Curioddity (29 page)

Inside Wil's pocket, the Whatsit beeped, plaintively. Mr. Dinsdale carefully placed a small wooden pocket watch on top of the bag of odds and ends so that the pile wobbled slightly, as if threatening to topple over and detonate all of its caboodles. Had it accomplished this, Wil felt, the universe would have clearly made its point: this was a futile endeavor—ill conceived and ever so slightly illegal. The pile of useless items could not possibly prove to be the salvation of the museum; it would more likely prove to be the museum's downfall in a very meaningful and ignitable way.

“You might need this Sequitur,” said Mr. Dinsdale of the wooden watch. “It can be useful against the weak-minded. But don't expose it to sunlight or it loses its effect.”

“What the heck is a Sequitur?” asked Wil, growing ever more impatient by the moment.

“It brings people to a conclusion of an inference,” replied Dinsdale, proudly. “All you have to do, in theory, is lead someone with little to no imagination on a critical dialogue path and the Sequitur will take care of the rest. Just dangle it in front of their face, as if you're trying to hypnotize them.”

“Does it work?”

“Theoretically, yes. But there might be a couple of side effects.”

“Like what?”

“Studies are inconclusive. The last time I used it was on a marine biologist and ever since I've had a hankering to go deep-sea diving. It's probably nothing.”

Wil shook his head, determined to stick to his task: namely, moaning about the situation with the faint hope of changing it. “I still think this is nuts,” he muttered in Mr. Dinsdale's vague direction. “It doesn't matter if we have all the Sequiturs and Whatsits in the world. How are we supposed to find some old document you need if we have no idea where it's kept?”

“Let's start with the phone book,” countered Dinsdale as he moved toward Mary Gold's information desk. “I'm sure Marcus James's corporate offices are listed in it somewhere.”

“No, I didn't mean his offices—I meant this old electricity bill you're looking for…” Wil's voice trailed off, abruptly. He narrowed his eyes. “Wait a minute. You mean to tell me you don't even know where his offices are? You don't even know what they look like?”

“I've never felt the desire to track him down. I'm not sure it was ever relevant,” replied Dinsdale, innocently. Seeing Wil's reaction, Lucy stifled a giggle.

“It's probably relevant,” said Wil, patiently, “because if the offices are offshore we're unlikely to make it there in the next few hours—”

“Found them!” interrupted Dinsdale. Next to the register sat an old-style telephone directory. The old man peered at the pages a little closer, just to make sure. “Why, what a coincidence! They're in the penthouse of the Castle Towers! That ought to come in handy!”

Wil was beginning to suspect Mr. Dinsdale had known this all along, even to the point of recruiting him in the first place simply because he happened to rent an office in Marcus James's building. He resolved to keep his suspicions to himself.

Dinsdale motioned the three Roberts forward. “Bobby,” he said to the first, “I want you, Bob, and Robbie to load this gear into Miss Price's Pinto. Call Robert and Roberto up from the basement if you need their help. We need to be on the road in four minutes.”

Bobby nodded, and he and his fellow Roberts moved to extract items from the pile before heading toward the revolving door with armloads of useless detritus. “Mr. Dinsdale,” said Lucy, intrigued, as the group followed the Roberts toward the revolving door, “how come all of your workers are called Robert?”

“It began as a clerical error, actually. A number of years ago, we decided the museum should be fully automated. It wasn't really a cost-cutting measure. Mary and I just really like all that newfangled electronic stuff. We keep a database of all our exhibits in a cloud, you know.”

“What does that have to do with all the Roberts?”

“Well, we sent away to the Internet to order a multipack of industrial automatons but there was a typographical error. Instead of being sent twenty robots, twenty different Roberts showed up at our door from the employment agency. We thought for a while about swapping them out but I've grown rather fond of having them around. Plus, you can always rely on someone named Robert. It's scientific fact. Come on.”

*   *   *

A
T THE
exit to the museum, Wil and Lucy moved very carefully through the revolving door, each making sure to give the other a wide berth as Mr. Dinsdale breezed through. While the Roberts loaded the backseat of Lucy's rusty Pinto, they paused for a moment to take stock (something Wil was extremely good at). Wil was about to go on a hair-raising thrill ride with a beautiful girl—one that would include moments of triumph and moments of abject defeat. He was about to run blindly into the line of fire, to throw caution to the wind—to do the very things his father had spent the better part of his life advising him not to do, assuming he survived the trip inside the Pinto to the Castle Towers.

One of the Roberts held the driver's-side door open. “Good luck, sir … madam,” he said in the respectful voice of a colonel about to send his men on a suicide mission.

“Why, thank you, Bob!” said Lucy as she made her way toward the driver's side.

“I wish you both the best of luck!” exclaimed Mr. Dinsdale, proudly.

Wil gulped, sensing he would need every bit of luck he could scrape together, and then some. “Lucy,” he began, innocently, “I get a little vertigo in the passenger seat. Would you mind if I drove?”

She fixed him with a maniacal glare. “No one drives Genghis,” she said, coldly. “No one but his mistress.”

“Genghis? Your Pinto has a name?”

“Yup.”

“Why Genghis?” asked Wil, suspecting he already knew the answer.

“Because he brutalizes his enemies into submission and takes no prisoners!” Lucy replied happily, climbing in behind the wheel. “Come on.”

Wil rolled his eyes as he climbed into the passenger seat. He'd only guessed half-right. “Please don't kill us before we get there,” he said, plaintively. “I'd hate to see all these exhibits go up in a ball of flames.”

“Just fasten your seat belt,” muttered Lucy as she began to get into the swing of things. Wil checked his seat belt, and then he reached in his pocket for SARA. He wrapped the charging cord around the smartphone, just to give her the illusion of safety, and placed her back in his pocket with the Whatsit. “SARA,” he said, quietly so as not to draw any attention, “please switch off your navigation system. Trust me: you'll thank me later.”

“
Acknowledged, Wil Morgan,
” replied SARA in her best metallic tone. “
And thank you for your consideration
.”

As the engine puttered, then roared, into life, Mr. Dinsdale waved. “Good luck!” he called. “Drive safely!”

“Get bent!” yelled Lucy before gunning the engine and roaring off in the direction of the one-way system at speeds only imagined by aerospace engineers.

*   *   *

T
HE
F
ORD
Pinto careened drunkenly from the end of Upside-Down Street, where it narrowly avoided a few innocent passenger vehicles as it staked its claim to the divided highway. Lucy floored the accelerator and set off toward the Castle Towers with her hands gripping the steering wheel in something approximating a headlock. Wil could only assume she was searching for a pickup truck driver or two to terrify along the way but he didn't have the nerve to challenge her authority in such a confined space.

With his life once again flashing before his eyes, he considered his options. They seemed limitless, which wasn't as attractive a proposition as he might have previously imagined. For one thing, Wil could imagine a thousand nasty fates that might befall him—not to mention the crazed harridan sitting next to him at the wheel of the rusted death trap—before the evening was through. Being inside the Pinto engendered feelings similar to that of sitting atop a metal tea tray, and while the results might be the same, the outcome of the eventual crash would undoubtedly be far more painful. In the unlikely event that the car made landfall at some point—and in the even more unlikely event that Genghis remained upright throughout—the thought of breaking and entering into Marcus James's penthouse headquarters would seem like a vacation in comparison to this chaotic journey.

Concentrate on relaxing, thought Wil. Concentrate on relaxing. Mr. Dinsdale's concept seemed like a curious thing to suggest, but in fact, it carried a certain kind of logic. Surely these would be the thoughts going through the mind of a professional golfer armed with a brand-new Air-Max 3000 and a one-stroke advantage going into the final hole? If golf were simply a matter of concentration, then a golfer would probably get all flummoxed trying to calculate wind speed and vectoring their golf ball to factor in the Earth's rotation. And if a person simply relaxed, a golf ball might end up in the middle of a nearby road. Wil smiled to himself; he'd learned an awful lot about golf this particular week despite never having unwrapped his original Air-Max 2000.

However, while he was beginning to enjoy the madcap ride inside the rusted Pinto, there was something else that nagged at his brain—a particular feeling that refused to go away. His occipital lobe had manfully defended the fortress against this intrusive feeling for a few hours but had eventually needed to call in reinforcements. For a brief while, Wil's Strange Sense of déjà vu had taken up the cause and had tried to send this nagging feeling packing. But the feeling was persistent: if Wil had learned anything this week, it was that sometimes one must do the least logical thing possible. The least logical thing in this particular case would be to interrupt the girl of his dreams while she was busy trying to carve images of her Pinto into the sides of other vehicles. The least sensible course of action—given the time constraints, and the urgency by which Wil and Lucy needed to get to the Castle Towers—would be to take a detour.

The Pinto crossed the median, veered into the far sidewalk, slid around a massive telephone pole, avoiding it by inches, and roared onto a back street. Wil looked at Lucy, terrified out of his wits.

“I need to make a detour,” he said.

“Shut up! I know the way,” replied the demon in a foul, guttural tone that only vaguely approximated the voice of the person harboring it.

“I don't mean a shortcut! I mean a detour!”

“There's no time! Just do it out of the window!”

“I'm not talking about bodily fluids! I'm talking about something really important! Will you please slow down and listen to me?”

“Stop talking to me! You're going to make us crash!”

“Lucy!” yelled Wil with as much force as he could push into his diaphragm. “I need to make a detour! Now!”

The rusted Ford Pinto suddenly screeched to a complete stop—one so abrupt that Wil barely had time to imagine half of the vehicle's front tires being scrubbed off on the tarmac before his nose hit the front console. He grunted with pain as a bag full of assorted caboodles smashed into his skull in the exact place he'd already been hit multiple times during the week.

And then, silence. The city around them seemed to exist in a vacuum for a moment, as if it were hiding from what might potentially be an explosion of epic proportions. Lucy turned, slowly, to face Wil. Trembling, he reached out to switch off the engine and pulled out the key in the hope that this would release his new girlfriend from the demon's thrall.

“No one touches my ignition switch,” said Lucy, coldly. “Not unless they want me to pull the fingers off their hand one by one.” With that, she suddenly grinned, leaned forward, and planted a kiss on Wil's cheek. “It's a good job you're cute,” she said, and winked.

“Lucy? Is that really you?” asked Wil. “Are you back?”

“I'm sorry. People always tell me I get carried away when I'm driving.”

“That's an understatement. Mice tend to get carried away by owls. Sitting in a car with you is a bit more like being dragged away by a congregation of alligators.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Why did we stop again? I think I kinda missed something back there.”

Wil chanced a look in the street behind them. Judging by all the damage Lucy's Pinto had done, she hadn't missed much. He exhaled slowly. “I need to make a detour,” he said for the third time.

“But what about the museum? We need to get to the Castle Towers. We're running out of time.”

“Lucy, listen to me: you're right. I know this is a really bad idea. Every instinct I have tells me so. But for some crazy reason, I think there's something I'm supposed to do first. Can you understand that?”

Lucy pondered for a split second, then grinned again. “Sure,” she said. “Nothing else about this evening makes any sense. What do you have in mind?”

“We need to stop off somewhere,” said Wil, brandishing the Pinto's ignition key. “And this time, I'll drive.”

*   *   *

S
EVEN MINUTES
later, Genghis sat outside the Waterbury Hotel near the train station and dreamed of mowing down innocent pedestrians while its mistress and her new boyfriend embarked on a secondary fool's errand. Upstairs in the Waterbury, things were not going according to plan.

Wil had had a difficult week, to be sure. If his initial encounter with Mr. Dinsdale and the Curioddity Museum had rocked his world like a seventies punk rock band might rock a kindergarten music class, then this sidebar maneuver was more akin to farting loudly in the middle of an opera. It took until the fifteenth knock for Barry Morgan to even admit he was inside his hotel room. As Wil rightly assumed, his father was in no mood for a discussion.

“But Dad,” pleaded Wil as Lucy looked on with concern, “I'm just asking you to listen. Please. Just hear me out.”