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Read Ebook: I Was a Teen-Age Secret Weapon by Sabia Richard Freas Kelly Illustrator
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Ebook has 302 lines and 15858 words, and 7 pages
Illustrator: Freas
I WAS A TEEN-AGE SECRET WEAPON
BY RICHARD SABIA
Illustrated by Freas
"Get away from me!" screamed Dr. Berry at the approaching figure.
"But Ah got to feed an' water the animals an' clean out the cages," drawled the lanky, eighteen-year-old boy amiably.
"Get out of this laboratory, you hoodoo," shrilled Berry, "or I swear I'll kill you! I'll not give you the chance to do me in!"
Tow-headed Dolliver Wims regarded chubby Dr. Berry with his innocent green eyes. "Ah don't know why y'all fuss at me like you do," he complained in aggrieved tones.
"Kin Ah help it if you're always havin' accidents?" Wims replied with a shrug.
Berry turned a deeper red and a dangerous rumble issued from his throat, as if he were a volcano threatening to erupt. Then quite suddenly, with an obvious effort, he capped his seething anger and subsided somewhat. Through taut lips he said, "I'm not going to stand here and argue with you, Wims; just get out."
"But the animals--"
"You can come back in an hour when I've finished running these rats through the maze."
"But--"
"I SAID OUT!" Berry leaped at Wims with arms outthrust, intending to push him toward the door, but Wims had stepped aside in slight alarm and the avalanche of meat plunged past and into a bench on which rested a huge, multilevel glass maze which was a shopping-center model being tested to determine a design that would subliminally compel shoppers into bankruptcy. There was a sustained and magnificent tinkling crash as if a Chinese wind-chime factory was entertaining a typhoon. Berry skidded on the shards into a bank of wooden cages and went down in a splintering welter of escaping chimpanzees, Wistar albino rats, ocelots and other assorted fauna.
Wims moved forward to help extricate the stunned Dr. Berry from the Everest of debris in which he sat immersed.
"DON'T TOUCH ME!" Berry screeched.
"O.K.," Wims said, retreating, "but Ah guess y'all gonna blame me fer this, too."
Berry's mouth worked convulsively in sheer rage but he had no words left to contain it. He put his head on his knees and sobbed.
The other psychologists of the research division came crowding into the laboratory to seek the cause of all the tumult.
"What happened?" Dr. Wilholm inquired.
"Well, Doc Berry has gone an' riled hisself into 'nuther accident," Wims informed him.
"I suppose you had nothing to do with it," Wilholm snapped.
"Cain't rightly say Ah had. He worked it out all by hisself."
"Just like the rest of us, I suppose," Wilholm said with unconcealed hostility.
"Well now y'all mention it, Doc, Ah ain't nevah seen sich a collection o' slip-fingered folk. Always bustin' either their gear or theirselves."
"Listen, you--"
"Now lookit Doc Castle up on top o' that lockah. He's gonna bust a leg if he don't quit foolin' with that critter."
Wilholm turned to see Dr. Castle up near the ceiling trying to get at a chimpanzee perched just out of reach on a steam pipe. "Castle, are you crazy?" he cried. "Get down from there before you hurt yourself."
"But I've got to get Zsa Zsa into a cage before one of the cats gets her," Castle protested. Just then an ocelot leaped for Zsa Zsa and she leaped for Dr. Castle who promptly lost his balance and plummeted toward Dr. Wilholm who foolishly tried to catch him. They all crashed to the floor and lay stunned for some moments. Castle attempted to rise but he sank back almost immediately with a grimace of pain. "I think my leg is broken," he announced.
"Well Ah tole you," Wims said. "Ain't that so, Dr. Wilholm?"
Wilholm attempted to hurl Zsa Zsa at Wims but found to his surprise he could only wriggle his fingers. The effort sent little slivers of pain slicing through his back.
Two hours later, Dr. Titus, the division chief, strolled in just as the firemen quenched the last stubborn flames. He surveyed the nearly total ruin of the laboratory. "Really!" he said to a thickly bandaged Dr. Berry who was attempting to rescue an undamaged electroencephalograph from a gleeful fireman's ax, "can't you test your hypothesis without being so untidy?"
Dr. Berry whirled and struck Dr. Titus.
"Of course you know what this means," Titus said calmly, rubbing his jaw. "I'll just have to have a closer look at your Rorschach."
"You can just go take a closer look," Berry snarled.
"Now, now," Titus said soothingly, "why don't we just go to my office and find out what is disturbing us? Hm-m-m?"
The ax came down on the encephalograph and Berry burst into tears and allowed Titus to lead him away.
Titus seated himself at his desk and waited for the sobbing Berry to subside. "That's it," he said unctuously, "let's just get it right out of our systems, shall we? Hm-m-m?"
Berry stopped in mid-sob and became all tiger again. "Stop talking to me as if I were a schizo!" he roared.
"Now, now, we are not going to become hostile all over again are we? Hm-m-m?"
"Hm-m-m all you want to, Titus, but you'll change your tune soon enough when you hear what happened. It was no band-aid brouhaha this time. I've warned you time and again about Wims and you've chosen to treat the matter as airily as possible--almost to the point of being elfin. However, the casualty list ought to bring you back down to earth." Berry ticked off the names on his fingers: "Dr. Wilholm hospitalized with a broken back; Dr. Castle, a broken leg; Dr. Angelillo, Dr. Bernstein, Dr. Maranos and four lab technicians severely burned; Dr. Grossblatt and two assistants, badly clawed; Dr. Cahill, clawed and burned; and no one knows what's wrong with Dr. Zimmerman. He's locked himself in the broom closet and refuses to come out. Twelve other people will be out a day or two with minor injuries, including your secretary who was pursued by Elvira, the orangutan, and is now being treated for shock."
Titus protested, "Why Elvira wouldn't harm--"
"Elvira has been misnamed. Elvis might be more appropriate."
"Why I had no idea," Titus mused. "Now I'll have to rerun those tests with the new bias."
Berry flared up again. "You don't even have a lab left to run a test in. You can't keep Wims after this!"
"Are you blaming poor Wims for what happened?"
"How can you sit there and ask that question without choking? Ever since that two-legged disaster was hired to sweep up, everybody in the psycho-research division has suffered from one accident after another; even you haven't remained unscathed. Why within the month he arrived we lost the plaque we had won two years running for our unmarred safety record. In fact, the poor fellow who came to remove it from its place of honor in the staff dining room fell from the ladder and broke his neck. Guess who was holding the ladder?"
"I was there at the time," Titus said, "and I saw the entire performance. Wims did nothing but hold the ladder as he had been instructed to do. Old John, instead of confining his attention to what he was doing, kept worrying about whether or not the ladder was being held firmly enough and, as could be expected, he dropped the plaque, made a grab for it and down he went."
"Don't you think it significant, Titus, that Old John had been the university handyman for eighteen years, had climbed up and down ladders, over roofs, and had never fallen or had a serious accident until Wims came upon the scene? And this is just about the case with everyone here?"
"Yes, I think it is very significant."
"Then how can anyone but Wims be blamed?"
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