Floors #2: 3 Below (13 page)

“Calm down there, little buddy,” Remi said. It wasn’t that little. It was short and squat, in the shape of a plump bulldog. When Remi got close, the hopping stopped and the mechanical thing sat down, staring up at him with glassy eyes, steam shooting out of its nose in quick bursts.

Blop had gone cold and quiet, like he was trying desperately not to be noticed, but when Remi set him on the floor, he finally gave in.

“Hello, Clyde,” Blop said. “Please stay calm.”

Clyde and Blop clearly had some history. Clyde was fond of Blop.
Extremely
fond. She ran around in a circle, steam blowing out of every crack and crevice in her weird body.

“You
know
this thing?” asked Leo. “How?”

“I’ve been here before with Merganzer,” Blop explained. “I’m afraid Clyde is a little bit over the moon for me.”

“Clyde
likes
you?” Leo asked.

Before Blop could answer, he began to shake, like he was about to be magically pulled off the ground. Then, as fast as the eye could see, Blop shot across the floor and landed with a loud clang on Clyde’s back.

“Blop!” Remi yelled. His robot had been kidnapped by a magnetically charged metal dog. He ran right up to Clyde and tried to pry Blop free, but it was no use. It was as if Blop were bolted to Clyde’s back. The Franken-dog pranced around happily in a circle.

“What can I say?” Blop said. If he’d had robot shoulders, he would have shrugged them. “She likes the sound of my voice.”

A burst of steam shot out of Clyde’s upturned head, blasting Blop square in the face. Then Clyde began making beeping noises.

“She says she wants us to follow her,” Blop translated.

“You’re kidding,” said Remi. “You can understand what she’s saying?”

“Or course I can. I’m a robot.”

Clyde bounced up and down, higher and higher, nearly touching Blop’s head to the ceiling.

“I hate when she does this,” Blop said.

“How are we going to get you back?” Remi asked.

“Oh, she’ll get tired of carrying me around. Eventually. But for now, I’m afraid I’m stuck here.”

Leo shrugged, not sure what else to do. At least Blop could understand Clyde. It was a start.

“Take us to your leader,” Leo said, feeling much better about the dungeon as Clyde bounded mechanically toward the back of the spooky room. Everything felt less scary, more wacky, just the way Merganzer D. Whippet liked it.

Clyde stopped bouncing and started banging her head against the wall until Blop told Remi and Leo that it was a door they should open. It took them a few seconds to figure out all they had to do was push, and the wall drifted back on squeaking hinges. On the other side was a room less frightening than the one they were leaving.

Leo thought of Mr. Carp and felt guilty for leaving him behind. But what could he do?

“Hold tight, Mr. Carp!” Leo yelled behind him. “We’ll be back before you know it!”

Clyde and Blop were already well ahead as Leo passed through the door into a high-ceilinged chamber.

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Remi said, for this was less a dungeon and more the mad scientist’s lab he’d hoped to find. “This is the stuff!”

A thick bolt of blue electricity streamed between two giant glass orbs hanging from springs on the ceiling; inside the glass, there was more electricity, moving in
ghostly green and yellow patterns along the surface. There were tall round cylinders along the wall with dozens of rubber tubes sprouting out of their tops. Red and purple liquids ran through a hundred or more twisting clear tubes over their heads. A spinning belt wrapped over the top of a ten-foot flywheel turning in the center of the room. The wide belt disappeared into the floor, where the sound of pistons and gears leaked up through the concrete. There were platforms and ladders and piles of journals and drawings everywhere they looked. In the middle of the room, there was a square iron table, its sides covered in meters, dials, knobs, drawers, and buttons.

“I think I’m in love,” Remi said, and Leo knew why.

The farthest wall back was made entirely of glass, and behind the glass sat row after row of Flart’s Fizz. Remi began walking like a zombie toward the wall of bottles.

“Stay calm, Remi,” Leo said, following close behind, taking in the surroundings. “We need to find Dr. Flart fast. There’s no time for burping now.”

Clyde bounced happily to her doghouse, which was in the corner and made of rivets and sheet metal. She tried to go through the door, but Blop banged into the frame and stopped her cold. Much beeping ensued as she tried again and again, each time with a little more force.

“She’s not the smartest tool in the shed,” Blop said, banging into Clyde’s house before adding, “Takes her a little while to figure things out.”

Leo didn’t have time to feel bad for Blop, because Dr. Flart’s mad scientist’s lab suddenly filled with the sound of a tremendous burp, followed by an explosion and a burst of light in one of the tall cylinders against the wall. The door blew open, pouring smoke, and a man stumbled out.

“Clyde!” the man bellowed. “Bring me another!”

Clyde immediately stopped what she was doing and bounced on her springy feet toward the bank of dials and knobs and buttons along the table in the middle of the room. The man didn’t seem to notice Remi and Leo standing in the shadows, and neither boy felt the urge to start talking. Clyde beeped and whirled. Steam shot out of her ears.

“I haven’t got all day!” the man yelled. He had turned around and shoved his head back inside the cylinder, pulling out gobs of wires and adjusting things Leo and Remi couldn’t see. Even hunched over, the man was very tall.

Clyde tapped her metal nose on a button and a claw attached to the ceiling by a coiled cord moved across the room. It plummeted to the floor near the glass wall,
and when it reappeared, the claw was holding a bottle of Flart’s Fizz.

“Which button did she push?” Remi whispered. Leo elbowed him in the shoulder as the bottle arrived in front of Clyde. The mechanical dog picked up the bottle between her wide metal jaws and carried it to the cylinder. Clyde beeped loudly and the man reached back his hand without turning around. A moment later he stood, banged his head on the edge of the cylinder door, and took a closer look at the bottle through the thickest pair of glasses Leo had ever seen.

“I specifically asked for grape, did I not?”

Clyde beeped and shook her head back and forth.

“No, no. I did, I said grape. I’m sure of it.”

He leaned forward, setting the cap of the bottle between Clyde’s metal teeth, as if he were about to use the Franken-dog as a bottle opener.

And that’s when the man saw Blop.

“What do we have here?” Dr. Flart said curiously, squinting his eyes through his thick glasses. “Is that? No, no — it can’t be.”

“Hello, Dr. Flart. It’s been a while,” Blop said.

Dr. Flart looked confused, scratching the wild tuft of white hair on top of his head.

“So it has,” he said at length. “So it has, indeed.”

He popped the cap off the bottle of Flart’s Fizz and Clyde’s head spun in a circle, steam pouring out everywhere, beeping like a lunatic robot. Dr. Flart didn’t pay any attention. Instead he guzzled every last drop from the bottle in one continuous monster glug. He got a funny look on his face, shook his head back and forth, and then let out the puniest of burps. It barely made a sound.

“Another dud,” he said, setting the glass bottle on the metal table with a
clang
. “Two in one day. What are the odds?”

“I didn’t come down here on purpose,” Blop complained. He was in an irritable mood, probably because of all the body blows at Clyde’s doghouse. “Those two idiots brought me.”

“Two idiots, you say?” Dr. Flart swung his head around as he took in the whole of his laboratory.

“Over here,” Leo said halfheartedly, stepping out of the shadows and pulling Remi along by his red jacket.

Dr. Flart weaved back and forth, ducking under a low beam as he moved cautiously toward Leo and Remi. He was thin and wiry, pushing seven feet tall, and he leaned down with his hands folded behind his back when he arrived within a foot of the boys.

“I’m a fan of your drink,” Remi said.

“Wherever did you get one?” asked Dr. Flart. He didn’t wait for an answer. “And what are you doing in my dungeon?”

“Merganzer sent us,” Leo said before Remi could start asking for more bottles of Flart’s Fizz. “And we got the drinks from Ingrid, upstairs.”

“In the Jungle Room,” Remi added.

Dr. Flart had gone a little soft in the face somewhere in the middle of all this, his eyes drooping and gigantic behind his glasses.

“Merganzer D. Whippet, the one and only,” he said.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Leo said with a smile. “He asked us to gather some things for him, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“Ingrid gave us the zip rope,” Remi explained, nodding with pride.

Dr. Flart stood straight up and banged his head on one of the beams.

“You should move some of those things,” Remi said. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Keeps me alert, agile. But it’s a thought.”

Dr. Flart seemed to be seriously contemplating the idea of removing some of the lower beams as he looked around his work space.

“We were wondering,” Leo said nervously, unsure if
he should ask, “you see, we’re on a tight schedule, and there are some things we’re looking for. . . .”

Dr. Flart held the watch on his wrist extremely close to his face, clapped his hands twice, and walked away. He shouted over his shoulder as his white lab coat trailed behind him.

“Come along, time to eat! We’ll get this all straightened out over dinner.”

Remi and Leo were famished . . . but they were also nervous about going too deep into the dungeon, away from the door that would lead them back out. Still, the idea that dinner might include Flart’s Fizz and all kinds of other fantastical menu items was enough to get them both moving as Clyde went ahead, encouraging them along.

“You don’t really think we’re idiots, do you, Blop?” Remi asked as Clyde bounced up and down, hitting Blop’s head on one of the beams as they went. Clyde didn’t seem to notice.

“Don’t answer that,” Leo said, and they kept walking until they reached a corner that turned to the left. Inside sat a large table, and around the table, all kinds of strange containers bubbling and frothing with foam and goop.

But it was the walls that made Leo and Remi stop in their tracks. They were very high, thirty feet or more.
And the walls were something altogether more dungeonlike: scary, creepy, weird.

All around them — the floor, the ceiling, the walls — was clear glass.

And behind the glass, tons and tons of dirt.

And in the dirt, many, many tunnels big enough for Leo to crawl through.

And in the tunnels, ants.

BIG ants.

Bigger than rats.

Bigger than Clyde.

Bigger than Remi!

I
call this stuff Glooooob,” Dr. Flart said. He had the handle of what appeared to be a gas-station tire pump in his hand. There was a long clear tube behind him full of something green and gloppy-looking. The handle had a thumb depressor, and Dr. Flart pushed it, sending a bright green stream of Glooooob sailing through the air.

“I’m going in!” Remi yelled — his fear of giant, man-eating ants wasn’t enough to keep him out of a room filling up with crazy green Glooooob. Clyde bounced up onto the table as Dr. Flart hosed her down with Glooooob, then he pointed the hose into his own mouth and glugged four or five mouthfuls.

He stopped spraying Glooooob and smacked his lips a few times.

“Sour,” he said, “like Pixy Stix. I might have over-cooked it just a tad.”

“Sour like Pixy Stix?” Remi said, and then Dr. Flart shot him in the face with the Glooooob and Remi had his first taste of something so delicious, he couldn’t put words to it.

“Get in here, Leo! It’s better than the Cake Room in the hotel!”

Leo reluctantly took two steps into the room, and Dr. Flart blasted his curly head of hair with Glooooob. Some of it ran down Leo’s face and into his mouth, and that was all it took to get Leo into the action.

Glooooob was sour, sweet, syrupy, sparkling perfection.

And the best part? What didn’t get eaten bubbled and fizzled and
poof!
It was gone.

“Dr. Flart, you’re a genius!” Remi said.

“So I’ve been told. Try this one.”

And so they went from tube to tube, showering one another and the room with every color of the rainbow. After a while they calmed down a little bit, sat in the chairs, and each held a different tube.

“Which one is this again?” Remi said, shooting Leo in the face.

“That’s the Flooooob,” Dr. Flart said. “The blue one is the Zooooob, blueberry bubble gum fizz, my personal favorite. I like to get my fruits at least once a day.”

“How’d you make this stuff?” Leo asked. It was awfully tasty, and the way it vanished like Flart’s Fizz made him like it even more. No cleanup.

“Simple molecular gastronomy, my boy. Nothing to it,” said Dr. Flart, and then he shot Remi square in the chest with a bubbling stream of pink Flooooob.