The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (2 page)

The scientist could hear the footsteps moving closer—long, slow, deliberate strides, stepping over the threshold and down the aisle behind him. Even as his heart pounded against his chest, he kept his breath intensely slow. Though he tried to ignore it, he could feel the warmth of the hand even before it came to rest on his shoulder.

His breath caught.

His elbow slipped.

The droplet released and fell, inert, to the ground.

“Is this how you clean the blackboard, Wallace?” Miss Brett asked.

“I...” But Wallace bit his lip. He looked at the ground where the tiny droplet had soaked into the wooden floor of the classroom. The resin had left a shimmering residue Wallace knew could never be removed. Already, the chemical structure
of that spot was different from the rest of the wood surrounding it. The stain would be there, forever, hard as stone and smooth as glass. Wallace could visualize the equation in his head. He was, after all, a scientist, and the fact that he was two days shy of ten years old did not mean he was anything less. He was a scientist, as surely as his father was—and as his mother had been—and all who had come before them. This experiment was as important as anything on which any of them had ever worked.

Not that Wallace had ever known much about their work. All he knew was that his mother believed in him. She told him she firmly felt that one day, perhaps that very day, Wallace would do something that would change the world. She knew it, and she made him believe it, too.

In any case, the fact that this polymer—this molecular compound, this chemical concoction—could change the world was clearly not going to get Wallace out of blackboard duty.

“It’s lunchtime,” said Miss Brett, “and I know you must be hungry. Everyone else is outside finishing sandwiches and taking exercise.”

Wallace’s small brown nose was simply not big enough to hold his large glasses in place. He pushed the stems up against his sweaty round cheeks and looked out the window, where his four classmates sat under an oak tree in the middle of the schoolyard. They looked like any ordinary group of school children, taking a break from study while innocently basking in the afternoon sun. That had been the plan, after all—to appear innocent. It had been the plan to look, for all the world, as if they had not a care, not a worry, no concern other than who would get to hold the jump rope or who got the last cream cheese and jelly sandwich.

However, these children were neither ordinary schoolmates, nor, unbeknownst to Miss Brett, were they simply having a picnic. Wallace caught sight of each of his colleagues as they played by the tree.

Faye, the oldest at thirteen, was tall and slender as a gazelle but, Wallace considered, infinitely more like a python in temperament.

Noah looked gawky and gangly, even comical, with his wisps of reddish-blonde hair waving like wheat in the wind, but Wallace had seen that twelve-year-old boy work feats of engineering magic (not to mention what he could do on a violin, to which Wallace had listened in secret).

Jasper, who was the same age as Noah, was always at attention, keeping guard over little Lucy.

Lucy, who was all of six years old, might have been the most brilliant of them all.

Yes, they all looked like children enjoying the day. But they were not ordinary children. Nor, Wallace sensed in the pit of his stomach, were they innocent.

“Well, young man?” Miss Brett said.

Wallace’s pleading face softened Miss Brett’s features. Not so much skinny, but small and a bit frail for his age, Wallace seemed even younger than his nearly ten years. Miss Brett’s heart so obviously ached for him. She saw a sad little hungry boy eager to join his friends, but she didn’t know the real reason why.

Wallace did not like deceiving Miss Brett. Miss Brett was
very kind. Over the weeks that he and the other children had been together and in her care, she had conducted her classes with foresight and imagination.

And to Wallace, she gave something he had not had in many years. She gave him something that would remain secret even from his classmates—something he shared only with her. This made the deception all the more painful.

It was one thing to not explain the nature of their work to their teacher—how could she understand it anyway? But to keep such a secret, and plan such an escape behind her back, was another thing entirely.

In fact, they all longed to tell her. They wanted Miss Brett to know all about their brilliant creation. But the dangers were too great right now. For her. For them. For it.

Wallace reached into the pocket of his trousers. The pocket, he knew, was empty. Not generally prone to fancy, Wallace wished he still had his lucky coin. The thought of his empty pocket reminded him of a bigger emptiness. He hoped his father had not lost the coin. And he hoped his father himself was not lost.

In his other pocket, Wallace felt his magnifying glass. He corked the vial and slipped it into the same pocket, leaving his other empty, awaiting the return of the coin. He took the burette and placed it, along with the clear liquid, into a basket that hung outside the window, on the ledge. Miss Brett wanted to keep poisons outside the classroom whenever possible.

Miss Brett pulled back her sleeves and picked up the bucket of wet rags that sat, as yet untouched, near the blackboard.

“Come on. I’ll help you.”

Wallace bent to dip the rag in the bucket again. Right now,
the main objective was finishing this chore and getting out of the classroom. He looked out the window as he rose to face the blackboard.
They
would be coming, maybe any minute, and he would be too late.

“Come on, Wallace,” Miss Brett urged gently. “I’d like to get started on the gardening shed. I want to clean it out before dark.”

Wallace knew his brown face had suddenly turned pale. Miss Brett wanted to clean out the gardening shed. Wallace already knew this and tried not to panic as she reminded him.

He looked over by the road at the edge of the field. He could see the back of the truck. It was still there. There was still a chance.

M
INDS
O
VER
M
ATTER

OR

A VIEW FROM THE SCHOOLYARD

“H
e’s cleaning the ruddy blackboard,” groaned Faye.

They were facing life and death and Wallace was cleaning the blackboard.

“Cleaning the blackboard?” Jasper asked, his voice cracking as he tried to remain calm.

“At least Miss Brett is helping him,” Noah said, trying to find the bright side. “As long as she’s in there with Wallace, she can’t be cleaning the shed.”

All things considered, Noah could not help but see the irony in their predicament. They needed to get to the shed before Miss Brett, and they needed Wallace to be done with his chore. However, Wallace being done with his chore meant that Miss Brett would be headed for the gardening shed.

Faye harrumphed. “We shouldn’t have agreed to let him finish his useless—”

“It is not useless,” Jasper declared firmly. “It’s a brilliant piece of chemistry and...” Jasper gulped down the words he wanted to say but couldn’t. “It couldn’t wait.”

“You’ve been saying that, Jasper,” Faye said, stepping closer to him, “but you haven’t explained. Why can’t it wait? Why is it so—”

“What’s going to happen?” Lucy asked, interrupting Faye and slipping her hand into Jasper’s.

This
was
the question. As scientists, Jasper, Lucy, Faye, Noah, and Wallace knew more than most people about a lot of things. They knew more than most about the power and the magic of science. As scientists, they knew the power they held in their hands.

But as for what was going to happen, they hadn’t a clue. So much of their lives here remained a terrible mystery. But Jasper knew two things the others didn’t. First, he knew that this experiment, in fact,
did
have something to do with an upcoming event. And, second, he knew that Wallace had no choice but to finish this experiment. And if that meant forgoing the plan, Jasper knew in his heart that Wallace would not have a quick decision on his hands.

So little made sense right now. For one thing, it had been over two months with no real word from their parents. Without warning or explanation, the worlds of the young scientists had been turned on their sides. Their parents had simply disappeared. A dark shadow loomed over them all. There had to be a way to find their parents and to help them escape from their captors.

Now, the children had formed, and meticulously laid out, a plan to free their parents, themselves, and Miss Brett from the clutches of—and there were really no better words to describe them—the
men in black.
In truth, this was not their first plan. Or second. Or ninth. The five young scientists had been working on escape plans since their first days at Sole Manner Farm. But over
these last few weeks, while they worked on their most brilliant invention, the children had all agreed, and hoped desperately, that this was the best plan yet. It was, without a doubt, the only plan they had left.

And there was Wallace, stuck in the classroom.

Faye shook her head. “He shouldn’t have risked it.”

“This is his life’s work, Faye. He’s been working on that polymer for... well, years,” Jasper said. “He had to do it now, or... it would have been for nothing.”

“Whatever use it may be in the future,” Faye said, “it’s of no use to us now. We can’t use it to save our parents. It isn’t going to magically answer all our problems. Is it going to save the world? I don’t even care. I’m too busy trying to save our parents, or have you forgotten? If it wasn’t for Wallace’s—”

“Don’t,” Jasper warned.

Although Faye might have disagreed, each child had been vital to the creation of this plan and to the invention at the heart of it. So much was riding on everything they did.

Back in the days before the men in black, when the children saw invention as nothing more than pleasure, in the days when the young scientists’ minds were not shadowed by fear and the presence of mysterious strangers, back in their own homes, their own countries, their own worlds, they each had worked hard on various inventions. Now, they could see how all these inventions fit together—they were parts of the same, much larger and more important invention. Before they were all brought here, to Sole Manner Farm, there was already something uniting them. Each child had provided a piece of the puzzle—except Wallace.