The Last of the Gullivers (9 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

AND THE
WATERS PREVAILED

W
hen Michael showed Jane what the Lesser Lilliputians had done—when she saw their battle-torn Nation, the scarred land, the shattered buildings—her heart dropped inside her. “Why are they doing this?” she wanted to know. “Why are they acting this way?”

“I wish I knew,” was all the answer he had.

The fighting was flaring again, right under their noses, a skirmish in the Farmer's barley field.

“We could give them a time-out,” Jane finally said. “Dad used to do that to me when I was little.”

“We could give it a try, I guess,” said Michael.

And they tried it. The Yesbutzers and Nobutzers were told to sit quietly for ten minutes, on either side of the country, and think about what they'd done.

With the armies in time-out, Michael and Jane started cleaning up the little town. They swept away the broken glass and splintered wood.

“Taking care of them,” said Michael, “is more work than I figured.”

“We can do it,” Jane told him.

The little clock tower struck four and the time-out was over and the fighting started once more.

“We can't give up,” said Jane. “That's not a choice we have.”

In Moss-on-Stone, Mr. Mallery was running up the stairs and into his office to reach the ringing phone.

“Is Jane there?” A child's voice. Her school friend.

“Who is this?”

“Me. Do you know where she is? I only tried her like two million times.”

“Who is this?” Mr. Mallery asked again.

“Nicole. I've called so many times you wouldn't believe. Where is she?”

“I'll tell her to call you,” said Mallery.

“Right, tell her call Nicole. Mannnn, she's
never
around anymore, is she?”

And he hung up.

When she came in that night, Jane found her father in a very dark mood.

“Where've you been?” he asked.

“I was—” But he already knew, she could tell that. “Was with Michael,” she told him. “He needed me to help him. It was important.”

The fact was this. Julien Mallery hadn't got on well with his parents. The fact was, they were childish people who never grew up. He had wanted to get along with Jane, had wanted it very much. It hurt him that she lied.

She waited, wordless, until he said, “You're a little old for time-outs.”

She nodded. “And they don't really work.”

“Let's say you're grounded. For a month, I think. Yeah. A month.”

Without Jane's help, Michael lost all control of the Lesser Lilliputians. The Civil War raged on and grew worse with each day. Its damage was awful and everlasting. The Grand Panjandrum could have done more, should have done more to stop the fighting. But he didn't.

The war might not have ended, but for what happened early on a Summer morning. Michael had been working hard, too hard, between his job at the Market and the Little Ones and their bickering. He woke with a fever, sweating, shaking, miserable, and couldn't get out of bed.

Billowing black clouds covered the whole county. By mid-day, thunder was rumbling in like an army on the march, promising a long ugly storm. Ice-white veins of lightning pulsed in the darkening sky. And in Lesser Lilliput, a wind began to blow across the city, for the very first time.

Rain fell through that day and the next, and for a full week, without pause. Before long, the drains of the Garden City were filling with leaves and sticks and every kind of rubbish. With Michael sick at home and Jane grounded, no one had kept the grates cleared. The Lesser Lilliputians might have done it themselves, but they were too busy fighting. The drains were useless now and a flood was rising.

The low meadows were first to vanish: the Farmer's fields of wheat and barley turned to marsh, then lake. Evet moved his grazing livestock through the hard rain to higher, drier ground. By the next nightfall, water lapped at his piggery and some outbuildings were half-underwater. Mr. Butz herded his animals to town and into the Great Hall, making a loud smelly barn of it.

With dawn, the People found water at the outskirts of their own neighborhoods, squeezing tighter like a giant noose. Whole houses were sinking into the flood, chairs, tables, clothes, art, books, fortunes, memories, all washing away and nothing spared. A sailboat from the once-little lake drifted in the street outside Philament Phlopp's workshop. More and still more of the Little Ones fled to the safety of the Great Hall, packed alongside cows, sheep, horses, geese and pigs.

And the Civil War was forgotten.

None of them had ever seen a storm like this. It struck hard at the little city, merciless and endless, breaking roof tiles and ripping wood siding from houses. Each street was a river now. Everyone looked to the Grand Panjandrum for answers, but he had none to give.

He told his wife, Docksey, not to worry, these were a resilient People and they would take care of themselves. But the Lesser Lilliputians had panicked, completely, and needed someone to guide them.

It was the moment Hoggish Butz had been waiting for and he didn't even know it. Ethickless Knitbone hurried to tell him and found him eating his second lunch of the day.

“Hoggish!” she hissed. “What do you think you're doing?”

“I think I am eating, dear Dr. Knitbone,” he said around a lump of suet pudding.

“But my plan! Our plan!”

“Oh, what's the point,” Hoggish grunted and waved a sausage toward the storm. “This weather has ended our lovely little
WAR.
Really, dear, what's the point anymore?”

Knitbone had no time for this. Topgallant's inaction, she said, was a greater gift than they could have hoped for.

“What are you talking about?” asked Hoggish. “And pass me one of those spicy buns while you're explaining.”

“Burton Topgallant has done nothing to stop the flood,” she hissed. “He has given us a serious crisis and we cannot let it go to waste!”

She grabbed him by his fleshy arm and he squealed like a colicky baby. She ignored the cries and pulled him through the rain to her office. They had to make sure that every man, woman, and child knew how useless the Grand Panjandrum really was.

At this same time, across town, two of the Little Ones, Chizzom Bannut and Gulkin Afterclap, found the drifting sailboat and went rowing out to look at the drains. They passed chimney pots and treetops and guessed where the first grate was. The rain was cold and the floodwater colder, but Bannut dove and tried clearing the drains by hand. He found them blocked with a tight weave of branches, leaves and dirt, and held by the weight of a fast-rising sea. The men started rowing back to share the grim news.

Floodwaters encircled the town square, once the highest point in Lesser Lilliput, now a fast-shrinking island. Most of the population had gathered in the Great Hall; Topgallant's own house was gone.

When Bannut and Afterclap told what they'd seen, the rowdy room went silent: they understood that their city was doomed, another Atlantis lost to the world forever. And they would go under with it.

But Philament Phlopp wasn't so sure. An idea was taking root, somewhere deep in his brain. For an hour or more, he kept it to himself and let it grow. As the waters prevailed over their Nation, he began to believe, to
know
that his scheme was their one best chance.

“We must tear down the Wall,” he said suddenly, unexpectedly, and a still-greater hush took the Hall.

There were some coughs, some clearing of throats, but the People were too stunned to do more. The Grand Panjandrum said, at long last, “Um. Ah. What was that again, Brother Phlopp? The wall? Which wall are we talking about?”

“Flestrin's Wall,” he said. “We have to break through it, so the flood can drain out.”

No one, not in three hundred long years, had dared think a thought like this. The Wall was
the Wall
and beyond it lay every peril.

“Great Ghost of Bolgolam . . . !” It was Hoggish, with an armload of freshly printed pamphlets. Dr. Knitbone was at his side. “This man's mad, mad, mad! Without the Wall, we
DIE!
”

For once, most of them agreed with Hoggish Butz.

“We may die
because
of the Wall,” Phlopp went on. “It's holding the floodwater in, making an ocean that will drown us all.”

“But, Brother Phlopp,” the Grand Panjandrum began again, uncertain, unsure, “what if there's an even-greater ocean beyond? If we break through the Wall, more water might pour in . . .”

There were scattered mutterings from the crowd. “Topgallant's right.” “We don't know what's out there.” “The Wall's been there since the days of my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather.”

“Quinbus Ninneter comes from beyond the Wall,” said Phlopp, “and Quinbus Ooman, too. It can't all be ocean out there.”

There was a long silence then.

“But the monsters,” said Evet at last. “You open a path to the Land of Naught and Nil, you'll let 'em in to eat us!”

“All we know,” said Mr. Phlopp, “is we have to do something, or there'll be nothing left of us.”

The Grand Panjandrum walked to a window and looked out, long and hard, on the storm. “This rain isn't stopping,” he finally said, “and the water's getting higher. If no one has a better idea, I say we try Phlopp's way.”

There was another long dismal silence and they considered the bad options left to them. Hoggish and Evet Butz and a few others were set against it.

“We couldn't do it if we wanted to,” said Evet. “The Wall was built to keep us safe, it was made to be forever.”

And that, they all knew, was also true.

“We could do it,” a new voice now, Burra Dryth's voice, “if we worked
with
each other, instead of
against
each other.” She laid out a plan and it was this:

They would float a raft out to a section of wall where the stones were small and had plenty of cement between them. Using picks and chisels, hammers, drills, they would weaken the old grout and the force of the flood would bring the wall down.

This was her plan and they voted to try it.

And Michael? He was still in bed, sweating through another fever spike. Freddie was in the next room, playing cards with some mates. Jane was at home, still grounded, painting a picture of the Garden City as she remembered it.

The Little Ones worked as fast as they could and built five rafts—huge, by their scale—from trees they found floating, from the timbers of wrecked buildings, the wood siding of houses. Others scavenged the flooded city for tools, picks, sledgehammers, all else. By mid-day, the armada was ready to sail. Each raft held a dozen or so, and twice that number had volunteered. With makeshift oars and poles, they set off down the river-streets and into the still-rising sea.

Phlopp and Dryth found a place where the Wall was weather-worn and built of smaller stones. The rafts were anchored here and they set to work. With picks and hammers and shovels, they attacked the aged mortar. Even in the ruthless rain, the tools sent sparks flying and filled the air with a sour smell.

They worked for hour after hour, but made little progress. A few stones chipped, some cement broke away, but the Wall remained. The Lesser Lilliputians kept at it, even as they understood—silently and all at once—that the whole thing was futile.

But Burra Dryth knew it wasn't. She could see that the Wall was weakening. She told Phlopp that a well-aimed cannon blast might bring the whole thing down.

A few of them rowed back to the Great Hall and loaded the cannon on a smaller raft and strapped it tight. Topgallant called for the workers to abandon their work and return to the city square.

With the cannon-raft anchored a few feet from the Wall, Phlopp fashioned as long a fuse as he could. “I'll wait till everyone's cleared away,” he told them, “in case something goes wrong.”

“No offense, Brother Phlopp,” from Thudd Ickens. “But you better let me,
in case
. I'm the better swimmer.”

“He's right,” said the Grand Panjandrum. “No one swims like Mr. Ickens.”

And they all knew it.

Phlopp left the raft and Ickens climbed aboard and the others rowed off into the flood. He waited until they were a good distance away, then tried to light the fuse. But his hands shook from nerves and cold, and the flint was rain-damp. Ickens tried to calm himself, tried to shake off the sense that something just wasn't right. He struck at the flint again, and a spark jumped to the primed fuse.

And something did go wrong.

The fuse burned in a flash and there was no time for Ickens to get away. The cannon fired a half-second later.

The blast's recoil capsized the raft and sent Thudd Ickens flying into the air, a dozen feet up and then down into the icy sea. The blast hit the Wall squarely and shards of stone and mortar exploded from it. Ickens sputtered to the surface, but dove back to safety as debris began falling with the rain. He came up again, coughing, confused, unsure which way to swim. The downpour was so heavy, it blurred the world and he couldn't tell what was lake and what wasn't. He was blind and lost, until he heard the others yelling to him: “This way!” “Over here!”

When he finally saw the boat, he went swimming toward it and was still a half-dozen feet away when Topgallant told him, “It hasn't worked, Brother Ickens. The Wall's still standing.”

But Ickens said, “Don't be too sure, Mr. Topgallant.”

He had felt a strong pull at his feet, a sharp new current in the sea. It grew by the second, slowly drawing him back and away from the men in the boat. Philament Phlopp saw hundreds of eddies break across the water surface and he, too, understood what was going on.

“Swim, Ickens, swim!” cried Phlopp.

A fracture had opened somewhere in the Wall, unseen, below the water surface, and the flood was beginning to drain. Thudd Ickens swam with all his strength and then some. But the water was roiling under him and pulling him to the Wall.