The Age Altertron (10 page)

W
hen Rodney and Wayne explained the situation to the
Professor, the old man said, “That’s extortion! It’s monstrous! That bully-boy
intends to be an outright dictator!”
“What can we do about it, Professor?” asked Rodney. “You and Aunt Mildred will
have to eat.”
“You must be resourceful, boys. Doesn’t your great aunt do a little canning?
What has she put up from last year?”
“Some green beans and squash.”
“Nothing soft and squishy and not too acidic or too seedy?
Seeds are never good for the tracts of old people.”
“We’ll find out,” said Rodney. “Also, there is still a little oatmeal in her
cupboard. And we noticed a box of pudding mix in your pantry.”
“Is it Tapioca? I love Tapioca.”
‘I don’t remember.”
“Well, there is enough food around—if we do a thorough job of scrounging—to
feed your great aunt and me for the next two days—perhaps even three or four
if we each take small bites. And in the meantime, we must work as hard as we
are able to finish the new Age Altertron. Now go down and complete your inventory
and then, if there is time left, I would not mind some hot pudding.”

Rodney and Wayne completed their inventory and cooked some pudding and then
worked through the night on the first phase of construction for the new machine.
The Professor sat in an arm chair not too far from the work area, wrapped in
a blanket to keep away the chill, consulting his calculations and his diagrams
and shouting out instructions in his increasingly raspy voice: “Tighten that
bolt! Excellent! The red wire and now the green wire! Now why is there no charge
in that auxiliary battery? I wonder what has happened to the multi-volt charger?
Can you find the thermionic triode pentode? What have I done with it? Think,
Russell, think! And why have I reversed the electrostatic charge? Would someone
please tell me that? Ah, there is our oddleg caliper. Gizmo had been sleeping
on it!”

The Professor also took time to explain the mechanics and physics of the Age
Altertron II so that Rodney and Wayne would have a better understanding of what
they were doing. “When we age, boys, the cells in our bodies decay and die.
Conversely, if a man were to grow incrementally younger, there would be a rebirth
of cellular tissue within his body. Now this is what the Age Altertron does:
depending on whether you wish it to age a man or give him sudden youth, the
machine sends signals throughout a prescribed area—in our case, the town of
Pitcherville—that either destroy the components of human cellular growth or
stimulate them. The pulse of the signal is multiplied exponentially to create
a nearly instantaneous result. Now did you understand any of that?”

By morning the boys were exhausted but proud of all they had accomplished.
The Professor was equally proud of his two apprentices and how hard they had
worked. “I was afraid that we would be unable to recover from the damage that
I did last night,” the boys’ scientific mentor said with a crusty voice, “but
this is a most admirable start. I wish that there were some way I could repay
you two for all the good work you are doing.”

“You’ve repaid us enough with everything you’ve done for this town over the
last year, Professor,” said Rodney.
Becky, who had come by to bring egg-and-olive sandwiches to Rodney and Wayne,
nodded in agreement.
“But there is nothing that I can do, specifically, for you kids?”
“Well, now that you mention it,” said Wayne, grinning mischievously, “you could
let me take your Nash out for a spin.”
“What is that, Wayne? I didn’t hear you.”
Wayne was about to repeat his request with more volume when he was interrupted
by a knock at the door. Becky jumped up to answer it. “Hello, Officer Wall.
Won’t you come in?”
Officer Wall, who now had the wrinkled face of a man in his eighties, hobbled
into the laboratory using a cane. He was no longer wearing his policeman’s uniform.
“Good morning, Professor. Good morning, Rodney, Wayne, Becky.”
“Are we being too loud?” asked Wayne.
“No, no. You are well within the noise limit. I have come to tell you something
I believe you should know.”
“Please sit down, Officer,” said Rodney. Together he and Wayne helped the slow-moving
officer down onto a bench.
“Ah. That feels good. It is a long walk from City Hall. I no longer have my
patrol car, you see.”
“Why is that?” asked Wayne.
“It doesn’t belong to me anymore. I have been fired—no, I believe that the proper
word is ‘retired.’ I have been purposefully ‘retired’ from the police force.”
“But why?”
“Look at me. I can hardly walk. Let alone breathe. My asthma is much worse.
It is for the best. I was at the new mayor’s office this morning. There was
a very long line. People are worried and depressed. This calamity is taking
a terrible toll on the oldest citizens of this town and on everyone who loves
them. But the ones waiting in line took some pity on me and let me go ahead.
When I stand for too long, my knee joints seize up and then I walk around as
if I am walking on stilts.”
“So what did you need to see the mayor about?”
“There has been no mention of whether I am entitled to a pension. My wife and
I have no income now. I needed to find out if there will be a little money for
us to live on.”
“And what did the Mayor say?”
“That I had to discuss it with his new police chief.”
“Who is the new police chief?” asked the Professor. He held a cup of warm beef
broth in both hands. Becky had just brewed it for him. It was not as fine a
meal as oatmeal and mashed bananas, but it did keep the hunger pangs away for
a while at least.
“It’s Lonnie. Lonnie Rowe, the boy my partner and I arrested for helping to
incite the City Park baby carriage riot. Jackie, now
Mayor
Stovall, eluded
us. But we got Lonnie and kept him in jail for a whole day. He is now the new
police chief. I’m sure that he will take vengeance on me and I will see no pension.
But that is neither here nor there. Oh look, there’s your little terrier, Professor.
Where are his earmuffs?”
“He only wears them when there are loud noises to contend with. Please, go on.”
“Yes. Well, as you can see, it takes me a little while to get from Point A to
Point B. It took me an extra minute or two to leave the Mayor’s office after
our chat. During that time I overheard a conversation between the Mayor and
his new police chief that he probably didn’t think I could hear. But I can actually
still hear quite well. Perhaps it comes from all those years of listening closely
for potential noise violations.”
“What did you overhear, Officer Wall?” asked Becky.
“The Mayor was asking the police chief to send some of his men—the younger men,
that is, those who have just joined the force—not any of the old codgers like
myself who are now too rusty to do our jobs—to send them here to this house,
with an order to destroy all the equipment in this lab. All the tools, all of
your notebooks, everything. He wants to shut your laboratory down, Professor
Johnson.”
“Upon what grounds!” cried the Professor. So unsettling was this report from
the former police officer that Professor Johnson started to rise up from his
chair, knotting himself in his blanket and sloshing his broth all about.
“Upon the grounds that your laboratory poses a danger to the town of Pitcherville.
He said that he heard there was a fire here last night. Now, I don’t know if
there was one or not…”
“There was,” admitted Rodney solemnly.
“And he says he cannot trust that there will not be other fires with a doddering
old fool at work here.”
The Professor grimaced when Officer Wall said “doddering old fool.” It was a
look of anger and hurt.
Officer Wall continued: “And with all the chemicals and potentially explosive
materials in this laboratory no one could be sure that the next fire wouldn’t
be far worse than the last, or could even result in the whole neighborhood being
blown to smithereens! And that is all of the conversation I heard, for by then
I had reached the door. But that was plenty to hear, don’t you think?”
“Oh it was more than enough, Officer Wall, and I appreciate your telling us.”
The Professor settled himself back into his chair. “Do you children see what
our new mayor is doing?”
Rodney nodded. “Jackie must know that we are working on a new Age Altertron.
And he must know that once we finish it and all of us have been returned to
our true ages, he won’t be able to hold on to his power over this town any more—that
his days of being a dictator will be over. Then he and Lonnie will have to go
back to being the two juvenile delinquent nobodies they have always been!”
“Well put, Rodney,” said the Professor. “So where shall we move all of this
equipment to continue our work on the machine in secret?”
“How about your sub-basement?” suggested Wayne. “And who was it who told us
about the Professor’s sub-basement, Wayne?” asked Rodney, arching an eyebrow
at his brother.
“Well—let me—
oh.
It was Jackie. But is it true, Professor?”
“It is true. I am trying to think of how Jackie would come to know about my
several basements, though.”
“Well, Professor,” said Officer Wall, “he and Lonnie have always made it their
habit to sneak into places where they could hide from my fellow officers and
me.”
“And you
do
like to leave you laboratory door unlocked, Professor,” added
Wayne.
“Well, now that the truth is out, Wayne, I will admit that I not only have a
basement and a sub-basement but even a cellar and a sub-cellar below those.”“Why
so many underground rooms, Professor?” asked Wayne.
“I will tell you some day, but not today. Suffice it to say, Jackie and Lonnie
know of the basements, so we will have to think of some other place to move
our lab. Let us put our heads together, kids; where is the last place that those
two thugs would think of looking for my Age Altertron?”
“Well,” said Rodney, “I know of a cellar that few people know about—a cellar
that even I have never seen.”
“Where is it?”
“Beneath my very own house.”
“What is Rodney talking about, Wayne?” asked Becky. “You two never told me there
was a cellar under your house.”
Wayne nodded. “It’s a secret cellar. It was built over a hundred years ago,
at the time that the house was built.”
“The cellar was a place for slaves to hide,” explained Rodney. “Slaves who were
escaping from their Confederate masters before the outbreak of the Civil War.
You see, our father’s house was once a stop on the Underground Railroad.”
The Professor whistled his surprise. “And in this case the word ‘underground’
may be applied quite literally! I had no idea, Rodney. And I happen to know
a great deal about the history of this town.”
“Well that was the idea—that no one should know about it, except the people
who were
supposed
to know about it, the people who wanted to help the
runaway slaves.”
“But why have you two never seen it?” asked Becky. “What is down there now?”
Rodney lowered his voice dramatically, as if to add a note of mystery to his
story. “Well, that is the second half of the tale. My father started building
something down there. Something secret. He began building it when Wayne and
I were very small. He said that some day he would show it to us. In fact, he
said that he hoped to be able to show it to us when we turned seventeen.”
The Professor looked puzzled. “Why seventeen, Rodney? Is there some significance
to that age that is momentarily escaping me?”
Wayne answered for his brother: “There is no significance about our being seventeen,
Professor. What is significant is the year that he wanted to show it to us:
1960.”
“1960. How curious. I cannot think why that year should hold such meaning for
your father. Can
you
, Officer Wall?”
“I didn’t know your father very well so I couldn’t say. The year holds no special
meaning for
me
, although 1960 will be the year I turn ninety if your
machine doesn’t return us all to our real ages.”
“We must go talk to Aunt Mildred, Rodney,” said Wayne. “She knows about the
cellar. And she also knows what’s down there. Maybe she’ll let us work on the
machine there if what our father has left there can be set aside. It can’t be
any more important than what we are doing to save this town. I’m sure that Dad
would agree.”
The Professor nodded. “Wayne, you make a very good case.”
“An astute case?” asked Wayne, hopefully.
“Most astute, my boy. Now you and Rodney go speak to your aunt. I’ll remain
and nap so that I will be fresh to continue work on my calculations. We cannot
afford for me to make another mistake. I must have seven naps a day, you see,
and by my latest estimation, I am two behind.”

Rodney and Wayne found their Aunt Mildred awake. She was lying in bed listening
to her radio. In the stronger light, Aunt Mildred looked very different from
her earlier, younger self. She was tiny and frail with a face that wrapped itself
so tightly about her skull that she appeared almost skeletal. Save only a few
patches of fine, wispy hair, she had no hair at all. “Are you listening to your
favorite soap opera, Aunt Mildred?” asked Wayne.