He kept stripping off the rest of his suit, leaving each piece on the floor as he continued up the hallway.
“Sorry to disillusion you, kids,” he said as he got closer. “But Coolicious McBrainy is not really a magical intellectual hipster-teen owl.”
“We guessed that,” Nick muttered.
Coolicious—or whatever his real name was—didn’t hear him.
“I’m just a man,” he raved. “A disrespected, disposable man. And I will not stand for this kind of treatment!”
The upper half of his suit was completely peeled off at this point, revealing a tight sweat-dampened T-shirt beneath. He stopped walking, ripped off his oversized talon-shaped boots, and tossed them over his shoulder.
“Uh, excuse me,” Tesla said. “But have you seen our friend DeMarco? Twelve years old? Kinda short?”
“No. Sorry,” the man said.
Now he was peeling the Coolicious costume off his legs. Underneath he was wearing yellow short-shorts that barely reached the tops of his surprisingly muscular thighs.
“May I ask why you’re undressing in a hallway?” Uncle Newt asked.
“Because I’m quitting, that’s why!” the man said with a snarl. “I’m a professional. An artist! I’ve been a tap-dancing Pikachu. A break-dancing Burger King. I did an ice-skating Snoopy that brought thousands to tears! And these ingrates don’t even have the common courtesy to tell me that I’ll be out there vamping with a bunch of rank amateurs!”
“What are you talking about?” Silas said.
The man finished pulling off the rest of his costume, wadded it up into a big ball, and threw it against the wall.
“Just go look and you’ll see,” he said, flapping a hand at the pair of double doors at the far end of the hallway. “They took my backup suits and gave them to a bunch of imposters. I was supposed to be the X-Treme Learnasium’s mascot. I was supposed to be Coolicious McBrainy, the raddest screech owl to ever give a hoot about science and technology! And now I find out I’m just another piece of meat in a feather suit? I won’t stand for it!”
And with that the man stomped off, his sweat-soaked socks leaving a trail of moist footprints as he went.
“We’re just gonna let him go?” Silas said.
“Weren’t you listening?” said Tesla. “Our pool of suspects just got a lot bigger.”
She headed toward the double doors at the end of the hall. Nick, Uncle Newt, and Silas followed after her.
Soon they heard music. Then laughter. Then voices. Lots of them.
It was obvious what was going on.
The X-Treme Learnasium’s grand rededication gala had begun.
When the four of them reached the doors, they opened them a crack and peeked through. The cavernous atrium lobby was well lit. Dozens of people in tuxedoes and shimmery dresses were scattered all around, happily chattering among the display cases and demonstration booths and giant slimy-looking organs. Two women—one dressed as an astronaut, the other as an explorer—were busily handing out drinks from behind a makeshift bar in front of the gift shop, while several waiters dressed in suits with black bow ties moved smoothly through the crowd carrying platters of hors d’oeuvres.
The animatronic Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops at the center of the huge room suddenly threw back their heads and roared, and the partygoers gasped … and then applauded.
“Oooh,” Silas moaned as a waiter passed nearby. “Pigs in blankets!”
“I think those are shrimp puffs,” said Nick.
“Whatever. I’m starving.”
Silas started to push through the doors. But Tesla pulled him back.
“Come on!” he protested. “Do you know how long it’s been since lunch?”
“About six hours,” Tesla said without looking at him. She was scanning the room for owls. “But we can’t just barge in and start chomping on shrimp puffs. We’ve got to lie low till we know who has DeMarco.”
“All right,” Silas whined. “I just wish I could lie low with something in my stomach.”
Nick elbowed his sister in the side.
“Check it out, Tez. They’ve opened the other new wings.”
Tesla swung her gaze up to Ms. Wharton-Wheeler’s space exhibit on the second-floor landing. The big white partitions had been removed, revealing an entrance that was built to look like a space station airlock. Next to it, written in big blocky silver letters, were the words WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE FINAL FRONTIER?
Back on the first floor, the other wing that had been closed off was on the other side of the dinosaurs, and Tesla had to lean to the side to get a look at the entrance. She could see a round entryway ringed with yellow neon. Extending in an arc over top was the name of the exhibit:
Tesla assumed the Hall of Genius had been opened, too, though it wasn’t visible from where they were standing. Which meant that if the saboteurs had been trying to stop the X-Treme Learnasium’s public debut, they’d failed.
But maybe that wasn’t what they were after. There had to be another goal, a bigger plan. Tesla was sure of that now. But what was it?
“If it’s those other owls you’re looking for, there they are,” said Uncle Newt. “One by the T-Rex’s tail, one by the giant liver, and one over there by the bar.”
“Wow. Good eye, Uncle Newt,” said Tesla. “I can still barely see ’em.”
Uncle Newt gave her a humble shrug.
“I was into bird watching when I was a kid.”
“So we know one of them was near DeMarco when he was captured,” Nick said. “But how do we figure out which?”
“I’m not sure. We need to get close, see what they’re up to, but we’ve gotta be subtle about it,” said Tesla. “We don’t want the bad guys to panic and make a break for it.”
“What do you think, Uncle Newt?” Nick asked. “What should we—hey. Where’d he go?”
“He was here just a second ago,” Tesla said.
They turned around to find their uncle walking toward them carrying a giant owl head.
“It would seem that whoever is behind this has figured out a pretty good disguise,” Uncle Newt said. He put the owl head over his own.
“Why can’t we use it, too?”
“Oh, my,” Uncle Newt said when he was zipped into the Coolicious suit.
“What’s wrong?” asked Nick.
“I can see why that actor was wearing such skimpy clothes. It is hot in here.”
Within seconds, Uncle Newt could feel his shirt growing soggy with sweat.
“And damp,” he added.
He inhaled deeply to make sure he’d be able to breathe in the tight-fitting outfit.
“And stinky. Now I know why there were so many backup costumes. Wearing this thing is like being mummified in dirty sweat socks. Oh, well. Wish me luck!”
“Good luck,” Nick, Tesla, and Silas said.
Uncle Newt saluted them with a wing and then turned and pushed through the double doors into the atrium.
It took him a moment to get his bearings. The owl head had two eyeholes the size of coasters, but they were covered with a fine metal mesh to hide the person wearing the suit. The mesh blurred everything Uncle Newt saw, turning the world into a collection of indistinct blobs.
Finding the other Cooliciouses wasn’t going to be easy.
There was only one thing to do.
Mingle.
So this is what being responsible gets you, Uncle Newt thought as he shuffled toward the crowd. You agree to look after your niece and nephew for a few weeks and you end up hunting kidnappers in a smelly owl suit.
It occurred to him that it was a good thing he didn’t have children of his own. If this was what parenting was like, he probably wouldn’t survive.
But there was no turning back now. He’d been neglecting the kids all day, and now there was a price to pay. It was up to him to make sure Mario was safe.
Or was it DeMarcus? Delmonte?
Great. A boy’s life was in his hands, and he couldn’t even remember the
kid’s name.
Uncle Newt loved Nick and Tesla, but for the first time he found himself wishing they’d gone to stay with their Aunt Hypatia.
“Another owl?” he heard someone chuckle.
He turned toward the voice and saw a blob that had the general shape of a human male.
“Sure. We’re a flock,” Uncle Newt said. “Could you steer me toward the nearest one? I’m a little lost.”
The blob pointed. Uncle Newt couldn’t see what exactly he was pointing at, but at least he could tell the direction.
“Well, must fly,” Uncle Newt said. “Birds of a feather and all that.”
He moved off as quickly as he dared.
Uncle Newt was in among the gala guests now. Two hundred of San Francisco’s most prestigious philanthropists, business leaders, journalists, and “notables,” as Katherine Mavis had put it when she described the guest list to him. She was going to give a speech, let the mayor or the governor or the pope or somebody cut a symbolic ribbon (Uncle Newt hadn’t really been paying attention), and then take the crowd on a tour. First they’d see “the showstopper” (whatever that was), then the Hall of Genius, then Ms. Wharton-Wheeler’s exhibit upstairs. Uncle Newt had assumed he’d be home tinkering in his basement lab when all the hoopla happened, not stumbling through the middle of it, half blind.
Then he bumped into something just soft enough—barely—to be a person. A shrill voice screeched, “Ahhh! Red wine! On my Givenchy!”
Uncle Newt wasn’t sure what a “givenchy” was, but he assumed it was either an expensive dress or a part of the human anatomy with which he was unfamiliar.
He reached out and found himself patting a bony shoulder.
“Bill it to the museum,” he said.
Once again, he beat a hasty retreat. Not too hasty, though. There were only so many notables he could drench in red wine before the wrong owl noticed.
“We’re ska-funk-punk-emo-metal with a retro grunge twist,” he heard a familiar voice say. “And I—oh! Is everything all right?”
Uncle Newt leaned in close to see who was talking to him. So close, in fact, that he ended up bonking Mojo Jones on the head with his beak.
“Hey! Ow!”
“Sorry! Everything’s fine! Hoo-hoo! Science is cool!”
Uncle Newt moved on.
“Um, well, as I was saying, I rap,” he heard Mojo say after a long silence. Uncle Newt thought he sounded strangely shaken, though perhaps that was natural for someone who’d just been pecked by a giant owl.
Canned jazz music had been playing in the background as Uncle Newt wandered through the crowd, but now it faded out and an amplified voice echoed through the atrium.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the new and improved Northern California Museum of Science, Industry, and Technology. The X-Treme Learnasium!”
It was Katherine Mavis. The crowd responded with polite applause.
“Tonight you, our special friends, have the honor of being the first to tour the X-Treme Learnasium,” she went on. “I think you’re going to find what you see inspiring, delightful, and, in at least one case, very, very surprising.”
A wave of excited murmurs spread through the room, though whoever the woman was who was standing next to Uncle Newt wasn’t talking about the Learnasium. She was saying, “Put down your phone and have a meatball, Frank.”
“Have a meatball, she says. Have a meatball!” this Frank grumbled back. “With our stocks dropping like lead balloons and our broker backpacking over the Andes. And to top it all off, I can’t even get a signal on a $5,000 cell phone! Where are we, anyway? The moon?”
“So there’s nothing you can do,” the woman replied. “Have a meatball.”
“Why are you pushing meatballs on me all of a sudden? What’s in the sauce? Arsenic?”
The woman sighed loudly.
Uncle Newt couldn’t see the squabbling couple. He couldn’t see any of the owls. He couldn’t see anything. He was no closer to finding Nick and Tesla’s friend than he had been when he put on the suit.
Time for a game changer, he decided.
“Excuse me,” Uncle Newt said, turning toward (he hoped) Frank and his lady friend. “Did they happen to give you a fork for the meatballs?”
“What? No,” the woman said, sounding surprised. “They’re on toothpicks.”
“Oh.”
“But they gave me a fork for the oysters,” the woman said.
“Ah! Could I borrow it for a second?”
“Uh, sure.”
Uncle Newt stretched out a hand—or a wing—and after a moment he felt the woman drop the fork into it.
Then he tightened his grip on the utensil and plunged it into his right eye. Coolicious McBrainy’s right eye, that is.
He could hear the woman gasp as he stabbed at the eye over and over, ripping a hole in the wire mesh. When the hole was big enough, Uncle Newt turned back to the woman. He could see her now. She had short gray hair and jewels around her neck and a shocked look on her pale face. Next to her was, he assumed, Frank—a gaunt, glowering old man with a cell phone in one hand and the other clenched into a fist.
Uncle Newt quickly gave the woman back her fork.
“Enjoy the oysters.”
He moved away, scanning the room as he went. He had only a little porthole about the size of a quarter to see through, but it was an improvement.
There was Katherine Mavis standing behind a podium, saying more about the exciting new this and the awesome new that at the Learnasium.
There was Ms. Wharton-Wheeler standing behind her, looking neither excited nor awed.
There were two Coolicious McBrainys, one tall, one small, lingering at the edge of the crowd, not far from the guards—guards?—stationed in front of the Something NEW under the Sun exhibit.
And there was the third Coolicious on the opposite side of the atrium, walking toward the Hall of Genius.
And stepping over the velvet rope stretched across the entrance.
And slinking off into the hall.
“Gotcha,” Uncle Newt said to himself.
He’d found the bad egg.
He moved quickly(ish) toward the Hall of Genius, trying—and quite often failing—not to jostle any bigwigs or splash them with their cocktails. He was now sweating so profusely he could feel half an inch of pooled perspiration squishing beneath his feet with every step. His eyes were stinging, his head was beginning to swim. But on he hurried.
Just hold on, what’s-your-name! Uncle Newt thought. I’m coming for you!
At last he cleared the crowd and scurried past the museum’s giant pancreas, then the giant gall bladder, then the giant brain. When he reached the velvet rope blocking off the Hall of Genius, he jumped into the air, flapping his wings to give himself every bit of lift possible.
He soared over the rope, hit the ground running, and dashed into the hall.
Inisde, he found the other Coolicious, bent over the control panel hidden in Sir Alexander Fleming’s lab. He was trying to type something into the keypad but seemed to be having a hard time.
“Stupid wings,” the owl groused.
“Hold it right there!” Uncle Newt shouted.
The owl looked up in surprise, then spun on his heel and tore off toward Einstein’s blackboard.
So the evil owl knew about the control panel and the secret back exit. If he made it out through the door, he would disappear in the museum’s endless corridors.
Uncle Newt was already panting and nearly blinded by sweat, but he swerved toward the blackboard and pushed himself to run even harder. And then he quickly tripped over Sir Isaac Newton’s foot.
“Nooooooo!” he cried as he crashed to the floor.
For a moment, Uncle Newt lay there stunned, cursing gravity. Then he pushed himself to his knees, expecting to see the rear exit door open and the other owl long gone.
Instead he saw this: the owl running past him with Silas on his heels while Nick and Tesla stood in the doorway by Einstein’s
blackboard, their eyes open wide.
Of course, Uncle Newt realized. The kids had been watching as he’d stumbled through the reception. When they saw he was heading for the Hall of Genius—and why he was heading there—they’d taken the back way to cut off any escape. But could they really keep the owl-man from getting away?
Uncle Newt quickly got his answer: Silas threw himself on the bird’s back in a flying tackle, and the two of them hit the ground in a heap.
“Oof!” said the owl.
“Got ya!” said Silas.
The owl tried to get up, but Silas stayed on his back, pinning him down.
“I sure hope that’s you in there, Uncle Newt,” Nick said, walking up cautiously to his uncle. “Otherwise, Silas owes you a big apology, and I’m talking to the bad guy.”
“It’s me, Nick. Would you help me get this head off? I’m about to suffocate in here.”
Nick undid the Velcro holding the head in place, then pulled it off.
“Air!” Uncle Newt rasped. He sucked in a deep breath. “Oh, sweet, unsweaty, 20.95 percent oxygen air, how I love you!”
Nick gave the inside of the head a sniff, then scowled and went pale.
“All right. Let’s see who’s behind all this,” Tesla said.
She walked to the other owl, bent down beside him, and ripped off his head.
“Oh,” she said, stepping back from the stranger beneath the mask. “Who the heck are you?”
Staring back up at Tesla was a red-faced man with cracked, crooked glasses and a dark goatee.
“Mark!” Uncle Newt said. “I’m disappointed in you! Don’t think I won’t tell the Multinational Alliance of Developmental Scientists about this!”
“Is that Mark Carstairs?” asked Nick. “The designer who got fired when the Hall of Genius wouldn’t work?”
“It is, indeed.”
The man tried to say something, but all that came out was a wheeze. His face was turning a dark purple.
“Maybe you ought to let the guy breathe, Silas,” Tesla suggested.
“Right.” Silas slid off the man’s back but remained hovering over him, ready to slam on him again at a moment’s notice. “We don’t want him to smother before he tells us where DeMarco is.”
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