Story Time (22 page)

Her first after-school encounter with Whit occurred in the County Commission Room. Without a word, and without looking at her, Whit handed her an index card with a book title printed on it. She assumed that she was to get the title from the stacks and took off to find
Genetic Mapping: The Path to Superior Human Beings.

Kate found the title on the fifth floor. When she came back up the stairs, she ran into George, June, and the Juku Warriors on the landing.

George looked at the book and asked, "What do you want with that thing?"

"It's for Whit."

"Whit?"

"Yeah. I'm his personal assistant now."

"No!"

"Yeah." Kate looked for Whit through the Plexiglas window. "I'm on my way to give it to him."

George shook his head. "No, Kate. Let me take it. I'm going in there anyway."

Kate looked at him closely. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Why don't you go take a break?"

"I do need to go to the bathroom."

"Here's your chance. Let me have the book."

Kate handed it over. "Thanks, Uncle George."

"No problem." He took the book and started in, but he paused to hold the door for June and the Juku Warriors, and then, seemingly out of nowhere, Pogo.

June took the children to the back, but Pogo hovered near the front, bobbing around aimlessly. George watched her and wondered,
Why is she in here?

Whit was seated on a folding chair in the first row, draped in his father's blue shower curtain, as his mother trimmed his hair.

George walked calmly up to the dais and placed the book on the slanted face of the podium. Then he started to walk calmly back, but he had to leap out of the way as the door flew open.

Dr. Austin entered, took in the barbering scene before him, and warned his wife, "That shower curtain had better be returned to my office."

She assured him, "It will be."

Then he pointed at George. "George Melvil. I want the Juku Warriors to perform today. I think the Harvard representatives will be impressed with them. Don't you?"

"Oh, yes. Yes, sir."

Dr. Austin's eyes narrowed. "But no more singing!"

"Oh, no. No, sir."

Pogo darted behind them and slipped out the door. George watched her through the Plexiglas as she hurried away. He walked back to June and whispered, "Pogo's up to something. I know it. I have to find out what."

June's eyes widened in fear.

"Cover for me, okay? I'll be right back."

June kept her teeth clenched. "Okay. But be careful." She watched her little brother circle and then exit the room, walking as quickly as he dared.

George caught up with Pogo on the roof just as she was pulling back the mushroom cap. When Pogo spotted him, she gasped aloud and clutched at her throat.

George, by way of apology, started twisting his hands into expressive shapes, like an interpreter for the deaf. "Sorry! Sorry, Pogo. I ... I want to know what you're doing now. Okay? I like to know things like that."

Pogo stared at him, puzzled.

"I ... I need your help, Pogo, to figure this all out."

Pogo scrutinized his face and followed the twists and turns of his hands. She pointed at him and said:

"Georgie Porgie,
Pudding and pie."

George flipped his hands outward in confusion. But then he directed them back at himself. "Yes. Georgie. That's me. Me wants to know. I mean, I want to know. Please help me."

Pogo thought for another moment. She muttered:

"To do what's right
With all your might."

Then she led him down the hole.

Once inside the secret room, Pogo guided George to the Holographic Scanner. He stared down into its glass plate and waited.

Pogo snatched a book from the half-empty case. She handed it to George with great urgency.

George recognized the book,
Perrault's Mother Goose,
but he puzzled over its meaning. He pleaded with Pogo, "Will you talk to me about this?"

She would not.

George set the book on the glass and pressed his hands to his temples. "Okay. Let me try to talk this out myself. You know? To think out loud? Maybe you can tell me if I'm right or wrong?"

Pogo cocked her head.

"The demon will go into
any
book you put on the scanner—like
Brown Bear, Brown Bear
or
The Three Billy Goats Gruff
—and then come back out after he's done his evil work?"

Pogo shook her head no very rapidly, like quivering gelatin.

George tried again. "Okay. The demon will go into any book you put on the scanner, but ... But! He will only come back out into this one?" He pointed at
Perrault's Mother Goose.

Pogo stopped quivering. She nodded an emphatic yes.

George's face lit up. He pumped his fist "Yes!" Then he begged her, "But why, Pogo? Please, tell me why."

Pogo pushed past him, turned her back, and set to work at the scanner.

George waited for a moment longer and then gave up. He said, "Thank you, Pogo. Thank you for talking to me. I'd better get back to my job."

Pogo didn't look up.

George hurried out. In his excited state, he did not notice the title of the book that Pogo had placed, with practiced care, onto the scanner. It was
Genetic Mapping: The Path to Superior Human Beings.

Twenty minutes later, the County Commission Room was filled with an assortment of adults and children. Prominent among them were four representatives from Harvard University.

Dr. Austin and Cornelia huddled near the door with the Harvard group. Cornelia asked them, "Isn't it remarkable that the next great student from Whittaker would be our own son?" She didn't wait for an answer. "The Whittakers, as you may know, comprise the upper class of King's County—" But she paused when she saw Kate walk in. "You there!" she called. "Find your mother and help her dust the lobby." She turned back to the Harvard representatives with a smile. "We must, of course, train the future domestic class, too."

Kate took a quick look around. George was sitting in the back with the Juku Warriors. She snuck over to him and whispered, "I have to go down to the lobby. To train for my future career. Keep your eyes open up here.
Semper Paratus,
right?"

"Right."

Kate started out just as the crowd quieted and Whit walked to the podium. He frowned when he saw the manila envelope. He tilted the envelope toward him, slid out
Genetic Mapping: The Path to Superior Human Beings
, and opened it.

After a moment of silent reflection, Whit closed the book emphatically. Then, as the puzzled crowd looked on, he removed his blue blazer and began tying it into tight knots. He then did the same thing to his tie, and then his shirt.

Down in the lobby, Kate had dutifully joined June to help with the dusting. The can man was asleep in a chair with a newspaper over his face, so Kate dusted around him. She continued her work, lost in her own thoughts until, a few minutes later, she heard a great commotion and looked up. Way up. To the eighth floor.

She spotted George hustling the Juku Warriors out of the room and running with them toward Elevator #3. She could hear the children's shrieking voices, but she couldn't tell what they were saying.

The four Harvard representatives ran out of the room right afterward. They turned left and sprinted for Elevator #2.

Then Dr. Austin burst through the door. He grabbed on to the railing and yelled across the chasm, "Hodges! Hodges!"

Mrs. Hodges appeared at the seventh-floor railing. "Mrs. Hodges! Get your equipment," he ordered. "The time has come!"

Mrs. Hodges darted away toward the stairwell as Dr. Austin took off running for Elevator #1.

Kate tried to watch in four directions at once. Elevator #3, with George and the Juku Warriors, was descending well ahead of the other two.

When the doors of Elevator #3 opened, Kate heard the children laughing wildly and shouting about "the funny man."

George said, "Yes, he was a funny man. Wasn't he?"

Kate ran up to them. "Uncle George, what happened?"

George rolled his eyes up. "Oh, nothing."

The Juku Warriors yelled, "The funny man took his clothes off!"

"Oh yeah, well, aside from that, nothing happened."

"Uncle George, come on! Please!"

"Well, let's just say Whit was not himself. For one thing, as the children have pointed out, he took all his clothes off."

A little boy shouted, "He was a monkey!"

George smiled at him. "Oh, yes, I nearly forgot that part. He climbed up on top of the podium. Then he started shrieking, in some kind of monkey language."

The boy shouted to Kate, "He was a funny man!"

George shook his head. "Then, well, I can't tell you the rest."

"Uncle George!"

"I'd rather not go into the graphic details in front of the children," he whispered.

George turned the Juku Warriors over to June as Elevator #2 arrived with the Harvard representatives. Dr. Austin's elevator reached the lobby ten seconds later.

The Harvard group sprinted past Kate and George, with Dr. Austin in pursuit just ten yards behind. Kate and George watched them all run through the entranceway and out into the street. The Harvard representatives were clearly faster and were pulling steadily away from Dr. Austin.

Kate turned and pleaded, "Uncle George! Come on!"

George checked to see that they were far from the children. Then he confided, in a low voice, "Do you remember that time when I was in third grade, and you were in fifth grade, and our whole school took a field trip to the zoo?"

Kate remembered. "Yeah."

"Do you remember when we went into the monkey house?"

"Yeah. I remember how bad it smelled."

"Okay. Now. Do you, by any chance, remember what the bad monkeys, specifically the bad boy monkeys, were doing to themselves?"

Kate's jaw dropped. "No!"

"Yes."

"No way!"

"Yes. Way." George cast his gaze upward toward the County Commission Room and intoned, "Welcome to the monkey house."

The Harvard group ran past the front in the other direction. Dr. Austin ran past, too, trailing now by a wide margin.

"I don't think Whit's getting into Harvard," George added. "Not in this lifetime. Unless of course it's as a specimen in their anthropology department."

Then they heard Cornelia screaming. They looked up in time to see Pogo run in a panic from the County Commission Room to Dr. Austin's office.

To the left, they saw Mrs. Hodges come crashing out of the service elevator. She was dressed in elbow-high gloves and thick protective goggles. She propelled a black cart before her like a sled down a snowy hill, rounding one corner and smashing through the door of the County Commission Room.

Back across the square, Pogo dashed out of Dr. Austin's office holding the blue shower curtain before her. Cornelia met Pogo at the door, snatched it away, and ran back inside. She returned seconds later, hustling Whit toward her husband's office with the shower curtain now wrapped around him.

Kate spoke slowly and deliberately. "Uncle George? Do you remember that book I gave you?"

George gulped. "That genetic engineering thing?"

"Yes. Did you, by any chance, give that book to Pogo?"

"No. I gave it to Whit. Like you said. I put it on the podium."

"Was Pogo in the room?"

"Uh. Yes."

"Did Pogo then leave the room?"

George looked up. "Yes again."

Mrs. Hodges careened back through the door with a manila envelope now sitting atop her cart. She steered the cart to the service elevator and punched at the button with a gloved hand. The doors opened, and Mrs. Hodges pushed the cart in, but it came rolling right back out, followed by Pogo.

Mrs. Hodges shouted, "Pogo! Get out of my way! I command you to get out of my way!"

But instead, Pogo rushed the cart and grabbed the manila envelope. Mrs. Hodges grabbed it back. They wrestled desperately until the envelope ripped away into Pogo's hands, leaving a large antique book in Mrs. Hodges's hands.

Pogo stumbled sideways into the railing. The metal squealed once and then gave way completely. A three-foot section snapped off and hurtled, eight stories, to the lobby below. It landed with a loud clatter, dangerously close to Kate, George, June, the sleeping can man, and the returning Dr. Austin.

Pogo pinwheeled her arms wildly, reeling back and forth on the edge of the precipice. She regained her balance, though, and backed away from the hole with a look of fear and confusion on her face. She continued to back up until she disappeared into the elevator.

Mrs. Hodges then stepped toward the hole with a stiff-legged gait, like a zombie platform diver. She inched out over the eight-story abyss so that only the heels of her black shoes remained on the landing. She peeled off her gloves and goggles, dropping them and the antique book into the empty space in front of her. Then she declared, in a booming theatrical voice, "Jack fell down and broke his crown, and Jill came tumbling—
Ahhhh!
"

Mrs. Hodges raised her arms and took off flying. Momentarily. Then she started to fall. She fell for a long, long time, her arms and legs moving in slow motion through the air like a swimmer's. She hit the lobby floor without the slightest bounce and stuck there, like a wad of black putty.

After a moment of stunned silence, Dr. Austin approached Mrs. Hodges in small fearful steps. He said, "Get back all of you. I'll call Dr. Cavendar. He'll take care of her." Then he added loudly, "I think she's going to be all right."

Cornelia ran up to him and was about to speak when he barked at her, "Where's Dr. Cavendar? Where's Bud?"

Cornelia whispered, as best she could, "I don't know. Listen: Whit is in the Hummer. We're on our way to the emergency room."

Dr. Austin ordered her, "Get the blue shower curtain!"

"I can't. It's wrapped around Whit."

"What?" Dr. Austin exploded. "Then get it off of him!"

"He ruined his clothes. It's all he has to wear."