“I am Noel, and I am zee guide,” the girl replied. “I am here to help you-if you are looking for something special… for instance, say, a robot?”
“Excellent!” Max said. “It couldn’t have worked out better if it’d been planned this way. It just so happens that we are looking for a robot. That is, except Boris here. He’s on a sight-seeing jaunt. Just tagging along.”
“Da,” Boris grinned.
“That means ‘yes,’ ” Max explained to Noel. “He’s a Southerner.”
“I sink I recognize zee oxent,” she smiled.
“Student of languages, eh? All right, let’s see how you can do on faces. This particular robot we’re trailing has probably mingled with the official representatives by now. He’ll be hard to spot.”
“What does he look like?” Noel asked.
“Pretty much like any other robot. His eyes revolve. He has a lever at his side. And… oh, yes… he goes, ‘Peep-a-dotta, poop-a-dotta, dippa-dotta-boop.’ It’s the kind of thing you hear around here a lot, I suppose.”
Noel looked thoughtful, reflecting. “I see so many faces,” she murmured.
Blossom tried to help. “You may have seen him in the balcony,” she said. “I sort of had that in mind while I was putting him together.”
Noel suddenly brightened. “I know him! Yes! He is a new country. He just arrived yesterday.”
Max smiled smugly. “What did I tell you-no seniority,” he said to Blossom. “He’s probably got an office somewhere in the basement.”
Noel brightened even more. “Yes! That is where I see him! In the basement!” She turned away. “You will follow me, please.”
They trailed after her, Max at her heels, the others strung out after him.
As they proceeded along the corridor, a tall, spare, middle-aged man in striped trousers came raging toward them. He was brandishing a small piece of green cardboard.
“This means war!” he shrieked, as he passed and then disappeared into an office.
“What was that he was waving,” Max said to Noel, “an ultimatum from some war-like nation?”
“No, no… a parking ticket,” she explained.
They reached a bank of automatic elevators, and stepped into a waiting car. Noel punched a ‘down’ button, the door glided closed, and the car began to descend.
“Poor Fred,” Blossom said. “I’ll bet he’s miserable down in the basement.”
“He should have told them that he had the means to control the world,” Max said. “They probably would have given him a top floor, corner office. It’s never a good idea to hide your light under a bushel.”
“Fred is very modest,” Blossom said. “For a computer, he’s really a very wonderful human being.”
The door opened. Again, as they exited, Noel led the way. The basement was dark. But Noel produced a flashlight. The beam skipped along the walls of the corridor, as if looking for something in particular.
“Not far,” Noel said.
“Rorff!” Fang barked.
“That’s ridiculous,” Max said. “If it were dangerous down here, they’d put up a sign saying ‘DANGER.’ ”
“Ah, yes… here we are!” Noel said exultantly.
Her light flashed on a bright red door. Attached to the door was a sign saying: DANGER!
“Rorff!”
“Don’t be an ‘I-told-you-so,’ ” Max snapped.
“Through here,” Noel said, indicating the door. “This is where I saw Fred.”
Max pointed to the sign. “Are you positive? That says ‘Danger!’ ”
Noel shook her head. “No, no, no, no, no,” she said. “In English, yes, it says Danger. But in the universal language, it says ‘PRIVATE.’ ”
“That adds up,” Max nodded. “Blossom said that Fred was a modest kind of guy. He probably doesn’t want a lot of ambassadors flocking in there to tell him what a swell fella he is.” He nodded again. “I’ll buy that.”
Noel reached for the door knob. As she began opening the door, she doused her light, and said, “After you…”
There was a burst of daylight. Max stepped through the doorway, followed by Blossom, then Fang, then Boris.
Once across the threshold, Max turned to Blossom and said, “Do you have the feeling you’re falling?”
“Oh, yes!” she gushed. “But I didn’t think you were interested in anything but your work.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean falling down… descending rapidly from a high level to a low level.”
“Yes, that, too,” she said.
“How about you, Boris?” Max said.
“Da.”
“Fang?”
“Rorff!”
“We seem to have a consensus,” Max said. He looked down. “And we’re right,” he said. “We’re headed straight for the East River!”
Blossom looked down and shrieked.
“Don’t panic,” Max said. “The East River is really very nice country. I was thrown into it in the summer of ’61. I was trailing a ping-”
The splash was heard all the way to The Bronx.
Bobbing to the surface, Max sputtered, “It certainly hasn’t gotten any drier since ’61.” He spotted Blossom and Fang a few feet away. “Ahoy!” he called.
Fang back-stroked over to him.
Blossom dog-paddled.
Max counted. “One… two… there seems to be one missing.. where’s Boris?”
Blossom pointed. “There he is… swimming toward that submarine!”
Max looked. “That isn’t a submarine,” he said disgustedly. “That’s only a periscope. The East River is much too shallow for a submarine. A periscope, yes. A submarine, no.” He called out. “Boris! Boris! Gome back! This way to Grant’s Tomb!”
But Boris continued swimming toward the periscope.
“Apparently he thinks it’s a submarine, too,” Max said. “Well, goodbye Boris. The minute this case is concluded, I’ll report his disappearance to the Missing Visitors Bureau. That means they’ll have to go to the expense of dragging the river. The city will lose every cent it made on Boris.”
“Rorff!”
Max shrugged philosophically. “You’re right, Fang… you make a little, you lose a little. It all evens up in the end.”
“Hadn’t we better get to shore?” Blossom said.
“Good thinking,” Max said approvingly. “I wish I’d had you with me in the summer of ’61. I spent a whole night in the East River. I was finally picked up by a garbage scow. At least, that’s what I thought it was. Later, I discovered that it was a motor launch that was being used by a FLAG agent to smuggle orange ping-pong… but that’s another story. Let’s get ashore.”
Max and Blossom clung to Fang’s tail and he towed them to land. On shore, Max and Blossom shook themselves violently, flinging water, drying themselves, as Fang watched disinterestedly.
“Is that Noel ever going to feel like a fool when we tell her where that door led to,” Max said. “She was so positive it was a private office.”
“You know-” Blossom began.
“I guess this will teach her a lesson,” Max continued. “From now on, she’ll double-check before she sounds off about how much she knows about languages. ‘DANGER’ probably means ‘This way to the East River’ or something like that.” He smiled. “Well, it’s a good laugh on her.”
“I don’t entirely trust her,” Blossom said. “Could she be a FLAG agent?”
“Hardly,” Max replied. “She didn’t ring a bell with me.”
“Rorff!”
“All right, all right, we’re coming,” Max said. “Don’t be a nag. Nobody likes a nag, Fang!”
They made their way back to the entrance of the U.N. Building. When they reached the lobby, Max looked around, then said, puzzledly, “Funny… no Noel. Maybe she’s on her coffee break.”
“There’s something,” Blossom said, pointing. “She said Fred had become a new member. Maybe he’s listed on the board.”
Max peered toward the large board, where a young man was posting the names of new countries. “It’s worth a try,” he said.
They approached the young man, and watched as he worked.
He put up ‘Malawesia.’
“Could that be Fred in the universal language?” Max said to Blossom.