The 8th Continent (11 page)

ALARMS SCREAMED IN RICK'S EARS. THE
ROOST
FELL LIKE A FLAMING ARROW, FILLING RICK
WITH
an intense feeling of weightlessness that nearly made him puke. 2-Tor flapped his wings and screeched a sound like a radio blasting Top 40 singles at full volume.

“Rick!” Evie screamed, clinging to him. “We have to do something! Override the system.”

“I know!” Rick shouted over the noise.

“Quiz failure! Quiz failure!” 2-Tor squawked.

Rick dove under the flight console and snapped open the access hatch. A mess of colored wires greeted him. “Evie, grab the flight stick. When I reroute the auxiliary power, you're going to have to straighten out the
Roost
so we don't crash.”

“I'm already doing it,” she said, pulling on the flight stick as hard as she could.

Rick tried to remember how to rewire the ship, but all he could recall was something about an empty socket.

“Impact in ten seconds,” 2-Tor screeched.

Rick had had just about enough of countdowns.

And then he saw it, a vacant white socket behind the wires, looking at him like a surprised ghost. He disconnected the main power plug and stuck it into the auxiliary socket.

A million needles struck his arm all at once. He recoiled in pain at the electric shock. “Argh!”

2-Tor's voice sounded distant and tired. “Power restored. System operational.”

The reactivation of the
Roost
's engines screeched like a robot symphony.

“Woo-hoo!” Evie cheered, pulling back on the flight stick. But then she said the worst two syllables Rick had ever heard her say. “Uh-oh.”

“‘Uh-oh'? What's uh-oh?” Rick asked, climbing out from under the dashboard.

The flight stick shook violently, and Evie struggled to keep her grip on it. “Umm . . . we're coming in a little bit too fast.”

“A little? We're going two hundred miles per hour! Pull up, Evie! Pull up!”

He put his hands over hers and pulled with all his might. Together they adjusted the angle of the
Roost
so that the engines pushed down, allowing the repulsor buffer to kick in.

But still they fell.

Rick held his breath as the bright blue ocean filled the windshield.

Then everything went black as the
Roost
hit the surface, cutting through the dark water like a diving rod. Rick toppled to the cockpit floor. 2-Tor lost his balance and tipped over. Rick rolled out of the way just an instant before 2-Tor struck the floor with a tremendous
DONG
that echoed throughout the hovership.

Being wood, the
Roost
floated, bobbing to the surface a few seconds later. The hovership balanced on the ocean like a message in a bottle, upright with quite a bit of tilting.

Evie crawled out from under the control console. She put a hand over her chest, gasping for breath. “We made it.”

Rick flipped 2-Tor over and inspected the front of his robot body. “2-Tor, are you okay?”

2-Tor's eyes shot sparks. “Internal battery functioning at nine percent.”

“What got into you, you stupid bird?” Rick asked.

2-Tor tapped his feathers together awkwardly. “When I was exposed to the electromagnetic pulse from your father's detention device, it must have corrupted some of my memory. My solid-state drive contains all the programs and code, millions and millions of lines, that allow me to function. Some subsection of my master program must have been altered, or damaged, creating the series of catastrophic errors we just experienced. By my bolts, I am so embarrassed. I am sorry, children. Are you all right?”

“We're fine,” Rick said, unable to help but smile at the silly robot. “We're just glad you're okay.”

“If there is anything I can do to make it up to you, I will. Both of you will receive extra scoops of ice cream every dessert for a week.”

“How about for a year?” Evie fanned herself with her hand for effect. “I'm a little traumatized over here.”

“I will make it a month,” 2-Tor said. “But do not push it, young lady.”

Rick rose to his feet and helped 2-Tor up. “As much as I love ice cream, we need to figure out what to do next.”

“Isn't it obvious?” Evie replied. “Look at our GPS. We're only about fifty miles from the coordinates you found at Winterpole HQ. We should fly there right away.”

Rick took a glance for himself, then agreed. “You're right. We should go find the seastead, but how about we stay in the water? I've had enough air travel for a while.”

“It's a deal,” Evie said, pushing the lever to increase the throttle. The hover engines spat bubbles, and the
Roost
cut through the water like a snorkel.

Besides the low rumble of the engines, the trip was peaceful. It felt good to have some quiet after the intense landing. 2-Tor kept to himself, standing half in and half out of the cockpit, almost as if he was ashamed to be in the same room as Rick and Evie. Rick felt bad. He didn't want a depressed robot on this trip. It wasn't even 2-Tor's fault. Like everything else, the problems went back to Winterpole.

Evie distracted him from his brooding. “The coordinates are pretty close to the North Pole.”

“I guess they are,” Rick agreed, sitting forward in the pilot's chair.

“Do you think Doctor Grant lives at the North Pole?”

“I don't think so.”

“What if Doctor Grant is Santa Claus?”

“Don't be ridiculous.”

“What if he
is
, though?”

“He's not.”

“I'm not saying he is. I'm saying
what
if he is.”

“Evie! Dad's old teacher is
not
Santa Claus.”

His sister rolled her eyes. “Sheesh. What a grinch.”

They drove into a chain of icebergs, which dotted the water like the little bars of soap Mom used to throw into Rick's baths. He knew from his reading that some icebergs were more than a hundred meters tall, although most of their mass was hidden under the water.

“Look at that!” Evie said, pointing at two large blobs on the GPS. “There are whales swimming alongside the
Roost
. AWWOOOOOOOOOH!”

“What's that?” Rick asked. “Your whale call?”

Evie ignored the jab. “I sing to thee, gentle giants of the ocean. AWWOOOOOOOOOH!!!!!”

“You sound like a wolf.”

“AWWOOOOOOOOOH!!!” She howled in his face. “It's a whale. Rick, you better clean the blubber out of your ears. That sounds nothing like a wolf.”

“Children . . .” There were long pauses between 2-Tor's quiet words. “My sensors indicate that we are directly on top of the coordinates of Doctor Grant's seastead. I'm not sure if you can trust my sensors after the terrible thing that I did, but that is what they say.”

“It's all right, 2-Tor,” Rick assured the robot. “The GPS says the same thing.”

“So where is it?” Evie asked, peering out the windows. “What are we looking for?”

When Rick closed his eyes, he could see Doctor Grant's incredible invention. A seastead—an artificial island capable of housing hundreds if not thousands of people. It would look a little like an oil rig, but much bigger, and more beautiful. From above, it would resemble the most tranquil homestead imaginable. Happy families would toss Frisbees and walk their dogs. Teachers would hold classes in outdoor gazebos, where kids could run and play between lessons. Maybe there would even be an aviary to house all the birds that wanted to visit. It would be heaven—a perfect place where Rick could read books and play video games and no one would bother him, where he could continue the mission of Lane Industries to develop cutting-edge technologies.

“No sign of anything anywhere,” Evie said for the eightieth time. Doctor Grant's seastead would only be heaven if they could find it. . . .

“I don't understand.” Rick furrowed his brow. “We detected those whales on the GPS, and there are icebergs everywhere. Why hasn't the seastead appeared on our scanners?”

“I'm checking them.” Evie adjusted the dials, focusing the three-dimensional map the
Roost
had charted of the area. “But I don't see anything.”

Rick moved his eyes close to the GPS screen, peering over the graphics for any hint of the seastead's location. The giant structure should have been easy to spot.

For over an hour they drifted in circles, looking behind icebergs in search of Doctor Grant's elusive ocean hideout. Rick was tired, Evie was bored, and they both really could have gone for a chicken sandwich.

“It's no use!” Evie banged her fist on the console. “There's nothing up here.”

“Wait a minute!” Rick grabbed the GPS screen and pulled his face closer to it. “Straight ahead. What's that?”

Evie peered out the windshield. “I don't know. It's bright. Something reflective.”

“Is it some kind of hovercraft?” Rick asked.

“I can't be sure from here,” Evie said. “Let's get a closer look.”

“Wait! It might be dangerous,” Rick cautioned.

“Only one way to find out!” Evie grinned, pushing the
Roost
forward.

Ahead in the windshield, Rick watched as the bright reflective light took shape. It was a flat raft of what looked like plastic bottles, bound together with hundreds of tight rubber bands.

“Come on!” Evie said, jumping out of her seat. “Let's go check it out.”

Rick raced her through the
Roost
. They emerged from a knot large enough for them to stand in and crept onto one of the longer branches overlooking the plastic bottle raft. There was a bunch of junk at the bottom of the raft—cooking gear, a small stove, a broken radio, a big bundle of rags, and a small pile of fish bones.

Asleep on the edge of the raft was a long, thin cat with reddish-brown fur and black stripes. It looked a little bit like a tiger.

“It's just a cat,” Evie said.

“
Rrrrowa!
” said the tiger cat.

The pile of rags shook. “Quiet, Niels Bohr! Quiet, I say!”

The tiger cat hissed, then padded in a circle around the bobbing raft. Rick watched in disbelief as the pile of rags fell apart, revealing an old man in huge bug-eyed sunglasses.

“Excuse me, sir!” Rick called out to him. He waved, but the man seemed uninterested in the two children on the seafaring tree. “I'm looking for a seastead that's supposed to be around here. It should look a little bit like an oil rig, but with houses and stuff on it. Have you seen anything like that?”

The old man snorted. “Seen? Nope! I haven't seen anything. You see, I'm blind! But as for the seastead, you're looking at it. Welcome! You've arrived!”

2-Tor pushed his way through the knot and sidled onto the branch. He dug his talons into the wood to keep from falling off. “I say! What's going on here?”

Rick could not understand what the old blind man was talking about. How could this ugly recycled raft be the seastead? The seastead was supposed to be a palace on the waves, a worthy home for someone of Doctor Grant's genius.

He called out to the old man, “I don't understand. Where's Doctor Grant?”

“You're looking at him!” the old blind man said. “Assuming you're not blind too. And if I could see, I would be looking at Richard and Evelyn Lane.”

Rick exchanged a glance with Evie, who appeared equally surprised. “I'm not sure which is more confusing,” she began in what for her was a tentative tone, “that you are Doctor Grant, or that you know who we are.”

Doctor Grant cackled. “You mean I was right? Stupendous!”

Evie squinted like she was trying to read fine print. “Did our dad tell you we were coming?”

“No, I have not spoken to your father in well over a decade, but I would recognize the sound of a robo-voci speech box anywhere. Only George Lane could fine-tune such a brilliant invention.”

2-Tor sounded startled. “You mean me, sir?”

“Yes, yes!” Doctor Grant said, moving his head around as if trying to find where 2-Tor was standing above him. “You sound like a marvelous creation.”

“Why, sir, my coils are blushing. No one has ever said that about me before.”

Doctor Grant slapped his knee and laughed. “This is too much. So where is the old circuit dealer?”

“You mean our dad?” Evie asked. “He's in trouble. That's why we came. Doctor Grant, we need your help.”

The blind doctor called them down from the
Roost
. The water was too unstable to use the ship's exit ramp, so Rick fetched a grappling hook. 2-Tor stayed on the branch overlooking the raft, while Rick and Evie climbed down the grappling hook's rope and settled on Doctor Grant's water bottle abode. It was no larger than a king-sized bed.

“I still don't understand how this can be the seastead,” Rick said. “I expected something so much bigger.”