What a Trip! (4 page)

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “We have to finish going around the world before that techie at the library fixes the gates and closes our escape route, right?”

Frankie nodded. “Right.”

“But Detective Fix is trying to stop Mr. Fogg's trip, so right now he's our biggest problem.”

“Right,” said Frankie. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“Here comes our biggest problem.”

The guy with the twirly mustache climbed up the stairs from a lower deck and spotted us.

“He's so annoying,” said Frankie. “I bet he's going to try to weasel some info about Mr. Fogg out of us.”

“Is it bad to throw a book character off a ship?”

Frankie laughed. “Maybe we can just throw him off the scent. Here he comes.”

The man twisted the ends of his mustache as he sauntered over. “You are friends of Mr. Fogg, aren't you?”

Before I could get a word out, Frankie went straight to the point. “Yes, we are … Detective Fix!”

“Detective?” He narrowed his eyes. “I'm sure I don't know what you mean! I work for the shipping company. Really, I do.”

“Yeah, right,” I said to myself. Then I had an idea. I pulled out the book and opened it. “Since you work for the shipping company, you probably know all about India, right?”

“Of course!” he said. “I, er, travel to India all the time.”

“Well this book is about India,” I said. Then, winking at Frankie, I said, “They say a great site to visit in India is a place called … Palmdale. What's it like?”

“Palmdale, eh?” Fix shifted his eyes nervously. “Oh, a beautiful place. Lovely place. Exotic. Full of enchantment, yes …”

“Could you be more specific?” asked Frankie, giving him a cold stare.

Fix looked away. “Well, Palmdale is full of palms, isn't it? And dales. It has several of those. Oh, yes, lovely palms and dales. Wait, what's that? Oh, I think I hear my name being called. I must be going. Good day!”

He scuttled off nervously.

“What a fibber!” I said. “He doesn't know India!”

“We'd better keep an eye on the guy.”

“Or four eyes,” I said. “Your two plus my two.”

“You're so good at math. Come on, let's do lunch.”

It was more of the same for the next few days, as the steamer finally left the Red Sea and launched out into the Indian Ocean. Waves, water, wetness, you know.

Then, on Sunday, October 20, at around two in the afternoon, the
Mongolia
arrived in the port of Bombay.

For the entire voyage, Mr. Fogg had played cards with an English soldier named Sir Francis Cromarty. Sir Francis was a nice old man who actually did know about India. I hoped he'd turn out to be a good character in this story.

When Mr. Fogg finally appeared on deck, carpetbag in hand, having seen none of the voyage, he announced, “According to my calculations, we have arrived two days ahead of schedule. This is good news.”

“Good news? This is wondrous news!” said Passepartout, hanging over the railing and gazing at the giant city that spread out before us. “Bombay! India! I finally get a chance to see some of this wonderful world!”

“Us, too!” I said. Then, nudging Frankie, I added, “And maybe we'll get to leave Detective Fix behind.”

We all clambered down the plank and onto the dock.

“Ah, Bombay,” said Sir Francis Cromarty, wiping his forehead. “One of the gems of all of India. Today in Bombay there is a festival of one of the religious groups known as the Parsees. They have wonderful customs, very colorful, very musical.”

“Indeed?” said Fogg, glancing coolly at his watch. “The train for Calcutta leaves in just over half an hour. Passepartout, you have your errands. Everyone, if you please, we shall meet at the train station in exactly thirty-three minutes beginning … now! Do not fail!”

“I shall not!” said Passepartout.

“Us not, either!” I said.

With that, Fogg and Sir Francis strode off toward the train station to get tickets. That left Frankie and me alone with Passepartout at the foot of a huge city.

“We don't get much time to look around,” I said, staring at all the pink and orange and purple buildings.

“That's the whole problem with life,” said Frankie. “There's always too much
stuff
to do. You can't enjoy the best things. Like just wandering around.”

“I agree with Frankie,” said Passepartout. “Are we to miss Bombay as we have missed Paris and Rome?”

“It does seem harsh,” I said. “Besides, what trouble can we get into in just … thirty-two minutes?”

The first thing we found out as we wandered into the city was that Sir Francis was right. There really was a religious festival going on. Down one street of pink stone buildings there came a parade of people dancing to the sound of tambourines and drums and strange, whining musical instruments.

“Awesome!” said Frankie.

“Let's follow the parade,” said Passepartout.

“Maybe there's food at the end of it!” I added.

The parade wound through narrow streets and up a hill to a giant temple with a big pointy dome on top.

“A lost temple!” I said. “How cool can you get?”

Frankie gave me a look. “It's not lost if everybody knows about it.”

Passepartout was doing his own little dance and heading toward the big building.

“We should go after Passepartout,” I said.

Frankie chewed her lip. “I don't know ….”

“It looks like fun. I'm going!” I rushed after him.

Frankie grumbled, but soon caught up with us. Together, we slid through one of the pointed arch-ways and into the temple. The high dome was decorated inside with tiny colored tiles, some of which were gold. Light filtered down through openings around the top, shedding streams of colored light across the floor.

It was cool and hushed inside the huge room.

“It's beautiful!” Passepartout whispered.

“I've never seen anything so amazing,” I said, trying to look at everything at once. “It's so quiet and peaceful in here. The place is full of people, but you can't even hear anyone walking around.”

“That's because they've taken their shoes off,” said Frankie. “Look, nobody has shoes on but us.”

It was the “but us” part that should have warned me.

Within a nanosecond, there was a gang of worshipers running toward us. “Stop them!” they shrieked.

Frankie and I took off running. Passepartout wasn't so lucky. Someone stopped him and pulled off his shoes.

“My wonderful French shoes!” he cried. He managed to twist out of their grasp and, slipping and sliding in his socks, tore across the floor to the exit. Meanwhile, Frankie and I had zipped out and clambered up to a sort of porch above the temple door.

“But I didn't do anything!” cried Passepartout, facing an even larger crowd rushing at him from the street.

“It looks like we offended them by wearing shoes in the temple!” Frankie called down to Passepartout. “Now jump up to us!”

Just as the crowd closed in, Passepartout jumped up and grabbed our outstretched hands. Amid the screaming of the throng, the three of us leaped from one colorful roof to another and finally down into the street.

We didn't stop until we boarded the train.

Chug! Ssss!
The engine puffed a huge cloud of steam and began to roll away. An instant later, the angry worshipers skittered into the station, screaming at the top of their lungs, and waving Passepartout's shoes in the air.

At the same moment, too, Detective Fix raced onto the platform. But the train was already too far along to catch. You would think the guy would be mad.

Instead, he smiled at the crowd of angry temple worshipers and then, from far away, at us.

“I don't like the way he's looking at us,” I said.

“Then you won't like this look, either,” said Frankie.

I turned around to see Mr. Fogg glaring down at us.

Chapter 8

“I believe I asked you not to get into trouble,” said Mr. Fogg as the train chugged on.

“I've heard about your little escapade,” he said when we wormed our way to our compartment. “We must hold all local customs in great respect.”

“Quite right,” said Sir Francis, who occupied the seat next to Fogg. “The government is very severe about this sort of thing. Quite against the law to wear shoes in an Indian temple. The worshipers get angry, you know.”

“We found out,” I said. “It won't happen again.”

“I am especially sorry,” said Passepartout, pulling on a pair of slippers and hanging his head the way I do when Mr. Wexler catches me daydreaming.

“Very well,” said Fogg. And that was the end of it. He began scribbling in his notebook, and everyone else was fairly quiet for the next few hours. The train chugged swiftly into the evening.

“Passepartout,” I said, “what time do you have?”

He pulled out his watch. “Seven in the evening.”

Sir Francis laughed. “You are over four hours slow!”

Passepartout smiled. “Perhaps that is because I did not change it from London time.”

“What difference does that make?” I asked.

Sir Francis smiled. “It is seven in the evening in London, four hours earlier than it is here, because you have been traveling eastward.”

Instantly, my head began to hurt. I guess it showed.

The military man leaned forward. “You see, the earth is divided into three hundred and sixty degrees all the way around. Since your journey is taking you to the east, you gain four minutes with each degree you pass through. And I should guess that you have passed through some seventy degrees so far. That accounts for the four-hour time difference and why it is earlier in London than it is here in India. Do you understand now?”

“Sort of,” said Frankie.

“Sort of me too,” I said. “Okay, not really.”

“At any rate,” said Passepartout, stuffing the watch back in his pocket, “I will not change my watch to suit the place. It shall remain on London time!”

“Quite right,” said Mr. Fogg. “Now, if you will excuse me …”

Instantly the conversation stopped, and Fogg huddled over his notebook again and scribbled in it, pausing only to look at his own watch and to mumble softly.

It was boring watching him, so Passepartout, Frankie, and I decided to go out to the back platform to get cool.

“What a master!” said Passepartout. “He refuses to look out the window. We are traveling across India, and he sees none of it! I am sorry about losing my shoes, but at least we saw some of Bombay. Him! He only looks into his little tiny book and scribbles with the numbers. An hour behind. A day ahead. Aye-yi-yi!”

“He is an odd sort of guy,” said Frankie. “I wonder if he cares about stuff the way normal people do.”

The train shot away into the darkness of the Indian night. Looking around, we could see the huge, wide night sky dusted with stars, and the strange shapes of temples and large, shaggy trees filling the background.

Sir Francis came out onto the platform, just as the train whizzed past a group of elephants tramping slowly beside a river that ran parallel to the tracks.

“We will be entering the dark section of the country soon,” said Sir Francis. “But we are perfectly safe as long as we remain on the train.”

“I don't like the sound of that,” I said, gazing into the scenery blurring along beside us. “What's out there?”

“Tigers and snakes and other creatures of the wild are the real rulers in these jungles,” Sir Francis said. “Then, of course, there is the village of Kalenger ….” He suddenly went quiet.

I turned to Frankie. Her eyes were wide. She was paler than usual. She nudged me. “You ask.”

“No, you.”

“I asked you first.”

I took a deep breath. “Urn, excuse me, Sir Francis … what about the village of Kalenger?”

Sir Francis's voice went almost to a whisper. “The villagers there are devoted to the Indian goddess … Kali.”

“Collie?” I said. “Lassie was a collie. She was nice.”

“Not collie,” said Frankie. “Kali. Go on, Sir Francis.”

The old military guy sucked in a long breath, looked both ways into the night, then stared right into our eyes. “The followers of Kali call her the goddess of
death!
”

Frankie and I nearly jumped out of our skin.

“You do well to be afraid,” said Sir Francis. “The followers sacrifice victims to Kali, right here in these jungles just a few feet away from us. They don't like strangers, that's for sure.”

I raised my hand. “When you say
strangers
, um, do you, sort of, you know, mean, like—”

“Us,” he said.

Frankie gulped. “Us? As in … us?”

“Us!” Sir Francis said creepily. Then he laughed. “But we have nothing to fear! This railway doesn't stop in the village of Kalenger! We won't be anywhere near where the villagers do their dark deeds! This train shall rumble right through until the morning light—”

Errrrrch!
The train screeched to a stop.

“Passengers, into the jungle now!” the conductor yelled. “The railway ends here!”

Chapter 9

In a flash, Phileas Fogg was out of his compartment and hopping off the train next to us. At the head of the train were some tents pitched in a small clearing, a bunch of workmen, and a bunch of no more tracks.

“What is the meaning of this?” asked Mr. Fogg, to someone who looked like he was in charge. “Why are we stopped here?”

“The railway is not finished!” was the answer.

Even in the dark night, I could tell that Passepartout was getting all red-faced. “Impossible! Do you know that my master must cross India in three days! How are we to do this now?”

I went up to the train guy myself. “Look, Frankie and I are stuck here in your world unless we make it completely around the world in eighty days!”