The Lonely Whelk (22 page)

“
I did it to protect you!”
she hissed. “You think you would have rather grown up surrounded by
thieves and murderers and criminals? You really think that was a
better environment for a child than one in which he believed he was
loved and protected by his mother? I love what I do, regardless of
what you think of it, but there was no way I was dragging my son
into it. If you had any sense at all, you would never have taken a
job in law enforcement! I told you not to, remember? Then we
wouldn’t be in this situation at all! You should appreciate
everything I’ve done for you! You should love me! I am your mother,
and you will respect me whether you like it or not!”

“
No, Mom,” Clyde stated,
backing slowly away from her. “I can’t. You’re still holding a
knife to Kaia’s neck.”

“
Bad Face!” Perla
commanded. “Put the knife down, but don’t let the girl
go.”

Bad Face pulled the knife away from Kaia’s
neck but kept it in the air in front of her, and didn’t let go.

“
You and I are going to
have a chat,” she said, looking at Clyde, but then turned back
towards John. “But first, you are going to give me what I came here
for.”

“
I have your son,” John
said, “and you have my intern. I think it’s really a draw this
time.”

Perla frowned and turned back to Clyde.

“
Where is Lord
J?”

“
Right here!” a voice
exclaimed, breathing heavily. “Your brat made me run down twelve
floors – that is twenty-four flights of stairs!”

John chuckled. “Serves you right.”

“
Well,” Perla said angrily,
turning back to John, eyes narrowing. “It seems we are no longer at
a draw. I now have my son,” she flicked her wrist and Clyde felt
the cold metal of a knife press against his throat, “and your
intern.” She flicked her wrist again and Bad Face’s knife went back
into its original position against Kaia’s neck.

“
You’d kill your own son?”
John asked.

“
No, but I might injure him
or knock him out,” Perla answered. “Take me to the
Door.”

“
Fine.” John sighed loudly
and began to stomp his feet towards an office on the other side of
the room.

“
Don’t,” Kaia hissed
loudly.

“
Be quiet,” John said
harshly. He did not turn to look at her.

“
But it’s got
seven...”

“
I said, be quiet,” John
emphasized. “I am well aware of that fact, and it would behoove you
to start counting – to a million this time.”

Clyde felt Lord J shove him forward. “Watch
that knife!” Clyde muttered.

“
Serves you right for
trying to be befriend me and pretend to care about my dad!” Lord J
replied. “I thought you might actually not be the wimpy idiot I
always thought you were, but turns out I was wrong.”

“
I outsmarted you,” Clyde
pointed out. “That always stings.”

Lord J kicked him in the back of the knee
and Clyde grunted, stumbling forward.

“
Lord J!” Clyde’s mom
scolded. “No!”

Standing up again, Clyde felt Lord J’s
breath on the back of his neck. “We’ll finish this later,” the
criminal muttered.

John stopped in front of the office door.
“It may or may not be in here,” he said. “It is rather
unpredictable.”

“
Then we will go in there,
and the building will stay locked down, until it is in my hands,”
Perla commanded. “Now, please, let’s go in.”

They all entered the room. It was not a huge
office, but it fit all six people with plenty of space.

John stood in the middle with his arms
crossed, staring at Perla.

Clyde looked at Kaia. Her eyes were wide and
she was staring right at him. He tensed. Something was about to
happen. He had to be ready – for anything.

The sound of the monkeys running – no,
swarming – was a grating, irritating noise, like someone scraping a
washboard with a plastic garden fork while grinding their teeth
into a microphone and humming the
Song That Never Ends
.
Hazel couldn’t see any of the ship as she and Pilgrim were rushed
down the corridors. Monkeys ran across the ceiling, walls, and
floor. As far as she could tell, there was even a layer of monkeys
running on top of the layer of monkeys that ran on the architecture
of the ship. All around her, fur and paws and little blinking eyes
throbbed, and she felt very odd being swept along in this tide of
robotic mammals.

Then, all at once, the swarm came to a
halt.

“
Where are we?” she asked,
and then the monkeys swarmed again for a moment, creating a hole in
the wall in front of her. “My shop!”

The monkeys swarmed again and Admiral
Hawkings appeared in front of her.

“
Admiral!” she
exclaimed.

The admiral looked very intimidating. Her
arms were crossed and a frown lay across her lips, quiet and tense
but ready to explode into a scowl at any second.

“
What is going on here?”
she demanded.

A monkey hung down between Hazel and
Holland.

“
Bow to the emperor!” it
proclaimed.

“
No.” Holland’s scowl came
out of hiding and slathered across her face.

“
I am Emperor Tamarin,” a
different monkey proclaimed, and the swarm of fur vibrated again,
this time revealing a monkey wearing a crown.

“
Squeak?” Holland asked,
surprised. “You rotten little monkey! This is my ship! What do you
think you are doing?”

“
We will rule
Earth!”

Holland scratched her nose. “Why Earth?”

“
Because this human can
take us there!”

“
Can you?” Holland asked,
turning to look at Hazel.

“
No,” Hazel replied. “I
don’t even know how I got here!”

“
Lies!” Emperor Tamarin
boomed. “The shop is your ship and you will take us to
Earth!”

The swarm of monkeys began to hiss and howl,
and Hazel flinched as the noise catapulted into her eardrums. A
moment later the door to her shop was open, and the mass of fur was
flowing inside.

“
Hazel,” Pilgrim hissed.
“Untie me!”

“
Oh, right.” Hazel turned
and pulled at his bindings. A moment later he was free. He ran to
Holland and the two began to confer.

Hazel looked behind her, feeling a bit
seasick as the walls of fur around her writhed and pulsed. She
imagined this would be what it felt like to be on a very small ship
on an ocean stirred up by a kraken. She hoped she never met one of
those, and she hoped she found a way to escape from this surreal
situation.

“
Where are you going?”
Holland asked suddenly.

“
What?” Hazel looked down.
Several monkeys had picked her up and were carrying her towards the
shop. “Help!” she shouted.

Holland disappeared from her view as the
monkeys carried Hazel into the shop.

“
You will show us how to
operate your ship,” Emperor Tamarin stated in a robotic
tone.

“
But I don’t know how!”
Hazel protested. She was beginning to feel quite overwhelmed. It
was as if she were trapped in a strange dream and couldn’t wake up.
Tears began to well up in her eyes. Then she felt a hand at her
elbow. It was Holland.

“
It’s a computer virus,”
Holland whispered in Hazel’s ear. “We’re not sure where it came
from, but we’re suspecting that the alien technology that hit our
ship several hundred years ago... well, you don’t care about this.
We can figure it out. I’ll be right here.”

Hazel nodded.

“
Tell us!” Emperor Tamarin
boomed.

Crossing her arms across her chest,
frowning, and taking a deep breath, Hazel yelled, “I do not know
anything! Now leave me alone, you horrible robot!”

The little monkey’s face suddenly changed
into a terrifying mask. He hissed, showing his sharp teeth and
beady eyes which now glowed with some internal light. Then, he spun
around towards his swarm of monkeys and shouted, “Explore the ship!
Find the controls!”

The monkey carpet scattered in a hundred
directions, causing the writhing mass of fur to vibrate at a higher
speed. Hazel saw Pilgrim sneaking in around the edge of the
room.

He sidled up to Hazel; the monkeys were
totally focused on their task and ignored him.

“
McGraff and Lieutenant
Song are outside, weapons at the ready,” he whispered. “I’m not
sure how much good the guns will do, though, since we don’t know
what exact changes Squeak made to their physiology and
programming.”

“
I want them to hold their
position until we have more information,” Holland decided. “Hazel,
is this, in fact, a ship?”

“
I don’t know. It moves
around, but I’ve never been to space before! And it was always
random – I never picked where it took me! It always stayed on
earth, except for this one time I ended up in someplace called
Pomegranate City.”

Hazel watched Holland exchange a meaningful
glance with Pilgrim.

“
Pomegranate City, you say?
That’s where we’re from!” Pilgrim offered.

“
Oh!” Hazel frowned. “Well,
a man named John came in and did something in the back and then
suddenly I was back on Earth again. I hadn’t gone anywhere else
until now.”

“
Tell me—” Holland reached
out and grasped Hazel’s arms. “Did you ever imagine visiting other
places?”

“
Of course! All the time!”
The still-loyal monkey draped around her shoulders rapidly
chattered her words into Holland’s language.

“
Did you get to visit any
of the places you imagined?”

Hazel’s eyes widened. “Oh... I did! I never
noticed the connection though. I’ve been to almost every place I’ve
imagined. And just yesterday I was thinking how neat it would be to
go to space!”

Holland turned back to Pilgrim, as the
buzzing and screeching of the monkeys got louder.

“
Pilgrim, the emergency
exit was in Corridor 11, right?”

“
Yes, sir!”

With an intense expression, Holland turned
back to Hazel. “My friend,” she said, “You need to imagine the man
that came to fix your shop. Imagine talking to him, imagine his
face, imagine that you need help. Do it now and don’t stop until I
say otherwise.”

Nodding, Hazel closed her eyes and tried to
block out the sound of the monkeys around her. Nothing made sense –
nothing at all! Maybe if she imagined being somewhere else it would
all go away – maybe she would wake up from this intensely real
madness. Maybe this time when she woke up her father would be
there, and he would have a nice hot cup of coffee steaming. He
would be grinning at her, all excited because he had planned a
surprise trip to climb a mountain or visit the ocean or ride on a
camel. Maybe this time he would take her out on a hovercraft, just
like he had always promised, and then they could get coffee
afterwards.

Maybe.

She heard Holland yell and the sound of the
monkeys quieted.

“
What do you want?” Emperor
Tamarin asked angrily.

“
How do you know that the
trigger is inside the shop?” Holland asked. “Maybe it’s
outside.”

Hazel opened an eye to see a swath of
monkeys flush through the door of the shop.

“
Go,” Hazel said, and the
next moment Pilgrim had disappeared after them.

“
You’re sure you don’t know
how to fly the ship?” Holland asked.

“
No, I have no idea,” Hazel
replied. “Maybe something in the back room?”

“
Why do you think that?”
Emperor Tamarin demanded, flying down in front of her.

“
Because the man that came
to fix the shop went into the back.”

“
Show us!” Emperor Tamarin
demanded. “Show us now!” A path formed across the floor as the
monkeys moved out of the way.

Holland nodded encouragement and Hazel began
to walk forward slowly. As she neared the back room, she refocused
her thoughts on the man, on the city, on the word
Pomegranate...

Kaia was counting, just like John told her
to, but she couldn’t focus – couldn’t keep her mind on the numbers.
So she began to calculate instead; a seven-sided Door seemed
impossible, but not when you added the basic principles of physics
and geometry into the mix. A seven-sided Door could be an amazing
piece of technology. It could be anything or do anything... or it
could do nothing. What did John have up his sleeve?

Her brain froze as she felt Bad Face’s knife
move against the skin of her neck. On the one hand, a scar would be
cool, especially if it came with a good story. On the other hand,
she tended to store very important arteries in her neck, which were
generally used to power her brain, and she thought that
accidentally severing one might be to the end to her very promising
career. She stood very still.

They were still talking, but then Clyde
looked right across the room and into her eyes. She felt bad for
him so she tried to smile, to be encouraging. It must have been
very hard to find out that his mother was a criminal. Then, she
turned her mind back to the seven-sided Door and let it run as a
background program while she considered the situation around
them.