“Euvyd,” said Chet, “you had the chief going there for a while.”
“You’ve got the wrong guy.”
Chance’s line sounded corny even to him.
“Any idea of the seriousness of your crime?”
“I was just playing around.”
“Not.”
All the Balliopes laughed. They marched on. Chance worked at the bars.
“Balliopes!” said a voice.
It sounded highly familiar, but all Chance could see was some doctor walking alongside and staring at him. The doctor put a finger to the mask covering its mouth, implying shh!
“Balliopes,” said the doctor, “what are you doing with my patient?”
Pauline!
“Your patient, doc,” said Chet, “is under arrest for impersonating a figure of authority.”
“And resisting arrest,” added another.
“My patient,” Pauline boomed, “was due in surgery ten minutes ago.”
“He should’ve thought of that before he impersonated Sir Amk Bittius the Fourth.”
Pauline couldn’t wait to ask her brother what that was all about. She hoped she’d get that opportunity. She’d better. At that moment, though, things weren’t looking all that rosy.
“Is that what you want?” said Pauline. “A corpse on your hands? Because that’s what you’re going to get if his surgery is delayed an instant longer.”
The Balliopes stopped, as did the two creatures carrying Chance, and they all conferred among themselves.
“OR 2222.150,” said Pauline, standing in front of the lead Balliope and gesturing to the left, at two swinging polished steel doors of an operating room. “Right here.”
“But—”
“Now, gentlemen.”
“We—”
“Let him out of the cage, and place him on the operating table faceup.”
“If—”
“If something happens to him, I will make all of your puny, spherical lives infinitely more miserable than they already are.”
“C’mon, guys,” said Chet. “Bring him in. We’ll just sit outside the door and wait. No big deal.”
The Balliopes unlocked the cage and placed Chance on the table, then left—all except for a diminutive example of the species, who now stood inside the door.
Pauline dragged over a couple machines and a tray of instruments and green towels. She placed a clear plastic mask with a tube coming out of it over Chance’s face, taped an IV to his arm without actually sticking the needle in a vein, lifted up his shirt to expose his stomach, then draped green sheets over him, leaving open only a square of tummy. She picked up a scalpel and looked back at the Balliope. He looked queasy. She turned back around, leaned over Chance, and whispered, “Okay?”
“Okay,” Chance whispered back.
“Bear with me. Pretend you’re under general anesthesia.”
She removed the mask from his face.
“Chance,” she whispered, “you were so brave to jump on that Flok’emble’s back.”
Chance was excellent at playing the anesthetized patient; he lay perfectly still.
After performing “surgery” on her brother for a good fifteen minutes, tossing “used” instruments noisily into the tray and plucking fresh ones out, dropping wadded-up towels smirched with iodine, which against the green cloth looked much like blood, Pauline looked over her shoulder. The sentinel Balliope had fainted. Pauline whispered to Chance, “Hold your breath and don’t move.”
Pauline ran out into the hallway.
“Balliopes,” she shouted. “My patient is dead. This is all your fault, you kept him from surgery too long. I will have each and every one of your dense little heads brought to me on a surgical tray. Out of my sight!”
The Balliopes scattered. Pauline grabbed an unoccupied gurney and wheeled it into the operating room. Chance jumped on it, lay down, and Pauline placed a sheet over him, covering him from head to toe. She wheeled him into the hallway, whispering, “What now, Chance?”
“I know where Arbipift Obriirpt is,” he said from under the sheet. “Thirteenth floor, room five fifty.”
“Then that’s the next stop,” said Pauline, already watching for an elevator bank. “It’ll be as close as we’ve come yet to getting out of here.”
“But we also have to rescue Braig.”
“What? Why?”
“He was arrested and imprisoned for kidnapping Mrs. Rurriery.”
“Chance, we have to think of ourselves, now,” whispered Pauline, jogging along. “We have to get out. The infirmary is okay now.”
“We wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without him,” whispered Chance, dying to look out from under the sheet to see where they were. “It was Braig’s idea to transfuse Mrs. Rurriery’s flerky blood into Yryssy. And it worked. So we have to save him. He’s on the sixteenth floor, in a special cell.”
“If we’re not careful,” said Pauline, finally locating an elevator that went all the way to the 12th floor, “all three of us will be in the basement wasting away, probably forever. We have to get out first, then somehow save him.”
Pauline pressed the UP button.
“I can’t let him down.”
Chance was close to tears. He had never been more sincere, and Pauline could hear it in his voice.
“Let’s talk about it when we’ve got the map. Maybe we’ll figure something out between now and then.”
The elevator came.
It was enormous. It could have held a small building. Or King Kong if he sat down cross-legged. But it was empty. Pauline wheeled Chance in. When the doors finally closed and they were alone, Pauline took the sheet off her brother and he climbed off the gurney.
“Good-bye and good riddance to 2,222,” said Chance, reaching up to punch the button to the thirteenth floor.
“I’ll say,” said Pauline.
The elevator began to rise. Incredibly, it made the whole trip without stopping once. The doors opened.
The floor before them was a wide-open space three stories high, and apparently under construction. Creatures wearing overalls and lumberjack shirts wandered around carrying nail guns and saws and aluminum ladders and coils of copper hose; others manned big machines that jackhammered, sliced, bent, drilled, welded, lifted, and crushed, while still others lazed around a watercooler, drinking something that looked like gray Gatorade from clear plastic cups. They stared at Chance and his sister with mild interest.
Lining the walls were thirty-foot-tall doors with big doorknobs in the middle and little doorknobs down at human height. Chance and Pauline began to jog along the first hallway. They were half out of breath when they finally reached 0013.550.
“I should go in by myself,” whispered Chance. “Arbipift might get suspicious if there are two of us. He may not give the map to me, though—he asked me if I could pay and said that I couldn’t afford it if I had to ask what it cost.”
“Maybe we can trade something for it,” said Pauline.
They both went through their pockets. Chance had nothing. Pauline had only a tiny flashlight, a couple AAA batteries, peppermints, and twenty bucks.
“Maybe this?” she said, giving her brother the banknote.
“Can’t hurt to try.”
“Maybe he’ll just give it to me,” said Chance, his confidence in this possibility being roughly zero.
“I know you’ll think of something, Chance. I’ll be out here waiting. If you’re gone for more than ten minutes, I’m coming in.”
Chance knocked.
“Who is it!” shouted a deep voice from within that reminded Pauline of kettle drums.
“Uh, the Euvyd,” said Chance, not feeling very brave.
“Enter.”
With some effort, Chance turned the human-size doorknob, leaned hard into the vast door until it stood slightly ajar, and squeezed in.
It wasn’t really a room. It was a cave. A cave ringed by huge glass-fronted refrigerators against every rocky wall. In the center sat a de
sk the size of a Dumpster. Behind it sat a creature, a colossus of the same species as Feargus M’Quiminy—a Harrow-Teaguer—wearing navy slacks, a short-sleeved white shirt with breast pockets, and a plaid tie. A stubby horn, glowing yellow and with a blue tip, stuck out of its forehead. Its hair was plastered to its scalp like greased seaweed, and its hairline dipped almost to its eyebrows. Its body was covered in scales that looked like the black keys on a piano, and its massive, muscular legs spread out on either side of his desk, which was piled high with papers and binders and in/out boxes, among which were scattered glass jars, each holding a semitransparent liquid, and some kind of … lump. Very organic-looking lumps.
“Hello, sir, I called about the ma—”
“Silence, Euvyd,” it said. “Do you know who I am?”
“Uh—”
“Never mind,” it said. “Come closer.”
Chance hesitated. The room was perfectly silent. Well, almost; the only sound was a sporadic wet clicking. Chance realized with horror that it was coming from the monster’s sugar-cookie-sized eyes. He could hear the monster blink.
“Forgive my short-term memory problems,” he said, “but didn’t I tell you to come closer?”
Chance took a few ministeps forward.
“Now,” said Arbipift, looking around his desk for something. “I know I have it here someplace. Ah.”
Arbipift held a small, heavily wrinkled rectangle of dirty paper between his only two phalanges: a thumb and a forefinger, together large enough to encircle Chance’s neck. He swallowed. The paper was limp from time and use, and it looked like a swatch of very supple leather.
Chance took another step forward.
“Thank you, sir—”
“Not so fast,” the Harrow-Teaguer said, snatching the paper away and sticking it in a small floor safe. “That is a very rare document. In fact, I believe it is the only known copy. What happened to your head?”
“Oh,” said Chance, reaching up for the bandage. “I, uh, bumped into a Wreau.”
“Zat right,” it said, leaning back in its chair and crossing its arms. “Is that why you’re in Saint Philomene’s?”
“Yessir.”
“How come you can’t leave by the regular channels?”
“Oh, uh, I can. I’m just getting the map for a friend.”
“Who?”
“Oh, you wouldn’t know her.”
“Oh, a girrrl,” it said, extruding the word from between his teeth like mud. “Say no more. That’ll be twenty thousand clahd.”
“I … will you take twenty Oppaboffian dollars?” said Chance, looking around the room desperately. “I’m just a poor—”
“Silence, again,” it said with a low, heavy hiss. “Anything else?”
“Um, nothing.”
“Why, I’ll just give it to you then.”
“Really?” Chance couldn’t wait to tell his sister. They’d be out of there in no time!
“No, not really, sorry. But you do have something, er, tradable. You just don’t know it.”
The Harrow-Teaguer grinned. A thin line of drool fell from its lower lip onto its shirt.
“Wha—”
“Well,” he said, settling back in his chair and putting his arms behind his head. “There’s this little Euvyd girl, Pticia, down on the 4,816th, do you know her?”
“Uh, no,” said Chance. Whatever it was Arbipift thought Chance had, Chance did not have. What did he want, his clothes? His galligaskins and Kippetore hair shirt and Möbius-strip T-shirt? If so, then Arbipift could have them, but that would kind of suck. Still, anything to get out of this place.
“Well. Pticia has some problems. Medical issues. The most pressing is an unreliable kidney. One has already been removed, but you can’t remove them both.”
“I don’t see how I can help,” Chance said, but of course he could see.
“In exchange for the map,” said the creature, “I’ll be needing a kidney. Provided, of course, you are free of infection.”
“Uh, I better be going now.”
With the speed of a rattrap slamming shut, Arbipift reached out with his two phalanges, wrapped them around Chance’s head, and lifted him off the ground. Chance couldn’t see, hear, or breathe. He could taste the Harrow-Teaguer’s skin, which reminded him of the time when he slid headfirst into home plate and got playground dirt in his mouth. Chance pounded on the huge beast’s thumb.
Something was being wrapped around him. Around and around. Rope. Or tape. Once he was immobilized, Arbipift laid Chance down on the floor behind his desk.
“I will make the kidney decisions around here, ha-ha-ha!” he said while Chance gasped for breath. “I better tape your mouth up, too. Hold still.”
“Waimmlph.”
A knock at the door. From his vantage point, Chance could see under Arbipift’s desk. The door opened. Pauline walked in.
“What do you want, trespasser?” shouted Arbipift.
“Oh, sorry, sorry,” said Pauline, closing the door behind her and touching her mask to be sure it was still in place. “Someone said you were looking for transplant surgeons?”
“Who said that?” the monster said, pounding on his desk, making everything on it jump.
“It’s common knowledge,” said Pauline, hoping her voice didn’t betray the elevated state of fear that had seized her when under the door she had seen Chance’s feet rise off the ground. Where was he now? He couldn’t be far. After all, Arbipift, if she had heard right, was planning to steal a kidney from his body.
“I see,” said Arbipift. “Well, you do realize some transplants require a measure of, er, discretion? Perhaps total discretion?”
“Yes, I understand. Anyway, hi, I’m Doctor, uh, Spock. I’m a freelancer, just offering my serv … Say, what’s wrong with your eye?”
“Huh?”
“Your left eye. No, your other left. Yes. It looks milky. Mind if I take a look?”
“Um, sure.”
“No, don’t bother getting up. I’ll climb up and stand on your desk.”
“Do you need some help?”
“No, I can manage,” said Pauline. She hoisted herself up. She stood and tiptoed toward the repulsive Harrow-Teaguer.
“Bend down so I can take a look.”
Arbipift did.
“Look up.”
Arbipift did. That’s when Pauline dropped something into the breast pocket of his shirt.
“Okay, look down.”
“Am I gonna be okay, doc?”
Pauline glanced down behind his desk.
Chance. All tied up.
“Probably,” said Pauline. “It seems that you have a case of, uh, halitosis piñatas. You should see a specialist. But there’s no hurry.”
“Oh. All right. Thanks. Now let’s talk about a transplant project that’s just come along. It’s a little Euv—”
“Go, Mersey,” shouted Pauline.
“Huh?” said Arbipift, jumping back.
“‘Oh, mercy,’ I said. A poor little Euvyd.”
The huge Harrow-Teaguer began to shake its head. Vigorously.
“What the heck?” it said, the tip of its horn turning from blue to red. Arbipift shook his head again, then held it between his hands, as if he were going to pop it.
“Get away!” Arbipift shouted.
He stood up, looking around desperately. Pauline jumped off the desk and ran around to Chance. Arbipift was now banging his head on the wall.
“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop! This voice in my head! Help! What do you want?”
He fell to his knees, holding his head in both hands and banging it on the floor. Pauline worked frantically to remove the tape around Chance’s head and body while Arbipift was busy with his agonies.
“Agh,” said Arbipift, lying on his side in a fetal curl on the stone floor. “Anything, I’ll do anything you say, just sto-o-o-op!”
“Get the map out of the safe, Harrow-Teaguer!” shouted Chance.
And Arbipift Obriirpt, Harrow-Teag
uer invincible, got up onto his knees and crawled to his safe, dialed the combination, and removed the rectangle of dirty paper.
“Here, here!” he whispered. “Take it, you vicious sorcerers!”
Chance snatched it away, and the two Jeopards fled the room, pulling the immense door shut behind them, closing off the suffering Harrow-Teaguer for good.
CHAPTER 32
“What,” said Chance as he and his sister ducked through a doorway, “was that all about?”
They found themselves in a library. An old library with sagging bookcases twenty feet high—books bound in brown or dirty white leather that were as large as seat cushions filled the lower shelves, smaller books were on the middle shelves, and the smallest sat up high. Ornate wooden rolling staircases circled every row of bookcases, at each end of which sat a huge book open on a podium—a dictionary?—that seemed to guard the library from vandals and desperadoes and all manner of the unwelcome.
It was dark as a tomb, lit only here and there by flickering gas lamps. Pauline and Chance were obviously in a little-used section of a vast athenaeum: the dust was a half-inch deep, most of the lamps were broken, and strange insects and spiderlike beasties crawled around, chasing and eating one another. Huge old wooden chairs were scattered about.
“I was watching under Arbipift’s door,” said Pauline, stepping gingerly between two rows of bookcases. “I saw a commotion. I ‘called’ Mersey and told her what was happening—that you were under the control of some monster. I told Mersey about the map and that I’d heard the beast say he wanted one of your kidneys in exchange. Mersey gave me an idea.”
The books were so old that the titles had completely faded. Pauline pulled a book from the shelf. It was much lighter than she’d expected. It was written—not printed—in an unknown language, on thick, wavy paper, and in every margin on every page were notes in a tiny script. It reminded her of the note she’d traded back and forth with Mersey in class.
“Mersey suggested that I break the fulgurite in two and figure out a way to secrete half on Arbipift’s person. Then Mersey would get in his head and torment him with Muzak until he gave us the map. And voilà.”
Pauline held up the map. She directed Chance to pull up two chairs. They sat down under a lamp, placed the big volume across their knees, and spread out the map on its cover.
Saint Philomene's Infirmary for Magical Creatures Page 15
