The Age Altertron (12 page)

No answer.
“Aunt Mildred! Are you sleeping?”
“Now Wayne, what did I tell you about asking questions that

can only be answered one way?”
“Well, ‘No, I’m not sleeping’ was the answer I was looking for.” Not hearing
that answer, the boys climbed the stairs to look in

on their unresponsive great aunt. The room was empty. Aunt Mildred was gone.
But her radio was still on. The new mayor of Pitcherville was giving another
of his speeches. He was saying, “… know that this is for everyone’s good. Our
oldest citizens will be well cared for and there is no cause for concern. You
may visit your loved ones on alternate Sundays from 2:15 until 2:30 in the afternoon.
Anyone attempting to circumvent this law will be subject to immediate arrest
and prosecution.”
“They have taken Aunt Mildred,” said Rodney.
“Along with all the other old people, I’ll bet. All of them, except

for Professor Johnson. What are we going to do, Rodney?” “Get the tertiary
beam deflector from his coat pocket and hurry
back here as quickly as we can. I am sure that once we tell the
Professor what is happening, he will not want to wait until
tomorrow night to activate the new Age Altertron. We can run our
tests tonight and be ready to flip the switch by midnight.” Wayne nodded. He
noticed a sealed envelope at the foot of the
bed. “What’s this?”
He picked it up. Though the handwriting on the outside was
crabbed and hard to read, it looked as if it were addressed to Rodney
and him.
Wayne tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter that was
inside. He read it aloud to his brother:

My dear Rodney and Wayne:
No doubt you realize by now what has happened to me.
I will miss you, dear boys. Please take good care of yourselves. Eat your vegetables.
If you sprinkle some cinnamon on them they will taste even better.
By the way, there is a warrant out for your arrest, so you might want to go
back to you-knowwhere and stay there!
Love,
Aunt Mildred

“We can’t go to the Professor’s house now,” said Rodney. “If Lonnie isn’t waiting
for us just outside, he’s probably lying in wait somewhere along the way, ready
to ambush and arrest us.”

“Then we should go back down to the cellar like Aunt Mildred says.”
“And then what, Wayne? Sit around and do nothing without the tertiary beam deflector?”
“Maybe the Professor can tell us how to make a new deflector.”
“And how long will
that
take when we’ve never worked with such small
components before?
Wayne shrugged. Rodney sat down on the bed. He took the letter from his brother’s
hand and turned it over in his own hand, thinking of his great aunt.
“Smell the letter,” said Wayne.
Rodney took a whiff of Aunt Mildred’s scented letter.
Cinnamon, to remember her by.

P
etey and Grover would be the decoys. They would come
out of the McCall house looking as much like Rodney and Wayne as they were able
(considering that Petey was shorter and Grover was wider). They would wear fedora
hats with the brims tilted down and hiding their faces in shadow and would mount
Rodney and Wayne’s bikes and then ride slowly to the Professor’s house by the
street route. The boys hoped somebody would be watching the McCall house and
would take the bait. Then Rodney and Wayne could slip out and go the opposite
way on foot, taking a circuitous route that wound through several backyards,
and down a drainage ditch and through City Park. If they were quick enough and
their friends Petey and Grover slow enough Rodney and Wayne would beat their
friends to the Professor’s house and would be in and out, deflector in hand,
before anyone else arrived. This was the plan.
And the plan worked. At least the first part.
An unmarked car, which had been parked a block from the McCall home, now began
to shadow Petey and Grover as they steered their bikes slowly down the street,
both boys wobbling a little because their older heavier bodies sat differently
upon the light Schwinn cruisers. Rodney and Wayne made very good time with their
foot route, which required some fence scaling and some ditch crossing that taxed
their new-old muscles and tired their newold lungs.

As planned, the twins arrived first at the Professor’s house and quickly stole
through the back gate. They entered the house through the back door to what
had earlier been the Professor’s laboratory. The old house was dark, but they
did not dare turn on any of the lights.

Stumbling a little in the darkness Rodney and Wayne made their way to the stairs
and then up to the Professor’s bedroom. While Rodney stood just outside the
closet, Wayne stepped inside and closed the door so that he could turn on the
flashlight he had brought, and no one would see its light from outside the house.
“Gee, there sure are a lot of lab coats in here!” remarked Wayne in a muffled
voice from inside the closet.

“Then you’ll have to look through all the pockets,” said Rodney to the closet
door. “The deflector shouldn’t be hard to find. It’s about four inches high
and two inches around. Be careful not to prick yourself on the connectors.”

After a moment, Wayne said, “I can’t find it. There’s nothing in any of these
pockets but a couple of peanuts and a piece of paper.”
“Pull out the piece of paper.”
“Can I have the peanuts too, Rodney? I’m kind of hungry.” “The paper, Wayne.
What’s on the paper?”
“It’s probably nothing. Wait. It’s something.”
“What does it say, Wayne?”
“It’s a letter to
us
!”
“Is it from the Professor?”
“No.”
“Who else would put a letter to us into the Professor’s lab coat pocket?”
“Who do you think, Rodney?” Wayne read the note aloud to his brother:

Hi Monkeys,
Guess what used to be in this pocket? Something important, I’ll bet. And how
do I know this? Because of how carefully the Professor cleaned it before he
put it in here. And how do I know this? Because I was watching him from a dark
corner of the lab after I had quietly let myself in on that fateful night. Didn’t
you think it was strange that the door was locked the next morning? I locked
it. I was going to tie up the Professor and then take an axe to his precious
Age Altertron. I didn’t want any sudden witnesses.
My father sent me, you see. He even paid for the axe.
But guess what? I didn’t have to do anything since your friend, the brilliant
man of science, did such a good job destroying that machine himself. My father
got his wish sort of. But I got a lot more. I could hardly keep myself from
laughing as I crawled through the darkness to let myself out through one of
the back windows.
But now it doesn’t matter. You can know everything. And the most important thing
you should know is that your precious gadget will be waiting for you whenever
you want to come see me at City Hall. Come there during my office hours and
let’s do some business together.
Sincerely,
You Know Who

Wayne flicked off the flashlight and stepped out of the closet. “Jackie doesn’t
want to do business with us, Rodney. He just wants to arrest us.”

“You could be right, Wayne. Unless maybe he wants to work out some kind of
deal: if we tell him where the Professor is, he’ll let us go.”
“And then he’ll probably make sure that the Age Altertron II gets chopped to
pieces. That won’t be any kind of a bargain, Rodney.”
“You’re right. Our freedom in exchange for losing everything and everyone we
care about: Aunt Mildred, the Professor. And the next calamity that hits this
town just might be our last. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Come on. We
have to get out of here before Grover and Petey arrive.”
Wayne glanced out of the Professor’s bedroom window and down at the front gravel
drive. The decoys had just ridden up on their bicycles. A car was pulling up
behind them. “Uh oh. Too late.”
“Not too late. We have at least thirty seconds to get out the back door before
whoever is in that car discovers that it isn’t you and me on those bikes.”
Off the two boys raced through the Professor’s large dark house, their eyes
better adjusted now to the lack of light.
Meanwhile, in the front yard, bright car lights illuminated Petey and Grover
as they started to dismount their bikes. At the same time, three men got out
of the car that had been following them. One was Police Chief Rowe. The others
were two new police recruits. The two men were very good friends. Only a couple
of weeks earlier they had sat next to each other in kindergarten.
“You’re not Rodney and Wayne,” said Lonnie, looking at Petey and Grover.
“And you have no business being a police chief, you big baboon!” taunted Petey.
“Why Petey!” whispered Grover. “You said the word ‘baboon’ and some other ‘
b
’
words too!”
“I did, didn’t I?” said Petey with a proud grin. ”Maybe my brain has finally
found a way to get around my ‘b’ problem.
Before Grover could respond, Lonnie barked, “You know what I ought to do? I
ought to arrest the both of you!”
“Hey! Lookit! Arrest
them
!” said one of the police chief’s officers,
pointing at Rodney and Wayne. He had just caught sight of the twins coming through
the Professor’s backyard gate. The rookie officer was now jumping up and down,
both from excitement at spotting the culprits and from having to go to the bathroom.
“We’ve been tricked!” cried the Police Chief. “Shoot to kill, men.”
“Bang! Bang!” said the obedient second officer, pointing the toy gun he had
put into his holster in the place of the real one he had been issued.
Lonnie was losing patience. “What is that? Where is your gun?”
He turned to the other officer. “Take your gun, like this…” He cocked the trigger
of his own service revolver “And give it to those two criminal house breakers
right between the eyes!”
Rodney and Wayne were just rounding the corner of the Professor’s backyard fence
so they could run off through the adjoining back yard (retracing the route they
had taken to get here) when Lonnie Rowe raised his gun and took aim. Part of
the beam from the car’s headlights shone perfectly upon his two fleeing targets.
Grover thought of jumping Lonnie and pinning him to the ground, but there was
too much distance between the two of them. Petey had a better, quicker idea.
He angled his head so that his steel head plate would catch some of the car’s
headlight beam and bounce it back into Lonnie’s eyes, temporarily blinding the
police chief at just the moment that he was about to fire two bullets—one for
Rodney and one for Wayne.
“Lookit!” Wayne called to his brother. “Petey’s used his own head as a beam
deflector!”
Lonnie cursed and tried to block the reflected light with his hand but by then
it was too late. Rodney and Wayne had disappeared into the darkness of the adjoining
yard.
“Don’t just stand there! Go after them!” Lonnie yelled to his two rookies, one
of whom was now crying.
“We can’t!” said the one who was still dry-eyed.
“Why can’t you?”
“Because we’re both afraid of the dark!”

“To City Hall. I have a feeling that the deflector is somewhere in Jackie’s
office.”
“Why would you think that? Why wouldn’t he just toss it away?” “Because I just
thought of another reason that Jackie might

want to meet us tomorrow. Something else that he might want to bargain for.”
“And what is that, Rodney?”
“Let’s stop here, at this picnic table and catch our breaths.”
The boys were now in City Park. It was quiet and dark and cool. It was a sweater
kind of night. “Don’t forget your sweaters, boys!” Rodney could picture his
great aunt saying as the two boys rushed out to meet up with their buddies for
some moonlight touch football. Sometimes their father would also join them.
“And you too, Mitchell!” Aunt Mildred would add. “The night has a nip to it!”
This night had a nip to it too.
“Did you ever think, Wayne, that Jackie might start to get tired of being the
mayor of a town in which nobody is younger than fiftytwo? And next year will
be fifty-three and then fifty-four. We will be an old and dying town for the
rest of our days, Wayne. Now at some point, if you were the mayor of a town
like that, wouldn’t you start to think about maybe turning back the clock a
few years— maybe not all the way back, but just far enough back so you’d get
to keep your power and your guns and get to keep telling everybody what to do,
but still get to be a young man while you’re doing it? Remember how much Jackie’s
father wanted to stay a younger man? So much that he sent Jackie to the Professor’s
laboratory to destroy the original Age Altertron!”
“I hadn’t thought about it, but you’re right. It makes sense.”
“It actually makes a lot of sense,” said a voice from the darkness. The owner
of the voice stepped out of the shadows and revealed himself. It was Jackie.
“In fact, I was thinking about it this very night.” “What are you doing here?”
asked Wayne.
“Well, certainly not chasing after you two. You’re a lot faster than I am, I
can tell that.”
“Lonnie tried to kill us,” said Rodney.
“That sounds like Lonnie. He’s a juvenile delinquent you know.”
“So what are you doing here?” repeated Wayne.
“Sitting here thinking. Remembering how much fun Lonnie and I had turning over
all those baby carriages. I miss those days. Simpler times. Good times.”
Jackie sat down on the top of the picnic table. He took something out of his
pocket and set it down next to him. It was the tertiary beam deflector. “Is
this what you guys want?”
Rodney and Wayne nodded, too surprised even to speak.
“And you’re right, Rodney. It’s a pretty good bargaining chip. So why don’t
you listen to my proposal and tell me what you think?” Jackie didn’t wait for
a response. “Give me a year to put things in place—to firm up my hold on this
town. One year. And during that year and all the years after that, you two will
be free men. You have my promise. Give me that year and then we’ll pull the
Professor out of mothballs and get him to activate his Age Altertron, and take
off, let’s say thirty years from all of our ages. I’ll be—let’s see—thirtyseven
then. That’s not a bad age to be, don’t you think? Think of all the things we
could do that our parents would never let us do. And all the things that we
could keep
them
from doing for a change.”
“There’s nothing I can think of that I would want to keep my dad from doing,”
said Wayne. “I’d be pretty happy just to have him come home!” Wayne stared into
a bank of moonlit clouds, his thoughts partly on his father and partly on the
tertiary beam deflector he had just slyly picked up and slipped into his pocket.
“And what are you going to give
us
, Jackie?” asked Rodney. “Besides not
throwing us in jail for the rest of our lives.”
“How about the privilege of working with the Professor, just as you always have,
to save this town from future calamities—to be the big heroes two, three times
a month. I mean, that’s what you guys love, right?”
“I’ll tell you what we would love even more,” said Rodney. “Not having to live
in a town with a Jackie Stovall for a mayor—a town where my Aunt Mildred has
to lie on a cot, and nobody knows if they’re going to get shot at by your crazy
police chief.”
“I can’t speak for my crazy police chief, monkeys, but I’ll tell you this: we’ll
close that nursing home down the minute we’re all young again, and those old
folks can start pulling their weight around here again. Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a Boy Scout, Jackie,” said Wayne. “And you know what else, Jackie?
I have the deflector in my pocket now. And you know what else? I’m going to
knock you right off this picnic table the same way you knocked over all those
baby carriages last week.” With that, Wayne did exactly what he said he would
do. He took a big swing at Jackie that sent him straight to the ground. Then
he and Rodney took off.
Out from behind a stand of evergreen trees, several police officers now appeared.
“What were you doing back there—playing Tiddly Winks?” Jackie shouted at them
and then waved at them to go after Rodney and Wayne. As they ran off, Jackie
pulled himself to his feet and massaged his throbbing hip at the place where
it had struck the ground. He started walking—with a slight limp—in the direction
that Rodney and Wayne and his police officers had gone. He continued his conversation
with his twin adversaries as if they were still there: “I was giving you boys
the chance to keep yourselves out of jail! I was giving us all a way to be young
again! And you blew it! You stupid goofball idiot-numskulls!”

Every now and then an officer would fire a shot, but it was too dark for them
to get a good aim, and besides, most of them had never even picked up a gun
before, except a toy cowboy six-shooter. But Rodney and Wayne weren’t taking
any chances; they ran faster that night in their sixty-six-year-old bodies than
they had ever run as thirteen-year-olds.