The Final Gambit

by Christopher Healy

  “Think about it, Molly,” Rector continued. He circled the monument in long slow loops, keeping them over the crowd that was helpless to interfere. “If you come out on top today, do you think they’re suddenly going to change their minds? Tell everyone the truth about what you did? Do you think you’ll ever get any credit for saving the world from ‘Crazy Ambrose Rector’? Do you think anyone will ever listen to you and your insufferable band of overachievers?”

  “Yes,” Molly sneered back. “Because all those people down there? They heard the fight over the Empowernator. They heard everything! They know . . .” But even as she said it, she realized that none of their words were currently echoing through speakers down below.

  “Oh, you poor, naive little thing,” Rector replied. “You sound so proud of yourself, it almost feels cruel to point this out, but you must not have noticed our good friend President Arthur flick off the Empowernator the moment you crashed into the room. The oaf had no idea what was going on, of course, but if there’s one thing the man knows how to do, it’s avoid bad press. He jumped to it on pure instinct, protected my anonymity without even knowing it. So, no, I’m sorry, but nothing has changed and nothing will. You can’t fight the system. The system always wins. That’s why I’m going to replace the system, become the system.”

  Molly clenched her teeth as she fought to hang on.

  “You’re a clever girl, Molly,” Rector continued. “I complain about you, sure—”

  “And try to murder me,” Molly snapped.

  “And try to murder you a little bit too, yes,” Rector went on. “But only because you’re such worthy competition. Look, I feel that sock sliding. We don’t have much time for parlay here. What I’m trying to say is that if you keep fighting me, even if you win today, you’ll end up back in the same place you were before—in the back of a smelly old pickle shop, unknown and unappreciated, no matter what you do. As for me, I’ll escape—I always do. But you never will. You won’t escape the fate society has assigned you. Your mother will continue to languish in obscurity, your friends will still be stymied by a world that doesn’t appreciate them and continues to present them with nothing but obstacles to their success. You will never get credit for any of the feats you’ve accomplished, any of the battles you’ve fought. And why? Because of this system. The system you’re always fighting so desperately to stop me from taking down! You protect your own oppressors!”

  Molly said nothing. Her wrist felt like it was about to snap.

  “You know I’m right, Molly,” Rector continued. “If you win, you end up back in the same place you were a year ago. And the same things will come from it. Your frustration will build until you eventually do something desperate, anger the powers that be, and end up on the run again. Until my next dastardly plot. Which we all know is coming. And then we’ll end up doing this all over again, Molly. Again and again and again.”

  Molly swallowed. She knew Rector liked to play mind games with her. But deep in her core, she knew there was truth to what he was saying. Her fingers started going numb. She couldn’t hold on much longer.

  “The only way to break the cycle is to do something different,” Rector said. “Change the rules of the game, Molly. Join me. Just give in. It’s either that, or wind our clockwork lives back up and start all over again. Hey, maybe next time, I’ll escape with you on a rocket to the moon. That could be fun, eh?”

  Molly shivered in the biting autumn air. Rector was right. But he was also wrong. The system did feel rigged against her—against lots of people. It was a broken, unfair system in which so many were set up for defeat from the start. The system did need changing. But not like this. Not Rector’s idea of change. Creating real change would take time and effort, and it might be thankless. The people who do the hard work might get no credit, no recognition, no reward other than knowing they’ve made a difference. It was a daunting thought. But Hertha’s words rang through her head: the future is worth fighting for.

  She craned her neck to look Rector in the face, but peering up at him, all she could see was his dark silhouette against the sun, directly overhead. Her left hand gave out. It slipped free and hung limply at her side, tingling with pins and needles. She tried to tighten the grip of her right hand, but the cramps pulsing through her palm made it beyond difficult.

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay what?” Rector asked. “I want to hear you say it.”

  From the corner of her eye, Molly caught a glint of gleaming metal, soaring through the sky.

  “Okay, I’ll beat you again,” she said, grinning as Robot swooped up and grabbed her by the waist. “I’ll beat you every time, if that’s what it takes.”

  “I believe,” Robot said, “that Miss Pepper is not enjoying this ride. Shall we go to the ground, Molly?”

  For once, Molly was not upset about Robot breaking the no-flying rule. “Yes, Robot,” she said. “We’ve already thwarted Rector’s little plot. All that planning and scheming, and, look, he’s on the run yet again, flying off with his little backpack, foiled once more by a couple of nosy kids. Rest with that thought until next time, Ambrose.”

  With his arms around Molly’s waist, Robot angled to fly downward, but Rector had other plans. He grabbed Molly’s arms and tried to yank her back to him. “No!” he shouted. “She does not get to run away this time! We are not going through this dance again in six months! Or ever! The cycle ends today!”

  “Let go!” Molly cried as Robot and Rector both began spinning in the air, playing a vicious tug-of-war with her.

  “I tried to make it your choice, Molly! But if you won’t break the cycle, I will!” Rector snarled. “I’ll change the game by taking you out of it!”

  “Hold tight, Molly,” Robot said as the fliers began spiraling out of control. Molly smacked at Rector’s arms and shoulders in an attempt to make him let go. Robot joined in, daring to release one of his arms from Molly in order to whap the villain in the gut. But Rector struggled even harder. As the three figures tumbled through the sky in high-altitude somersaults, people began to scatter, afraid to be directly under the midair confrontation.

  “No more, Molly!” Rector cried. “This ends now!” He let go with one arm and reached back, patting around on his antigravity pack. He was looking for something. His fingers found his Magneta-Ray, but that apparently was not what he’d been seeking. He hurled it angrily into the trees, and immediately went back to feeling around the backpack. Molly finally spied what he was reaching for—another Sizzle-Stick, protruding from a pocket on the side of the pack. He was planning to shock Robot out of the sky.

  But caught as he was in a dizzying spin, he seemed unable to find his weapon. With increasing panic, Rector ripped open one pocket after another, tearing at any strap or button he could touch. Eventually, his fingers found their way around the thick black cord that held down the flap to the backpack’s main compartment. He yanked it, releasing the flap, and the antigravity device inside—a skull-sized, circuit-covered metal box that housed a chunk of Ambrosium—floated out. The small machine drifted straight up into the atmosphere until it vanished from sight.

  Molly gasped. But Rector didn’t seem to notice what had happened. He pulled his hand forward, having finally located his Sizzle-Stick. “Aha!” he crowed, raising the weapon overhead in both hands like a victorious king on the battlefield. Then he finally felt the tug of gravity. Ambrose Rector’s eyes went wide with horror as he plummeted helplessly to the ground, five hundred feet below.

  Molly closed her eyes, but she could still hear the screams. And the thud.

  “He’s—he’s—”

  “He is gone,” Robot confirmed.

  Molly hugged Robot tight as they finally began to descend unimpeded. But Robot didn’t float straight down.

  “I am trying to take you farther away,” he said. “I do not want you to have to see what has become of Mr. Rector.”

  “Thank you, Robot,” she replied. “But you’re still going . . . What do you
mean, ‘trying’?”

  They began descending faster than they were moving forward. “I cannot . . . keep myself . . . aloft,” Robot said. His voice slowed with every word. “I think . . . maybe, Molly . . . I am done too.”

  “No, Robot, no,” Molly said. “Just land, okay. Land and we’ll—”

  “Thank you . . . for being . . . my family.”

  Robot’s body shook as he struggled to slow their descent. His feet thumped down hard on the lawn of the National Mall. He bent to set Molly gently on the ground, then collapsed onto his back. “Thank . . .”

  And then he was silent.

  “No,” Molly cried. “Robot! Robot!” On her knees beside him, she threw open his chest plate. Inside, she saw gears, springs, bolts—but no Ambrosium. The chamber was empty.

  27

  After the Fall

  “THAT WAS QUITE a show!”

  “Well, until that one actor accidentally died.”

  “Oh, yes. Tragic that.”

  As she sat on the grass, cradling Robot’s lifeless aluminum body, Molly listened to the murmurings of the slowly dispersing crowd that filed past her without acknowledgment. It was true: the president had shut down the Empowernator. The spectators outside all thought it was a performance. None of these people even heard Rector’s name. Molly laughed, an ironic chuckle that slipped out between tears. Rector had become a criminal because his father wouldn’t let him be an actor—and now he’d died with people thinking he was one.

  “Hey, is that the girl from—”

  “Shh! Don’t bother her. I think she’s still in character.”

  “Or she could be, you know, mourning the death of her costar.”

  “Either way, let’s not get involved.”

  “Yeah, you’re right . . . Hey, all those different flying machines were pretty amazing, though, right?”

  “Yes! I had no idea Thomas Edison had invented such incredible things! That man’s definitely got my vote.”

  Molly wiped her face on her sleeve. She would be furious about that later. Right now, she didn’t have the capacity for anything beyond sorrow. She stroked Robot’s smooth metallic head. She wished she had a hat for him. Any hat. She’d told him he could wear a hat when he . . .

  “Molly! Thank goodness!” Her mother pushed through the crowd and dropped to her knees to embrace her.

  “It’s over, Mother,” Molly said softly as Cassandra caressed her head. “It’s all over. And Robot is . . .”

  “Oh, Molly.” Cassandra hugged her daughter tighter.

  Captain Lee appeared at their side a second later, with the rest of the former captives right behind him. He looked around anxiously. “Where’s—”

  “I’m here, Papa!” Emmett came running from the direction of the monument. He immediately threw his arms around his father. Then he looked down. “Oh, no. Robot?”

  “I’m sorry, son.” Captain Lee closed his eyes as tears ran down his cheeks. “But he was a hero. Just like you. I’m so proud of you, son.”

  “You should be proud, sir,” said a deep voice. President Arthur, surrounded by an entourage of federal agents, walked up and cleared his throat. “This is the second time now that these children have been instrumental in, well, saving my life.”

  Agent Clark, out of breath and looking more of a wreck than the Daedalus Chariot, pushed his way to the front of the agents. He surveyed the group before him: the Peppers, the Lees, the entire MOI. “Excellent, you’re all here,” he said. “Men, put these people under arrest.”

  The Mothers immediately began protesting, but it was President Arthur’s words that got the agents to stop advancing. “Did you not just hear me say they saved my life?”

  “But, Mr. President,” said Clark.

  “I just saved your life!” Emmett said to Clark.

  “Potentially,” the agent replied. “We have no way of knowing for sure whether that machine would have killed me or not. And, actually, we don’t know where it landed. By pushing me out of the way, you might have allowed someone else to be squashed by that thing.”

  Emmett went pale. “I . . . um . . .” He looked up to the window of the monument and raised his hands in an L shape to calculate the angle. “Excuse me. I’ll be—um, I’ll be back.” And he ran off.

  One of the agents made a move to follow, but President Arthur stopped him. “Look, I’m still president for a while longer, and I’m hereby pardoning all these people of any crimes they may have committed,” he said. Smiles began to spread across the faces before him and he quickly added, “Crimes committed up to this point, that is. Understand that those secrecy agreements you signed are still in effect, and if any of you choose to once again break those contracts, this government will have no choice but to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, whether it be me or Mr. Edison there.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Edison said, a smile coming over his face. “I guess I’m going to be president. Since no one will ever know it was Rector who’s been running and not me. Neat.”

  “As president of the Inventors’ Guild, I look forward to working closely with you, Mr. President,” Bell said, shaking Edison’s hand and giving him a sly wink.

  Molly slumped into her mother’s arms. Rector had been right. Everything he’d said, it was already coming true.

  “Well, I didn’t sign anything,” Nellie Bly said, waving her very full notepad. “And I think the American people will be very interested to hear about—”

  “Nothing,” Clark said. “They will hear about nothing. Because neither you nor Mr. Lee are leaving this area until you’ve signed the same agreement as the others.” He turned to the president. “I can at least do that, right?”

  President Arthur nodded. “The nation needs to keep its secrets.”

  Clark sent someone to retrieve paperwork for Nellie and the captain. “No mention of Ambrose Rector, Ambrosium, or the incident at the World’s Fair. The official stance is that none of those things ever existed. Are we clear?”

  “Let me get this straight,” Nellie said. “If I don’t sign away my rights, you’ll toss me straight into jail?”

  “This is criminal,” said Mary.

  “Utterly unfair,” said Sarah.

  “Positively ghastly behavior,” Josephine scolded.

  Molly yelled at all of them. “Yeah, it’s awful! They’re awful. Did you expect anything less? But none of it matters anymore. Robot is dead. He’s never going to make another terrible metaphor. He’s never going to juggle pickles again. Never going to twirl his silly metal mustache.” Her words faded as she buried her face into her mother’s shoulder.

  “We are so terribly sorry,” Hertha said somberly. “It is a terrible loss. Come, ladies, let us give the family some space to mourn.” She shot a stern glare at the president as the women walked off.

  “Oh, um, yes,” President Arthur sputtered. “Us too. We shall let the Peppers, um, cry for a bit. Don’t worry, Clark, we’ll make sure those other two sign their papers.” Bell and Edison followed as the president ushered his gang of federal agents back to the monument where a group of reporters awaited the “official” story of what had happened that day.

  Only Captain Lee stayed with the Peppers. He crouched by them and peered into Robot’s empty chest compartment. “Are we certain he’s—?”

  Molly nodded.

  Cassandra ripped off a strip of her skirt and held it for Molly to blow her nose into. “His Ambrosium was going to run out eventually,” she said. “He chose to use the last of it to save your life. I will be forever grateful to him for that.”

  Something caught the captain’s eye. “Um, Cassandra, didn’t you once say you might be able to try a—what did you call it?—a transplant? If we found more Ambrosium to put into him?”

  “Yes, but— What are you looking at?”

  “That dog. That ridiculous, wonderful dog.” Captain Lee stood and pointed to Dr. Stinkums, who was trotting around the Mall, growling and gnawing at the silvery blaster between his teeth. T
he dog noticed the captain and padded over, the ray gun in his mouth glowing a faint orange.

  Molly jumped up. “Rector’s Magneta-Ray! There’s Ambrosium in there! Oh, Dr. Stinkums, Robot was right—you are a genius!”

  The dog shook his head and snarled, crunching down on the ray blaster until it cracked in half and a walnut-sized, glowing tidbit of Ambrosium plopped onto the grass.

  “Good show, Dr. Stinkums!” Cassandra cheered.

  “I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes!” said Captain Lee. “That dog might just have saved the day!”

  “Good puppy!” Molly cooed.

  And then, in one gulp, Dr. Stinkums ate the Ambrosium.

  “No! Drop it, drop it!” Molly tackled the dog and stuck her fingers into his drool-slick mouth, feeling around behind his teeth and under his tongue until the dog made a very unpleasant noise. She let him go. “It’s gone.”

  “I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes,” Captain Lee said.

  Cassandra winced. “Is Dr. Stinkums going to become an evil genius now?”

  “That little shard was our last chance to possibly save Robot,” Molly said.

  “We don’t know for certain if the transplant would even have worked,” Cassandra replied.

  “But we could have tried,” Molly said. “With that rock we wouldn’t have had to just sit back and accept things the way they were. That rock could have changed everything! But now it’s . . .”

  She froze, a cascade of intriguing thoughts rushing through her mind.

  “Molls? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “I just . . . I had an idea.” She looked into her mother’s eyes. “It might not be over.”

  “Excellent,” Cassandra replied. “What might not be over?”

  “Everything,” said Molly.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” asked Captain Lee.

  “Absolutely,” Molly said. “I thought we were stuck, trapped in this cycle. But we can break it, we can try something new. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have to do what Rector said. Not killing people or any of that stuff—don’t worry. I have to change the game.”