It was beautifully drawn and done in great detail. It was obviously old; no elevators were pictured, only staircases. There were no words, but the drawings suggested the twenty-fifth floor featured a door to a room that extended into the rock on the easternmost bounds of the infirmary. The door was marked with a skull and crossbones. Inside the room, in a far corner, was a trapdoor in the floor that led to a light-rail six miles in length, near the end of which was a five-hundred-step staircase that led to Oppabof. Where in Oppabof, it did not say.
“We’re almost out of here, Chance,” said Pauline.
“We just have to go free Braig,” he said.
“Chance. There’s no time for that. They’ll be onto us before long.”
“I’m going,” said Chance, standing up. “It’s only three floors away. I’ve got the map memorized. I’ll meet you on Oppabof soon.”
“But you don’t know where on the sixteenth floor!”
“I’ll find him.”
“Every floor is the size of downtown Dallas!”
Chance hadn’t thought of it like that.
“Still.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
Chance was so relieved that he thought he would collapse.
“Good. C’mon!”
Just as they were replacing the ancient volume on the shelf, the door they had entered through burst open.
“There!” shouted half a dozen creatures: Vyrndeets, Balliopes, unknowns, all stumbling over one another. “Catch ’em! They’re worth ten thousand clahd apiece, dead or alive!”
Chance and his sister took off between two endless rows of bookcases, heading for … what? They did not know. They ran.
They came upon a wall. No doors. But toward a corner, flanked on either side by a rusty iron chair, was a sliding glass door marked POLE, behind which was a tiny, brilliant-white antiseptic room, a complete contrast to the dusty, gloomy, cobwebby catacomb they were presently in; a juxtaposition of light and dark, old and new, clean and dirty. Only about the size of an ordinary shower stall, the room was empty except for three curious features: a hole about the size of a manhole in the ceiling, a similar hole in the floor, and, running centrally through both, a thick brass pipe.
The hoots and yowls of the pursuing mob were now modulated by the yodels of the ubiquitous Balliopes.
“What is that?” said Pauline.
“I think,” said Chance, pulling the glass aside, “it’s a firefighter’s pole. Look, it says it goes all the way down to the 1,395th floor! Let’s go!”
Pauline carefully stepped over a gap and hugged the smooth, polished pole, letting herself slide down, not too fast, not too slow. Twenty feet above her, Chance grasped the pole and started to slide, too. They stepped off at the sixteenth floor, finding themselves in a small booth.
“What’s the plan?”
“Simple. Watch.”
The siblings opened the door and stepped onto a broad hallway lined with boring administrative offices. Creatures of all stripes, most wearing suits and hats and carrying briefcases, looking rather run-down, trudged up and down the hallway, glancing without interest at the Jeopards.
Chance spied an especially world-weary Wreau in a gray flannel suit pausing at a watercooler.
“Sir, can you tell me the visiting hours for the holding cells?”
“Er, by appointment. Just call ahead.”
“Ah. And where exactly are the holding cells?”
The Wreau leaned over and examined Chance a little more closely. If it had any suspicions, it was far too tired and despairing to do anything about them.
“End of the hall, go right, left, right at the stuffed Flok’emble. Can’t miss ’em.”
The holding cells were simple barred doors, nothing fancy, each with a sleepy Balliope sitting in front of it. No sign of Chet.
Pauline and Chance suddenly charged the cells.
“Braig Toop!” shouted Pauline, startling the row of Balliopes. “Where is Braig Toop? I need Braig Toop immediately!”
Braig came to the bars of the second cell, mouth wide open, astonished. Chance put his finger to his lips.
“Who are you?” said the Balliope who appeared to be in charge, “and what do you want with my prisoner?”
“He is needed for an organ transplant immediately, Balliope,” roared Pauline, “per orders of none other than Arbipift Obriirpt.”
“Well, Arbipift Obriirpt can come get him himself.”
“This is a time-sensitive matter, Balliope. Do you realize that Mr. Toop is the only creature in the infirmary with the kind of, er, flang bladder that is desperately needed by none other than a baby Balliope?”
“Really.”
“Do you want the needless death of a poor, sweet, cute, helpless infant Balliope on your conscience?”
“Well…”
“And on top of it all, do you want to be tried for willful interference?”
“All right, all right,” said the Balliope, fumbling with his keys. He let Braig out, and the three retreated in the direction Chance and Pauline had come from.
“That was marvelous,” said Braig when they were safely out of earshot.
“You’re going to have to stay in hiding until we can somehow get you an official pardon,” said Chance. “I have an idea. Wait a few days, then contact Yryssy.”
“I’ll leave the infirmary for a while. Go stay with my friend Muge, out in the country caves.”
“Good.”
“Let’s get back to the firefighter’s pole,” Pauline said. “We have to get to the twenty-fifth floor.”
The friends all hugged. Chance and Pauline slid down the pole and got off at the twenty-fifth floor.
Just as he stepped off, Chance looked up and saw a tiny face ten floors above him. Chet?
Braig continued sliding down until he disappeared into the murk.
“They saw us,” said Chance.
“It’s okay. We’ll work quickly.”
They were in a large, clean, empty room floored in light green tile and furnished with what looked like the doors to minifridges, dozens of them, all protruding from a single giant steel refrigerator like windows in an Advent calendar.
In the rest of the room, tidy rows of gurneys stood in antiseptic silence. Most were empty. But one had something on it. A green sheet covered it completely.
“Oh dear,” said Pauline, wrinkling up her nose. “A morgue.”
“Do you think,” said Chance, “there’s any way this could be the skull-and-crossbones room?”
Pauline consulted the map.
“It sure could be,” she said, folding the map back up and putting it in a back pocket. “Let’s look in the corners for a trapdoor.”
“I don’t have to look,” said Chance. “I can see from here there aren’t any.”
“What about under the big refrigerator, over to the left?”
“We could never move that thing.”
The juggernaut of money-hungry citizens of Donbaloh who were anxious for a piece of the lucrative fugitive pie could be heard squeakily sliding down the firefighter’s pole. If only they hadn’t seen us! thought Chance and Pauline at once. If only.
“Hurry,” said Pauline, “pile some gurneys up in front of the pole door. And the front door, too, for good measure.”
The two Jeopards moved every gurney except the occupied one, piling them on top of one another, setting their brakes, until it would have been nigh impossible to get in without a battering ram.
“How are we going to move the cadaver fridge?” said Chance.
“Well, look,” said Pauline, summoning Chance to the lower-left refrigerator door, a steel square with a handle. “Open it.”
“You open it,” said Chance, grimacing.
Pauline did. She pulled out the long, sliding drawer, which was, mercifully, corpseless.
“How in the world does that help us?” said Chance. “We still can’t get under this thing.”
Pauline pulled the smoothly sliding dra
wer out as far as it would go. Then she yanked, and the drawer popped off its rails and landed with a thirk on the floor of the morgue. Pauline looked inside the hole where the drawer had been. She climbed in. She crawled to the very back.
“Hurry,” shouted Chance, urgent, panicky. “They’re at both doors. We’re doomed!”
Pauline found a wooden trapdoor with an old, rusty iron handle bolted to it.
“They’re getting through the doors,” shouted Chance.
“Chance, get in and pull the refrigerator door closed behind you.”
Chance did.
“Whoa, I can’t believe you found it,” said Chance, leaning down to pull on the trapdoor handle.
It was heavy. His sister helped. Finally, they got it open. Inside, it was as black as the Mariana Trench.
Pauline let herself down, holding on to the edge with her fingertips.
“I can’t see the bottom. I don’t know how far I’ll fall.”
“Just do it,” said Chance. “They just broke into the room; I can hear them tearing the place apart looking for us. I’m coming right after you.”
Pauline let go. She was in perfect free fall for a full second, then she hit hard rock, landing squarely on both feet.
“It’s okay, it’s not that far.”
“Ow,” said Chance, falling hard.
Pauline remembered her tiny flashlight. She switched it on.
They were in a great cave. The walls shone like mother-of-pearl, water shimmered in limpid pools, stalactites and stalagmites dropped and rose. In the distance, old railroad tracks glimmered.
“There’s the rail. Let’s go.”
They jogged off into the dark, the little flashlight beam jumping with every movement. They arrived at an old but very ordinary-looking railroad.
“Just six miles. Careful not to trip on the ties.”
After half an hour, Chance had to sit and rest. He had never gone this long without sleep.
“We’ve got to keep going, Chance. Can you stand up?”
Pauline took a step and suddenly bumped into something that knocked her back on her rear end. She reached out and felt the edge of a thin metal platform of some kind. On four wheels. She climbed on. There was a handle. Two handles on a crossbar, like a seesaw.
A draisine. A pump car.
“Chance, get up, I’ve found the answer to our prayers. Climb on.”
Chance put all his weight on his end of the seesaw lever. The pump car started to move. An inch, a foot, a yard. It slowly picked up speed. They were now going five, ten, fifteen, twenty miles per hour … in total darkness. They would be there in minutes.
But where? How would they be able to see a five-hundred-step staircase?
Chance let up on his end of the lever. He was finally done. He curled up on the platform of the pump car and fell asleep. He had always been able to sleep in moving vehicles, no matter how shuddery or loud.
Pauline pressed on, but she was beginning to slow, too, exhausted herself.
Pauline realized all at once that she was able to see. Just barely, but there was something illuminating the way. There was no obvious source of light above her or ahead of her.
Ah. The minerals in the walls were ever-so-faintly glowing—enough for her to see her brother dozing on the pump car floor.
Way ahead of her, the cavern seemed to suddenly darken again, as if the minerals in the rock had decided for some reason to quit glowing. She closed in on the new darkness. Was this the end? Would she crash into a wall?
She squinted. It seemed like there was something up ahead. Or, more precisely, nothing. A vacancy. A vacuum. She squinted. The tracks ahead looked like they simply disappeared.
Then the vacancy ahead became clear.
A hole.
“Chance!” she said, grabbing her brother by the collar. He didn’t move. She let go of the pump handle. With the same kind of strength that allows mothers to lift wrecked cars off their trapped children, Pauline picked her skinny little brother up and jumped off the pump car and onto the berm, where they landed hard, both tumbling, the rocks tearing at their flesh and bumping their heads and bruising their bodies. The pump car hurtled on by itself.
Pauline slowly stood up and examined herself for injuries. Chance, wide awake now, gave himself a once-over. Lots of scrapes and cuts and knots, but nothing serious.
They walked up to the chasm into which the pump car had plummeted. Beyond it, the rail started up again. The hole was a terrific underground sinkhole that had probably claimed an awful lot of victims—pump cars, engines, entire trains. They’d probably abandoned work on the railroad a century or more ago.
Along one edge of the chasm was a narrow ledge just wide enough for a single human to shimmy by on.
“C’mon,” said Pauline, not at all sure she was ready. But, of course, there was no choice. The staircase was certainly on the other side. “I’ll go first.”
Pauline inched her way onto the ledge. She hugged the dark rock of the cave wall.
“C’mon, Chance. You can do it.”
Chance, refreshed from the nap and near-death experience, knew he could do it. He had practiced on a much narrower ledge in an elevator shaft not so long ago.
They made it to the other side.
And there, on the left, a recession in the wall of rock appeared. Set deep inside was an old iron door the size of a small movie screen.
“Look,” said Chance. “The staircase?”
Pauline began working on the doorknob, which was rusty as a well-traveled anchor.
“Got it,” said Pauline, unlatching the door and pushing it open.
Pauline reached down to give her brother a hand through the door. A vast, empty room revealed itself, its floor and walls made of huge stones intricately set in a diamond pattern. Moss and slickness covered everything, and insects scuttled at their feet. In the center of the room, a steep and towering spiral staircase of a reddish-gray stone flecked with gold rose like a medieval silo to the ceiling a hundred yards above, and beyond.
Each step was as tall as Chance’s knee, each stair only a few inches deep, making for a very steep climb.
“Be strong, Chance,” said Pauline, looking back at her brother and seeing utter fatigue in his eyes. “We’re almost out of here. Think of being at home, seeing Mom, playing with Jiro. I’ll give you my internet password and you can use my computer anytime you want.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
With short rests every hundredth step, they eventually reached the 497th. Ahead, they could see a raised wooden boardwalk just wide enough for a single person, which was built over what appeared to be deep pools of clear, greenish water that led through a narrow cave. The cave turned a quick corner, and a low, earthly light spilled from that direction. A faint mist, cool and refreshing on their faces, floated on the air: 498. 499.
500.
“We made it, Pauline.”
Chance jumped around with the last of the energy in his benumbed legs. Pauline, all business, started marching down the boardwalk.
“C’mon, Chance. We’re not out yet.”
They picked up their pace, running along until they turned a corner and were stopped by something they had not expected to see.
A waterfall. Light shone through it.
“Look!”
The noise of the violent torrent was exceeded in magnitude only by the sheer volume of water that poured over them as they made their way through it. When they emerged from the two-foot-thick wall of water, they were in a clear, churning river. They swam to the bank, fell to the ground in utter exhaustion, and slept for six straight hours on the softest riverbank in all of Oppabof.
CHAPTER 33
It was early morning when the heat of the western Texas sun woke Pauline and Chance. Pauline dug in her pocket for the last fragment of fulgurite.
“Mersey!”
No answer.
Chance, sitting on the bank, looked up at his sister.
“Is th
is for real? Did we make it?”
“We made it, Chance. Well, kind of. We still have to get home.”
The Jeopards looked around.
“Do you hear that?”
“What? The water?”
“No,” said Chance. “Listen.”
“A train?”
“I think so.”
“I can’t tell which direction it’s coming from.”
Chance stood up. He shielded his eyes and looked due south over a low edge of a canyon wall. He saw something strange.
Giraffes?
He was afraid to tell his sister that off in the distance he could see disembodied giraffe heads moving slowly eastward, four of them, hazy in the rising heat. She would think he’d lost his mind, and perhaps he had. But on the other hand, what bizarre things had they just encountered? What were a bunch of smeary giraffe heads compared to Vyrndeets and jelsairs? Besides, who cared what Pauline thought?
“Hey, sis, look. Giraffe heads.”
Pauline turned, visored her eyes, stared into the distance. After a moment of analysis, she started running toward the low rise. She paused after a few yards, just long enough to turn and shout at Chance:
“C’mon!”
“What? Why!”
Chance was too tired to start running, but he did anyway. He followed his sister to the top of the caprock, where the siblings looked down upon something extraordinary: The FanTan & Carlinda Circus train, moving slowly to the east.
“It’ll go through Starling, Pauline! C’mon!”
And now it was Chance who had suddenly renewed energy. He took off toward the train, Pauline trailing by several paces. When they finally caught up with the seemingly endless string of coaches, it was moving so pokily they could easily keep up. They found an open boxcar and, with the utmost care, they climbed up and inside. It was filled with hay.
They watched the Texas landscape drift by, they waved at people in all the small towns they passed through, they dozed, they developed appetites, they started to recognize landmarks, and finally, when they realized they were at the city limits of Starling, Pauline fulgurited Mersey and told her to meet them behind the house in five minutes. And then, as the train passed the alley behind their home, Chance and Pauline leaped, one at a time, into the arms of Mersey Marsh. Door-to-door service! They all ran into the house, where they found Pye McAllister snoring deeply on the couch in front of the TV.
Saint Philomene's Infirmary for Magical Creatures Page 16
