Operation Sherlock (2 page)

His mother looked startled. His father's dreamy eyes opened a fraction of an inch, which was
his
way of looking startled.

“Why, yes—yes, it does,” stammered his mother. She looked to her husband. “Cromp?”

Mr. Davis reached out and put his hand over his wife's. He nodded to her encouragingly.

Dr. Davis took a deep breath. She glanced around, as if looking for someplace to hide. Her eyes darted over the room, from her own priceless antiques to Trip's rare tropical fish to her husband's award-winning paintings, and finally returned to her son. “Trip,” she said softly. “I have to ask you to promise me something.”

Trip ran a long-fingered hand over his close-cropped brown hair. Now she was making
him
nervous. “Okay,” he said. “Shoot.”

“Silence.”

He raised a pale, questioning eyebrow.

“I have to have your promise of silence.”

Trip shrugged. “I can keep my mouth shut.”

Dr. Davis nodded. “Good. Because you can't tell anyone about what we're going to be doing.”

“What
are
we doing?” asked Trip.

“Leaving,” said his father.

A chill tingled down Trip's back. “Where are we going?”

His parents locked eyes for a moment.

“We don't know yet,” whispered his mother.

Rachel Phillips folded up the small instrument she had been looking through and nodded in satisfaction. It had been three weeks since the mysterious visit from Dr. Hwa had disrupted their lives so thoroughly, and at last she knew their destination. Dropping the tool into her pocket, she nudged her twin brother, Roger. The government plane they were riding in touched down with a slight bump. “The South Pacific,” she said confidently. “Somewhere east of Australia.”

Roger shook his head. “Can't hear you,” he said, pulling a plug out of his ear. The strains of Beethoven's magnificent Ninth Symphony drifted out until he twisted the end of the plug. It fell silent, and he dropped it into his pocket. “What were you saying?”

“We're in the South Pacific,” repeated Rachel as the plane taxied down the runway.

Roger shrugged. “So what's the news? I was watching the stars, too. This whole thing about landing at night so we won't know where we are seems pretty silly to me. It's
easier
to figure it out then. I'm not sure Dr. Hwa's as bright as Dad thinks he is!”

Rachel tugged at her braid, a length of hair so red it seemed to be on fire. “I think this
whole thing
is pretty fishy,” she whispered.

Roger nodded, then shoved back a lock of red hair that had fallen across his own eyes. Their father often said that if nothing else had marked them as twins, the hair would have done it. People had trouble believing one such head of hair could exist. Two of them had to mean twins!

“I wish Dad wasn't being so mysterious about the whole thing. You'd think we were blabbermouths or something.”

“That bothered me for a while,” admitted Rachel. “But you've got to remember how everyone at Harvard was always wondering what he was going to come up with next. Like that graduate assistant who tried to make friends with us so he could get a jump on Dad's research?”

“That twit?” asked Roger with a wave of his hand. “I knew what he was up to from the beginning.”

“Are you two ready?”

Their father, Dr. Anthony Phillips, had been riding a few seats ahead of them, next to Dr. Hwa. Looking up, Roger was disappointed to see that the mysterious scientist was already on his way out the door. He had wanted to corner him for a brief talk.

“As ready as we'll ever be,” said Rachel glumly.

“Come on, Rach,” said Dr. Phillips. “It's not the end of the world.”

“No, just the end of our lives,” said Roger. “Who wants to leave Cambridge for some deserted island in the South Pacific?”

Dr. Phillips's eyes widened, and he looked at his son nervously. “How did you know where we are?”

“Come on, Dad, give us
some
credit,” said Rachel. “We're not your kids for nothing.”

Dr. Phillips ran a hand through his thinning auburn hair. “Okay, I can guess how you figured out the location—actually I expected you to do that, if not quite this quickly. But how did you know the island is deserted?”

“Well, if it wasn't, what would be the point of keeping it secret?” asked Roger. “We'd have figured out where we were as soon as we got here anyway.”

Dr. Phillips smiled. “You have a good deductive mind, son, but you're still too quick to jump to conclusions. Or sometimes you come to the right conclusion for the wrong reasons—which can be just as confusing in the long run. The point wasn't to keep you from figuring it out. It was to keep anyone
else
from knowing before we got here. Besides, the place isn't totally deserted. It used to be an Air Force base, and some of the staff has been kept on for this project.”

Rachel began to giggle.

“What's so funny?” asked Dr. Phillips.

“You!” said his daughter. “One of the reasons Roger jumps to conclusions is he knows you can't resist correcting him. It's a great way to find things out.”

Dr. Phillips blushed.

“There goes my secret method!” complained Roger.

“Oh, don't worry,” said Rachel. “Dad can't help himself.”

Anthony Phillips looked at his children and wondered, not for the first time, how he would survive the six years left until they were eighteen, and old enough to leave home. “All right, you two,” he said at last. “Let's get moving.”

Reaching above their heads, he hauled down the bags the two of them had brought to carry their most necessary or most beloved items. Then he grabbed his own satchel and headed for the door. The twins followed at his heels.

“Ouch!” said a voice as Roger accidentally banged one of his cases against a seat. The voice came from inside the case.

Rachel rolled her eyes.

“Hey!” yelled the voice. “Who turned out the lights? Somebody, turn on the lights!”

“Roger,” sighed Dr. Phillips, “will you please turn him off?”

Roger slapped the side of the case. “Shut up!” he said fiercely.

“Rats!” muttered the voice. “I hate it when you make me go to sleep!”

 

“Let's Blow This Popsicle Stand”

Wendy Wendell was snoring in her new bed when the pale morning light began to filter through her window. After a few moments the sunrays struck the face of a large doll that sat on the shelf opposite her bed.

Immediately the doll—dressed in diapers and a bonnet, and known to her owner as “Baby Pee Pants”—opened her glass eyes. She crossed and uncrossed them, waited thirty seconds, then reached out to poke the doll next to her. “Hey, Blondie,” she growled, in a voice that would have been better suited to a truck driver, “time to wake up!”

The second doll—a twelve-inch-tall beauty with blue eyes, waist-length blond hair, and a hot-pink bikini plastered onto a figure that would have been grotesque in real life—yawned and stretched. “Time to move it, Mr. Pumpkiss,” she said wispily, nudging the teddy bear that sat on her right.

The bear's nose twitched. “Buzz off, Blondie,” it snapped.

Despite its words, the bear pushed itself to a standing position.

“Ready?” asked Baby Pee Pants.

The other two toys nodded. Moving in unison, all three took a step forward.

Immediately they fell off the shelf and crashed to the floor.

Still in perfect synchronization, the toys said a word their owner's parents would have preferred she not even know, then climbed to their feet and began marching across the room. “Captain Wendy,” they chanted. “Calling Captain Wendy! Time to wake up, Captain Wendy!”

When they had made their way across the floor—which was like a doll-sized obstacle course, given the mess that covered it—they ran into the side of Wendy's bed and fell down again. After repeating their curse word, they began trying to climb the sheets, crying, “Let us up! Let us up, Captain Wendy!”

Wendy Wendell opened her right eye and glared at the toys. “Lemme sleep,” she growled.

“Let us up! Let us up!”

“Chips!” exclaimed Wendy, pushing herself to her elbows. “What did I do to deserve this?”

The toys responded, as they had been programmed to: “Life is rough, Captain Wendy.”

“And then you die,” added Baby Pee Pants in her truck-driver voice.

“Right.” Rolling onto her side, Wendy pulled the sheets over her head.

“Let us up! Let us up!”

With a sigh Wendy reached down and scooped the toys onto her bed. This cued them to give her five minutes of silence.

When the time was up, the bear began to sing.

Ray Gammand dug his spoon into the strawberry jam and scooped an outrageous amount onto his English muffin. “I don't like it here,” he said. “I want to go home.”

“For heaven's sake, Ray, give the place a chance,” replied his stepmother. “We got here after dark last night, and you haven't been outside yet this morning. How can you possibly know if you like it or not?”

Ray looked at her suspiciously. “I thought you didn't want to come here, either.”

Elinor Gammand shrugged. “I didn't. But I lost that fight. Do you think I should hold a grudge about it? Your father had good reasons to accept this assignment, so I figure I just have to make the best of things.”

Ray scowled. “I don't want to live on an island.”

“What did you think Manhattan was?” asked the new Mrs. Gammand, trying to hold in her smile.

“Well, at least it had a city on it! I hate this place. You can't even get a cell phone signal here!”

“I suppose you'd better just go back to your room and sit,” said Ray's stepmother, wiping a smear of jam from the side of his mouth. “After all, there's no point in going out to explore a place you hate.”

Ray sighed. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get Elinor to put up with his nonsense. “I guess I can cope with it,” he grumbled, shoving the last of the muffin into his mouth and grabbing his basketball. “I'll see you later.”

Elinor Gammand let the smile she had been holding in blossom. It was quite dazzling, one of the things that had led to her becoming the second Mrs. Gammand. Then her face went serious again. “Don't forget what your father told you.”

Ray looked puzzled. “He told me lots of things.”

“Security is tight. So pay attention to the signs and
don't
go where you shouldn't! Also, be back by eleven-thirty. Dr. Hwa has scheduled a big meeting where we'll meet the other scientists and then tour the base. For heaven's sakes, try not to be late for a change. This is an important meeting.”

“Okay,” said Ray.

He didn't really mean it. By eleven-thirty he planned to be on his way back to Manhattan.

“Too much blue,” said Trip Davis to his father.

Elevard Crompton Davis looked out at the early morning sea, then back to the easel he had set up on the bluff above Anza-Bora's eastern shore. “You're right,” he said glumly.

Trip smiled.

“Look, Trip, I appreciate the advice,” said Mr. Davis as he opened a tube of brown paint and smeared some onto his palette. “But the truth is, you're starting to drive me slightly mad. I know there are some other kids here. Why don't you go look for them?”

Trip's smile faded. “I don't like meeting new people.”

His father paused, then wiped his brush on a rag. “I can understand that,” he said at last. “But let's face it—it's new ones or no one.”

“I didn't ask to come here,” said Trip bitterly.

“Neither did I!” snapped his father. They looked away from each other. “Your mother…”

“I know,” sighed Trip. “Mom-the-computer-genius has to do this.” He turned away. “I'll be good,” he muttered. “She'll never know how mad I am.”

Turning back to the scene he was trying to paint, Mr. Davis noticed a pair of redheaded kids strolling by on the beach below. “Look, Trip,” he said. “Why not see if you can get to know those two?”

No answer.

“Trip?”

No answer.

Cromp Davis turned away from his painting. His son was gone.

The dark-eyed woman gazed through her kitchen window, watching her son, Hap, work in the backyard. She felt another pang of the guilt that had nagged at her off and on since she and her husband had decided to stay on Anza-bora Island after most of the base personnel were shipped back to the states.

She bit her lip. The boy appeared content; tinkering with the engine of his dune buggy was one of his favorite things to do. But she was a mother, and could see beyond mere appearances. As she watched, every once in a while Hap would look up from the engine and stare out to sea. Though the salty breeze rustling through his blond hair gave him a carefree appearance, his eyes were dark and brooding.

He looks so handsome
, she thought.
And so lonely. It's hard to believe he's only thirteen
. She pulled the curtain shut and went to her favorite chair.
Did we make a mistake staying on like this?

“Where better to raise a boy than on an island?” her husband had kept asking when they were trying to decide whether to accept Dr. Hwa's offer. “The world is going crazy. This is a safer place to be.”

Despite her husband's claim that he wanted to remain on Anza-bora for Hap's sake, the woman knew the real reason he wanted to stay was that he himself loved isolated places, and considered living on a nearly deserted island close to heaven.

While they had many things in common, in this matter, Hap and his father were very different. Not that Hap would ever admit it. As soon as he figured out his father wanted to stay (and it hadn't taken him long to do so), nothing could have gotten him to say he wanted to leave.