The Secret of Zoom (12 page)

 

Cook bustled past, digging in the linen closet for napkins. “Larry never had much of a head for science. He was a nice man, though—collected trash for the city of Dorf until he died. He was always very prompt, but I'm afraid all the admiration went to his scientific brothers.”

Christina took the napkins from Cook's hands. “I'll fold those,” she said. “
And
set the table.”

Cook beamed. “
I
always said you were a helpful child!” She disappeared behind the swinging door.

Christina pulled Taft out, dusty and rumpled, and hurried him into the dining room. By the time Cook returned, Taft was wedged inside the long hollow bench under the window and Christina was setting out forks with a placid air.

 

At dinner, Dr. Adnoid had little to say. He ate quietly, looking worried and unhappy, and now and then he stared at his fork as if he had forgotten how to use it.

Christina, for her part, was trying to think of questions to ask her father. She couldn't ask about the orphans, or zoom, without making him suspicious. And
anything
she asked him was likely to turn into a discussion of math. But she could almost feel Taft's impatience from the hollow bench beneath
the window, as Nanny made sprightly conversation about the difficulties of knitting striped socks and Cook brought up the interesting fact that she had used green peppercorns with the baked chicken.

“Dad?”

Dr. Adnoid looked up, his eyes unfocused.

Christina gave it her best shot. “I was just wondering. Why did you come to Loompski Labs in the first place? What exactly do you do there?”

Dr. Adnoid seemed to collect himself. “Well, Leo Loompski hired me. I'm a physicist, you know, and we were doing work on some rather startling theories of his in quantum mechanics. He hired your mother, too. She was a geologist . . .” His face sagged. The lines around his mouth deepened.

Christina hesitated. “What's quantum mechanics?” She braced herself.

Her father's face brightened. “Quantum mechanics is the study of matter and energy. It's a mathematical construct for predicting the behaviors of microscopic particles—”

Christina could feel her attention start to wander. She shook herself—this time, she was going to
try
to understand, at least—and put a hand on her father's arm. “Dad. Could you make it simpler, please? I'm only ten.”

Her father looked surprised. “Oh. Right. Well, see, on a molecular level, things don't work the way you think they will.”

Cook began to clear the table. Nanny took her knitting and sat in the next room.

“What do you mean?” Christina asked as Cook clattered the dishes in the sink.

Dr. Adnoid cleared his throat and leaned back in his chair. “You've learned about molecules, haven't you? And atoms?”

Christina nodded. “They're tiny bits, so small you can't see them, and they connect together to make up everything in the universe.”

“That's right. And have you learned that matter is mostly made up of space? This table, for example.” He smacked his hand flat on the wood.

“It sounds pretty solid to me,” said Christina.

“Yes, but that's just because the tiny bits are attracted to each other. They want to stay close to each other—but not so close they touch—and in between, there's a
lot
of space. Trust me on this.”

“Okay,” said Christina. It was surprising, but so far her brain hadn't gone completely numb. Maybe it was because he hadn't gotten to the point of writing down numbers and making her look at them.

“Now, my hand has a lot of space in between its molecules, too. And every time I slap my hand on the table, like this—”

Christina smiled to herself. Her father's expression was happy and interested again.

“—all the tiny bits in the table bump into the tiny bits that make up my hand, and my hand stops.” He looked up, his eyes alight. “But quantum mechanics tells me that if I keep slapping my hand against the table long enough—for billions of years, say—eventually all the spaces would line up just right and my hand would go right through.”

Christina looked at the table, and then at her father. “But it probably won't, right?”

“Exactly! It
probably
won't—but it
could
. That's the point, don't you see?”

Christina didn't. She shook her head.

Her father gave a dry chuckle. “Well, quantum theory
is
pretty hard to believe. But amazing things like that happen at the subatomic level all the time. And that's what was so exciting about Leo Loompski's work. See, he believed—”

Dr. Adnoid glanced at Cook, who was just going through the swinging door, and Nanny, visible in the next room. He lowered his voice. “He believed that there were places where these wonderful and strange things were
much
more likely to happen. He looked for places where very ancient rocks had been thrust up from the deepest parts of the earth, places where the fundamental forces of nature—”

He glanced around again as Cook left the room.

Christina leaned forward. “The fundamental forces of nature?” she prompted.

“—were poised to create a critical frequency—”

What was he talking about? Christina wondered.

“—with the vibrations of specific notes of precise pitch, with certain harmonic overtones—”

Christina held her breath.

“—to activate an element that—believe it or not—responded to thought waves.”

“
Thought
waves?”

“Well . . .” Dr. Adnoid looked a little embarrassed. “See, Leo Loompski was a genius, but he also was a bit of a crackpot. He liked to work on these crazy inventions now and then—a rocket-powered baby carriage was one, I remember—and he
had these odd theories. One of them was the idea that
thought
had vibrations, too, just like light and sound. And if you could tune your thought frequencies, so to speak, to the other vibrations that were going on—if you could focus your thoughts very precisely in just the right way, then . . .”

Christina looked at him, waiting.

Dr. Adnoid fidgeted. “It's hard to explain. At first I kept telling him there was plenty to investigate here on the quantum level—there were lots of exciting new advances in
hard
science that we could make without having to go in for this metaphysical mumbo jumbo. But his nephew Lenny was egging him on, telling him he should write up his research and try to win the Karsnicky Medal a second time. Leo began to leave the main laboratory work for me to supervise and go off on his own. He had your mother helping him up on the ridge, too. She was the one with the specialized knowledge about rocks.”

Christina concentrated. “So are you saying,” she said slowly, “that in these certain special places, when you have certain rocks and certain sounds and certain very focused
thoughts
—”

Her father nodded encouragingly.

“—that you can just
think
something, and it will happen?”

“Well, if you put it that way, it does sound silly,” said her father. “And it's never worked for me. But of course, I don't have perfect pitch—”

He stopped. He pushed back his chair. “Perfect pitching ability,” he said loudly, “like in baseball, I mean. That's why I went into science,” he added, avoiding her gaze. “I didn't have perfect pitching. Pitch
ing
, you understand.”

“I get it,” said Christina.

“Anyway, I have work to do,” said her father, and went into his study.

Christina glared at his retreating back. Her father explained every incredibly boring detail about numbers and math, but when it came to something interesting, something important, something she actually wanted to
know
, he clammed up.

Perfect pitch, the orphans, her mother's death—he wouldn't talk about any of it, and he didn't want Christina to ask questions, either. He wanted to keep her curiosity shut up behind a gate, too, and for what? Safety?

Christina stalked past her father's closed door. She was getting very,
very
tired of being kept safe.

“W
ELL,
that
didn't help much,” said Taft, flopping on the attic floor.

Christina plugged a small lamp into the extension cord she had hauled through the trapdoor, and the attic was suddenly lit by a warm glow. “It was interesting, though. I mean, how cool would it be to be able to focus your thoughts and just make things happen?”

Taft made a small, exasperated sound. “Leo Loompski might have been a genius, but your dad's right—he was a total crackpot, too. Just
think
and things will happen? That's not scientific. That's just make-believe.” He rubbed his shoulders and scowled. “And did you have to wait three whole hours to let me out? I'm stiff all over.”

Christina glanced at him in surprise. “I couldn't help it that Cook decided to polish the dining room silver. And I had to wait for everybody to go to bed, so I could get you something to eat. Or should I have let you starve?”

Taft rolled over and stared at the rafters. “We didn't find
out
anything
,” he muttered. “Not about where Lenny takes the kids, or zoom, or anything we can
use
.”

Christina stretched her legs into the circle of light on the worn wooden floor and took the plastic wrap off the plate she had fixed for Taft. She was risking a lot, raiding the kitchen all the time. Pretty soon Cook was going to start wondering where all the food was going.

“Here,” Christina said, pushing the plate across the floor. “Eat something. You're too grumpy to live. And I thought I did a
good
job getting him to talk. I even understood him, for once.”

Taft tore into a piece of chicken, clearly hungry—and then set it down, and looked at her miserably. “Sorry.” He rubbed his sleeve quickly across his eyes. “I'm just—you know. Worried.”

“About Danny?”

Taft nodded. “He's alone, and scared—”

“He's
not
alone,” said Christina. “The other kids are with him.” She nodded at Taft's plate. “Why don't you try the chocolate cake? You'll feel better.”

Christina watched Taft eat, thinking that Danny was lucky to have a friend. Taft might be rude, at times, but it was easy to understand why, once you got to know him.

Taft set down his fork, took a last drink from the thermos, and lifted his sleeve to wipe his mouth.

“Here,” said Christina, handing him a napkin. “Don't use your sleeve, it looks like you were raised in an orphanage.”

Taft gave the napkin a startled glance, and took it slowly.

“And don't lick your plate, either,” Christina added.

Taft frowned.

“Listen,” Christina said, “I'm just telling you. It's good manners.”

Taft wiped his mouth in silence and put the napkin down. “They didn't teach us manners at the orphanage,” he said slowly. “There's probably a lot they didn't teach us.”

Christina hadn't meant to embarrass him. “You're smart, though,” she said.

Taft ducked his chin. “I wish I was smarter. I
hate
not knowing stuff.” He ran his hands through his hair in frustration. “I wish we could figure out what Lenny is doing with the zoom. And I wish I knew why the kids never come back.”

Christina nodded. “And how come they don't run out of kids at the orphanage, if they keep sending more and more of them up to the ridge?”

“I can tell you that,” said Taft. “It's because we keep getting new kids from the big city.”

“Seriously?” Christina frowned. “But how can kids keep disappearing without somebody wondering what's going on?”

“Good question. But have you noticed that practically everybody in Dorf thinks Lenny Loompski is wonderful? Maybe they just don't want to ask any embarrassing questions.”

Christina shook her head. “I never meet anybody from Dorf, unless they come to the house. And I hardly knew there
was
a Lenny Loompski before yesterday.”

Taft looked pleased to know something that Christina didn't. “Well, we collected trash all over Dorf—trash, and recycling, and lately we're even going to garage sales to buy up any little plastic toys they have—”

“Like the ones Danny was scrubbing?” Christina interrupted. “Are they for you guys to play with?”

Taft looked at her in disbelief. “Are you kidding? We just sort them and clean them and put them in boxes. Then somebody loads them in the truck's cab, and a bunch of kids climb in the hopper, and that's the last we see of the toys.
Or
the kids.”

Christina was silent, digesting this.

“Anyway, everywhere we collect trash, people talk to the driver and say how great Lenny Loompski is, and how he's the nicest Loompski of them all, and how lucky the town is to have such a generous benefactor.”