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“Maybe,” Kaz said. “I’ll need some of you on the outside though, running defense. Here.” He tossed Grandpa a small device that looked like a headset with an earpiece that fit snugly into the ear.
“Communicator’s Glass?” Grandpa asked, holding it up.
“Nope. Bluetooth.” Kaz handed him a cell phone.
“Librarian technology,” Draulin said with a sniff. “Far less advanced than a good shout.”
“Yeah, well,” Kaz said, tossing me and Draulin a cell phone and headset each, “it works. That’s all I care about.”
Grandpa was all too eager to put on the headset, though he needed a little help, as he thought the strap that held it in place was an eye patch. (Free Kingdomers often have an … unusual perspective on Hushlander technology and customs.) We started up a phone call, all four of us on the line so we could talk easily.
From there, the three of us left Dif, Shasta, and Kaz to make for the exit bay—a room where the wall was retractable. There we equipped ourselves with boots that had Grappler’s Glass on the bottom—it would stick to any other kind of glass. I pulled a boot onto my foot.* Doing so gave me a sense of perspective. The last time I’d done something like this, I’d been escaping from the Hushlands. Now I was heading back, full throttle.
Before, the Librarians had been trying to prevent me from escaping. Now it seemed they would do practically anything they could to keep me out. I was no longer the one being chased. I’d beaten the Librarians in Mokia, and now I was the wolf and they were the sheep. (You know, if sheep had antiaircraft guns, bazookas, and high-tech jet planes.)
This reminds me of hornets.
What? It doesn’t remind you of hornets? You’re pretty strange. I mean this is obviously the exact place in a story where you’d expect a discussion of insect biology. It’s even listed as such in The Great Book of How to Write Awesome Books.*
You see, hornets and bees are natural enemies just like cats and dogs, disco and rock, or Bastille’s fist and your face. They fought back and forth until one day, the game changed. And that game-changer was the Japanese giant hornet. These monsters managed to get across the ocean (they probably bought a time-share and felt forced to use it) and invade North America.
This was a problem for the bees. You see, the Japanese giant hornet has tougher skin than any North American hornet. They’re more vicious, bigger, and almost impossible for your average honeybee to kill. A few Japanese giant hornets can take out an entire hive—tens of thousands of bees—all by themselves.
So am I the hornet or the bee? Well, it depends on whether Aesop is telling this story or not.
Draulin pulled open the side of Penguinator, exposing us to howling wind and a view that twisted my stomach. Grandpa put on a pair of green-tinted spectacles: Windstormer’s Lenses, which would let him control the wind and make it easier for us to walk on the outside of the missile-like penguin ship. We filed out, sticking our boots to the floor, then walking out onto a retractable planklike device that extended out the door. From it we could step onto the outside wall of Penguinator, relying on our boots to keep us from plummeting to an untimely death on the top of the local Safeway.
Once we were outside, Grandpa pointed. He’d take the central position, above the penguin’s head. Draulin—giant crystal sword hefted on her shoulder—marched up to the left side of the ship, and I claimed the right.
Dark clouds rumbled overhead. It might storm soon.
“Welcome to the drive-through,” Kaz’s voice said over my headset. “May I take your order?”
“Uh…” I said back. “What?”
“That’s how you start a conversation over radio in the Hushlands,” Kaz said. “I’ve seen it in movies.”
“It’s not—”
“I’ll have a large soda and fries,” Grandpa said.
“Do you even know what a large soda is?” I asked him.
“Code phrase,” Grandpa replied. “It means ‘I acknowledge you, and by the way, please give me some fried potatoes.’”
“I … You know what, never mind.”
“Anyway,” Kaz said over the line, “anyone got any brilliant ideas on how to sneak into the Highbrary?”
“Sneak?” Draulin said. “Might be a little late for that, Lord Smedry.”
“Nonsense!” Grandpa said. “We have a rousing battle, then when everyone is exhausted, we slip in.”
“Assuming that would somehow work,” Draulin said, “how are you planning to bypass the dome?”
“Hmm…” Grandpa said.
“How about this,” Shasta said loudly over Kaz’s line—was she listening in on his conversation? “I think of a plan and you all focus on keeping us from being blown up.”
That seemed like a fine idea to me, as the jets were almost upon us. In fact, a pair of them passed by in a scream of engines and a blur of black. I stumbled, then pulled out my Shamefiller’s Lens.
Another jet approached, and this one launched a rocket. I yelped, thrusting my Lens forward and sending a jolt of power into it. A wide maroon beam blasted from my hand and struck the missile.
A voice popped into my head.
“Oh, wow. Remember how I jostled the other missiles as I was being loaded? Particularly that cute one? How could I have been so clumsy? And that one time back in the factory? I totally made an inappropriate sound when my casing scraped on the floor. Everyone was looking. Ugh. I wish … I wish I could just vanish.…”
BOOM.
As the missile vaporized, I lowered the Lens, stunned and more than a little unsettled. From the front of the ship, Grandpa looked back and gave me a thumbs-up. He was still using his Lenses to keep us from getting buffeted by the wind, but enough got through that his wispy hair fluttered around his head.
I felt sick. Had I guilt-tripped that missile into self-destructing? It had sounded so pathetic.
It was an inanimate object, I thought. Why should I care?
Gritting my teeth, I pointed my Lens as something else shot toward us. The maroon floodlight burst out, and I caught an entire enemy jet in its glow.
“Oh, wow,” I heard in my mind—the voice of the plane’s pilot. “I can’t believe what I said to Jim two years ago. Everyone was having such a good time, and then I bring up his mother. I knew she’d died. I’d been at the funeral! But it just slipped out. ‘How’s your mom?’ Why, why did I say that? I could literally explode right—”
I pulled the Lens away, panting, a shock of fear running through me. I felt that if I had waited a moment longer, the pilot would have exploded from embarrassment.
Wasn’t that the point?
The jet wobbled, then spun out of control, even though my Lens was turned off. I think I saw someone eject. I pretend I did, at least.
Hadn’t I always wanted more destructive Lenses? Hadn’t I complained about being given “wimpy” Lenses instead? But this … this was hitting below the belt. Hearing those voices dredged up all the stupid things I’d done in my life, the little mistakes that everyone else has most likely forgotten about. They were the kinds of things you lie in bed thinking about, feeling foolish. Wishing you could simply vanish.
This was a very, very dangerous Lens. And yet Grandpa considered the other one—the Shaper’s Lens—even worse.
What had I gotten myself into?
The penguin dived suddenly; Kaz was taking evasive maneuvers. As we spun through the air, zipping one way and then another, I had to scramble to blow up the odd missile—though I stayed away from attacking the jets.
Fortunately for us, Grandpa and Draulin were far more competent than I was. As she had demonstrated during a previous trip, Draulin had this uncanny ability to jump in front of missiles and bat them away with her sword—like she was playing a very strange game of tennis.* And Grandpa …
Well, Grandpa Smedry was a master of Lenses. I found myself distracted, watching him control the wind to blow missiles off course and planes into one another, or nudge Penguinator out of the way of a strike. He didn?
?t move; he stood in place, a look of intense concentration on his face, and Lenses hovered in front of him. He was using some six or seven at once, sending out blasts of fire, controlling the wind, heightening his awareness of the enemy locations.
He was a ridiculous little man sometimes, but at the same time he was—and I don’t use this word lightly here—astounding.
He also wasn’t going to be enough. Our ship was better than the Librarian ones, our pilot was amazing, and my grandfather was fighting wonderfully—but we were barely staying ahead of the missiles and the machine guns and the gun emplacements. Kaz couldn’t keep us on a straight course; he had to twist us to the sides to avoid barrages.
After ten minutes of furious battle, we were no closer to breaking through than we had been.
“I can’t help thinking,” Draulin said as she sliced a missile in half, “that this assault wasn’t very well-thought-out.”
“How surprising,” my mother’s voice said in our ears.
“Do you have a plan for us?” I asked her, then spun toward a missile and focused my Lens on it. The poor thing thought about how its serial numbers were misprinted and blew up. Bits of shrapnel bounced off Penguinator around me.
“Yes,” Shasta said. “But it requires us to not be the center of attention for a few moments.”
“So, basically impossible,” I said. “I mean, we are Smedrys.”
“I hadn’t noticed,” Shasta said. “For once it would be nice if you people didn’t hog all the attention.”
“My dear,” Grandfather said over the line, panting, sounding exhausted, “you must not have been paying attention. You see, this is what Smedrys do best.”
“Smell funny?” Kaz asked.
“Make my life difficult?” Draulin asked.
“Eat your chips when your back is turned?” I asked.
“No,” Grandpa said. “Draw fire.”
All was still for a moment.
“Pine nuts!” Kaz cursed. “Someone is calling us on the ship’s Communicator’s Glass.”
