How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees

by Paul Tobin

  “What’s up with all the flowers?” Nate said. He was squinting at the windshield.

  “Flowers?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Nate said, tapping on the windshield. “This is a bed of flowers. Well, it’s how a bee would see a . . . Oh. I get it.” He turned from the windshield and looked to Melville, who was buzzing in the air a few inches away from the windshield, occasionally thumping against it, then retreating with that buzz of hers that I’ve come to understand means confusion or frustration.

  Nate said, “Interesting. The windshield is picking up Melville’s thought patterns. I’ll need to study that later. Hadn’t thought it was possible!” He was positively radiant. A bit handsome, too, in those new clothes of his. He was dressed exactly like I would prefer my boyfriend to dress, if I had a boyfriend, which I don’t.

  “How come you can see like a bee?” I asked.

  “Oh. Remember when I put on that mechanical dog’s nose?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It was the first day I met you.”

  “Right. I’ve streamlined that technology so I can smell like a dog can, all without wearing the nose.”

  “Bees are not dogs,” I said, happy to throw a little science in Nate’s direction, for once.

  “No. They’re not. But I enjoy developing skills, so as long as I was working on the dog’s nose I invented a way to see what insects are seeing, and also sonar like a bat, and I can sometimes jump like a kangaroo.”

  “You’re like . . . the best crazy person I know.”

  “Thanks!” Nate said. He gestured to his bag in the backseat and added, “I use pills for the abilities. Kind of. They’re more like tablets with nano-bots inside that give me temporary powers.”

  “So if I swallowed one, then I could do all these strange things, too?”

  “Yep. I could make some for you, if you’d like.”

  “Naww. Don’t bother. I don’t want any super-cool abilities.”

  “Oh. Okay.” He shrugged.

  “Uhh, Nate?” I said. “You really need to create a tablet that gives you the ability to detect sarcasm. But, do that later. Now, we should find those transmitters before the city is overrun with bumblebees.”

  “Right,” Nate said, and his brow furrowed for just a moment, and the map of Polt came back on the windshield. Melville buzzed in disappointment, landing on my shoulder. I carefully petted her.

  Nate said, “Here’s where the rest of the transmitters are at.” The map had four red dots. The first was at Popples, a dot that Nate said represented Gordon Stott. And there was another red dot at Tommy Brilp’s house (Tommy, obviously, and it was actually over his garage), and another at Plove Park (apparently, it was Kip Luppert), and there was a dot for Marigold Tina at Polt Middle School, the home of the Crimson Pterodactyls.

  “Nice,” I said. “So you’re tracking our classmates with the transmitters.”

  “Sure,” Nate said. But just like I’ve grown to understand what Melville means when she buzzes in a certain way, I’ve also come to understand certain tones of Nathan Bannister’s voice. This time, the undercurrent of Nate’s voice was saying, “Sure. Although there’s more to it that I’m not telling you.”

  “What are you not telling me?” I asked.

  “Oh, uh . . . it’s not only our classmates with the transmitters I’m tracking.” He tried to stop talking but I gave him a Delphine Special (my best glare) and he reluctantly added, “I guess I track the rest of our classmates, too.” Many more red dots appeared on the map.

  “And?” I said. I still wasn’t liking Nate’s tone of voice.

  “And the rest of the entire school,” Nate admitted. Lots of new dots on the map.

  “And?” I said. Melville buzzed next to me, adding in what was, I’m quite sure, a very menacing bee frown.

  “And most of the rest of the town,” Nate conceded. The map basically exploded with red dots, far too many of them to make any sense of it. They almost buried the map.

  “Kind of creepy, Nate,” I said. “But for now, let’s just take it down to our friends with the secret transmitters, and deal with them one at a time.” He nodded, and the map returned to having only four red dots, and then the windshield screen showed a crystal-clear view of Popples, the restaurant. I wasn’t sure why.

  “Why is it showing that?” I asked.

  “Because that’s what’s outside,” Nate said. “It’s not projecting mental images anymore.” He tapped the windshield and said, “Just glass, now. We’re here.” Nate opened the door and got out, heading for Popples. Melville flew out the window and hovered, waiting for me. I stuck my head out the side window and, sure enough, we actually were at Popples.

  “It’s a strange world,” I said.

  “It sure is,” said Betsy, the car.

  Welcome to Popples,” the woman at the counter said. “What would you like?”

  “Some sanity,” I said, emphatically.

  “Excuse me?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, just some Popples fries and a lemonade.” This time, the clerk only nodded and began entering my order in the register. She was a bit old to be working at a fast-food restaurant. Possibly in her late twenties. And she was too . . . too something. She looked like she belonged strolling through Paris’s Left Bank fashion district, because she was somehow managing to make even the Popples uniform (green and red, with an image of a cow and chicken looking bewildered while being catapulted into space) look stylish.

  She had black hair, a sharp nose, and immaculate skin.

  Her name tag said “Lorie.”

  Melville didn’t like her.

  “Oh, you have a bee?” Lorie said. There was the briefest of hesitations as she frowned at Melville on my shoulder. “Should I kill it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Bzzz,” Melville said, with a bit of menace.

  Nate said, “I’ll have a Turkey Meteor and a glass of ice water, please. Also . . . a side order of Popples potato poppers.”

  “Sure thing!” Lorie said, still frowning at Melville.

  While we were waiting for our food at the counter, I looked around the restaurant, searching for Gordon Stott. It wasn’t a very long search, because it wasn’t very crowded. There were three men sitting together, all of them in dark suits, wearing sunglasses, intently staring at a basket of chicken poppers on the table in front of them. Occasionally, one of them would reach out and eat one. They didn’t look my way, and they weren’t talking at all.

  At another table were three women dressed like teenagers in some music video, except they were at least a decade too old to be dressed like that. They were loudly talking about classes in their high school, and events in their high school, and teachers in their high school, and so on.

  But . . . no Gordon Stott.

  “Is that bee a pet, then?” Lorie asked.

  “A friend,” I said. Melville buzzed in appreciation.

  “How strange,” Lorie said, but I was barely looking at her, because Nate was subtly trying to get my attention.

  I should explain about Nate and his subtly. Much like how sarcasm goes completely over his head, subtly is also lost to him. While he can apparently grasp the very nature of the universe, the theories of subtlety remain far too complex for the genius that is Nathan Bannister. So while most people who wanted to act subtle would have cleared their throats in a meaningful way, or perhaps tugged on my shirt, Nate had a different tactic.

  He said, “Delphine, I need to talk to you privately, without her overhearing us.” He pointed to Lorie. She raised an eyebrow.

  I said, “Well, that’s real subtle, Nate.”

  “Was it?” he said. “Good. I was worried.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “Oh. I missed it.”

  “Yeah. You did.” I pulled him away from the counter, then whispered, “What did you need to talk to me about?”

  “Tea.”

  “Did you want me to order some for you?�
� I asked. “I thought you just wanted water?” I turned to Melville and added, “How about you? Do you want anything?”

  Nate said, “I don’t want tea. I meant that I believe we’ve walked into a trap.”

  “No. We walked into a fast-food restaurant. It’s almost the same thing, though.”

  “I mean . . . the Red Death Tea Society. I think . . . they’re here.” When he said that, my stomach flipped a bit. I tried to look subtly around the restaurant, and I like to think that I have a bit more ability in that area than Nathan Bannister. I had Melville fly off my shoulder and buzz across the seating area, with me following her around, making it seem as if I was trying to get her to land on my hand, but in reality just using it as an excuse to get a better look at everyone.

  And I realized Nate was right. The men at their table and the women pretending to be in high school, they had the horrible lean menace of assassins. They were furtively staring at us, or pointedly not looking toward us, and they were clenching their fingers and they positively reeked of tea.

  The Red Death Tea Society was there in the restaurant.

  And we were in trouble.

  “Hmm,” I said. Then I looked over to Nate, back at the counter, and gave him a subtle nod of my head.

  “Find anything suspicious?” he called out.

  “What? Uh, no! Just, uh, looking for a place to sit. That’s all I’m doing.”

  “Did you notice how everyone is drinking tea?” Nate said, loud. I’d been hurrying back to him, trying to stop him from saying anything else that would blow the game, but with that, I slid to a stop. And, yes . . . I had noticed that everyone was drinking tea. The men in their suits, the women pretending to be teenagers . . . they all had extra-large cups of tea. They were all assassins, and Nate was right; we’d walked into a trap.

  Lorie strode out from behind the counter and locked the front door. Was she one of the assassins?

  “I suppose you know who we are,” she said.

  “I don’t have the slightest idea,” I answered. Maybe if Nate and I pretended we didn’t know who we were up against, then we could catch them by surprise and—

  “The Red Death Tea Society,” Nate said, looking around the seating area. He paused, then gestured to Lorie and said, “You’re Luria Pevermore.”

  “Huh?” I said. “She is?” Luria is the brilliant but deadly chemist, second in command for the Red Death Tea Society.

  “Of course,” the woman said. With that, there was a slight wrinkling in the air, like ripples moving across the room, and a disguise fell away from Luria, revealing her true self. We could see her wide mouth, her green eyes, and high cheekbones. A few freckles appeared on her cheeks and arms. Her hair changed from black to red, like mine, though hers was darker. I wouldn’t say it was more luxurious or any silkier, but, well, okay . . . it was. Mine curls a bit.

  Her smile went darker. Smaller. Crueler.

  The men in the suits stood from their table, holding their teas in one hand and some particularly interesting pistols in their other hands. The weapons looked like science-fiction ray guns made of glass, and I was somewhat curious to know exactly what they could do, but not at all interested in any demonstrations.

  “And I suppose the two of you know how we managed to surprise you here,” Luria said, gesturing to Popples.

  I said, “I don’t have the slightest idea.”

  “Of course,” Nate said. “You must have used pulsed light to refract your signatures.” I slid closer to Nate and nodded with what he’d said. Pulsed light. Refracted signatures. Of course. It seemed so obvious, now. (I had no idea what he was talking about.)

  “And do you understand what’s going to happen now?” Luria said. She’d walked a few steps closer. Her shoes squeaked on the tiles, and the sound matched that of the straw in her plastic cup when she sipped her tea.

  The three women who were pretending to be teenagers had torn away their horrible fashions to reveal dark red bodysuits that hugged their every curve, and also every curve of all the weapons they had stashed all over. Their eyes were narrowed, intent, not even taking their gaze off Nate and me whenever they had a drink of their tea.

  I raised my hand.

  Luria looked to me.

  “Yes, Delphine?” she said.

  “Can I go to the bathroom?”

  “Now?”

  “Standoffs make me queasy.”

  “You’ll have to hold it,” Luria said. Her every move was like that of a snake. I was trying to decide if she was exceptionally limber or if she used special tablets similar to Nate’s, except that while his could make him see the world through a bee’s eyes, her tablets made her as sinuous as a snake.

  Eww. I don’t like snakes.

  I was trying to come up with a good way to go to the bathroom (this was not the first stage of an amazing escape plan: it was the first, only, and quite desperate stage of an “I need to go to the bathroom” plan) when I heard Melville buzzing. She’d landed on Nate’s hand. From the corner of my eye, I could see that Nate had worked a black pill of some sort out from his pocket and into his fingers. Then, quite casually, he let his hand drop at his side, holding the pill between two of his fingers. Melville grabbed the pill and took to the air. Flying. Slowly. I could tell she was straining. The pill was almost as big as she was.

  “What do you want?” Nate asked Luria. “You already know I’ll never give you the Infinite Engine. Just leave us in peace.”

  “No,” Luria said. “No, never that. It’s true that Maculte holds tight to his hopes of you joining us, aiding us, but . . . I’ve studied you, Nathan Bannister. You don’t see the world the way I do. The way we do.” She gestured to the others, with her hand barely missing the unnoticed Melville as my bee lugged the tablet through the air.

  Luria said, “And because you don’t see the world properly, because you’re no good with tools, because—”

  “Nate’s really good with tools!” I said, speaking up because one of the women in the bodysuits had noticed Melville and was starting to frown, and I needed to distract her. Also, Nate totally is good with tools. Not only hammers and saws and that sort of thing, but the last time I was over at his place we’d been in his tree house (one of his four laboratories, and the one with the best ventilation and the most squirrels) and he’d showed me a set of tools that looked like tiny metal squids or something, with just . . . weird things flailing all over. They were tools of his own invention. And he was good with them.

  Nate told me, “Luria means other people. She calls them ‘tools.’”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Precisely,” Luria said. “Compared to my intellect, a normal human is no more intelligent than a rubber mallet. It would insult my genius to treat them as my equal. It’s the duty of the Red Death Tea Society to educate others.”

  “Educate them?” I said. That didn’t sound so bad. Education is good, right?

  “She means treat them like slaves,” Nate said. “To show them their proper place. Maculte and Luria believe that it’s the duty of anyone they believe is less intelligent . . . meaning everyone else . . . to serve. The ultimate goal of the Red Death Tea Society is to construct a servant class. To assign numerical codes that quantify everyone’s worth, and to force them to stay within the boundaries allowed by their assigned numbers.”

  “Oh,” I said. “That type of evil.” Melville was still hefting the pill across the room. She’d had to take a rest stop, landing on a table. There was a very small click when she landed and the tablet hit the table. I could hear her gasping for air, clearly exhausted from carrying the pill. It would’ve been like me trying to pick up a refrigerator and then running with it.

  Luria said, “Nathan, you may have managed to distract our leader for a time, but his work continues. While he’s eradicating the termite infestation in our tea crops, I’ve been entrusted with continuing to destroy this city. And you along with it. You will be dissected. Your brain studied. Probed for its secrets. Why should I s
imply steal the Infinite Engine when I can steal the brain that made it?”

  “Boring,” Nate said. He yawned, covering his mouth with his hand. I was the only one who noticed him swallowing one of the black pills, using the yawn to disguise what he was doing. Melville, meanwhile, had taken flight again. She’d pushed the pill to the edge of the table, grabbed it with her legs, and then launched off into the air, falling almost to the floor before adjusting to the weight and regaining some height. I could hear her straining.

  “Boring?” Luria said. She’d taken out a small device, one that looked like a pencil made of braided wires. “Then let’s see if we can’t make this more exciting.” She slid the device along the top of a table and there was a horrible sound, like when a muffler is hanging low off a car, grating against concrete, dragging on the pavement. There was a tiny puff of smoke. The table fell in half. There was a smell of fresh bread. It was a pleasant smell, not acrid at all.

  “Congratulations,” Nate said. “You’ve invented a passably interesting saw.”

  I said, “Sorry, but I seriously do need to go to the bathroom.” Nobody paid me any attention, though I guess even if I’d been excused to go off to the toilets, there was no way that I was going to leave Nate alone. Luria had been talking about . . . dissecting him? Seriously? I was shuffling closer to Nate, wanting to protect him, but he was a good ten feet away. The woman in the bodysuit, the one who’d noticed Melville, was walking closer, openly staring at my bee as Melville strained across the room toward me. Melville was only a yard away from me, and I thought about stepping forward, but at that moment Luria reached out and clamped a hand on my shoulder.

  She was cold.

  Like, cold . . . wrong.

  “Brrrr,” I said, shivering, and it did not help with how seriously I needed to go to the bathroom. I thought about saying something about how cold Luria was, but then I abruptly had a really good view of the cutting device in her hand, because she put it on my forehead, right between my eyes.

  There was that strong smell of fresh bread. But it wasn’t so pleasant anymore.

  “Not just a saw,” Luria said. “It’s also a quark-level scanner. When it divides material, such as Delphine, it scans at the same time, revealing secrets at a subatomic level. Would you like an exhibition?”