Brainboy and the Deathmaster Read online

  Normally Darryl wouldn’t have stepped onto the narrow escalator for the world, but now he calmly rode all the way up to the platform with Abs and Mr. Masterly. On the platform a dozen clear-plastic containers were grouped like the petals of a flower around a central hole. They looked like big eggs, or small blimps, each about six feet long and three feet high, each with a foot pedal in front, a seat and steering wheel in the middle, what looked like a scuba diver’s tank in the rear, and rotors and rudders mounted on the tails. Mr. Masterly unplugged the front egg—they all seemed to be charging—and lifted the lid on its top.

  “Hop in,” he said.

  “What are they, sir?” Darryl asked.

  “I call them movie pods.”

  “Movie pods?”

  They were a bit reminiscent of the Space Needle’s elevators, and normally Darryl wouldn’t have gotten near one. But normally he would have been a wreck just being up on that dizzying platform.

  Abs deposited Darryl into a pod as if he weighed nothing.

  “The pedal controls rotor speed,” Mr. Masterly said, fastening Darryl’s seat belt. “The whole thing lasts about ninety minutes. When it’s over, just steer back up to the top. If I’m not here, Abs will be. Have fun!”

  Before Darryl could ask what lasted ninety minutes, Mr. Masterly closed and sealed the pod’s lid. The pod slid forward and tilted down and plopped through the hole into the top of the huge sphere. Suddenly everything was darker than BJ’s basement room at night—and for a second Darryl actually pictured BJ. But BJ seemed far, far away, the inhabitant of another world, and the thought of him slipped away like a space eel.

  Though Darryl was all alone, locked in a clear egg that seemed to be slowly sinking in the darkness, he felt surprisingly calm. He experimented with the steering wheel and the pedal. By pressing the pedal, he increased the rotor speed, and the pod seemed to rise. Easing off the pedal decreased rotor speed, and the pod sank.

  It dawned on him that the huge round ball was actually a tank of water, and for a moment, as glimmers of color began to dart by his see-through submarine, he thought they were tropical fish. But in fact they were just flickers of light. The flickers grew brighter; off to his right the water took on a brilliant green glow. Intrigued, Darryl turned the wheel that way and pressed the pedal halfway down. As he approached the glow, it came into focus, becoming a primeval forest full of trees even more exotic than the monkey puzzle in his old backyard. As he neared the treetops, two gigantic birds leaped off a branch and flew right at him, the flapping of their wings deafening in his ears. He jerked the wheel to the left and floored the pedal. The birds whizzed past the pod, barely missing it. Except they weren’t birds at all. They were pterodactyls.

  Darryl guided the pod back out into the middle of the tank. He quickly recovered from the shock of the attack of the winged dinosaurs and steered his little submarine toward a reddish-brown glow that resolved itself into a volcanic crater with a bubbly surface. When a jet of molten plasma spat right at him, Darryl jerked the wheel to the right and sped back to the middle of the tank. But before long a bluish glow lured him down and to the left. A lagoon. As he hovered above it, something gurgled; then a bizarre shape broke the surface: the head of a dinosaur with a breathing hole on a bump on its forehead. This time Darryl didn’t flee.

  The lagoon supported an astonishing variety of life forms, ranging in size from dragonflies to bronto-sauruses. In his clear pod Darryl felt as if he was part of the ecosystem, and he got so caught up in every nook and cranny of it that before he knew it, the hour and a half was over and the tank turned dark again, leaving only a ring of red light at the top of the tank. He guided his pod up toward it.

  When the pod plopped back onto the platform, there stood Mr. Masterly. He unsealed the lid and opened it.

  “But I only saw the lagoon!” Darryl cried. “Can I go back and see something else?”

  “You liked it?”

  “It’s fantastic! How in the world does it work?”

  “Well, the tank’s made of a special nondistorting Plexiglas we developed at MasterTech. The exterior’s sprayed with a special material used for rear-projection movie screens. We use six different projectors. Needless to say, it’s a wildly expensive format, but the great thing is, you can see it over and over without getting bored. Or you don’t have to watch the movies at all. Some of the kids like just to ride around and enjoy the light show. We have some kinks to work out with the sound system, but it’s coming along.”

  “I don’t know why I stuck to that lagoon. There was so much to see! Can you run it again?”

  “Once you’re through orientation, you can come back any night after dinner.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “What’s orientation?”

  “It basically brings you up to speed on the work we’re doing here. That is, if you’re interested in joining us.”

  “The work about … communicating with the dead?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Are there more openings? My friend BJ’s top of his class.”

  “I’m afraid there’s just one at the moment. And if you take it, I’m also afraid you’ll have to cut off ties to those you knew. As I said, we’re top secret.”

  Darryl thought of BJ and his mother. But they seemed as distant as the Vulpecula galaxy.

  “I suppose you could have one more go,” Mr. Masterly said. “Pop into this pod over here. It’s charged up, with a full air supply.”

  Darryl hopped eagerly into another pod. “Thanks!” he said, scrunching down so Mr. Masterly could seal him in.

  14

  “Cops!” Ronnie Johnson cried.

  As a squad car nosed into the parking lot, kids scattered in all directions. Big T sprinted up Cedar Street, but BJ headed in the exact opposite direction: due west, across the glinting railroad tracks. A siren wailed. But BJ had Big T’s number-two board, and once he was sailing along in the shade of the Alaska Way Viaduct, the wailing at his back diminished. It seemed only fair that the police weren’t chasing him. He’d felt a twinge of envy watching Big T pry the silver jaguar off the hood of that car, but he’d just stood around with his hands in his pockets, an innocent spectator.

  At the aquarium BJ hopped off the board and hoofed it back across the tracks to the public elevator to the Pike Place Market. Up in the market the Korean guy at the fruit stand eyed him warily as he walked by, though he hadn’t been the one to rip off a banana when the gang swaggered through the arcade an hour ago. He passed the fish throwers and the big piggy bank his mother dropped change into. When he got to First Avenue, he headed south, toward Pioneer Square, where you could get a bus up Yesler Way. He skulked along in the shadows of the buildings on the west side of the street, hoping to go unspotted by anyone who knew his mother.

  It didn’t surprise him to see somebody curled up asleep in the doorway of a boarded-up Army-Navy store. First Avenue was the original Skid Row, so named because in the old days they dragged skids of logs down to the waterfront on it, and bums and derelicts had always hung out there. But BJ was surprised that the sleeper looked familiar. He stepped into the doorway for a closer look. Stretched out on a sheet of cardboard was the scrawny boy with the ponytail and the tattoo who’d disappeared out the window at the Masterly Children’s Shelter. BJ squatted down and gave him a shake. Boris shot up like a rocket. BJ lunged for his ankle. Boris was too quick.

  But the sidewalk wasn’t crowded, and thanks to his board, BJ was able to catch the weasel and pin him against the smoky-brick wall of an SRO hotel.

  “What’d I freakin’ do to you, man?” Boris muttered.

  “You stole my friend’s GameMaster. Remember?”

  “That’s years ago.”

  “It was a month ago.”

  “So what?”

  This was a good question. What did BJ care about Darryl and his GameMaster? In a month Darryl hadn’t bothered to call once. He was surprised he’d even referred to him
as a friend.

  “Jeez, man, you need a bath,” BJ said.

  “Sorry. I ain’t stayin’ at the Ritz.”

  BJ relaxed his grip on Boris’s arms. “Listen. If I let go, will you chill a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  BJ let go of him—and Boris bolted. BJ snagged his sweatshirt. As Boris tried to slip out of it, BJ grabbed him around the neck.

  “Let go or I’ll yell for the cops!”

  “Go ahead,” BJ said.

  But of course Boris didn’t.

  “Look, man, I just wanted to know if you found your sister yet.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Nah. I was up in Bellingham last week, but it was a bust.”

  “You lost her down in Portland, right?”

  “That’s where we ran out of gas. We was thinking about Canada.”

  “Your sister can drive?”

  “Nah, she’s just twelve. I was driving.”

  “You can drive in Oregon when you’re fourteen?”

  “Nah, I kiped my dad’s car so we could run away. Hot-wired it.”

  “Huh,” BJ said, not sure he believed this. “So you ended up in a shelter and your sister just disappeared?”

  “I figure somebody started beating on her like you’re doing to me. So she split. What’s it to you?”

  “Just it’s kind of strange. Darryl disappeared, too.”

  “The GameMaster guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re killin’ my neck.”

  BJ let go of him.

  “It is kind of weird, them two both disappearing,” Boris said, this time staying put. “The two whizzes.”

  “Have you checked to see if your sister went home to your dad?”

  Boris snorted. “No way she’d do that. But yeah, I checked one time. Had this girl I met call and ask for her. My old man hadn’t seen her in months. Not that he cared.”

  Smelly as Boris was, BJ was beginning to feel for him. “How long you been sleeping on the streets?”

  “Who knows?” Boris pulled a beetle out of his greasy hair and squashed it between his fingers. “Tell you the truth, I was thinking I might go back to that shelter for a few days. Rest up, get a shower.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Now?”

  “We can catch a bus to Madrona down in Pioneer Square. I’ll go with you.”

  Half an hour later BJ was ditching his board under the hedge of old rhododendrons bordering the shelter’s gravel drive. The sneering redhead, still not placed, was sprawled on the porch glider when they walked up.

  “P-U,” she said.

  “You don’t smell like no rose petals yourself,” Boris snapped.

  “Where’s Ms. Grimsley?” BJ asked.

  “Probably in the garage sniffing the bucket seats in her new car,” said the redhead.

  But BJ found Ms. Grimsley reading in her office.

  “Mr. Walker,” she said, shoving her paperback into her bag. “Surely it’s not Saturday.”

  “No. I brought Boris.”

  “Hey,” Boris said, stepping in. “I was wondering if I could stay a few days.”

  “We’re not a hotel, Mr. Rizniak.”

  “But he’s been living on the streets,” BJ said. “You’re not full up, are you?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  In the end she grudgingly agreed to let Boris have a room—the same third-floor room he’d shared with Darryl a month ago. BJ accompanied him up there.

  “She didn’t know about the knife?” Boris said, closing the door.

  “Nah,” said BJ.

  “Thanks, man. Where is it?”

  “I got it at home.”

  “Can I have it back?”

  “When you cough up Darryl’s GameMaster.”

  “I had to sell it for bus tickets.”

  BJ sat down at the desk. “Do me a favor, will you?”

  “What?”

  “Take a shower.”

  “You’re the one stinking the place up.”

  But in a minute Boris actually did traipse out of the room.

  Left on his own, BJ flicked on the laptop—the real reason he’d come. Ever since he’d watched Darryl play StarMaster, CastleMaster had seemed kind of lame, but on his Saturday visits here he never had time to try his luck, what with his mother waiting in the car. He’d forgotten about the maze, though. This one looked disturbingly complex. But he concentrated on visualizing a path through it, and with a couple of lucky guesses he managed to make it through with five seconds to spare.

  The game list appeared, and he clicked on StarMaster 3. His opponent was called SuperSuk. He just called himself BJ. But he wasn’t experienced and had recruited only two Individualist leaders when Boris came back in—smelly as ever.

  “You didn’t shower?”

  “Keep your shorts on. I wanted to check out Grimface’s new wheels. You’re not gonna believe what she’s driving.”

  “What?”

  “A brand-new S-GPS 600.”

  “A Mercedes?”

  “No, a toaster oven. What do you think, dork-brain?”

  “But they’re top of the line.”

  “No duh. Come on, man, you got to check it out.”

  So BJ gave up the losing cause and went to see Ms. Grimsley’s fancy new car.

  15

  As soon as she opened her eyes, she shut them again and tried to get back to the circus tent. She’d just let go of her trapeze; she’d been somersaulting through the air to the astonished gasps of the crowd below. A tiny figure was swinging toward her, hanging by his knees from another trapeze, growing bigger and bigger the closer they got. It was Boris! She flew toward him, but when she grabbed his hands, she couldn’t quite hold on, and the crowd sucked in its breath. Yet even as she tumbled through the air, she knew she would land in the safety net, and soon Boris would drop down and join her there and the relieved crowd would give them a hand anyway.

  However, she landed in her bed. She wasn’t a dare-devil flying-trapeze artist at all, she was just Nina Rizniak, twelve and blind as a bat. And she wasn’t with her brother, she was all alone in room seven at Paradise Lab. Most mornings she managed not to cry, but the feel of her brother’s hands, brief as it had been, seemed so real that she couldn’t keep her eyes from misting over, making the rosy blur of the globe light turn to tomato soup.

  The soup brightened as Mr. Masterly’s recorded voice filled the room:

  “Rise and shine, friend and colleague. It’s a new day—the day you may well make the discovery that will change human history. …”

  Nina put a pillow over her head, muffling the inspirational voice. Long after the daily pep talk ended, she was still trying to get a grip on herself. But finally, knowing she would be the last to breakfast, she tossed the pillow aside and climbed down out of the luxurious bed and put on her glasses.

  Eyeing her from across the plush room was a young acrobat. She’d happened across the painting, by Picasso, a couple of months ago, while surfing through Art on her remote, and she’d left it up ever since because it reminded her of Boris.

  Picking up the remote, she went to Music, and soon her favorite song filled the room. She’d found it, too, by chance, while surfing through Campfire Songs.

  When the world is gloomy and glum,

  I only know one thing to do;

  I remember the moon and the sun

  And then I remember you. …

  The moon and the sun, she thought as the wall panel slid back and she walked into the blue-tiled bathroom. How wonderful it would be to see Boris and the outdoors again! Then they could join the circus and become the Flying Rizniaks, just as they’d planned. And he would get her contact lenses, as he’d promised, so she wouldn’t have to worry about her glasses falling off when she was somersaulting through midair. They would become famous and make a fortune, but when their father came to beg money from them, Boris would pretend not to know him, and when their
father said, “But I’m your father!” Boris would say, “The one who beat me with his belt?” If their father denied it, they would give him nothing, but if he admitted it, they would give him a thousand dollars, so long as he promised never to come begging again. And she and Boris would buy a house so big, they could practice their trapeze act in the living room, and there would be a whole wing for their hamsters and gerbils and monkeys and dogs and cats and parakeets and turtles. …

  Her mood entirely changed, Nina bounced out of the dressing room in a sky-blue jumpsuit and sun-yellow jelly shoes, her face washed, teeth brushed, curly blond hair combed as well as it could be. But once she left room seven and the hopeful song behind, her mood soured.

  She trudged down the carpeted corridor into the dining hall. When she’d first joined the others here after her orientation, the dining table had been oval shaped, but a couple of months ago a new one had replaced it, shaped irregularly, like a cross section of the G-17 molecule. As she took her place there—things at Paradise Lab tended to be numbered, and there was a 7 on the back of her chair—six of the seven kids already there regaled her with a chipper chorus of “Morning, Nina.”

  “Morning, everybody,” she said, doing her best to sound chipper back.

  The kitchen door swung open, and out shuffled Hedderly with a steaming platter of scrambled eggs. He gave it to Ruthie Katz, who was eighteen and sat at the head of the table.

  “Very good, Hedderly,” Ruthie said in the tone a parent would use on a small child.

  Hedderly wasn’t a small child. He was a balding, two-hundred-fifty-pound man. But as with Abs and Snoodles, there was something docile and childlike about him. He had the same vacant eyes and the same crescent-moon scar on his forehead.

  After spooning herself a portion of scrambled eggs, Ruthie passed the platter to Mario Hernandez in chair number two. Though small for his age, Mario was seventeen. He took some eggs and passed them to sixteen-year-old Billy O’Connor, who had flaming red hair and flaming red pimples. In chair number four sat Paul Pettinio, who was fifteen and, in spite of Abs’s efforts to get him to do calisthenics, extremely fat. Chair number five was Suki Yamashita, also fifteen, with long, straight, jet-black hair that Nina envied. Next came Greg Birtwissel, the prissy fourteen-year-old in chair number six, who passed the eggs on to Nina. She spooned some onto her plate and passed them on to the boy with messy dirty-blond hair in chair number eight—the one who hadn’t said “Morning, Nina,” probably because he didn’t know her name. She’d seen him a couple of times with Abs up on E, but he’d been in orientation, so she hadn’t bothered trying to make conversation, even though he looked about her age. This was the first time he’d joined the rest of them for a meal—the first time since she’d come here that she hadn’t been the last served.