The Lonely Whelk (24 page)

“
Bad Face,” Perla
shouted.

A lump in the middle of the monkeys stirred
and then fell quiet.

“
Lord J,” she said a little
more quietly. No one answered. Hazel looked around but didn’t see
anyone move.

“
Maxwell,” Perla said,
after a pregnant pause.

From the corner, a loud hum began to sound,
increasing in volume until it became a shriek. Then, from a heap of
monkeys, a figure barreled towards Holland. She put up her hands to
defend herself, but his momentum was too much and they toppled over
and disappeared under the monkeys.

“
Quin,” John stated, almost
as if he were making an unspoken request.

A huge black man stepped forward, put one
hand into the squirming blanket of fur, and pulled out a wriggling,
writhing little man whose face was angry. He lashed out, but the
black man was too strong and had him quickly subdued.

“
You!” the man shouted.
“It’s you!”

“
What are you talking
about?” Holland asked, picking herself up off the ground and
dusting off her clothes. “What about me?”

“
You’re the one in the
picture! You’re her! You’re the one that ruined my life! If it
weren’t for you, he never would have picked him over me!” The man
spit in John’s direction.

“
Okay, Maxwell,” John said,
holding up his hands. “I’d like to pause everything right now and
figure out what exactly is going on in your head. You’ve been
stalking me for years – don’t think I haven’t noticed. And now, out
of the blue, you break into my office to steal what?”

“
The pencil,” Maxwell
hissed. “The only reason you succeeded and I failed – unfair
favouritism!”

“
You really think that’s
the reason you weren’t successful?” John asked.

Quin cleared his throat and raised an
eyebrow. Hazel thought that must be a message of some sort – maybe,
‘please explain.’

John nodded an acknowledgement to Quin.
“Okay,” he said, “so when we were kids in the orphanage, we got
called up for a meet and greet. This gentleman called me cute and
said I reminded him of his son. Then he gave me a pencil, told me
it was magic, and told me to work hard and be successful. Then he
donated a bunch of money and left.”

“
And I,” Maxwell growled,
“what did I get? Nothing! My whole life, all I wanted was to touch
the pencil, to hold it, to learn to wield its power!”

“
Don’t you think you’re too
old for magic pencils?” John asked.

“
Never!” Maxwell roared.
“Maddy—” he pointed at John, “—get him!”

“
Maxwell,” Perla
interjected harshly. “Maddy isn’t real. She never was, never has
been, never will be.”

Hazel frowned. She felt like she had been
dumped in the middle of a story, with no clue which direction was
the beginning and which was the end. Clearly there was a much
bigger issue going on here – but how had she ended up in the middle
of it?

Maxwell began to thrash and spit in Perla’s
direction. “How dare you! How dare you say such things about my
Maddy! She is the most beautiful, intelligent—” Quin dropped him
and he took off towards Perla. “—wonderful, amazing, sweet,
funny—”

Then everything was a haze of fur and limbs
and hate as Maxwell kicked and clawed his way through the sea of
monkeys towards his half-sister.

Clyde watched with a dazed indifference as
everything went to hell and came back again, and then took a return
trip. He wasn’t sure he would ever be able to tell the story of his
first day at work because no one would believe him. The strangest
part was that no matter how strange and chaotic everything was, all
he could see was his mother. She was in the center of the
commotion, making a fuss, demanding things be her way – and he
realized that she had always been this way. In restaurants, the
food was never good enough. At playgrounds, the other kids were
always the ones being naughty. At school, it was unacceptable for
teachers to give him anything lower than a B. And now, he was
seeing this same behavior, but on a much larger scale. She was no
longer an over-protective mother ensuring that life was perfect for
her son. She was now an over-protective mother who was also a
thief, a liar, and possibly a murderer.

He watched as Quin dropped Uncle Max, who
immediately made a beeline for his mother. It was Ivanna the Bard
who had said, “
Your parent is she who gave you life and he who
kept you going. In all you do honor this gift
.” He nodded. It
was as if he could hear the great teacher speaking directly to him,
through all the noise, chaos, and insanity that surrounded him.

Without another moment’s hesitation he
stepped forward and plowed one fist through Maxwell’s nose.
Maxwell’s rapid momentum was interrupted and he fell sideways,
clutching at his nose and crying profusely.

“
You hurt Maddy!” he yelled
and then broke into sobs.

“
Oh, Clyde!” his mother
gasped, turning to look at him. “You are a wonderful
son.”

Clyde turned towards Quin and held up his
hand; Quin tossed him a pair of handcuffs.

“
You’re under arrest, Mom,”
he said quietly. “Everything you say can and will be used against
you, and even though I’m not a licensed police officer, I will
testify against you in court.”

Her mouth dropped open as he snapped on the
handcuffs and guided her through the quagmire of monkeys towards
the Door.

“
Uh, wait a second,” John
called. “I think we’ve moved again.”

Clyde looked out the window of the little
tourist shop. He saw metal walls, a sign proclaiming that only
authorized personnel were allowed outside, and not a whole lot
else.

John turned to look at the red-haired woman
he called Hazel.

Hazel muttered in a foreign language.

“
Don’t apologize, Hazel,”
John said kindly.

Hazel said something else.

“
Let me see it!” John
reached out and took the monkey that she had been holding around
her neck. He fiddled with it for a moment and then it began to
beep.

“
Sorry,” it said. “My
translation monkey doesn’t work anymore.”

“
Bit of a delayed
reaction,” John said. “But that should help.”

“
Thanks!” the monkey
repeated after Hazel.

“
You should probably get
out of the shop,” John said to Holland. “Then we’ll deal with this
so you can get back to dealing with your lost passengers.” A
serious look crossed his features. “I am very sorry for your
loss.”

“
How did you know about
that?” she demanded.

John only shrugged.

“
Well, if you won’t tell me
that, at least tell me what that man over there has got against me.
I’ve been asleep for six hundred years!”

“
Ah, yes! I believe your
late husband, Johann, donated money to various orphanages all over
Sagitta, including mine. He was the one that gave me the magic
pencil.”

Holland still had a confused expression on
her face, and Clyde agreed with it.

“
I don’t
understand.”

“
He’s a madman.” John
shrugged. “He thought magic was real. He thought the magic pencil
made me successful. He’s been trying to get that pencil from me
since we were kids. I just didn’t realize that the pencil was still
the issue – I thought he had something else that he was mad at me
about.”

Holland was nodding. “So my husband gave you
a pencil… was it because you were named John?”

John nodded.

“
Yeah, that was our son’s
name. He gave you a pencil and told you it was magic. That sounds
like him.” Holland reached up to tuck her hair behind her ears. “So
let me get this straight. My husband gave you this ‘magic’ pencil,
and this gentleman, Maxwell, saw him give it to you, thought it was
really magic, and has been tracking it down ever since.” Her face
took on an expression of disbelief.

“
That’s about it,” John
replied, a grin spreading across his features. “I should probably
just give it to him.”

“
He stole it,” Quin
said.

“
Oh, the one in the frame?
That’s not the real one. I hid the real one in my sentimental box.
That one was just to remind me that someone else paid for my
education. Although I guess all that matters is that he believes it
was the real one.”

A muffled moan came from the huddled,
bleeding heap named Maxwell.

“
Well, Admiral Holland
Hawkings,” John said in a tone of finality. “It has been a pleasure
to meet you.”

“
And you, sir,” she
replied, reaching out to shake his hand. “I will take just Squeak –
or Emperor Tamarin, as he apparently likes to be called – since he
is our real shipbot. I will have a technician run virus software
and he should be fine. The rest of the monkeys are all yours. I
hope you enjoy them.” She turned to face Hazel. “It was a strange
meeting.”

Hazel nodded. “It was,” the monotone voice
of the monkey said.

“
Please, if you can avoid
it, don’t bring your ship back to mine. It causes electrical
problems.”

“
I won’t.” Hazel reached
out her hand.

Holland shook it and then turned and left
the shop.

“
Take us home,” John said,
“or, I mean, back to the Globe if you please. Just think ‘Globe’
and ‘Pomegranate City.’“

Without so much a sensation of movement,
Clyde looked out the windows of the shop, and there they were:
home.

He reached down unceremoniously, grasped his
mother’s arm, and led her from the shop.

Kaia’s brain went wild as soon as John said,
“Admiral Holland Hawkings.” She knew who that was – the famous
Admiral who led the Lonely Whelk, as the tales went, through a
storm of alien fighter ships and emerged on the other side, alive.
She had lost a large percentage of her passengers, but the ship
survived due to the diligence of her brother. Then she rose from a
deep slumber and piloted the ship, her crew, and her passengers to
the Ocean Planet, where they settled down and colonized a world by
hand for the first time in the history of Sagittan civilization.
They created man-made islands across the waters, terraformed
massive icebergs, and raised several generations of children before
they lost contact.

But the most amazing part was that Kaia knew
all this. She knew what was going to happen to Admiral Hawkings.
Holland had said that she had just woken up, and yet... Kaia shook
her head, the gears spinning faster and faster. John had done it –
the crazy genius had done it! He had built a time-traveling Door!
It wasn’t just a Door that moved itself through space. It wasn’t
just a Door that could do amazing and incredible things. It wasn’t
just a Door that seemed to defy all mathematical probability. It
was real and it could travel in time.

When her thoughts calmed enough for her to
realize what was going on around her, Hawkings was gone and Clyde
was guiding his mother out of the shop. She knew for sure that they
were back in Pomegranate City when security guards in black
sunglasses began to stream into the room to escort the thieves to
their new accommodations and pick up the robotic monkeys littering
the floor.

She looked up at John, who was frowning at
her.

“
You... you...” she
stuttered. “You... you...”

The biggest grin she had ever seen spread
across his face and spilled out into the air around him. His mouth,
his eyes, even his ears were grinning. He put one finger up to his
lips.

“
Shhh,” he said. “It’s a
secret.”

Kaia nodded, mouth still agape, and watched
as he turned away to deal with the situation at hand.

*******

The next several hours passed in a whirlwind
of excitement. Kaia followed John around as things seemed to
resolve themselves, if chaotically. First, Quin locked up Perla,
Maxwell, Bad Face, and Lord J in the security cells. Then he took
Clyde, and the two of them set about canceling the lockdown. Rock
and the police arrived, and, between them and the rest of Globe
security, they had the entire building cordoned off in a matter of
minutes, labeling it a crime scene.

Kaia was questioned, but she barely heard
what they asked her. The bright lights, loud noises, and utter
chaos were impacting her ability to process information, until
finally the police officer said she could answer the questions
tomorrow. John was bouncing around as if it were his birthday, but
this seemed to be his typical reaction to life in general, and Kaia
figured she had probably better get used to it. Hazel walked around
in a daze with the monkey around her neck. She got questioned too,
but John told them she was just a bystander and then the police
left her alone.

Clearly, John wanted to keep this new Door a
secret. Apparently the world wasn’t ready for time travel. She
imagined it was for this reason that she found herself being
carefully tucked away by John in a closet with Hazel.

“
Hi,” she said quietly. The
darkness of the closet was comforting, and it was good to get away
from all of those people, but she still wished she could be
alone.

“
Hi,” Hazel replied – or at
least that was how the monkey interpreted it. “What’s happening?”
she asked.