The Secret of Zoom (22 page)

Beth Adnoid sat down at the edge of Christina's couch and took off the rubber bands that held her daughter's hair in braids. Christina stiffened automatically—she hated having her hair combed, Nanny always yanked too hard—and then relaxed in surprise as her mother began to brush with gentle, rhythmic strokes. This was actually kind of nice. If only her mother's hands weren't so terribly warm . . .

“We had it in the main laboratories, of course.” Beth Adnoid smoothed Christina's pale hair and parted it in the middle. “The aboveground buildings where I worked with your father were wired for electricity. But the zoom was so powerful an energy source that, whenever we managed to activate it, there would be a sudden surge of localized power and all the electrical circuits would blow.” She turned aside to cough, from deep in her chest.

Christina remembered how the lightbulbs had fizzed and gone dark in the tunnel, but she was more concerned about her mother. Shouldn't she be lying down?

“In the end,” continued Beth Adnoid after a moment, braiding up one side, “we had to use such extremely small amounts of zoom in our experiments that Leo got frustrated—”

“And he built the underground labs so he could work on more zoom at a time, and he used oil lamps because they wouldn't go out, I bet!” Taft stretched out on one of the couches.

Beth Adnoid finished Christina's second braid and wrapped the end with a rubber band. “I helped him. I know about rocks, you see, and it was clear that this was a site of a former volcano—and honeycombed belowground with lava tubes.”

“Lava tubes?” Taft poked his nose out from his brown striped quilt.

“You might call them caves, or tunnels.” Christina's mother set down the brush as if it was suddenly too heavy. “You're in one right now. Lava flowed through here long ago. Then when it drained out, the empty tunnel was left.” She drew a gray patchwork quilt up under Christina's chin with fingers that trembled. “But enough questions. Growing children need their sleep.”

“I'm practically asleep already,” said Taft.

“Me, too,” said Christina.

“Good night, darlings,” said Beth Adnoid.

Christina lay still, reveling in the new sensation of being tucked in and hugged. She wished she could just go to sleep like a regular girl and let her mother take care of everything.

But the sound of coughing echoed suddenly from the washing area. Christina waited, tense under her quilt, until it was over. No, she couldn't rest.

She turned to Taft and spoke under cover of the quilt. “Listen. We'll fly out as soon as she's sleeping. I bet I can find some cough medicine in the bathroom cabinet at home.”

“And then let's find Danny and bring him down here.”

“Food first,” whispered Christina. “If we brought him down here but there was no food when he got hungry—”

“Okay,” Taft said reluctantly. “Quiet now—she's coming back.”

Christina nodded. And then she felt the touch of a warm hand on her hair and heard the sound of her mother's voice, singing a familiar lullaby. She shut her eyes . . . she would only pretend to sleep . . .

C
HRISTINA
woke to a hand shaking her roughly and Taft's voice insistent in her ear.

“Hurry! We don't have much time!”

She opened her eyes. Far above, the hole to the sky showed the dull gray of the hour before dawn. She fought her way out of a tangle of quilt and stumbled to the plane she had used the day before, parked near the rest of the fleet.

“Sing
soft
,” said Taft.

Christina didn't need reminding. But as the plane bloomed into its final, muted chord, Leo Loompski lifted his rumpled head from the second row.

“Where are you going?”

Taft put a finger to his lips. “To get food,” he whispered. “Since Lenny didn't bring you any.”

Leo sat up, a small man with confused eyes beneath wispy hair. “Lenny?” He gazed at the luminous violet plane, his eyes reflecting its glow. “Are you going to see my nephew?”

Christina, in the cockpit of the plane, sat perfectly still.
Would he wake her mother? Would he tell them they couldn't go?

But Leo just dug in his pocket. “You need a wrench. For fixing.”

Christina took the proffered wrench. It clinked against the jackknife in her back pocket.

“But what do you want us to fix?” Taft asked gently.

Leo stared at them both, his eyes more focused than Christina had ever seen them. “
Lenny
needs fixing. Go. Fix him
now
.”

 

As they neared the top of the cavern, they heard voices.

Christina circled around the dim, gray light that washed in through the opening and hovered in the shadows, beneath a hanging lump of rock. The plane's humming was drowned out by the sound of an idling engine nearby, and the arguing voices were deep and loud.

“But I've got the winch on the back of the truck,” said a voice that Christina thought she had heard before, “and the supplies all ready. Just let me lower the food, at least.”

“No,” snapped the second voice—which was clearly Lenny Loompski's.

“But that's the second supply order you've canceled!”

Christina recognized the first voice now—it was the yard boss from the orphanage. She glanced back at Taft. He sat rigidly, his shoulders hunched nearly to his ears.

“So?” Lenny's voice held a shrug. “I supplied everything Uncle Leo and Beth Adnoid wanted for years, but not once did they give me what I wanted. Nothing I could submit for
the Karsnicky Medal! Nothing I could use to make zoom into fuel!”

“But the scientists at the main lab just figured that out.”

“Right. So what do I need these two for? Nothing, that's what.”

There was a pause. “What are you going to do? Starve them to death?”

“I'm not
starving
them. I've just . . . lost interest in feeding them.” Lenny's voice sounded annoyed. “Anyway, what business is it of yours, Crumley?”

“Er . . .”

“If you feel that sorry for them, why don't you join them? I can lower you on the winch right now.”

“Boss, I never said—”

“You're paid to do as you're told and keep your mouth shut, remember? Now turn off that truck and leave it.”

“Yessir.”

The idling engine was cut. Suddenly everything was much quieter.

“Hey,” said Crumley, “do you hear somebody humming?”

Softer, softer, softer
, thought Christina in a panic, and the plane's hum diminished to the merest breath of sound.

“I don't hear anything,” said Lenny. “Come back to the guardhouse. We just got in our first order for zoom, and I want to go over the procedure with everyone.”

Lenny's sentences began to break up, coming to Christina's ears in fragments.

“Tonight . . . visitor . . . doesn't know . . .”

Lenny's voice faded into an indistinct murmur. The sound
of footsteps died away, and a door slammed in the distance. Christina edged the plane up just until her head cleared the rim, and she and Taft looked out.

Directly before them was a large pickup truck, backed up to the hole. The predawn air was gray and murky, but there was enough light for Christina and Taft to see that the pickup was loaded with food.

“Jackpot,” whispered Taft.

Stay
, Christina thought.
Good plane
. She took off the helmet, stood on her seat, and climbed out over the lip of the cone. She slid a little—the cone sloped—and stopped herself against the truck's rear right tire, which smelled of asphalt and rubber. She peered around it to the guardhouse at the bottom of the hill. A window showed the silhouettes of Lenny and the bristle-haired boss, backlit by yellow light, as they sat down and leaned toward each other.

“Look, there are even gunnysacks!” Taft was already up on the truck's flatbed, poking amid the stacked boxes and baskets. “We can pack them with whatever we want!”

Christina was filled with a powerful sense of satisfaction as she scrambled onto the pickup. She
would
be able to get food to her mother and Leo, lots of it, even sooner than she had thought. And the truck would block them from the view of anyone who looked out the guardhouse window.

“Hey!” Taft stopped in the midst of loading a gunnysack with bread and fruit. “Why don't we make more than one trip? There won't be room for me in the plane anyway, if the food's in the back seat—”

“And while I'm unloading, you can be filling another sack!”

Christina flew down into the cavern with the first sackful of food, flushed with triumph. In a few more trips, they'd have enough food to last them for weeks—time enough for Leo to design and build a plane that could carry more weight. And then—why, then her parents would be reunited, the orphans would be freed, and Lenny Loompski would be thrown behind bars, where he belonged.

Yes, everything was going perfectly. By the time her mother woke up, the cupboards would be completely stocked with food.

And medicine? Christina flew softly past her sleeping mother and blew her a kiss. It would be in one of the boxes on the truck. The question was, could she find it in the dark?

 

“I've been thinking,” said Taft. He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead; while Christina was gone, he had filled six gunnysacks and lined them against the side of the truck. “Why not bring Danny down, right now? Once we get enough food, I mean.”

Christina climbed onto the open tailgate and dug in the first box she came to. Was that a bottle of cough medicine? She held it up and squinted in the gloom. No, only mustard.

“I know we can't rescue all the kids yet,” Taft went on. “But Danny needs me. I could go find him and send him down in the plane with you.”

Christina ripped open the next box with her pocketknife. “That won't work. Once he sees you again, do you really think he's going to get in a plane and let me take him away from you?”

“But I'd
explain
—”

“You'd have to explain over and over again, and he would make a fuss. And he's never been in a plane, I bet. He might be scared. He might yell.”

Taft looked at his feet. His shoulders slumped.

“Of course,” Christina said, “he'd go with
you
.”

Taft looked up.

“If
you
were flying the plane,” she continued, warming to her idea, “he'd go with you in a heartbeat, no fuss at all.”

Taft frowned. “I can't fly, remember? I tried.”

Christina felt inside the second box. Duct tape, pens, scissors, paper. Cough medicine had to have been on the supply order—where was it? “You
can
fly,” she said briefly, opening a third box. “But you have to believe you can, first. It's just like me and math.”

“Math is different,” said Taft. “Anyone can do math.”

Christina sat back on her heels, exasperated. “Well, I couldn't. And you'll never focus your thoughts enough to fly, either, until you stop focusing on how you
can't
.”

Taft looked doubtful.

“Come on, try it. You can practice without Danny, and while you fly the food down, I'll try to spot where he is.” Christina jumped off the truck. “Here, let me have your shirt—and let's cut off your shock collar. I can tape it together around my neck. Then if somebody sees me, I'll look like just another orphan. Now get in the plane, and put that helmet on—unless you
don't
want to rescue Danny.”

Taft climbed into the plane, protesting all the way. “Listen, Christina, it's different for me. I really can't fly this plane—it won't let me. I bet it can tell I'm just an orph—”

“Stop
saying
that!” Christina saw with fury that his shoulders were beginning to hunch. “You're brilliant at math, and you didn't panic in the cave even when the flashlight died, and you're my best friend, and Danny's, too.” Christina knelt at the edge of the hole and glared down at Taft, shivering bare-chested in the plane's front seat. “You're not just an orphan, you're
Peter Taft
. Now think! Think hard! Think
GO
!”

There was a
whoosh
of air and a swirl of violet light as the plane beneath her took off with a jerk. Christina suppressed a whoop—he'd really done it!—and turned to look around the edge of the truck.

Yes, the two silhouettes were still in the guardhouse window—and now they had been joined by more, all lifting glasses and drinking. They looked as if they were settling in for a long, long time.

Even better, Christina found the cough medicine in the fourth box. She wanted to make sure Taft took it in his very next load, so she set it front and center on the tailgate of the truck, where he would be sure to see it.

She couldn't help but feel a little proud of herself as she prowled the ridge, looking down at the orphans' camp below. She had figured things out, she had made her own plans, and now she was even going to rescue Danny.