Brainboy and the Deathmaster Read online

  “You’ve got over twelve hundred movies to choose from,” Mr. Masterly said.

  “This is really my room?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Delighted, Darryl realized he could watch the rest of the movie later and pressed the pause button. He looked around for a window, but his eyes settled on a nearby painting, a portrait of a woman with a mysterious smile.

  “The Mona Lisa,” he murmured.

  “Perhaps you’d like something more modern? Try Art.’”

  Darryl typed in “Art” on the remote. Another list of categories appeared on the LCD panel: African, American, Australian Aboriginal, Chinese, Dutch, Egyptian, English, Flemish, French, German, Ancient Greek, Indian, Italian, Native American, Roman, Spanish … He clicked on American and soon replaced the Mona Lisa with colorful spatters of paint.

  “Try ‘Music,’” Mr. Masterly suggested.

  Darryl typed in “Music” and, after weeding through a bunch of categories, selected a legendary Seattle grunge band.

  “Not bad, huh?” said Mr. Masterly as a familiar rock anthem filled the room.

  “Unbelievable!”

  “Unfortunately, it can’t produce food. How about some brunch?”

  Darryl nodded enthusiastically, and Mr. Masterly pressed a button on his wrist device.

  “Hedderly, will you please bring brunch for Darryl and me in room eight?”

  His house was so big the rooms were numbered!

  “How do we get some daylight, sir?” Darryl asked.

  “You want more light?” Mr. Masterly turned a dimmer switch on the wall, and the rosy glow brightened.

  “Aren’t there any windows?” Darryl said.

  “I’m afraid not. Security.”

  This made sense. Someone as rich and powerful as Keith Masterly probably had enemies, or people who wanted to spy on him—and anyone could buzz by his house in a boat. The windows Darryl had seen in photos of the house must have been a false facade.

  “Could I make a quick call, sir? BJ and his mom’ll be worried about me. They’ll never believe I slept a whole day!”

  “Will you do me a favor first?” Mr. Masterly asked.

  “Of course!”

  “Listen to what I have to say.”

  Mr. Masterly sat back down in his red velvet chair and pointed at the one opposite. It was the most comfortable chair Darryl had ever sat in.

  “I consider myself a pretty good judge of character, Darryl, and I’ve decided you’re someone worth cultivating. You’re part of a very small elite. Do you know what ‘elite’ means?”

  “That you’re snobby?”

  “Not necessarily,” Mr. Masterly said, smiling. “It means being part of a select group. I’m speaking in terms of intellect. I think you may be a genius, Darryl.”

  “Because I get straight As?”

  “Let’s just say it’s an intuition. But the trouble is, young people with fine minds often don’t get proper encouragement and guidance, and their natural intellect ends up going to waste.”

  “You must have had proper encouragement and guidance.”

  “I was one of the lucky ones. And I want you to be one of the lucky ones, too.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. I’ve decided to offer you a rare opportunity. In fact, the rarest in the world.”

  “What opportunity?”

  “To change the course of human history.”

  Darryl waited for Mr. Masterly to smile again, to show he was kidding. But he didn’t.

  13

  “What do you mean, sir? Darryl asked a little breathlessly.

  “I mean there’s an opening at Paradise Lab, and I want to offer it to you.”

  “Paradise Lab? That’s PL?”

  Mr. Masterly nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you know what a think tank is, Darryl?”

  “A place where people sit around thinking?”

  “More or less. Paradise is a kind of think tank. It’s become the primary focus of my life. I’ve been scaling back at MasterTech, delegating some of my responsibilities. I still enjoy dreaming up the games, but the business side has become tedious. Whereas Paradise is never tedious.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Right here in Washington State.”

  “Really? I never heard of it.”

  “It’s top secret.”

  “Is it really a paradise?” Darryl asked, flattered to be let in on something top secret.

  “Well, what do you think?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “This room is part of it.”

  “You mean it’s in your house?”

  Mr. Masterly shook his head. “We stopped by the house yesterday, then flew here last night.”

  “While I was asleep?” Darryl said, more flabber-gasted by the moment.

  “Do you like it?”

  “It’s great, but … you mean we’re not on the lake?”

  “We’re in Paradise Lab.”

  “You mean … but where are we?”

  “In Washington State, as I said. Have you ever thought about what paradise really is, Darryl?”

  It was very hard to think about anything when he was feeling so disoriented. They weren’t in the house on Hunt’s Point; they were somewhere they’d had to fly to. In the copter? Mr. Masterly clearly wasn’t going to get any more specific than “Washington State,” seeing as it was top secret.

  “Paradise would be a place where you’re happy,” Darryl said.

  “Exactly. But what’s happiness? The absence of unhappiness, perhaps? That’s the conclusion I’ve come to. Do you know what the root of unhappiness is?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “The root of unhappiness is time.”

  Mr. Masterly’s watch gizmo beeped. He went to the door and returned wheeling a little trolley, which he parked by the table between their chairs. The biggest thing on it was a silver dome with a handle formed of the letters PL. There was also a silver coffee pot, a gold-rimmed cup and saucer, two silver forks, linen napkins with a PL monogram, and two glasses of orange juice with small paper cups beside them.

  “I hope you like eggs Benedict,” Mr. Masterly said, releasing a puff of steam as he lifted the dome.

  There, on a gold-rimmed plate, were twin mounds of poached egg and Canadian bacon perched on English muffins. Darryl had never had eggs Benedict, but they certainly smelled good.

  “They’re all yours,” Mr. Masterly said.

  “What about you?”

  “I have to watch my weight.”

  Mr. Masterly plucked a dark-blue pill out of the little paper cup and took it with his juice. Darryl pulled a pale-blue pill out of the other paper cup.

  “Our MasterPills,” Mr. Masterly said. “They give you all the vitamins and minerals you need, plus they stimulate the brain cells. That one’s designed specially for young people. Try it.”

  Darryl swallowed the pill with a swig of orange juice. “Wow, fresh squeezed!” He tried the eggs. “These are great!”

  He tried not to wolf down his brunch, but it was so good, it was hard not to.

  “You were saying something about time, Mr. Masterly?” he said when his plate was clean.

  Mr. Masterly poured himself a cup of coffee. “If you had to describe life as we know it in a word, Darryl, what would that word be?”

  Darryl suspected life as he knew it, and as most people knew it, was pretty different from life as Keith Masterly knew it. “I’m not sure, sir.”

  “I suppose it would be expecting a lot for someone your age to have a Weltanschauung.”

  “A what?”

  “An overview of the world. Even for someone who’s lost his family.” Mr. Masterly’s wrist buzzed again. “Unfortunately, time is still my master. We’ll have to continue this little talk later—if you’re interested.”

  “Oh, yes!” Darryl said, afraid the buzz meant that he was boring the great man as Ms. Grimsley had.

  “You accept my offer
then?”

  “Well, it sounds fantastic, sir. But …”

  “But you have doubts. I understand. A pity, though.”

  “I didn’t mean no! I only meant I wasn’t sure.”

  “The trouble is,” Mr. Masterly said, standing up, “there are several others in line for the spot.”

  “For being adopted?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “What would I do there? I mean, here.”

  “Learn. And apply what you learn to unlocking the mysteries of the universe. For example, have you ever wanted to communicate with someone who’s dead?”

  As Darryl stared at it, the rosy globe lamp above Mr. Masterly’s head turned fiery red. But instead of feeling hot, Darryl started to shiver.

  “Darryl? Are you all right?”

  “Isn’t communicating with the dead impossible?” he said, barely above a whisper.

  Mr. Masterly picked up the remote and pressed a button. The painting changed from loose, colorful splatters to a detailed still life of apples and peaches with a dead rabbit hanging on the wall in the background. “Fifty years ago people would have said doing that was impossible. If you believe something’s impossible, it is. Open your mind, and the possibilities are infinite.”

  But the thought of talking with the dead was as painful as it was intriguing, and Darryl’s mind veered away. “What about BJ?” he said. “Could we still learn to water-ski?”

  “Not if you decide to stay here, I’m afraid. But if you prefer to water-ski the summer away, you certainly may.”

  “Is Paradise Lab in session now?”

  “Paradise is always in session.”

  “No vacations?”

  “Depends how you look at it. You might say it’s all vacation, since being genuinely engaged in something is the only true source of pleasure in life. And at Paradise you’re always engaged.”

  “Are there other kids here?”

  “That’s all there are, except for a small staff. Would you like a tour?”

  His shivering abated, Darryl wiped his mouth with his PL napkin and followed Mr. Masterly out the door into a corridor with the same thick carpeting and gentle rosy lighting as the bedroom. Between Darryl’s door, numbered 8, and the next, numbered 7, was a glassed-in trophy case. The figurines on the trophies looked like ordinary girls and boys, and Darryl soon got a glimpse through a doorway of the models, sitting around an oddly shaped table in a sumptuous dining hall. There were six kids: four boys and two girls. They all looked cheerful except the youngest-looking one, a girl about his age who seemed strangely familiar. She had curly blond hair, and her eyes looked sad—though this might just have been because they were magnified by thick glasses.

  “They’re just starting lunch,” Mr. Masterly said, leading Darryl past the doorway.

  “Is the girl with curly hair from Seattle?” he asked.

  “Nina? No, she’s not.”

  “Huh.”

  At the end of the corridor Mr. Masterly pressed a button and an elevator opened. He stepped inside.

  “Coming?”

  Darryl hated elevators. He had ever since his cousin Barry’s sixteenth birthday up in the Space Needle. The Space Needle’s elevators were like capsules, and after squeezing into one behind his brother and Uncle Frank, he’d found himself pressed up against a door that was almost all window. As the elevator whooshed upward, seemingly through open space, people oohed and aahed at the expanding view of the city. But Darryl fainted. If the elevator hadn’t been packed, he would have sunk onto the floor in a heap. As it was, he slumped back against his brother, who gave him a sharp jab and hissed, “What’s your problem, wuss?”

  “I’m not going to bite you, Darryl,” Mr. Masterly said.

  Darryl took a deep breath and stepped in. It didn’t bother him at all: he felt pleasantly numb. Moreover, it was a pretty unscary elevator. There were no windows, and only four buttons. The top button had a keyhole in it; the others were:

  E

  S

  L

  According to a lit panel above the door, they were currently on SLEEP SUSTENANCE, but they soon dropped smoothly down to LIBRARY LABRATORY. There was nothing rosy about L: it was as bright as an operating room, so bright Darryl had to squint as he followed Mr. Masterly into a sleek, eight-sided room. The entire ceiling glowed. Again there were no windows, but each of the eight sides had a door. In the center of the room was an octagonal console with eight computer stations, at one of which an Asian girl with long, lustrous black hair was eating a sandwich. Except for her, and the plaques on the doors and the Paradise Lab screen savers on the monitors, the only thing in the octagon that wasn’t gleaming white was a globe of red glass mounted on a pole above the console.

  “Darryl, meet Suki,” Mr. Masterly said.

  “Hi, Darryl,” the Asian girl said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.

  “Nice to meet you,” Darryl said.

  “Any nibbles, Suki?” Mr. Masterly asked.

  “Not today, sir.”

  “Once you’re accepted here, Darryl, you have the run of the place, twenty-four hours a day. We have no locks in Paradise, do we, Suki?”

  “Of course not, sir.”

  Darryl glanced curiously at the elevator, which had the keyhole in the top button, but Mr. Masterly pointed at the next door over, labeled Emergency. “Stairs, in case the elevator breaks down. Though that never happens.”

  Mr. Masterly showed him through the third door, marked Books, and it was like traveling back in time. A long mahogany library table with green-globed student lamps was flanked by bookshelves so tall that there were sliding mahogany ladders for reaching the top shelves. The only modern touch was the computers in the study carrels.

  “How many books are in here, sir?” Darryl asked, wide-eyed.

  “You tell me.”

  Darryl quickly counted the books on one shelf, the number of shelves in each case, and estimated the number of cases.

  “Ten thousand?”

  “Very close. It’s our scientific library.”

  Darryl came up with a similar estimate of the number of tapes in the next chamber, which was called Video. The tapes were of lectures and demonstrations given by the greatest scientific minds of their time. The next room, Bio, was a laboratory where high-powered microscopes were arrayed on stainless-steel tables flanked by shelves holding everything from slide racks and tweezers to glass jars containing dead frogs and pig fetuses suspended in formaldehyde. At the far end of Bio were stacks of cages containing crusty old white rats and what looked like aquariums, except with insects flitting around inside instead of fish.

  “Fruit flies?” Darryl guessed.

  “Exactly,” Mr. Masterly said.

  Next came Chem, another laboratory, with Bunsen burners, and racks of test tubes, and nozzled tanks, and more microscopes, and a device for X-ray crystallography, and setups for chemical experiments with rubber and glass tubes connecting beakers with various colored liquids in them. Here the shelves held brown glass jars labeled with the names of chemical compounds, acids, and elements, along with tanks containing gasses. In the rear of the room was what looked like a big, sunken, stainless-steel bathtub, for mixing chemicals.

  The next room, Accel, was dominated by what looked like a gigantic steel beehive.

  “A circular accelerator, for splitting atoms,” Mr. Masterly said.

  When they came to the last door, marked Snoodles, Mr. Masterly knocked. It was opened by a stooped old man with a crescent-shaped scar on his forehead.

  “S-s-sorry, s-s-sirs!” he stammered, shuffling out in a droopy white lab coat. “I thought p-p-people was at lunch. Want me to cook up some more of that p-p-polliwog?”

  “Polymer,” Mr. Masterly gently corrected him. “No, I just wanted you to meet Darryl Kirby. He may be joining us. If you need toxic chemicals mixed, Darryl, or need your microscope cleaned, Snoodles is your man. He keeps things shipshape.”

  “S-s-snoodles, at your s-s-service,” t
he elderly man said, bowing. “Twenty-s-s-seven hours a day.”

  “Twenty-four,” Mr. Masterly murmured.

  “S-s-sorry, s-s-sir,” Snoodles said, bamming his fore-head with the heel of his hand. “I’m s-s-such a knuckle-head.”

  After saying good-bye to Suki and the stammering old man, Mr. Masterly led Darryl back into the elevator, and they quickly swooshed up to E. The most spectacular gym Darryl had ever seen, EXERCISE ENTERTAINMENT was win-dowless, too, but bathed in a soft yellow light, as if morning sun was slanting down from the high, scaffolded ceiling. Mr. Masterly introduced him to an extremely muscular man in a gym suit who was mopping the rubber mat in the free-weight area.

  “Darryl, Abs. Abs, Darryl Kirby.”

  Abs quit mopping to shake Darryl’s hand, nearly crushing it. His biceps were as big around as Darryl’s waist.

  “Abs will help you with your fitness program. Won’t you, Abs?”

  Grinning broadly, Abs nodded his head, which had the same sort of scar on the forehead as Snoodles’s. After giving Darryl’s arm a squeeze, Abs grinned even more broadly, as if to say that there was plenty of room for improvement there. Then he led them onto a gleaming hardwood basketball court, where he picked up a loose basketball and swished it from forty feet. In the gymnastics area Abs performed flawless routines on the rings and the parallel bars and the pommel horse, never breaking a sweat, and on the tennis court he jumped the net to shake hands with an invisible opponent. In the cardiovascular center he demonstrated the treadmills and stair climbers and rowing machines, and in the strength-training center he ran through the state-of-the-art muscle-building machines. He didn’t jump into the sparkling Olympic-sized swimming pool or the whirlpool bath beside it, but in the track-and-field area he ran a sprint and heaved a discus and threw a javelin the entire length of the field.

  Leaving the gym, the three of them passed under an archway with the word AquaFilm pulsing over it in aquamarine neon. Looming before them was a white ball, over fifty feet in diameter. Above it, suspended from the ceiling, was a platform reached by a two-way escalator rising up like one of those conveyor belts for carrying grain up into grain silos.

  “What is that thing?” Darryl asked, eyeing the huge ball.

  “Come see,” Mr. Masterly said.