Read Online Brainboy and the Deathmaster by Tor Seidler - Free Book Online Page B

splatters to a detailed still life of apples and peaches with a dead rabbit hanging on the wall in the background. “Fifty years ago people would have said doing that was impossible. If you believe something’s impossible, it is. Open your mind, and the possibilities are infinite.”
    But the thought of talking with the dead was as painful as it was intriguing, and Darryl’s mind veered away. “What about BJ?” he said. “Could we still learn to water-ski?”
    “Not if you decide to stay here, I’m afraid. But if you prefer to water-ski the summer away, you certainly may.”
    “Is Paradise Lab in session now?”
    “Paradise is always in session.”
    “No vacations?”
    “Depends how you look at it. You might say it’s all vacation, since being genuinely engaged in something is the only true source of pleasure in life. And at Paradise you’re always engaged.”
    “Are there other kids here?”
    “That’s all there are, except for a small staff. Would you like a tour?”
    His shivering abated, Darryl wiped his mouth with his PL napkin and followed Mr. Masterly out the door into a corridor with the same thick carpeting and gentle rosy lighting as the bedroom. Between Darryl’s door, numbered 8, and the next, numbered 7, was a glassed-in trophy case. The figurines on the trophies looked like ordinary girls and boys, and Darryl soon got a glimpse through a doorway of the models, sitting around an oddly shaped table in a sumptuous dining hall. There were six kids: four boys and two girls. They all looked cheerful except the youngest-looking one, a girl about his age who seemed strangely familiar. She had curly blond hair, and her eyes looked sad—though this might just have been because they were magnified by thick glasses.
    “They’re just starting lunch,” Mr. Masterly said,leading Darryl past the doorway.
    “Is the girl with curly hair from Seattle?” he asked.
    “Nina? No, she’s not.”
    “Huh.”
    At the end of the corridor Mr. Masterly pressed a button and an elevator opened. He stepped inside.
    “Coming?”
    Darryl hated elevators. He had ever since his cousin Barry’s sixteenth birthday up in the Space Needle. The Space Needle’s elevators were like capsules, and after squeezing into one behind his brother and Uncle Frank, he’d found himself pressed up against a door that was almost all window. As the elevator whooshed upward, seemingly through open space, people oohed and aahed at the expanding view of the city. But Darryl fainted. If the elevator hadn’t been packed, he would have sunk onto the floor in a heap. As it was, he slumped back against his brother, who gave him a sharp jab and hissed, “What’s your problem, wuss?”
    “I’m not going to bite you, Darryl,” Mr. Masterly said.
    Darryl took a deep breath and stepped in. It didn’t bother him at all: he felt pleasantly numb. Moreover, it was a pretty unscary elevator. There were no windows, and only four buttons. The top button had a keyhole in it; the others were:
    E
S
L
    According to a lit panel above the door, they were currently on SLEEP SUSTENANCE , but they soon dropped smoothly down to LIBRARY LABRATORY . There was nothing rosy about L: it was as bright as an operating room, so bright Darryl had to squint as he followed Mr. Masterly into a sleek, eight-sided room. The entire ceiling glowed. Again there were no windows, but each of the eight sides had a door. In the center of the room was an octagonal console with eight computer stations, at one of which an Asian girl with long, lustrous black hair was eating a sandwich. Except for her, and the plaques on the doors and the Paradise Lab screen savers on the monitors, the only thing in the octagon that wasn’t gleaming white was a globe of red glass mounted on a pole above the console.
    “Darryl, meet Suki,” Mr. Masterly said.
    “Hi, Darryl,” the Asian girl said, wiping her mouth with a napkin.
    “Nice to meet you,” Darryl said.
    “Any nibbles, Suki?” Mr.