The Last of the Gullivers (10 page)

What happened next seemed to happen very slowly.

Phlopp held out a makeshift oar and Ickens fought his way to it. They had only hauled him aboard when Topgallant saw a wide section of Wall tremble and collapse on itself. Stones fell loose of the old cement and crashed into the churning flood, falling like a shower of meteors.

The water silently buckled, then raced to fill the new void in the Wall. The boat was dragged with the flood and the men fought to row against it. But it was a lost battle and the surge was sending them to oblivion.

It's fact that Lesser Lilliputians are clever, but they aren't good at thinking ahead. If they had considered the consequences, they might have seen this coming. But they hadn't and now they were being pulled to their deaths in the violent flow.

A moment before the men and their boat would shatter in the rocky rapids, an old tree appeared from the dropping flood. At the last impossible second, Ickens threw a rope and snagged the steady trunk. He pulled them to it, heaving, ho'ing, his hands blistering, bleeding. The men jumped to safety in the tree branches, as their little boat was torn plank from plank and tossed over a monstrous waterfall.

In later days, as Burton Topgallant told the story, Mr. Ickens' daring feat became the stuff of legend. He was the Hero all children dreamed of being, the one true measure of greatness. “Your daughter swims like Thudd Ickens!” Or, “He's as fast as Thudd Ickens.” “Thudd Ickens, you say!” It's something you'll still hear today, now and again.

Back in the heart of the village, they knew the plan had worked: the flood was dropping. More and still more of their wonderful city rose from the sea, shimmering in mud, like a Phoenix, reborn.

In another half-hour, the rain still falling, but lighter, Topgallant, Phlopp, Ickens, and Dryth returned and the Lesser Lilliputians danced the muddy streets and played their eternal symphony on damp instruments. The Farmer, alone, didn't join the celebration: he was too saddened by the loss of that fine cannon.

The storm was not done. In Moss-on-Stone, rain washed the roofs clean and, for the first time in centuries, the River Stone began to flow.

With Michael still sick and in bed, Fenn understood how much the boy meant. He'd made his job easier, had made the market run better, had made it all, well, fun again.

“Uncle—Fenn.” The worthless lump Myron was calling from the stockroom.

“What is it?” the grocer coughed.

“Better come see for yourself.”

He found Myron finishing more peppermint, his chins wet and sticky. “Michael left his schoolbooks here.”

“So?” said Fenn. “He'll be back.”

Myron shook his head and said, “Better see what's in 'em.” He opened two of the books, to pages where twenty pound notes were laid out, neat and flat. “Looks like he's been stealing from you.” He opened more pages to more notes. “There must be three hundred and fifty pounds here, total, what he stole.”

“You don't—don't know that.” Fenn coughed and turned even redder. “This could be anything.”

“Yeah, could be,” Myron said, shrugged. “If it was my store, I'd make sure.” And he waddled from the stockroom. “'Course it's not—my store.”

Fenn went to his office and went over the books, checked, double-checked, and checked again. The store was running close to 400 pounds short.

Myron watched from the door. “Now d'you believe me?”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

INTO A NEW WORLD

W
ith the store closed and Myron gone, Fenn wandered the unlit aisles all through the lonely night, quietly wondering. There had to be some reason, some explanation for it, had to be something so simple he'd overlooked it.

Outside, the storm went on. And Fenn could find no answers, as hard as he tried.

With morning, he picked up the phone and called Horace Ackerby II.

At this same dawn, a startling blue sky spread over the countryside. The storm had wrung itself dry and drifted to memory. The People of Lesser Lilliput left the Great Hall to learn what was left of their Nation. Hardly speaking a word, they moved down the streets that ran from the heart of the village.

And the flood's cruel mark was everywhere.

Buildings were mud-stained to the eaves and beyond, windows and doors broken in, furniture swept away. Heaps of trees and shattered houses blocked some streets completely. Here and there gutters held a stray sodden treasure: a doll cloaked in mud, an album of ruined photographs.

They followed the Grand Panjandrum through the silent city, tiny feet slurping the muck that shrouded the land. They moved over flattened fields and came to the spot where the Wall had fallen.

A new stone canyon gaped and through it, in the gold morning sun, they saw another world. They saw an alien land of giant forests and a meadow ten thousand times as broad as any they knew.

There was a ridge of stone, boulders by their scale, piled in the bottom of the Wall chasm. Thudd Ickens climbed onto it. He wanted to see more of this place, and yet he didn't; he was fascinated and he was frightened.

“You're crazier than I ever dreamed!” Hoggish screamed. “Come
BACK
here, you great Blefuscudian Lump!”

“Hoggish is right.” It was Evet now. “Every kind of monster is waitin' out there, we know that!”

“Do we?” Philament Phlopp had joined Ickens, crawling the slippery trunk of an uprooted tree. “How can we not explore a place like that?” he wondered aloud as he stared through the crumbled Wall, to everything beyond.

“I'll tell you how!” screeched Hoggish. “We won't go because we
WON'T
! As simple as that! It's
FORBIDDEN
. We've known for centuries that we do not cross the Wall! It was built to keep us safe!”

Burton Topgallant, too, had wandered closer. “We've always thought that, haven't we, Brother Butz? But have we ever known why?”

“
TREASON!
” screamed Hoggish and to the rest he said, “Your own Grand Panjandrum—upholder of Justice,
ha-ha, that's rich, I say! He questions the Knowledge of the Ancients!”

“We only know,” Topgallant said, “that there is much we don't know.”

“Ignore the old fool!” Hoggish cried out. “He'll get us all killed.”

The G.P. joined Ickens and Phlopp at the new passage, the threshold between Here and There. “No one should come who doesn't wish. It's true we don't know what's out there. Each must decide.”

And most of them chose to find out. Most of the Lesser Lilliputians began to climb through the breached Wall and toward the strange new world. Evet and Hoggish and a few others stayed behind.

As they moved across the flood's flotsam and over the shattered Wall, a new land spread around them and drew them into it. Here, nothing was the same. Forests like cathedrals made great canopies above them. Grass grew as high as their houses. Giant insects roamed the still-wet land.

Young Frigary Tiddlin screamed when a mole as big as a cow crawled from the earth beside her. A few of them grabbed twigs, stones, any weapon they could find, but the thing only sniffed blindly a few times and sank back into the soggy soil.

The Lesser Lilliputians came to a broad field of clover, washed clean by the storm, steam clouds rising with a warming sun. It was primeval and pure, as if they'd stepped back to the First Day, to the beginning of time. The land sloped gently here and Burton Topgallant found the highest point. He saw, in an instant, how wide this world really was. It spread around him in each direction and went on to eternity.

Like Mr. Fenn, the Chief Magistrate didn't want to believe the boy had robbed the store. But what other answer was there? Three hundred eighty-nine pounds were hidden in his schoolbooks and three hundred eighty-nine pounds were missing from the market's accounts. Facts are facts and these spoke for themselves.

Horace sat at his desk for a long time, silently staring out the window. The rain was over, the clouds burned away. He asked himself, again and again, when a trust had been shattered as badly as this, can it ever be restored?

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A NEW WORLD

H
orace Ackerby picked up the phone and made the call and ordered Michael Pine's arrest.

The boy's fever had broken that morning and he woke up aching and wanting to get back to the Garden City. He showered and dressed and was about to go when he heard a new voice from the next room.

“I need to see Michael.”

“What's he done now?” Freddie asked.

“Just get him out here, please.” It was Stanley Ford.

“You tell me why.”

“I have to take him in,” the officer said. “He's going to YOI.”

“I haven't been paid for the month!”

There was no way Michael could go. He hadn't done anything wrong. He had to get back to the Little Ones.

While Freddie and the officer argued about money, Michael crawled quietly out the bedroom window. There was a quarter-story drop to a garage roof and he landed on hands and knees. He made his way to the alley and climbed to the pavement. He unchained his bike and set off, to the sound of Freddie yelling and pounding the door of his empty room.

He was crossing the Market Square when Robby saw him and started following in a car he'd stolen, keeping a good distance back. “Find out what he does, where he goes, what he's up to,” Nick had said and that's what Robby was going to do; and that's
all
he was going to do.

By the time Michael reached the crossroads, he could hear sirens in the valley below. The police were after him once again.

The Lesser Lilliputians, most of them, were still out in the New World, trying to take it all in. Topgallant looked to the sun and said, “About mid-day, I judge it. We can't stay longer or we'll be caught here in the dark. We'll come back in the morning.”

The word spread among them, the grand expedition was returning home for now. Philament Phlopp, who had been cataloguing each new discovery, counted that everyone was there.

But everyone wasn't. One was missing.

Upshard Tiddlin suddenly saw that her son was not at her side and said: “Frigary, where's your brother?”

“He
was
here,” the young girl answered.

“Slack!” Upshard called. “Slack Tiddlin!” And again. “Slack Tiddlinnnn!”

The others heard the fear in the mother's voice and they heard the silence that answered. Without a word, without a thought, they raced into the forest, through fern, vine and bramble, calling out:

“Slack!” “
Slaaaaaack
!” “SLACK!” “Slack, boy!” “Where are youuuuuuu?!” “Slack Tiddlin!”

“I've found him, he's here!” One of them had seen the boy, far in a meadow, bared to every unknown danger. They screamed for the child, but only frightened him, confused him, and he ran farther into the field.

Mr. Wellup, the nearsighted journalist, was first to go running. Thudd Ickens went next, Slammerkin Dap close behind, and none of them saw the weasels lurking in the weedy undergrowth. There was no tower bell to sound its warning as the first of the monsters darted toward Slack. Ickens leapt and grabbed the boy, and the weasels took Wellup instead. Slammerkin Dap tried beating them back, but it was all too late.

Michael dropped his bicycle by the door and ran through the house to the Garden City. He slid in the foul mud that covered every street, filling the first floors of houses and shops, and he saw that many structures, sheds, barns, even cottages were simply gone. Tiny trees lay fallen, in tangles of muddy root.

The Little Ones, just returned, told him all about the flood. And then Michael saw the Wall.

“What happened here?” he asked them.

“A long story,” said Topgallant.

“Then you better start now,” said Michael and they told them the whole thing, about the weasels and poor Mr. Wellup.

“We'll have to fix this,” he sighed. He tried his best to rebuild the fallen section, stacking huge heavy stones across the chasm; but these only tumbled down, again and again. With wood from the shed, he patched the hole as tightly as he could. Next, he took an old shovel and started clearing muddy streets. He swept, he mopped, scrubbed, sprayed the soupy muck with a garden hose. The Little Ones worked with him, hauling wagonloads of ruined, reeking furniture to the fields for burning.

The work went on for half-a-day and still wasn't finished when they heard a hammering at the cottage door. “Open up! I know you're in there!”

It was Officer Ford. He had seen Michael's bike.

“What's going on?” asked Topgallant.

“Another long story,” the boy answered. “And I don't think it's going to have a happy ending.” He knelt by Burra Dryth and told her Jane's phone number: “Can you remember it?”

Burra nodded, she could.

“She—Quinbus Ooman will be your Guardian for now. Call her if you need help.”

The pounding was louder, angrier. Michael told them to get to the shelters and stay there and, “Don't come out till you're sure it's safe.”

“Michael!” Ford was in the house.

And the People were safely hidden.

“You've been given a lot of chances, boy.” Ford was in the garden now. “And you blew 'em all. Why?”

Michael had no answer.

“Only one course left and that one leads to the YOI. You ready?”

 

PART THREE

HEAVY SEAS

CHAPTER NINETEEN

YOUNG OFFENDERS

W
hen you robbed Mr. Fenn's Market,” the Chief Magistrate began, with a faraway voice, “you robbed us of hope that a boy like you can change.”

Michael gave his word, he hadn't taken any money.

But the Magistrate said, “Facts are not fungible and these facts speak for themselves. We took a chance on you and you let us down.” Then he signed the order sending Michael to the YOI in Ambridge.

Michael and another boy were the only ones in the van that night. A wire mesh separated them from the driver, who sang loudly and not well the whole long trip. The other lad, fifteen or so years old, sobbed like a baby all the while.

And Michael watched moonlit farms drift past the window, watched meadows of sleepy sheep sail by, and the spires of other stone villages. He looked out on passing houses where families gathered in bright-lit rooms.

The van was let through a gate in a tall wire fence, and parked by a damp stone building marked Reception. The Young Offenders Institution had been a boys' school a hundred years back and a mass grave for the plague-dead before that. Michael and the weepy teen followed a man to a small room. They waited one slow hour, until a doctor came and looked them over, quickly. A second man came and took their papers and gave them toothbrushes and told them the rules. They were given a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and told to change there.

A guard came next and took Michael, and he never knew what became of the crying boy. They went to a new building, plain, concrete, one story, built around an open court. Michael was put in a cell by himself, and here he found a battered metal desk, a chair, a lamp, pin board. There was a toilet and sink, both brown and chipped. There was a small noisy bed and a thin stained mattress. There was no place that wasn't scratched over with graffiti.

Michael wanted to sleep, but his dreams wouldn't let him.

The Lesser Lilliputians had done as he asked. They waited to hear the police car crunch down the gravel drive. They waited for silence and then, only then, they came from their shelters.

“You can go back to your homes, what's left of them,” the Grand Panjandrum told them. “All is safe.” But he couldn't have been more wrong.

Evet Butz went to check on the few cattle he had left and heard a rustling, a scritching, a scratching in the darkening forest past the farm. “Ahhh, rattletraps,” he said, a whisper.

Moonlight was fading behind a lone cloud when he saw a shadow move. Something brushed a tree and he caught a glimpse of hungry yellow eyes. Weasel after weasel crawled through Michael's makeshift Wall patch, a whole ghastly army pouring in.

In the city, everyone heard the Farmer's rising cry to, “Run, run, run!” The G.P. saw the monster horde and called the Beacon Tower to sound the alarm. People hurried to battle posts, grabbing what weapons they could. Others ran to the shelters, but most of these were still flooded and filled with mud.

One of them leveled a crossbow and the arrow stopped the beat of a weasel heart. It fell where it stood, a surprised look in its ugly eye, but others took its place, climbing over their dead comrade and charging on.

The monsters knew their time had come.

The Grand Panjandrum knew it, too. This was the full-out attack that had haunted him. The Farmer and Postman loaded the cannon as weasels sniffed the village and found the shelters. With carnivore-claws, the rodents dug at hidden hatches and secret doors. Topgallant saw that the hideouts were useless and called, “To the Great Hall! Hurry now, hurry!” It was the only building strong enough to keep the monsters out.

With spears and guns and arrows, a few of them held the weasels back as the People escaped to the muddied Hall. Hoggish Butz was last to waddle in, and just in time. The Lesser Lilliputians shouldered the doors closed, but one of the things pushed through his toothy snout. Topgallant's wife ground out her Rhodesian pipe on the tender nose and the beast drew away with an angry anguished squeal. The doors were shut and bolted.

“They can't get us now,” the Grand Panjandrum reassured them, and himself. “The doors are iron and the walls are solid stone.”

But the ceiling above was wood, and weasels were gnawing their way in. Slobbery splinters rained on the Little Ones.

“What now!?” wailed Hoggish. “
WHAT NOW
?”

Then, from a distance, a hopeful sound: the small whine of a steam engine. When he first saw the weasel hordes from the distant railyard, the Engineer coupled every possible car to his locomotive and set out for the city's main station. If he could get the People aboard, he was sure he could outrun the beasts.

As he drew closer, the Engineer let go the throttle and quietly pulled the train into the station. He made his way, carefully, through back streets and rapped at the Great Hall's side door. When he'd told Topgallant the plan, they called to the People together: “We're going for a train ride, come on now, single file, no talking, that means you, Frigary Tiddlin.”

The Lesser Lilliputians pattered through the muddy side streets and into the station house. The weasels, still gnawing at the Great Hall dome, didn't see their prey slip silently away.

The People were piling into railcars by the time the weasels caught their scent and let out furious barks. The beasts crawled from the Hall and into the station as the Grand Panjandrum made his way along the coaches: “Close the windows, that's it, lock them tight!” Even now, the wretched weasels were smashing through the flood-ravaged station.

The locomotive's drive wheels spun on the mud-slicked track and the Engineer poured extra sand for traction and the train moved off in a steamy fog, its couplings catch-catch-catching. It pulled out of the town center, a fire-bellied serpent, picking up speed, racing for the countryside. But the weasels weren't far behind.

Philament Phlopp knew they'd only bought themselves time and not much. Sooner or later, the beasts would understand that the train was only running in one great circle.

Then Mr. Phlopp began to remember something.

It had been, what, a week, two weeks ago?

Yes, two weeks back.

Before the flood, before the war, he'd been working on a fireworks show to mark the coming of Spring. It would have been the grandest he'd ever attempted: twice the usual rockets, with bigger charges, louder blasts, brighter displays and more—much more—gunpowder. He remembered loading the rockets for delivery to the town center, a delivery by train. If those explosives were part of
this
train . . . Phlopp made his way down the carriage and into the next, and through one more. The way was blocked then, by a freight wagon. The train had reached top speed by now, swaying side-to-side, ready to fly from the track at any second. Phlopp struggled up the ladder to the car's rocking roof and carefully made his way to a hatch. A fast look was all he needed: it was packed tight, every inch, with fireworks. At least a thousand
rinniks
, a full Lilliputian ton, of gunpowder filled that car.

There was only one thing to do.

Phlopp hurried back to the last three cars and started moving the passengers to the front of the train. He helped them up the ladder, to the top of the wildly rocking freight car. It was a dangerous, risky climb, but there was no choice and all of them did as he asked. As the Lesser Lilliputians moved along the roof, some of them crawling, terrified by the height and speed, the weasels saw and charged faster after them.

As the passenger cars emptied, one after the other, Phlopp uncoupled it. The cars went rolling, slowing, and the weasels stopped to sniff out each one.

When the Lesser Lilliputians were safe in the front-most cars, Phlopp set to work making a long fuse. He waited for the weasels to catch up to the train, not a long wait. He heard the first of them leap to the roof and he moved closer to the door, to the passage between cars. He could hear more and still more of them jumping onto the freight car, chewing its wood-plank roof.

And still he waited, listening to the grinding of their teeth. When one of the monsters chewed through, Phlopp lit the fuse and bolted the door and let the freight wagon loose. He hurried to join the others, as the weasel-crusted car drifted free of the train.

With a lighter load now, the rest of the train pulled away and left the slow-rolling wagon behind. The People gathered at windows to watch, but Phlopp warned them back from the glass.

A second passed and another and then, all at once, the gunpowder exploded. A light as bright as day flooded the coach and the sound of the blast came next and shattered every window in every railcar.

The freight wagon went up in a red riot of flame and train and weasel-parts. The Little Ones cheered and the Engineer let off the throttle as they watched the great fireball roll into the night sky. The weasels were gone from the earth and the People were safe, at least for now.

From his bedroom window, a half-dozen miles away, Nick Bottoms saw the fiery glow and briefly wondered what it was.

That next morning, Michael was taken to the Recreation Room and three voices rang off the cold concrete walls: “Good to see you, squire!” “Knew you'd make it sooner or later!” “You poor swot!”

It was Peter, Gordy, Phil, and they wanted to know about Nick and Robby. Michael told them as little as he could, and let them fill in the rest as they chose.

“You're going to like it here, Mike,” Gordy said and seemed to mean it. His face was still red and puffy from the dog bites, but he looked happy.

“If you need anything, squire, just let us know,” said Peter.

Michael saw a guard watching and wished the boys would leave him alone.

“We got everything, Mikey, everything! Three meals, billiard room, telly, exercise yard, everything!”

“And all built on a plague pit,” Phil added. “Ten thousand peasants, dead from the plague, buried right under our feet.”

Michael tried wandering off. But they followed.

“Where're you staying?” Gordy wanted to know.

He waved a hand toward the building at the far corner of the prison yard.

“12-A? You're kidding me!”

Michael shrugged, no.

“They put him in Seg!”

“What's Seg?” the boy asked.

“That's the Segregation Unit, squire,” said Peter. “They only put the special ones in 12-A.”

“It means you're VP, Mike!” Gordy shouted.

“What's VP?” Michael asked.

“That's a Vulnerable Prisoner.” Peter laughed till he nearly choked.

Michael was glad when his time in the yard was done. He was taken back to his cell in Seg and he sat on the foul bed and thought about the Little Ones.

They'd be better off without him, that much was sure. He couldn't take care of himself. What ever made him think he could take care of them?