The 39 Clues Book 7: The Viper's Nest (19 page)

"Dan, sit back and put your seat belt on!"
Amy spun around. The vial was knocked out of Dan's hand. It flipped in the air twice. Dan flailed for it but only managed to bat it against the inner wall of the plane.

It smashed into pieces, spurting green ooze onto Dan's arm and the seat next to him.

"Auuuggghh!"
Dan shrieked.
"Amy, I can't believe you did that, you idiot!"

Amy sighed. "It's a
fake,
Dan."

But as a drop fell onto the seat, the fabric smoldered.

"UH, DAN?"
Nellie shouted to be heard over the engine noise.
"WHAT DID YOU SAY THAT WAS?"

Dan felt as if a zoofull of scorpions had dropped from the sky on his arm.
"OW,"
he cried out.
"IT STINGS!"

The plane was in the air now. Amy looked at Professor Bardsley in the rearview mirror. "WHAT COLOR DID YOU SAY THAT SERUM WAS?" he asked.

"GREEN. OOZY. IT'S BURNING THE SEAT."

Professor Bardsley's eyes went wide. "IT IS NOT A

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SERUM. IT IS A SLOW-ACTING POISON! THE KABRAS TRIED IT ON ONE OF MY COHORTS. IT WILL ERODE THE SKIN AND OVER TIME WORK ITS WAY INTO THE NERVOUS SYSTEM!" His hands were all over the controls now, flipping switches, setting dials. "I NEED SOMEONE TO MAN THE COCKPIT!"

Nellie leaned forward. "I WILL! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!"

Professor Bardsley quickly traded places with Nellie, causing Saladin to jump to the floor with a hiss. The old man reached behind the seat and pulled a canister labeled UMHLABA.

The pain was spreading. Dan felt his entire body vibrating. He gritted his teeth.
Don't
think of it don't think of it don't think of it don't think of it...

"WH-WHAT'S THAT?" he asked.

"CONCENTRATE OF ALOE," Professor Bardsley replied. "IT WILL SLOW THE POISON'S ACTION UNTIL WE GET TO A HOSPITAL IN MOZAMBIQUE. IT WILL TAKE ABOUT TWO HOURS, BUT YOU SHOULD BE ALL RIGHT. I BELIEVE THEY MAY HAVE THE PROPER ANTIDOTE THERE."

"MAY
HAVE IT?" Amy was screaming. Her face was bone white. "YOU CAN'T LET THE KABRAS KILL HIM!"

Professor Bardsley nodded, his brows knitted.

He soaked a handkerchief and applied it to Dan's arm. It felt like ice water, soothing the fire. Dan's body began to settle, but there wasn't enough.

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"MORE!" Dan yelled. "MORE!"

Professor Bardsley daubed the stuff more thickly.

"ISN'T THERE ANYTHING ELSE IN GRACE'S PLANE?" Amy shouted. "MAYBE SHE HAD SOME ANTIDOTE HERE!"

Bardsley suddenly looked up at Amy. "WHAT AM I TALKING ABOUT? I DO KNOW OF A PLACE WE CAN GET THE ANTIDOTE. BUT I'LL NEED TO RESET OUR COURSE TO MADAGASCAR!"

"ON IT, DUDE!" Nellie was flipping dials with confidence now. The plane veered to the right.

"Mrrp!"
Saladin said, sliding across the floor.

"WHAT'S IN MADAGASCAR?" Amy yelled. Through Dan's fluttering eyelids, all he saw were the veins of her neck sticking out like tree roots....

Professor Bardsley was now wrapping a tourniquet on Dan's arm. It felt good, but the pain was changing. It shot out in waves, up his neck, down to his legs, yo-yoing back and forth like some medieval torture.

Professor Bardsley's voice came to Dan like a radio station slowly fading. "WE ARE GOING," he replied, "TO YOUR GRANDMOTHER'S AFRICAN HOME!"

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CHAPTER 27

"Dan ...?" Amy said, dragging her brother across the scrubby pathway, little more than a tangle of vines and roots.
"Dan, stay awake!"

He was moaning. Deteriorating fast.

Amy barely noticed the entrance. Grace's "African home" was tiny, little more than a mound of rock and soil, a cave fitted with a custom-carved wooden door.

"We will not enter her working headquarters," Professor Bardsley said. "There is a small house around back, where she lived when she was here. I --I have a pass --a pass card...."

Professor Bardsley was shaking. He'd landed the plane safely but taken a corner too sharp on the taxiing, clipping a wing. He was coming apart, Amy could tell.

Keep it together,
she thought.
Keep my brother alive!

Dan sagged between Nellie and Amy, no longer able to walk.

"You're g-g-going to be f-f-fine," Amy said.

Alone.
The word muscled its way into Amy's brain.

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For her whole life, she'd felt like a part, a half. It was never Amy. It was Dan and Amy. Like one word.

DanandAmy.

AmyandDan.

"Here we are!" she said, stopping before a small, shuttered shingle house as the professor fumbled with the lock. Dan was shivering again. His arms were wrapped in white tourniquets soaked in
umhlaba,
but his face was turning from red to yellow.

Nellie had her arms around him. "He's going into toxic shock," she said. "Hurry!"

With a loud
thwock,
Professor Bardsley opened the front door. "Sit him down!" he said. "I will go to the medicine cabinet."

Nellie and Amy wriggled Dan through the door.

Amy couldn't hold back a shiver of recognition. In a split-second view, she took in details that were hardwired into her memory--lace doilies on small dark-wood tea tables, demitasse cups placed as if Grace were about to emerge from the kitchen with tea, a portrait of Grace that Amy had drawn in third grade.

She and Nellie sat Dan down on a damask sofa.
"OWWW ...OWOWOW OW!"
he cried.

Professor Bardsley ran in, a hypodermic needle in one hand. "You have to
inject
him?" Amy cried out.

"It is the only way to get it into his bloodstream fast," Professor Bardsley said.

Amy looked away, holding tight to Dan's hand. She

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felt him stiffen briefly,
a
tiny whine emitting from his mouth that was more breath than sound.

Finally, she felt him go slack. Amy felt her heart turning inside out. "What's happening? Is he ...?"

Professor Bardsley wiped his brow. The knots in his forehead were deep. "We can only pray now."

"Thank you," Nellie said, "for everything."

Professor Bardsley smiled wanly. "Thank
you.
If I'd had to change the course of the plane myself..."

Dan's head lolled to one side. His mouth moved, but no sounds came out.

Professor Bardsley felt Dan's forehead. "I must return to the airfield for a moment. The way I landed
The Flying Lemur
may be a hazard to other craft. I will not be long. As soon as he is feeling well, we must leave. We cannot stay here."

* * *

Professor Bardsley was gone longer than Amy expected. Nellie continued to put fresh dressings of
umhlaba
on Dan's arm, but he wouldn't be back to normal for some time. The skin was badly burned.

"A-Amy?" Dan rasped, wincing. Amy ran to his side.

"Dan! You're speaking!"

"Duh," Dan said. "That Churchill note --the one Mrs. Thembeka gave us? Where is it?"

"Your back pocket, I think," Amy said.

"Want me to get it for you?" Nellie volunteered.

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Dan groaned. "Could you ... get me more dressing? Please?"

As Nellie disappeared into the bathroom, Amy continued exploring the room. She fought back tears. She had almost gotten Dan killed. Her anger had angered Isabel. Made Ian shove Dan toward the propeller. Then, in
The Flying Lemur,
she'd made Dan so frustrated he'd forgotten to be cautious about the poison....

"Dan?" she said. "I'm sorry I've been a hothead."

Dan smiled weakly. "You're saving my life," he said. "So I don't care. Hey, check out the piano."

Tucked in the corner, barely fitting, was a spinet piano with a stack of sheet music on it. Amy stepped over to the piano and hit a few chords, but it was sadly out of tune. She remembered the hours Grace would spend in her mansion in Massachusetts, on a much nicer piano, teaching Dan and Amy all the words to her favorite Broadway showtunes. "Now, tell me the iPod compares to
this!"
Grace loved to say.

Nearby sat a desk whose ornately carved designs contrasted with the simple lines of the piano. Amy opened a drawer and jumped as a hairy spider crawled out. She looked over her shoulder, checking Dan. He was scribbling weakly on a pad of paper.

As Amy went to close the drawer, she noticed a small notebook tucked deeply inside. She pulled it out, rubbing her hands over the soft leather cover.

It was full of Grace's perfect, small handwriting, as

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if Amy were opening a letter written yesterday. Each page was covered with notes--travelogues, mostly-- with postcards from various countries taped to the pages.

Amy paused at a page of notes from a trip to China. Grace had never told them about this trip....

I have written Deng Xiaoping who has agreed to grant visit to A & H when he discovered that they, like him, are M.

A & H --Amy's heart jumped. That would be Arthur and Hope! "Dan?" she called out.

"Amy... look!"
Dan blurted out. He shuffled toward Amy, holding a sheet of paper in a shaky hand.

"Easy, Hercules," Nellie said.

Dan placed the Churchill note on the desk. "The letter ... look what he wrote at the bottom."

"The unbroken line shall deliver thy desire to the letter, if thou proceedeth downward ever, in single steps,'" Amy read aloud.

"Remember what we said about an unbroken line?" Dan said hoarsely "Look... Churchill's
circle --
one letter, a T. All the way at the top, all the way to the left! Now. 'Proceedeth downward in single steps'-- that's what I couldn't figure out." Dan flinched as Nellie put gauze tape around the dressing. "What if ... you go down ... from that first letter. Step by step? Watch!"

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[proofreader's note: this is a copy of the letter on page 102, with the first letter of the line starting with "taste" circled, the second letter of the next line circled, the third letter of the next line circled, and going down to the last line of the main letter, where the "a" in "realization" is circled.]

'"A realization... given herein,'" Dan said. "The realization was the clue, Amy. It was buried in this letter!"

'"Tomas clue is umhlaba,'" Amy read. "That's amazing!"

"Whoa!" Nellie shouted. "I thought the clue was
diamonds*.
The Kabras said it was, too. You guys --you

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can't just reject that. There was that message about being 'in the ground with Shaka'!"

"What was
in
that box, Nellie?" Amy said. "What did we have to cut away? What was growing all over the place?"

"The clue we were looking for ..." Dan said, gently touching his aloe dressing, "is saving my life!"

"Aloe ..." Amy said. "It was right in front of our noses. The Kabras must not have decoded the Churchill letter. Maybe we're the first to do it!"

Nellie hooted. "Take that, Dragon Lady!"

Dan sank wearily in the sofa. "We're good, yo," he said, a peaceful smile spreading across his face. "Now all we need to do is figure out where to go next."

The house fell silent.

But Amy was fixated on the message in Grace's notebook. "Uh, Dan ..." she said. "What do you think this means? 'I have written Deng Xiaoping, who has agreed to grant visit to A & H when he discovered that they, like him, are M.'"

"Deng --he was, like, the head of China, right?" Nellie said.

"A and H ..." Dan said. "Arthur and Hope --Mom and Dad. They met the leader of China? Cool. Let's go there next."

"Maybe," Amy said. "But read it again --Deng agreed to meet them because he realized they were ..."

"M," Nellie said. "What's M? Mandarin? Uh, wait..." Dan stood and limped over toward a rear window.

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"Where's Professor Bardsley, guys?"

He stubbed his toe on the foot of the piano and his knees buckled. Nellie ran to him as his hand landed hard on the piano keys.
"OW!"
he cried as an ugly sound echoed through the room.

Amy ran to him, still holding Grace's book. "Can't you sit still?"

"The book..." Dan was grimacing. "Read me some more ..."

Amy flipped all the way to the end, where there were a dozen or so empty pages --pages Grace would have filled had she lived.

The last page of writing contained only one entry. "Listen to this," Amy said, reading aloud: "T am feeling melancholy today, thinking about my dear A & H and missing them so. I cannot even bear to listen to my beloved di Lasso, because of the reminder ..."'

"Reminder?" Nellie asked. "Reminder of what?"

Dan was staring at the piano, his face was ashen. "Oh, no ..." he murmured.

Amy panicked. "Dan, sit! You are very, very sick!"

"Orlando di Lasso ..." Dan murmured. "That's the guy Professor Bardsley specializes in. Loves the music and all. Look."

He lifted some sheet music from the piano and showed it to Amy and Nellie.

Amy glanced at the title, a complicated name in French. "That was the piece Professor Bardsley's guys sang after we defeated the Tomas, right?"