“That sounds outrageous,” said Chance. “How could he expect a medical miracle to come from a death threat?”
“Well, as I mentioned before…”
“He’s nuts.…”
“In fact and indeed.”
“How do they know he really has a deadly virus?”
“They don’t.”
“But they can’t risk that he’s bluffing, I guess.”
“Correct. And given his line of work, it is not impossible. He demanded to be put in contact with the chairman of the infirmary board, Sir Amk Bittius the Fourth, a Deviklopt; Mr. Green was given a two-way radio handset and submitted all his threats to him. The general population of the hospital had—has—no idea they’re in danger. Only Bittius, the chief of staff, security (the Balliopes), and a few doctors know. And you and me. Dave Green said if he noticed any signs of an evacuation, he’d release the virus.”
“How do you know all this?”
“When Bittius asked Dave Green how he got here, my chess name, sleight_of_hand, naturally came up, and they quickly found out who I was. So when those accursed Balliopes arrested me for treason and corruption of infirmary security, I pretended I was unconscious, and then overheard them talking.
“As we speak, Dave Green is wandering the halls and crevices and grottoes of Saint Philomene’s Infirmary for Magical Creatures, probably still disguised as a ghoul, gripping his tube of Terabug—if, in fact, that is what it is—while the very best doctors in the entire hospital work around the clock trying to revive Yryssy Ayopy, to no avail. So far.”
“Why is she so sick?”
Simon was silent again. He picked up the tin can again and looked inside.
“How much time left?” he said.
“It’s been almost exactly two hours,” said Chance.
“Good.”
Simon sat up. He put the tin can in his lap; took out the waterlogged paper; squeezed the excess back into the can; opened his mouth, revealing razorlike teeth; bit into the karate-chop edge of his right hand; let the blood run down his arm—or leg, depending on whether one considered him more human or more something else—then held his hand directly over the cup, counting the drops of blood as they splashed in the water.
“… nine, ten, eleven, annnnd … twelve! That should do it. Now, my dear Chance, let us count two more hours.”
Chance was getting anxious. Two more hours, then they somehow had to boil away most of the water—who knew how long that would take! Meanwhile, Yryssy Ayopy was dying, Dave Green was dying, Simon Sleight was dying, and Chance was locked up with no possible way of getting out. The flerk had to be delivered to Yryssy immediately, but there was no way to do so!
“To answer your question, Chance, Yryssy Ayopy has Iptid’s Misery, just as I do. She caught it from me, in spite of the hazmat suit, when she visited to play chess. She has an acute form of it and will die within days. The demise of this infirmary, and the mass death of its inhabitants from Terabug infection, will be on my hands. Unless I can get this flerk to her. As soon as possible.
“Now, I must rest,” he continued. “You must stay awake and count seconds. Wake me when the two hours are up. During that waiting period, I pray you will 1) hope none of the principal players die and 2) find a way out of here. You appear a clever fellow.”
Simon fell back, his greasy hair spreading out on the mattress. He immediately began to snore. The cell was empty except for a zinc bowl for his food; his water bucket; a few candle stubs and some matches; the filthy mattress, which was made of a large, clear trash bag apparently stuffed with roots; a foot-long iron rod lying on the ground; and the long chain attached to his ankle. What to do! Chance paced and paced. Nothing came to him. He would die here.
Chance picked up the iron rod. It was a half-inch thick. He tried to pry open the bars of the cell, but there was no adequate fulcrum. The rod was useless, unless, perhaps, he could chip his way out through the stone. But that would take months. Chance put the rod down and continued to pace. He thought as hard as he could. He thought so hard his jaw hurt.
“Simon?”
“Present!” Simon shouted, bolting upright, eyes wide open. “Oh, er, is it time to get up?”
“It’s been almost two hours.”
“Certainly. Let me prepare a small fire with roots from my mattress. Where are my matches?”
“There.”
“Ah.”
Simon lit the first match, but it immediately fizzled out. The second caught, but the roots were too damp to catch.
“Give me your trousers, boy!”
Chance hesitated, but then took them off. He figured, What the heck. How am I worse off in just my Underoos?
But Simon could not get the jeans lit, either. He was down to one match. He was about to light it when Chance said, “Wait!”
Chance pulled a few hairs out of his own head, then a few more, and a few more, until he had made a little nest of kindling on the ground.
“That’ll burn,” he said. “When it’s lit, hold my jeans over it. They’ll catch easier that way.”
“Brilliant,” said Simon, smiling, revealing his razorlike teeth.
Simon lit the last match. He cupped his hand around it, coaxing the flame, blowing gently, gently to feed it oxygen. Then he lit Chance’s hair, which caught easily and burned rapidly. Simon held Chance’s jeans over the flame.
But they didn’t catch. The flames went out. Simon lay back on his root bag.
“We are doomed,” he said. Simon began to moan in anguish.
“Stop that now,” said Chance.
Chance stood and looked through the bars. Across the passageway was a sconce in the wall holding a pitch torch.
The torch was at least two feet out of his reach. He grabbed the end of one jeans leg, reached outside the bars, and using the jeans like a bullwhip, snapped at the torch, finally connecting after two dozen tries, knocking it out of its sconce and onto the passageway floor. With the jeans-whip, it was easy to drag the torch close enough to grab it.
“Bravo, young human,” said Simon. “Now hand it to me.”
Simon fashioned a small stove out of stones. The liquid started to boil. When it was reduced to a thimbleful, Simon removed it from the stove.
“Drink some,” said Chance. “What’re you waiting for? We have to save you before we can save Yryssy.”
But Simon ignored him. Instead, he tore a small scrap of plastic from his trash-bag mattress. He pushed his thumb into the middle of the scrap so it stretched and made a deep indentation. Then he poured the flerk into it, plucked a thread out of his tunic, and used it to tie off the little plastic pouch.
“Here,” he said, pressing the small flerk balloon into Chance’s hand. “Geckasofts, just so you know, are delicate, slim gray creatures about three feet high, wrinkled, much like Oppaboffian elephants, with long snouts and large eyes. Yryssy is particularly slender. You must take this to her. You must get it into her mouth somehow, all of it, every drop.”
“But … but … what about you?”
“There is only enough for one being.”
“You mean…”
“Yes.”
“I can’t let you die!”
“We have no choice. Either I die alone or everyone dies.”
Simon lay back on his mattress. His mouth opened. His hands reached up, clawing at the air, then appeared to freeze solid, midgrasp.
“Simon!”
“Get out of here, Kid Chance,” he said so quietly that Chance had to bend over and put his ear near Simon’s mouth. “Go.”
“I can’t leave you!”
“Perhaps,” he said, closing his eyes, “but I am leaving you.”
“Wait! Tell me where Yryssy is!”
Simon Sleight did not respond.
Chance touched his friend’s throat; no pulse. Did Deviklopts even have pulses? Chance put Simon’s wrist to his forehead. Simon’s body seemed to be growing cool. Was he dead? Chance had never seen anything that big dead. Birds
and armadillos and raccoons … and, well, that leathery skeleton on the 1,509th floor. But not Deviklopts. Chance stood up and screamed.
“Help! Help!”
But all he could hear was some creature in another cell far away mimicking him: Hay-yulp! Hay-yulp!
Chance rattled the bars of the cell, but they were absolutely solid. He put his pants back on, placed the precious balloon of flerk in his pocket. He lay down on the warm stone floor and quickly fell asleep.
Chance awoke with a violent start, sweating, mouth completely dry. He looked around. Some creature had left a paper bowl of food and a tin of water. He drank the water, which tasted like iron. The food looked like a very large piece of jellyfish sushi. He nibbled at the slimy, slippery thing. It tasted like chicken. He ate quickly.
The torch, leaning against the wall, was running out of fuel; it burned only dimly now, the flame a thin gauze of blue. Simon had not moved; he lay still on his mattress, mouth open, clawing at nothing. Insects had found him, strange Donbaloh bugs, and were beginning to crawl on his face, up his wrists to his hands, over his manacled ankle.
The chain. Could Chance use it somehow? He crawled over to examine the manacle. He touched Simon’s foot, which felt smooth, cool, and spongy. It didn’t appear the manacle would easily come off over the foot, even though it was fairly thin and bony. Chance tried all the same. If only he had a shoehorn of sorts, or oil to use as a lubricant, he might be able to get it off. But there was nothing like that.
Chance stood, but nearly slipped when he trod on a lock of Simon’s long, ultragreasy hair that had trailed onto the ground.
Ah.
Chance scooped up a palmful of Simon’s extraordinarily copious hair grease, slathered it on the Deviklopt’s chained ankle, and, with no little effort, slipped off the manacle.
The chain was longer than the cell was deep, one end anchored to the wall. Chance tied the other end around a bar of the cell door, in the manner of a tightrope. He climbed up and stood on the chain, balancing by putting his hands on the ceiling. But his weight wasn’t great enough; the bar didn’t budge. He pushed on the ceiling as hard as he was able to, but no dice.
Chance jumped down. He glanced at Simon. Strange insects were all over him now, crawling in and out of his ears and mouth and nose. Chance shuddered and turned away, accidentally stepping on the iron rod and nearly falling again. He picked it up.
He stuck one end of the rod through a link in the middle of the chain stretched between the wall and the bar on the cell door. He turned the rod once, beginning to twist the chain. He turned it again. The chain began to tauten. Another turn, another, and another. The chain creaked and groaned, so high was the magnitude of its tension. Chance turned the rod again. It was becoming more and more difficult. What would give first? The chain, snapping at its weakest link; the wall, where the end of the chain was anchored; or Chance, himself, unable to turn the rod any farther?
Chance, with a low grrr of concentration and effort, turned it once more.
Bink! The chain snapped and smashed into the back wall. The rod had been stripped out of his hands, and Chance was knocked onto his back. He looked up at the cell door.
The bar had broken in half under the tension of the torquing chain, leaving enough room for Chance to squeeze through. Before he did so, however, he crawled around the floor, located the iron rod, and used it to scratch a design on the wall.
A bee.
He touched Simon on the arm, murmured, “I won’t fail you,” tucked the iron rod in his belt, then squeezed through the bars of Cell #299, finally falling into the passageway, liberated.
He had to find Yryssy Ayopy. Now.
CHAPTER 19
What Pauline needed more than anything else right now was a destination.
“Mersey, where am I going?” she said.
I don’t know, said Mersey, deep inside Pauline’s head. I’m trying to tune in to a signal to get some information—the appearance of a human down there would be big news, and it would be talked about on Infirmary Radio (WSPI). According to hospitalprofunda.com, I might be able to pick up a two-way radio down there, which the security forces use. But at the moment, all I can pick up is Muzak.
“Mersey, you’re fading.”
Wh—?
“What?”
And Mersey was gone. Pauline supposed fulgurite transmitters were subject to communication blackouts, too, although in her circumstances, that could prove very inconvenient.
Where could Chance be? Probably staying out of sight, maybe traveling by air duct or little-used elevators and forgotten staircases. Pauline presumed he was trying to get out now, having delivered his letter to Simon Sleight. But how? Maybe Chance knew how. But if he didn’t, he’d go to the top floor, wouldn’t he? The one closest to the surface of the Earth? Yes. Then that’s where she would go, too.
After an hour of running up and down rows of cells, she finally found an elevator, but it was locked and appeared to need three separate keys to open. There were no other elevators; all she could find was passageway after passageway of dank cells. Where were the jailers? Someone must look after these beings! Pauline decided it was not her business to worry about the beings in the cells. It was her business to find her brother, then get out of that hole and go home to her mother and her Mersey and continue on with life, right where they left off.
So Pauline found the door to the stairs she had used to enter the basement, and she began to climb, story after story, stealing out onto each floor to see if elevators could be found. This far down, the floors were simply abandoned, tomblike expanses, each a finger deep in what looked like centuries of dust and decay, and some so dark and forbidding they gave Pauline chills. She hastily closed the doors on those places and continued her ascent.
Floor 6,199 was different. It was actually a seven-story room, entirely open, a quarter of a mile in area, filled from end to end and floor to ceiling with hundreds and hundreds of machines, their great shiny silver frameworks filled with bronze gears spinning at greater and lesser speeds, red-painted funnels atop every one, each spouting steam, and sealed ducts leading to the next floor high above, each looking like a huge metal cobra striking the ceiling. Every machine was manned by a creature of a different species, from tiny beasts that looked like mouse skeletons to four-story colossi resembling finless zebra-striped whales who were waving around dozens of long, thin, multijointed arms like daddy longlegs’ legs. Each creature was pushing buttons or yanking levers or mopping its brow or scribbling on a yellow pad.
There were recognizable creatures, too—a tall, thin, corroded zombie with half a face, a bonafide werewolf, and what appeared to be Cinderella’s fairy godmother. She was shorter than Pauline had always imagined.
Pauline ducked behind a little cart filled with flywheels and thick blue cables, peeking around every so often, trying to decide what to do. Just walk up to one of them and ask for directions? Well, why not?
She was about to take a deep breath, stand up, and stroll over to the fairy godmother when a creature that looked like a schnauzer-sized dung beetle in a leotard prodded Pauline on the rear end with a yardstick.
“Whatcha doin’?” it said, in a voice like a honking cat. “Looking for a neck to bite?”
“Well, no. I’m, uh, staying on the chicken pox floor, and I decided to go for a little walk, and, you know, got lost.”
That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
“Well,” it said, stepping back. “You can’t be on the Climate Floor. This is where all the air-conditioning comes from, for the whole infirmary. A very delicate environment. I’m Rod Nthn, the foreman. I’ll have you know, I’m the first Thropinese to ever hold that position.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m very important.”
“That’s great.”
“I have a key to the Commodore Club.”
“Oh really.”
“The chairman of the board called me once.”
“That’s just s
uper.”
“And I can make announcements on the PA whenever I want.”
“Tremendous.”
“You have no idea.”
“You’re very special.”
“Thank you,” Rod said, curtsying and blushing all at once.
“Um, how do I get out of here?”
“I shall conduct you,” said the Thropinese, bowing and offering one of his hideous bug legs for Pauline to take. She did. It felt like a skeleton’s arm, except with spikes and mucus all over it. She tried not to gag. The creature led her through the machines, pausing to introduce her to several of the workers as his “new friend,” until they reached a bank of elevators, one of which went to the first floor. It was this elevator that Rod Nthn stopped in front of, and he pushed the UP button.
They waited. And waited. For the next forty-five minutes, Rod Nthn paid Pauline many embarrassing compliments, exclaiming over her hazel eyes; her fiery red curls; the keenness of her fangs; her clear, chicken pox–free skin; and her dainty vampiric hands.
Finally, the elevator arrived. They were the only ones aboard; 6,199 buttons covered all the walls. Rod pressed the button to the first floor and stepped back. The elevator jolted once, then began to rise.
When they had just passed the 6,000th floor, Rod Nthn suddenly pressed the button for 5,999, where the elevator came to a slow, squeaky stop.
“What’s going on?” said Pauline, growing more and more uncomfortable with this guy.
As the door opened, he dashed for Pauline, and before she could begin to react, the strange creature picked her up and hoisted her over his shoulder.
“Hey! Leggo!”
He whisked her out of the elevator, down a long, black hallway, through a pair of black swinging doors, and into his bachelor pad, where he seated her on a big throne made of bones and bottle caps, chained her ankles to the legs and her arms to the armrests, stood back, and said, in his annoying honking-cat voice:
“You are to be my wife.”
“What?”
Saint Philomene's Infirmary for Magical Creatures Page 8
