by Tor Seidler
“But it’s an emergency!” the youngest elder cried.
Lucy jolted awake. Normally, she would have been mortified to be found still in bed—and mortified for company to see their slovenly crate. But the memory of last night, of their dashed hopes and Phoenix vanishing, numbed her to embarrassment.
When the two elders explained why they’d come, she and Beckett followed them straight to Mrs. P.’s. The great rat invited everyone to take a cushion and asked the siblings how their mission had gone.
“Strange that Phoenix would come back out and then disappear again,” Mrs. P. said after Lucy told her.
“I suspect something grisly happened to him,” Beckett said.
“Poor squirrel,” Mrs. P. said with a sigh. “But I suppose it’s time for you to think about evacuating.”
“We can’t go without you!” Lucy cried.
“As I told them,” Mrs. P. said, eyeing the elders, “I’m too old to—”
“No, you’re not!” Lucy insisted. “Beckett and I can help you.”
Mrs. P. shook her head. “Pack rats never part from their collections, dearie. And I have far too much to cart with me.”
“But those are just things. Things aren’t important.”
“What a wise young rat you are,” Mrs. P. said. “But remember, we’re all made of time as well as fur and blood. We pack rats spend a lot of our time accumulating things, so they’re part of us.”
“We’ll help you carry your favorites,” Lucy said.
But nothing she could say could sway Mrs. P. When the two elders took the discouraging news back to the pallet, some rats went off to join Augustus’s crowd. Most others adopted a wait-and-see attitude, packing up their valuables but holding off leaving till they had no choice.
Lucy and Beckett had the advantage of possessing no valuables to pack up. Beckett’s library was public property—next winter’s fuel. They also had the advantage of Lucy’s knowledge of the city. And Beckett’s ability to read would hold them in good stead in the world of humans. But they had no intention of leaving without making a final effort with Mrs. P.
When they stopped by her place, they found Mrs. P. stuck in the doorway between the gallery and the fromagerie. She’d gone to fetch some cheese for herself, but since the last time she’d done so, she’d put on quite a bit of weight. Lucy and Beckett yanked her back into the gallery by her tail. Undignified as this may have been, Mrs. P. laughed.
“Looks like I’ll have to do a little gnawing on that door,” she said. “Though if I’d been stuck long enough, I suppose I would have lost a few ounces and made it through.”
Lucy helped her back to her cushion in the parlor, and Beckett brought her a chunk of her best Vermont cheddar. Lucy waited till Mrs. P. had a nibble before making her pitch.
“You can’t really expect me to go down into the sewers when I can’t even make it to the fromagerie,” Mrs. P. said. “But you two must go.” She set down her cheese, opened her amulet, and pulled out the key. “I’d like you both to have something nice to remember me by. Open my lockbox and take whatever you’d like.”
The tears Lucy had shed in her shoe early that morning must have lowered her resistance, for a couple more leaked out now. She and Beckett politely declined the key. They stayed until Mrs. P. finally started yawning and shooed them out.
A lot of the older wharf rats had gathered near the metal drum, many with their bundled belongings stacked around them. Beckett tried to steer Lucy that way, but she headed for their crate, too distraught to face others just then, and he followed her. She sat down on the toe of her loafer and buried her head in her paws.
“Oh, Beck, I can’t stand to leave her,” she said with a sob.
“Shhh,” Beckett said.
“What?” Lucy said, blinking up at him.
Beckett pointed at a scabby tail poking out of the nest of paper shreds.
“It appears the prodigal has returned,” he said softly. “And he seems to be asleep.”
13
TEPID COFFEE
AS A RULE, LUCY WAS no more of a screecher than a weeper, but a screech escaped her now. It was partly out of surprise, partly pure joy.
“Where’ve you been?” she cried, jumping up.
Phoenix, who’d fallen into a deep sleep after sneaking back into the pier, pawed at his eyes and blinked blearily. “I wish I could tell you,” he said.
“But what happened at the substation? We saw you on the ledge, then you disappeared!”
“I thought of an easier way down.”
This wasn’t quite true. After shinnying up the flagpole’s support wire a second time, Phoenix had perched on the balcony in a quandary about his descent. Eventually, he made his way back through the pipe into the upper chamber, where the human was still sweating over the circuit switch. After some reconnoitering Phoenix located the trapdoor to the spiral staircase, but it was too heavy to budge. So he crouched by the elevator, figuring that was his best hope, and as he got hotter and hotter, he even felt a smidgen of gratitude for having lost so much fur. When the doors showed no sign whatever of opening on their own, he decided he would just have to wait for the rats to go home and then climb down the facade tail-first. But on his way back to the pipe, the human’s canvas tool sack caught his eye.
“I got in and curled up in a corner of it,” he told his two listeners.
His timing was perfect. After returning the needle-nosed pliers to the closet, the human picked up the sack and carried it to the elevator.
“What’s it like, riding in an elevator?” Beckett asked curiously.
“It makes your stomach feel funny,” Phoenix said.
The elevator came to a stop, the doors swooshed open, and the repairman walked out. When he stopped to talk to somebody, Phoenix climbed a hammer and poked his head out of the tool sack. They were in the lower chamber of the substation: He could even see the opening to the ventilation duct. But as he was about to jump, the human started walking again, knocking him back down into the sack. Jostling along, Phoenix heard a door open and close. More jostling, then a beep. Another door opened, and the sack landed hard on something. A door slammed. There was a wheeze and a roar. Phoenix tried to scramble up the hammer again but got jolted back down into the sack as they started to move. Then everything was herky-jerky.
When he finally managed to stick his head out for a look around, he got a shock almost as bad as when the hawk grabbed him. He was actually inside one of the humans’ killing machines.
“I think you almost ran us over,” Beckett commented.
“I wasn’t driving,” Phoenix pointed out.
The human drove for a very long time, though whether or not he managed to squash any creatures, Phoenix couldn’t say. At last the human parked the truck, got out, and slammed the door, leaving the tool sack on the passenger seat. Phoenix climbed out of the sack and explored the cab of the truck. The windows were up. There was no way out. As the truck gradually filled with daylight, he huddled on the floorboard by the driver’s side door, thinking he would zip out of the prison when the human came back. As he waited, his nose twitched.
“There was a bag of some twisty things under the seat,” he said. “They were stale, but not bad.”
“Pretzels?” Beckett guessed.
“Do pretzels make you thirsty?”
“I think so.”
Luckily there was also some tepid coffee in a Styrofoam cup in a cupholder between the seats. After taking a slurp of this, Phoenix hopped to the dashboard and peered out the windshield. He didn’t know it, but the truck was parked in the driveway of the Con Ed repairman’s home, a semidetached house in Jamaica, Queens. They’d gone through a tunnel to get there. Another thing Phoenix didn’t know was that the repairman worked the night shift and was now sound asleep in an upstairs bedroom.
As the sun rose higher, Phoenix heard rumbling noises and saw big silver birds slanting into the sky that reminded him of the one that had eaten Walter.
“Sounds like jet planes taking
off,” said Beckett.
“Who’s Walter?” asked Lucy.
“The red-tailed hawk who brought me up here,” Phoenix said. “I wonder how his eyases are doing without him.”
Here was a word that stumped even Beckett.
“The hawk chicks,” Phoenix explained.
Beckett wanted to know how to spell it. Lucy wanted to know if the eyases at least had a mother. Unable to answer either question, Phoenix returned to his story.
The repairman’s truck grew hotter than the upper part of the substation. The coolest spot was under the seat, but even there it was stifling. Beckett and Lucy insisted it couldn’t have been as hot as the pipe they’d been stuck in, and this may have been true, but Phoenix had been trapped in the truck far longer—all day in fact. He only survived by portioning out the coffee.
In the evening it began to cool off a little, but when the repairman finally opened the door and got in, Phoenix was too sapped and dehydrated to zip anywhere. As the truck backed out of the driveway and pulled away, Phoenix just lay under the driver’s seat like a squeezed-out sponge. Fortunately, the repairman turned on the air-conditioning, so by the time they passed through the tunnel into Manhattan, Phoenix had revived somewhat. Awhile later the repairman pulled up to a curb, turned off his truck, grabbed his tool sack, and climbed out. Phoenix just managed to hop onto the curb before the door slammed.
Again his luck was mixed. He was unlucky that they weren’t back at the substation—the repairman had a job in an office tower in Midtown—but lucky that the building had a fountain in front of it. While the repairman went into the lobby, Phoenix climbed the fountain’s marble rim and had a good, long slurp.
“Where was this building?” Lucy asked.
“No idea,” Phoenix said.
“How’d you get back here?”
“Do you know what pigeons are?”
“Of course.”
“I asked one the way to the river. Seems there are two rivers hereabouts, so I told him I wanted the one with New Jersey on the other side. He pointed the way. Once I got there, all I had to do was head downtown.”
Just as he’d fudged a bit about the beginning of his adventure, Phoenix fudged a bit about the end of it. In fact, when he got to the river, he remembered what Mrs. P. had said about the bridge to New Jersey being north. He sensed that he was north of the pier already, and he headed farther uptown along the edge of the jogging path. It was pretty much deserted at that time of night. After pattering along for a good while he saw what had to be the bridge. He climbed a lamppost for a better view. The bridge must have been a hundred times the size of the one that crossed the bay to the spit of beach houses back home. It was actually quite beautiful, a glimmering necklace stretched across the dark neck of water. But the swirling river reminded him how Lucy and Beckett had saved him from drowning in it. And it struck him that maybe he owed it to them to try to save their pier.
But in the end it wasn’t this that made him climb down the lamppost and head south. It was the flickering image of Lucy in his mind. She was a rat, of course, like the one he’d seen rooting in the garbage back home. But there was something about her that made him want to see her again, if only to thank her and say a proper good-bye.
He didn’t tell her this, of course.
“I’m so glad you’re all right!” she said now. “Did you see anything that could help us? In the top part of the substation?”
“Any chance of shorting the grid?” Beckett added.
“Well, I saw two coils like the ones in the box on the tower back home,” Phoenix told them. “But much bigger. And I found a piece of metal long enough to touch both coils at once. Of course, I have no idea if it would work.”
“But it’s worth a try, don’t you think?” Lucy said, barely containing her excitement. “Could you climb up there again?”
Phoenix’s left whiskers twitched. “I suppose so.”
“Come with me!”
Tired as he was, he let her drag him out of the crate. He’d snuck into the pier earlier, so only now did the rats by the steel drum see him. They got quite excited, and Lucy stirred them up further by saying they might be smart to delay their departure. Then she tugged Phoenix under the sliding door and asked if he could reach the posted notice.
This was a piece of cake. The door was half-rotted wood, easy to sink his claws into, and it was a cinch to extract the tacks with his teeth. After the cardboard sign zigzagged to the ground, he stuck the tacks back into the door, then leaped down to help Lucy drag the notice back to her crate. They had to bend it slightly to fit it through the door.
“Your turn, Beck,” Lucy said, flipping the notice to the blank underside. “Tell the humans they’ll be sorry if they try to demolish the pier.”
Beckett frowned. “Aren’t we jumping the gun?”
“What’s the good of shorting the grid if they don’t know we’re behind it? We’re certainly not in any worse shape if Phoenix can’t pull it off. They’re already planning to turn this place into . . . what is it?”
“Tennis courts,” Beckett said.
He eyed the piece of cardboard. At first nothing came, but when his sister thrust the pen into his paw, words began to flow. Dear Humans, he wrote. Please quit putting out poison and leave our pier alone. We are peace-loving creatures but if you try to carry out your plan you will regret it.
When he read his composition aloud, Lucy clapped her paws. “Perfect! Don’t you think so, Phoenix?”
Phoenix agreed.
“How shall I sign it?” Beckett asked.
Lucy wasn’t sure, since it was doubtful the humans would know who “Beckett” was.
“Why don’t you draw a picture of a rat?” Phoenix suggested.
This seemed a good solution. When Beckett drew a practice rat on the back of a magazine, he got another “Perfect!” from his sister. The one he drew under his message was even more convincing.
“Let’s show Mrs. P.!” Lucy cried.
They found Mrs. P. dozing on her favorite cushion, but Lucy didn’t hesitate to give her a shake.
“Ah, Phoenix, how nice to see you again,” Mrs. P. said cheerfully. “There was talk of you meeting with a calamity.”
“He saw two coils in the top part of the substation!” Lucy blurted out. “Like the ones that shorted the grid where he comes from. Only bigger. And he found a piece of metal that could touch both at once!”
“Mercy,” said Mrs. P., shimmying herself into a sitting position.
“Beck, read what you wrote,” Lucy urged.
Beckett obliged.
“That seems to the point,” Mrs. P. said when he’d finished. “I also like your rat.”
“Thanks,” Beckett said modestly.
“Phoenix is going to tack it up again so the humans can see it,” Lucy said. “And if they touch our pier, he’ll climb back to the top of the substation and put that piece of metal on the coils.”
Mrs. P.’s broad brow furrowed. “I hope you won’t short your own grid, Phoenix,” she said.
As Phoenix promised to try not to, there was a knock on the crate. The eldest elder poked his head in the door.
“Er, excuse me,” he said, “but we were wondering what’s going on.”
Mrs. P. may have refused to lead the wharf rats underground, but she’d agreed to be their interim mayor, so even though it was the middle of the night, she figured it was her duty to keep them informed. Once she’d squeezed through her door, Beckett and Phoenix each gave her a paw, and Lucy dragged the notice behind them. When they reached the congregation by the steel drum—hardly a rat was in bed on this ominous night—Mrs. P. told them that Phoenix had made it into the top of the substation.
“And,” she said, “he’s willing to go back again to try to disrupt the humans’ electricity.”
Phoenix held up his paws to quell the rats’ excitement and advised them there was a good chance it wouldn’t work. Beckett nodded in accord.
“Oh, but I know you can do
it!” Lucy said. “I just wish we could all go up and help you.”
Junior crossed his paws. “I don’t see what good it’ll do.”
“That’s where this young genius comes in,” Mrs. P. said, smiling at Beckett. “He’s composed a warning for the humans.”
Beady eyes fixed on the notice, and when Lucy and Phoenix dragged it under the sliding door, many rats followed while Beckett helped Mrs. P. back to her crate.
“Smell something?” Mrs. P. asked once she was sprawled on her cushion again.
Beckett sniffed and said, “Nothing good.”
“I have a feeling it’s coming from upstairs.”
He’d never been upstairs, but he climbed the stirring stick now. There was a putrefying hot dog in a corner, but the upstairs apartment impressed him despite the stench. Oscar certainly hadn’t done much decorating—the only furnishing was a bed made of rags—but there were two spacious crates with a handsome archway gnawed between them.
While Beckett was disposing of the hot dog in the storm sewer, Phoenix was putting the notice back up. It was tricky to hold it in place while extracting the tacks from the door with his teeth, all in the dark, but he had plenty of encouragement from below.
Once the notice was up, there wasn’t really anything more for anyone to do that night. Other than Mrs. P., however, few got any sleep. Most of the rats milled anxiously by the front of the pier, waiting for the fateful day to dawn.
It finally did. The first joggers appeared, and the West Side Highway grew more and more congested. So did the river, with ferries and river taxis bringing office workers from New Jersey. But these things happened every weekday morning. As the sun climbed higher, the only unusual occurrence was a seagull flying in one of the pier building’s broken windows. After circling twice under the rafters, it flew back out.
Gradually the rats’ mood turned from anxious to cautiously optimistic. When there was no sign of a demolition team by noon, Augustus mounted the phonebook again to remind his fellow rats to vote tomorrow.
“If you’re mayor, who’ll be sergeant at arms?” a rat wanted to know.
“I’ll appoint someone young and healthy,” Augustus promised, looking pointedly at Junior.
