Frederik rested his head against the doors. “You’re right.”
“Let’s try to think of another way.”
“There is no other way. These doors are my only way in. If I take any other route, they’ll see me coming.”
“Well,” said Edna, “I don’t see how we can remove this obstacle.”
And without warning, the voice of Venkatamahesh Ramasubramanian echoed in his head.
“Remover of Obstacles,” Frederik whispered. “Ganesh!”
“Bless you, dear.”
“No! Ganesh. The Hindu deity. He’s an elephant. Well, partly.”
Edna pondered. “It’s imaginative. But I don’t know how practical.”
“It might be,” he said. “It might just be. Come on.” And he took her arm and started back toward the station. “We need to visit Rasmus.”
The train screeched into the wooden platform, deep below the elephant house. “Come up there with me.”
“No, dear, no.” She shook her head as though trying to shake something off, something she couldn’t shift. “He doesn’t remember me, I’m sure.”
“He does.”
But she wouldn’t hear it. And so Frederik climbed the twisting tunnel to the zoo alone.
He didn’t find Rasmus. Rasmus found him, standing at a narrow window, staring into the concrete cell at the massive bull elephant pounding its head into metal doors again and again, trying to bust its way through.
“He doesn’t like doors,” Frederik said.
“Hates them,” Rasmus said. “Do you need something?”
“Him. I need him.”
“The elephant?” Rasmus chuckled. “Sure. Have him back by teatime, would you?”
“Certainly,” said Frederik. “Really? I can borrow him?”
Rasmus smiled. For quite a long time. Then he looked sort of confused. Then blank. Then unhappy. “No,” he said. “No, no.”
“No?”
“No, no, no. No, no.”
“I need to knock down some doors!” Frederik whispered, checking about to make sure no one else could hear.
“No, no, no, no. Nuh-uh. Nope. Noooooo. No.”
“In Municipal Hall!” Frederik hissed. “I need to get in. I need to rescue Pernille.”
“The one with the hair?”
“Yes!”
“I like her.”
“Yes!”
“No.”
“It won’t take long. I’ll take him there on the train.”
“The train? Underground? Down there? With the zombies?” Rasmus’s voice got suddenly louder, his face redder. “With the zombies?”
“They’re locked away!” Frederik told him. “And they’re not zombies.”
“They are zombies!” Rasmus moaned, and Frederik knew right away that he’d lost him. “Rising from the depths of the earth. Keep away from them! Keep them away from my elephants!”
“I need the elephant!” Frederik shouted.
“No!” Rasmus shouted back.
“Then what am I going to do?” he hissed through gritted teeth. “I need help!”
He wracked his brain for two whole days, pacing the dusty factory. He huddled at Edna’s table, eating rehydrated noodles. He stared at Municipal Hall hour after hour. Nothing came. No ideas.
There was no way he was going to get an elephant. What had he been thinking? And even if he did, what then? What about the noise? How would the mayor and her staff miss colossal crashes in their basement?
The only way was to truly expose the mayor: to let the whole world know she’d been hiding those valuable marbles for thirty years to protect her own reputation. But he couldn’t go to the press. And he couldn’t show his face.
What would Pernille do? He laughed at the thought. Pernille would do the opposite of anything anyone expected. She’d break the rules. Rules are for fools, she’d say. She’d break every single rule and all at once, if she had to.
“All right then,” he murmured. “Every single rule and all at once.”
He boarded Edna’s train, determined now but no clearer. Time was running out. Edna came up with nothing new. The train howled into Frederik’s Hill. Frederik stared, frustrated, at the people on the platform.
One of them waved.
Just a tentative how-are-you kind of wave.
“Claus?” he hissed. “Calamity Claus?”
Before Edna could stop him, he was on his feet and off the train and running across the platform, shouting, “You moron! What did you do? What did you say? They’ve all been taken. Pernille, Venkatamahesh, my mother and father.” He grabbed Calamity’s collar so hard the material ripped a little. “What did you do?” he yelled in Calamity’s face.
“Sorry,” said Claus.
“You’re a wanted criminal,” said Erica Engel, sliding from the shadows. “You’re all over the news. Take your hands off our friend.”
Frederik gave Calamity a push, and he tottered into Erica, knocking her backward. “Here. Have him. He’s all yours.”
“Wait!” Calamity said. “It was an accident.”
“Don’t talk to the foreigner, Claus,” Erica said. “He’s a stain on our borough.”
Calamity’s face flushed. “He isn’t!” he shouted in Erica’s face. Erica clearly wasn’t used to that at all. “He’s all right. He’s not a bad kid. Once you get to know him.”
“You got to know Frederik Sandwich?” she said, appalled.
“All aboard!” yelled Edna.
Frederik ran. Sprinted as fast as he could. Leapt the step and into the carriage. Turned. Was instantly knocked flat by Calamity Claus.
“Get off this train!” Frederik barked.
“I’m coming with you,” Calamity said. “I’m not one of them.”
“Well, you’re not one of us,” Frederik shouted, and then he found himself staring over Calamity’s shoulder and into a pair of eyes.
“I suggest you take that back,” said Edna softly.
“I won’t take it back. It’s all his fault. He was supposed to send the media to the Cisterns. It was simple.”
“It doesn’t sound very simple,” Edna said.
“It wasn’t,” Calamity said. “I tried. I did. But it went all wrong.”
“You weren’t supposed to mention zombies,” Frederik spat, hauling himself to his feet.
“I know. But they asked. And I got confused. And I think I might have been in shock.”
Edna grabbed them both by the scruffs of their necks and tipped them onto a seat. “Hungry?” She waved a pack of suspiciously elderly cookies in their faces.
The train rattled on in the gloom. The cookies were stale but still the best thing Frederik had tasted in days. Edna watched him closely.
“We’re all you’ve got,” she told him. “A bunch of misfits, yes. But better than nothing, surely?”
He nodded, a little ashamed.
“I just want to help,” Calamity said.
“Then figure out a way to show the whole of the borough where those marbles are hidden. That was your job!”
Calamity pondered, munching another cookie. He nodded and chewed, staring out the window at darkness. “Easy.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s impossible.”
“Listen!” said Edna. “Listen to him.”
“Wait till Friday night,” said Calamity. “Midsummer. When the marbles get moved above ground. The whole of the borough will be at the festival, just across the road.”
The mayor wants them hurried away out of town. But what if that didn’t happen? What if they got diverted and everyone saw them?
Frederik opened his mouth to argue. Closed it again. “Oh,” he said. Claus was right. Everyone would be there. Including the mayor. And the queen. “How did you think of that?”
Calamity shrugg
ed. “Another accident. Sometimes they’re not so bad.”
“Such action,” said Edna, “would be very much against the rules, of course. As an employee of the borough I’m duty bound to tell you that. You can’t just go around rewriting the mayor’s instructions willy-nilly.”
Frederik thought about that. His mouth fell open. “Yes, I can,” he murmured. “Yes, I can.”
Chapter 19
The Mayor’s Instructions
Frederik dropped from the attic hatch to his bed. Crept downstairs to Father’s office. Municipal Hall glared over the rooftops. He closed the blinds. Had to be quick.
He flipped Father’s keyboard over. There was the sticky note. Father’s password: Fr3d3r!k. A lump appeared in his throat. He pressed a key and the monitor glowed.
Frederik’s Hill Department of Rules and Regulations.
Please Enter Password.
It was so against the rules that he almost couldn’t do it. But then he peeked through the slats at Municipal Hall. Father and Mother, Pernille, and Venkatamahesh locked inside. He typed. He clicked. Checking Credentials, it said. And then, Access Granted.
He found the order he’d watched Father type a week or so back. Mayor’s Instructions Concerning Zombies.
At the top of the page, the crest of Frederik’s Hill. At the foot of the page, a reproduced signature. Kamilla Kristensen, Mayor.
He deleted the text in between.
Urgent, he wrote. Mayor’s Instructions. To Nordmaend Logistics, concerning my Deluxe Expedited Service. He added more with a mix of terror and glee.
Save As.
Print.
He grabbed the sheets from the printer, snacks from the kitchen, clothes from his drawer. Found a bag and was back in the attic, panting. Rules were for fools, and he would fool them all.
One more night on the factory floor. Dawn lanced through the huge windows at four on midsummer’s morning. He watched the empty streets come alive. Workers arrived in a truck and closed the roads. Rush hour was canceled. Borough holiday.
He rested. Paced. Ate some lunch. Caught the train in the afternoon when he couldn’t stand to wait a moment longer.
“Where to, dear?” Edna asked, as they howled through the tunnels.
They rolled underneath Municipal Hall and its lighthouse. Frederik stared at the archway that led to the escalator that led to the door that led to Pernille and his parents.
“I need to go to the Cisterns.”
“The Cisterns? The station is all locked up. No way out. Get off at the Brewery instead. Walk up the hill from there.” She got to her feet. She hit the switch to open the doors. “Brewery!” she hollered. “Change here for buses to Sundby Strand.” She lowered her voice. “Say hello to Torben, if you see him.”
He stepped down to the platform, clutching his bag. “Who’s Torben?” But his question was lost in the whistle and fumes as the train lurched away.
The platform was cracked. The walls might once have been white. Stairs led up and away. He climbed to a large, empty hall. Old beer advertisements in dusty frames. A row of doors. The first he tried swung open and away. A hallway. Voices and footsteps. A lot of them. He jumped back, alarmed. Who was out there? He reached to pull the door shut.
An enormous rubber glove closed over his wrist.
“Who’s this?” A man’s voice. Gruff.
Frederik was tugged through the gap and into the face of a man with not much hair. A name tag on his apron. Noah.
“Can you read?” the man bellowed. “What does this say?” He stabbed his finger at a sign on the door.
“Strictly No Visitors,” Frederik read. He gripped his bag ever tighter, terrified the man might ask what he had in there.
“Where is your party?”
Frederik glanced around. He was in a long corridor, wood panels on one side, windows on the other. Men and women in matching overalls. A rumbling somewhere. A collision of smells. Malt and bitterness and sugar. No sign of a party.
“I’m taking you to Security,” said the man.
“No! Don’t do that. My party is, well, I lost it.”
“What did they say at the start of the tour? Do not lose sight of your guide. Weren’t you listening?” He ushered Frederik forward. The window looked onto a cobbled courtyard. Old, industrial buildings. Tall chimneys spewing steam. He was herded through a doorway into a claustrophobic room. Enormous cylindrical tanks, peppered with fat rivets. Iron platforms overhead. Workers checking instruments. The smell was overpowering.
Up ahead, a door opened. “This way!” someone said. Well-dressed adults squeezed themselves into the room. At their lead, a woman in a shawl, a sign held over her head: Tour Party B. “Follow me,” she called out in a singsong voice.
Frederik slipped the man’s grip and was carried along by Tour Party B, through a door, and down a flight of metal steps, feet clanging.
“Boiling and sterilization,” the guide called out. “Please keep to the right.”
Frederik was hidden in the press of bodies. A man said something unintelligible and burst out laughing. All the tourists seemed to be foreign. Why? The festival? These must be the overseas VIPs, sightseeing before the mayor’s event.
They swept along a tunnel of whitewashed stone. It was cold. Metal barrels stacked in deep dead ends. Frederik had to get out of there. But which way was out? They climbed again. Steep stairs. Huge pipes fed huge tanks. Mechanical arms stirred enormous dishes of slurry, thick liquid slurping from side to side. The air was sickly sweet.
“Mashing tuns!” the guide called out, and a dozen voices echoed in peculiar accents. “Water is drawn from the reservoir tanks up on the roof. You may have seen them.” The guide waved her hand at iron pipes, disappearing into the ceiling. “Let’s visit the control room!”
Frederik had no choice but to follow, up more stairs, till they were high above street level. From a window, he saw Municipal Hall in the distance. The hill in front of him, rising to the yellow walls of the castle. People everywhere. Thousands of them, climbing the hill and converging on the gates to the park. Parents with baby carriages, people on bicycles, toddlers towed behind in buggies. All heading for the mayor’s big night. He had to hurry. Which way was the exit?
“These controls,” the tour guide was saying, “regulate the water supply. You can read the purity on this digital display, and the hydraulic pressure here.”
“And what,” someone asked, “are these?”
A tangle of plumbing climbed the wall, a twisted puzzle of rusty pipes and dials. Red, rotating needles behind glass.
“That’s the old water supply. The original valves and taps. No longer used.”
Frederik stared. He had seen rusty valves and taps like those before. They brought back unpleasant memories. He raised his hand. He had to ask.
“Yes, young man?”
“Where did the old water supply come from?” He already knew the answer. He was sure of it.
The guide blinked. “That’s sensitive information, actually.”
“From an underground cistern at the top of Frederik’s Hill,” said a voice at his ear.
A portly man rested one gigantic hand on Frederik’s head. He was wearing brewery overalls. He was old. A white beard and a flamboyant, white mustache. Kind, twinkling eyes. The tag on his apron said Torben. He pointed through the window, up the hill, toward the castle. “Up there. You can’t see it. It’s buried in the top of the hill. Water fed down by gravity. Massive capacity. Production in the old days was twenty times today’s. But we had to stop using the Cisterns. Mayor’s orders.”
The tour guide hoisted her little sign and wheeled away. “Follow me, Party B. Next, the 3D Experience.”
But Frederik followed Torben instead. “Excuse me, why did the mayor order that?”
Torben looked down at him, smiling. “Why do you ask?”
Frederik hesitated. “I’m just interested. In machinery, you know. And local history. Educationally speaking.”
Tour Party B bustled out the doorway, leaving the two of them alone in the control room.
“And by the way, Edna says hello.”
Torben’s face lit up. “You’re a friend of Edna’s? How is she? I must say, it’s nice when a youngster takes an interest in the beverage industry. Although, you won’t ask too many questions about the mayor, if you’ve any sense.”
“The Cisterns?” Frederik prompted.
“Yes. They’re nearly two hundred years old. They didn’t only feed the brewery. They once supplied water for the porcelain factory, the fountains in the park, houses and businesses, everything. The pipes lead in all directions, like an underground web. Some are tiny, some are huge. You could drive a bus down some of them.”
“So these pipes on the wall link to the Cisterns?”
“Exactly. See that?” Torben pointed to a large lever. “That’s the bypass trunk displacement unit. It connects the new supply to the old. Pull that, turn that tap, and water from our reservoir tank would shoot into the old pipes at colossal pressure.” He chuckled and lowered his voice. “And these taps over here are the storage tanks. If we wanted, we could flood the Cisterns and all the underground pipes with beer.” His eyes shone with amusement. “Or Volcanade.”
“What’s Volcanade?”
“Pop. The label says it’s a hyper-effervescent antioxidant rehydration infusion with lemon, aloe, and acai. But between you and me, it’s just pop. Highly-carbonated soda. Of course, the old pipes aren’t in good shape. The extreme fizz would shake the town apart.”
“Like the earthquake,” Frederik murmured. He stared at Torben. “Did these taps start the vibrations in the pipes a few months back?”
Torben winced. “Don’t tell anyone. The mayor went loopy when that happened. It was her own idiotic idea, of course. Testing the fountains, she said. Ridiculous. Anyway, we shouldn’t talk about that. It’s just we don’t often get a visitor your age who’s so keen.” He patted Frederik’s shoulder. “Stop by when you’re twenty-one. We’ll find a job for you.”
Frederik Sandwich and the Mayor Who Lost Her Marbles Page 13
