Cloneward Bound (12 page)

As Fisher watched the car roll away, he deeply regretted not packing his magnetic harpoon gun. Granted, the last time he’d tried to use it he’d ended up being slung right into the waffle-cone storage at the back of an ice-cream truck, but even a desperate tactic seemed better than nothing at this point. Two didn’t want to come home—and even worse, Fisher couldn’t blame him.

Two was living a dream life in LA. Free housing, no parents, no school, rising fame, a whole city to play around in …

In comparison, Wompalog Middle School seemed about as exciting as a chess tournament in a nursing home. And Wompalog was the only other place Two had ever known, thanks to Fisher. Fisher had thrown Two into that festering pit of horror so that he wouldn’t have to suffer through it himself.

It was hard to blame Two for wanting to escape. It was what Fisher had wanted, too.

But Two had to come home. The stakes had gotten too high. Fisher knew he was being followed—the note proved it. Agents could be trailing Two right now. This time next week, Fisher could be in a cell on the far side of the moon, and Two could be in a laboratory.

Fisher felt his stomach dip into the soles of his shoes.

“Just what
exactly
was all that talk about sinister agents and evil conspiracies?” Amanda demanded as they watched the car disappear into the blur of traffic.

“I told you I had to lie to him to keep him in line,” Fisher protested. He didn’t like the way Amanda was looking at him.

“I guess I didn’t expect you to just keep on doing it,” she said, little embers still smoldering in her eyes. “You got me to agree to help you by telling me the truth. How do you expect to ever earn his trust if you don’t do the same for him?”

“I will!” Fisher cried out. He passed a hand through his hair. “Just not now.”

“Right.” Amanda shook her head almost pityingly.

“So what now?” Fisher said, despondent.

Amanda exhaled. “I have a plan.”

“Can’t wait to hear it,” Fisher said hollowly.

“We know he’ll be at the Hollywood Bowl tonight,” she said. “That place is huge. I’m sure sneaking in won’t be too hard.”

“And what do you plan to say to him? And that’s
if
we find him.” Fisher said. “Like you said, the place is huge.”

Fisher leaned down and freed FP from his disguise so that he could trot around for a little while. The little pig started snuffling around at his feet.

“I’m going to try the guilt angle. I plan on telling him,” Amanda said, coughing a bit and aiming her eyes directly at the sidewalk, “that I have a huge crush on him, and that if he doesn’t come back to Palo Alto with us
my heart will split down the middle and never recover.”

“So you yell at me because I didn’t tell him the truth, but you’re going to lie about having feelings for him?” Fisher asked cautiously. She hadn’t exactly looked pleased to see him earlier, despite Two’s obvious attempts at impressing her.

“Do you want him back or don’t you?” Amanda snapped. “My methods have been getting us along pretty well so far. Don’t start doubting them now. Besides, who are you to judge me for lying to him?”

Fisher held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I’m not questioning your methods,” Fisher said quickly. He paused, considering. “And your idea isn’t bad. I had a conversation with Two about you a few weeks ago, and I think he might genuinely like you.”

“Wait—what? Really?” Amanda squeaked. Then she coughed and grunted, and resumed in a normal voice: “Well … good then. If that’s the case, then there’s an even better chance my plan will work. Come on.”

Fisher scooped up FP, who was having a staring contest with a seagull over a discarded half sandwich, and he and Amanda began the long trek back to the King of Hollywood.

The Southern California sun felt a lot less pleasant after Fisher had spent half an hour marching under it at a pace that would give a drill sergeant an asthma attack. The taxi
to GG McGee’s office had used up what little cash he and Amanda had been given by their parents, so they’d had to walk back. Amanda’s legs were short, but they powered forward like she had a diesel engine embedded in her hip bones. Fisher could barely feel his own legs, and FP’s weight was tugging on his arms like a lead brick. Sweat was dripping from his eyelids by the time they finally made it.

“Fisher Bas,” Mr. Dubel, one of the chaperones, had just called as Fisher and Amanda slipped through the door of the hotel and joined the rest of their classmates.

“H-heeeere,” Fisher managed to gasp out, worming his way into the line.

Mr. Dubel’s dim eyes noted Fisher’s presence, and he moved on in the roll call.

Ms. Snapper stood in front of the group, her arms crossed, trying to suppress a bitter frown.

“She doesn’t look too happy,” Fisher said to Amanda, pointing to their teacher. “I wonder how long she stood around waiting for Dr. Devilish to show.”

“Long enough that our absence went totally unnoticed,” Amanda replied. “That’s all I care about.”

Fisher thought, not for the first time, that he must be very careful to stay on Amanda’s good side.

Once the class had been tallied up in the hotel lobby, the group headed out to the bus. Fisher didn’t enjoy having to walk again after barely catching his breath, but at
least it was to a bus with comfortable seats.

The
Strange Science
set was a very different place in the middle of a shoot. All of the crew members sat or stood quietly at their assigned stations, monitoring screens or sound apparatus. The lighting was on full force, illuminating Dr. Devilish and his laboratory in a yellow-tinged blaze. The class sat on cushioned seats set on risers behind the cameras. FP sat happily at Fisher’s side, free of his disguise. FP seemed to enjoy being free of the frightening steel headgear so much that he was willing to sit still for a while.

Lucy Fir looked out of sorts as she walked onto the set wearing athletic pants and a Lakers T-shirt.

“Can you page someone from wardrobe for me, please?” she snapped at a nearby stagehand. “I’m missing my best suit. I want to know if it got mixed in with their things.”

Fisher looked over at Amanda and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged, but he saw the smile flicker across her face. No wonder her disguise had been so ill-fitting. Lucy was nearly a foot taller than Amanda.

“Welcome to
Strange Science
,” Dr. Devilish said as the bright film lights turned his full smile into its own constellation. “Today’s episode: “Fur Spots and Kilowatts.” And now,” Dr. Devilish said, locking his eyes on the middle of three cameras and treating the audience to his famously dazzling smile, “for our first experiment of the
day, I will demonstrate how to power a lightbulb using the most unusual-seeming combination of ingredients: a handful of dried apricots—and a wombat.”

Fisher leaned forward eagerly, straining to get a better view.

Dr. Devilish gestured to a large lightbulb on his lab table. It was fitted with a metal frame and run through with a prong, so that an electrical current could be passed through it.

He then reached into a drawer and set a small bag of apricots on the table. Finally, he ducked behind the table and came up with a small gray mammal with a round face in his hands. “Behold; Wally!” he said. A chorus of very quiet “aww”s arose from the audience.

The sleepy-looking wombat plodded in a small circle around the table, its eyes unfocused and vaguely confused, as though dazzled by all the lights. Dr. Devilish removed two crinkly, dried apricots from the bag, and carefully placed one on the end of each of the mechanism’s prongs.

“By harnessing the natural conductivity of the apricot and the electrochemical properties inherent to wombats,” he said, giving the camera a dashing toss of his head on the word
wombats
, “I can create an electric current strong enough to power this bulb for several minutes.”

“Is that really possible, Fisher?” Veronica whispered in
his ear as she sat down next to him. He seized up slightly at the feeling of her breath and turned to answer.

“Well, I … Well, it could … I’ve never really studied wombats, but maybe.…” Veronica turned back to watch Dr. Devilish, and Fisher found his attention badly torn between the two of them.

Dr. Devilish pulled out several more apricots and stuck them to the first two with quick-drying adhesive. As a final step, he gently held the wombat’s front paw up until it clasped one side of the apricot circuit, and lifted its tail to touch the other. Fisher winced as the bulb winked on quite brightly. The audience gasped, and Fisher found himself clapping along with everyone else.… Everyone except Ms. Snapper, who was scowling.

“And now,” Dr. Devilish said. “You can see that the—”

He was drowned out by a loud crackling sound. The lightbulb went out and so did several of the studio lights. One of the cameramen stepped back from his camera with a frown and checked its power cord.

“What happened?” Lucy Fir rushed forward as various crew members began shouting instructions to one another.

“Problem in a power cable,” said one of the crew. He lifted up a large cable, following it hand over hand, searching for the problem. He’d pulled several feet onto the stage when the problem became clear: FP was pulled into view, his
jaws locked around the cable with fierce determination.

Fisher leapt out of his seat and bounded down the risers. He’d been so focused on Dr. Devilish—and Veronica—that he hadn’t even noticed FP had left his side. He unhooked his pig’s mandibles from the cable.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he said, his face burning hot as the lights had a minute earlier. He kneeled down and whispered to FP. “One more embarrassment, and you’ll be wearing Trevor’s headgear for the rest of your life.”

As he turned to apologize to Dr. Devilish, he noticed a thin electric cable, only visible from this vantage point, snaking from the bulb apparatus on top of the lab table to the larger cable FP had been chewing.

A cold feeling flooded Fisher.

“Wait a second,” he said. “The lightbulbs were
plugged in
?”

“Uh.” A slight flush crept over Dr. Devilish’s tan cheeks. “Yes, naturally.” He coughed and adjusted his collar. “You see, sometimes the wombat will generate
such
power that the assembly won’t be able to handle the circuit, so we run a cable to reroute any excess electricity.” His toothy smile popped back onto his face, and he hurriedly disassembled the setup. “Let’s move on to the next segment,” he announced loudly, clapping his hands. He was so eager to move on, he neglected to put Wally back in his cage.

Fisher was trying to gather FP up into his arms when
Wally the Wombat ran up to them. He started sniffing and lightly pawing Fisher all over, then did the same with FP, who tried to swat the little animal away with his front hoof.

“C’mere, Wally!” said Henry, the sound engineer Fisher had met earlier, running up to them and tapping his hands on the ground. “Come on, boy! Leave them alone, now.” Wally gave Fisher and FP one last, wide-eyed look before scampering into Henry’s arms.

“Wow. He responds to your commands?” Fisher said as Henry scooped the wombat up.

“Sometimes,” Henry said. “Ever since he arrived on set I’ve been trying to train him. I’m thinking there may be a future in domesticated wombats as pets! I might even start my own business if I get tired of doing sound.”

“That, uh, sounds great,” Fisher said. “I’m sure you’ll corner the market on wombats.… I think I should get back to my seat.”

“Right!” Henry said. “See you later! Come on, Wally.”

The next experiment continued with the small mammals theme. Dr. Devilish constructed a water filtration system using only a few handfuls of oak leaves (as the filter itself) and a very indignant lemur (whose footpads apparently contained antimicrobial chemicals that, when stomped repeatedly on a pile of leaves, gave them germ-killing properties).

This time the experiment and filming went without a hitch. Fisher eyed the little water samples that got passed out to the class with suspicion, but they looked clean. Maybe Dr. Devilish
did
know what he was doing. The taping wrapped up smoothly, and the class was gathering up to leave. Fisher kept a tight hold on FP.

“Fisher, could I talk to you for a moment?” Veronica said, walking up to him. Fisher mentally scanned through all of the different ways he knew to say yes.

“B-but of course,” he got out at last, and then cursed himself for sounding like a French waiter.

Veronica pulled him away from the class.

“I just wanted to say that I really liked your new video,” she said.

“My … new video,” Fisher said, feeling like he had just swallowed a squirming wombat.

“Yeah, it was very clever,” Veronica said, smiling. “It looks like you’re really attracting a fan base. I guess there’s still a lot I don’t know about you, Fisher.”

“Well …” Fisher choked out, past the flailing sensation in his stomach. “It’s … difficult, managing two different lives. I’d like to be more honest about everything I do, but I know I can’t right now.” He was relieved to finally tell her something that wasn’t technically a lie.