The Extraordinary Colors of Auden Dare

by Zillah Bethell

  Vivi stepped forward. “We’ll never know unless we try. Come on.”

  The three of us strolled as casually as we could possibly manage toward the gate. The guard—having given up with the chewing gum—glared at us as we approached, his rifle at the ready.

  “Halt!” he shouted.

  We stopped.

  “Who goes there? What do you want?”

  “We are here to see Dr. Milo Treble,” Vivi called back, her voice strong and confident. If she was as scared as I was, she certainly didn’t show it. “Dr. Milo Treble in the Fleming Building.”

  “Do you have an appointment?” the guard asked.

  “No. But we are here on a matter of the utmost importance.” Vivi obviously thought that that was a clever thing to say, and she gave me a nod to highlight just how clever she thought it was.

  The guard, though, wasn’t impressed. “Doesn’t make any difference. No appointment means no entry.” He waved the rifle toward us. “Now run along or I shall have to shoot you for acting in a threatening way.”

  We all stood there for a while, astounded at just how abrupt our visit had been.

  “Go on.” The guard waggled the rifle up and down. “Off you go now.”

  “Come on,” Paragon muttered. “Let’s go.”

  “But—” I began.

  “No buts. Let’s go.”

  He turned around and slowly started walking back from where we had just come, his shoulders slumped.

  Vivi and I just stared at each other before racing off to catch up with Paragon.

  “You can’t just leave,” I said as I came alongside him. “You said Treble could help you. Why didn’t you try harder to get in?”

  Paragon said nothing. He just kept on walking.

  “I’m sure they’ll let us in if we just explain the situation to them,” Vivi argued as she skipped to keep up. “Don’t you think?”

  Paragon marched on, his head bowed.

  “I thought you were stronger than that,” I growled. “I thought you would at least try. For goodness’ sake, I thought you were brave.”

  Paragon stopped dead.

  “Don’t worry, Auden,” he said. “I haven’t given up yet.” He turned and looked back at the guard, who’d gone back to his previous occupation of trying to pry chewing gum off the road with his toe. Suddenly, Paragon started walking away from the road and over the tumps of stringy grass. Vivi and I followed. “You see, we’re not going to get in through the front door.…”

  “So we’ll get in through the back door! Of course.” Paragon had not given up after all. He was simply thinking out of the box!

  “Or the side door at least. Come on.”

  We trudged over the earth until the guard disappeared from sight and all we could see was the wire fence, buzzing and clicking like a fly trapped in a bathroom. The fence eventually turned back on itself by about ninety degrees and we continued to follow it. A few hundred yards later, Paragon stopped.

  “This is probably good enough,” he said. He slipped off both of his gloves and handed them to Vivi. “Now, whatever you do, do not touch me while I’m connected. Okay? It could kill you.”

  We both nodded and automatically took a step back.

  Paragon moved closer to the fence and brought up his left hand. It sat just a couple of inches away from the fence.

  “Paragon!” Vivi squeaked.

  Paragon looked toward Vivi and whispered, “Shhh.”

  Suddenly, Paragon reached out and grabbed the fence with his hand, gripping it with his fingers. A couple of sparks flew from the fence and Paragon gave a small judder, making his hat slide off.

  “Paragon?” I asked. “Paragon? Are you okay?”

  He didn’t answer. It was like he was miles away, dreaming of something else, the lights for his eyes stuttering on and off.

  “Is he okay?” Vivi looked worried.

  Then he started talking.

  “Dr. Milo Treble is here today. He electronically signed in at eight thirty-five this morning. There are three armed guards on duty in the complex. The one at the gate and two patrolling the grounds. One of those guards follows a route that passes the Fleming Building every sixteen minutes or so. The last time he passed it was seven minutes ago, meaning we have nine minutes left in which to enter the building.”

  “We could wait until he’s passed again,” Vivi said. “That would give us the full sixteen minutes in which to get in.”

  “Nope,” Paragon replied. “That guard is about to take his lunch break in the guards’ room, which overlooks the entrance to the Fleming Building. If we wait now, we’ll be waiting for well over an hour. During that time, two Scoot drones fly over the area to check the periphery of the site.”

  “But you can disable drones from a distance, can’t you?” I said.

  Paragon shook his head. “This is open country. If they fly across from the other side of the park then they might well spot us before they are close enough for me to disable them.”

  “But how are we going to get in?”

  Paragon—still holding on to the fence with his left hand—lifted up his right hand with the index finger extended. Then the weirdest thing happened. The tip of the finger twisted completely back on itself, exposing a tiny pipe. Suddenly a fierce flame about an inch long started burning. Paragon brought it up to the fence and started cutting away at the wires, melting through them like butter.

  “Won’t they be able to detect that?” I wondered out loud. “They’ll know the fence is damaged and send the guards to get us, won’t they?”

  “Nope. I’m redirecting the flow of the electricity around the gap I’m making. They won’t suspect a thing.”

  If you’d told me a few months earlier that I would find myself standing in the middle of the Cambridgeshire countryside with a friend from school and a robot, cutting our way through an electric fence to break into a science park in order to try to talk to a man none of us had ever met before, I’d’ve laughed. But, as it was, it seemed perfectly natural for us all to be there.

  In fact, it almost felt like fate.

  Paragon worked steadily through the wires and, after about four minutes, the last wire was sliced and a wide section of the fence big enough for us to crawl through fell to the ground.

  “There.” He pulled his left hand away from the fence. “Let’s go.”

  Paragon went first, followed by Vivi and then me.

  “The Fleming Building is that way. Now walk normally. Don’t attract attention.”

  I half laughed to myself, thinking of the way the driver of the first bus stared at Paragon. Dressed the way he was it was hard for him not to attract attention.

  Then, from out of nowhere, a small electric van zoomed past.

  Quickly, Paragon turned us around and pointed up at something as if he was an adult showing us something incredible in the sky and we were two little children fascinated by whatever it was. The van went on without stopping and disappeared way in the distance.

  “Come on.”

  We carried on down a long, dull road before turning a corner onto another long, dull road. The whole area seemed like it was deserted. Clearly many of the people who normally worked here were off fighting.

  “There it is.” Paragon nodded up ahead.

  THE ALEXANDER FLEMING BUILDING, read the flowery sign on the lawn directly in front of it.

  We sped up and walked up the steps to the vast glass door. I gave the door a push but it didn’t budge.

  “Look.” Vivi pointed.

  The door was locked and the large touch-sensitive pad on the wall next to it revealed that it could only be unlocked by somebody with a registered handprint.

  “We can’t get in,” I moaned.

  “Paragon. How long have we got?” asked Vivi.

  “One minute exactly.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “Aha! Stand back.” Paragon stood in front of the touch-sensitive pad and held up his right hand yet again. This time i
t was the tip of the smallest finger that flipped backward, revealing a needlelike wire. Paragon felt around the pad before inserting the wire into it. The pad glowed bright and then faded.

  “Now, Auden. Put your hand on the pad.”

  “But it won’t recognize my handprint.”

  “No, it won’t. But in the millionth of a second during which it questions your handprint I am going to register you on the system. Essentially, I am going to race their computer. Okay? You ready?”

  I positioned myself next to Paragon, my hand flattened and ready to hit the pad.

  “Okay. Go.”

  I put my hand on the screen and less than a second later the glass door whooshed open.

  “You did it!”

  “Phew! It was close, though. They’ve got some efficient software here. I only just got there in time. It required me making several thousand nano-bypasses to be able to do it.”

  “That must have been the quickest race ever,” Vivi said with a smile as we rushed into the hallway of the Fleming Building. Outside, we could see the guard coming down the road, swinging his gun as he headed toward his lunch.

  CHAPTER 18

  MILO TREBLE

  The building was utterly silent. It was almost as if it was due to be demolished and everyone had vacated it, leaving it hollow and echoey. As we made our way up the granite stairs, our footsteps bounced around the stairwell like intruders and, in the remainder of the silence, you could hear the usually inaudible whirs and bleeps that came from somewhere within Paragon.

  “Where is everybody?” I whispered, though it sounded like a roar in this place.

  Paragon shook his head. “The war? Some may be away fighting. Others have probably been conscripted into some other government work. Who knows? There are probably only a handful of scientists working in this complex now.”

  We worked our way up each flight of stairs without seeing a single person. On the third floor we consulted a sign on the wall and tip-tapped down an endless corridor. The lights were all blazing as if the building was still a normal, up-and-running place of work, and a number of the screens on the walls were still flashing up the occasional message.

  REMEMBER—WATER IS PRECIOUS. DON’T WASTE. DON’T SPILL.

  CREATIVITY IS THE KEY TO PEACE AND PROGRESS.

  WORK SO THAT YOUR CHILDREN MAY HAVE A BETTER, BRIGHTER FUTURE.

  The messages gave me the creeps. They seemed to have the smell of brainwashing about them. What exactly was this place?

  Paragon suddenly stopped.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Drones.”

  “Drones? Inside?”

  “Yes. They’re behind us. Just around the corner. A hundred and twenty-two of them. And they’re coming this way.”

  “A hundred and—”

  “Shh!” He pushed Vivi and me against the wall of the corridor, next to a metal filing cabinet. What was happening? How could a hundred and twenty-two drones be coming toward us? There was no noise. Surely we would be able to hear them coming.

  I peered around the filing cabinet and something weird began happening. It was like the air at the end of the corridor was starting to shiver. Quiver. A cloud of what seemed like dust hovered and rippled halfway between the floor and the ceiling. Still there was no noise. Then I noticed the cloud was getting bigger. No. It was moving toward us.

  “What is it?” Vivi hissed to Paragon, who was standing firmly in the center of the corridor still.

  “I … can’t … talk,” he mumbled. “Not now. Trying … to … block all one hundred … and twenty-two of them. Difficult.” His fists clenched like he was struggling.

  “Paragon! Are you all right?”

  The cloud got nearer, and then, as it passed into the light streaming in through a window, I could make out what they were.

  Butterflies. Tiny, shiny mechanical butterflies.

  Butterfly-shaped drones. Each of them only a little bigger than an actual butterfly.

  “Almost … done. Hard to … keep them all … blocked together.” Paragon looked tense. “Now to … reprogram them.… All of them.… Every … single … one!”

  The fluttering mass of butterfly drones got slowly closer and closer until they were about six feet from Paragon.

  “Okay…” Paragon gripped his fingers even tighter. “Time for … you all … to … go.”

  Suddenly, one of the butterflies—a largish one with wide wings and spiraling antennae—peeled off from the group, flickered upward, brushed against the ceiling, and then flew off back in the direction from which it had come. A few seconds later, two others did exactly the same thing. Then, almost as one, the rest of the cloud seemed to pause before turning back on itself, each of the minuscule robotic butterflies fluttering away from us.

  “Wow,” whispered Vivi. “They’re beautiful.”

  As the last of the cloud disappeared back around the corner, Paragon seemed to relax and loosen his fists.

  “Phew! A hundred and twenty-two of them at the same time. That’s quite a feat. Really tested my multidimensional tasking ability.” He either swaggered with pride or wobbled through exhaustion. It was hard to tell which. “I’m giving my systems a workout today!”

  “What sort of drones were they?” I asked. “I’ve never seen any drones like that before.”

  “Zephyr drones,” Paragon replied. “Internal surveillance units. Still at the prototype stage.”

  “Well,” Vivi announced as we started to make our way along the corridor once again, “I think that Zephyrs are now my favorite type of drone. They’re so much prettier than the Ariels.”

  *   *   *

  “Wait!”

  “Hmm?”

  “Quiet. Can you hear that?”

  Vivi and I strained to listen. We strained and then we strained a bit more.

  “No. I can’t hear anything.”

  “Me neither.”

  Paragon took a turn off the main corridor. “It’s coming from this direction.”

  Vivi and I followed close behind. After about a minute, we could both hear what Paragon had been hearing.

  Music. Classical music.

  “What’s that?” Vivi asked.

  “It’s Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto Number Two in C Minor, Opus Eighteen. The 1965 recording by Earl Wild.” Paragon tossed out the information like it was nothing to him.

  We walked toward the music. It got louder and louder as we got nearer and nearer until—

  BANG!

  A door flew open and slammed into the wall as a man marched into the corridor from the room beyond, his head bent over a sheet of paper. He was so absorbed in reading whatever was on the paper that he didn’t even notice us standing about twenty feet from him.

  “Rubbish!” he muttered to himself. “Insubstantial lightweight rubbish!” He reached up and opened one of the windows on the corridor before scrunching up the paper and tossing it out.

  I looked out the window and watched the paper as it fell and landed on a grass verge covered with thousands of other little balls of scrunched-up paper.

  The man closed the window and turned to go back into the room. That was when he saw us.

  “Who are you?” he asked in an annoyed sort of voice. “What do you want?”

  Vivi stepped forward again. “Dr. Treble?”

  He was a man of about forty with long, curly dark hair and a small ring of a beard around his mouth. He wasn’t fat, but then again he wasn’t slim. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans that, in my opinion, desperately needed a wash. His eyes looked tired.

  “Yes?” he asked suspiciously.

  “We’re here to talk to you about Jonah Bloom, sir.” I took a step nearer. “We’re here to ask a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  The man barked a laugh. “I’ve already answered all the questions I’m ever going to answer about Bloom. Who are you, anyway? How did you get in here? This is a secure complex.”

  “My name is Auden Dare, sir. I am Jon
ah Bloom’s nephew.”

  Treble frowned and looked hard at me. “You’re the boy who can’t see color.”

  “Yes.”

  Treble didn’t say anything. He was obviously weighing things up in his mind. “Look, I’ve nothing more to say about your uncle. I gave a number of statements to the Water Allocation Board. They accepted all my versions of events. If you’ve any questions, you’d be better off talking to them.” His hand reached for the door handle back into the room from which he’d just stomped. “I’m sorry about Bloom. It’s very sad. But, please, I have work to do. Leave the way you came. Good-bye.” He turned the handle.

  “Wait,” Paragon called, and Treble released his grip. “Wait. Dr. Treble. I think there’s something you should see.”

  “Do you now? Well, what exactly is that, may I ask?”

  “Me.” In one smooth movement Paragon threw off the hat, glasses, and scarf and ripped the coat and sweater from his torso. The light blazing in through the windows reflected brightly off his hard metal body and dazzled Treble momentarily.

  Treble stood with his mouth wide open as Paragon approached and stood directly in front of him, towering over the scientist.

  The silence that filled the corridor was even more deafening than the silence that was smothering the entrance hall. Nobody said a thing. Not for ages. And then, eventually, Treble broke the silence with a single word.

  “Paragon?” he said.

  *   *   *

  We were in Treble’s large and wonderful laboratory. There were huge machines that did things that I couldn’t understand. There were flames busy bubbling substances that I’d never seen before. There was shelf upon shelf and row upon row of pieces of scientific equipment that I didn’t know the names of.

  It was like a strange new magical world.

  Screens and monitors beeped and fizzed, and weird shapes and equations were scribbled all over a scruffy whiteboard.

  And the smell!

  Rotting eggs, burned metal, sickly sweet sugary. All mixed together.

  Treble pulled the stylus from the screeching record and stood Paragon in front of him.

  “My, my…” he admired as he closely inspected the intricacies of the robot’s limbs and head. “My, my. Magnificent work. Bloom surpassed himself with this. Superb craftsmanship, I must say.”