Adam and the Arkonauts (21 page)

‘What is the Great Booming Sonic Mind-Control Procedure?' demanded Adam.

‘You would know it as “the Dreadful Alarm”,' said Professor Scabellax. ‘Not a very scientific name, and one I'm, frankly, not very happy with. It's very simple. I invented – oops, there I go again. I
borrowed
the invention from a group of Finnish scientists who had been working on sound waves in Helsinki. It appears that if you regularly play a certain sound at a certain frequency for a certain length of time to people, then you can destroy their free will for ever, particularly if those people are already under significant duress. It really is fabulous. I was so impressed with the scientists' work that I almost didn't kill them.'

‘Almost?' said Adam.

‘Let's not get too sentimental here,' said Scabellax.

‘So that's why you've been trying to prevent the Mayor from abolishing the Crime and Punishment Code – to soften up the brains of the citizens so you can use the Dreadful Alarm to destroy their free will.'

‘Ten out of ten,' said Scabellax with an approving tap of the cane. ‘You see, I have known about Buenos Sueños for a long time. Its idiosyncrasies made it the perfect testing ground for my research into mind control. Even better still, two of its stupider citizens – Chief Grivas and Felipe Felipez – were more than willing to help me achieve my goal.

‘A few years ago, I – or should I say, a friend of mine – convinced Grivas to introduce his zero-tolerance system of law, which destroyed the lives of the citizens by making them all criminals in huge debt. So mentally weakened were they by this regime, I was encouraged to implement the next stage of my plan: the physical assault on their senses. When elections were called and the Mayor threatened to abolish the Code as part of his new mandate, my, er, friend gave Felipez the funds to stand against him, together with a guarantee that he would stop the so-called “Dreadful Alarm”, providing the Code remained in place. Felipez and Grivas have unwittingly provided the Mayor with enough distractions and obstructions to allow me to see through my experiments with the Great Booming Sonic Mind-Control Procedure, refining and perfecting the technique. It was easy to persuade Grivas to declare martial law as an insurance policy against any attempted meddling by the Mayor when I was so close to success.'

‘Anyway, thanks to the rapid progress of my sonic experiment, the outcome of the elections is now utterly irrelevant. The test with the “Hokey Cokey” demonstrated that the citizens have lost their free will, though it is not yet a permanent state. One last extra-special session of the “Dreadful Alarm” should ensure that the effect becomes irreversible.'

‘I don't understand,' said Adam.

‘Of course you don't,' said the Professor. ‘You are a mere boy and cannot think on the grand scale that I do.'

‘But what's so important about being powerful in a small city like Buenos Sueños?'

Scabellax sighed. ‘You really are a dimwit, aren't you, boy? My experiment was never about ruling Buenos Sueños. I couldn't care less for this isolated little excrescence. It was about ensuring beyond all doubt that my procedure would be one hundred per cent successful, that power gained by the Great Booming Sonic Mind-Control Procedure can never be lost again. I want to show that I can order the citizens to do anything I choose.'

‘Why?' said Adam.

‘Remember, I am a scientist,' the Professor replied. ‘It is not enough that one believes something will work; it must be tested with rigour.'

‘I think you're crazy,' said Adam boldly.

‘Of course you do,' Scabellax replied. ‘And in the centuries to come, who will know of your insignificant little opinion? Nobody. But the words and deeds of Scabellax will last for ever. Then we will know who is crazy and who is nothing.'

The Professor smashed his stick dramatically against the floor as he spoke. After such a speech, Adam half expected fireballs to explode all around him. But in fact there was only a rather tinny echo. Scabellax glanced at the countdown clock. It showed seven minutes and thirty seconds. He chuckled.

‘What are you going to do?' Adam asked. ‘What is going to happen?'

‘Have you ever thought about lemmings?' said Scabellax.

‘Lemmings?'

‘Fascinating creatures,' the Professor went on. ‘For no reason at all they occasionally join together to throw themselves off cliffs and plunge to their deaths. Remarkable.'

‘I don't under—'

Adam stopped. He'd just realised what the Professor was getting at. And it was a horrible thought.

Scabellax read the look on Adam's face.

‘I see that you appreciate the power of the idea. The sound will be played one final time, louder and more piercing than ever before, and then the citizens of Buenos Sueños will be ordered to gather together in one large group, run down to the harbour and throw themselves into the sea. Drowning themselves is a suitable action with which to test the success of my experiment, because it is unquestionably against their best interests.'

‘But . . . but . . . but . . .' Adam protested – he was rendered almost speechless by this monstrous proposal.

‘There are no buts,' said Scabellax. ‘It is perfect.'

The counter clock clicked down to seven minutes.

‘But what about the people?' Adam blurted out.

‘They will have died for the greater good of science,' said Scabellax.

‘No,' said Adam, realising that reasoning with Scabellax like he was a human being was useless. He had to appeal to his vanity. ‘What I mean is, if the citizens are dead, then there'll be nobody for you to have power over.'

Scabellax clicked his fingers dismissively.

‘What is one small city?' he said. ‘Once I have proved that the Great Booming Sonic Mind-Control Procedure works, I can take over the world. There are more than enough people on the planet for me to control. I can spare one tiny city.'

‘But you're not sparing them. You're killing them.'

Scabellax tutted angrily.

‘This conversation is rapidly becoming tedious,' he said. ‘And I have little time if I am to travel to Buenos Sueños and watch the results of my experiment at first hand.'

Adam couldn't believe that Scabellax, with all his technicians and guards gone, could still seem so confident.

‘What if we were to smash every single one of these machines now?' he said.

‘You'd probably make a mess,' answered Scabellax calmly.

‘But it would stop you, wouldn't it?'

‘I'm afraid not. The launch codes have been fed into the computer. Only an expert who has had access to all the preparations and who has a precise knowledge of the initiation sequence could possibly manage it.'

‘Someone like you,' suggested Adam.

Scabellax stroked his chin.

‘Oh, dear me, no,' he said. ‘I, you see, am responsible for the big picture, the overview. The little details I leave to others. I simply give them suitable incentives, like threatening to kill them and everyone they know if they don't do precisely what I require. It seems to do the trick. In truth, I could no more halt the procedure than you could.'

There was something about Scabellax's calmness that convinced Adam he was telling the truth. And he remembered that the Doctor had always said that what had sent Scabellax mad was his lack of ability as a scientist. He was good, but not quite good enough. Someone else would have to stop this, but who?

‘If it would help,' said Scabellax, reading his mind, ‘and I do like to be helpful, I will inform you that the only person who could have reversed the procedure was one of the white-coated lab technicians you rather foolishly chased down one of the tunnels. The salvation of Buenos Sueños is no doubt lost deep inside the mountain. Still –' Scabellax glanced at the counter – ‘you have five minutes forty-seven seconds to find him. Of course, it is hopeless. But I do find that even when they've been beaten, people do like to keep themselves busy in the final moments before the reality of their defeat becomes clear, so do please amuse yourselves. But, rude as it may be, you will now have to excuse me. I have to witness the destruction of the free will of the people of Buenos Sueños.'

‘You're not –'

‘Oh,' added Professor Scabellax, almost as an afterthought. ‘You may also be interested to know that your mother –'

‘Where is she?' interrupted Adam.

‘She's quite safe for the time being,' said Scabellax. ‘I keep her away from here. I didn't want her seeing things. But as I was saying before you interrupted me, her free will is going too. I had hoped to avoid that, but it has become necessary. For years she has refused my – how shall I put it delicately? – my . . . er . . .
advances
, no matter what I promised. Luxury, wealth – everything you could imagine I offered her, if she would only consent to bestow her love on me. But all she ever said was, “Take me back to my husband and son.” And, frankly, her answer has become tiresome. Therefore, I have resolved to remove her free will and her objections all in one.'

Adam felt himself choking with rage. To take his own mother from him for ever? Adam wanted to kill the Professor with his own bare hands.

‘So if you'll excuse me . . .'

Adam couldn't believe that this monster actually believed Adam would be willing to let him go.

‘You're staying here,' he commanded. ‘If we can't stop anything else, then we'll stop this. I'll never let you see my mother again.'

‘How very protective you are,' said Scabellax with an indulgent leer. ‘But, of course, you are correct. I'm so used to everybody doing exactly what I say, when I say it, that I had completely forgotten that you are in control here. Well, I suppose I'll have to get used to it. I'll just sit down over here and wait to see what else you do.'

Resting heavily on his cane, Scabellax walked over to a chair and sat down.

Adam turned helplessly to Anna and Calico Jack.

‘Does anybody remember which tunnels the technicians went down?'

Anna shrugged hopelessly and pointed at all of them.

‘I –' began Adam.

BOOM!

There was a loud explosion behind him. Adam turned round to see Professor Scabellax shooting up towards the roof of the cave in his chair.

‘An ejector seat!' cried Calico Jack.

And above them, the ceiling was opening.

Professor Scabellax gave a dismissive wave.

‘Adieu, my little friend,' he called to Adam. ‘I will send your regards to your mother, though of course she won't know who you are.'

‘Stop him!' shouted Adam desperately.

But it was a futile cry. Before anybody could react, the ejector seat had shot through the gap in the ceiling. Adam saw that a tiny turbo-powered jetpack was attached to the back of it. Scabellax fired it up as he rose. He would be able to go straight to Buenos Sueños. The ceiling shut smoothly behind him.

The counter was down to three minutes.

‘We've got to stop the procedure,' cried Adam.

But how?

Scabellax and the technician were gone. And Scabellax had said that only a scientist who had witnessed the entire process could possibly reverse the procedure. And there were no . . .

‘The Doctor!'

The Doctor had been standing in that very room for Scabellax's amusement the whole time.

‘He couldn't possibly remember,' said Calico Jack. ‘He's done well simply not to move for three days. Almost anyone else would have buckled and died. He couldn't possibly have memorised the initiation sequence too.'

But Adam knew that if anybody had the willpower and memory to do it, it was his father.

Two and a half minutes.

‘We've got to get him out.'

Anna waved her hands helplessly.

‘He's stuck behind an Electrical Self-Generating Lethal-Strength Figure-Hugging Force Field. Even if he does know, we can't free him.'

There must be a way
, thought Adam.
Think like a scientist.
Was there anything in the name that might give him a hint?

A light bulb went on his head. It gave him an idea.

Electrical.

Perhaps when the Professor said that the force field was self-generating, he meant that its shape was self-generating, not the power that ran it. If that was true, then the electricity had to come from somewhere.

‘The plugs! shouted Adam. ‘Switch off all the plugs! Now!'

Adam, Anna, Calico Jack, Fidel and the animals rushed to the sides of the cave. Frantically, they switched off any the plugs they could find – some with their fingers, some with their noses, some even with their wings. Fifty plugs were turned off in a minute.

The cave was plunged into darkness.