by Henry Clark
“No,” answered Spalding. “That’s the real Elwood, on the day he graduated from MIT.”
“MIT?” Pre’s eyes lit up. “Is it truly magicless?”
“That, I imagine, would depend on the instructors. Those are Elwood’s parents on either side of him. That picture was taken only two days before he invented the DavyTron.”
“The tour guide who pretends to be his mother doesn’t look anything like her,” I said, leaning against the fridge to study the photo. “And the guy who pretends to be his dad doesn’t look like his dad. But you look exactly like Elwood.”
“Weird, isn’t it?” said Spalding as he fished a powdered doughnut out of a ceramic jar shaped like a cabbage. He took a bite of the doughnut and continued to talk as he chewed, getting white powder down the front of his shirt. “When Elwood first appeared in the news, after he announced his brilliant invention, all my friends and neighbors said, ‘Hey, Spaldy, you look just like this guy. Maybe you should travel to Disarray and see if he’ll give you a job.’ So I did, and it turned out I didn’t look exactly like him, but then I got my nose fixed and my hair dyed, and you couldn’t tell us apart.”
“Getting your nose repaired caused your hair to die?” said Pre, sounding appalled. “Is that why it’s so thin?”
Spalding winced. “You’re using humor to chide me for the extremes I went to. I understand.”
“No, he’s just taking you too literally,” I explained. “You get used to it.”
“Oh.” Spalding seemed confused. He blinked several times as he held the ceramic cabbage out to Modesty. She looked inside and shook her head. Spalding recovered and continued. “Whether you approve or not, the things I did to my appearance worked. Elwood hired me, at first to stand in for him at things he didn’t want to attend, like appliance-store openings and that pesky Nobel Prize ceremony, but then, once the factory was in full operation and he decided there were going to be guided tours, he made me the official Elwood Davy for tour groups.”
“And you live here?” I asked. “In his old house?”
“Of course not. That would be silly.” He offered me the jar. I started to reach for a cinnamon doughnut, then thought better of it and pulled my hand back.
“I’m only here tonight because Bert, the security guard, took a sick day,” Spalding continued. “I sometimes fill in for him. Elwood has complete trust in me. I think he likes my face.”
“Where is Mr. Davy now?” asked Pre.
“Currently, he’s away on business in the Champagne region of France.”
Spalding offered the jar to Pre, who pulled out a plain doughnut, sniffed it, and took a tentative bite.
“What’s Mr. Davy doing in France?” I asked.
“He’s buying up all the vineyards so he can tear out the grapes and plant tomatoes. The world will need more and more tomatoes, as more and more DavyTrons go online. Assuming we can’t talk him into shutting down his multibillion-dollar company to save a bunch of people he’s never heard of.”
Spalding plunked the cabbage down on the table, spun on his heel, and darted through the door to the living room. We trailed him. A lifelike mannequin sitting on the sofa swiveled its head as we walked by. Its jaw moved, and it said, “Howdy,” which was what I expected it to say, but then it added, “young girl with a determined look,” and Modesty stopped in her tracks.
“It can see me?”
“Well enough to see you’re a girl who shouldn’t be messed with,” simpered Spalding, as if it were all his doing. “Granddad here is now hooked in to the mainframe. He can analyze what’s in his field of vision. It’s cheaper than hiring a tour guide to play Elwood’s grandfather. If we had more time, you could actually engage him in conversation.”
The animatronic grandpa, who had a face molded to match the face of an old man in a photo hanging on the wall behind him, leaned to one side and looked directly at Pre. “Hi there, youngster in a Goofy sweatshirt!”
Pre stretched out the fabric and stared down at it. “My shirt’s goofy?”
“He means the picture,” I said.
“Which happens to be Mickey,” Modesty pointed out.
“Oops,” said Spalding. “That’s a glitch. He’s supposed to be able to recognize all six thousand four hundred and fifty-two copyrighted cartoon characters. Granddad!” The mannequin’s head swiveled toward him. “Access code 2-MATE-2. Perform a self-diagnostic. Search for possible error in cartoon-recognition subroutine. Make all necessary corrections.”
“Sure thing, kiddo.” Granddad’s eyes crossed, his head bowed, and he started rummaging around in his inner self.
“Grandfathers only say kiddo in old movies,” said Modesty.
“Yes,” agreed Spalding. “Elwood’s granddad watched a lot of old movies when he was a boy. He also sometimes says daddy-o and peachy keen. Let me show you where Elwood invented the DavyTron. It’s the highlight of the tour.”
He brushed past us, and we followed him down a hall that connected the house to the garage. A flight of stairs took us to an apartment with scribbled diagrams stuck to its walls, tomato plants on the windowsills, and a desk crowded with a grubby, old computer and loose electronic parts. A sofa sagged under blankets and what looked like a pair of leopard-print pajamas, but when you looked closer, the leopard spots turned out to be pictures of potatoes.
“This is where he did it.” Spalding spread out his arms and spun around once. “This is where he invented the hardware. And over here—” He leaned in a doorway, flipped on a light, and revealed a bathroom. “This is where he came up with the computer code to turn tomato juice into turnips!”
“Did he write down the code on that scroll?” Pre asked.
“That’s a roll of toilet paper,” I said.
Pre’s eyes popped. “You need that much?”
“Not usually,” said Modesty. “It depends on what Fidelity’s put in the chili.”
“We think,” I said to Spalding, “the nightly DavyTron updates might contain a magical incantation for something called transmutation. How can we find out?”
“What an extraordinary notion.” He gave me a quizzical look. “I suppose we could look at the code.” He flicked a pair of undershorts off the computer chair and sat. He fumbled with the computer’s mouse, then leaned over the keyboard so we couldn’t see what he was typing.
“This is the oldest processor on the network,” he explained. “They keep it connected for sentimental reasons. But it should still be able to access the mainframe. And… here we go. Easy as pi. Provided you’re calculating pi to the four millionth decimal place. There—the code for tonight’s DavyTron software update!”
He grabbed a rag and wiped dust off the screen, then moved aside so we could see. Filling the display from top to bottom were lines and lines of stuff that looked like this:
(_ ,T,”@N’+,#'/*{}
W+/W#CDNR/
+,{}R/*YAM}+,/*{*+,/W
{%+,/CARROT,/#{L,+,/N{N+,/+
#N+,/#;#Q#N+,/+KALE#;*+,/‘
R:‘D*'3,}{W+KW’K:'+}E#';
DQ#‘SOY#'+D’K#!/+K#;Q#‘R}E
KK#}WK’RK}PEAS{NL]'/#;#Q
#N’){W’){){CHIVES]'/+#N’;D}R
W’I;#){NL]!/N{N#';R{#
TARO{N
L]'/#{L,+‘K{RW’IK{;[{NL]'/W
#Q# TAT SOI# IWK{BEANS{NL]!/
W{%‘L##W#’ I;:{NL]'/*{Q#‘LD;
R’}{NLWB!/*DE}‘C; {LEEK’-{
}RW]'/+,}#'*}#NC,’,#NW]'/+K
D’+E}+; #‘CHARD#W! NR’/')}
{RL#'{N’ ‘)(!!/"): T<-50?
I took the mouse and scrolled down the screen.
And scrolled.
And scrolled.
And scrolled.
“How long does this go on?” I wondered as the same sort of gobbledygook kept rolling past.
“For about half a mile,” said Spalding. “At the speed you’re scrolling, it will take two hours to reach the end.”
I let go of the mouse. “It would be easy to lo
se an incantation in something that long.” I turned to Pre. “You wouldn’t happen to know the transmutation spell, would you?”
Pre leaned in to study the screen. “Only our master mages know it by heart—it’s forty pages long. But every Congruent schoolchild knows the opening lines.” He put his hands behind his back, straightened his shoulders, and recited, “Kimbo scalawag fluffernutter yeep; antiphon epsilon bedder cheddar fleep.”
“It goes on like that for forty pages?” I asked.
“Pretty much.”
“No wonder nobody here ever got magic to work.”
Spalding moved back in front of the screen and typed fluffernutter yeep into a search field, then tapped the Return key.
The transmutation spell was suddenly on the screen.
“That’s it!” Pre confirmed.
“So the incantation goes out every night as part of the DavyTron updates,” I said. “Does it go out the same time every night?” I turned and looked at Spalding.
“That’s… not something I’ve ever been asked by a tour group,” he said. “But wait a sec—I’ll check the tour guide manual.” He stood up, pulled a phone from his pocket, and skated his fingers over it. “Ah. Here we go. In the IAQs—the Infrequently Asked Questions—it says the updates are transmitted every night, whether there are any changes to the code or not, at exactly the same time. It takes forty-five seconds to send the entire update, which, by computer standards, is a huge amount of time.”
“What time is exactly the same time?” I was positive there were only four possibilities—1:23, 2:34, 3:45, or 4:56, the four Magic Minutes that occurred after dark. Magic wouldn’t work at any other time.
Spalding squinted at his phone again.
“Twelve minutes past midnight,” he said.
CHAPTER 22
PACIFIST ENFORCEMENT AND CONTROL ENCHANTMENT
Twelve twelve?” Modesty yelled. “That can’t be. It makes no sense.”
“Why does it make no sense?” Spalding blinked. I didn’t blame him for being confused. I knew I was.
“Because—” Modesty caught herself. She couldn’t tell him 12:12 wasn’t a Magic Minute without explaining Magic Minutes to him, and that was information we had all decided to keep to ourselves.
“Because,” I said, “you’d think the updates would go out at a time that was, uh, neat and tidy.”
“Neat and tidy?” Spalding shifted his attention to me.
“Like midnight or one AM or maybe even two thirty. Nothing with odd, freaky minutes in it.”
“Oh, definitely,” Spalding agreed. “I’ve always thought that times like three oh nine or eleven forty-six were very sloppy. And ten seventeen? A total mess. Still, it says here that the time the updates go out is twelve minutes past twelve. Every night. Who knows how scientists think or why they do the things they do?”
“Scientists are very mysterious people,” Pre agreed.
“So!” Modesty drew the attention back to herself. “If we delete the transmutation spell from the DavyTron updates, will it stop the magic from draining out of Congroo, warm up the place, and keep the dragons from going extinct?”
“Yes,” said Pre eagerly. “I’m sure it would do all that. Prevent the spell, prevent the effects!”
“Unfortunately,” said Spalding, “we can’t remove the transmutation spell. The password I entered grants read-only access. We can look at this stuff, but we can’t make changes. The only person who could do that is Elwood Davy himself.”
“What?” Modesty sent Spalding spinning away in his swivel chair and stepped up to the keyboard. She typed frantically. The screen remained unchanged.
“Fazam!” She kicked the table leg.
“But,” said Spalding cheerfully, “here’s the good news: Elwood will be back tomorrow night around nine o’clock. He always comes straight to headquarters after his trips—he has a secret luxury apartment on the other side of one of the giant tomato-juice tanks in the factory wing—and I will be there to meet him. I will tell him everything you’ve told me, about how his life’s work is destroying an entire magical world—no offense, but he’ll be more apt to listen to a grown-up than to a bunch of children, even if they have made him a crown out of carrots—and then, after I’ve told him everything… he’ll refuse to believe me.”
“That is good news!” said Modesty archly.
“How does that help us?” I asked.
“Because then you’ll come along, oh, let’s say around eleven o’clock—a nice neat and tidy time—and you’ll do some genuine magic to convince him. You should definitely bring your fire tower. Then, as soon as he’s convinced magic exists and Congress is a real place—”
“Congroo,” Pre corrected him.
“Congroo, yes. Once he’s convinced Congroo is a real place and the DavyTrons are destroying it, I’m sure he’ll stop the updates and save your world. He’s that sort of guy. An absolute prince.”
I gave Modesty a sideways look, and she responded by shaking her head. We were thinking the same thing. We couldn’t do magic at eleven o’clock at night. The nearest Magic Minute was more than two hours later at 1:23. Unless 12:12 was a genuine Magic Minute, but I wasn’t at all sure about that.
“That sounds great!” said Pre. “We’ll be here. Congroo is running out of time—delaying any longer than tomorrow night would be fatal. At the very least, I don’t think Phlogiston can hold out beyond that. We should get going now”—he waved at a clock on the wall, and I was shocked to see it was already 3:39—“young folk such as ourselves need our sleep. How do we get back to the top of the building? Is there some sort of fun catapult thing?”
“The elevators are behind the reception desk,” said Spalding. “I’m not sure how fun they are, but follow me.”
He left the room with us right behind him, and a short stroll over the lawn and across the tiled floor of the lobby took us to the elevators.
“You should plan on something spectacular, magic-wise, in addition to arriving in a walking fire tower,” Spalding advised us as he ushered us into an elevator, came in behind us, and punched the 10 button. The doors slid shut, and the elevator shot upward.
“Ooh,” said Pre, pressing one hand to his stomach and the other to the wall. “Scientifical levitation.”
“What I’m saying is,” Spalding continued, “you’ll have to lay it on thick if you’re going to convince Elwood as quickly as possible. Can any of you make balls of fire shoot from the palms of your hands?”
“No,” said Modesty, “but I can tell which card’s been picked from an ordinary poker deck. As long as it’s my deck.”
“Um… I might work on that a bit,” replied Spalding as the doors opened and we spilled out into the office. The fire tower waited patiently for us at the far side of the roof garden, right where we had left it.
The night had gotten cooler, and it was a relief to get back into fresh air. The three of us clambered over the parapet and dropped into the cab. I kicked the trapdoor shut as soon as I got in.
“I’ll see you all tomorrow, then?” said Spalding once we were aboard. “Promptly at eleven PM?”
We nodded.
“And don’t come to the main entrance,” he added, stepping back from the parapet as if we were about to blast off and he didn’t want to get scorched. “Go to the factory wing on the north side. Come in the door marked SERVICE PERSONNEL ONLY. I’ll leave it unlocked. That’s the closest entrance to Elwood’s secret apartment.”
My phone was mostly hidden in the palm of my hand. I glanced down at it and discovered it was 3:44.
The clock advanced to 3:45.
Blippity-blippity-blip.
The trapdoor flew open as my phone’s alarm automatically played the door-opening spell. I eagerly looked into the opening.
Only stairs.
No Drew.
“Time to go,” Modesty announced, and turned her back on Spalding. She nudged me with her elbow, and I put aside my disappointment—I was still hopeful I would see
Drew before the minute ended—and turned the same way she was facing. We pressed ourselves together side by side to form a wall that Spalding couldn’t see past, and Modesty took out her phone.
We repeated what we had done the first time we had animated the fire tower. Modesty cued up the stilt-walking incantation and played it—blippity-brumpity-bork!—then I hit the intensification spell—blippity-brap!—and we waited, knowing it took a few seconds to work.
“Is it something I said?” asked Spalding behind us.
I looked over my shoulder.
“No offense. For the magic to work, we, uh, have to be facing in the direction we want to go.”
“Which is away from you,” Modesty felt compelled to add.
The fire tower lurched. It took a step forward and immediately opened a ten-foot gap between the top of the building and us. We hid our phones and whirled to face Spalding. He looked properly impressed, even if he had seen the tower walk before.
“Bye!” said Pre, and gave a little wave.
“Tomorrow!” Spalding shouted as the distance increased. “Eleven o’clock! At the north entrance!”
His voice dwindled as the tower reached the far edge of the parking lot and plunged into the trees.
I watched my phone as 3:45 became 3:46. I hung my head, and Modesty put a hand on my forearm.
“Reset your alarm for the next Magic Minute,” she advised me. “We’ll get him back one of these times. I know we will.”
I did as she suggested and tried to think of other things.
After a moment, she asked, “Any way we can get back to your farm without going through Deadman’s Curve?”
I nodded and grabbed the pay-per-view binoculars by the ears, then swiveled the space-alien head to the left. The more I tried to force it, the more resistance it gave; the tower really wanted to go straight to its destination, but it grudgingly altered course enough to go where I pointed the lenses. I found it felt good to actually be in control of something.
“There,” I said. “That should take us across the grounds of the middle school and over Campbell Hill to the opposite side of town, where it’s all farmland and there’ll be less danger of being seen. Then we can cross the tracks at Baily Road.”