Chapter Thirty-One

With a horrendous clatter, the massive rat cast aside his huge weapon, which would have tripped him up as he squeezed through. He muscled his way in, shouldering Devin, Gadget, and the others aside as he zeroed in on Timothy like a thundercloud, wrath glinting in his eyes.

Slamming his massive paws on Timothy's shoulders (but with a precise strength, the way a giant might pick up a fly without killing it), the behemoth lifted the terrified mouse out of his wheelchair and shook him a bit.

In the space before the incredibly huge creature spoke, he inhaled--Gadget felt the air pressure in the room actually change as air rushed to fill the great lungs like the bellows of a steel furnace. Heat actually was radiating off his fur--the one shaft of light in the room shimmered with it.

"THEY BURNED THE BOOKS?" rumbled the intruder, quivering like an oak tree in an earthquake. Everyone but Tina plugged his or her ears.

"Sorry, Brutus. We couldn't save any." Timothy meekly cast his eyes down, his legs dangling limply. "Here for my physical therapy?" Brutus' whiskers bristled at him like porcupine quills.

Brutus set Timothy back into his chair--just gently enough not to break him further. "Fine time for jokes, Mister Brisby," the basso voice settled down lower, "I'm going to have to invent a whole new set of library fines."

Gadget tapped Brutus' side, not being able to reach his shoulder. "Am I to assume," she quavered with relief, "that you aren't about to break and batter us to bits, and then laugh mercilessly at our general destruction?"

"No," Brutus glowered down at her, distracted from his interrogation of poor Timothy.

"Then please (gasp) let's continue this outside. You're breathing all our air."

"Hm?" Brutus puzzled this over for a second. "Oh. Sorry. The size thing again." He backed out of the room with some difficulty until Devin, Tina, and Gadget helped push. As he popped into the workroom beyond like a cork, a rush of fresh air hit the room, to the relief of many--the musky smell of large angry rat hung about the place, and in fact took weeks to get out of all the corners.

With Brutus finally out (he retreated into the workroom to poke through book-ashes, truth be told, in furious private tears), another less threatening form popped into the entryway, though the dried blood on her blue medical garb was a bit disturbing. Tina rushed to meet her. "Mom!" she cried. "Thank goodness, it was you sending the Morse code."

Gadget's eyes goggled. The resemblance was uncanny.

"Tina Mouskewitz! Don't you ever scare me like that again," Tina's near-double harangued, but without the faint hints that spoke of deafness in the younger mouse. She grabbed Tina by both forearms, eyes red with worry (and a little lingering smoke). "Locking yourselves up in here, we didn't even know if all of you survived!" Patting Tina's face with a gentle touch that belied the angry words, she turned to face the others.

"I'm sorry, I don't think we've--" Devin started.

"Don't give me that, Doctor Packard. I know you just fine. I never forget someone who spills formaldehyde on me."

"Well, you are looking well-preserved," Devin couldn't help saying. "I was about to say, Rosie--I don't think we've all been introduced." Devin squirmed. Rosie was easy to take, in easy times. Right now, her thorns were out in force.

"Still using my stethoscope, too, I see." She sniffed haughtily as Devin unlooped it from his shoulders and handed it to her. She rubbed a pawpad on the stainless steel, lost in thought. "Oh, go ahead and keep it, I don't want your rat earwax," she snapped and pitched it at his head like a bola. Devin yelled in surprise as the tubing slapped his forehead and the stethoscope clattered away. Devin sat straight down as Gadget rushed to his side and shot a dark look at Rosie.

"Anybody hurts Devin, and they answer to me," Gadget bristled.

Devin put a calming paw on her shoulder. "Don't worry, Gadget, she just needed to throw something."

Rosie grinned and a sudden change came over her. "Your fat head makes a handy target." She made as if to kick Devin while he was down, but checked the blow.

"Nice to see you too," Devin chuckled, rubbing his forehead.

Rosie stuck a paw out--Devin took it and she hefted him to his feet. Gadget gasped--it was the same arm she had flung the 'scope with, and it was a withered, undersized thing. With Devin back on his feet, Rosie extended the limb to Gadget, who shook it uncertainly. "You must be Gadget Hackwrench. Don't tell me you've picked Devin here as your next science fair project--"

"Yes," Gadget narrowed her eyes. "A long-term one."

"A specialist in lost causes, I see." Rosie's eyes drifted to Gadget's stomach. "You know, you really ought to work on one experiment at a time. When's the completion date on this little number?" She jabbed a careful paw in the direction of Gadget's waistline.

Tina rolled her eyes. "Mom… you're awful!"

Timothy growled. "That's going a bit too far, Rosie--" He thought to himself for a moment. Did that just come out of my mouth? he signed to Tina, who put a paw to her mouth to stifle a titter.

"Fourteen days from now, as close as we can tell," Gadget grumbled, still not sure if she liked this mouse or not. She tensed as Rosie gingerly prodded the small bulge pushing at the belt of her coveralls.

"Id's not like chegging for ribe wabermelins!" Runner growled. "Be nice!"

"Take it easy, small fry. I know my way around the female body a lot better than you." Runner put his ears back and blushed as Rosie clicked her tongue. "Well, Hackwrench, from one mother to another, I can tell you--those coveralls aren't gonna cut it. Feeling the pinch?"

Gadget nodded furiously. "Oh, God, yes. These worksuits have been like a uniform for years--I don't have much of anything else, not on this trip. And they're impossible to get out of." Well, nearly impossible.

"We'll get you some scrubs, the kind that have an elastic waistband," Rosie thought out loud, patting Gadget's stomach gently. "They size scrubs for the rats around here, and I don't think you'll need more than a medium, toward your due date." Her tone was so kindly and full of concern, such an antidote to her former dark mood, that Gadget almost forgot about the stethoscope assault on Devin. Almost.

"So, let's get the lady suited up, Rosie," Devin coughed. "We were supposed to meet Dr. Ages hours ago."

Rosie wrinkled up her nose. "He's attending to some… unpleasant business. You aren't squeamish, are you, Hackwrench?"

"Aside from a little morning sickness, I have a stomach of cast iron," Gadget assured her. "I can take anything you throw at me," she narrowed her eyes a bit, "but just don't throw any more medical equipment at Devin." She stepped closer to Rosie and got a firm, almost biting grip on her blue scrubs. "Ever," she growled. With that, she let Rosie go and stalked past her out of the room.

"Whew!" whistled Rosie, smoothing Gadget's pawprints out of the scrubs. "She's a little bit protective, isn't she?"

Devin nodded after his absent love, with more than a touch of pride and admiration. "She'd give her life for me, and she knows I'd do the same."

"Ahh, mush. It's just her raging hormones," Rosie chuckled. "Mostly, anyway. What does she see in a nutjob like you, Devin?"

"You might as well," drawled Timothy, as Tina pushed him toward the door, "ask what Dr. Ages sees in a crabby, overbearing, sarcastic mouse a quarter of his age, like you?"

"I keep him young," Rosie cackled.

**********

The good doctor's current job was not making him feel his age any less. Not one whit. In what would have normally been a nice shady spot under the trees at the base of the cliffs, just far enough away from the waterfall's spray to not get one's fur soaked, but close enough to stay cool in the mid-day heat encroaching on all sides, Dr. Ages was cataloguing the dead.

There was no nice way to put it. Dr. Ages knew that Cynthia was not easily moved to tears, but surveying the sad debris that was left of the attackers after their long fall--it had hurt Cynthia to realize how far she'd gone to protect the Valley. There wasn't much recognizable in the tangle of fur and flesh, and no further damage for her and her troops to inflict, so Cynthia took off for her own little outpost, back up the cliffs, headed for, in her words, "the longest shower ever". She needed it. She was covered in grime, blood, and who knew what else from the one attacker she and Ages had saved, and she felt absolutely defiled.

Dr. Ages was about to pack it in, himself. He looked a fright--his white fur nearly crimson now from the blood of that one survivor and his less fortunate kin. Everything he'd learned from the bodies was bad news--though the longer fangs and distinctive bunched patterning of whiskers was seen in every individual, and dutifully recorded by his photographic assistant Angela (on loan from the Thorn Valley Sentinel Weekly), none of the other rats bore the telltale ear tattoos. Checking for the fluorescent ink with a blacklight under the noonday sun had been no small trick--luckily the photographer was resourceful in such matters. These pitiful remains were the sons (and daughters, he noted grimly) of Group B rats, or perhaps the grandchildren by now. Group B had been busy, building their strength, and recruiting from the outside as well--many of the rats had a piebald or streaked appearance that spoke of a wild strain in their blood.

Of course, we've got a few like that of our own, Dr. Ages sighed. For though he was not a rat, he had worked hard with them to build a new life after the escape from NIMH, and had been there for all the arguments about intermarriage with 'outsiders'. He'd argued that the danger of inbreeding made bringing new blood into the group a necessity--so even among the Thorn Valley rats, there were many of varied shade and hue. Fur color was of no use in spotting a rat in the Valley that didn't belong.

Here and there among the bodies, Ages would stumble upon a dead rat who had worn one of the mysterious gray-and-black outfits. Cynthia had told him that those enemy rats seemed to fight the hardest, and were the only ones with any real skill. Before leaving Ages to his unpleasant task, she had also said something that disturbed him greatly.

"There are a couple of missing stripes on these," she'd pointed out, tracing a paw along one shoulder of a fallen enemy's jerkin, "and the colors are wrong--but if they were green-on-brown instead, they'd be exact copies of our Guard uniforms."

It was just one more oddity in a day that had left Dr. Ages feeling like a whole other story had been going on behind his back. And now, here came two more players in the whole mess, just to muck up the works some more.

Gadget held a handkerchief over her mouth and nose, peering out from above it with wide astonished eyes. She hadn't seen a dead body since she and Devin had made their unpleasant discovery at the lake, and had only once been more horrified at a scene--these rats were strangers, and enemies, but that didn't make her feel any better. This is only a taste of what a war would be like, she reeled at the thought.

It was cut off by a strobe flash. Dots danced before her eyes as she and Devin blinked and glared at the photographer, Angela, her camera warming up for another flash.

"What are you doing that for?" Devin growled.

Angela put her paws up and backed away among the bodies. "Hey, the editor over at the Weekly said to get a couple of shots of you two."

"Do it somewhere else!" Gadget waved her off angrily. "You won't get a good picture of me when I'm trying not to throw up!"

Angela wisely left them alone, returning to her grisly duties, photographing subjects that could no longer object to her methods.

Dr. Ages had noticed the commotion. "What have you brought her out here for?" Ages gestured at Gadget, in place of an introduction. "Didn't you two just nearly die in a fire? My Rosie was worried sick!"

"She's fine, back to her old equipment-flinging self," Gadget offered, the piece of cloth muffling her words.

"Gadget's all right, Dr. Ages," Devin said, not surprised at his reaction. Dr. Ages' medical know-how was constantly advancing, but in other ways he was set in stone. "She's been through a lot, but she's strong."

"I wanted to come," Gadget took the handkerchief away long enough to get the words out. It had not been long enough for decay to set in, of course, but the coppery smell of blood stung her nose and made her think of the caves where she'd lost her friends. "I need to see who we're up against. And if I'm ever going to be a doctor myself, I can't hide from death."

"You're thinking of joining us at the Hospital, I hear." he cocked his head thoughtfully at her.

"Maybe. I don’t know if I'm better at fixing machines or living things."

"You had better decide quick," Ages raised a bushy eyebrow, making her frown. "There's a job opening up pretty soon, and I think Justin and Elizabeth will ask you to take it. But first things first." Dr. Ages sized her up, literally. He was a short mouse (though he had been powerfully built in his day) and Gadget stood a head taller than him. She stood pretty firmly, too, he decided, and wasn't going to pass out at the gruesome scene before her. "So, Miss Hackwrench. I hear you might be going through a mixed-species pregnancy?"

She gritted her teeth. "Call me Gadget. It's a possibility, yes."

"Mm-hmm. Well, with the genetic uncertainty and everything else--" Dr. Ages' eyes (and tone) softened a bit, "--everything else you've been through, and the Justins have told me quite a bit--I would consider it a high-risk pregnancy. No heavy lifting! And that's about all there is left to do here."

"How many attackers?" Devin prodded warily at the arm of one of the rarer black-and-grey-garbed bodies, its paw still clenched tight around the handle of a cruel and twisted knife.

"Twenty, at best count." Ages scratched his head. "We've been counting paws and dividing by four--that fellow you're kicking at is the most intact of the bunch."

Devin whistled. "Cynthia really did a number on these guys."

"You're still scraping up the rest, I see," gulped Gadget, as a couple of Valley rats carted up another stretcher-load. One stumbled a bit and Devin leaped to help him. "How are you disposing of them?"

"Mass grave," grunted Ages. "There's plenty of extra space in the cemetery, thank God--the Hospital is good at its work. A few we're saving for genetic tests." He regarded Gadget again. "Speaking of genetic tests, you know, we could try amniocentesis on you--see if we can learn more about the father."

"Any chance it could hurt the baby?" Gadget put a protective paw over her stomach.

"Very slight, but a chance," Ages admitted.

"Then I'm not interested," Gadget said firmly.

Devin came up, wiping his paws and leaving crimson streaks on his lab coat. There is definitely bleach in this coat's future, he grimaced. "I heard that, Ages. Trying to muscle in on my private patient?" Gadget laughed, a welcome sound in that place that had seemed darkened somehow, even in the sun.

"Is that what they're calling it these days? Private patient, my whiskers." Ages chuckled. He saw the way Gadget and Devin reached for each other's paws, the way that they both seemed to stand stronger and taller when they were together. He raised an eyebrow again. Justin and Elizabeth have that effect on each other--it's what happens when good strong souls get together. We can't afford to lose these two.

As though he'd caught a hint of the old mouse's thoughts, Devin narrowed his eyes. "Hmm. Dr. Ages--you mentioned something earlier, then changed the subject--"

"Did I?" Ages asked, all innocence. "You'll have to remind me."

"Something about Justin, Elizabeth, and plans for Gadget--" Devin prodded warily.

"Yes, you did say something, about a job opening up," Gadget seconded. "It struck me as something you'd rather not talk about."

Ages sighed. "I'd rather not, but there's no way around it. I just got news from the Hospital. Poor old Arthur--I do believe our Engineer is dying."

Button images by Keith Elder