The Secret of Zoom (18 page)

A warm feeling spread through Christina's chest. Her father didn't just care about her math grades, or keeping her behind a fence—he would
defend
her—

“Do you hear that, officer?” Lenny Loompski raised his voice. “Officer! You, there, outside! This man is threatening my life!”

Heavy footsteps sounded on the kitchen tile.

“Threatening?” cried Dr. Adnoid. “I'll do more than threaten, you pasty chunk of bologna—”

“Now, sir,” came the officer's voice, “there's such a thing as terroristic threats—”

“And he's certainly making them,” said Lenny. “Oooh, I'm so
scared
—”

“I'll rip out your heart and stomp on your liver before I let you near her!” cried Dr. Adnoid, in a high, enraged voice that Christina had never heard before.

“Heart ripping, officer? Liver stomping? How much more evidence do you need that this is a truly dangerous man?”

“Sir, I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you in,” said the officer. “Now, are you going to come quietly, or do I have to use the cuffs?”

“
Handcuffs
? For what? Trying to protect my own
daughter
?” screamed Dr. Adnoid.

Christina pressed a hand to her mouth, frantic with worry. Should she go down to help her father? Should she tell the officer what Lenny Loompski was really like? Would he even believe her?

“And by the way, officer,” came Lenny's voice clearly over the sounds of a scuffle, “I not only have a search warrant—I have here a temporary order, signed by the magistrate, to take his daughter and place her in the orphanage, if it turns out that we have to arrest him. And, tragically, that
does
seem to be the case.”

Christina's heart gave a sudden beat, high and hard in her throat.

“Temporary is right, you hind end of a pork chop! This order won't stand—what did you do, bribe the clerk? I'll get it straightened out in the morning—you're going to
pay
for this—”

“Tell it to the judge, mister,” said the officer firmly, and the scuffling sound moved from the kitchen to the front entrance and out the door.

There came a sound of thick fingers snapping and a shuffling of several pairs of feet into the kitchen.

“All right, the rest of you,” said Lenny Loompski, his voice low and forceful. “Search the house. I want that girl.”

S
NICK.
The trapdoor in the floor of the attic closed and latched. Christina, carrying her shoes in her hand, hurried silently across the wooden floor, bumping her mother's rocker into motion as she passed.

For an instant she paused, hearing the sound she dimly remembered, the creak that had once matched the rhythm of her mother's lullaby.
Little one, child of mine, safely rest tonight . . .

Christina turned away. She unlatched the service door and was on the roof in two seconds flat.

She climbed into the still-humming plane, dropped her shoes in the passenger seat, and strapped on the helmet with fingers that fumbled. Her father had been willing to go to jail to keep her safe. But she had not been able to help him at all . . .

A cool breeze touched a tear on her face, and she realized that she had lifted off and was flying toward the Starkian Ridge once more.

She didn't look back. She couldn't bear to see them take her father away.

 

There was a scent of pine as Christina skimmed the treetops near the great slabs of rock. On the way to the ridge she had figured out what she should have realized before; she could rescue Taft without any trouble at all. All she had to do was swoop down in the plane. He could leap into the back seat and they'd be up and out of reach before anyone knew what was happening.

And where would they go then? And what about Danny and the other orphans?

Christina squinted, focusing on the ridge ahead. If she rescued Taft first, then together they could figure out a way to set the others free.

But to do that, she had to locate Taft and see if the guards were still with the orphans. Perhaps if she flew high enough, she could spy out the situation without anyone noticing the glowing violet craft.

She climbed higher into the night sky. A harrier soared up with her, close enough that she could see its fierce yellow eye and soft ruffled wingtips tinged with color from the plane's violet-blue glow.

Christina glanced at the control panel, puzzled. Suddenly there was more blue than violet. The piercing high E faltered, resumed briefly, and then was lost to the chord. The plane dipped, sputtering. The blue light took on a tinge of green.

Christina stared at the dashboard. What was going on?

The green color became more pronounced. The minor seventh tone faded in a series of soft pops and then disappeared entirely.

All at once Christina knew exactly what was happening. She was running out of fuel. And unless she managed to land in a great hurry, she was going to crash.

Christina gripped the armrests, her hands sweaty. She couldn't think about crashing—not with the zoom responding to her every thought. She had to keep focused on flying, she had to keep thinking she could make it—

The plane plunged through the night like a small chunky comet, first green, then yellow, then orange. Christina's breaths came short and fast as the plane dove spiraling down. At the last moment, in the light of the plane's dying pink glow, she spied a rock ledge jutting out from the cliffs. It was small and slick with damp, but it was almost flat, with room enough for the plane and a little to spare.

The plane stuttered through the mist of a thin waterfall that splashed down the rock face and disappeared into the darkness below. With the last spurt of liquid draining from the helmet, Christina remembered to put down the landing gear. The tiny rubber wheels bumped on the wet rock, the plane's glow faded, and the melodic hum went silent.

Christina slumped with relief. She had done it!

But there was no time to waste. She had to refill the tank from the canister in the back, and she had to do it at once. Who knew how long she had to rescue Taft and the others?
Maybe the guards had seen the plane diving and were already climbing down the side of the cliff to investigate.

The moon gave just enough light to see by. Christina unplugged her helmet and clambered out to pull the spare canister of zoom from its slot. She popped open the fuel cap, fumbled for the funnel, and began to unscrew the canister lid with nervous fingers.

Her arm was already wet to the shoulder from the waterfall's spray. She glanced up, annoyed—if she wheeled the plane a little farther along the edge, could she refill the tank without getting drenched?—and stopped in midmotion.

There was something glinting up there in the waterfall, caught and wedged against a lip of rock; something that stuck out and sent a fine spray curving from the cliff's face.

Christina set the canister down and climbed back into the plane to stand on the red leather seat. The object was half hidden by the tumbling water, and yet she could see its smooth, glassy surface, its rounded tip.

It was a wonder that it had stayed stuck there all this time. Christina stretched—could she reach it? Not . . . quite . . .

She stared at the test tube, her heart thumping. Her mother must have sent the messages out for as long as she could, hoping that one of them would be picked up. What would this one say?

Christina stepped up onto the plane's curved metal back and stretched higher.

The water cascaded along her upraised arm and down the back of her neck, soaking her shirt. She touched the smooth
glass tube with her fingertips. Only a little farther, just enough to get a grip on it. She was almost there—

She gave a spring with her toes and grasped the test tube, wrenching it from the rock. It shattered in her hand, but she didn't let go as her feet slipped on the wet, curving back of the plane, as she caromed off its rounded side, as she landed with a cry of pain on the damp rock ledge, just barely missing the canister of zoom.

Christina lay in a heap, breathing hard. She had almost blown herself up.

Her hand was bleeding, too. But things could have been worse. She was safe, and she had her mother's message, and—

And the plane was rolling. She had forgotten to set the brakes.

She lunged, she grabbed, but she was too late. The plane tipped for a long, agonizing moment at the corner of the ledge and then fell, hurtling nose first down the mountainside with a shriek of twisting metal and a rending crash.

 

Christina sat hunched on the ledge in the pale, cold light of a quarter moon. For some bizarre reason, the dancing chickens from Chickie-Go Math came to her mind, with their signs that read
GOOD EFFORT
! and
NICE TRY
!

She stared out into nothingness. It didn't matter in the least how hard she had tried or how good her efforts had been. She had failed. And if she were the crying sort, now would be the perfect time to burst into tears.

Her father was in jail.

Her only friend had been captured.

A horrible man wanted to turn her into one of his orphan slaves.

And to top it all off, she was soaking wet, bleeding, and stranded on the side of a cliff—plus she had just watched the coolest kid-sized plane in the world roll over the edge and vanish forever.

Shivering, Christina picked shards of glass out of her palm and tried to think of something good about her situation.

Well, she had her mother's message. Of course, the moon didn't give enough light to read it by.

On the other hand, she did have perfect pitch and a canister full of zoom.

Carefully, delicately, Christina unscrewed the canister's lid all the way. She flattened out the crumpled, blotted paper with her good hand and opened her mouth to sing a high G-sharp.

But instead, she found herself singing her mother's lullaby.

Someday you may find yourself lost and far from home . . .

The canister of zoom glowed beautifully pink as Christina reached the high G-sharp and held it. She smoothed the message with a trembling hand—and almost cried aloud in disappointment. The message was blotted on every line with her blood.

A word here and there was readable. Danny's ABC, for one—she could make a guess at
Adnoid, Beth, Christina
—but besides that, just a few more random words, senseless without the other words around them. About the only thing that
wasn't defaced with a red smear was the date, in the upper right-hand corner . . .

The date.

Christina blinked twice and read the clear script again.

The year was this year. The date was last week.

Her mother was still alive!

H
ER
mother was still alive, and trapped in the mountain. She might be on the other side of the rock wall, right now.

Christina's mouth went dry. She stared wildly at the blood-soaked message. Only a few days ago, her mother had touched this very paper. Only a few days ago, Beth Adnoid had been thinking of her daughter—she had written Christina's
name
.

Christina pressed the note to her chest. She was getting blood all over her shirt, but she didn't care. The thought of her mother, alive, so close, filled her with an ache so acute she almost couldn't breathe.

Words drifted through her head, accompanied by a haunting tune.
Never fear, Mother's near, though just out of sight . . .

She swallowed hard and shook herself. She had to get a grip. Her mother needed rescuing, and
now
.

But how to start? What to do?

Christina gazed at the sheer cliff with its translucent
streaks of zoom, still faintly shining from the note she had sung.

She put her face up close to the rock. The fine tracery of pink and green webbed over the surface like a veil. The color was fading, dying away as she watched.

She sang a G-sharp, exactly on pitch. The thin veins of zoom brightened, and strengthened in hue. They were mere threads, not pencil-thick strands of zoom as she had seen before, but there was something different in the rock behind them. The rock surrounding the zoom did not stay dark, but seemed to blush in wide swaths of muted color.