The Lonely Whelk (18 page)

“
Well stop and just stuff
canisters. I’ll explain it in a minute, and then you can do the
math later.”

Kaia sighed. A moment later a loud grating
noise filled the air. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at the
same time.

John reappeared behind her. “Don’t worry.
They’re just shutting down the building. The noise only lasts a
minute.”

“
Why is it so loud?” Kaia
asked.

John rolled his eyes. “Our last head of
security had this thing about warning everyone about what was going
on. But he didn’t want to just, you know, say it, because then,
heaven forbid someone who wasn’t supposed to know found out...” He
began to shout as he headed back towards the Doors with another
armload. “…so he created a system of really irritating sounds which
play over the public announcement system whenever something
important is happening.”

Kaia stuffed the last canister, grabbed an
armload and followed John.

“
What do I do?” she asked
when she reached the Door where he stood.

“
You’re done?” John asked,
turning.

“
There aren’t any canisters
left,” she said.

“
Good. That means we have
five extra. I stopped here.” He pointed at the Door in front of
him. “This is easy, but you have to know what to look for... er,
feel for. Because the Door is driven by brainwaves, you have to
consciously direct the canister to the other side. That means that
your hand has to go through. You will feel some pressure and the
canister will get super light, and then it will get super heavy,
almost like something is pulling it from the other side. Let it
pull for a count of three seconds, and then you can let go. Got
it?”

“
Direct with my brain,
stick my hand in, pressure and light canister, then heavy pulling
canister, three seconds, let go,” Kaia repeated. “But how do I
direct it with my brain?”

“
Just read the name of the
location—” John pointed to the name that was neatly printed on the
frame above each Door, “and then stick your hand
through.”

“
Okay,” Kaia replied
hesitantly.

“
Oh, and you can only go
slowly on the first two, and then you have to move like the wind.
I’ll take this half, you take that half.” A moment later, John was
off, doing each Door in six seconds or less.

Kaia took a deep breath. The name at the top
of her Door was Station Way. She fixed the thought in her mind and
then plunged her hand holding a canister into the strange, blue,
almost watery rectangle in front of her. As it went in, she gasped.
The sensation was tingly and strange, not unlike the feeling of
lukewarm water, but at the same time that her hand was floating, it
was also being pulled in a million directions at once. She couldn’t
feel the canister. A panicky feeling began to bubble up her throat.
What if she had dropped it?

All at once she felt a heavy pressure in her
hand. There it was! And suddenly, someone or something was dragging
on it pulling on it. She tightened her grip and counted the
seconds. One... two... three... the dragging was so intense that
she almost couldn’t hold on anymore. She let go. Her hand still
tingled. She pulled it out of the Door and looked at it, examining
it from all angles.

“
Weird, huh?” John asked,
stopping next to her with an armload of canisters. “I should also
mention that you don’t want to leave your hand in for more than 30
seconds, or the rest of you will start to get pulled through. It’s
slow, so you can definitely stop it, but just so you know.” He
grinned. “So what do you think?”

“
It’s so weird!” she
exclaimed. “But is there any biological impact? Do I age faster by
going through Doors, or maybe just my hand ages faster? Or maybe I
stay young longer...”

John’s grin widened. “Don’t worry about that
for now. We just need to get these canisters through the Doors.
I’ll race you. On your mark… get set...”

“
Wait,” Kaia interrupted.
“Can we race after I do one more? You did promise me two slow ones
after all and I want to make sure I’ve got it right.”

“
No problem,” John said,
still moving from Door to Door so quickly that it looked like he
was throwing the canisters through.

Kaia moved to the next Door and repeated the
process. It wasn’t any less strange the second time – and she loved
it.

“
Okay,” she said as she
picked up a third one. “Now we can race. I’ll do this half, you do
the other. On your mark... get set.... GO!”

They were off, one canister after the next
after the next.

Maxwell and Maddy arrived at the Globe
mid-afternoon.

“
Where is Perla?” Maddy
asked, holding tightly to Maxwell’s arm.

“
I don’t know, but look at
all the people coming out of the building!” Maxwell pointed to the
Globe, where a large number of individuals were flowing out like
the unchecked swells from a broken dam. “I think they started
without us!”

Maddy gasped, outraged. “How could they?”
she demanded.

“
We had better just go in,”
Maxwell stated in a very irritated tone of voice. “She never wanted
to help us at all! She was just using me to get the
key!”

“
What a horrible woman!”
Maddy exclaimed. “I think we should probably not ever speak to her
again. At least, I won’t!”

“
I am seriously considering
it.”

The two strode rapidly forward towards the
building, working their way around to one side of the crowd and
squeezing through the door, muttering comments about having
forgotten a purse or briefcase. One gentleman gave them a very
concerned look. “It had better be important!” he barked. “This is
an emergency shutdown, you know! That means we all have to leave as
quickly as possible!”

They slipped into the lobby and moved to the
side, out of the way of the mass of people. There were three
streams: one from the elevator, and one from each set of
stairs.

“
We should take the
elevator,” Maddy said.

“
Why?”

“
Because people aren’t
supposed to use the elevator during emergencies. I bet it will be
easier.”

“
Okay.” Maxwell held onto
Maddy’s hand tightly for a moment, and then turned to her. “You go
first. No one will notice you if you are quiet. They never do. It’s
like you’re Houdini.”

“
Okay,” Maddy whispered.
She let go of his hand and slipped into the crowd. Maxwell tensed.
He always felt a little naked without her.

Now it was his turn to sneak over to the
elevator silently – like a bat, or a fox, or something that sneaked
silently. That said, being silent might not be all that necessary
at the moment. The mob of people talked wildly, waving their hands
in excitement while dashing forward as if someone were giving away
the most delicious meal, steaming and hot, on the street. There
were frantic conversations going on all around him:

“
My razor-backed rabbit
tails are going to…”

“…
you think it’s the Door
Room again? That would be twice this month!”

“
I can’t imagine
why…”

“…
can’t be sure someone
doesn’t just pull the alarm…”

“
What if it’s a bloody
prank by one of those…”

“…
so we can go home early
every day?”

“
Hahahahaha!”

He inched his way into the building. He
could see Maddy through the crush of people holding desperately
onto the front desk so as not to get swept away with the crowd,
waiting for him to catch up. The secretary was on six phones
simultaneously, hanging up and then picking up another; it almost
looked as though he had six arms. Maxwell frowned.

He wiggled his way around the secretary’s
desk. The man didn’t even notice him, luckily. He pretended he was
an invisible fox, slippery and sly, sneaking his way into the dark,
dank den of the hibernating bear.
I am a fox, I am a fox
, he
chanted silently in his head.
A fox, a fox, a fox.

The elevator doors slid open.

“
Excuse me,” he said to a
woman exiting the elevator. “Which floor is Quin’s office
on?”

“
Twenty-seven, sir,” the
woman replied. “But you had better hurry and get on out of here,
before the building shuts down.” She scampered off.

“
Thank you,” Maxwell
replied, a little too late, as she had already vanished into the
crowd, and hit the “doors close” button. After several stops, the
doors opened on the twenty-seventh floor. He stepped out and looked
around. It seemed pretty empty.

“
Quin’s office!” he said,
and then put his hand over his mouth. Maddy wasn’t here, so it
would appear that he was talking to himself if he weren’t
careful.

He strolled down the hall, pulling a map
from his satchel. He had spent weeks searching the internet for a
blueprint of this building, and then stumbled into a gift shop
where they were selling it for only a few dollars. Of course, it
was a relatively unhelpful map, but it did have one really useful
piece of information on it: the number of Quin’s office.

It appeared to be quite simple. First, he
had to turn left out of the elevator, and then make a right at the
end of the hallway. He grinned. Easy as pie. He knew this building
was designed for and by the creative mind, so it didn’t surprise
him to see large paintings lining the hallway. They were nice
paintings. He thought about destroying them, since it seemed that
everyone was leaving the building and every so often it was good to
prove that he was a villain, but then decided it would take too
much time.

He reached the end of the hallway and came
to an abrupt halt. To his right was a gaping chasm. It spanned from
where he stood to the hallway on the other side. Gazing down, all
he could see were shadows, and some light from where he stood
glinting off of pipes and wooden beams. A sheet or tarp fluttered
far below – at least, he hoped it was a sheet, and not a ghost or a
dead body or something. The chasm extended far above, with the
metal beams which supported the structure of the building spanning
the gap overhead. A breeze stroked his cheek lightly.

“
They should get that
fixed,” Maxwell muttered with a loud sigh. Quin’s office must be
out of use, because according to his map, you had to go down this
hall to get there – there seemed to be no other route. “Which is
odd, as this building is round.”

“
What’s odd?” said a voice
from behind him. He gasped and spun around. Maddy stood there
smiling cheerfully.

“
Oh, it’s you!” he
exclaimed. “How did you find me?”

“
I walked up the stairs,
silly! Sorry I didn’t get here sooner, but the secretary was on so
many phones at once that he didn’t notice. Did you know that the
secretary actually has six arms? When he sits behind that desk you
don’t see them, but when there’s a crisis, man do those arms fly!
What happened here?” She gasped as she noticed the gaping hole
right next to them.

“
Oh, you finally noticed,
did you?” Maxwell said sarcastically. “Well, I need to get across
to the other side and there’s no other way.”

“
Did you bring a grappling
hook?” She had a very innocent expression on her face, and for a
moment, Maxwell wondered if he should have brought her at all. She
could get hurt!

“
No. I did not bring a
grappling hook.” Maxwell sighed and rubbed his eyes. “I should have
known this would never work.”

“
I wonder how deep it is.”
Maddy opened her massive and always present purse and dug around.
“I don’t need this,” she said, pulling out a small rock.

“
Why do you have a rock in
your purse?” Maxwell asked.

“
Oh, you know, I like to
collect things.” She threw the rock into the void.

The rock plopped at floor level.

Maddy gasped. “The rock can fly!”

Maxwell put out his hand to quiet her.
“Hush. It’s not flying.” He walked over to the rock and picked it
up, smiling a little to himself. “It’s an illusion! Come with me.”
He gestured for her to follow him into the hallway.

She stepped backwards instead. “Um, it
really doesn’t seem safe.”

“
It’s safe,” Maxwell
insisted. “Just put one foot out and take my hand. Close your eyes
if you want.”

She closed her eyes and put one foot out. It
hit the ground.

“
Just a few more steps,”
Maxwell said.

She put her other foot out and waved it
around in the air.

“
You’re about eight inches
too high, there,” Maxwell rolled his eyes.

Six steps later, she opened her eyes… and
gasped. “I don’t think I can do it! Maxwell... it’s so real!”

“
Maddy. You’re fine. Take a
deep breath.” Maxwell pulled her to the other side of the LED
hallway until she was standing on the other side.

He smiled at Maddy and then turned to look
down the hallway. There were only a couple of doors down here and
one of them had to be Quin’s office. Now came the tricky part of
the mission.

“
It’s room 2701,” he told
Maddy. The number was carved into a plaque on the wall, three doors
down from the hallway. He pushed open the door. It was dark. He
pushed it open further. A light came on. There was no one inside.
He turned and gestured for Maddy to follow him.