Science Fair (25 page)

“It’s me,” said Toby, causing everyone at the table to jump.

“Who said that?” said Micah.

“It’s me! Toby!” said Toby. “I’m wearing the invisibility iPhone Sternabite made.” He tried to press the invisible iPhone to make himself visible, but in his nervousness he couldn’t find the right place on the screen. Frustrated, he reached across the table, grabbed the lone remaining muffin, and waved it in the air. “See?” he said. “I’m doing this.”

“Whoa,” said Tamara and Micah together.

Drmtsi and Vrsk stared at the floating muffin, their faces a mixture of awe and fear. Drmtsi said to Vrsk in Krpsht, “Ask them why this good-tasting bread item is floating in the air and speaking.”

Vrsk, his eyes stil on the muffin, said in English, “Why is bread item floating in air and speaking?”

“It’s our friend,” said Micah.

“What did boy say?” Drmtsi asked Vrsk.

“He said the bread item is his friend,” replied Vrsk.

Vrsk stared at the floating, talking muffin. “The Americans must be giving us drugs,” he said.

Final y Toby’s fumbling fingers found the right spot on the iPhone screen. In an instant he became visible.

“Very powerful drugs,” said Drmtsi to Vrsk.

“How does that—” began Tamara.

“No time,” interrupted Toby. “Listen, there’s a guard outside, down the hal to the right.” Toby pointed. “I’m going to go out and try to get him around the corner. You peek out the door. As soon as he goes around the corner, you run the opposite way. There’s an exit sign down there. I’l get past the guard and fol ow you.”

“And
why
are we doing this?” said Tamara.

“Because we have to get to the science fair,” said Toby. “We have to stop whatever’s gonna happen.”

“But if we escape,” said Micah, “won’t we get in trouble?”

“Micah,” said Toby, “we’re terrorism suspects. We’re being held in a secret location. We can’t
get
in any more trouble.”

“Oh, you’l think of something,” said Tamara.

“Listen,” Toby said angrily, “I came back here to get you. If you don’t want to…”

“Oh, shut up,” said Tamara. “Of
course
we’re coming.”

“We are?” said Micah.

“Of course, we are,” said Tamara, rising.

The three friends moved toward the door. Drmtsi said to Vrsk, in Krpsht, “What are these children doing?”

“I think they are escaping,” said Vrsk.

“How?” said Drmtsi.

“They are walking out the door,” said Vrsk.

“Ah,” said Drmtsi, admiring the cleverness of this plan. He rose and said, “We are escaping also.” Toby turned the knob, quietly opened the door, and peered out into the hal . The guard was stil at the intersection of the corridors, twenty-five feet to the right. Toby turned to Tamara, put his finger to his lips, then reached down and touched the wand icon on the iPhone.

Invisible now, he stepped into the corridor. Behind him, Tamara closed the door almost al the way, leaving it open just a crack so she could see what was happening. The guard had just finished looking around the intersection and was walking back toward the conference room. Toby ran past him, making no effort to soften his footsteps. The guard turned toward the sound, swiveling as Toby passed him. Toby stopped a few feet away, turned, cupped his hands, and shouted, “I THOUGHT I TOLD YOU PERSONNEL TO EXIT THE PREMISES.” The guard stepped forward, waving his hands at the air. He reached to his belt and unclipped a walkie-talkie. As he raised it to his mouth, Toby stepped forward, grabbed the antenna, and yanked. The walkie-talkie came free of the stunned guard’s hand. Toby turned and ran with it.

“Hey!” shouted the guard, pursuing the floating walkietalkie around the corner.

Behind him, Tamara quietly swung open the conference room door, turned left in the corridor, and sprinted toward the EXIT sign, fol owed by Micah, who was fol owed by Drmtsi, who was fol owed by Vrsk.

After fifty feet, they ran past another door, on the other side of which was the surveil ance station. Inside this stuffy, dimly lit room was a wal -mounted bank of television monitors connected to the hidden cameras in the conference room. In front of the monitors was a long table with a speakerphone on it. Gathered around this table were agents Turow, Iles, and Lefkon, along with some other officials. None of them were looking at the monitors, which was why they hadn’t noticed that the conference room was now empty. Instead, their attention was focused on the speakerphone, from which came the voice of a CIA linguist, who was heading the team trying to translate the recorded conversation between Drmtsi and Vrsk.

“I’m afraid it’s a very obscure dialect,” she was saying. “We’ve only been able to translate a fragment. We’l keep working, though.”

“Wel , tel us what you’ve got so far,” said Turow. “We need something,
anything.”

“To be honest,” said the linguist, “al we have so far is ‘cheese.’”

“‘Cheese?’” said Turow. “As in, ‘cheese’?”

“Cheese,” said the linguist.

Turow rubbed his weary face with both weary hands.

“Wel ,
that’s
a big help,” he said.

“We’re doing the best we can,” snapped the linguist.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Turow, pressing the DISCONNECT button. He looked around at the others. “Cheese,” he said.

“Maybe it’s a code,” said Lefkon.

Suddenly they heard shouting in the hal . Al eyes went to the monitors, which showed an empty conference room. Lefkon yanked the door open; they al ran outside. To their left was the source of the shouts: the guard. He had chased his walkie-talkie around the corner and then down the corridor, where the invisible Toby had hurled it. He had then run back to the conference room, yanked the door open, and saw that it was empty. Meanwhile, Toby was racing down the corridor after his friends. He passed the surveil ance-room door just as the agents opened it; in fact, Lefkon nearly ran into him as she burst from the room.

At the moment, the feds were al looking left toward the guard. He was standing at the doorway to the conference room.

“They’re gone!” he shouted.

“Where?” shouted Turow.

“There!” shouted Lefkon, who had just spotted the running figures at the far end of the corridor.

“Cal security!” shouted Turow, sprinting toward the figures. “Lock it down NOW!”

Lefkon ran into the conference room and grabbed the phone; the guard was shouting into his walkie-talkie. Moments later, a recorded voice boomed down the corridor, saying,

“WE HAVE A CODE MAGENTA SITUATION. REPEAT, THIS IS A CODE MAGENTA SITUATION.”

At the far end of the corridor, Tamara, Micah, Vrsk, and a red-faced, huffing Drmtsi reached a T-junction. To their right, they saw men running toward them; to their left was a door with a sign that said EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY—ALARM WILL SOUND. Tamara sprinted toward it and slammed into the bar. The door banged open, and an alarm began emitting a shril
beep beep beep
. Tamara stopped and looked around. Night had fal en; she was in an al ey in the rear of the building, and it was lit by the harsh glare of a security light. Along the wal next to the door was a large green Dumpster.

Micah burst through the door fol owed by Vrsk, who was fol owed by the flagging Drmtsi. Pounding down the corridor toward them were a half-dozen men.

“What now?” said Micah.

“I don’t know,” said Tamara. “Where’s Toby?”

“Here!” said a voice next to them. “Close the door and give me a hand with the Dumpster!”

Micah slammed the door shut, then he and Tamara ran to the Dumpster and grunted, trying to move it in front of the door. It didn’t budge.

“Help us!” shouted Tamara at Drmtsi and Vrsk. Vrsk said something to Drmtsi in Krpsht, and the two men ran behind the Dumpster and pushed. Slowly it began to rol on its creaking wheels. Just as it reached the doorway, the door slammed open, but the Dumpster kept it from opening more than a few inches.

“Push it toward the building!” shouted Toby. He and the others shifted positions and tried to push the Dumpster against the door. But the men inside were also pushing, and they were stronger; the Dumpster was moving back, and the door was opening. The men were going to get out.

“You guys run!” said Toby. “I’l hold this as long as I can. They can’t see me.”

Tamara and Micah looked at each other, unsure about leaving Toby. Meanwhile Drmtsi was saying something to Vrsk.

“Looking out!” Vrsk shouted at the kids. “Is danger!”

Toby, Tamara, and Micah turned to the two men, who were reaching into their pants. The Dumpster, shoved by the men inside, creaked and shuddered as it was pushed toward them. The door was almost open enough for the men to slip through. Inside, somebody shouted “One…two…” as the men prepared for one last coordinated shove.

“THREE!” shouted the voice. As the men heaved into the door, Drmtsi and Vrsk pul ed their hands out of their pants and hurled two globs of smerk through the opening. Instantly, the air was fil ed with a stench that smel ed like a cross between a rotting buffalo and a sewer explosion, only worse. From inside, there were shouts of surprise, fol owed by yelps of terror.

“GAS ATTACK!” shouted a voice. “IT’S A GAS ATTACK!”

There were more shouts and the sound of pounding feet as the men fled back down the corridor.

“What was
that
?” said Micah to Vrsk.

“Is smerk,” said Vrsk. “Cheese.”

“Whoa,” said Micah.

“Smerk?” said Drmtsi, preparing to reach back into his pants.

“No thanks!” said Micah and Tamara hastily.

Toby pressed his iPhone and made himself visible. “Come on,” he said, trotting away from the building. “We gotta get to Hubble.”

“Right,” said Tamara, trotting behind fol owed by Micah. “But which way
is
Hubble?”

“I have no idea,” said Toby. “But we can’t stay here. They’l be coming back.”

“Excuse me,” said Vrsk, who was also trotting behind and fol owed by the huffing Drmtsi. “Did you say Hobble?” Toby glanced back. “I said Hubble,” he said.

“Yes,” said Vrsk. “Hobble. Is this Hobble Middle School?”

Toby stopped short and turned around. “You know about Hubble Middle School?”

Vrsk nodded rapidly. “Yes,” he said. “Is where we are going also.”

“Why?” said Toby.

Vrsk exchanged a few rapid Krpsht words with Drmtsi, then turned back to Toby.

“Touristism,” he said.

Toby was about to say something more when he heard shouts in the distance coming from the building they had just escaped.

“Let’s go,” he said, running away from the building toward the dark streets beyond, fol owed by his two old friends and his two new weird and smel y al ies.

O
N THE HUBBLE MIDDLE SCHOOL
bal field, nearly a thousand excited people—students, teachers, parents—watched the dark night sky, waiting.

“There it is!” shouted a boy. He pointed toward the south, where flashing lights showed on the horizon. A few moments later, the crowd heard the
whupwhupwhup
of big rotors slicing the air. As the TranScent Corp. helicopter swooped toward the school, teachers shouted at the excited throng to keep back from the roped-off landing area, which was bril iantly il uminated by four huge portable spotlights.

Soon, the chopper was over the bal field. It hovered for a few seconds, then settled gently onto second base, its downdraft kicking up a swirling dirt storm. The pilot shut down the engines. As the rotors wound down, the chopper door opened and the folding stairway deployed. Cheers erupted from the crowd as Lance Swingle himself appeared in the doorway, waving as he descended the stairway. The handsome bil ionaire looked younger than his forty-three years, his radiantly white teeth gleaming in the spotlights, his dark hair tousled by the dwindling rotor breeze.

Swingle was greeted at the bottom of the stairs by Principal Plotz-Gornett and a dozen other school officials. Then, with Swingle triumphantly leading the way, the excited crowd thronged into the gymnasium and gathered around the platform set up for the opening ceremonies of the science fair.

Swingle was introduced by the president of the school board, who read brief opening remarks in which he compared Swingle’s achievement of sending smel s over the Internet with the work of Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bel , Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, and Bil Gates. Swingle smiled bashful y to indicate that he was unworthy of this praise, although in fact the opening remarks had been written by his vice president for public relations.

When the introduction was finished, Swingle strode to the microphone, acknowledging the crowd’s cheers with sincerely faked modesty. He then launched into his “brief” remarks.

“Thirty-one years ago,” he began, “an eighth-grade boy walked into this very same gymnasium. In many ways, he looked like an ordinary young man; in fact”—here Swingle flashed a bril iant smile—“you might say he looked like a younger version of…me.”

The crowd chuckled in recognition of the fact that the young man was, in fact, Lance Swingle. Principal Plotz-Gornett groaned inwardly and shifted on her feet; she knew from experience that it would take Swingle a good twenty minutes to get through the dul but supposedly uplifting story of how the young, ordinary-looking young man transformed himself, against great odds, into the wealthy, bril iant, handsome genius entrepreneur standing on the stage tonight.