The Atomic Weight of Secrets or The Arrival of the Mysterious Men in Black (39 page)

“Yes,” Faye said, now anxious. “Do you know where my cousin is? How we might find her? It’s rather urgent.”

“Course I know,” the woman said. “I’m the housekeeper. I keep the house. Course I know where everyone is.”

“Lovely,” said Faye. “Would you be so kind as to tell us?”

The old woman gave them a piercing stare, looking each one of them dead in the eyes. Then she turned to Faye.

“Thems with you?” she asked, nodding toward the others.

“Yes,” said Faye.

“Well, Miss Katharine’s with her brothers at the shop.” With that, the old woman began to close the door.

“Wait, the shop? What shop? Where is it?” Faye asked,
grabbing hold of the door.

“Twenty-Two South Williams Street,” the woman said, again trying to close the door.

“Where is that?” asked Faye, again stopping her.

“You go right a few blocks, left, then west up and down that way.” The old woman pointed this way and that, and then she peeled Faye’s fingers from the door and closed it with a decisive bang.

“Actually, it’s left three blocks and then right,” said Lucy, looking up at the others with an almost apologetic grin.

“Well, if I had to pick between Lucy and that old woman as the one to follow,” Noah said, stepping over to stand beside Lucy, “I’d pick Lucy, any day.” Lucy beamed.

With that, the children picked up their satchels and headed in the opposite direction from where the old woman pointed. After several left and right turns, they found themselves on a rather busy street.

“We passed South Williams loads of times,” said Lucy, “and I’ve seen the shop at number twenty-two.”

“Even if you hadn’t, Lucy,” said Jasper, pointing across the street, “how many shops on South Williams could there be?”

“It’s her!” said Faye, jumping up and down. There, on the corner, was a shop, and in the front, bending over a bicycle, was Cousin Katharine. Faye rushed across the street, minding the traffic, with the other four quickly, but carefully, following.

Faye shouted, “Katharine!”

Katharine stood up. Her dark hair was pulled back and mostly hidden beneath a light hat. At first, she did not seem to recognize Faye, but then, all at once, she grew a marvelous smile that lit up
her whole face.

“Is this my little Faye?” she asked, hugging her cousin tight. Faye was almost as tall as she was.

“Oh, I’m so glad to find you,” said Faye from the depths of Katharine’s embrace.

Katharine looked around. “Where are your parents?” she asked. “And who are these fine young people?”

“These are my schoolmates. Mother and Father... well, they’re working on a project. But we must talk...” Faye looked around, then whispered, “And we must talk in private.”

“All right.” Katharine thought for a moment. “Come with me,” she said.

The bicycle shop was full of gears and drawings and parts, as well as finished bicycles. They looked lovely. There were even a couple tandems—bicycles built for two riders. Several men were working at benches and testing wheels. One sketched something at a drafting table.

“I thought you were a teacher,” Faye said.

“I am,” Katharine said, “but I help my brothers out here at the shop when I can. I love to ride and tinker. Mother always taught us the pleasures of working with our hands.”

The children followed Katharine to the back room and closed the door behind them.

“Right,” Katharine said. “Tell me, what is going on?”

It took several minutes to explain to Katharine what had transpired. They left out several details. Many, in fact. They divulged no information about what their parents were doing.
They didn’t know anyway. About Reginald Roderick Kattaning, they said simply he was in pursuit of their creation and that he was not a very nice man. Of the Young Inventors Guild, they told her nothing.

“We’ve been led to believe our project would be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands,” said Faye, cryptically. “It might bring about problems for those closest to it, and to our parents, if it were discovered.”

“What are you saying, Faye?” said Katharine.

“It’s just that we’ve created something very powerful, and it must be kept secure,” said Jasper. “We can’t keep it where we’re staying.”

“And what is this invention?” Katharine asked, looking worried. “A weapon?”

The children looked at one another, and then at Faye.

“Faye, you should do the honors,” said Wallace.

Faye slowly unwrapped her satchel. The others followed.

Forty minutes later, Katharine opened the door to the room, flushed with excitement at what she had heard and seen. She went over to the man working at the drafting table and whispered in his ear. He stood abruptly, spilling his pencils onto the floor.

“Ed,” he called to the man aligning a set of wheels on a bicycle, “please get my brother.”

The man hurried through the door that led to the back porch. He returned almost immediately with another man, younger than the draftsman, with a dark moustache and a wrench in his hand. Both the draftsman and the younger brother with the moustache
followed Katharine into the back room.

There they found five children standing around a small contraption obviously built to fly. Faye stood up.

“This is Faye, Cousin Gwendolyn’s daughter,” said Katharine.

The two men didn’t look up. Instead, they walked around the small craft.

“Gentlemen,” coaxed Katharine, “please stop drooling for one moment and greet Cousin Faye.”

“Little Faye?” asked the draftsman, looking around as if suddenly aware that others were in the room.

“Well,” Katharine said with a smile, “she’s not so little anymore.”

The two men seemed taken aback at the sight of Faye. They studied her, as she studied them. “You’ve grown, Little Faye,” said the younger brother with the moustache.

“And you’ve grown a moustache,” said Faye.

“This is some machine,” said the younger brother with the moustache.

“Who built this?” the draftsman asked.

“We all did,” said Faye.

“But it was her idea,” Noah said.

“No, it wasn’t,” said Faye. “I know when a thing is my idea. This was all of ours.”

“It’s wonderful,” said the younger brother with the moustache.

“It’s a fantastic design,” said the older brother.

“And it flies,” said Katharine.

The two men looked at Faye. She nodded.

“It flies?” they both asked in unison.

Faye’s smile broadened. “Yes, it does.”

“It truly flies on its own power?” the younger brother with the moustache asked, looking at the engine.

“Yes, although it depends on wind for lift,” said Wallace. “And you have to—”

“You’ve got to keep it for us,” said Lucy. “Faye says you’re the only ones we can trust.”

Faye started to explain, but the younger brother with the moustache cut her off with another stunned sputter. “And you say it really flies?”

“Yes, although we haven’t built a larger-scale craft yet,” said Faye.

“We’ve been working on our own designs,” said the draftsman, running his hand along the wing of Faye’s craft.

Faye said, “We’ve worked out that the wing-warping—”

“Wing-warping? Of course!” said the younger brother with the moustache. “We’ve been working with kites and found—”

“Yes, kites!” exclaimed Faye. “That would have been an excellent way to visualize, to get a real, solid handle on—”

“Faye,” said Jasper, catching her by the sleeve, “who are these fellows? How do we know we can trust them?”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said the younger brother with the moustache, kneeling down and looking Jasper right in the eye. “Terribly pleased to meet you,” he said.

“This is Lucy, Jasper, Noah, and Wallace,” said Katharine. “They’re friends of Cousin Faye. Children, these are my brothers, Wilbur and Orville.”

“I can see the similarities between your creation and our most recent design,” said Wilbur, still examining the aeroplane, “but you’ve done a much better job with the engine, the propeller,
the wings, and—”

“You need to take this working half-scale prototype,” Faye began, but Orville cut her off.

“What do you mean ‘take’ it?”

“We need someone to take it from us,” said Faye. “In fact, it would be best if the full-scale model was completed and made public. Someone else is bound to be close, and it’s safer to have it out there than hidden and at risk of finding its way into the wrong hands.”

The children all looked at one another. They had not counted on Katharine’s brothers being interested, let alone knowledgeable and, in fact, working on the same thing. They had come seeking a place to hide their invention. What they’d found was a place to launch it.

“May we have a moment?” Jasper asked, but the brothers only nodded, enthralled as they were with the aeroplane.

“Are we just going to give them the aeroplane?” asked Wallace, incredulous. “These guys aren’t going to want to simply hide it. And we don’t even have a patent.”

“We have no choice,” said Noah. “We’ll just have to be the silent geniuses who changed the world.”

“And we do want to change the world, don’t we?” asked Faye. “We don’t want to destroy it, and chances are we may never have a chance to let it fly it ourselves.”

“We can let them finish it,” said Jasper. “Then, when it’s safe, we can let the world know it’s ours.”

“Even if that’s not until we’re dead,” said Noah.

“Noah might be right,” said Faye. “With everything going on, who knows if it will ever be safe to be in the public eye?”

“Are you saying you think I’m right?” said Noah.

“Me? Say you’re right?” said Faye in mock indignation. “I won’t say you’re right even if you are.”

“I’d love to see it fly with a real person in it,” said Lucy.

“And what am I, Lucy?” asked Faye.

“I mean so that a real
big
person could fly it,” Lucy said.

“Right. Is it settled?” Faye looked at her friends. They nodded. “My cousins can complete it and release it to the world. We can claim credit when it’s safe.”

Five hands went into the center. The Young Inventors Guild had made a decision, and while they knew it was the right one, they all felt a little sad just the same. It felt a bit like a mother bird watching her baby bird fly away. “Well, we’ll always have our journal,” said Lucy.

Orville cleared his throat. “You were saying..?” he said.

“You need to build the full-scale version,” said Faye. “We can’t do this ourselves and, for now, we cannot take credit. You will have to do the calculations for the full-scale version. It will be you doing all of the work from here on out.”

Faye looked at the others. This was suddenly more difficult than any of them had thought. It had been theirs. It had belonged to them all. They had succeeded where all the adults before them had failed.

Faye took a deep breath. “You will be the inventors of the world’s first aeroplane.”

Wallace wrote in the journal frantically. “I need to know the name of the shop again, please,” he said.

“For the record,” said Jasper. “Wallace and Lucy have been keeping a journal of all of... all of our notes.”

“Then we’ll eat it,” said Noah. It took a moment for everyone to laugh.

“The shop is called Wright Cycle Company,” said Wilbur. “But really now, are you sure you don’t want your names—”

“We’re sure,” said Wallace, finishing his notes.

“Right now, and I don’t mean to sound so secretive, but it really is not a very good time,” said Faye. “Our parents don’t know and they’re... working on a project... and everything needs to be secret. We don’t want you to mention us in connection with this craft. Really, absolutely no mention until we say otherwise.”

Wallace mumbled to himself, jotting down figures and rereading his notes. He pulled out a separate piece of paper. “I’ll give you some measurements,” he said, handing the paper to Lucy, who added a few quick sketches.

“And you’ll need a four-cylinder, twelve-horsepower engine,” Noah said.

“And two propellers,” said Jasper.

“Then,” said Faye, “with proper wind to give it that initial lift power, you will, without a doubt, get it to fly—”

“But you’ll have to find a windier spot than Dayton, Ohio,” Jasper said.