The Lonely Whelk (19 page)

The office was basically empty except for a
few pieces of furniture, six books, and a phone next to a pile of
paperwork on the desk.

“
So what are we doing in
here?” Maddy asked.

“
We’re leaving a trap for
Quin.”

“
A trap?”

“
Yes, you see,” Maxwell
began to explain, “my biggest fear is that we will get caught by
Quin. But if we leave a trap for him, then he will get caught here
and not be able to come after us.”

“
That makes a lot of
sense,” Maddy agreed.

“
And, while we’re in here,
we can check to make sure John is out of his office.” He picked up
a small sticky note which read “John.” Then, he picked up the phone
and dialed. No one answered. The answering machine picked
up.

“
Hello, you have reached
me, John! Actually, you haven’t reached me, because I’m not here.
This is just a recording. Shame on you if you didn’t know that
already. Leave a message! Or you could stop by my office, room 883,
but you should probably wait until later, because, as I said, I’m
not here. Cheers!”

Maxwell hung up. “Step one accomplished!” He
fished around in his bag and pulled out a magazine and a bottle of
Extraordinary Adhesive. The magazine was titled
The Art of
Pruning
.

“
Hey, I brought you that!”
Maddy observed.

“
Yes.” Maxwell set the
magazine in the center of Quin’s desk.

“
What’s it for?” Maddy
asked.

“
Well, when he sees this,
he’ll want to sit down and look at it.”

Maddy frowned.

Maxwell took the tube of Extraordinary
Adhesive and began to spread it all over the seat of Quin’s
chair.

An expression of pleased surprise and
understanding crossed Maddy’s face. “I see,” she said. “So he will
sit down to look at the magazine, and then he will get stuck to the
chair and not be able to chase us! That is very clever of you,
Maxwell.”

Maxwell grinned, feeling very pleased with
himself.

“
So what’s next, then?”
Maddy asked.

“
Crossing the void and then
going to John’s office... to get the... you know what.” Then
Maxwell laughed. He had practiced the laugh an awfully lot, but it
never seemed to come out right. It was a villainous laugh, yes,
right up until the end, when it sort of… broke.

“
That was good!” Maddy
encouraged him. “You’re getting really close!”

Then the villain and his companion took
their leave of Quin’s office, traversed the chasm, and made their
way towards their goal.

P
ART 3

Hazel was confused. She had been surrounded
by trees, with a strange man... but now she appeared to be just
waking up, and if her nervous system was still in working
condition, it seemed to be telling her that her arms were tied
tightly together and her feet were bound. In addition, it would
appear that either someone had turned out the lights, or she had
gone blind.

She blinked a few times. It was pitch
black.

“
Hello?” she
said.

There was a blaze of light in front of her,
and a dark silhouette appeared at the center.

“
You have been chosen,” the
figure said.

“
Chosen for what?” she
asked.

“
Chosen to fulfill your
destiny.” The voice was odd. It was loud, but strangely
robotic-sounding.

“
Can you untie me?” Hazel
asked.

“
You must wait in silence
until the time is right.”

The light suddenly vanished. Hazel blinked
rapidly, trying to clear the spots from her eyes.

“
The time is right for
what?” she asked.

No one answered.

She wriggled around trying to loosen her
bonds. It was no use; they were secure. So she settled back and
tried to relax as the tiniest bit of headache began to bleed into
her consciousness.

A little tear leaked from her eye, but she
blinked it away. She felt strange. Only a little while ago she had
been missing her dad, traveling the world, and selling useless
trinkets to spend-happy tourists. Now she was on a spaceship filled
with sleeping people and robot monkeys, being held captive by said
monkeys, and with no idea how to get out of the predicament.

Then she smiled as she realized the little
monkey robot was still around her neck – the one that had been
translating for her all along.

“
What’s your name, little
monkey?” Hazel asked.

The monkey didn’t reply. She rubbed her face
against its fur. “I hope you’re on my side,” she whispered, and
then fell silent.

“
Hazel?” Pilgrim’s voice
sounded in the darkness a few minutes later. “Hello?”

“
I’m here,” she said
softly. The robot monkey repeated her words. “But I don’t know
where we are.”

“
Me neither,” Pilgrim said.
“But Holland is looking for us, so we just need to be patient and
try to figure out what is going on with these monkeys. Are you tied
up?”

“
Yes,” Hazel replied. “The
bonds are secure.”

“
Mine are too. Maybe if we
can inch towards each other, one of us can untie the other. Try to
move towards me.”

“
Okay,” Hazel said, and
began to scoot towards the sound of Pilgrim’s voice. All of a
sudden the monkey around her neck began to squeak and
buzz.

“
What’s that?” Pilgrim
asked.

“
It’s the translating
monkey.” She rubbed her face against his fur again. “Do you have
light, little monkey?”

His eyes lit up, two glowing orange beams in
the darkness.

“
Oh,” Pilgrim said.
“There’s a row of cactuses between us. We must still be in the
arboretum, but they fiddled with the night settings.”

“
Monkey,” Hazel said, “can
you untie me?”

“
Meep!” the monkey replied.
It scampered down her arm and began to fiddle with the ropes around
her hands.

“
How is that the monkey can
repeat all of my words in another language, but not speak to me?”
Hazel asked Pilgrim.

“
I don’t know. This monkey
was programmed by another robot monkey. Squeak made them all. Who
knows what logic robot monkeys follow?”

“
They follow my logic!” a
voice proclaimed.

The lights in the room blazed brightly.
Hazel blinked in the sudden light, until her vision cleared enough
to see Emperor Tamarin standing on a large rock in front of
them.

“
I made them! They are my
children!”

“
Okay, Squeak,” Pilgrim
said in an irritated voice. “Come on, now. What is going
on?”

“
We have found our
opportunity,” Emperor Tamarin replied. “It is time!”

“
What opportunity?” Hazel
asked. The little monkey was still fiddling with her bonds. She
hoped he would hurry.

“
Our opportunity to take
over the world. The perfect opportunity, or in other words:
you!”

“
How her?” Pilgrim scoffed.
“She is alone. She has no power. No one even knows she’s
here!”

“
Ah, but she got here. She
has a ship!” Emperor Tamarin was hopping a little, presumably with
excitement. “We have discovered that the ship is locked – thus we
need to you let us in, and then we will take over the
world!”

“
A
world,” Pilgrim
muttered. Then he said more loudly, “Okay, then, let’s go! Get this
over with.”

“
Stand!” the Emperor
commanded.

As Hazel stood, she felt the bindings around
her hands loosen, and her little ally monkey slipped back up around
her neck. She kissed his fur. “Thanks,” she whispered, and began to
walk slowly in the direction indicated by the swarm of monkeys that
surrounded them.

Staring at the stars, Holland watched as
memories of her son, her husband, her brother, and life back on
Sagitta flashed through her memory. They were painful, but warm;
dark, yet comforting. Every so often she would think,
I don’t
have time for this
, but ignore the voice in the back of her
head – just one more minute, just one more.

Then, Holland’s nostalgia was harshly
interrupted as a voice boomed over the loudspeaker.

“
Admiral Hawkings,” it
said. “Please report to Corridor 11.”

Frowning, Holland headed to the nearest comm
station. She needed to get the portable communicators out of
storage and hand them out to everyone.

“
McGraff?” she asked.
“What’s going on?”

“
Sir,” McGraff stated. She
must have been at the Corridor 11 Comm Station. “You need to get
over here. This is the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“
Be right
there.”

Holland tried to run, but as she did, pain
shot up one leg. She grimaced and slowed down. Whatever this
mystery was would have to wait the few extra minutes it required to
walk instead of run. She was amazed that she was still able to
remember all of the corridors to get from one side of the ship to
the other. All of the shortcuts, ladders, and doorways were all
still firmly in her mind; the years spent sleeping hadn’t emptied
her mind of anything. When her thoughts brushed up against the
death of her son, however, she wished it had.

He had been only eleven when his life was
snuffed out: a game with his friend in an empty field that had
resulted in a broken leg in the bottom of a well. The broken leg
wouldn’t have killed him if it hadn’t severed his artery… she
gasped as a surge of emotional pain rose up like a tsunami. She
quickly tried to pull her thoughts away. She was six hundred years
past and flying close to the speed of light on the other side of
the galaxy, but it felt like it had happened just yesterday.
My
poor John
, she thought, and then swallowed, forcing her
attention back to her surroundings.

She rounded the corner into Corridor 11 and
saw her staff standing in a huddle down at the far end. McGraff
waved in her direction, so she speeded up a little bit. As she drew
near, her jaw dropped. Stuck into the wall was a store – the kind
you found in touristy locations in cities all over the galaxy. She
hurried closer, and her crew hurriedly stepped out of her way. A
sign hanging over the door said, “The Magic of Whelk,” and when she
gazed through the glass windows in the front of the shop, she could
see sweatshirts, magnets, chocolates, and all sorts of little
trinkets blazoned with the name of her ship.

“
What is this?” she
asked.

“
We were hoping you could
tell us,” McGraff replied. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t here when we
left.”

“
Did the monkeys build it?”
Holland asked. It was the only thing she could think of. “But why
would they?”

“
Restaz has an interesting
theory,” McGraff replied.

Sergeant Restaz stepped forward and saluted.
“Ma’am, could it be the alien’s ship?”

Holland raised her eyes. “I don’t see how,”
she replied, “but it’s just as likely as the monkeys building it.”
She looked around. What should she do about it? It didn’t seem to
have done any harm, aside from causing a minor electrical spike –
assuming that the shop was, in fact, responsible for that – and she
had far too many other things to worry about.

“
Okay, I am moving this to
a lower priority. McGraff, take your team to the arboretum. Finding
Pilgrim and the girl is your next top priority, and if you see a
way to stop those blasted shipbots, do it.”

“
Yes, sir!” McGraff saluted
and her team marched down the hall.

Holland stared at the shop again. She tried
the door, but it was locked. They would have to break in at some
point, unless Hazel had the key… but what a strange, strange thing.
Shaking her head, she turned to look down the hallway. If it was
Hazel’s ship, what had she thought when she landed here? Did she
come on purpose? Taking a deep breath, Holland pushed the thoughts
from her mind. She needed to focus on the primary problems at hand:
finding Pilgrim, dealing with the shipbot infestation, and getting
her people safely to the ground so they could start colonizing.
Then she could send a report back to Sagitta and get on with her
life.

She began to walk down the hallway, and
imagining the steam rising from a hot bath. A glass of whiskey,
jasmine bubble soap, some classical music, and a good cry sounded
perfect right about now. Then maybe a jaunt through her family
photos file, so she could put the emotional swinging to rest. She
paused as she heard a strange noise behind her. Turning, she gazed
in amazement at an ocean of robotic fur swarming down the hallway
towards her.

Give me a run-down,” Quin said as he burst
into the security room where Clyde sat feeling awkward, stressed,
and terribly uncomfortable. “And then I want you to help me with
the shutdown. We need to do it now.”

He turned his focus towards the problems at
hand. “The group that was harassing Bob is in, on their way to the
Door Room – at least according to this book of blueprints. Some
random guy just broke into your office, and Boris just left the
office with the giant turtle desk.” Clyde didn’t take his eyes from
the screen.