3 Below

by Patrick Carman

  “Are you a spy, sent by our enemies to steal our secrets?”

  “Remi, come on,” Leo said, laughing nervously. “You’re being paranoid.”

  “Then answer me this,” he went on, taking Blop out of his jacket pocket and setting him in front of Lucy so he could help with the interrogation. “How come she’s got overalls, just like you? And a tiny dinosaur in her pocket? And she burps like a county-fair champion! The only thing that could make her more appealing is if she were a ninja robot!”

  Blop took this as a compliment and said as much. Remi had made a pretty good point: If Lucy were a spy, she’d attack at their weaknesses with her overalls, dinosaur, and championship burping.

  “You guys are weird,” she concluded, taking Phil out of her pocket and standing him in front of the cracker bowl. Blop was less alarmed than curious.

  “Tyrannosaurus rex,” he said. “Making one this small would require both DNA and an unrivaled knowledge of nanotechnology. Also microbiology.”

  Blop began to ramble, as was his habit, while Phil attacked the crackers. Lucy took a deep breath and told everyone assembled the truth of the matter.

  “I used to live two blocks down and one block over from the Rochester Hotel in an apartment building.”

  She stopped there, not exactly sure how to proceed.

  “You mean the hotel owned by Miss Harrington?” Alfred asked. Comet peeked out of his hiding spot in Alfred’s jacket and saw Phil. Comet tried to fly out of Alfred’s pocket, flopping and spinning, and landed badly next to the plate of crackers.

  “Do dinosaurs and ducks get along?” Leo asked.

  “I think dinosaurs eat ducks,” Remi said. “Or they would have if there had been ducks, you know, a bunch of millions of years ago.”

  Phil stopped eating and turned his head to the side, like he wasn’t quite sure what to make of Comet. The duckling was bigger than Phil, but not by too much. Comet righted himself with some effort, shook his head very fast, and stood toe-to-toe with a T. rex.

  Then he quacked.

  Phil looked at Lucy as if to say, What kind of wacky creature is this thing? Will it try to eat me?

  “Go on and play,” Lucy said. “He’s harmless.”

  Phil was very pleased with this answer, and the two small creatures began yapping at each other, as if they were carrying on a conversation. Then they both stood in the middle of the cracker plate and started eating.

  “Okay, that didn’t go as expected,” Remi said. Blop rolled over next to them and began to explain the difference between birds and dinosaurs. Disaster averted, Lucy went on with her story.

  “Anyway, the Cranstons, who run the crummy apartment building, are lazy. They watch a lot of TV. They took me in only because my previous foster home said I had a reputation for being handy. Which is true. I’m handy. Also, I’m a ninja.”

  “No way!” Remi said.

  Lucy smiled, hiccupped, and burped in the space of one second.

  “No, not really. But I do have ninja pajama pants.”

  “Cool,” Remi said, nodding his approval.

  “But where are your parents?” Leo asked.

  “That’s just it,” Lucy said. “I don’t have parents. At least I don’t think I do. I’ve been in the New York City foster care system forever and ever. I’ve bounced around a little bit.”

  “And how did you come to find yourself inside a secret floor at a Whippet hotel?” Alfred asked.

  “I guess I’m what you might call a stowaway,” Lucy admitted sheepishly. “Sometimes, when there were things that needed fixing at the Rochester, the Cranstons would hire me out. Because I’m really handy.”

  “So you’ve said,” Remi commented. He still thought she might be a spy, but even he was softening.

  “It was kind of miserable, living in the basement with the Cranstons, but I loved the Rochester.”

  “I live in the basement of my hotel, too,” Leo said. “And I do maintenance work. With my dad. Ever fixed an air-conditioning unit?”

  “Sure I have. Lots of times.”

  Leo beamed. Remi never wanted to talk about fixing hotel stuff, but Leo loved this part of his life. He could have sat there and talked with Lucy about boilers, pipes, wiring, and old doorknobs for hours.

  “Let’s get back on track here,” Remi said. “How did you end up inside that crazy dinosaur floor?”

  “Well, I was fixing the elevator, which kept getting stuck between floor number seven and floor number eight. There were some wiring problems, that was for sure. And while I was digging around on top of the elevator, I looked up. There was an extra door, way at the top, that didn’t belong.”

  “So you climbed up and found a secret entrance?” Alfred asked. He was more than a little impressed with her resourcefulness.

  “Pretty much, yeah. The only problem was that once I got in I couldn’t get back out. The door shut behind me and I could never get it back open. That was two months ago.”

  “Two months!” Remi said. “What did you eat?”

  Lucy shoved a hand in her pocket and pulled out a handful of dino treats, which looked quite a bit like Whoppers. Remi grabbed two and tossed them in his mouth, crunching them into little bits.

  “Tastes like dog food.”

  “I think so, too,” Lucy said, tossing a couple in her own mouth and smiling as she chomped.

  “You two are totally gross,” Leo said.

  “And then yesterday the floor began to move,” Lucy continued. “I didn’t know what to think. After that, you all showed up. And here I am. That’s all there is to tell.”

  “That, young lady, is a remarkable story,” Alfred said. “I wonder if the Cranstons are worried about you.”

  “I highly doubt that. And I don’t think they’d let me keep Phil.”

  Lucy scratched under Phil’s long neck, and the little guy made a sort of gurgling sound.

  “He purrs like a cat,” Remi said. “Nice.”

  “I know, right?” Lucy agreed, glancing back at the ladder leading down into the tiny dino floor. “I’d rather stay down there with Phil than go back and live with the Cranstons.”

  “I don’t think it’s going to come to that,” Alfred encouraged her. “But you’re in the middle of a competition you can’t win. I’m afraid it’s rather exclusive.”

  “Yeah,” Leo said. “You have to manage a hotel to get in.”

  “Whoa,” Lucy said. “That is exclusive. What if I just tag along? I bet I could be useful.”

  “We believe you,” Leo agreed. “And I don’t see the harm in it as long as no one else does.”

  “We can use all the help we can get,” Remi chimed in. “And we can’t break up Blop, Comet, and Phil. They’re like a team now. Let’s do this thing.”

  Albert thought about it. He was the adult among them, and everyone looked at him for confirmation.

  “I suppose I could arrange to have you dismissed back into the foster care system. In any case, the Cranstons need to be told. I’ll see that it’s taken care of just as soon as our little adventure is over.”

  “Cool!” Remi said. He’d been completely bowled over by Lucy. “Three musketeers!”

  “Make that four,” Alfred said.

  “I’m coming over!” Miss Sheezley yelled from the ladder where she stood. She’d been quiet for a while, but all this secretive talk had finally made her curious enough to walk out under the building hovering overhead. Before she reached the picnic, a voice carried across the roof.

  “Hello, everyone — how are we doing?”

  It was Mr. Pilf, who hadn’t been seen since he’d taken a ladder down the side of the library. He’d gained a hat in his absence, a floppy sort of number that made him look like a Frenchman with his long, thin beard.

  “What do you want?” Miss Sheezley asked, arriving at the blanket and snatching up a stack of little sandwiches Alfred had carefully put together. “I thought you were out of the competition.”

  “No, no — not out,” Mr.
Pilf said as his feet landed on the roof and he began walking toward them. He peered up at the building nervously, watching it sway slowly back and forth like a piano about to drop on his head. Lucy picked up Phil and hid him in a pocket before Pilf could see him.

  “Who’s this?” he asked as he arrived at the picnic. He was staring at Lucy, but it was Leo who answered.

  “That’s a friend of Merganzer’s — Lucy is her name. She’s along to help us. And she’s handy.”

  “Unexpected,” Mr. Pilf concluded, though he was more concerned with being let back into the competition than the unforeseen addition of another child in the mix.

  Just as Mr. Pilf said this, and before Miss Sheezley could protest his entry back into the game, the floor above them began to move down.

  “Look there,” Alfred said, pointing his cane skyward. “I think the picnic is over.”

  A moment later the floor overhead wasn’t just moving, it was dropping.

  “To the ladder!” Miss Sheezley yelled, throwing her sandwiches over her head. Had she been a linebacker she would almost certainly have blocked anyone else racing toward the ladder so that she could get there first, but as it was, no one else was making a run for it. “Come on, you fools! You’ll be crushed!”

  “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Leo asked the remaining group.

  Even Pilf could see the way in, and he nodded with all the rest.

  “Look up, Miss Sheezley!” Pilf yelled, but he didn’t have to. A way into the falling floor of Miss Sheezley’s Foxtrot Hotel appeared before her.

  “Looks like six spots,” Leo said. “Let’s spread out.”

  Six egg-shaped holes had opened up on the white bottom of the hotel floor above, and out of each egg-shaped hole, a beam of light shot down onto the roof where they stood. Six spotlights, six places to stand, and six people who could take up positions under each. Miss Sheezley ran right past the one she’d arrived nearest to and started down the ladder. She watched as all the other people on the roof spread out and stood under different spots.

  “I don’t like it,” Miss Sheezley yelled, her eyes wide with terror. “I don’t like it one bit!”

  “Say hello to the Brontosauruses for me,” Lucy said, smiling with excitement as she looked up into a hole only twenty feet above. The light coming out of the hole was so bright she couldn’t see past it, but if the floor above was anything like the floor below, she was all in.

  Miss Sheezley glanced down the twisted ladder and thought about what the rest of her afternoon might include. She would be alone in a tiny dinosaur zoo, eating dog food, not knowing when or if she’d ever be found and rescued. Or she could stand on the roof and be swallowed up by an egg-shaped hole, which would at least give her a chance of overseeing an entire empire of hotels.

  “Oh, bother,” she said to herself as her chance to decide neared its end. The roof of her beloved Foxtrot Hotel was only ten feet from landing. It was now or never.

  “Come on, Miss Sheezley!” Leo yelled from the far side of the roof, where he stood under a beam of light. “Don’t you want to know what’s been on top of your hotel all these years?”

  She did want to know, that was true, and maybe that alone was what finally made her decide to step out under the light and take her chances with what lay above, not below.

  She stood as tall and thin as the egg-shaped hole arrived only a foot over her head. The hole wasn’t big enough for two people, it was made for one person. She looked across the flat roof and saw Remi jumping up and down, reaching for the hole like the playful child she imagined him to be. Leo was looking at Lucy, as if he worried she might not be okay. Lucy was staring up into the hole with a look of wonder on her face. Alfred Whitney kept looking pensively between the children, like he was afraid for their safety. And Pilf — well, Mr. Pilf was not one to revel in exciting opportunities that came his way. He had his hands clasped over his hat-covered head like he was protecting himself from marbles falling out of the sky.

  As Miss Sheezley’s head went inside the egg-shaped hole and she lost sight of everyone else, she must have been thinking the same thing they all were: What diabolical weirdness has Merganzer D. Whippet planned for us next?

  One thing was for certain: They were all about to find out.

  There was one large hangar in the field of wacky inventions that was used to envision and build many of the most outrageous floors of Merganzer D. Whippet’s hotels. Only Merganzer’s most trusted workers — a large number of whom were monkeys and robots — were allowed inside. Mr. Powell had returned with supplies and news, and as he entered the two main doors and looked every which way, he hoped it wouldn’t be too hard to find the master of inventions. It was a huge space, easy to get lost in, and Powell felt overwhelmed at the sight of it all. The ceiling was a hundred feet overhead, crisscrossed with hanging ropes and scaffolding piled in crooked stacks. Monkeys swung from some of the ropes, carrying tools or plans from one place to another. They were small but frighteningly strong and very bright. They could be taught complex tasks and master them quickly, and so they were highly useful when it came to piecing together unusual floors. Four such floors were in different stages of development in the hangar. Welding sparks flew in the distance and several rolling robots whizzed by as Powell journeyed deeper into the hangar in search of his friend.

  “Merganzer? Where are you? I’ve returned with the supplies you requested!” Powell yelled, his voice reverberating against the far walls.

  “Over here!” Merganzer yelled back. “But do approach carefully. I’m right in the middle of something rather unstable.”

  Merganzer was often in the middle of something unstable when he worked in the hangar, so Powell didn’t seem the least bit alarmed about this news until he arrived at the metal and electric shop and saw what Merganzer was doing.

  “Oh my,” Mr. Powell said. “That is unstable.”

  “Hand me that Flooger, will you?” Merganzer said, reaching his one free hand out into the air. “And tear me off some duct tape. I’m going to need to shut this iron box in a second.”

  “What on earth would you have done if I hadn’t come along when I did?” Mr. Powell asked, taking up the Flooger, which looked like a foot of orange rope, and handing it to Merganzer.

  “I knew you’d arrive when I needed you. You always do.”

  Mr. Powell beamed with happiness. It was true. He did have a way of showing up at precisely the right time, just when Merganzer needed him the most.

  “I suppose that’s what friends are for,” Mr. Powell said, tearing off a strip of duct tape that was just the right length and holding it out.

  Merganzer was hunched over a long workbench covered with an intricate array of circuits and wires. The round Wyro, which Leo and Remi had retrieved from under the Whippet Hotel, was sitting in the middle. It was many layered and moved like a gyroscope, spinning in different directions at the same time, or so it seemed. It powered something big Merganzer needed done.

  “They’ve just entered one of my most complicated floors sooner than I expected them to,” Merganzer said. “I haven’t even tested it yet!”

  When he said this, a stream of goopy green liquid began streaming out of one of the tubes and the spinning Wyro began to slow down.

  “As I expected,” he said. “Sprung a leak!”

  Merganzer wrapped duct tape around the leak in the blink of an eye and everything seemed to be working as he’d intended again.

  “We’re close, George. So very close!”

  “You mean … the AG chamber?” Mr. Powell asked.

  “Yes. I mean the AG chamber. I do believe the time has come at last. One of my greatest inventions is nearly ready.”

  “It’s a good thing Leo found the Wyro. We’ll need all the power it’s got.”

  Merganzer grabbed a lever to his right and pulled it toward him. An energy dial began to move, circling closer to a clearly marked red zone as the Wyro heated up. It floated a few inches above the workbench, turning
from blue to purple to red and throwing off heat Mr. Powell could feel on his face.

  It all seemed very dangerous to Mr. Powell — as though an explosion with the power to destroy the universe might happen at any moment. But Merganzer appeared unconcerned. He stepped back, wiped his hands on his trousers, and asked Powell about other matters of business.

  “This will take a little time,” Merganzer said. “It’s stable … for the moment. What’s happening with the bids from the east?”

  “The Japanese conglomerate just offered two hundred million for the furry candy.”

  Merganzer tapped his lengthy chin three times fast.

  “Hold out for two fifty and leak the offer to Nabisco.”

  Powell nodded. They’d been developing a frighteningly furry candy in the lab, and it was set to raise a lot of money for expansion.

  “And the synthetic tooth-growing enamel? What’s the counteroffer from Procter & Gamble?”

  “A billion,” Mr. Powell said. It was a word he loved using but didn’t often have the chance.

  “And per-unit profit sharing?”

  Powell nodded. It had been a difficult negotiation, but he’d gotten that, too.

  “Sell,” Merganzer instructed.

  There was a moment of silence between the two men in which the whirring sound of the Wyro and the glugging of the liquid in the tubes filled the space.

  “I’ve got that feeling I get sometimes,” Merganzer said. He was often capable of two expressions at once, and such was the case as he looked at his oldest friend.

  “I can’t tell if you’re confused or concerned,” Mr. Powell said, seeing both confusion and concern on Merganzer’s face.

  “I am both, which is not a happy combination. We must be careful as we near the end. We wouldn’t want everything I’ve created to fall into the wrong hands.”

  Powell agreed, nodding, that it would be a great tragedy if the wrong person were put in charge of such important assets. But there was nothing to be done about it. If Powell knew one thing for sure, it was that Merganzer D. Whippet had his own methods for placing people in positions of power within his empire. He alone had the authority to take such risks, because he alone had masterminded the whole lot of it.