The Boxes

by William Sleator

  And now, here I was in the middle of the deepest, longest slowdown yet—in the frozen inner sanctum of Crutchley Development. I was in the perfect position to run around and carefully disable them; all their computers, all their files, all their blueprints were right here for me to go through and cleverly tamper with. This was my chance to put them out of business forever and save our neighborhood.

  And I had no idea what to do.

  I screamed in frustration.

  “Calm down. Wait a minute,” I said out loud. “You’re not alone.” And I wasn’t. Henry and Uncle Marco would not be trapped in the slowdown either—Henry because he hadn’t been last time, for some reason I still didn’t understand, and Uncle Marco because he had his own clock. Henry and Uncle Marco were smart. They would both know exactly what to do to disable Crutchley Development.

  And Henry and Uncle Marco were both twenty miles away, in the suburbs. Every conveyance between there and here, every car, every taxi, every train, was frozen, trapped in the slowdown.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I was on my own.

  I looked around, trying to think through my panic. Computers, files, blueprints. Where should I begin?

  I didn’t have a computer at home; Aunt Ruth thought they were an expensive luxury. I often worked on the computers at school, but I knew how to use only those particular simple programs. I had no idea how to get into a mainframe and look for secret data. Henry might be able to do it, but Henry wasn’t here.

  I screamed again and stamped my foot. This was probably our only chance to get Crutchley and save our houses. What was I going to do?

  I ran over to the filing cabinets. I found the L file. At first the drawer didn’t want to budge. I gave it a really hard yank and it rolled slowly toward me. I pawed through the sluggish, heavy papers as quickly as I could, my hands shaking, looking for our last name, Levi. There was a folder with our name on it; I tugged it open. It contained letters that Crutchley had written to us in the past, old offers that Aunt Ruth had rejected. There was also a kind of resume about Aunt Ruth and a very short one about me. There was nothing about Uncle Marco. I knew it was his intention that people know as little about him as possible. He had succeeded.

  But there was nothing illegal here, nothing damaging to Crutchley.

  It took a lot of effort to get the file drawer moving, but once started, it crept forward with inevitability and finally clanged shut with a long, brittle sound like a drumroll, which echoed eerily in the large room.

  I turned around, wondering where else to look. It was odd to see the four people bending over the spinning propellers of the clock and behind them the nearly motionless lights and snowflakes outside the window. The people weren’t actually statues—Crutchley’s eyeballs were moving slightly toward the window and Whelpley was gradually turning his head—but they were slow enough so that they couldn’t interfere with me. The clock and I were the only things that moved normally, my breathing and the clock’s whirring the only faint sounds in the silent, frozen world.

  Then I noticed the secretary, seated at a desk with a typewriter on it on the other side of the room; she wasn’t facing the typewriter; she had turned her chair around to look at the clock at the moment she froze. If that was her normal workstation, there might be some more recent papers there that could be useful. I hurried over.

  And on the desk where she had been working was a pile of about two dozen very legal-looking documents: STANDARD FORM PURCHASE AND SALE AGREEMENT, the top One said in big letters. I thumbed through the pile. They were all purchase and sale agreements.

  I looked through them again, more carefully. The buyer in every case was Crutchley Development Corporation, represented by Adam Crutchley. The sellers were all different, and many of the names were familiar to me. The addresses of the properties were all in our neighborhood.

  These were the documents that would finalize Crutchley’s buying out our neighborhood so that he could tear down the houses and turn it into a giant mall. He had said they’d be ready tomorrow.

  My first impulse was to destroy them. I lifted the top one to tear it to shreds.

  I stopped myself in time. If I destroyed them, all they’d have to do was make new ones when the slowdown was over. Tearing them up wouldn’t stop Crutchley.

  But I still had the feeling there might be something useful here. I looked the documents over more carefully. They were all signed by Crutchley, but not by the sellers. That was interesting—and it seemed a little foolish.

  But he was about to leave for Tokyo, and they were in a hurry to finalize these purchases. With his signature on the agreements, his staff could close the deals while he was gone. After all, the forms were perfectly safe here, locked away behind two security doors that only his closest cohorts could get through. No one would ever expect that someone—like me—could get in here and get her hands on them.

  The buyers hadn’t signed them yet. The space for the date was still blank. Was there anything else that had been left out? I checked through them one more time, more slowly and carefully than ever.

  Clause number seven, PURCHASE PRICE, also had a blank spot that had not yet been typed in on about half the forms. I blinked, and shook my head, and checked again. The empty space was in front of a line labeled “are to be paid at the time of the delivery of the deed, in cash, or by certified cashier‘s, treasurer’s, or bank check.”

  The amount to be inserted there must be the final purchase price that Crutchley had to pay. Where it was typed in, the prices were mostly between $70,000 and $100,000. Why hadn’t the others been typed in yet? Probably because they were still doing the last-minute final negotiations, trying to get the sellers to settle for as low a price as possible.

  As low a price as possible ...

  That gave me an idea. My heart began to pound. Would this really work?

  I set the purchase and sale agreements down carefully and turned to Ms. MacElberg’s typewriter. She had been typing in the blanks on one more purchase and sale agreement when I had come into the room. That meant this was the typewriter that had the legal clout for these documents.

  The idea I was beginning to come up with was crazy and so wonderful I hardly dared to believe I could get away with it. I wasn’t a legal expert, and maybe Crutchley would find a way around this. But what was there to stop me from trying? I couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  I was also aware that the slowdown could stop at any instant. It had already gone on longer than the last one. And I couldn’t depend on the clock to help me out and extend it for as long as I needed—it was nasty and unreliable.

  Still, I ran over and bowed to it. Please, please, keep this one going as long as you possibly can. Remember, we’re connected. It’s the only way you’ll ever get back to your worshipers in the basement.

  Back at the typewriter, I was trembling more than before, my heart still thudding. Ms. MacElberg was in the way, of course, in her secretary’s chair on wheels. With great effort, I tried to push her chair so I could have access to the typewriter keyboard. At first the chair didn’t want to move. Panting, I pushed and pushed, and finally it began to roll. It rolled several feet, rocking slowly over bumps in the linoleum floor, Ms. MacElberg with her bun and glasses swaying stiffly on the seat. Finally it slowed and stopped.

  I approached the keyboard nervously. Ms. MacElberg hadn’t made any mistakes, and I couldn’t either. The power light on the typewriter was flickering green. Under normal conditions the machine would have been humming. Now it was making very infrequent, long, drawn-out thumps—very distant and faint in the deep, deep quiet of the room.

  The first thing I wanted to type in was the date—the space for this was at the very top of the document, and the paper was now about halfway down into the typewriter. I had to move it back up to the top.

  I carefully pushed down on the key with the up arrow. Like the telephone keys during the last slowdown, it didn’t want to move. I had to put more pressure on it than I expec
ted. Finally, with a kind of sigh, the key sank down. I held it there. The carriage trembled and very slowly moved, and the paper went down one notch. Then another notch. Then another. I lifted my finger when the blank space for the date seemed to be in the right place.

  Today was the fifteenth; I would put in today’s date so the sellers would sign immediately. I patiently depressed the 1 key. When I finally got it all the way down, the metal ball inside the typewriter went into action. Normally these things flashed so fast you couldn’t see them. Now it glided centimeter by centimeter toward the document, turning languidly as it went. Finally it made contact with the paper like a long, lingering kiss and began its leisurely journey back into the typewriter again. It took a long time, but I was pleased—the number was in just the right spot on the page.

  When at last the date was finished, I moved the paper back down to the space for the purchase price. How much? I pondered. I didn’t want to make it too unrealistic. On the other hand, I might not have enough time to do all the empty purchase and sale agreements. I had to make sure the ones I did do were enough.

  I went to work. After what felt like fifteen minutes, I had typed in a purchase price of 100 million dollars.

  I hadn’t even noticed whose house this was. I glanced up at the seller’s name. “Nathan and Elizabeth Vail,” it said. I smiled. I figured Henry wouldn’t have much trouble getting his parents to sign this.

  I put it down quickly. At any moment time could start up again and I’d have to run out of here. But there was no way I could go any faster—the typewriter physically couldn’t do it. I went on working, my hands moist now, the tension in my body constant and grinding. I kept praying for the clock to please just give me enough time to do another one. I turned back often to check on the people. They were all looking toward the window now.

  At the back of my mind, in the deep silence, I was also worrying about keeping my promise to the clock and the creatures. I had to get it home, for me and the creatures. But how?

  I was on the fifth 100-million-dollar purchase and sale agreement when the banging began.

  I jumped about a foot into the air. Now my heart was pounding more wildly than ever.

  The banging outside the room—not on the door to this room, but not very far away—continued.

  The sound was unnatural, impossible—the world was frozen. What did it mean? Henry and Uncle Marco wouldn’t have been able to get here this fast. Who else could be outside the slowdown?

  I forced myself to finish the agreement, my hand shaking more than ever; got it out of the typewriter; and started for the door. Then, just to be safe, I picked up the five finished agreements and took them with me.

  The banging went on, unabated. Whoever was making it was very determined to get in—and seemed to believe that there was somebody inside who could hear it. Who would believe that in the middle of this arctic slowdown? I hesitated. Maybe it would be better to ignore the noise and let whoever was making it give up and go away.

  But I was too curious.

  I had to push very, very hard to get the door out of this room to begin to move. When it did, it moved slowly enough for me to think and remember not to stupidly lock myself out—I didn’t know the security code. I took off my shoe and stuck it in the door so it wouldn’t close.

  The banging was coming from the next door, the first one with a security device on it. I crossed the cement anteroom. Holding my breath, I looked through the little glass peep-hole in the door.

  “Henry!” I shouted and pushed open the door.

  Henry tumbled inside, gasping for breath. We hugged each other awkwardly. “C-Crutchley?” he wheezed, his chin on my shoulder.

  “They’re all frozen. Like everybody else. We should have known. It was so great when it happened!”

  “Oh, wow!” was all he could say.

  “How did you get here? How did you know I was here?” I asked him, pulling away.

  He slumped against the wall, panting, too breathless to speak.

  “Come on. We’ll talk in here. I’ve got work to do,” I told him. I pulled the double door open with one of the two U-shaped handles, picked up my shoe and slipped it on, and we went inside.

  I was already typing the next document by the time Henry had looked around the room and caught his breath enough to talk.

  “So... we still don’t know why I don’t freeze like everybody else,” he said.

  “Nope,” I said, pushing down on a key and watching the ball perform its slow adagio over to the paper and come moping back. “They’re not really frozen,” I said. “They’ve all turned toward the window since it started.”

  “What are you doing?” he wanted to know.

  I smiled. “Look at this,” I said, handing him the purchase and sale agreement for his house. “Didn’t I do a good job? He’d already signed it but left off the date and purchase price. I put them in. I’m on my sixth one now.”

  Henry looked at it curiously. Then his head shot forward; his eyes widened; he turned to me. “Uh... a hundred million?” he murmured.

  “This one’s mine,” I said. “We’re getting two hundred million.”

  Henry burst into laughter. He was laughing so hard he couldn’t stand up. He sank down onto the floor, rolling in mirth, clutching his sides. Now I was laughing, too.

  Finally Henry wiped his eyes and was able to say, “This will kill him! These signed forms mean he’s legally obliged to pay all this money. He won’t be able to. He’ll have to go out of business, bankrupt!”

  “You got it.” I finished the one for our house. “Let me have another one.”

  He hugged me again, quickly. “Annie, you’re a genius!” he said and handed me another agreement.

  “I’m not a genius.” I worked the paper into the typewriter. “Crutchley’s just an idiot. Oh! I forgot to tell you. I found the shadow ghost on your roof. It was Uncle Marco.”

  Henry peered at me. “What are you talking about?”

  “Uncle Marco was in his own slowdown on your roof, with his own clock. Don’t ask me why. He was just coming out of it. He told me to come here and make a slowdown. If he hadn’t told me, I might have resisted more or maybe not even done it. Lucky thing I found him.”

  Henry was shaking his head. “I still don’t understand why he would...”

  “Neither do I. How did you get here so fast?”

  “I called the house from the garage to tell you we were going to be late. You weren’t there.” I looked over at him. He wiped sweat off his forehead, then shrugged off his coat onto the floor. “I knew Crutchley got you—and was going to force you to make a slowdown. I told Mom I had to go and got a taxi for downtown right away. Every second I was afraid the slowdown was going to start and I’d get stuck before I got here. We were just coming off the highway when it happened. I had to get out of the cab and find my way here—and then climb thirty-nine flights.” He slouched against the desk.

  “How did you know which doorway to knock on?” I asked him, starting to type in another 100 million.

  “Nobody was in the conference room. Then I saw the door with the security lock on it. I figured that’s where they’d take you. I just kept banging away.” He looked at the five people in the room, grinning. They were turning away from the window toward us now. “Why didn’t we realize this is what would happen to them? What a relief! I was so worried about you.” Then his smile faded. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “Huh?” I was concentrating on finishing the form.

  “We’re in trouble.”

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Look. Out the window.”

  I turned impatiently.

  The snowflakes were just beginning to slide past the glass.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “We gotta get out of here!” I said, pushing the arrow key to move the form out of the typewriter. “If they catch us, it’ll ruin everything.”

  Henry bent over and grabbed his coat. “Come on, let’s go!” he said, heading
for the door.

  The form was still click-clacking its way out of the typewriter. “But ... we have to bring the clock.”

  “What?” Henry turned back, frowning. “How? Why?”

  At last the form worked its way out; I set it on top of the others. The snowflakes were still barely moving. I remembered how slowly Uncle Marco had come out of his stasis. “Because I promised it and the creatures. Anyway, I don’t want to leave it here.”

  “But ...” Henry shook his head. “We can’t risk them getting those forms!”

  Normally I wouldn’t have been so pushy. But I didn’t think I could physically leave the room without the clock. I also couldn’t let the creatures down; they were depending on me. “If we can get the box on the dolly, it won’t take long. Come on!”

  We rushed over to the table. The four figures were moving faster now, still turning toward the back of the room, where I’d been typing. The propeller was gradually slowing down, now that time was starting up again.

  I put the papers down on the table, and Henry and I began trying to push the clock toward the edge. It was difficult to get things to move, just coming out of a slowdown, and the clock was heavy under normal conditions. We were both grunting as we inched it across the table —lucky for us that the four melting statues were all at one end and not in the way

  At last we got it to the edge. I looked away for a moment. The four people were turning toward us now, away from the back of the room—maybe we were no longer a blur to them.

  Henry and I were each gripping two bottom corners of the metal box. “One. Two. Three!” Henry said.

  We lifted it and staggered, both groaning, and dropped it with a crash onto the dolly.

  One of Crutchley’s hands began to lift from the table.