Brainboy and the Deathmaster Read online

  He got out of the elevator and wandered back into the dining hall. Might there be a phone in the kitchen for Hedderly and the other staff members to call their families? He pushed open the swing door.

  “Hi, Hedderly.”

  “Hi, boyo,” said Hedderly, who was peeling potatoes.

  “Is there a phone around?”

  “A phone?”

  “You know, a telephone.”

  “Not as I know of.”

  “A cell phone, maybe?”

  “Not as I know of.”

  “Don’t you ever call anybody?”

  “Not as I know of.”

  Darryl walked into the dim pantry. To his right were towering shelves of canned goods; to his left, two steel doors: one big, one small. He opened the big one—and a blast of icy air swept over him. It was a vast freezer, with sides of beef and unscaled king salmon hanging from hooks and, in the back, great vats of ice cream. He closed that door and opened the little one. Inside was a boxlike chamber, room temperature, empty.

  “What do you suppose it is?” he mumbled.

  “I think it’s a dumbwaiter.”

  Darryl whirled around. For a moment all he could see in the far corner of the pantry were two glimmering circles, but as he peered, the circles turned into the lenses on a pair of glasses.

  “That’s funny—I was hunting for you,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting,” Nina said.

  “For me?”

  “Not exactly.”

  He looked into the small chamber, then back at her.

  “Where’s the waiter?”

  “A dumbwaiter’s a thing, not a person. It carries food and stuff from one floor to another. It was in one of my mom’s mysteries I read. They call it dumb because it doesn’t talk, not because it’s stupid.”

  “Where’s this one go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “So … what are you waiting here for?”

  “Probably nothing. I waited twice before, but both times it was a bust.”

  He walked over to the dark corner. Next to where she was sitting there was a vent in the wall.

  “What’s that go to?”

  “Have a look,” she said, pulling off the vent cover. “I may be wrong, but I think there’s only a minute to go.”

  She scrunched down and pushed herself into the horizontal vent on her back, headfirst.

  “There’s room for two,” she said in an echoey voice.

  He scrunched down, too, and pushed himself in beside her. It was a duct that bent upward after a few feet. As his shoulders reached hers, he sneezed.

  “Dusty.”

  “Look up,” she said.

  He blinked and looked up. A long tube, less than a yard in diameter, stretched up and up and up—a hundred feet, it must have been—ending in a small black circle. He knocked on the tube. It was made of Teflon or some other hard plastic.

  “What is it?”

  “I think it’s a ventilation pipe for the kitchen,” she said. “See up there a few feet? That might be where the stove hooks in.”

  “But where does it go to?”

  “Straight up. That’s the sky.”

  “The sky? But it’s getting …”

  Nina sucked in her breath as the end of tube suddenly brightened.

  “What’s happening?” Darryl said.

  “The moon!”

  It didn’t remain in place over the end of the tube very long. Maybe a minute. But it was definitely the moon—a full one.

  After it slid away, they wormed their way out of the duct, and Darryl turned away from her. She’d seen him fall on his butt that afternoon: he didn’t want her to see him crying now. For some reason, the sight of the moon had filled his eyes with tears.

  He faked another sneeze, using it as an excuse to wipe his face. Then he saw that she had her glasses off and was wiping tears out of her eyes.

  “How’d you know it would be there right then?”

  “I made some calculations on one of the computers,” she said. “And I hoped.”

  “Wow.”

  “I wonder if Boris was looking at it at the same time. …”

  She’d put her glasses back on, but dim as it was, Darryl could see that her eyes were welling up again. He suddenly felt so sorry for her, being separated from her brother, that he put an arm around her. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

  “I feel strange tonight,” he said. “Different.”

  “Different from before you went to the mall?”

  He giggled. The mall was such a silly name for orientation.

  “I was hoping to see you tonight,” she said. “I almost skipped the moon. I thought you might come by my room.”

  “I did.”

  “Really?”

  “Do you know where there’s a phone?”

  She smiled sadly. “A phone.”

  “Yeah, it’s so weird. I don’t know why, but I never thought of calling my friends till now.”

  Nina said nothing. She just took his hand and gave it a squeeze.

  21

  The noon sun was blazing when BJ locked his bike to a lamppost outside the entrance to the Seattle Yacht Club. He waited in the shade of a cherry tree. After half an hour he was starting to mutter about how the weasel was no more dependable than Darryl when a clanking sound made him whip around. There Boris stood, a green toolbox at his feet.

  “Where’d that come from?”

  “I grabbed it. These nimrods at the Chevron station chased me about a mile out of my way. That’s how come I’m late.”

  Squatting, BJ opened the toolbox. “This is great. It’s got everything.”

  “Take me to the boats, man.”

  Boris looked surprisingly undisreputable in his borrowed clothes, but BJ, in cutoffs, figured it would be unwise to walk down the Yacht Club’s driveway, what with a uniformed doorman standing under the club-house awning. So they skulked around the side of the Yacht Club grounds on the narrow lane leading down to Portage Bay. On the right was a funky shop plastered with signs advertising prices for renting boats and kayaks; on the left, the Yacht Club wall. The wall came to an end well above the water, so to reach the closest docks, all you had to do was scramble over some prickers. It was a weekday, and in spite of the balmy weather not many boats were out on the water, leaving the Yacht Club packed with sloops and yawls and ketches, cigarette boats and catamarans and cabin cruisers, Boston Whalers and three-masted schooners and a few yachts so big they had lifeboats on their decks like ocean liners.

  “How about that guy?” Boris said, pointing at a cabin cruiser about fifty feet long. “The Lazy Boy.”

  “Too big,” BJ said. “We don’t want them to call out the Coast Guard or something.”

  “That one?” BJ pointed at a sleek little inboard-outboard with a fiberglass hull.

  “Too flashy.”

  Boris plunked down on his toolbox, pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his sock, and lit up.

  “What are you doing?” BJ said.

  “What’s it look like? I’m having a smoke while you figure out which boat we want.”

  But now that they were here, BJ couldn’t go through with it. An image of his mother had loomed up like Quadros in CastleMaster.

  “Maybe we should rent,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  BJ dug nine dollars out of his pocket. “How much you got?”

  “I’m busted.”

  “Yeah, right. How much did they give you for Darryl’s GameMaster?”

  “None of your friggin’ business. But I just about got killed getting this.’’ He patted the toolbox.

  “Hide it,” BJ said, turning away.

  A bell tinkled as he went in the door to the rental shop. After the bright sunlight BJ couldn’t see much in the shadowy place, but he could smell incense and varnish and soon made out an aging hippie with beads and long white hair who was varnishing one of those skinny boats they use in crew races.

  “Pea
ce, brother,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want to rent a boat.”

  “How much you want to spend, brother?”

  “I’ve got nine dollars.”

  The bell tinkled again as Boris sidled into the shop.

  “Peace, brother.”

  Boris looked at the man as if he was nuts.

  “One-man kayak’s eight bucks for the day,” the man said.

  “Can two people fit in it?” Boris asked.

  “Sorry, brother. Two-man kayak’s thirteen.”

  Boris reached into his left sock and produced a crumpled five-dollar bill. “I forgot about this,” he said.

  BJ took it and smoothed it out on the counter and handed over all but one dollar.

  “Life vests are a buck each, brother.”

  “We got our own,” said BJ.

  “Kayak has to be back by six. And you have to leave a credit card.”

  “We don’t have any credit cards.”

  “No credit card, no boat.”

  In spite of his brotherliness the old hippie was a cut-throat negotiator. Finally BJ had to get his bike and leave that and his watch, too.

  The kayaks were in an open pen behind the shop: long, slender boats with scuffed fiberglass hulls and cockpits for the paddlers. BJ picked the newest-looking two-man.

  “No way,” Boris said. “I ain’t going in no yellow boat.”

  “Okay, you pick.”

  Boris chose a red one with a black stripe. The paddles were all orange, so there could be no argument there. BJ grabbed two and lifted the front of the kayak while Boris picked up the rear. The proprietor opened a gate for them.

  “You’ve kayaked before, right?” he said as they lugged the boat past him.

  “Lots of times,” BJ said.

  Once the gate closed behind them, the two boys carried the kayak down to the water and set it in parallel to the shore. They ditched their shoes and socks under the brambles where Boris had hidden the toolbox.

  “Gross,” Boris said, stepping onto the slimy lake bottom.

  “Get in front,” BJ said.

  “In your dreams.”

  “Fine, take the back.”

  But Boris soon popped out of the rear seat. “I won’t be able to see a freakin’ thing with a big mother like you in front of me.”

  BJ steadied the craft while Boris shifted to the front. “So you’ve been in one of these guys before?” Boris said, looking over his shoulder.

  “Nah. But how hard can it be?”

  They soon found out, nearly capsizing as BJ climbed in. The kayak was incredibly unstable. And when they finally managed to start paddling, they went around in a circle.

  “Listen, Boris,” BJ said, lifting his paddle out of the water. “You row on the starboard side. I’ll row on the port.”

  “How come you get port?”

  “Okay, you take port. I’ll take starboard.”

  “Which is port?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “You think I’m in the freakin’ navy?”

  BJ knew of port and starboard from books, but the truth was, he wasn’t sure either. “Port’s right,” he guessed. “Starboard’s left.”

  They set off, Boris paddling on the right, BJ on the left. But Boris’s natural stroke was quick and jerky, while BJ’s was slow and smooth, so their progress was fitful, and they ended up moving in a rightward arc. When they nearly hit a sailfish, BJ lifted his paddle again.

  “Hey, man, we got to synchronize.”

  “What’s that?” Boris said warily.

  “Paddle in time with each other. I’ll go faster, you go slower.”

  But that didn’t work either. They still arced to the right.

  “Maybe we got to shift back and forth,” BJ said. “Maybe that’s how come the paddles have the oar things on both ends. You start on port, I’ll start on the starboard. Then we switch every stroke.”

  Though Boris complained bitterly when BJ splashed him, this approach worked better, and they managed to negotiate the channel that led from Portage Bay out to Lake Washington. On the lake the water soon turned choppy.

  “We better go under the floating bridge while we can,” BJ said.

  “Why?”

  “We’re on the leeward side.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The side where the waves are. The other side’s windward.”

  BJ wasn’t sure about this terminology either, but Boris didn’t challenge it. The floating bridge was on pontoons, so a boat could pass under it only near shore, where it rose up on stilts. Once they paddled through to the south side, the water was glassy, and as they got into a rhythm, BJ actually began to enjoy being out on the lake with the sun on his face. Boris seemed to enjoy it, too—till they’d been paddling about half an hour.

  “This is whacked,” he suddenly declared. “We should’ve ripped off that speedboat. My arms are about to fall off.”

  “It’s good exercise.”

  “You got twenty pounds on me. I got to work that much harder.”

  “You’re fourteen. I’m not even thirteen yet.”

  This shut Boris up. But the truth was BJ’s arms were aching, too, and by the time they passed between the stilts on the east end of the bridge, he was thinking they should have taken the bus across the floating bridge and rented a kayak on this side.

  All such regrets flew out of his head when they rounded Evergreen Point. “Wow,” he said, gaping at the lakefront mansion he’d seen pictures of in magazines.

  “How’d you like to have to mow that lawn!” Boris cried. “Look, tennis courts!”

  “And check out the helipad!”

  “Jeez, you could park a friggin’ aircraft carrier at that dock. I don’t see Nina, though.”

  “Or Darryl.”

  “Maybe they’re inside beating each other’s brains out at GameMaster.”

  As they paddled toward the dock, they clunked up against a log floating just beneath the water’s surface, but the kayak bounced off it unharmed. They were still a good football field from the edge of the property when a Jet Ski swooshed up alongside them.

  “Cove’s private,” barked the driver, a beefy man in a dark-red uniform, his eyes hidden by mirrored aviator glasses.

  “We’re visiting the Masterlys,” BJ said.

  “They expecting you?”

  “Well, I’m a friend of Darryl Kirby And this here’s Nina Rizniak’s brother.”

  “Who?”

  “Darryl Kirby.”

  “And Nina Rizniak,” Boris piped up.

  “Never heard of them,” the guard said.

  “But … are you sure they don’t live here?” BJ said.

  “What are they? Gardeners? Housekeepers?”

  “They’re kids,” BJ said. “Our age. I think Mr. Masterly adopted them. Can’t we at least ask him?”

  “Not if you don’t have an appointment.”

  “But—”

  “Sorry, boys. The Masterlys don’t go in for sight-seers.”

  “But we paddled all the way across the friggin’ lake!” Boris cried. “Can’t we even rest on the dock a minute?”

  “Like I said, it’s private property.”

  Already red in the face from all the sun and exertion, Boris went almost purple.

  “Let’s go,” BJ murmured, turning the bow of the kayak back out into the lake.

  But Boris refused to do any paddling, and after a minute or two BJ stopped, too.

  “I’m dying of thirst,” Boris muttered.

  “So am I.”

  “I’m hungry, too.”

  “Me, too.”

  Drifting along, they heard a roar and swiveled around. A boat sped out of the private cove, driven by another man in a dark-red uniform, pulling a water-skier who looked about eighteen, very tan, his sun-bleached hair whipping in the wind.

  “It must be Keith Jr.,” BJ said. “If he falls, maybe we could rescue him.”

  “He doesn’t look like
he’s gonna fall, man.”

  Boris was right. The powerful boat and expert slalom skier shot past them. When they got out into the choppier water past the end of Evergreen Point, the boat looped back, the skier jumping the wake and sending arches of spray into the afternoon sunlight.

  “When they come by, jump in and wave for help,” BJ said. “He’ll have to stop.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re white. You’ll stand out better against the water.”

  “No way, man.”

  “Come on, it’s our only chance!”

  “No way.”

  This time the boat nearly clipped the kayak, and they took on buckets of water. While they were bailing with their cupped hands, Boris cried: “Cripe, here it comes again!”

  This time the ski boat gave them a wider berth. But as it shot by, the graceful skier plummeted headfirst into the water. He made hardly a splash, and the boat continued obliviously on, the handle of the ski rope skipping along between the wakes.

  First the slalom ski popped up. A few seconds later the skier surfaced, floating facedown in the water. BJ and Boris paddled fiercely his way. When they reached him, BJ dropped his paddle and hauled the skier across the cockpit by his life vest. This nearly capsized the kayak, and sent Boris tumbling into the water, but BJ concentrated on the skier, administering a good smack on the back. The skier coughed and gagged and spat water, then slid off the kayak and started treading water, blinking up at BJ.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “You took a header.”

  “Man, oh man. I hit a deadhead.”

  “A deadhead?”

  “A log floating just below the surface. Skier’s nightmare. Lucky you were here. Thanks a lot. I’m Kit.”

  “I’m BJ. This is …”

  But there was no sign of Boris anywhere around the kayak. Alarmed, BJ slithered out of his cockpit into a lake far colder than at shallow Madison Beach. Icy as it was, he submerged his head and opened his eyes. A figure was flailing about four feet below him. BJ swam straight down to him—and Boris immediately got him in a death grip, leaving BJ no choice but to jab him in the solar plexus, causing what little air Boris had left to come shooting out of his mouth in bubbles. Though BJ was getting pretty desperate for air himself, he maneuvered behind Boris and grabbed his ponytail before frog-kicking back up to the surface.

  BJ latched onto the kayak with one hand and pulled Boris’s head above water with the other. Boris grabbed the front cockpit, his face squashed up against the fiber-glass. He took a rattling breath, coughed up two or three cups of lake water, managed another breath, then sputtered and turned his head sideways so his cheek was against the kayak’s hull. His eyeballs looked as if they were about to rupture.