she reach it? Not . . . quite . . .
She stared at the test tube, her heart thumping. Her mother must have sent the messages out for as long as she could, hoping that one of them would be picked up. What would this one say?
Christina stepped up onto the plane’s curved metal back and stretched higher.
The water cascaded along her upraised arm and down the back of her neck, soaking her shirt. She touched the smooth glass tube with her fingertips. Only a little farther, just enough to get a grip on it. She was almost there—
She gave a spring with her toes and grasped the test tube, wrenching it from the rock. It shattered in her hand, but she didn’t let go as her feet slipped on the wet, curving back of the plane, as she caromed off its rounded side, as she landed with a cry of pain on the damp rock ledge, just barely missing the canister of zoom.