Curioddity (39 page)

“Hiya, Marcus!” called Wil, sweetly. “We'll be with you in a minute! We just have to help your two goons over here! They've gotten themselves into a bit of a sticky wicket!”

Inside his giant blue globe, Marcus James glowered. Clearly, the pitchman was considering firing his cannons right there and then, and ending the conflict before it had really gotten under way. Luckily for everyone concerned, a couple of his assets were blocking a clear shot.

However, Wil was alarmed to notice the back of one of the tank devices open to reveal a detail of slightly smaller-than-normal bots, which promptly filed into a line to await their master's command.

“Not sure what you've got in mind out there,” said Wil with as much artificial sweetener as his voice could muster, “but you might want to rethink whatever it is you're about to do.”

By this time, Marcus James had given up any pretense of trying to keep up appearances; he had developed an unreasonable loathing for Wil that threatened to bubble out of his semiplastic skin and clog up the controls of his escape pod. “You think you've won, Mr. Morgan. But you haven't won anything at all. All you did was delay the inevitable, and cause me a slight headache on a Thursday evening.”

“That's good to hear. I'd hate to think you have any lawsuits coming your way because you just bared your backside—I mean literally and figuratively—on national television.”

“Oh, I'm sure you've caused a blip or two on the radar, nothing more. The stock market is going to experience a slight downturn, and by the time the bell rings on Monday morning my paid speculators will have turned this awkward event into a profit. They're good at what they do, and I pay them well for it.”

“Also good to hear. What are you going to do about all those unsold golf clubs? Can I still have my upgrade?”

“I'll deliver it to you personally,” said Marcus James from within gritted and impossibly white teeth. Clearly, he was ill prepared to combat sarcasm, no matter the size of his cannons.

The two goons were now so inextricably stuck inside the revolving door that it would take no less than a fire truck and the Jaws of Life to extricate them. Outside the museum entrance, confused ninja-bots wandered aimlessly. Wil felt slightly embarrassed for the poor automatons, as they seemed to be growing ever more morose by the second. Perhaps it was the effect of all the stray electrical discharge, he reasoned. If only his mother had been here to witness the chaos. This was exactly the kind of random and potentially explosive situation she would have loved.

Wil moved back into the atrium, chuckling. Someone was going to have to make a decision.

At the counter, Mary Gold was still busy smacking her gum. “Mary,” said Wil, “would you please go up and tell Mr. Dinsdale we might be expecting visitors in a few minutes? I think we should make a stand in the Perpetual Exhibit.” Mary smacked her gum in a manner intended to convey her disdain for menial tasks and floated off in the direction of the stairs. At the same time, one of the Roberts entered from a side door bearing a tray of hot chocolate. He carried a crowbar under one arm and the lightning catcher under the other.

“Mr. Dinsdale said you might be needing these,” said the raspy-voiced Robert as Wil extracted the crowbar. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Not unless you can see into the future,” replied Wil. He removed the green glass bottle from underneath Robert's other arm, and took a cup of hot chocolate for good measure. “I can't be sure how all of this is going to shake down but whatever we decide to do, I think we'd better hurry. Can you take the rest of this hot chocolate up to my father and Cousin Engelbert, please? Dad always works better with hot chocolate.”

Over at the door, the two goons had finally managed to extricate themselves from their predicament and had moved back into the street to face the music. A disturbingly coordinated sound of weaponry being armed echoed across the buildings outside. Wil guessed a tactical assault on the museum was about to go down in roughly the same manner—and at the same speed—as Marcus James's share prices.

“Afraid not,” said the Robert. “We usually follow Mr. Dinsdale's lead in situations like this.”

“Oh, this sort of thing happens a lot, does it?”

“A lot more than you'd think,” said the Robert, enigmatically. And with that parting comment, the handyman headed off upstairs with the tray while Wil sipped at his cup of hot chocolate.

*   *   *

W
ITHIN MOMENTS,
Robert had crested the stairs and headed off into the bowels of the museum. Wil was now alone in the atrium, save for a few of John Keely's wayward flying globes, and the little will-o'-the-wisps that seemed to delight in chasing them. Out of the corner of his eye, a couple of the wooden crates tried to grab his attention. Outside, a smaller ninja-bot armed with a blowtorch was rapidly dismantling the hinges on the revolving door. Wil smiled to himself. No doubt even the most vicious and bloodthirsty automated killing machine would think twice before attempting to navigate the museum's revolving door in the accepted, conventional manner. He could hardly blame Marcus James and his cronies for being cautious in that respect.

Wil grabbed the crowbar and moved toward one of the crates closest to the greeting desk. He dragged it over to one side and placed the crowbar inside one of its wooden slats. In his peripheral vision, the other crates seemed to shuffle in an agitated fashion. Wil paid them no mind. For unknown reasons, his future father (or someone close by) had instructed him to open one of these things, and this was no doubt as a response to whatever was inside, and its potential usefulness in defeating the maddened pitchman who was now moments from entering the museum. As Wil pushed down the crowbar with a slight grunt, a strange feeling began to nag at his mind. For some reason, he could smell mushrooms. He moved to a second slat, and loosened it slightly. All Wil now had to do was pull up the top of the crate to reveal its contents. He paused for a second, listening to his inner nagging feeling, which had been quite a helpful ally over the last few days. The growing smell of mushrooms threatened to overwhelm Wil's gag reflex. Intuitively, he closed his eyes and pulled the top off the crate. Then, with as much self-control as he could muster, he moved back toward the greeting counter without so much as casting a glance in the direction of the open crate. No, he decided; this little riddle would be left for someone else to decipher.

Wil positioned himself at the counter facing the main entrance, where the smaller ninja-bot had almost finished its task. Despite his curiosity regarding the open crate's contents, he was going to be damned before he looked first at the contents of the crate. He was immensely disturbed by the notion he could feel eyes boring into the left side of his head. Nearby crates rattled in a manner alarmingly similar to the rattle in his apartment pipes. But still he refused to look.

The Lemon phone buzzed insistently in his left pocket, while the Sequitur seemed to tremble softly in his other pocket. He fished the Sequitur out of his pocket and placed it on the counter next to the lump of blue clay, just in case. He wasn't sure if it would even work now, since he'd left his stolen Air-Max 4000 in the back of Lucy's Ford Pinto. With a resigned sigh, he fished inside his pocket and produced the Lemon phone. SARA's interactive voice function was somehow activated. No doubt, the maniacal phone wished to discuss matters.

“
Greetings, Wil Morgan,
” SARA began as Wil tapped on her glass screen. “
Would you like me to look up ‘what should I do now?' on the Internet?
”

“No thank you, SARA,” replied Wil, cautiously. “Do you have anything relevant on ninja-bots or giant glass blue escape marbles?”

“
Ninja-bots are theoretical weapons whose early prototype designs were abandoned by the Industricorp Corporation as a result of their instability under test conditions. They are impervious to fire, explosions, and attempts at reprogramming. Industricorp's other assets include a ninety percent global market share of skyscraper elevators and the chain of coffee shops known as Mug O' Joe's.
”

“Yes, I really should have seen that coming.” Wil thought for a moment. “Why were they unstable under test conditions? Do they blow up if you overload their memory banks, or something?”

“
Negative, Wil Morgan. Ninja-bots are merely a theoretical design whose existence cannot be proven.
”

“That's good to know,” Wil replied, wryly, as the main revolving door at the museum entrance clattered inward and four or five ninja-bots scuttled toward his position. As they came, hundreds of scattered paper clips began to fly across the atrium. The little pieces of metal caromed into the magnetized hulls of the ninja-bots, creating surreal miniexplosions every time they hit pay dirt. By the time the ninja-bots had arrived at the greeting desk, they were covered in paper clips. A strange blue glow began to illuminate the broken door from outside.

Wil surreptitiously placed SARA and the lightning catcher into his pockets. He began to reach for the Sequitur, whose remarkable—almost impossibly useful—properties had proven very handy in a pinch. But for some reason he couldn't fathom, he opted for the little lump of blue clay instead. Wil quickly grasped the lump of clay in his hand and lifted it above his head in a sign of unconditional surrender just as the bloodthirsty ninja-bots descended upon his position. He picked up his cup of hot chocolate with his free hand. If he was going to meet his end at the hands of a murderous automaton, he reasoned, at least he was going to meet it in comfort.

The blue glow now filled up the entire door fame. Moments later, Wil was astonished to see Marcus James enter wearing a bright-blue glowing exoskeleton. To his eye, Marcus looked like a refugee from a bad science fiction movie. As the TV pitchman stomped toward the counter, little waves of electrical energy sparked out of his exoskeleton with every heavy footstep. These drifting pockets of Tesla-like energy roamed across the waiting ninja-bots, causing the creatures to glitch, slightly. They seemed slightly embarrassed to be caught in such a degrading situation but resolutely stayed at attention.

“Hello, Marcus,” Wil called, cheerily. “Did you come with my Air-Max 3000 upgrade?”

“No,” Marcus James replied with the kind of sneer that a professional poker player would have been proud of. “I've come for a discussion. It's going to be a little one-sided, I'm afraid. Where's the old man?”

“Which one?”

“You know which one.”

“I do? Well, that narrows it down.”

Marcus James's eyes narrowed, dangerously. In terms of comedic articulation he knew he was wielding a slingshot against Wil's heavy cannons. In reality, however, the TV pitchman was wielding actual cannons and wasn't about to let himself get outgunned in a different sort of battle.

“I'm going to level with you,
Mr.
Morgan. This is not going to end well for you.” Marcus's blue exoskeleton glowed, as if to affirm his murderous intent. “My people have already identified your accomplice, a certain Miss Lucy Price. Since she is a customer at one of my banks, steps have been taken to freeze her assets and bring about her eviction from her place of business. No more Lucy's Magic Locker, I'm afraid. I'm sure the world breathes a collective sigh of relief.”

Wil sipped casually on his hot chocolate, and tried to ignore the ever-growing sense that a roughly four-feet-tall shadowy figure was now standing inside the opened wooden crate, just barely visible in his peripheral vision. “I'm sure it does. By the way, before we get into this, I just want to make it clear that you should under no circumstances look at that crate over to my left.”

“Thank you so much for the advice. I will do my utmost.”

“It's for the best,” said Wil with a grin carefully calculated to infuriate. “Now what can I do you for, Mr. James?”

Marcus James's exoskeleton seemed to fold in on itself—small, revolving panels along both sides collapsed inward, revealing nasty-looking laser weapons built into the suit. “I would like,” said the pitchman with just the right amount of carefully calculated menace, “to get my property back before there is any more damage, intended or otherwise.”

“I'm sure you would. Now, just a couple of points of order before you shoot me, if you don't mind. I've had a phone call from my dad, which means if you were going to kill me, you would already have done it by now. I'm sure he wouldn't have bothered to call me if you were going to kill me anyway.”

“What on Earth are you rambling about?”

“It's a bit of a temporally anomalous situation. I know I don't really understand it so I'm pretty sure you won't. Now about those paper clips: they're significant, as is this piece of clay I'm holding in my right hand and the cup of hot chocolate I'm holding in my left. I don't know exactly why but I'd say we're about to find out.”

To the side of Wil's awareness, the strange black shadow inside the box seemed to be growing in size, so that it was less of a figure and more of a growing mass. Wil felt a shiver run up his spine. The smell of mushrooms was becoming overwhelming.

Marcus James raised his right arm to reveal yet another weapon protruding from below his wrist. “I'll give you one last chance: tell me what you've done with my property or this hand cannon you're looking at will most definitely be discharged in your direction. Do I make myself clear?”

“For once, yes.” Wil gulped. It was now or never. In his peripheral vision, the black mass was clearly moving toward them. Wil refused to allow his eyes to wander from Marcus James's glare. “Incidentally,” he said with a level of saccharine equivalent to an American factory full of soft drinks, “I meant what I said: don't look at that crate over there.”