The Mysterious Benedict Society mbs-1 Read online

  They were moving swiftly upon a seldom-used road, in a weary old station wagon driven by Rhonda Kazembe. As the car passed beneath the trees, Reynie noticed the first colors of autumn in their overhanging branches. The outer leaves were going red, yellow, and orange, while the inner ones still held the deep green of summer, so that the trees appeared candy-coated. A lovely sight, but Reynie was unable to enjoy it. His companions felt much the same. Within minutes they would be admitted to the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, and they were apprehensive. The closer they came to the island, the more real the danger felt.

  Rhonda was pointing through the trees toward the mainland shore. “Our telescopes will be hidden there in the brush,” she said. “We’ll be setting them up right after I drop you off, and from then on we’ll attend them at all times. If you stand anywhere on this side of the island, we should be able to see you through the telescopes as if you were two feet away. Whenever you have something to report, we’ll be ready for it. And if we have anything to tell you, we’ll send a message in return. It’s up to you to find the safest time to communicate. Most likely it will be after dark, when the others are asleep.

  “Even then,” Rhonda added, “there’s always the slight chance our messages to you will be observed from the island. For this reason they must necessarily be cryptic —”

  “What’s cryptic?” cried a shrill voice from the backseat.

  “I’m sorry, Constance. By cryptic I mean vague or mysterious. We won’t ever use names, and will never give obvious directions except in case of emergency. In most cases we’ll rely on your ability to figure out what we mean. It’s more difficult this way, but we must take precautions for your safety. Even with precautions, your situation will be extremely dangerous.”

  With the words “extremely dangerous” fresh in the children’s ears, the car rattled out of the woods into plain view of Nomansan Island. And there, on the island’s near side, was the Institute: an arrangement of massive gray buildings, a broad plaza, and a slender tower that resembled a lighthouse, all of which appeared to be built entirely of island stone. From this distance the Institute blended so thoroughly into Nomansan’s stony crags it seemed a part of the island itself. Behind it and on either side rose up steep hills, and beyond the hills could be seen the peaks of still more hills, and beyond those still more. A flagpole jutted from the side of the Institute’s tower, supporting a long red banner that rippled in the breeze. Printed upon the banner, in letters large enough to be read from the mainland, was the word LIVE — an acronym, obviously, for the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened.

  “At least it doesn’t say die,” Kate mused.

  “Oh, yes, very encouraging,” said Sticky, whose forehead had begun to sweat.

  Reynie stared out the window at the approaching bridge. To cross it, they had to first check in at a guard house, and Reynie was nervous despite Mr. Benedict’s assurances. New students were admitted all the time, and Mr. Benedict had made every arrangement, had followed every proper procedure, but still. . . . It was normal to feel nervous, Mr. Benedict had said. All children get nervous on their first day at a new school, and all secret agents get nervous on the first day of a mission. Combine the two and your chances of nervousness are greatly increased.

  At the bridge entrance two people stepped out of a guard house and waved the car to a stop.

  “Steady now,” said Rhonda in an undertone. “Nothing to worry about yet.”

  The guards were a young man and woman wearing sunglasses, smiles, and expensive suits, with well-polished shoes that gleamed in the morning sun. As the woman motioned for Rhonda to roll down the window, no one could help but notice the huge silver watches on her wrists. Reynie squeezed the armrest.

  “May I help you?” asked the woman, peering in. A sweet, citrusy perfume drifted through the window. The woman was all smiles, the picture of friendliness. The other guard also smiled, but Reynie could tell he was studying them with great attention.

  “These are your new students,” Rhonda said. “Three transferring from Binnud Academy and one from Stonetown Orphanage.”

  “Wait here, please.” The woman stepped back into the guard house. The other guard stayed put. He cocked his head to hear something the woman was telling him, but he kept his eyes on the car.

  “Steady,” Rhonda intoned again, just loud enough for the children to hear. But Reynie noticed that — ever so subtly — she had shifted the car into reverse. Just in case.

  Reynie took a deep breath and held it. He hoped his friends remembered their stories. His own was easy enough, since it was the truth: Mr. Rutger, properly persuaded, had made a special exception in his case. The others, though, were from a special temporary school for orphans called Binnud Academy. That morning, as they’d said their good-byes over breakfast, Mr. Benedict had pointed out that if they said “Binnud Academy” aloud, it would remind them his thoughts were with them always.

  “As are mine,” Number Two had said. Distracted by emotion, she was drying her eyes with a slice of bread. “My thoughts and all my prayers.”

  All of the adults had seemed especially bleary, exhausted, and sad — except Milligan, who always looked that way — yet even so, there was a flicker of excitement, indeed of hope, in every eye.

  “Go now, children,” Mr. Benedict had said, “go and show them what you’re made of.”

  At this moment Reynie felt sure they were made of jitterbugs. His knees trembled, and he could barely keep his teeth from chattering. Sticky was scrubbing his glasses so hard they squeaked, and Constance had her eyes squeezed tightly shut, unconvincingly feigning sleep. Even Kate squirmed a little. The guard seemed to be taking an awfully long time.

  When she finally came out, her smile hadn’t faded in the least. Reynie just had time to wonder whether this meant she did or did not have something to hide . . . and then she was at the car, saying, “Welcome, kids! You’re all clear and right on time. Please drive across to the island gate. I’ll radio for them to let you in.”

  As Rhonda rolled the window up and put the gear in forward again, all four children released deep breaths. Then they passed over the long bridge toward their fate.

  After their suitcases had been unloaded from the station wagon, and Rhonda had signed a form and bidden them farewell, the children were left to wait in a loading area by the bridge gate. Their escorts would collect them shortly, the gate guards said. In the meantime they were to step aside, please, as this was a busy area and not the sort of place for children to be underfoot. Workers in white uniforms were hauling crates from a nearby storage shed and loading them into a big truck. And they did indeed seem very busy, tirelessly loading and stacking until it made your back hurt just to watch them.

  The children moved off to the side of the loading area, dragging their suitcases behind them. (Rhonda had packed changes of clothes for each of them, including outfits she had sewn overnight to fit Constance’s diminutive size.) They hadn’t much to do or look at to occupy themselves, even though they very much wanted to be occupied to take their minds off their nervousness. There was only the guard house, the storage shed, and the loading area — all of which were apparently off limits — and a stone wall that blocked their view of the harbor. After twiddling their thumbs a few minutes, the children stacked their suitcases and took turns standing on them to peek over the wall. (Constance required all four suitcases; the others managed with two.)

  They were interested to discover some activity beneath the bridge — more workers in white uniforms, navigating a boat among the pilings. The workers carried oversized wrenches, cranks, and other tools, and were using them to make adjustments on some unseen apparatus beneath the water’s surface. Like the workers loading the crates into the truck, those in the boats seemed earnestly intent upon their work. They spoke but rarely, and then in quiet tones, as if they held some great reverence for the task set before them.

  Must be the turbines, Reynie thought, climbing down from the suitc
ases. Sticky and Kate had come to the same conclusion, but Constance wondered aloud what in the world those people could possibly be doing down there. Were they trying to fix the water?

  Reynie wasn’t sure whether or not Constance was joking. He had started to answer, regardless, when his voice was drowned out by the rumbling of an engine. The workers had finished loading the big truck. Two men in suits had climbed into the front, and as the gate opened for them, they waved cheerfully to the children and drove away over the bridge.

  “Did you see that?” Constance cried. “They’re wearing those shock-watches! The bridge guards, too. Have you noticed?”

  “Lower your voice,” Kate hissed. “Are you crazy? Of course we’ve noticed.”

  Constance was indignant, but there was no time for a full-blown argument to develop, for just then the children’s escorts arrived.

  The escorts were dressed identically in blue pants, snappy white tunics, and blue sashes, but they could never be mistaken for each other. One was a stocky, red-haired young man with icy blue eyes and a nose so skinny and sharp it resembled a knife. The other was a powerfully built young woman with a greasy brown ponytail and small, piggish eyes of an indeterminate color. They introduced themselves as Jackson and Jillson.

  Reynie extended his hand. “My name’s —”

  “There’ll be time for that,” Jillson said, turning away. “Let’s get moving. We’ll take you to your rooms first so you can dump your luggage.”

  Surprised, Reynie lowered his hand. He knew it was Jillson who had been rude (she and Jackson hadn’t offered to help with their suitcases, either), but he still felt foolish.

  “She’s a nice one, isn’t she?” Kate whispered.

  The children were led up a long gravel path toward the Institute buildings. They crossed the broad stone plaza, then a modest rock garden, then waited as Constance shook the gravel from her shoes. At last they were taken into the student dormitory, where, since the girls’ room lay at one end of a long stone corridor and the boys’ at the other, they were forced to separate.

  Reynie and Sticky’s room, aside from being very clean and tidy, was rather what they would have expected: bunk beds, two desks and chairs (but no bookshelves), a wardrobe, a radiator, a large television cabinet (well, that was unexpected), and a window overlooking the plaza. Reynie went to the window. Beyond the plaza lay the glittering channel, brilliant in the sunlight and choppy with white-capped waves, and beyond that the wooded shore, where Mr. Benedict’s telescopes were going to be hidden. The children could send their Morse code messages from this very window. Reynie’s stomach fluttered. His mind might understand he was a secret agent now, but his body still had a hard time believing it.

  Jackson leaned against the doorjamb. “If you need anything, ask an Executive. You can always tell an Executive by the uniform — blue pants, white tunic, blue sash. The Executives run the show here. A lot of us are former students who did so well as Messengers that Mr. Curtain hired us on. Don’t get us confused with Messengers, though. Messengers wear tunics and a sash, too, but their pants are striped. They’re just students like yourselves, only they’re top of the class and have special privileges. Secret privileges, I might add. Anyway, you’ll learn all about this soon enough. Right now just get yourselves unpacked, watch some TV if you want.” He switched the television on for them. “You’ll have your orientation tour in an hour. Then you’ll meet Mr. Curtain.”

  “Who’s Mr. Curtain?” said Reynie, who thought it best to give the impression of knowing as little as possible. The less you knew, the less people suspected of you — and perhaps the more they told you.

  Jackson sneered, then forced the sneer into a smile. He looked like a red-headed crocodile. “I keep forgetting how ignorant you kids are when you get here. Mr. Curtain’s my boss. He’s the founder of the Institute, the reason we’re all here. Got it?” It was clear Jackson was the sort of young man who considers himself rather smarter than he is, and who is naturally cruel but thinks himself a decent fellow. When the smaller boys didn’t answer him quickly enough, he snapped, “Do you understand me or don’t you? You speak English, right?”

  The boys nodded.

  “Good. I’ll see you in an hour.”

  When Jackson had gone, Sticky switched off the television. “Did you hear that? Messengers. We know what that means, don’t we?”

  “We’d better find the girls,” Reynie said.

  “We’re right here,” said a muffled voice from above them. A ceiling panel slid aside, and Kate Wetherall’s head appeared through the gap. “There aren’t any support beams over your bunk bed, so one of you move that chair over, will you? I’m going to lower Constance down. What are you doing, anyway?”

  The boys had been on edge already, but at the sound of an unexpected voice directly overhead, Reynie had thrown up his hands as if to ward off a blow, and Sticky had tried, unsuccessfully, to hide behind his suitcase. With a sheepish grin Reynie slid a chair under the gap. A moment later Constance’s tiny feet appeared, then the rest of her body, as Kate, hanging by her legs from a beam, lowered her carefully to the chair. The boys helped her to the floor while Kate secured her rope to the beam and climbed down to join them.

  “Don’t bother thanking me,” she said to Constance, who was scowling and brushing insulation from her clothes.

  “Why should I thank you? You drag me up into the ceiling, through a heating vent, crawling through spider webs in the dark, across all these hard boards saying, ‘Don’t put your knee there! You’ll fall through and break your neck!’ and ‘Don’t breathe so loudly! Someone will hear you!’ until my heart’s in my throat and my knees are killing me, and you expect me to thank you?”

  “Not at all,” said Kate. “I was happy to do it.”

  Constance’s eyes seemed ready to pop from her head.

  “Did you ever consider just walking down the corridor?” Sticky asked.

  “I figured we’d better have a hidden entrance,” she replied, “in case we want to meet secretly. I’ll bet those Executives are always patroling the place. I don’t like them a bit. Jillson made fun of my bucket, and she kept calling us ‘little squirts’ and bossing us around. I thought Constance was going to bite her leg off.”

  “I considered it,” Constance said.

  “She’s a tough-looking one, though,” Kate reflected. “Six feet tall, arms like a gorilla, and ties her ponytail with wire. Probably uses it to strangle kids who cross her.”

  “Let’s be sure not to cross her, then,” Reynie said, then told them what Jackson had said about Messengers.

  “Jillson told us the same stuff,” said Kate. “So the voice we heard on the television must be some Messenger kid, right?”

  “It must be. And it sounds like the other students don’t know much about what the Messengers do — they don’t get these ‘secret privileges’ until they become top students. That means we’ve got to rise to the top, and fast, so we can become Messengers and figure things out as soon as possible.”

  “Why don’t we poke around and figure some things out for ourselves right now?” said Kate, who had a passion for poking around.

  The others agreed, and so Kate fetched her rope and replaced the ceiling panel, and they set out down the corridor. Hurrying to keep up with Kate, who always moved in high gear, Reynie was almost to the dormitory exit before he noticed Constance wasn’t with them. They all went back. Constance stood just outside the boys’ room, pointing at a patch of mildew on the ceiling and wrinkling her nose. “That’s disgusting! I mean, that’s nasty! I hate mildew!”

  “Um, Constance,” Reynie said. “We’re in a hurry, remember?”

  They set out again, this time keeping an eye on Constance. But aside from being easily distracted, Constance was an intolerably slow walker. When they urged her to hurry, she obstinately refused. When they let her fall behind, she was irritated they didn’t wait up.

  “It’s not my fault my legs are shorter than yours,” she complained. �
�I can’t be expected to walk so quickly.”

  “How about if one of us lets you ride piggyback?” Reynie suggested.

  “That’s stupid,” Constance said. But in the end she let Kate hoist her up, and in this way, at last, they made it out of the dormitory and into sunlight.

  The children decided to follow a narrow, well-kept track of crushed stone that zigzagged up a tall hill by the dormitory. In a few minutes they had reached the hilltop, where they were presented with an excellent view of the island. Its entire terrain was one series of hills after another, some of them gentle rises, some looming peaks.

  The children gazed down upon their new school. The Institute’s gray stone buildings were so similar to one another and so closely packed it was difficult to judge precisely where one ended and another began. They were arranged in a rough U shape around the broad stone plaza and were connected by stone walkways and stone steps. Seen from this perspective, with the stone tower rising up just beyond the dormitory, the buildings gave the impression of a fortress rather than a school.

  And yet, in the bright sun of morning, the Institute didn’t seem such a forbidding place, not as menacing as they’d imagined; in fact the whole island was rather lovely. The hillsides were a patchwork of sand, green vegetation, and clusters of boulders stitched together by crisscrossing gravel paths. And here and there along the paths, flowering cactuses had been planted in great stone pots. An energetic brook ran down from a nearby hill, following its course over and around the stones, sometimes spilling in miniature waterfalls as it made its way to the island shore, which lay but a short distance downhill from the Institute. Aside from the splash and murmur of water and the distant calls of cliff swallows, the island was remarkably silent, with no children in sight and only an occasional, white-uniformed worker sweeping a walkway or hastening off to some unknown duty.