Читать книгу The Planetoid of Amazement - Mel Gilden - Страница 8

CHAPTER THREE

UNDER RODNEY’S HAT

Rodney tugged gently at the sticker while he finished his math homework. Entire minutes went by when he didn’t even think about the sticker. It became just something to play with, like a callous or a hangnail. But at other moments he wondered when the sticker would begin to act, and what strange symptom he would notice first.

He wondered while he took his kazoo out of its case and plugged it in. He wondered while he set up his music stand and unfolded the music from the hair­cutting scene from Pastrami’s Samson and Delilah. He wondered while he hummed the first notes at the top of the page into his kazoo. His wonder suddenly turned to horror.

Experimentally, he hummed into his kazoo again. At first, because the sounds he was making were so aw­ful, he feared he’d forgotten how to hum. Then he decided that the sounds themselves were not awful. They were the same as always.

But now, unaccountably, in a matter of hours, his taste in music had changed. He hummed a few more notes into his kazoo, and the sound—which earlier that day had been so soothing—now put his teeth on edge. Itchy things crawled over his body.

He tried to remain calm but was not successful. Giving up the kazoo in order to have an adventure was not ever what he’d had in mind. Competing with his parents was silly, anyway. He didn’t need to have an adventure just because they’d both had one. Of course, the yellow sticker didn’t seem to be giving him a choice.

He frowned. And then with determination, Rodney began to hum into his instrument again. He concen­trated on the music, but that didn’t keep his skin from itching. He felt himself getting angry. By the time he’d finished the page, he was ready to tear phone books in half with his teeth.

Had the sticker changed his feelings only about kazoo music, or was it music in general? Rodney turned on the radio. A woman was singing a com­mercial about how everybody needed a credit card. The tune was trivial and the message insulting, but neither of them made Rodney itch. He turned off the radio and opened the “Latvian Sailor’s Dance.” The moment he began to play, jackhammers began pulver­izing an old sidewalk inside his brain.

He sat in his chair sweating and breathing hard, the kazoo a dead weight in his hands. As far as he was concerned, the sound of a kazoo was now fingernails on a slate, cats howling, and the whine of a dentist’s drill all rolled into one. Rodney had never heard of a poison that made you hate kazoo music. There had to be more to it. Rodney would have to quit the or­chestra. A yellow sticker did not seem like much to get in exchange.

Hoping to distract himself from the blackness clos­ing in, Rodney put his kazoo away and went down­stairs to watch TV.

* * * * * * *

By the time he had brushed his teeth, Rodney felt normal again. He studied the sticker in the bathroom mirror. It was the enemy. There had to be some way to defeat it. Maybe surgery was the only answer. Maybe electrolysis would work. The ads in the back of comic books said that electrolysis removed unwanted hair painlessly. Hair, stickers, what could be the differ­ence? Rodney had no idea what electrolysis was, but he suspected it hurt more than the ads admitted.

He crawled into bed, stared at the blank ceiling for a moment, and decided he was being a goof. He switched on the light, got out of bed, and tried his kazoo once more. The vibration seemed to be shak­ing his brain loose. He got back into bed and turned out the light. He lay there for a while and was not even aware when he drifted into a dream.

In the dream Rodney had long slender hands cov­ered with downy fur. If he crossed his eyes, he could see that his nose ended in a stubby snout. None of this bothered him; it all seemed normal. That all this weird stuff seemed normal should have bothered him, but this was a dream and it didn’t. Rodney’s dream personality seemed a lot like the personality he had while he was awake. He had a job to do, something a little vague—dreamlike—and he watched out for himself, but he was basically a good person who had no desire to hurt anybody.

Still, some things in the dream did upset him. He was far from home and had been roving for a long time, searching for something evil. In the dream the evil thing was a dirty brown blob that writhed and pulsated. It frightened Rodney even as it fascinated him. The evil thing had something to do with his job. Memories of adventures involving strange machines and stranger creatures did not excite him, but the longing to complete the job colored everything else like a thin gray fog.

Across the room, which seemed to be made of metal, was a creature three times his size. The crea­ture looked like a bear that was wearing a utility belt around his middle and a small stool over his head as if it were a space helmet. The legs hung front and back and the rungs of the stool rested on the creature’s shoulders. He and the bear seemed to be having a spirited discussion.

Whoever or whatever Rodney was, he liked and trusted the bear, though he thought the bear was kind of a goof with no serious goals or ideas. Like an uncle who showed up with presents from Outer Mongolia, bought everybody the biggest ice cream sodas they’d ever seen, stayed up all night eating cheese puffs and watching Marx Brothers movies on TV, and then went away, leaving your head swimming.

The bear turned around and adjusted one of the controls that covered the wall.

Then, as is sometimes the case in dreams, Rodney was suddenly somewhere else without quite knowing how he’d gotten there. He was outside under a black sky strewn with stars, walking across a field that ex­tended as far as he could see. Huge alien machines stood at intervals on the field. The one nearest him had a sign floating in front of it. He thought he ought to be able to read the words on the sign, but he couldn’t. That bothered him more than the fact that he was some animal and that he was consorting with bears who used tools. But it didn’t bother him as much as what needed to be done with the evil thing.

After that the dream broke up into swirling alien machines and alien faces. One of the alien faces seemed to glow. It had enormous catlike eyes and two little holes for a nose. When it began to hum, Rodney needed to get away from it. Seeking refuge from the face and the terrible noise, he awoke to dis­cover that his alarm clock was buzzing. He switched it off and fell back onto his bed. He enjoyed feeling more or less normal. Birds sang outside. Sunlight fell in through the window and landed silently on the floor in a brilliant yellow square. It was a relief to be at home.

He reached up and touched the sticker. Still there. He tugged on it and sighed when it pulled at the skin of his forehead. An adventure for sure. Oh, yes.

* * * * * * *

Rodney thought over the dream while he got ready for school. The dream was obviously trying to tell him something his brain was not prepared to understand. Maybe the sticker was some kind of training device. Training for what? By whom? The possibilities were mind-boggling, and he was perfectly willing to let his mind be boggled. But the explanation had better be good. He hoped he wasn’t giving up his kazoo for just any wimp adventure.

He was about to walk out the front door when he remembered that the sticker was still in the middle of his forehead. Teachers and fellow students would, no doubt, ask embarrassing questions.

He opened the closet and studied the hats that hung inside the door. Hanging there was another Captain Conquer leather flying helmet and a paper bag with holes for the eyes and mouth—the tradi­tional headgear of the Tuatara. Also, there was a top hat with a card stuck into the band. The card said “In this style, 10/6.” Farther along were a fedora, a slick yellow rain hat, and a shapeless knit thing you could pull down over your ears when the weather turned cold.

The knit hat would have been perfect, but the weather was too warm and he would have attracted suspicion. Rodney took the fedora and closed the closet door so that he could look at himself in the mirror on the other side. If he pulled the brim down far enough, he couldn’t see the sticker. Not very well, anyway. If it was good enough for Humphrey Bogart, thought Rodney, it was good enough for him.

The bus ride wasn’t so bad. Nobody cared whether or not a kid wore a hat. But once he got to school, he was not so lucky. He hadn’t taken two steps onto the playground when he was stopped by Mr. Trowsinger, a stoop-shouldered, white-haired old guy who taught history.

“No hats in school,” Mr. Trowsinger said in his feathery old voice.

“I have sort of a medical condition,” Rodney said. Mr. Trowsinger folded his arms, waiting. He’d been teaching history since before Rodney was born, and he’d heard everything. Twice, maybe.

Rodney removed his hat, and Mr. Trowsinger bent to get a close look at the sticker. He lifted a hand and said, “May I?”

“Of course.”

As gently as if he were touching the wing of a butterfly, Mr. Trowsinger tugged at the sticker. When it didn’t come off, he grunted and crossed his arms again.

“It’s feeding medication into my bloodstream. Through my skin.”

“You have a note from your parents?”

“My parents are away at a Chocolatron sales conference.”

“I see.”

Mr. Trowsinger seemed to buy what Rodney was selling. He took Rodney to his classroom and wrote a note giving him permission to wear a hat in school until the sticker came off. Rodney was delighted with the note. It made everything else a lot easier. For one thing, it gave him an excuse to sit out gym class in the bleachers. His math teacher made a joke about hats and detectives, but otherwise left him alone. Mr. Weinschweig didn’t seem to care one way or another.

When nobody was looking, Rodney stuffed tiny bits of Kleenex into his ears. A pretty girl in a business suit sat down next to him and nodded in his direction. She was Nutti Phil, the second kazoo. The Kleenex didn’t do much good. When Nutti hummed into her kazoo to warm up, it was all Rodney could do not to pull the vicious thing out of her mouth.

Mr. Weinschweig began to conduct; Rodney put his kazoo to his mouth, but he did not play. He gritted his teeth and tried not to listen to Nutti playing next to him. To Rodney, her playing sounded like somebody cutting sheet tin with an electric saw. The rest of the orchestra sounded just fine. He barely managed to get through the class without jumping around and tearing out his hair.

Fourth period was history. Mr. Trowsinger just nodded at Rodney when he came in wearing the hat. The period after that was lunch.

Waldo was reading a chemistry book when Rodney sat down on the bench next to him. As Rodney took a peanut butter sandwich from a plastic bag, Waldo glanced at him, nodded, and went back to his book. “Nice hat,” he said.

“Thanks,” Rodney said. “Want to see what’s under it?”

Waldo closed his book on a finger and contem­plated Rodney. “I’ve seen your head,” Waldo said.

Rodney showed him the sticker and told him the whole strange story. “I really miss the kazoo.” He sighed and brushed crumbs from his lap. He said, “The funny part is that I’m scared of two opposite things. On the one hand, I’m scared that the sticker is the beginning of an adventure. I don’t know if I can handle it.”

“You can handle it.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re handling it already.”

“Huh,” said Rodney, feeling a little better and enjoying the feeling while he chewed. But the realization came to him that adventures always got bigger, never smaller. The confident feeling went away.

“What’s the other thing you’re scared of?”

Rodney swallowed and said, “I’m scared that these stickers are just some crazy advertisement for glue, not the beginning of an adventure at all. I’ll end up like Mr. Weinschweig, writing the same movement of a symphony over and over again because I’m scared to continue. End up being jealous of my parents forever and hating myself because I know it’s all my fault. And not even having the comfort of the kazoo anymore.”

“Would it be all your fault?”

Rodney shrugged. His mood was gray and foggy. He’d felt like that before, just recently, though he couldn’t quite remember when.

Waldo pulled on the sticker gently, as Mr. Trowsinger had earlier. “And they call me weird,” Waldo said.

Rodney put the hat back on and chewed his peanut butter sandwich.

Without looking up, Waldo said, “I can get it off for you.”

“How?”

“Science,” Waldo said mysteriously.

They planned to meet in the boys’ bathroom after school. At that hour, nobody was likely to bother them.

* * * * * * *

The boys’ bathroom was down a short flight of steps. It was cold and full of chemical and biological smells. A light scent of cigarette smoke hung over the stalls. Waldo was studying himself in the mirror when Rodney came in. “We’re alone,” Waldo said. “I checked.”

“Good. What are you going to do?”

Waldo took a short, very sharp knife from his backpack and Rodney stared at it in horror. “That doesn’t look very scientific to me.”

“I use this knife in biology class. Surgery is very sci­entific.”

“Don’t touch me with that. You use it to cut up worms and frogs and stuff.”

“Get a grip, Rodney. I sterilized it before I came down here. Besides, I’m not going to cut you. Just the sticker.”

Rodney looked at Waldo dubiously. Just how badly did he want the sticker removed? It might fall off by itself that evening. On the other hand, it might be a permanent exhibit on Rodney’s forehead for years. “All right,” he said.

“Come over here, then.”

Rodney walked to Waldo and put his books and kazoo case on the floor. “Try to slice it off without killing me,” Rodney said.

Waldo grunted as he studied Rodney, an artist studying an empty canvas. He held up the knife and leaned closer. Rodney closed his eyes. He felt Waldo tugging on the sticker. “What’s going on?”

“This isn’t paper,” Waldo said. “It doesn’t cut.”

Rodney started to shake his head but Waldo commanded him to hold still. “I’ll try slicing off a corner.”

There was the tugging again, and suddenly Rodney felt dizzy. The floor opened away from him, and he fell toward the ceiling. He grabbed onto Waldo and held on tight. “Hey, watch it, man,” Waldo said.

They stood like that for a minute while gradually the disorientation went away. The floor and the ceil­ing rotated back to their proper places. Rodney opened his eyes. “This isn’t going to work,” Rodney said. “That thing has probably welded itself to my nervous system.”

“Maybe so.” Waldo sounded disappointed. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to put on this hat and take the bus home. What about you?”

“Yeah,” Waldo said. “I never claimed that science knew everything.”

* * * * * * *

At home the mail was the usual mix of bills and advertisements. One letter was selling guided trips to Tierra del Fuego. Another was offering him the chance to win five million dollars if he bought some designer luggage featuring the signature of Rocky Smith, Space Commando. A third advertised a fool­proof way to survive the coming invasion of killer ants “for fun and profit.”

Then Rodney saw the envelope. It was like the one addressed to his father the day before, like the one in which the pad of stickers had come.

But the interesting thing was, the exciting thing was, the thing that meant adventure was that where yes­terday the headline on the envelope had been just so many chicken scratches, today he could read the chicken scratches as if they were English. Whatever else it was doing, Rodney had the suspicion that the sticker was also doing its job. For a moment, the loss of the kazoo seemed a little less important.

The headline said VISIT THE PLANETOID OF AMAZEMENT (RTE. HUTZENKLUTZ STATION).

Rodney knew that he was really reading the writing and not just pretending, because every time he looked at it, it said the same thing. He shook the envelope. Something was inside. Whether it was more stickers or something else Rodney could not tell. He wanted desperately to open the envelope, but it was ad­dressed to his father in that same unsophisticated handwriting. Rodney would have to wait. He sat down on the steps.

After a while, it occurred to him that he was miss­ing an important opportunity to check himself. He pawed through the papers on the telephone table and found the envelope from the day before. He could read these chicken scratches too! They said EXCIT­ING FREE OFFER! YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY WON A TRIP TO THE PLANETOID OF AMAZE­MENT! USE YOUR STICKER TODAY!

No doubt about it now. The sticker had taught him how to read this weird language. But unless the Plan­etoid of Amazement was something really special, not just a video-game arcade or something, it was not much of a trade for playing the kazoo.

Time walked by in no particular hurry. He picked up and shook a gray plastic box that had the Captain Conquer wings stamped on it and a metal antenna you could pull out till it was a few feet long. The communicator box rattled and made a twanging sound. Inside, Rodney knew, were wires and springs and electronic blobs. When he’d shown the inside of the communicator to Rodney, Mr. Congruent had said, “I think it would work even now if it received the right signal.” Rodney had considered this unlikely, but he’d said, “Sure, Dad.” Rodney put down the communicator and picked up a wooden model of the Mitzenmacher 260, which he zoomed through the air.

When the phone rang, Rodney jumped and put down the model. “Hello?”

“How are you, Rodney?”

“Okay, Mom. How are you and Dad and the con­ference?”

“The new Chocolatron advertising campaign is very exciting.”

“Hmm,” said Rodney.

“Yes,” his mother went on, “I always liked ‘It’s atom powdered,’ but most of the delegates think that slogan is old-fashioned. They like ‘Chocolatron: a blast from the past.’”

“Hmm.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Uh, did Dad tell you about the strange envelope with the stickers inside?”

“He certainly did. It was very exciting. Any adven­tures to report?”

“Sort of.” Rodney told his mother what had been going on, about the dreams and the problem with the kazoo and all.

“This is very good,” Mrs. Congruent said.

“But what does it all mean?”

“You’ll find out soon enough, I’m sure. That’s the way adventures work.”

“Dad got another one of those strange envelopes. Only now I can read what it says.”

“The work of the sticker, of course. What does it say?”

“It says: VISIT THE PLANETOID OF AMAZEMENT (RTE. HUTZENKLUTZ STATION).”

“Very interesting.”

“The Planetoid of Amazement is probably a sec­ond-rate amusement park or a restaurant where they pay more attention to the video games than to the food.”

“You believe that?”

“No.”

“Have you opened the envelope yet?”

“No,” Rodney said patiently. “It’s addressed to Dad.” That was a good excuse, anyway.

“If you want to, open the envelope, Rodney. I think your father would insist on it.”

Rodney knew his mom was right. He no longer had I reason to avoid the inevitable. He held the receiver of the phone under his arm and sighed. With a mighty effort, he tore open the envelope. Inside was another instruction sheet and a foil packet. He held the packet up to the light and shook it, but still couldn’t tell what was inside.

The instruction sheet showed one side of the packet being torn off, and whatever was inside being poured over the outline of a person. In the drawing, the stuff looked like sand. At the top of the sheet something was written in the funny language that Rodney could now read.

“Mom?” said Rodney into the telephone.

“Yes, Rodney?”

“There’s a packet and some instructions. I don’t know what’s in the packet, but the instructions say GREETINGS, WATSON CONGRUENT. OPEN THE PACKET. THROW THE CONTENTS OVER YOUR­SELF AND GET A BIG SURPRISE.”

“My husband has obviously been keeping secrets from me.” Mrs. Congruent laughed and went on, “You must immediately do as the instructions sug­gest.”

“We’re talking adventure here, aren’t we, Mom?” A hot wind rushed through Rodney’s body. He felt as if he had the flu.

“I’m sure of it,” Mrs. Congruent said.

“Okay, then,” said Rodney. “Here I go.”

Rodney put down the phone. He tore open the packet and poured the contents into his hand. What­ever it was looked like the kind of glitter a little kid would glue onto a homemade Mother’s Day card. Judging by the strange properties of the sticker, this glitter probably was not as innocent as it looked.

With a sense that he was jumping off a cliff, he took a deep breath and threw the glitter over his head. As the glitter settled, the edges of each bit seemed to slice through the very fabric of reality. The world seemed to disintegrate around him.

Rodney’s last thought before he was engulfed by darkness was that he’d neglected to hang up the phone.