Brass Monkeys (12 page)

Ming’s angry voice echoed over the stacks and canceled out that good thought. “Stormies,” she bellowed, “I know he’s close! Sweep the area!”

There was a pause, then Fundabore’s hollow voice came over the microphone. “All drones pleease mooove this way for the Gathering Ceremony. We’re running behind schedule, so let’s close shop for a moment and gathhher around.”

The Gathering Ceremony sounded ominous and a shiver rocked me. “C’mon son, think of something,” I muttered desperately. I forced myself to look into the street. In a blur, I saw a crowded market where hundreds of drones were milling about selling school supplies out of shops and small carts.

Fundabore’s voice boomed out over the bustling street noise. “I said nooow, people! All drooones come this waaay for the Gaathering Ceremony.”

The drones in the street began leaving their work stations and heading for the loading platform. I watched a young drone couple with two children leave their cart, and I was so dazed it took me a couple of seconds to realize what they were selling:
tunics
. Almost at the same time, I saw swarms of armed Storm Teachers moving into view at the end of the street and coming my way.

“Go son, or die,” I whispered. “Make your move!”

I headed toward the cart, trying to act like I was on my way to the ceremony. I hoped everyone was too busy to notice my coat and missing letter. When I got to the cart, I found dozens of new tunics, each one with a different letter. But what did the letters mean? In a panic, I grabbed the nearest tunic, one with a large “J.”

Quickly I dodged behind the cart. In a flash I discarded the spring coat, then put on the belted tunic and slipped the book inside. When I emerged, I fell in with a group of drones who were hurrying by. They didn’t even give me a glance. A few strides later I dropped back casually, then slipped quickly to the other side of the street. From there I could see the loading platform clearly. Ming, Fundabore, and Strobe were moving about on it, along with dozens of Stormies. Near the back of the platform a huge video screen sat astride a tall pole. Live shots of the kids flickered across the screen. Right away I saw a shot of Alvin and Weeser, but I forced myself to look away and keep moving.

Ming’s voice boomed out, “All right, Stormies, let’s take the gloves off with Eugene! Seal off the entire market area! Do it now!”

My breath came in short, harsh pants. The jaws were closing. I increased my pace, heading for a side street just ahead. As I entered it, moving against the oncoming flow of drones, several Stormies closed the route just behind me. I’d barely made it through! I walked faster, trying to blend in with the disappointed drones who had been cut off and were turning back.

A great cheer rose from the crowd around the loading platform, and I stopped, along with several drones, to look back at the huge video screen that towered over the roofs. I let my breath out in a soft gasp. Harriet was on the screen, her frightened face framed by her curly brown hair. I stared up at those golden-brown eyes and I couldn’t have moved if I had wanted to. Now Ming appeared onscreen with Harriet and grabbed her by the hair. The crowd cheered.

“Let us formally welcome Harriet Grove,” cried Ming, “her friends, and faculty from Grindsville Middle School to our underworld abode!” Loud applause rose from the crowd. Ming grinned down at Harriet. “I know Miss Grove is wondering, somewhere in the deep recesses of her fading mind, what lies ahead for her and her friends.” Ming raised her eyes and looked out. “But even more, I know you’re wondering, Eugene, what’s in store for you. Yes, I know you’re watching out there! You’d better listen to what I have to say! Shouldn’t he, Miss Grove?”

I shifted uneasily. I felt the urge to turn my back and run. But everyone around me, including several drone kids, had stopped and were listening intently.

“Up in Grindsville Middle,” Ming went on, “you learned that the ingredients of a grand education are confusion, boredom, and fear. I believe, Harriet, that your friend Walter came up with the clever word ‘conborfear’ to sum it up! Very cute and creative, not that we care about those kinds of things!” The crowd laughed heartily. “At any rate, for the ultimate in conborfear, you and your friends will be attending my special school down here—the School of the Brass Monkeys!” She made a gesture and the camera panned to pick up a dark, squatty building on the horizon.

Just seeing it, even on the video screen, made the hair stand up on my neck.

“After three days with my teachers,” Ming went on,
“all
your Amberlight will be driven to that delicious spot behind your ear, ready for extraction! Then it’s graduation time, you lose your fur and tails, and back home you go, happy as empty-headed clams! And of course Mom and Dad won’t have missed you at all, because with our little time warp, they won’t know you’ve been gone! And will you remember any of this? Not a jot! Thanks to the rapid rise back to the surface on the Big Monkey, you’ll forget every moment of your perfect little field trip!”

I was stunned by this last bit of information. So that was how Ming could continue her operation of going from school to school, kidnapping the students and teachers, taking their Amberlight, and then bringing them back without anybody ever finding out! For Ming, it was a “perfect little field trip.”

“But now to complete our Gathering Ceremony,” Ming continued, “let’s see what kind of an Amberlight harvest we can expect from Harriet Grove and her friends!” Ming pushed up Harriet’s hair and exposed a yellow spot about the size of a half dollar just below her right ear. Thunderous applause beat the desert air.

Ming smiled broadly. “Oh, my,” she crowed. “It’s gathering! It’s gathering!”

Ming raised her eyes and looked slyly out over the crowd. I knew something more was coming, and my skin prickled. “So, Eugene, here’s my message to you: turn yourself in and I’ll make sure Harriet Grove never attends one of my classes! Give yourself up and I’ll make sure she keeps every ounce of her golden spirit! Think about it, Eugene! You can save her, with a simple gesture.
Give up!”

The crowd at the unloading platform roared out with approval and the drones around me joined in. I cheered too, but my face furrowed with determination and inside I was still chanting to Harriet, “I promise. I promise.” But now I stopped because I saw something on the screen that froze my blood.

It was the old guy with the thick glasses
. He was wheeling across the platform on an electric cart, accompanied by several Stormies. He rolled right up to Ming and began talking animatedly to her, waving his arms and pointing off toward the stacks. I expelled my breath softly. I knew he was talking about yours truly. Now the old guy began to pantomime something with his hands. Something about this big, he seemed to be saying, his hands describing perfectly the size of McGinty’s book,
Brass Monkeys
.

I saw Ming’s body jerk as if she’d been shot. She turned and faced the camera and it moved in on her, framing her face, those pale blue eyes, the flame-red hair.

“Let me have your attention, please,” she called out, her voice sounding too calm, too controlled. The crowd quieted immediately. “It has just been brought to my attention that our Eugene Wise may be carrying the one object I want more than anything in the world.” Her cheek twitched, and she seemed to be struggling to contain her emotions. “McGinty’s little red book.”

A great gasp of amazement rose from the crowd. I saw that large vein in Ming’s forehead began to pulse. “I must have that book,” she began in measured tones, but then lost control. “Do you hear me, everyone?
I Must! Have! It!”
Her lips curled grotesquely. “I’m cutting the ceremony short because I want the word to go out over the entire city! Find Eugene Wise! Find him!
Find him!”

The drones near me turned and hurried onward, talking excitedly among themselves. I heard the words
“Brass Monkeys
” several times. Fear shot through me like an electric current, but I forced myself to move with the crowd.

I stopped once, under the meager shade of a large cactus-like tree, and tried to steady my nerves. The heat was suffocating, and now some small red flies began to bite me. I reached inside my tunic and checked the book.
Safe …

One thought pinballed through my head—hurry up and find Lulu on the Avenue of the Musicians. I wanted to ask for directions, but squads of Stormies were everywhere. I saw them stop several drone kids and ask for I.D. I spotted most of the squads early enough so I could dodge behind some of the thorny shrubs that grew along the street, and a couple of times I saved myself by slipping inside the crowds of drone “shoppers.”

Shops selling various kinds of school supplies lined the streets, cheap knockoffs of things you’d see up in the surface schools. But also there seemed to be a thriving business in antique school equipment, probably stuff that Ming and her people had stolen from the schools they’d worked in.

As I moved along, I found myself inside a large group of drone kids. Listening to them talk among themselves, I learned they were “on break” from their various jobs, most of which sounded horribly boring. I could tell some of them knew each other, but many of them appeared to be strangers, just hanging out like myself.

I kept studying their faces, trying to pick out someone who looked friendly enough to talk to, but most of them seemed glum and unhappy. Also, I didn’t know what their various letters stood for—and that made me wary. The group I was in stopped to stare at some television sets in one of the shops, and I was about to take a chance and ask one of the older boys for directions, when all the sets suddenly switched to a picture of me! As I froze in fear, another burst of excited chatter rose from my group, and one of the girls pointed toward the big video screen. The rest of us turned to look, and there was the same picture of me.

My first instinct was simply to run, but then I realized the picture Ming was using was the one taken last year at Harris. I looked like I was ten years old, my teeth stuck out, and my hair gave the impression that a small wild animal had died on my head. Some of the kids laughed, and one said, “What a weird looker!” Another piped up with, “He’d have to be dumber than a box of rocks to bring the book down here.”

I nodded and laughed right along with them.

I was jarred out of this conversation by the sound of shouting from up the street. I snapped around nervously, trying to see what was going on. My first thought was that I had been spotted, but right away I could see the Stormies were after someone else, and this time they were shooting at him.

The other kids around me scattered for cover as this man came tearing down the sidewalk, right toward me. It was obvious he wasn’t a drone or a Stormie. He was wearing regular clothes, and there were three or four Stormies not far behind him, shooting like crazy. He stopped behind a cart-load of world globes not thirty yards from me. He raised a big, strange-looking pistol and fired back at his pursuers, his gun making a lethal sounding
brrripp! brrripp!
Then the Stormies cut loose with long-barreled guns that made a strange
thwut! thwut!
sound.

A shop window exploded behind me, and I finally had the sense to flatten out on the walk. As the battle got louder and more fierce, the guy’s pistol jammed, or maybe he was out of ammo. He said something angrily, then leaped out and ran across the street into a side alley.

My eyes must have been bugging out as I watched him. Not only did this man have wild blond hair, but he had on a ratty-looking white sport coat. The last of Webster’s words came back to me: “Every Stormie in the territory will be after him.” It was McGinty.

From my position sprawled on the walk, I was probably the only one who saw what happened next. The blond guy jumped onto a fire escape, shot up the ladder, and was on the roof of the building in mere seconds. He’d already disappeared across the rooftops, heading to my right, before the Stormies raced up, panting and furious.

I turned my face away, thinking they might recognize me, but they were too intent on catching their man. They went thundering down the alley, and I was up in a flash and hurrying down the sidewalk, heading for the next street. I thought it was a good bet the blond guy would surface over there. I walked quickly and turned down the next street, which actually proved to be another small alley.

Looking up, I spotted the guy coming hand-over-hand down a drainage pipe. I thought about yelling to him but stopped myself just in time—the Stormies were too close. In the next instant he leaped to the pavement and sprinted away. I raced after him, trying desperately to keep him in sight.

He flew out of the alley and into the bright light of another street. I came thumping out behind him into some heavy pedestrian traffic. We both slowed quickly, trying not to attract attention.

This street happened to be filled with shops that sold musical instruments and sheet music. It must have taken a solid minute before it dawned on me to look up at a street sign. Duwang!
Avenue of the Musicians
. This was exactly where Webster had told me to look for Lulu’s Blue Goat.

I had started closing in on the guy when he suddenly stopped and moved quickly behind a cartload of clarinets. Looking up the street, my heart began to race fearfully. It looked like an entire army of Storm Teachers was moving toward us, searching the shops as they came. The blond guy took one look at them and dodged into a nearby shop. The sign over the front said
LILAH’S BLUE NOTE
.

I felt like bolting the other way, but I knew I had to seize the moment. I patted the book which was still securely tucked under my tunic and mumbled “Here we go, men.” Then I rushed toward Lilah’s Blue Note and slipped inside.

I found myself in a long, softly lit room with a ton of instruments on display and no one in sight. I stood there for a few seconds, amazed by the music coming over the shop’s speakers. It wasn’t “Midnight Scholars,” but some neat harp music. I took a few tense steps forward and right away I spotted a fantastic silver trumpet. For a moment I totally forgot what I was doing and stood staring at it. There was a card by it that read: