Mearsies Heili Bounces Back (19 page)

Irene was the only one who got excited over this. But she
was soon puzzled by the bell-bottom jeans, angel tops, and the striped and
fringed mini dresses.

Faline picked something with giant orange polka dots. It was
a mini dress, but she also picked green bell bottoms with fringes to go
underneath. Her regular crimson sash would hold up the pants. Irene picked a
top with long flowing sleeves in a paisley print, Diana got a t-shirt and
jeans, and Gwen and I also got t-shirts. I picked what they called a granny
skirt, just a long skirt in layers.

As we were walking out, some teenagers came in, and as soon
as Faline spotted their beehive hairdos, she insisted she get one, too.

Pause for the girls to stop laughing.

Dhana muttered, “You forgot the go-go boots.”

Faline whispered, “Please make us talk.”

“She ALWAYS does.” Irene sighed loudly.

We walked outside, and I did a transformation spell on our
Mearsiean clothes, so they turned into the Earth clothes. I added a gigantic
beehive hairdo for Faline, her red curls standing up in a kind of crimpled red
helmet. It looked like that weird movie,
The Bride of Frankenstein
, only
red instead of black and white.

She kept patting it happily. “You could hide a badger in
this!” she exclaimed.

“And you would hide a badger in your hair because ...” Irene
prompted.

“You just never know when you might need one,” Faline said
stubbornly.

Faline clapped but didn’t interrupt. Irene fumed at me,
but also stopped interrupting.

“C’mon, let’s go. There’s the secret entrance.” I gave it
the ol’ thumb.

We crossed the street, and there was the Del Floria
Cleaners.

“What do they clean?” Faline asked.

“Clothes.”

“Where’s the water?”

“Isn’t any.”

“I thought you said they don’t have magic here!”

“They don’t. They have chemicals.”

“Eeeeuw!”

“Eeeeeeuuuw!” the girls echoed, like always.

We all piled into one of the dressing rooms. “Why do they
have dressing rooms in a cleaner’s?” Irene asked, but I made a spell to imitate
the secret access way, and fazoom! There we were, outside the main entrance to
U.N.C.L.E. HQ.

The door was just a flat door.

“Hey, what kinda of scuzzoon door is this, with no knob!”
Diana exclaimed.

We shoved, kicked, and punched, and finally I did a mighty
spell. The door cracked and then fell into a billion pieces, and we stepped
through.

Inside was an office with important-looking sci fi fluorescent
lights glaring a sick sort of blue-white. The office also had lots of steel
corridors and rooms with miles and miles of stern-looking mainframe computers,
their tape-wheels busy whirling, and IBM cards fluttering sinisterly from one
slot to another, while lights blinked and other machines made ominous
beedledy-boop
noises.

There were three men inside the main chamber. One old, who
had two giant moles on his face, and two younger. They were busy talking, and
at first didn’t notice us.

“She didn’t forget the moles!” Faline wheezed, writhing
on the rug.

“SHHHH!” the girls said, sounding like a forest fire.

“Another word, and I turn you into a mole,” I warned. “On
Kwenz’s big toe.”

“You can’t turn people into things!”

“Black magic can,” I said. “And I’m going to learn some
just for you!”

“Sorry, sorry. I won’t talk again, if you make me talk in
the story.”

“What a weird disguise,” Faline muttered out of the side of
her mouth.

“He just takes the moles off when he doesn’t want to be
noticed, of course,” Irene muttered back.

“What if he forgets where he put them? Would the villains
notice if he had one on his nose and his chin, then next time on his forehead
and lip?”

The men turned to stare at us.

“Who are you?” demanded Mole Man. “And how did you get in
here?”

One of the younger men was dark-haired, with a conceited
face, his cleft chin sort of aimed at us as if we smelled. The other man had
shaggy blond hair.

“That one’s got bird lips,” Faline whispered.

“Bird lips? He doesn’t have a beak,” Diana whispered back,
as Gwen and Faline snickered.

I said, “Hi, you U.N.C.L.E.S. We’re the A.U.N.T.I.E.S.!”

“A.U.N.T.I.E.S.?”

“Yes! Another Unwanted Network of Terribly Insane Eggbrains!
We’re allies of yours, battling ... uh, W.O.O.D.P.E.C.K.E.R.”

“W.O.O.D.P.E.C.K.E.R? Never heard of that outfit,” the
conceited one said suspiciously.

The blond said, “T.H.R.U.S.H. is our bird.”

“By cracky.” I snapped my fingers. “That’s it. We’re
fighting T.H.R.U.S.H.”

“By Bie,” Faline whispered, a salute to Klutz’s sister, Bie
Crakkee.

“
You
are?” Mole Man asked, in total disbelief.

“Yes.” I snuck a look around in my best spy manner. “We’re
in disguise. Now ... we’ve been sent to help you, so tell us your names.”

They looked at each other, shrugged, and the old geez with
the giant moles said, “I am Alexander Waverly.”

“His code name will be Wavey,” I whispered to the girls.

“Napoleon Solo.”

“Neopolitan Duet,” I muttered.

The girls repeated the new code names.

“Ilya Kuriakin.”

“Pilya Kluttlespin!”

Gwen elbowed me. “Can we call him Pill for short?”

“Yes.” To the men, I said in my most businesslike manner, “So,
Wavey, Nap, and Pill, here’s the report from our spies at A.U.N.T.I.E. You’ve
heard of T.H.R.U.S.H. I take it?”

“We’ve only come across them a few thousand times this year,”
Nap drawled, brushing his fingers at us as if scooting crickets. “Run along and
play.”

“That all?” I countered cleverly. “Well, according to our
sources, they have a plan to overthrow this world, through Tinfinger. We are
here to foil their dastardly plan.”

“Go away. Your mother is calling you,” Nap said wearily.

“How did you know all this?” Wavey asked.

“We always know,” I said, tapping my nose. The other girls
instantly tapped their noses, or peered around under their hands. “We’re
A.U.N.T.I.E.S. It’s our job to know.”

“Run along,” Nap said again, more sharply. “We’re busy.”

“Girls, did you hear that? We can’t let an Auntie be
Uncle’d!”

“No!” Gwen gasped.

“Neeeeeeuw,” Irene crooned.

“No!” Faline said, hands on hips, bare toes tapping.

“NO.” Diana scowled.

“What good could little girls possibly do in the dangerous
world of espionage and counter-espionage?” Wavey asked, steepling his fingers.

“This,” I said, and muttered a spell or two, and the three
rose into the air.

The girls cracked up as the men clutched at air, then at the
sides of their chairs, then looked down, expressing surprise, dismay, and
shock.

“That’s always good for a starter,” I said cheerfully.

“Give ’em more proof,” Diana said, eyeing Nap.

“Variation,” Irene recommended, nose elevated.

So I made Wavey rotate on his chair.

The other two reached for their pistols. I whispered a
transportation spell and made the pistols twitch away from their fingers, and
sail across the room to me. Then I applied a special spell, and as the men
watched, the pistols melted into goo on the floor. Stinky goo.

“Sooo.” I crossed my arms. “Convinced? Need more?”

“No,” Wavey and Nap said, the latter shaking his head. “No.
Nononono.”

“Let us down, please,” Pill said in his accented voice.

“All right then.” I let them down. Then rubbed my hands. “Let’s
discuss these T.H.R.U.S.H. birds’ latest bomb. We know Tinfinger is going to
pull a nefarious deed, but we don’t know where or when. In order to discover
the details, we must get someone into their lair—”

“Nest,” Irene said.

“Pit,” Diana corrected.

“Stinkpot,” Faline amended.

“Stinkbomb,” Gwen finished.

“—so my idea is, one of the three of you should let
yourselves get captured. They know you, see. They’ll be expecting you, which
means they won’t be looking for us. Now, Wavey’s too old, and besides, he has
to stay behind to direct the fumblings. Of you others, Nap is the most popular.”
I held my nose when I said it.

“Good idea.” Irene rubbed her hands.

“But—” Wavey began.

“Excellent plan.” Gwen turned thumbs up.

“Wait,” Nap started.

“Do it.” Diana gave a nod.

“So ... where should we send him?” I asked the girls.

“To T.H.R.U.S.H. HQ?” Diana asked.

The three men started loudly demanding we listen, but we
gave them exactly as much attention as they would give girls our age: zip.

“Where’s that?” Gwen asked.

“In Thrussia,” I said.

Both Gwen and Faline asked, “Where’s that?”

“Russia,” Pill said. “Though you should say Soviet Union.”

“Why are you
talking
to these brats?” Nap asked Pill.

“Thrushia, Russia, sounds the same to me,” Irene said
airily.

“Who told you urchins to interfere!” Nap demanded, planting
himself before us.

“Anyway.” I leaned around Nap. “T.H.R.U.S.H. HQ is where
we’re going.”

“Oh!” Faline snapped her fingers. “Then to some other spy
spot, where they want you to think they have something going on, but there
isn’t, but if you go there, then they wonder how you found out, and so they
have to follow you anyway.”

Everybody was quiet—even the guys—as they disentangled that
one.

“Good idea,” I said.

Nap tried again, in what he obviously considered a polite
voice. “What are you girls—excuse me, you A.U.N.T.I.E.S. talking about?”

Irene huffed, “We’ll tell you where you’re going to get
captured when we’re good and ready!”

o0o

Well, we dropped Nap off at a manure-refinement plant that
was actually a secret planning site that was actually the old headquarters of
S.M.E.R.S.H. before T.H.U.D. and S.Q.U.I.S.H. captured each other’s spies and
brainwashed them into changing sides, so they all went to the other guys, and
when they recovered, couldn’t figure out whose socks and toothbrushes belonged
where. So now they were back in business, spying in both directions between
Russia and the U.S. because who would actually send manure between continents,
except spies smuggling other stuff?

I meant to just drop Nap off, but Irene, who was still
steaming at all those ‘brats’ and especially ‘urchins’ told Nap that we just
got a coded message that he had to search the manure bags for smuggled
diamonds.

He was busy doing that when he got captured. He was actually
glad to get captured. And capturing him meant that all those spies had to toil
and boil around reviewing their security once again—
and
search the
manure bags, Just In Case.

While they were all busy, we got Pill to take us to the real
T.H.R.U.S.H. HQ, which was in Russia (not Thrushia, which made more sense), as
he knew his way around and spoke the lingo.

Once we were outside the main HQ, which was disguised as a trench
coat factory, we had a quick meeting.

“Okay, Pill.” I turned to him. “You have the experience
here. What should we do?”

“Rush in, guns blazing,” he said. “That’s our usual M.O.”

“M.O. What’s that in spy lingo?” Faline asked Irene.

“Moonpie Octopus,” said Irene (who can’t stand not to know
something).

A whole lot of looks and grins, but nobody interrupted,
not even Irene, who does catch a hint. Finally.

“That makes no sense,” Diana muttered, but Faline shrugged.
It made as much sense as the rest of the spy business.

“Okay,” I said, not bothering to point out that none of us
had guns. “Why don’t you go ahead and do that, and get captured. When they take
you to be interrogated, it’s sure to be by the head snakes, and then we can
nose in.”

He raised his brows. “Makes as much sense as the rest of
this ... affair.”

Faline nodded, hands out, as if to say, hey, I’m not the
only one.

Pill walked inside, and a minute or two later we heard yells
and thumps and shouts from inside, behind all the coat racks, and the mirrors
with customers busy trying the coats and looking around in sinister ways.

Diana jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I think they got
him.”

“Leave us to leave.”

“Where to?”

“The secret underground interrogation chamber, of course.”

All I had to do was use magic to search for Pill. We turned
invisible, sank through several floors, past even more miles of sinister
computers with tape machines whirling, until we finally arrived in a small room
with a very bright lamp hanging overhead. I kept us invisible.

Pill was tied to a chair, blinking, below this light, and
trying to breathe in air made blue from the four huge, hulking men smoking
cigars and belching out stinky smoke.

“Ansver me!” one man bellowed.

“Why are they speaking in those weird accents, instead of
their language?” Gwen whispered.

“Because they’re spies,” Faline said, forefinger upraised.

“How would you know he was a spy if he spoke like regular
people?” Diana asked, quite reasonably.

Irene finished, “You have to speak in the spy accent, so
they know you’re really a spy.”

Pill said to the bad guys, “How (choke) can (gag) I speak
(cough) in all (glug) this smog?”

“Why isn’t Pill using the spy accent?” Gwen whispered. “He’s
a spy.”

“It’s because he
already has
an accent,” Faline
explained.

“Oh.”

The sinister heads of T.H.R.U.S.H. set down the cigars.

“Now hvat does U.N.C.L.E. know about zees place?”

“What the A.U.N.T.I.E.S. told us.”

“Hvat vas that?”

“Ask the A.U.N.T.I.E.S..”

“Hvoo iss dat?”

“I’m one,” I said, and snapped away the invisibility
illusion.