The Flinkwater Factor (10 page)

25

I
n the Sewers

The inside of a storm sewer is not as gross as you might think. All the really nasty stuff goes in a different system of pipes and ends up in the treatment plant. The storm sewer just carries runoff from the streets, and it hadn't rained lately, so except for a few puddly sections, we didn't have to do any wading. But that doesn't mean it was pleasant. Our walk through the culverts and passageways took us past two extremely stinky, extremely dead raccoons, and way too many sets of beady rat eyes. I didn't know Flinkwater
had
rats. We could hear them scurrying ahead of us.

One good thing: With all those rats to think about I forgot to worry about the Sasquatch.

Redge did not care for the sewer at all. He whined and growled and snarled and moaned—sometimes all at once. To my relief, he did not
mistake the rats for squirrels. He just wanted to get out of there.

So did I. The time we spent making our way through those wet, echoey passageways supplied me with nightmare material for the rest of my life—not that I needed it after our Sasquatch encounter.

“Do you know where we are?” I asked Billy as we hit another intersection.

“Uh  . . . yeah, pretty much.”

“Pretty much?”

“I think we go right.”

We turned right and heard a massive amount of scurrying ahead of us.

“Actually, I think left would be better,” he said.

I was ready to strangle him and leave him for the rats, especially after I slipped and fell headlong in a gloopy puddle of I-don't-want-to-know-what. Fortunately for him, we soon reached our destination: a concealed doorway set into the side of the sewer wall. Billy pulled a hidden lever out from a recess in the wall, and the door swung open to reveal a narrow staircase leading up. We climbed the stairs to another door and found ourselves in Billy's underground sanctuary.

I have mentioned Billy's underground bunker before, but allow me to explain a bit more. Wilhelm Krause, the eccentric corn baron who, back in the 1950s, built the house where Billy and his family
now lived, had constructed a bomb shelter in the subbasement. That bomb shelter was now Billy's bedroom.

“He must have built in this escape tunnel just in case,” Billy explained. “I found it hidden behind this wall panel a few years ago. It comes in handy sometimes, like when I'm grounded, or when J.G. is being a jerk. Besides, it's fun exploring the sewers.”

“That was not
fun
,”
I said. “That was
disgusting.
”

“It was fun
and
disgusting,” said Myke. “I didn't know there were so many animals living underground!”

“If you start keeping sewer rats for pets, I'm going to unfriend you,” I told him.

Myke shrugged, smiling.

Redge was digging through a pile of Billy's dirty laundry.

Everybody seemed delighted with how things were going. Except for me.

“I have to change,” I said.

“Into what?” Billy asked.

“Clean, dry clothes, dog breath! Look at me!”

“Oh.” He looked at me. “How did you get so dirty?”

“Give me that laser thing,” I said. I wasn't actually going to kill him, just clonk him over the head with it.

He must have seen something in my eyes because he backed quickly away. “There's clothes right there,” he said, looking at the basket that had consumed all of Redge's head except for his floppy ears.

“
Clean
clothes,” I said.

26

Fr
amistats and Thingleberries

Billy found a pair of fresh jeans and a T-shirt with a picture of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue. I had no idea what that meant—probably some boy joke—so I turned the shirt inside out and went into the bathroom to change. The jeans were a little loose. I had to roll the waistband a couple of times to get them to stay up. I came out looking anything but fashionable. Billy and Myke could not have cared less. They were examining the collar. Redge was looking somewhat nervous.

“Don't hurt him,” I said.

Myke gave me a scathing look, letting me know that he, the founder and president of AAPT, would never cause an animal distress.

“Sorry,” I said. “I wasn't thinking.”

Billy was examining the two wires that ran from the collar to the back of Redge's skull.

“I can detach them from the collar easy,” he said. “But he'll still have these wires hanging out. I'm not sure how deep they go . . . . I mean, if they go all the way into his brain, he'll need surgery to get them out.”

“But we can take off the collar?”

“Oh sure. Let me just unfasten the buckle and—”

I moved closer to get a better look, and I guess I wasn't watching where I was stepping. Redge let out a yelp and jerked away. There was a faint ­double pop. The dog screeched and ran to hide under Billy's bed.

Billy stared at the two wires hanging from the collar in his hands. Myke followed Redge under the bed. I just stood there trying hard not to lose it.

“It's okay!” Billy said. “He's gonna be okay!”

“Okay?” I said. “You just yanked wires out of his brain!”

“No I didn't.” Billy was examining the ends of the wires. “Look, the wires just went to a couple of electrodes glued onto his skin.” At the ends of the wires were two disks no bigger around than a pencil eraser.

I could hear Redge whining and Myke blubbering.

Billy said, “Come on out, you guys. Everything's okay.”

It took a few minutes to coax Myke and Redge
out from under the bed. Myke was hugging the dog and crying. I think Redge was more upset at being strangled by Myke than he was by having the wires ripped off. When Myke loosened his grip enough for us to get a good look at Redge's head, I could see that Billy was right. There were two tiny bald patches where the electrodes had been fastened.

“He's gonna be fine,” Billy said.

“You could have killed him!” Myke said.

“Hey, I didn't do anything. He tore them loose himself. How come he jumped like that?”

I said, “It was me.”

They looked at me.

“I sort of accidentally stepped on his tail.”

We gave Redge a pound of hamburger from the freezer. As Redge gnawed happily on the brick of frozen meat, we discussed our next step.

“We've stolen a piece of ACPOD secret technology, and we're harboring a fugitive hound,” I said. “That means Homeland Security is going to be coming after us, if they aren't already.”

“How about we just return the collar,” Myke said. “They don't care about the dog—they were going to kill him.”

Billy was at his desk, using a tiny screwdriver to do something to the collar.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I just want to see if it—oops.”

“Don't say ‘oops,'” I said. “‘Oops' is scary.”

He was down on his hands and knees. “Dropped a screw. Here it is.”

Myke said, “Once we get the collar back to Area Fifty-One, they'll stop looking for the dog. Right?”

“Except that they might want to plug the dog back in so he can tell them who kidnapped him,” I said.

“True  . . .”

“This is really cool,” Billy said. He had the back off the collar and was examining its innards with his handheld digital microscope.

“Put it back together, Billy. Myke's right—we have to return the collar. We can tell them we found it on the street.”

“You think they'll believe us?” Myke asked.

“We're just kids. All we have to do is act stupid.”

“What about Redge?”

“Redge will have to lay low for a while.”

“Where? He can't stay with me,” Myke said.

“Me either—my mom would freak.”

We both looked at Billy, who was plugging a slim cable from his tablet into the collar.

“Check this out,” he said. His tablet lit up, displaying a complicated schematic.

“Wow,” I said, with no idea what I was looking
at.

“It's incredibly simple,” Billy said. He then rattled off a long string of words that included “synthetic bionomic interruption circuit” and “dynamical ergonomic interface” and “adaptive cybernetics.” None of which meant a thing to me.

“How fascinating,” I said boredly.

“What's
really
fascinating is that it's no more complicated than a lawn-mower engine. I bet I could make it even simpler. The
gubble gubble
circuit is redundant, and the
gobbledygook
is
framistating wingleberries 
. . . .”

I looked at Myke to see if he was following any of it. Nope.

I said, “Billy.
Stop talking
.”

He stopped talking.

“Put the collar back together. Myke and I are going to get rid of it.”

“Why?”

“What have we been talking about for the past half hour?”

“Cybernetic interfaces?”

“No. Put the collar together. And hurry up, before Homeland Security finds us here and
framistats
all over your
thingamabobs
.”

“Huh?”

“Just do it.”

Billy had the collar back together within
minutes. He handed it to me. I noticed some tiny printing on the inside:
DMI/ACPOD Prototype B-427.

DMI
. D-Monix Industries. What Myke had told me earlier was true. The talking dog was a D-Monix/ACPOD joint project.

I dropped the collar on the floor and stomped on it.

“What are you
doing
?” Billy said, horrified by the deliberate destruction of technology.

I picked up the collar and shook it. It produced a satisfactory rattle.

“I don't want them sticking this on some other poor dog,” I said.

“Yeah, but—” Billy was interrupted by a
ding
from a little speaker above his bedroom door. His eyes widened. “Somebody's coming!” He yanked open the secret door. “Myke! Get Redge out of here! Quick!”

Myke snatched the remains of the frozen hamburger and ran through the door to the sewers. “Redge, come!” Myke said

“Ruff!” said Redge, and followed Myke into the sewers.

Billy slammed the door. A second later the other door opened and Billy's father stepped into the room.

George G. George looked like his son J.G., only six inches taller, two hundred pounds heavier, and wearing a dark blue pinstripe suit. His pale blue eyes went from me to Billy, and his frowning mouth got even frownier.

“What was that!” he said.

“What was what?” Billy asked.

“I heard a dog bark!” he barked.

“That was me,” I said, thinking quickly. “I was practicing my animal imitations.”

George George nailed me with his steely gaze. “You are that Crump girl!”

He had me there. I was that Crump girl.

“You're the one who got my son into trouble!”

“Me?” I was too astonished to say anything else.

Billy came to my rescue. “Dad, I explained to you. Ginger didn't do anything wrong. She even helped me figure out how to undo the SCIC thing. Anyway, it was J.G. who stole the Projac. I just confiscated it from his room. And none of it would have happened if he hadn't glued my nose shut in the first place.”

George George swiveled his gaze back to Billy. “You blame everything on your brother! I'll have you know he was voted the most popular boy in his class!”

“That's because everybody was afraid to vote against him.”

George G. George scowled. It was a fearsome scowl, and I'm sure he used it at work to terrify ACPOD employees—including my dad—but it was all I could do to keep a straight face, because I was imagining him wearing pink polka-dot boxers.

“Hrumph!” he said, then wheeled and walked back up the stairs.

“Sorry about that,” Billy said to me.

“It's okay,” I said. “He kind of reminds me of my mom.”