Gertie Milk and the Great Keeper Rescue

by Simon Van Booy

  Once the sea was over their legs, it was hard to hold hands because of the pushing waves. Birdy let his body tip back into the water, and found he floated with ease.

  “Look at me!” he said.

  “Lavender butter,” said Robot Rabbit Boy, his arms and legs moving rhythmically. Gertie knew from the instruction manual that all Series 7 Forever Friends had an aquatic feature, which allowed them to survive in almost every water environment, including tropical swamps and polar ice caps.

  “I’m swimming!” Birdy yelled excitedly.

  “Yeah,” said Gertie, trying to shield herself from his splashing, “but maybe try and move your arms like this . . .”

  Birdy tried it and his head went under. Robot Rabbit Boy doggy-paddled over to him. But then the young Keeper’s head popped up, and he managed to keep his head out of the water and move his arms and legs at the same time.

  “Well done!” shouted Kolt, unrolling his Victorian bathing suit from the wicker picnic basket.

  Then, a little farther out, there was a loud hiss, and something big broke the surface of the water.

  “Aaaargh!” Birdy cried.

  Kolt heard the scream just as he was getting into his candy-striped swimming outfit.

  “It’s not that bad!” he shouted. “It was once the height of fashion!”

  Then Birdy shrieked again as an eel-like creature circled him in the water.

  “It’s a worm!”

  “With a head of fleshy holes?” Gertie said calmly.

  “Yes, help! Help!”

  Gertie was laughing now. “He’s one of us.”

  Then Kolt shouted from the beach, “I think I just saw Johnny the Guard Worm!”

  “Johnny the what?” Birdy cried.

  “It’s Johnny the Guard Worm,” Gertie explained, rubbing salt water out of her eyes. “Kolt’s pet, trained to catch Losers and protect Keepers.”

  “Who are Losers again?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Gertie said. Kolt was now at the water’s edge. Birdy watched with terrified fascination as an enormous snake-like, wormy creature writhed to the beach, then slithered out of the water to be petted by Kolt.

  “He’s sweet for an overgrown parasite,” Gertie said. “Want to go over and pet him?”

  “Er, not right now,” said Birdy. “I’ll stay here and try not to drown.”

  “Suit yourself, but if we ask really nicely, he might take us for a ride on his back.”

  Soon it was time to dry themselves off and eat the cheese and pickle sandwiches in the picnic basket. Birdy had fully recovered from meeting their pet moonberry worm, enlarged by Kolt with bags and bags of growing spice.

  “Summer or winter moonberry juice?” Kolt asked, holding up two bottles.

  “Winter for me,” Gertie said, then explained to Birdy that berries harvested from the colder months were less fizzy, and gave a you a warm glow, as though you had just eaten a fuzzy sweater.

  Kolt chuckled. “Water too cold?”

  “I’m just glad that big worm is friendly,” Birdy admitted. “What kind of skeleton does it have, Kolt, do you know? Or is it just muscle tissue?”

  Gertie almost spat out her juice. “What a strange question!”

  Birdy hung his head. “Oh, sorry.”

  “No, it’s good . . .” Gertie reassured him, “just something I would never have thought to ask.”

  Kolt was about to put everyone to sleep with a lecture on how Johnny the Guard Worm was actually born inside a moonberry when the sky began to darken, and the waves of the sea began to rise up and then crash.

  In the distance, over the far peaks and troughs of rolling waves, were faint silver threads of lightning.

  “Oh dear!” said Kolt. “Looks like an urgent return.”

  “A what?” said Birdy, chewing on his sandwich.

  “Now?” said Gertie. “When we have keys to find?”

  “Remember, it’s what we do, returning things to the world for the good of humankind.”

  “As Keepers of Lost Things, you mean?” Birdy asked.

  “That’s right,” said Kolt. “Now, do you like books?”

  “I love some books,” Birdy admitted, “but most are boring to me.”

  “How about a very, very big one?” Kolt said.

  “Is it boring?”

  “It’s many things,” Kolt answered, “but boring is not one of them.”

  27

  The Mysterious 9.8 m/s2

  WHEN THEY WERE HALFWAY up the mountain staircase, it started to rain hard. The slippery stones and now sopping clothes made everyone miserable.

  “Dollop mush,” said Robot Rabbit Boy, his small robot rabbit legs worn out from all the steps.

  “We should have put the towels on our heads,” Gertie said, “the way some of those Cherokee were wearing turbans!”

  Kolt slowed his pace, so that he was next to Gertie.

  “I’m not sure Birdy’s ready for the B.D.B.U.,” Kolt told her quietly, “so I’ll go up the tower alone and find out what we have to return and where.”

  Gertie’s teeth were chattering from the chill of rain. “O-k-k-k-k-aaay.”

  Water dripped off the end of Kolt’s nose. “Dry Robot Rabbit Boy with the hairdryer—it’s under the kitchen sink—then go back to your rooms and take hot showers—last thing we want is the pair of you coming down with colds.”

  “A-g-g-g-reed,” Gertie said, relieved she wasn’t going to have to climb the tower steps after slogging up the cliff from the beach.

  * * *

  ‹‹ • • • ››

  AFTER FOLLOWING KOLT’S INSTRUCTIONS, Gertie, Birdy, and Robot Rabbit Boy sat at the kitchen table, dry and warm, with steaming mugs of hot chocolate.

  “Where’s Kolt?”

  “He’s in the tower finding out where we have to go, and what item needs to be returned.”

  “What tower?”

  Gertie wondered if she should explain now about The History of Chickens, and the B.D.B.U.’s tower cloaked with Narcissus paint. But then she remembered her own first days on Skuldark, and how each new piece of information had filled her with sudden bouts of fear—even panic. Birdy was several years younger, so she thought it best if he learned things gradually.

  “It’s no big deal,” Gertie said. “I’ll show you sometime.”

  Outside rain was battering the cottage. Wind lashed the windows with a howl and whistle. The next adventure was upon them. Gertie wondered if it meant another Keeper rescue, though without a new key she was worried their chances of that were slim.

  “What’s going on out there?” Birdy asked. “It’s a storm, right?”

  “It’s nothing to be worried about,” Gertie said, “just sort of like an alarm clock. The weather changes when there’s an item for us to return.”

  “Who changes it?”

  “That book in the tower Kolt told you about. You’ll see it one day.”

  She wondered if it wouldn’t be a good idea to leave Birdy in the cottage for this adventure. Traveling in the Time Cat (which had safely returned itself from Renaissance Italy) might have been too much of a shock. He didn’t even know how to use his key yet—or the dangers of getting snatched.

  Suddenly Kolt appeared from the secret passage, and The History of Chickens slid back into the stack by itself.

  Birdy jumped out of his seat. “That book just moved!”

  Kolt was gasping for breath after descending the tower steps in such a hurry.

  “Chickens . . . will . . . do . . . that . . . now . . . follow . . . me!” He wheezed, rushing over to the trapdoor.

  Brushing the rug aside with one sweep of his foot, Kolt lifted the handle of the trapdoor to reveal a steep staircase down.

  Gertie needed to speak with Kolt alone, so she asked Birdy to check that his
bedroom door was locked, and to make sure he had his key. Once he had gone, she turned to the old Keeper.

  “You think he’s ready for this?”

  “Of course not, but we can’t leave him here. This is a big one, Gertie!”

  “What is it we’re looking for exactly?”

  “A bug.”

  “Euugh,” Gertie said. “Is that all? Why hasn’t it been catapulted back to Earth like all living things that come here accidentally?”

  “Because it’s a robot insect, not an organic, living one.”

  “Could it be a robot Keeper?”

  Kolt sighed. “Really, Gertie?”

  Then Birdy returned. “Everything okay?”

  “We’re about to show you something that isn’t normal,” Kolt warned him. “Just warning you.”

  “You have to trust us, Birdy,” Gertie said.

  “Why? What’s down there? A monster?”

  Robot Rabbit Boy hopped out from his bed and touched Birdy with a grubby paw. “A dollop of mashed potato.”

  “What’s down here is everything that’s ever been lost from the world,” Kolt told him, grabbing his dented bowler hat off the shelf. “Remember our long conversation yesterday?”

  Birdy looked suddenly worried. “I thought you were joking.”

  * * *

  ‹‹ • • • ››

  DEEPER UNDER THE COTTAGE and into the cliff they went, as lamps on the rock wall flickered to life, casting a faint glow over the four Keepers.

  Soon they reached the first level with all the different vehicles for getting around under the cliff, from single-person orange submarines to wooden skis, mini-motorbikes with spiked tires for ice, and even narrow boats made from animal bones and skin.

  From some secret hive in the cave, all seven Cave Sprites appeared and led Kolt over to a glass case with yellow backpacks inside.

  “Oh goody!” Kolt said with genuine surprise. “So we’re finally going to put these on, are we?”

  The Cave Sprites bounced up and down as if they were excited too. Kolt fed his Keepers’ key into the lock on the glass case, then swung open the door.

  Birdy was mesmerized by the glowing balls of light. “What are those things?”

  “Cave Sprites!” Gertie said. As always, Robot Rabbit Boy was waving his paws about trying to catch one. “There are seven in total, and each is the spirit of a long-dead warrior from history. Because there are seven in total, Kolt named them after days of the week.”

  Gertie pointed to a Cave Sprite moving much slower than the others. “That’s Sunday, the oldest.”

  “What do they do?”

  “They guide us to the bedroom with the object that needs returning—by helping us choose the quickest route through the cliff to get there.”

  “Cliff?” Birdy said. “As in—something people fall off?”

  Gertie remembered the old rope bridge, but decided not to mention it at that exact second. It was highly unlikely they’d be doing anything quite so terrifying for a long time. Then Kolt thrust a yellow backpack into everyone’s hands (and paws).

  “Put these on, and for goodness’ sake make sure they’re tight around your chest and waist. I’m nipping back upstairs; I think I’ll leave my bowler hat in the cottage for this mission,” he said mysteriously.

  Gertie had always wondered what these bright yellow backpacks were used for. Written in black was a strange code, 9.8 m/s2 with an evil-looking smiley face next to it. Gertie asked Birdy if he knew what it meant.

  “It’s the rate of acceleration due to gravity,” he said. “9.8 meters per second, every second, but only if there’s no air resistance.”

  “So something falling? Wow, that’s fast,” Gertie said, trying to imagine moonberries being dropped from the cockpit of her Spitfire. How satisfying it would feel to see one splat on the roof of the cottage.

  Birdy touched the numbers written on the yellow canvas. “The pulling force of gravity makes the object accelerate,” he explained, “so the object’s acceleration is increasing every second by another 9.8 meters. After 2 seconds it would be traveling at 19.6 meters per second, and after 3 seconds, falling at a rate of 29.4 meters per second.”

  “So . . .” Gertie said, thinking, “9.8 meters per second times 4 seconds equals 39.2, which is how fast an object would be falling after 4 seconds?”

  “Yes, with the velocity always increasing until air resistance pushing back equals the force of pulling, which is maximum velocity.”

  Gertie nodded, trying to take it all in.

  “After you left my room last night,” Birdy went on, “I couldn’t sleep and so read a couple of chapters on Newton and Galileo in one of those books by my bed. There was also a formula to calculate how far something has fallen, look . . .” Birdy took a piece of paper and pencil from his pocket, and wrote down:

  d = distance in meters

  g = acceleration due to gravity

  t = time in seconds

  distance traveled after falling for four seconds:

  d=1/2g t2

  78.4 meters = 0.5 x (9.8m/s2) x (4s x 4s)

  “Do you really get all this math, Birdy?”

  “Not really,” Birdy said, “which is why I keep studying it.”

  “Well, I wonder why acceleration due to gravity is written on our yellow packs? They seem pretty light to me.”

  “Actually, light and heavy objects fall at the same rate of acceleration, 9.8 m/s2, so a backpack full of metal would fall at the same speed as a backpack full of feathers, if they were the same mass, and there was no air resistance.”

  Gertie shrugged. “That’s weird, then it’s probably just written for decoration or something.”

  “Come on!” Kolt said appearing from behind a rack of skis. He led them to an old elevator in the rock face. “This will get us down to the level we need.”

  “I didn’t think it worked,” Gertie said.

  “Oh, it does, trust me.”

  “What bedroom is it we’re going to?”

  “782 SE.”

  Gertie had never heard of a room with letters after the number, and asked what they meant.

  “Southeast.”

  Gertie thought about it, but couldn’t remember Kolt saying anything about bedrooms with directions. She was going to ask another question when there was a ping. A triangle above the elevator door glowed orange, and the doors slid open.

  “Ever been in an elevator, Birdy?” Kolt asked.

  The anxious young Keeper shook his head.

  “The first ones were steam-powered, and called ‘vertical railways.’ This one is even more unusual than that.”

  They all got inside and huddled together, their yellow backpacks touching. The Cave Sprites whizzed in too, more excited than Gertie had ever seen them.

  “Eggcup fly?”

  “Sort of, yes . . .” Kolt admitted with a gulp.

  “So which floor?” Gertie asked, reaching toward the grid of round elevator buttons.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kolt said, closing his eyes painfully, “any number will do.”

  “But which level?”

  “They all take us to the same place,” he said shakily, “just hit any one!”

  Gertie chose to push five, but nothing happened.

  She pushed it again. “It doesn’t work.”

  “Oh, it works, just keep pushing . . .” Kolt said, wincing, “and hold on!”

  “Hold on to what?”

  Birdy and Robot Rabbit Boy were looking around innocently. “And why are you making that face?”

  “To be honest,” Kolt said, closing his eyes even tighter, “I hate this bit! I really do.”

  “Well,” Gertie said smugly, “after that bone canoe ride we took before going to ancient China, I’m prepared for anything, anything at all.
”

  At that exact moment, the elevator floor opened and the four Keepers tumbled silently into darkness, accelerating at a rate of 9.8m/s2.

  28

  Thermal Darts

  “AAAAARRGGGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!”

  “AAAAARRgggghhhhhhhh!!!!”

  “EEEEEGGGGGGCUPPPPPP FFFFFLYYYY!”

  “AAAAAARRggggghhhhhh!!!!”

  After freefalling for several seconds in total darkness, the Keepers’ yellow backpacks were triggered. From each one burst a tiny cluster of yellow smiley-face parachutes, slowing the Keepers just long enough to catch a terrific cross-draft of air, which whipped them into a side tunnel. They were no longer falling, but moving sideways through a dark passage, caught in a fast-moving air thermal that had been sucked in from several holes in the cliff face. The small smiley-face parachutes were swollen with gusting wind, like a cluster of fluorescent jellyfish, with the four Keepers dragging behind in the straps. They were moving too quickly even to scream as the parachutes whistled through the tunnel at over sixty miles per hour.

  After thirty seconds or so, the tunnel opened into another vast cavern, and the rushing air weakened quickly. The four Keepers’ parachutes went limp and they drifted down onto a bed of soft, springy rescue-mushrooms, which glowed the moment they were touched, lighting up the expansive chamber. All seven Cave Sprites floated down to the mess of Keepers, who were just lying on the enormous patch of fungi, wondering if they were dead, and if heaven was a fluorescent mushroom palace.

  “Everybody in one piece?” Kolt said, studying his watch. “Because anything under a minute is good for thermal darts.”

  “Thermal what?” Gertie cried, wrestling the backpack from her shoulders. The yellow smiley faces now looked like evil shriveled Cave Sprites.

  “Racing parachutes from the year 2259,” Kolt said with a grin.

  Birdy was lying facedown on a mushroom, barely stirring.