the time he had brushed his teeth, Rodney felt normal again. He studied the sticker in the bathroom mirror. It was the enemy. There had to be some way to defeat it. Maybe surgery was the only answer. Maybe electrolysis would work. The ads in the back of comic books said that electrolysis removed unwanted hair painlessly. Hair, stickers, what could be the difference? Rodney had no idea what electrolysis was, but he suspected it hurt more than the ads admitted.
He crawled into bed, stared at the blank ceiling for a moment, and decided he was being a goof. He switched on the light, got out of bed, and tried his kazoo once more. The vibration seemed to be shaking his brain loose. He got back into bed and turned out the light. He lay there for a while and was not even aware when he drifted into a dream.
In the dream Rodney had long slender hands covered with downy fur. If he crossed his eyes, he could see that his nose ended in a stubby snout. None of this bothered him; it all seemed normal. That all this weird stuff seemed normal should have bothered him, but this was a dream and it didn’t. Rodney’s dream personality seemed a lot like the personality he had while he was awake. He had a job to do, something a little vague—dreamlike—and he watched out for himself, but he was basically a good person who had no desire to hurt anybody.
Still, some things in the dream did upset him. He was far from home and had been roving for a long time, searching for something evil. In the dream the evil thing was a dirty brown blob that writhed and pulsated. It frightened Rodney even as it fascinated him. The evil thing had something to do with his job. Memories of adventures involving strange machines and stranger creatures did not excite him, but the longing to complete the job colored everything else like a thin gray fog.
Across the room, which seemed to be made of metal, was a creature three times his size. The creature looked like a bear that was wearing a utility belt around his middle and a small stool over his head as if it were a space helmet. The legs hung front and back and the rungs of the stool rested on the creature’s shoulders. He and the bear seemed to be having a spirited discussion.
Whoever or whatever Rodney was, he liked and trusted the bear, though he thought the bear was kind of a goof with no serious goals or ideas. Like an uncle who showed up with presents from Outer Mongolia, bought everybody the biggest ice cream sodas they’d ever seen, stayed up all night eating cheese puffs and watching Marx Brothers movies on TV, and then went away, leaving your head swimming.
The bear turned around and adjusted one of the controls that covered the wall.
Then, as is sometimes the case in dreams, Rodney was suddenly somewhere else without quite knowing how he’d gotten there. He was outside under a black sky strewn with stars, walking across a field that extended as far as he could see. Huge alien machines stood at intervals on the field. The one nearest him had a sign floating in front of it. He thought he ought to be able to read the words on the sign, but he couldn’t. That bothered him more than the fact that he was some animal and that he was consorting with bears who used tools. But it didn’t bother him as much as what needed to be done with the evil thing.
After that the dream broke up into swirling alien machines and alien faces. One of the alien faces seemed to glow. It had enormous catlike eyes and two little holes for a nose. When it began to hum, Rodney needed to get away from it. Seeking refuge from the face and the terrible noise, he awoke to discover that his alarm clock was buzzing. He switched it off and fell back onto his bed. He enjoyed feeling more or less normal. Birds sang outside. Sunlight fell in through the window and landed silently on the floor in a brilliant yellow square. It was a relief to be at home.
He reached up and touched the sticker. Still there. He tugged on it and sighed when it pulled at the skin of his forehead. An adventure for sure. Oh, yes.
* * * * * * *
Rodney thought over the dream while he got ready for school. The dream was obviously trying to tell him something his brain was not prepared to understand. Maybe the sticker was some kind of training device. Training for what? By whom? The possibilities were mind-boggling, and he was perfectly willing to let his mind be boggled. But the explanation had better be good. He hoped he wasn’t giving up his kazoo for just any wimp adventure.
He was about to walk out the front door when he remembered that the sticker was still in the middle of his forehead. Teachers and fellow students would, no doubt, ask embarrassing questions.
He opened the closet and studied the hats that hung inside the door. Hanging there was another Captain Conquer leather flying helmet and a paper bag with holes for the eyes and mouth—the traditional headgear of the Tuatara. Also, there was a top hat with a card stuck into the band. The card said “In this style, 10/6.” Farther along were a fedora, a slick yellow rain hat, and a shapeless knit thing you could pull down over your ears when the weather turned cold.
The knit hat would have been perfect, but the weather was too warm and he would have attracted suspicion. Rodney took the fedora and closed the closet door so that he could look at himself in the mirror on the other side. If he pulled the brim down far enough, he couldn’t see the sticker. Not very well, anyway. If it was good enough for Humphrey Bogart, thought Rodney, it was good enough for him.
The bus ride wasn’t so bad. Nobody cared whether or not a kid wore a hat. But once he got to school, he was not so lucky. He hadn’t taken two steps onto the playground when he was stopped by Mr. Trowsinger, a stoop-shouldered, white-haired old guy who taught history.
“No hats in school,” Mr. Trowsinger said in his feathery old voice.
“I have sort of a medical condition,” Rodney said. Mr. Trowsinger folded his arms, waiting. He’d been teaching history since before Rodney was born, and he’d heard everything. Twice, maybe.
Rodney removed his hat, and Mr. Trowsinger bent to get a close look at the sticker. He lifted a hand and said, “May I?”
“Of course.”
As gently as if he were touching the wing of a butterfly, Mr. Trowsinger tugged at the sticker. When it didn’t come off, he grunted and crossed his arms again.
“It’s feeding medication into my bloodstream. Through my skin.”
“You have a note from your parents?”
“My parents are away at a Chocolatron sales conference.”
“I see.”
Mr. Trowsinger seemed to buy what Rodney was selling. He took Rodney to his classroom and wrote a note giving him permission to wear a hat in school until the sticker came off. Rodney was delighted with the note. It made everything else a lot easier. For one thing, it gave him an excuse to sit out gym class in the bleachers. His math teacher made a joke about hats and detectives, but otherwise left him alone. Mr. Weinschweig didn’t seem to care one way or another.
When nobody was looking, Rodney stuffed tiny bits of Kleenex into his ears. A pretty girl in a business suit sat down next to him and nodded in his direction. She was Nutti Phil, the second kazoo. The Kleenex didn’t do much good. When Nutti hummed into her kazoo to warm up, it was all Rodney could do not to pull the vicious thing out of her mouth.
Mr. Weinschweig began to conduct; Rodney put his kazoo to his mouth, but he did not play. He gritted his teeth and tried not to listen to Nutti playing next to him. To Rodney, her playing sounded like somebody cutting sheet tin with an electric saw. The rest of the orchestra sounded just fine. He barely managed to get through the class without jumping around and tearing out his hair.
Fourth period was history. Mr. Trowsinger just
