And although mice usually can’t scowl, he managed a small frown to show just how serious he was. He was right, of course. Every minute the Mousemobile was here, the whole nation was in danger.
“Okay,” Megan whispered, giving him a last rub behind the ears. “Eleven o’clock.”
She put him down on the floor, where he hid behind a canister of cleaner as Maisie finished with her hair, ended her monologue about evil scientists, and led Megan back into the big room, with its clock. Two minutes to eleven.
s Megan sat down again in that big room, she wondered, did it show? That she had a plan now? She looked first at Uncle Fred, hoping he could tell from her expression that help was on the way, but there was no sign on his face or on Jake’s that they’d guessed anything.
She didn’t dare to go over to them, so she did the best she could in MSL—making it look like the sort of fidgeting you might expect from a kid who had to tell a really important story and was nervous about it. Both hands up against her head like big ears, meaning “Mouse.” The word “Attack,” which was sort of pecking motions—one hand on the other. Then one finger, twice, for “Eleven o’clock,” and finally “Run,” which she didn’t know in MSL but made up on the spot, with fingers making a running motion.
And for Uncle Fred she signed, “Leave the Thumbtop in the cushions,” which was easy: a tap on the left thumb and another on her head for “Thumbtop” before she tucked an imaginary object under her own cushion.
Did her humans get it? Hard to tell, but plainly they realized something was up, and all three sat watching her intently as she glanced up at the clock.
A minute and a half to go.
“Okay, so let’s have it,” said Jim-Bob, rubbing his hands in anticipation. “Let’s have the truth. Tell me how these guys keep trying to undermine our economy by faking up facts about the climate.”
Megan took a deep breath and began a story, even though she had no idea how it would come out—and with any luck, it wouldn’t have to.
It was hard, of course, because she had to make her story fit with the image of the Savannah these guys had in their heads—and get them to pay full attention to her so no one would be aware of any mouse-movement from a gathering army.
“It all began,” she said, “when me and my mom were on an island in the Atlantic. St. Hilda, it was called. She was doing research on climate change and how it affects sheep.”
“What’s that got to do with the price of tea in China?” asked Greasy-hair.
“Huh?” said Megan, glad of any excuse to slow down. “I don’t think it has anything to do with the price of tea, or with China really, though China does have problems with pollution, doesn’t it? Lots of greenhouse gas that warms up the planet. And it might have something to do with the price of wool in China because when sheep—”
“Hey, it’s just a saying,” said Greasy-hair.
“Then don’t say it,” said Jim-Bob. “Let’s not interrupt Savannah while she’s telling us her story.”
A look at the clock. One minute to go.
“Well, my mom started to think that maybe the climate wasn’t changing that much,” said Megan, putting a hand behind her so no one could see she’d crossed her fingers to cover the huge lie. Of course, her mom had found the opposite—that on St. Hilda, at least, the climate was changing much faster than anyone had expected.
“Anyway, she didn’t tell anyone,” Megan went on, finding it easier to lie as she went along. “Except me, of course. Like, there wasn’t really anyone else there for her to talk to, so she always told me everything. That was great, especially on those long evenings. We had this little cabin high up, where you could see the sea, but it was often foggy and rainy—”
“Is she going to get to the point?” asked Baldy. “Where’s she going with this story?”
Megan looked at the clock again. Twenty-five seconds to get through. It gave her an icy thought. What would happen if the mouse attack didn’t happen, for some reason? And she just had to keep talking? Forever? Where was she going with this story? She had no clue, and crossed her fingers harder, then started talking again.
“As I was saying,” she began, “me and my mom, we began to notice some things on this island.”
There were the changes in rainfall, she told them. And the wind pattern. And then one day…
At that point, the big hand of the clock jerked forward and got to twelve. Taking a deep breath, Megan turned to the window and shouted, “Look!”
And of course all human heads swiveled to follow her pointing hand—and they stayed swiveled because, to Megan’s huge surprise, there actually was something out there to look at.
A Jeep.
And in it was a very familiar-looking woman under a shock of springy fair hair, riding to the rescue with four of the most famous movie stars on the planet.
As Trey told Megan later, when he saw the Jeep, he thought of calling off the mouse attack, at least until he knew what would happen next. But there was no way he could rein in his army now. Some of the younger mice in particular had been longing for an excuse to take a bite or two, so they charged, and ran up legs, and leaped onto heads, and gave a few little nibbling bites to ears just to show who was boss—and it wasn’t the four Humans Who Knew who sprinted out of the lodge first, but Jim-Bob and his followers, to the mixed sound of EEEKs and squawks and barking as the protector dogs went frantic in the room where they’d been locked up.
“Follow me!” yelled Jake, leaping out of his chair.
He led the way out to the porch, where a scene was unfolding that could have sold to People magazine for a million dollars. The three action heroes had rushed Jim-Bob’s guys—the great Rocky Stone; Biff Morgan, who had the bluest eyes in Hollywood; and Nick Bender, who was kind of small in person but had been amazing in his last movie, where he took on a slew of bad guys single-handed.
Jim-Bob and his guys were so paralyzed by the combination of star power and mice that they surrendered without a whimper, as so many movie villains had done before them.
And here came Daisy Dakota walking calmly over to tell Megan, “I’ve heard so much about you!” and to give her a quick hug before Megan’s mom took over and hugged her as she’d never been hugged before.
The dust had settled. The action heroes had rounded up the men from WATCH and parked them in the old dining room of the resort, with their women and children behind them.
“Now what?” asked Uncle Fred. “What do we do with these guys?”
“How about calling the cops?” asked Rocky Stone. “They kidnapped you, didn’t they?”
“Sort of,” said Uncle Fred, “but if we tell the cops…”
Of course there was no way, although Uncle Fred couldn’t spell it out. A sheriff and his deputies swarming all over this valley? Finding the Mousemobile? Luckily, Megan’s mom thought cops were a bad idea too, because then there’d be newspaper stories with headlines about Green Stars, and their secret camp would be besieged by the media, with photographers hiding behind every tree.
“I think we can do something much more constructive,” said Megan’s mom. She turned to her four campers. “Guys,” she said, “I’ve just thought of something for your final exam. I’ll give you half an hour to prepare. Then you’ll have half an hour to get these people to change their minds—get them to admit climate change is happening, and humans are doing it. Deal?”
“Deal,” said Biff, the largest of the action heroes, rubbing his hands together. “Piece of cake.”
“Way to go,” came a whispered voice in Megan’s ear. “If that doesn’t kill two cats with one stone, I don’t know what will.”
Megan reached up to stroke Trey behind the ear. “You did good, mousie,” she whispered.
“You weren’t so bad yourself, kiddo,” he whispered back, leaning against her neck.
Megan wanted desperately to get her mom alone, to take her on that walk she had imagined for so long—the one where she’d say, “Mom, Trey has something to tel
l you.”
But that would have to wait, because everyone was busy now. The movie stars were in a huddle around the WATCH computers, planning their presentation, and Megan was helping her mom get the room ready—with Trey holding tight to a braid as if he never wanted to let go again.
“So, tell all,” said Susie Miller as she and Megan each took one end of the table that the stars would use for their PowerPoint presentation. “And it had better be good. Here you are, turning up on my mountain unannounced, mixed up with some of the…” She lowered her voice so the clump of humanity in the middle of the room wouldn’t hear. “Some of the weirdest of all the wingnut climate deniers. Did you get lost or what?”
“I guess so,” said Megan, seizing on the one explanation that might just get her through this conversation. “Then Uncle Fred and Jake got talking to these guys.… We were going to come to Green Stars, but Uncle Fred and Jake… It’s all complicated.”
“But why did Fred bring you out west at all?” asked her mom. “Were you on your way to your dad a bit early? Driving to Oregon? That might have made sense in a Prius or something, but in that huge gas-guzzler? We passed it on the way—I knew it must have something to do with you, because of that toy mouse that was dangling on the windshield. But really…”
A mouse dangling on the windshield? A toy mouse? Could that mean a dead mouse? Megan remembered her last look at Savannah, bounding off through the trees, a sudden hero in a pink ribbon. It had to be Savannah dangling. But alive or dead? Someone had to get up there as soon as possible, which meant getting rid of her mom right now, ending the flow of questions.
As if he could read her mind, Trey whispered, “Tell her it was all Jake’s idea to come here. Get her to go ask him!”
“It was Jake’s idea,” Megan said. “Jake realized that Green Stars was on our way, like halfway between Cleveland and Greenfield. And he said—”
“It was Jake’s idea?” her mom interrupted.
Megan shrugged. “Why don’t you ask him about it?” she suggested, and that worked fine. Her mom walked off in the direction of Jake, and Megan could slip away to check on that mouse on the windshield.
With Trey hanging on to a braid, she raced back the way she and Joey had come, up the steep slope to the bluff above the river. It felt much steeper this time, and Megan had to stop a couple of times to catch her breath. In fact, she barely had enough breath left to tell Trey about Savannah—how she’d gone back alone to sound the alarm.
“Even though she’s…” Trey began.
“No!” said Megan. “No more Savannah jokes.”
“I was only going to say, even though she’s hardly ever been outdoors before,” said Trey. “Probably never even seen a tree. That’s one brave mouse.”
Megan reached up and tickled him behind the ear to apologize for having suspected even for a second that he’d come out with a dumb joke at a time like this.
At last she reached the top of the bluff and skidded as fast as she could down the other side, grabbing young trees to slow her progress.
And yes, there was the mouse. And yes, it looked lifeless, dangling, caught on the windshield wiper. It couldn’t be dead. Please, please, please, Megan thought as she bounced off the last tree. Let Savannah not be dead.
egan leaned against the front of the Mousemobile and gazed upward. Behind the windshield, she could see the anxious faces of Curly, Larry, and Julia gazing down. And in front of them, caught on the windshield, the limp blob of Savannah dangling from her pink ribbon.
Megan stretched up to free her, but the Mousemobile had been parked with its front wheels on a slight rise, and even on tiptoe, Megan found she simply couldn’t reach the windshield. She was about to turn away to look for a stick she might use to bend the windshield wiper toward her when a man’s hand appeared over her head and plucked Savannah down.
Jake.
And at just the right moment, or the wrong moment, depending on your point of view, Susie Miller ran toward the Mousemobile from the Prius that had brought her and Jake up from the valley. She’d panicked when she saw her daughter heading off alone into territory that could still be hostile. With her mother bear instincts at full pitch, she’d begged Jake to drive her as fast as he could to the big old gas-guzzler, which was where Megan seemed to be heading. And now here she was, rushing up to hug Megan just as the mouse in Jake’s hand sat up and started to sing: “‘Someday, my prince will come. Someday we’ll meet again.’”
It didn’t sound great, because when you can’t sing anyway, then spend much of the afternoon on a windshield as hawk bait, it’s never going to sound great, but it had an effect. Susie Miller pretty much fainted. Luckily, she couldn’t faint far: the mossy bank of the steep bluff caught her softly, almost upright. And she didn’t pass all the way out, so while Jake squeezed one of her hands and Megan squeezed the other, she half opened her eyes and said, “Not a great time for a stunt like that, kiddo—singing like a mouse. My nerves are already… What’s that mouse doing?”
Megan looked around to follow her mom’s gaze and saw that the Big Cheese, still in his cage, was deep into an elaborate-looking speech.
“I don’t know what those signs mean,” Megan said truthfully. She looked at Trey, hoping he would whisper the translation into her ear.
But he went further than that, and hopped off her shoulder to sit on the bank near Susie, gazing up into her face.
“Yay!” he said, as loudly as he could. “It’s so cool! That’s my boss in there, and he has a message for you. You are the fifth human to learn that mice have evolved. Welcome to our world!”
“YESSS!” yelled Jake at the top of his voice, laughing as Megan hurled herself at her mom, saying, “Now you know! Now I can I tell you everything!”
No, Susie didn’t faint again, but she did lie back against the mossy bank with her eyes shut.
“It’s been so hard,” Jake was saying. “Not being able to tell you about mice—not just hard on Megan, but all four of us.”
“You do know, don’t you,” said Susie, slowly and carefully, her eyes still shut, “that evolution is an incredibly slow process. So, Megan, that mouse of yours wasn’t really talking. No way. Even if mice had the brain capacity to process language, which they do not, it would be scientifically impossible for them to make the sounds.”
It was Trey who answered her.
“Not being a scientist myself,” he said, “I would normally defer to your greater knowledge. But in this case I have to disagree because, as you’d see if you would only open your eyes, I am a mouse, and I am talking. True, not many of us can make human sounds. I and my brave colleague here”—he waved at Savannah—“are rare in that respect. But we can all think. And use computers. And communicate.”
Susie opened one eye and looked at him for a moment as he gave her a loopy grin, the one he’d learned for extra credit in his Human Expressions class.
“Fred,” Susie said.
“Huh?” said Megan.
“It’s Fred. He finally came up with a good invention. Really convincing robot mice. Probably remote controlled.”
She turned her gaze on the windshield, where several excited mice were talking all at once in MSL, as if they might indeed be robots. “See?” said Susie.
“Here we go again,” said Trey. “I went through this with Megan last year, and then with Joey, then with Mr. Fred and Mr. Jake.”
He climbed down the bank to where Susie’s hand was resting.
“Haaaaaaaaa,” he said, leaning over to blow on it gently. “Warm breath, right? Mouse breath. Not robot breath.” He flattened himself against the back of her hand so she could feel as much of his body as possible. “Warm body. Mouse body. Not a robot with central heating.”
It took a few minutes for Susie Miller’s scientific brain to agree with her regular brain. And when it did, she had a hundred questions, of course, about how mice evolved, and where, and when.
Trey quickly ran through the main facts—how some mice had spent
so much time watching young geeks in Silicon Valley that they learned how to use computers themselves. And how—once they could use language—they found out how smart they really were.
Susie put her hands over her face as if it was all too much to take in—but when she took her hands away she was laughing. “Planet Mouse, in Cleveland,” she said. “Do you mean to tell me you have real mice working in there?”
“Of course we do,” said Jake. “Making Thumbtops. Thumbtops and blobs, just like our sign says.”
“The Thumbtops are mostly for mice,” explained Megan, “so they can stop climate change.”
“Whoa!” said her mom, pushing herself upright. “So they can stop what? Holy cow! Mice?”
“Why not?” said Megan. “They want to help the planet as much as we do.”
“So when I was giving Freddy credit for turning green…”
“He’s really committed to that now,” said Jake. “But it started with mice.”
“And you couldn’t tell me any of this, Megan? You’ve known about mice for months and months and you couldn’t tell your own mother?”
“I wanted to,” said Megan. “I wanted to so much. But he said you weren’t ready.”
“He?”
“The big guy,” said Jake.
With Savannah still resting in his left hand, Jake used the other one to unlock the door of the Mousemobile and bring out the Big Cheese in his cage.
“This is our leader,” said Trey, as the Big Cheese went into a speech. “The Chief Executive Mouse. He’d like to address you in human speech, but he doesn’t have the right sort of mouth, so I will translate. He’s saying, ‘We bid you welcome, Miss Susie. Now is probably not the time to explain how I and my entire staff appeared on this mountain, but I must ask you to promise me one thing: that you will never, ever divulge our secret to anyone.’”
“Are you kidding me?” said Susie, and for a bad minute Megan wondered if the Big Cheese had been right the first time, and her mom might be incapable of keeping such a huge secret. Until she said, “If I told anyone a mouse had been talking to me, they’d lock me up!”
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