Chapter Twenty-Seven

The night before, Gadget could have sworn she never wanted to see water again--at least not if there were a dead rat to drag out of it. Now, she was about to wish that the whole lake would come rushing down from the Plateau.

It started with a muffled pounding at the door--the heavy, carefully balanced, impenetrable door that she had shut and bolted so that she and Devin might get some well-deserved peace. As Gadget brushed aside the covers, she rolled a touch awkwardly onto her side, for what felt like the hundredth time since she'd laid down the night before. She swung her footpaws over the edge of the bed, and stood up.

Wobbling dizzily, she tried to find her center of gravity. There's that balance problem Dev warned me about! It snuck up on me when I wasn't looking! She felt her stomach--fell asleep in the damn worksuit again…and loosened the belt a notch. Looks like you're needing more elbow room in there, kid.

On firmer footing now, she headed for the door as the pounding continued, though it was difficult to tell how urgent the knock was through the solid stone.

"Whozat this early?" Devin squinted up at her from the bed, the shaft of light from the skylight-hole making him want to sneeze.

"Early, shmerly," Gadget taunted him. "We've both slept in way too late. We should have met up with Dr. Ages by now." Gadget was already half-expecting to look down as she opened the door, and it would probably be Timothy grouching at them to come get breakfast before it got cold. But breakfast was anything but cold, and it wasn't a mouse in a wheelchair at the door--it was a squirrel with a crutch.

Runner had his paw drawn back to knock again, but he opened his arms to give her a frantic, frightened hug instead. "Gaddit! Debbin! Tha houb izzon fiber!"

Gadget shook her head. Maybe she was still sleepier than she'd thought.

"Speak again, squirrel," Devin yawned. "It didn't quite work the first time--"

Runner growled and thumped his cast on the floor, swinging his crutch around to point frantically. "Fiber! Fiber! Lobs of smote! I dunno where Tibby an' Teema are!"

Now that the door was open, Gadget could smell the truth of it. Timmy and Tina's cave was made of rock, but it was full of clothes, books, furniture--all of which might catch fire easily enough.

Devin cursed under his breath and half-slithered, half-thudded to the floor with the bedcovers. With Gadget's help, on the third try, he actually stood up.

"Neeb a kutch?" Runner chuckled nervously, holding his crutch out as Devin and Gadget rushed from the bedroom and into the workshop. "Watch oub!" he called after them, partly because they had almost knocked him over in their haste, and partly because they were hurrying into a dangerous mess.

Someone had been busy in the workshop. Piles of books and wooden-handled tools flamed in the corners. Gadget slammed a hip against one corner of a workbench as they dashed for the exit, but Devin caught her arm and steadied her. He gave her stomach a quick pat. "Careful, Gadge! You've got a passenger!" They wove their way toward the sunlight of the library, hunched over to get at the clearer air, Gadget saying a quiet prayer for the new life growing inside her.

They reached Timothy's workroom and library--it did not relieve their troubled minds one bit when they saw that none of the books remained on the shelves--all were burning in the room behind her or lying shredded here. The ceiling was higher, but the room was filling with smoke from both entrances. Runner was right--up above, at the entrance to the hallway just before the long drop down to the library, smote was indeed puffing out in huge lobs. Devin and Gadget stopped dead in their tracks as they saw Tina come coughing out of the hallway, staggering under Timothy's weight--he was slung over her shoulder and back like a sack of very small potatoes. Lively, potatoes, though--

"Put me down!"

"FIRE!!! GET OUT!!!" Tina hollered, batting at her smoke-reddened eyes with her one free paw. "Gadget! Anyone!"

"Dome wurry, Teema!" Runner called, stumping up behind the others.

"Down here, Tina!" Devin cupped his paws and yelled back, before he remembered. "Oh, hell," he said quietly.

"Devin!" Timothy choked. "Thank God!" He let go his death-grip on Tina's neck as they both spilled to the floor, choking. "Tina!" Timothy pointed frantically. "It's Dev and Gadget!"

Tina looked down--it was a long way, but it was good to see familiar, concerned faces. After Gadget's stories, she'd expected a horde of rogue rats milling around in the library, waiting to snap her up. "Thank God--it's just you!" She staggered to her feet and dragged Timothy toward the lift platform, with its beautiful big red button, that would take them down out of the smoke. They say when you're deaf the other senses make up for it. If I could just turn off my sense of smell for a second--

As she planted her paws on the platform, the waiting trio below motioning her onward, she felt the metal creak and buckle--

Runner rocketed forward on his cast, waving her off.

Artwork by Keith Elder

"GEB BAT!!!" he cried, and Tina flung herself backward with her beloved cargo just before the heavy slab of metal wrenched free and clattered to the floor--a bare instant after Gadget and Devin pulled Runner out of the way. Runner pointed with his crutch again--"Id's the draks! All twifted!"

"Draks? Oh, tracks!" Gadget ran her paws along the metal posts and rails that should have held up the lift. Someone--or several someones, she winced--had taken the supports apart with crowbars. From above came the sounds of someone being squished.

"Agh! Tina, get up, I'm flat!" Timothy writhed as Tina found her footing again, leaving him on the ground this time. Behind her, flaming embers began to streak out of the tunnel exit along with the smoke, landing in her headfur and smoldering there as she shrieked and tried to beat them out with her paws. She joined Timothy on the floor, edging a footpaw over into space--

"DON'T!!!" cried their would-be rescuers from below.

"It's too high to jump!" Gadget cast about desperately for something softer than computer equipment or shelving for Timothy and Tina to land on. The smell of fur beginning to burn hung in the air, a smell Gadget was all-too-familiar with. The heat pouring out of the tunnel and scorching the trapped pair was making her and Devin's whiskers wilt, even at that distance.

"Where's Runner?" Devin twisted around but the young squirrel had disappeared into the workshop. Devin swept a loose pile of smoldering papers off one of Timothy's desks onto the floor, stomping out sparks with his feet. "Dammit, my shoes are melting!"

"So am I!" howled Timothy. "Hurry up before I take the short way down again!"

"Don't you dare!" coughed Tina, barely able to lip-read through the smoke. "If anyone goes over, it's my turn!"

"Holb on!" Runner cried, hustling in as fast as his crutch and cast would let him, a coil of rope looped over one shoulder.

"Good thinking, Runner!" Gadget dropped her piece of planking and put a paw out for the rope. Runner looked her up and down, shook his head, and stepped to the base of the short cliff.

Devin grabbed his shoulder. "Runner, you'll break your leg again, or worse!"

"Gaddit's preggers and yoore a klutz." Devin scratched his head and nodded in agreement as Runner flung the crutch away and began to scale the wall, his cast dangling and bumping as he made a three-limbed ascent.

"Kid climbs like a spider," sighed Gadget.

"A spider with a few legs missing," Devin added.

"Cub it oud, I'm clybing!" Runner shot back over his shoulder, finding near-invisible chinks in the stone with his squirrelly little pawpads. He bristled and shrieked as Tina reached down to clamp her claws on him and pull him up the rest of the way. "Dome do thad!!!" he growled, as his cast knocked against the edge.

Timothy snagged the rope and knotted it around a twisted metal post--all that remained of his lovely chairlift. He felt like he'd been under a hair-drier for an hour, and as Elizabeth Brisby's son, he knew exactly how that felt. "Tina, your legs have never looked so good. Pick me up and get 'em moving!"

Tina scooped up Timothy as though he was made out of styrofoam (though she was sure her arms would feel like low-grade lead tomorrow), flung him across her shoulder, and rappelled down the rope in three huge bounds without a care for her paws. Better a ropeburn than getting barbecued! By the time Devin and Gadget met her at the bottom and relieved her of Timothy, Runner was halfway down the bare wall again himself.

"Rope! Use the rope!" Gadget waved her arms, but almost before she was finished, Runner was low enough to hop to the floor with one leg and snag his crutch. He was a wobbly red streak as he thumped past the others and into the workshop--as they joined him, the disturbed air of the library was filling with ash and cinders, the carpet beginning to curl up at the edges.

"Squiggles don' use robpe," Runner said proudly, allowing himself a bit of a well-earned swagger.

Devin grunted, under even half of Timothy's weight. "And I guess mice don't believe in sprinkler systems?"

"It was on the to-do list," grumbled Timothy, his eyes red and streaming tears that were only half from the smoke, which was nearly as bad here as in the library. "They burned the books! All of the journals Nicodemus left us! Our whole history, up in smoke!"

Tina stumbled along, half-blind from the smoke herself but keeping a close eye on Timothy. "It's not all gone, Timmy! You typed so much of it--"

Not enough, he grimaced, and would have kicked himself if his legs had worked.

"--and there are backups all over the Valley!"

Gadget kicked aside one ragged half of a book-cover with a gold-inlaid title and bits of mirror worked into the binding. Timothy shook his head sadly at Tina. "I'll take the real books any day."

In their jumbled flight, they had made it most of the way through the workshop. Gadget let Devin take Timothy's weight for a moment as she scooped up her pack of tools--left untouched at the base of a workbench, almost like a gift again. She drew out a makeshift weapon. "If one of the creeps who set this fire is still down here, he'll get a drop-forged steel screwdriver in the eye."

They piled into Gadget's room--when it had just been Devin and herself, she had thought of the room as cozy. As they all pushed the massive door shut, and she realized the place was standing-room-only, she decided the right word at the moment was crowded. This was a reprieve she didn't care to second-guess, though--it was a blessed thing to be out of the worst of the smoke. There was still a tinge to the air, but the skylight and air-hole far above made all of them very grateful that Arthur the Engineer had thought to include this little retreat. As inevitably happens, though, someone had to open their big fat mouth.

"What if this is what they wanted in the first place?" fretted Timothy.

Devin gritted his teeth. He hadn't known Timothy for long, but he knew he had an active imagination. "Don't do this, Timmy…"

"No, really, what if they wanted to force us all down into one little airtight room and pick us off in their own good time?"

"Timmy, sweetheart, please, don't get yourself worked up! I'm sure Arthur and Cynthia and the whole Guard and everyone will come dig us out!"

"Yeah, if they get to us first--"

Gadget shivered, her paw questing for Devin's and finding it cold and clammy, though strong. "Tim, quit it. You’re going to give me a heart attack!" A small, reasonable-sounding voice in the back of her head was agreeing with Timothy that she was stuck in a trap, a corner, a blind alley--

Their one source of light, the beam trickling in from the shaft high above, flickered and dimmed for a moment--Gadget snapped her head back and saw a figure silhouetted at the high, small hole.

"Someone's up there!" she whispered, and they all followed her gaze. This is when they toss the gas in, she felt before she thought it. Some of us can't run and the rest won't leave them.

Whoever was blocking the light pushed something down into the shaft like a dark gift, and fled.

Button images by Keith Elder