Finn checked his watch. “Where’s Philby? And Willa? Philby’s never late to anything.”
“Haven’t seen either of them. Amanda’s hanging at the Conservation Station,” Maybeck said. “Philby hooked up a bunch of other cameras somehow. So now she can see basically everything going on: the attractions, the paths, and all the buildings, inside and out. But she’s stuck out there. She can’t leave her AnimalCam console because she doesn’t want anyone to discover what Philby rigged up for her. What about you?”
“The thing about the brooms—” Finn said, starting to explain the way he’d felt. But then he cut himself off.
“Yeah?”
“Doesn’t make any sense.”
“As if any of this makes sense! Hello? Try me, Whitman.”
“Okay. So pretty soon after I arrived at Hollywood Studios, I thought this crow had spotted me. Then the brooms show up. You know? But they didn’t exactly come after me. They just kind of followed me there. At Voyage of the Little Mermaid it was almost like they were there to watch the show. The way I was.”
“I don’t get it,” Maybeck said.
“You see?” Finn said. “When the BlackBerry rang they saw me. Everybody saw me. But I think the brooms were surprised to see me there. Or maybe they didn’t care.”
“I still don’t get it,” Maybeck admitted, though somewhat reluctantly. Maybeck prided himself on knowing things before others.
Finn blurted out what he’d been thinking ever since the encounter. “Maybe the brooms were at Voyage for the same reason I was: to look for answers. My being there both confirmed they were in the right place and threatened them.”
“Threatened them how?”
“What if the crow was some kind of spy?”
“Like the bat,” Maybeck said.
“Yeah! Exactly! And what if the brooms were sent to follow me? So they did. Until The Great Movie Ride. They didn’t follow me into there. Why?”
“I hope you’re going to answer that.”
“Because by my going in there, they were no longer worried about me. And then when I got to Voyage, they weren’t even looking for me. It was the show that they were interested in.”
“The show,” Maybeck said. “Listen, I’m not getting this. What’s up?”
Finn gathered his courage. “I think the Overtakers heard ‘Under the Sea,’ same as we did.”
“Meaning?”
“Think about it,” Finn said.
He watched as the mental tumblers clicked into place and unlocked Maybeck’s thought. Maybeck spoke slowly. “They’re following the music clue the same way we are…because…they’re…looking for Jez.”
“She escaped,” Finn declared. “They had her in the stump on the savannah. We know that much. Maybe in transferring her, maybe sometime before they ever moved her, she managed to escape. She hid someplace here in AK. And for some reason yet to be determined, she used the music as a clue.”
“She’s stuck in the Park,” Maybeck said, “and she can’t get out without our help. So she played the music to send us a clue.”
“We heard it,” Finn said, “but so did the Over-takers. We both started looking at anything and everything that had to do with ‘Under the Sea.'”
“It makes sense,” Maybeck agreed.
Finn tried the D-Gamer chat room again, sending a shout-out to Willa and Philby. But the screen didn’t change. They weren’t answering.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We can’t wait for them any longer. Maybe the dreams in Jez’s journal are supposed to help us find her.”
“We need Willa and Philby,” Maybeck said. “There are a lot of drawings to make sense of.”
Finn said what they both were thinking. “What if something’s happened to them?”
The two boys met eyes with horrified expressions.
33
AMANDA PRESSED THE right-hand button on the camera controls, zooming in to get a closer look at Finn and Maybeck.
The AnimalCam stations—four in all—were enough like a video game that she had immediately gotten the hang of it: a small screen to her right displayed rows and columns of thumbnail images, each representing a different camera mounted somewhere in the Park. Normally, there were about a dozen vantage points offered, all of them devoted to the wildlife on display in the Park: giraffes, elephants, tigers. Philby had upgraded hers. Scrolling down the thumbnail screen, she had dozens of views available to her—maybe a hundred or more. Selecting a particular camera transferred the view to a much larger television screen mounted at eye level. She could then zoom in and out using the two buttons to the right, or maneuver the camera to look left or right, up or down, using a joystick. It provided her with a virtual tour of every aspect of the Animal Kingdom.
At the moment, she was watching Finn and Maybeck as she was writing to Finn on D-Gamer.
panda: have not seen either willa or philby on camera
Finn: can u c the cast member entrances?
panda: yes. but have not seen them, park is packed, could be here.
Finn: i think the otakers may have heard the change in music same as us. U watch home base for Phily and Wila. also keep eye on us. watch our backs.
panda: can do.
Finn hesitated before writing the next message. But he felt he had to tell her.
Finn: maybeck and i think there’s a chance jez escaped, it might explain some stuff that’s been happening, if so, she’s prob hiding in park.
For a long time the screen flickered, but no message appeared. He couldn’t imagine what Amanda must have been feeling.
Finn: we could be totally wrong, maybeck and i are going 2 track down each of the diary drawings, maybe her escape was part of her dreams. ????? r u ok?
panda: scared 4 jez
Finn: my dad’s crackberry does the internet, i will go onto vmk and try 2 find wayne. maybe he can help us find philby.
panda: i’ll watch 4 them and i’ll watch u and maybeck too…
The cursor hesitated. She wasn’t done typing.
…but if she escaped, why haven’t we heard from her?
Finn didn’t have an answer for that.
Finn: ????? don’t know.
Amanda zoomed the camera back and tried to stay with Finn and Maybeck as they headed off. It took her a minute to figure out how to follow them, one camera to the next—she lost them twice—but not long after, she pulled up their images as they moved from camera to camera. She pieced together the route they were taking to Discovery Island. At the same time, she studied the tiny thumbnail views, hoping beyond hope to catch a glimpse of her missing sister.
* * *
Finn and Maybeck walked the Jungle Trek in a hurry, though not so fast as to stick out. They kept about ten yards apart; if one of them was spotted, maybe the other wouldn’t be. The Trek had an occasional park ranger at an education station—there to give hands-on demonstrations to the curious—any one of whom might be an Overtaker. Finn paid particular attention to each of these rangers as Maybeck passed, glad to see that none seemed to take any particular interest in him.
Soon, they reached the tiger-viewing yards, where they stood among the ruins of an Indian temple—the jungle and buildings so authentic that, although he’d never been there, Finn could imagine himself halfway around the world. The footpath rose here to where it was fifteen or twenty feet off the ground, the walls of the crumbling temple holding in the Park guests, offering views to either side, down into grassy knolls and fields. In the heat of the day, the tigers had taken to the shade at the edge of the wall that contained them. People crowded the temple’s viewing windows to get a decent look at the wild cats. The arching windows held no glass but were divided into small squares as if they did, or once had. And while there was no pushing or shoving to win the best view, there was some seriously competitive leaning going on.
But before Finn ever reached the clot of guests at the windows, Maybeck stopped and pulled him aside.