by Paul Tobin
“Oh, Delphine,” Maculte said. “Do I look like a man who keeps my promises?”
The needle came closer.
I was thinking of how, if Nate and I couldn’t stop Maculte, he’d find the Infinite Engine and then he’d have all the power he’d ever need. Enough power that a single one of his disintegrator pistols would be enough to wipe out the entire world. He’d have a threat that nobody could stop. Everything would be lost. Everything would just be the dark, gray world of Maculte, devoid of art, passion, love, and friendship.
The needle came closer.
It touched the skin of my arm.
And all the doors in the hallway opened.
“I wouldn’t touch her, if I were you,” I heard. It was Nate’s voice. And he sounded colder than he normally does. It wasn’t an “it’s snowing and I’m accidentally outside in my underwear” type of cold, but the good kind of cold, an “action-movie” voice, at that moment where the hero’s eyes narrow and the villain knows he’s in trouble.
“Nathan?” Maculte said. He still had the tip of the needle against my arm. My arm felt cold. The “please don’t inject me with that needle” kind of cold.
“It’s me,” Nate’s voice said. I still couldn’t see him, but then, of course, ever since I became friends with Nate, I’ve learned that there are a lot of things I can’t see. Nate says it’s because our eyes can only perceive certain wavelengths, meaning that if light hits them with longer or shorter waves, then we just don’t see them. They’re effectively invisible. I won’t pretend to understand it. I can only deal with what I can see. Like, for instance, Maculte’s leg.
I kicked him.
“Arghh!” he hissed. I quickly jumped away from the range of his needle, but he was coming closer, lunging for me, hopping on one leg. He jabbed at me with the tea-dripping point of his needle, but I managed to grab the silver tray and use it to block the attack.
The needle broke.
And so did all the teacups and the teapot as they fell from the tray, shattering on the floor as they hit, as if they’d been just waiting for their chance to explode.
“No!” Maculte yelled in dismay. It was clear that the serving set had meant something to him. He went down on one knee and started scrabbling at the remains of the teacups as if they were a puzzle he could simply piece together. I almost felt sorry for him.
“Guhh!” he said, when I hit him over the head with the silver tray, which was quite heavy. It looked like it hurt. Once again, I almost felt sorry for him. You might note that I’m not saying I did feel sorry for him; I’m saying that I almost felt sorry for him.
There’s a difference.
There’s also, unfortunately, a difference between how hard I hit Maculte and how hard I needed to hit him in order to knock him out. He was reeling, but managed to get to his feet. When I tried to hit him again with the serving tray, he blocked it, then he pressed a button on his cuff link and the serving tray just weirdly . . . melted. I mean, it didn’t get hot or anything; it just . . . went liquid. Like it was thick water. Maybe yogurt? Pudding? Whatever it turned into, it splooshed all over my arm and down onto the floor.
Maculte pressed another button on his cuff links. There was a hissing noise, and then the air all around him began sparkling. Like glitter. Maculte straightened his tie, smiled at me, and made a slapping motion with his hand, slapping at nothing but air.
He was five feet from me.
But the air around me went . . . hard . . . and I whooshed up into the air and was flung backward.
“Brute force,” Maculte said. “I normally abhor it. Removing an opponent from the playing field should be done with finesse. But, that said, there’s a certain primal satisfaction in crushing a pawn with a club.” He waved his hand again. The air swirled around me. A gust of wind picked me up and slammed me to the floor. I was dazed. Out of breath. I couldn’t seem to inhale. It felt like the air was avoiding my nose, remaining just out of reach. I was starting to choke.
And then I saw Nate run past me.
He wasn’t wearing a shirt.
Also, he wasn’t wearing any pants.
Nate was only in his underwear, which had a picture of Isaac Newton on one side of his rear, and on the other side was Rosalind Franklin, meaning the woman who was instrumental in the discovery of DNA. It was odd underwear, but of course Nate is normally quite odd, and right then he was as odd as I’d ever seen him.
Because he was entirely painted green.
“Nate?” I said.
“Nathan?” Maculte said. He was pressing his vest buttons, tapping on the knot of his tie, using a small bottle to spritz some cologne onto his cheeks, and he’d taken a flask of tea from inside his jacket and was gulping from it. He was a flurry of activity.
“Why are you green?” I asked Nate, struggling to my feet. I expected Nate to help me up, but he was avoiding my touch.
“Green?” Maculte said, staring even more intensely at Nate. He made the color sound ominous.
Nate said, “Well, I had a thought.” He grinned. Maculte frowned. Nate’s thoughts can be a pretty big deal.
Nate said, “As I was working on the nuclear paint, down below in the tunnel, I determined there was a 98.7 percent chance that Delphine could defeat everyone in the house. She’s that resourceful.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“But if you were here”—he pointed to Maculte—“then the odds went down to a 21.8 percent chance of her lasting for the full hour I needed, and there was even a 17.2 percent chance that she would not survive. I found that unacceptable.”
I said, “I also find that unacceptable.”
Nate said, “So I needed to do something drastic, because it was likely that when I came up from the tunnels we would be at a disadvantage.”
“Do something?” Maculte laughed. “What could you possibly do? You’re just two children.” He took a step forward.
“That’s true,” Nate said.
Maculte took another step forward.
“And you’re not even carrying any weapons,” Maculte said.
“That’s also true,” Nate said.
Maculte took a step forward.
“And I’ve sent away all your friends,” Maculte said. “The bees are gone.”
“So I see,” Nate said.
Maculte took a step forward.
He was only about four feet away, and he’d reached into his jacket and pulled out another needle.
“And I’m protected by a force field now,” Maculte said.
“Absolutely true,” Nate said.
Maculte took a step forward. I bent down, all without taking my eyes off Maculte, and grabbed up a few shards of the broken teacups. I tossed them at Maculte, curious to see what he was talking about. The shards hit the area where the air was sparkling, and the sparks went brighter and . . . sizzled. And then the shards were gone. Simply gone.
“You can’t hurt me,” Maculte laughed.
“Now that,” Nate said. “That’s not true.”
Maculte stopped. He considered what Nate had said. He took a sudden breath, but then . . . with eyes narrowed . . . he calmed himself and took a step forward. He reached inside his suit and brought out one of those strange glass handguns, meaning he now had the gun in one hand and the needle with the poison tea in his other. And there was madness in his eyes. But his lips . . . they trembled.
“What do you mean it’s not true?” he asked Nate.
“I could easily hurt you,” Nate said. “It’s not like I painted myself green because I have incredibly poor fashion sense.”
I coughed discreetly.
“The nuclear paint, then?” Maculte said, as if admitting something he already knew.
“Yes,” Nate said. “The nuclear paint. Of course.”
“It’s so obvious,” Maculte said, nodding.
I held up my hand.
They both looked at me.
I said, “I have a question. What’s all this about nuclear paint?”
They both looked at me.
I said, “Look, maybe it’s obvious to two geniuses, but I’m a fairly common sort of sixth grade girl and I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not sure I’d categorize you as common,” Nate said. “For instance, only 3.8 percent of the world population has red hair. And you’ve fought a giant cat, and commanded a horde of bumblebees. That’s uncommon.”
“Nate,” I said. Just his name. But I used the voice that my mom uses on my dad. It never fails to make him blush and stammer an apology.
“Oh,” Nate said. “Sorry. You’re not talking about the law of averages, you mean common like . . . not a genius. Meaning you want me to explain why I’m wearing the green paint, owing to how you’re nervous about Maculte because he has a gun and a poison needle, and now I’m babbling because I think you’re going to be mad at me when I tell you that I scraped off all the nuclear paint from the walls down below and covered myself with it, so that I’ve become a walking nuclear bomb, and the temperature of my own body could trigger an event if it rises too high.”
All I’d done was say his name and he’d gone off babbling. Had he blushed? It was hard to tell, since he was covered in green paint. Or he was covered in a nuclear bomb. Your choice.
I said, “When you say, ‘trigger an event,’ you’re still not talking about a party, are you? You’re talking about explosions again, right?”
“That’s correct,” Maculte said. “A nuclear explosion.” He had his gun trained on Nate. The needle was pointed toward me. “But such an action is madness. You simply must be joking, Nathan. It’s true the explosion would stop me, easily overcoming my force field, but even a contained nuclear explosion would destroy this entire block, including you and that uncommon redhead.” He shook the needle at me. A droplet of tea was flung off the tip of the needle and splashed onto the wall. It sizzled.
“It was the only way to stop you,” Nate said. He reached into a hall closet and brought out his dad’s favorite broom and dustpan, the ones painted with racing stripes, and began to calmly sweep up the remains of the tea set as if we were in no danger at all. “If I don’t stop you, I calculate a 97.3 percent chance that you’ll take over the world, which would be a disaster.”
“A 98.87 percent chance,” Maculte said. “And it would not be a disaster. It would be good for the cattle that you call humanity to serve me, to show me the respect I deserve. Most humans, after all, are little more than the greedy termites you set on my tea crop. Termites that I’ve now eliminated, Nathan. Termites that—”
“You’re ranting,” Nate said. “Please don’t. My point is, I knew I had to stop you, even at the cost of my own life, so I covered myself with nuclear paint, and now if I get too stressed my body temperature will rise and the heat will act as a catalyst, causing a detonation. Hold this, will you?” He held out the dustpan to Maculte.
Maculte stared at the dustpan. His eyes narrowed. He looked to Nate. Then to me. I could almost see the calculations being worked in his head. Odds were being weighed. Actions considered. At several points he opened his mouth to speak, but then his mouth snapped closed. And through it all, Nate, with that smile of his, was just holding out the dustpan with a steady hand.
“You would sacrifice your own life for the good of others?” Maculte finally asked. Nate nodded. The dustpan didn’t waver.
“Not something you understand, is it?” I asked Maculte. “Self-sacrifice? Doing something for others?”
“It’s absurd!” he said. It came out as a snarl. He glared at me, and then at Nate. There was so much hate in his eyes that I had to look away, but Nate only cleared his throat in a meaningful way and gestured with the dustpan. The air in the hallway seemed heavy, thick as water. Being so close to Nate, I could smell the paint on his skin. It was like the smell of a gas station, or of spilled lemonade, and it burnt my nose, a little.
With a grunt of rage, Maculte pulled the trigger of his gun and the table in the hall burst into . . . nothing. It simply disintegrated. Maculte hissed with fury, and I jumped a bit, but Nate didn’t so much as shiver. He simply gestured with the dustpan, again.
“You’re nothing to me!” Maculte said. “Nothing!” He stomped on the floor. The sound echoed down the hallway. I could hear myself breathing. I could hear the electric hum of the strange glass gun in Maculte’s hands. There was a breeze coming through the open window, making the nearest door creak an inch or two, back and forth, swaying. Creak. Creak. Creeeeak.
Nate gestured with the dustpan.
He said, “I’m getting tired of holding this out. It’s a lot of effort. Hope it’s not too much exertion, raising my heart rate.”
Maculte looked to his gun. To Nate. He turned and kicked the wall in a childish display of temper. He started to say something to me, but I shook my head and reached out to tap on the dustpan in Nate’s hand. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Maculte let out a long, disgusted, heaving sigh, and he took the dustpan from Nate’s hands, and that’s how I found myself watching the most dangerous man in the entire world, a supreme genius unrivaled by anyone except Nate, bending down to hold the dustpan while my green-painted classmate whisked the shards of the broken tea set into it.
“This is humiliating,” Maculte complained.
“What’s humiliating is a tea leaf tattooed on your rump,” I said. It just sort of slipped out. I have a habit of saying what’s on my mind, of speaking up at the wrong time, and a further habit of not feeling sorry about it. “Do you guys really do that?” Nate had told me that every member of the Red Death Tea Society has a tea leaf tattooed on their bottom.
“It’s a show of solidarity,” Maculte said. “A badge of commitment.” I could tell I’d offended him. He was trembling with fury, holding the dustpan, looking for a wastebasket. I knew there was one in Nate’s room so I ducked inside and grabbed it, then came back out and held it for him. With a look of anguish, Maculte allowed the debris of his tea set to fall into the trash.
“Still pretty silly,” I argued. Maculte turned to face me, shivering with rage. I could tell he wanted to press some of those buttons on his cuff links again, but he didn’t dare. Attacking me would make Nate angry, and Nate’s body temperature would rise, and . . . well . . . boom. Not good. Of course, it wouldn’t be good for me, either.
“What now, Nathan?” Maculte asked. “Do you allow me to be further tormented by this crimson-haired girl, or am I free to go?”
“Put your gun and that needle in the trash can, please,” Nate said. Maculte had put his weapons on the floor when he was helping Nate to sweep. Now, he picked them up again and . . . with a moment of hesitation . . . dropped them in the wastebasket.
“There’s a button on the side of the wastebasket,” Nate told him. “Press it.” The wastebasket was made of metal and had an image of Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. The button was right on his nose. Maculte pressed the button, and there was a brief flare of light from inside the wastebasket and then it was empty. Everything inside was just . . . gone.
“Hmpff,” Maculte said. “And, now what?”
“I’ve called the proper authorities. You and Luria are going into custody.”
I thought Maculte would get mad when Nate said that, or become nervous, or do anything but softly smile. But softly smile is what he did. He tried to hide it, but he wasn’t a very talented actor.
“Something amusing?” Nate asked him.
“No. Of course not. I’m to be taken into custody, then?”
“Yes,” Nate said. “Please step outside.” He used the broom to point down the hall, toward the front door. Maculte went first. Nate and I followed at a safe distance, although of course I was walking next to a nuclear bomb, so my idea of “safety” was perhaps a bit off.
“I have to say, this is well done, besting me like this,” Maculte said, looking back. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider my offer to join my society?”
“I’m sure,” Nate said.
“And
how about you?” Maculte said, looking back to me.
“Me? I’m not into getting tea leaves tattooed on my butt. Or being evil.”
By then we’d reached the yard. I could hear sirens in the distance, and a strange sort of rustling in the hedges next to the house. Splitting a bit off from Nate, I investigated the rustling, cautiously peering through the thick branches of the hedge along the house, and then yelping when I saw two eyes staring back at me.
“Ahh!” I blurted.
“The dog is here!” Bosper said.
“Bosper?”
“The dog is stuck,” he whined.
“Stuck?” Now that I could see him better, I could see how he was hanging in the branches, two feet off the ground, all four of his feet wiggling in midair.
“Door was not opens,” he said. “Dog leaped through window! Heroic drama! Then . . . stuck.” I reached inside the hedges and rescued the terrier, telling him, “The police will be here soon. We’ve caught Maculte. Nate is a nuclear bomb.”
“The dog does not understand,” Bosper said.
“Me, either, really. But . . . we win anyway.” Bosper and I hurried to catch up with Nate and Maculte. They were standing on the sidewalk. I could hear the sirens getting closer, closer. They were only a few blocks away.
“Sounds like they’re almost here,” I said. A couple of cars drove by. I was nervous. Maculte was sneering. Nate was just . . . Nate. Bosper sneezed a couple of times, and then moved upwind of Nate. I could understand that, since Nate’s nuclear body paint reeked like a gas station even to my nose, and Bosper’s nose was a few thousand times more sensitive.
“Urggll,” I heard. I looked beneath the tree house, from where Luria was staggering closer. The bumblebees had really done a number on her. A big number. She basically looked like a pumpkin patch.
“What’s happening?” she asked. She probably narrowed her eyes, but it was very difficult to tell.
“You lose,” I said. “Nate called the police. You’re going to jail.” Luria looked to me, and she probably sneered (again, it was hard to tell), and then she looked to Maculte, who shrugged in return, admitting the truth. Luria, with a few moments of hesitation, shuffled over and stood next to him. I would’ve felt some pity for her, but . . . she’d shot Sir William.