I turned to my advisers. There were three of them, two men and a woman. The first man was tall and thin, with a long neck and spindly arms. He was kind of shaped like a soda bottle. The woman next to him was shorter and had a compact look to her, arms pulled in at her sides, hunched over, chin nestled down level with her shoulders. She looked kind of like a can of soda. The final man was large, wide, and thick-bodied. He was husky, with a small head, and kind of looked like . . . well, a large two-liter soda bottle.
‘Someone get me something to drink,’ I barked to my honor guard, then walked up to the soda-pop triplets. ‘You’re my advisers?’
‘We are,’ said soda-can woman. ‘I’m Mink, the large fellow to my right is Dink, and the man to my left is Wink.’
‘Mink, Dink, and Wink,’ I said, voice flat. (Like soda that’s been left out too long.)
‘No relation,’ Dink added.
‘Thanks for clearing that up,’ I said. ‘All right, advise me.’
‘We should give up,’ Dink said.
‘Good speech,’ Mink added, ‘but it sounded too much like a rock ballad.’
‘That jacket looks good on you,’ Wink said.
‘Er, thank you, Wink,’ I said, confused.
‘Oh, Wink got caught in an unfortunate Librarian disharmony grenade,’ Mink added. ‘Messed up his brain a little bit. He gives great advice . . . it’s just not always on the topic you want at the moment.’
‘Never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ Wink added.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘So you think there’s no way out of this?’
‘The dome is going to crack soon,’ Dink said, shaking his head.
‘These burrows are coming more frequently,’ Mink said. ‘They’ll keep digging into our city, knocking more and more people into comas until there’s nobody left to fight back.’
‘Always wear a hat when feeding pigeons,’ Wink added.
All three of us looked at him. Wink shrugged. ‘Think about it for a moment. You’ll figure out why.’
‘So,’ Bastille said, walking up, arms folded, ‘you’re saying that if we can keep the dome from falling and protect against the people digging in, we can hold out.’
The three advisers looked at one another. ‘I guess,’ Mink said. ‘But how are you going to do that?’
‘Alcatraz will figure something out,’ Bastille said.
‘I will?’
‘You’d better.’
‘Never trust a three-fingered lion tamer.’
‘Why are you so sure I’ll figure something out?’
‘Because that’s what you do.’
‘And if I can’t this time?’
‘If you run out of toothpaste, you can make your own by mixing two parts baking soda with one part salt and some water.’
‘I just said that you would.’
‘Well, I’ll bet it would help if we could destroy those robots.’
‘How?’
‘An onion a day keeps everyone away.’
‘Teddy bears! We could use those purple bear grenades, the type that destroy nonliving things.’
‘We don’t have enough of them.’
‘Don’t the Mokians have any?’
‘I checked. They used all of theirs.’
‘Always throw paper first.’
‘Hey, guys! What are you doing?’
‘Aydee, Alcatraz is going to come up with a brilliant plan to stop the robots.’
‘Cool!’
‘You’re always so bubbly.’
‘Kind of like soda pop.’
‘Someone needs to get you a drink, Alcatraz.’
‘I know.’
‘Boom!’
‘Did you just say, “Boom”, Alcatraz?’
‘No, that was the rock hitting the ceiling. We really need to stop those!’
‘Arr!’
‘Wait, what?’
‘It’s me, Kaz. I was going to say, “Are you guys done jabbering yet?” But I stubbed my toe.’
‘Arr!’
‘Kaz!’
‘That time it wasn’t me. It was Sexybeard the pirate.’
‘Hey, guys. Arr.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, and I’ll hire you as my lawyer.’
‘Wait, I’m lost.’
‘That’s not surprising for you, Kaz.’
‘Who’s talking?’
‘I am.’
‘Who are you?’
‘Aluki.’
‘When did you get here?’
‘Oh, a page back or so. Looked like a real dangerous conversation to get into.’
‘Alcatraz, the rocks! We have to stop them.’
‘We need more teddy bears. Wow. Never thought I’d ever use that sentence.’
‘Nobody has more bears.’
‘Yes . . . but I just thought of something to fix that.’
‘Should I be scared?’
‘Probably.’
‘Always remember, foursight is what Oculators have when wearing their Lenses.’
‘Shiver me timbers!’
‘All right, Aydee. I’ve got a question for you. It’s going to be a hard one. The hardest math problem you’ve ever seen.’
‘Er . . . I don’t know . . .’
‘Alcatraz, are you sure you want to do this?’
‘No.’
‘Great. That’s comforting.’
‘It’s the best thing I’ve got right now. Aydee, I’m going to ask you a math question, and I want you to keep the number in your head. Only spit it out when we get done, all right?’
‘Okay . . .’
‘Take one and add fourteen.’
‘Er . . .’
‘Then take away nine.’
‘Right.’
‘Then multiply by seventy-four.’
‘Um . . .’
‘Then subtract three.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Then take the square root of that.’
‘What’s a square root?’
‘Then take one third of that.’
‘Got it.’
‘Then multiply by negative one.’
‘Okay.’
‘What?’
‘Hush, Bastille. Then add the number of inches in a foot.’
‘That’s easy.’
‘It is? I’m lost.’
‘Quiet, Kaz. Then add eleven billion.’
‘Okay . . .’
‘Then subtract eleven and one billion.’
‘This is getting hard.’
‘Then take the square root of that.’
‘Oh, I remember! A square root is a carrot that doesn’t know how to dance, right?’
‘Batten down the hatches!’
‘Then subtract one. That’s exactly the number of purple bear grenades we have left. How many have we got, Aydee?’
‘Uh . . . er . . . um . . .’
‘I think her brain is going to explode, Al.’
‘Hush. You can do it, Aydee. I know you can.’
‘I . . . carry the one . . . multiply by i. Take the complex derivative of Avogadro’s number . . . I’ve got it, Alcatraz! Five thousand, three hundred and fifty-seven. Wow! I didn’t know we had that many bears!’
Kaz, Bastille, and I glanced at one another. Then we looked at Kaz’s pack, which held the bears. He took it off in a flash, throwing it away.
He was just fast enough. The pack ripped apart and a mountain of teddy bears burst free – 5,357 of them, to be precise. They flooded out, piling on top of one another, making a mountain of purple exploding teddy bears as large as a building.
‘Aydee, you’re amazing,’ I said.
‘Thanks! I think I’m getting better at math. I hope it doesn’t ruin my Talent.’
‘I think you’re fine,’ Bastille said dryly, picking herself up off the ground from where she’d ducked, anticipating the explosion of teddy bears.
‘That’s a big ol’ mound of bears,’ Kaz said, folding his arms. ‘I think it’s time to hunt us some robots.’
‘Be careful, Your Majesty,’ Wink warned. ‘Some robots are unbearable.’
‘Your Majesty,’ Mink said, brushing off her wrap. ‘Perhaps you should decide what to do with the prisoners first.’
I glanced to the side. The guards were still standing there, watching over the group of suit-, skirt-, and bow-tie-wearing Librarians. The Mokians looked very anxious. The Librarians seemed bored.
‘Do we have a dungeon or something?’ I asked. ‘We should . . .’ I trailed off, noticing something odd. Frowning, I stepped forward. One of the captive Librarians, huddled near the middle, was hiding her face, looking pointedly away from me. She had blond hair and an angular face. As she tried to keep hidden, I caught her eyes and recognized them for certain.
‘Mother?’ I asked, shocked.
6.02214179 × 1023
Are you surprised? My mother showed up completely unexpectedly in Tuki Tuki when I just happened to be there fighting? How unforeseeable!
What? You’re not surprised? Why not? Is it because my mother has unexpectedly shown up in every single one of these books so far? (It’s a mathematical law: One point is a point, two points a line, three points a plane, four points a cliché. I think Archimedes discovered it first.)
This plays into one of the big problems for writers. You see, we tend to skip the boring parts. If we didn’t, our novels would be filled of sections like this one:
I got up in the morning and brushed my teeth, then went to the bathroom and took a shower. Nothing exciting happened. I ate breakfast. Nothing exciting happened. I went out to get the newspaper. I saw a squirrel. It wasn’t very exciting. Then I came in and watched cartoons. They were boring. I scratched my armpit. Then I went to the bathroom again. Then I took a nap. My evil Librarian mot×her did not show up and harass me. That evening, I clipped my toenails. Yippee.
See? You’re asleep now, aren’t you? That was mind-numbingly, excruciatingly boring. In fact, you’re not even reading this, are you? You’re dozing. I could make fun of your stoopid ears and you would never know.
HEY, YOU! WAKE UP!
There. You back? Good. Anyway, we don’t include all of that stuff because it tends to put people to sleep. I spent months in between books two and three doing pretty much nothing other than going to the bathroom and scratching my armpits.
I tend to write about the exciting stuff. (This introduction excepted. Sorry.) And that’s the stuff that my mother tends to be part of. So it’s hard to keep it surprising when she shows up, since every section I write about tends to be one where she gets involved.
So let’s start this again. This time, do me the favor of at least pretending to be surprised. Maybe hit yourself on the head with the book a few times to daze yourself. That’ll make it easier for you to exclaim in surprise when she shows up. (Remember, you should be acting this all out.)
Ahem.
‘Mother?’ I asked, shocked.
‘Hello, Alcatraz,’ the woman said, sighing. Shasta Smedry – also known as ‘Ms. Fletcher’ or many other aliases – wore a sharp black business suit and had her hair in a bun. She wore thin, horn-rimmed spectacles, though she wasn’t an Oculator. Her face had a kind of pinched look to it, as if she were perpetually smelling something unpleasant.