“This has to be the cheesiest comic book ever written,” Leslie commented.
“I guess that’s one reason to keep it in a safe,” said Elliot, “but it doesn’t really tell us where Uncle Archie is.”
Patti put one scaly arm around his shoulders. “I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Till then, we gotta keep on gallopin’.”
“That’s where you come in,” said Harrumphrey. “You two have the most important job in the whole Creature Department.”
“We do?” asked Leslie.
Harrumphrey nodded. “It’s time we introduced you to the Preston Brothers.”
CHAPTER 15
In which the Preston Brothers demonstrate that some tables are bigger than others
Harrumphrey, Gügor, and Patti went to prepare the laboratory while Jean-Remy took Leslie and Elliot aboard the expectavator. Following another tug on the knottub (and another slightly sickening “AAAAHHH!” from the expectavator doors), they joined Gabe inside.
Although most of the buttons were crammed with lettering that described precisely where the expectavator might take them, this time Jean-Remy chose a button covered in nothing but tiny blue bubbles. When Gabe pressed it, the button glowed brightly, fading through a rainbow of colors as the journey began.
PING!
And ended.
“Got here faster than usual,” said Gabe in his usual monotone. He looked at Elliot and Leslie. “You two must be feeling quite hopeful this morning.”
Elliot and Leslie nodded; even though the safe hadn’t led them to Uncle Archie, they hoped he’d be back soon.
The expectavator doors opened on a drab, creaky corridor. It looked like the rest of the mansion, with one noticeable difference.
The smell.
Unlike everywhere else they had been in the Research and Development Department, the scent here wasn’t that of musty old books and moldering wood. This corridor had a clean, sharp scent, the crisp freshness of a late-November morning after the first frost.
At the far end of the hallway was a pair of ornate oak doors. As Elliot and Leslie moved toward it, the scent became more distinct. When they arrived, a silver plaque beside the entrance said:
The Abstractory
Jean-Remy stopped and hovered in front of the door. “Before we go in, I should tell you, please do not worry if ze middle one does not speak to you.”
“The middle one?” asked Elliot. “What does that mean?”
“Do not worry,” said Jean-Remy. “He never speaks.”
They entered the Abstractory.
At first, Elliot thought they had entered a library. Beyond the foyer was a vast room with carved wooden walls and broad pillars supporting a ceiling fitted with a huge, circular stained-glass window. This huge room was packed with what appeared to be bookcases. Many, many bookcases.
They zigzagged and crisscrossed, went up and down stairs, and spiraled around into narrow dead ends. There were towers of bookcases; there were valleys of bookcases; there were bridges of bookcases and caves of bookcases; there were even bookcases that sprouted from other bookcases to create what looked like . . . bookcase-trees.
If this place were a library, it was surely the most convoluted and disorderly one ever constructed. Yet still, with only a glance, it was clear that this was definitely not a library.
After all, there were no books.
Instead of being packed with dusty old volumes as you might expect in a grand old room like this one, on every shelf there were glass bottles and jars of all shapes and sizes. Inside each of them was a strange substance—liquids; gases; powders; shimmering metals; chips of wood; dried tea leaves; dark, rich soil; petals from outlandish flowers. There were endless substances in a seemingly endless array of colors.
Many of the substances sat inert in their containers, while others writhed and boiled as if they were living things.
“What is this place?” asked Elliot.
Leslie was just as dumbfounded by the sight of the room. “And what’s in all the bottles?”
“All in good time,” said Jean-Remy. “First, we must have our meeting with the Preston Brothers.” He fluttered to a counter (that did indeed look like the reception desk at a library) and jingled a small brass bell.
Leslie was expecting some tiny creature to pop up from behind the reception desk, but nothing appeared. Instead, she caught sight of a strange shape moving through the shelves.
It appeared to be a small crowd of people, but it was difficult to be certain because the figures were obscured by the mad jumble of shelves. In addition, what Leslie could see was distorted through the warped glass of all the bottles.
“Look!” said Elliot. He pointed just ahead of the figures that had caught Leslie’s attention. She looked where he was pointing—and gasped.
A tentacle!
A coil of pink, rubbery skin came lolloping around one of the shelves. Its suction cups puckered and popped as it pulled itself forward.
“Uh, Jean-Remy?” asked Leslie. “Please tell me that’s supposed to be here.”
“Mais bien sûr. Zat . . . is ze Preston Brothers!”
“The Preston Brothers are tentacles?”
“Non non non!” Jean-Remy pointed to the strange figures obscured by the shelves. “Ze tentacle belongs to them.”
They rounded the last bookcase just as Jean-Remy uttered their name. Leslie saw she had been mistaken. It wasn’t a group of creatures moving through the shelves.
It was only one.
Or was it three?
Or was it both?
The Preston Brothers, you see, were a three-headed creature. All three heads were identical—and identically strange. Each one resembled that of a pug-nosed seahorse, complete with a rounded, pony-like snout and spiny protrusions instead of a mane.
The only distinguishing feature between the three heads was their mustaches.
The head on the left had a handlebar mustache, the tips spiraling up to a point. The head on the right side wore the opposite style, an aptly named horseshoe mustache, the ends growing downward and hanging off the creature’s chin. Both these mustaches were thick, well groomed, and impressive.
The head in the middle, however, sported a mustache with hardly any hair at all: just the merest wisp of a pencil mustache. Topping everything off was a handsome tweed vest, specially tailored with three holes for three heads.
These were the Preston Brothers. With their three heads, two arms, and eight tentacled legs, they were surely the strangest creatures (or creature?) of them all.
“Well, if it ain’t Jean-Remy Chevalier!” said the head on the left (the one with the handlebar mustache).
“We just got the memo that you were coming up for a visit,” said the head on the right (the one with the horseshoe mustache).
The head in the middle (with the pencil mustache) said nothing.
“Allow me to introduce the keepers of the Abstractory,” said Jean-Remy. “Lester, Nestor, and Chester Preston.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said the two outside heads, speaking in unison. The head between them, the one called Nestor, merely nodded.
“That’s what you meant by the one in the middle,” Leslie said to Jean-Remy. She turned to Nestor. “He told us you were the quiet one.”
Nestor blinked at her but was otherwise expressionless.
“What about you other two?” asked Elliot. “Which is Chester and which is Lester?”
“That’s easy,” said the head on the right. He pointed to his brother on the opposite shoulder. “Lester starts with L and he’s on the left.”
“Technically,” Lester replied, “it’s a matter of perspective. I’m on their left but our right. Your L system only works if we’re standing face-to-face. It’s confusing. What if someone comes up behind us? Then you’ll be on the left.”
Chester raised his spiny eyebrows. “You think what I said was confusing?”
“Frankly, yes,” said his brother.
“You’re the one who’s making it complicated. Left. Lester. See? Simple.”
“Oh, yes, I can see the convenience; I just think we ought to strive for something more rigorous. Like our mustaches. Isn’t that why we grew them in the first place?”
Chester reached up to stroke his bushy horseshoe mustache. “Maybe that’s why you grew yours, but as for me? This ’stache is all about style.”
“Typical,” said Lester. “Mom always said you were the vain one.”
“Please, please, gentlemen,” Jean-Remy cut in. “We have important work to do.”
“Wait,” said Elliot. “How can we do this ‘important work’ if we don’t even know what this place is or what we’re supposed to do?”
“Seriously,” said Leslie. “What’s with all the bottles?”
Nestor, the mute middle head, furrowed his brow and nodded at them. He seemed to be saying, Yes, a very good question.
“These bottles?” said Chester, waving his arms at the strange shelves that surrounded them. “They contain the most important substances in all of creaturedom. We’ll show you.”
The Preston Brothers walked (or rather, flopped) behind the reception desk. They opened several different drawers with their tentacles and, taking advantage of their multiple heads, peered into several of them all at once.
“Did we lose it again?” asked Chester.
“Looks that way,” said Lester.
Nestor rolled his eyes in exasperation and one of the middle tentacles fished into the drawer in front of him, coming out with a small remote control.
“Good work, brother,” said Chester.
Nestor shook his head and pointed the remote at the wall. A large screen illuminated. On it was something both Elliot and Leslie recognized from science class.
“It’s the periodic table of elements,” said Elliot, but then he looked a bit closer. “Except that it isn’t.”
“There’re too many elements,” said Leslie.
“And number one is supposed to be hydrogen,” said Elliot. “Not . . . harmony.”
“Is that even an element?” asked Leslie.
“Of course not,” said Lester. “This isn’t the periodic table of elements. It’s the periodic table of intangibles, and it’s the cornerstone of creature science.”
“Our technology,” Chester continued, “isn’t based on the conventional energy sources used in the human world. Things like gasoline and batteries and solar panels. Creature technology uses something much more powerful.”
“Hope!” said Elliot, blurting it out.
“Like in the expectavator,” said Leslie.
“Well done,” said Lester. “You two are obviously just as sharp as we’ve been led to believe.”
“Not many humans would make such a leap of lateral logic,” said Chester. “Even if they did, they’d hardly think it was possible.”
“But of course it is,” said Lester. “The essences of concepts like hope or curiosity are among the most powerful substances in the world. Just so long as you know how to harness them.”
“Powerful,” whispered Chester, “buuut . . . a little unpredictable. As you can see,” he said, pointing to the screen, “there are many more intangibles in the universe than simple elements. It’s what makes creature science so endlessly interesting. We’ve got so much more to work with!”
“Indeed, we do,” said Lester, in a less exuberant, more detached and scientific tone. “Just as with the table of elements, the more common intangibles are up near the top. Things like courage or infatuation, trust or despair.” He pointed the remote at the screen and the table glided upward to reveal many more abstract concepts. “But if you scroll down a little farther . . .”
Elliot squinted at the screen. “Does that say ‘the feeling you’re being watched’?”
Chester nodded vigorously. “One of my favorites! Intangible abstract concept number 416: the feeling you’re being watched.”
“Scroll down even more,” said Lester, “and you start to get the really weird ones. Or should I say the really creaturely ones, intangibles that only really exist in the realms of creaturedom.”
“Like that one?” Leslie pointed to number 1,384, reading aloud from the screen. “‘The shudder of revulsion upon being drooled on by a hibernating bombastadon’?”
“Precisely,” said Lester.
“Gross,” said Leslie.
“Wait a second,” said Elliot. “Are you saying that’s what’s in all these bottles?”
Chester put out his arm, gesturing toward the maze of shelves. “Why don’t you go and have a look? This first shelf has some of our most recognizable intangibles.”
They wandered up to the nearest bookshelf, and the first bottle Leslie picked up was a tall, sleek one filled with a fast-moving, silvery-blue fluid. The label at the top of the bottle simply said:
Justice
“Seriously?” she asked. “This is a bottle of justice?”
“Be careful with that,” Chester told her. “Took us years to collect that much.”
Every bottle on the shelf contained a different unbelievable substance. Inspiration, vulnerability, egotism, patience, leniency, gravitas, nostalgia, panache, and on and on . . .
Leslie took a plump round bottle off the shelf. It was full of a bright, warm, orangey-red liquid that fizzled with tiny bubbles. She peered for a moment at the label.
“Hold on a second,” she said, turning the bottle to show the Prestons. “It says here this is a bottle of friendship. Does that mean if I make someone drink it or pour it over their head, they’ll be my friend?”
Chester and Lester laughed uproariously.
“Gentlemen, please!” Jean-Remy came to Leslie’s defense. “She is new to the Abstractory. Nothing is to be gained from your laughter but ze mockery.”
“Yeah,” said Leslie, “what’s so funny?”
“Think,” said Chester. “Is it so easy to make friends?”
“I don’t know,” said Leslie. “I just thought because it says friendship on the side, it might—”
“It is the essence of friendship,” said Lester. “Think of it like flour, for baking. It’s the perfect thing for making a cake, but if you bury a sack of flour in the ground, you don’t grow wheat.”
“You don’t grow anything,” said Chester. “Growing wheat is hard work—just like friendship. Do you see what we mean?”
Leslie looked at Elliot for a moment. “I think I get it, but then what do you use this for?”
“Let’s say we need to power some sort of machine for resolving arguments,” said Lester. “In that case, I’m sure you can see how a few drops of friendship would come in handy.”
To Leslie, it sounded extremely peculiar. But in an odd, creaturely sort of way, it made sense.
“What about this one?” asked Elliot, standing across the aisle from Leslie. He held up a squat glass jar about the size and shape of a can of tuna. Inside was nothing but a pile of gravel and dust. “It says here it’s the essence of failure. What can you use that for?”
Chester smiled. “All sorts of things!”
“For instance,” said Lester, “let’s say we were building some sort of educational device, something to help people learn a new skill.”
“Good point, my brother,” said Chester. “No one learns anything from nonstop success. In order to truly succeed, you need to make mistakes along the way.”
Gently, Elliot put the failure back on the shelf. “I think I get it. Sort of.”
“Speaking of inventions,” said Jean-Remy. “We must get started! Already, it is Tuesday. Zere remain only three days before ze meeting!” He lowered his voice. “We must tell ze children what it is we ar
e working on.”
Again, Lester pressed a button on the remote control. The periodic table of intangibles vanished and was replaced by a screen that was completely blank, save for the following words:
Possible Secret Projects the Professor Was Working on When He Abandoned Us
“He didn’t abandon us!” Elliot protested. “He just went off to get supplies, and maybe even build his machine.”
“I hope so,” said Jean-Remy, “but what if he does not return?”
“I believe you,” said Leslie. She put a hand on Elliot’s shoulder. “He’ll be back in time.”
“Ahem!” Lester cleared his throat. “Just in case he doesn’t, however, we’ve gone through your uncle’s logbooks to determine what it was he was working on. We’ve narrowed it down to three.”
Lester pressed another button and the screen shifted. Now it revealed the first of three unbelievable inventions. . . .
CHAPTER 16
In which Elliot and Leslie choose wisely
The screen was packed with incomprehensible equations, diagrams of cogs and gears and bits and pieces of countless arcane mechanisms. Superimposed over the images was a title:
1. Teleportation Device
“That’s what Gügor was working on,” said Elliot.
“In the Rickum Ruckem Room,” said Leslie, “when we first came here.”
“We have been trying to perfect zis device for years,” said Jean-Remy.
“Years?” asked Leslie. “In that case, how can you call it a secret project?”
“Excellent point,” said Chester. “But we can’t rule out the possibility the professor found a way to get it working.”
“It certainly might explain why he vanished all of a sudden,” said Lester. “Perhaps he was testing his device.”
Another press of a button and the screen shifted to a new image. Again, there were mathematical equations and inscrutable machinery. But central to this second slide was a drawing of an egg-shaped hat with elaborate chinstraps and what appeared to be a miniature radio tower on top. Superimposed across this image, it said:
The Creature Department Page 12