by Tor Seidler
Not far from the drop-off spot was a huge, rusty cleat where transatlantic steamers once tied up. After the burials the elders basically pushed Mrs. P. up onto it so all would be able to see and hear her. Augustus thought it only fitting that the sergeant at arms join her, but before he could reach the cleat Mrs. P. called Lucy and Beckett and Phoenix up beside her for support, leaving no room. In fact, Phoenix would have gladly given Augustus his spot, and when a rat called out, “What’s that mangy thing doing up there?” he tried to climb down. Mrs. P., however, grabbed his tail in her surprisingly strong grip, keeping him beside her.
When it suited her, Mrs. P. could make her voice almost as large as she was, and she did so now. “This mangy thing, as you call him, is named Phoenix,” she boomed, “and he just saved my life.”
Lucy gave Phoenix’s paw a squeeze. He still wished he could disappear, though he did notice grateful looks on a lot of upturned faces. But then there was grumbling about Lucy and Beckett. The truth was, they weren’t held in very high esteem by their peer group. Beckett’s lack of athletic ability more than overshadowed his intelligence, and his whispery voice only made things worse. And even if Lucy was pretty and spirited enough to attract a top-tier rat like Junior, many couldn’t see beyond her disreputable father and crummy crate.
The muttering prompted Mrs. P. to release Phoenix’s tail and place a paw on Beckett’s shoulder. “And thanks to this brilliant young rat,” she said, using her other paw to point at the notice on the pier door, “we know the humans’ plan. When is the demolition supposed to begin, Beckett?”
“August twenty-eighth,” Beckett said.
“August twenty-eighth,” Mrs. P. said, amplifying his answer. “Does anyone know today’s date?”
No one had a clue, but Beckett was only too glad to hop down from the cleat and go find out. After he scurried away, someone in the crowd asked what “demolition” meant.
“It means they intend to tear the pier down, or at least our building,” Mrs. P. said, “so they can put up their bubbles.”
“How?” the rat asked.
“With machines, I imagine. That’s how humans do most everything.”
“But how can we stop them?” another rat wailed.
“That’s what we’re here to decide. Any ideas?”
“I’ll turn them to mincemeat,” Augustus proclaimed, drawing his sword.
The sword was actually a fancy toothpick meant for a cocktail, but Augustus brandished it in a swashbuckling way that roused the crowd. Mrs. P. complimented his noble sentiment.
“But I’m not sure one rat could stand up to them—even you.”
“He can lead the rest of us!” Junior cried. “We’ll form an army and attack them in their beds! And bite their paws. And their ugly snouts.”
“Interesting idea,” Mrs. P. said. “But I fear there are too many of them. Millions, I believe.”
A young rat suggested they form a column across the front of the pier. “Then they’d have to run over us with their machines to do their demolition,” she said.
“How lovely to be so young,” said Mrs. P., keeping and so naive to herself. “I’m afraid there’s nothing humans would enjoy more than running us over.”
After this there was a long silence. Or not silence exactly. Rats talked among themselves in undertones—till there was a loud screech. Lucy’s heart jumped. It sounded like a car on the West Side Highway slamming on its brakes. Could Beckett have been hit? The thought of her brother being taken from her made her so faint she had to lean on Mrs. P. for support.
But the crowd soon parted—and there her brother was, dragging back the front page of a newspaper. It had come from the same newsstand where Oscar had filched the candy bar. Beckett hadn’t been gone long, so it struck him as odd when Lucy hugged him as soon as he remounted the cleat. Once she let him go, he shrugged and smoothed out the front page for Mrs. P.
Mrs. P. had a vast knowledge of ailments and cures along with a remarkable memory and a fine palate for cheeses. But deciphering letters and numbers was beyond her.
“What does it mean?” she asked.
Beckett told her that it said August 25.
“It’s August twenty-fifth,” Mrs. P. repeated for the crowd’s benefit. “That means we have . . .”
“Three days,” Beckett said softly.
“Three days,” Mrs. P. announced, “till the demolition begins.”
“But the special election is in three days!” Augustus exclaimed.
This was news to most of them, since Augustus had decided this on his own. But no one questioned it except Mrs. P., who just suggested they might have to postpone it a day or two.
“There wouldn’t be much point in electing a new mayor if there’s no pier to be mayor of,” she pointed out.
The words “no pier to be mayor of” had a baleful effect on the crowd. But the thought of having Beckett taken from her had given Lucy an idea.
“Yes, dearie?” said Mrs. P., seeing Lucy’s raised paw.
“I was thinking,” Lucy said. “To stop humans from taking something that means the world to us, maybe we could take something that means the world to them. As a warning. Like—if you do this to us, we’ll do this to you.”
“Logical,” Mrs. P. said. “But what could we possibly take that they love?”
Lucy hadn’t gotten that far in her thinking. Augustus realized the moment was tailor-made for a sound bite that would insure his election, but he couldn’t come up with one. His son, however, waved a paw.
“They all wear those weird clothes,” Junior said. “Maybe we could steal them.”
“Steal their clothes,” Mrs. P. said. “How would we do that?”
Junior had no idea.
“Maybe we could poison their food,” someone chipped in. “My cousin Maurice could help us. He lives in the kitchen of one of their fancy restaurants.”
“As I mentioned before,” Mrs. P. said, “I’m afraid there are far too many of them.”
The rats went on like this, throwing out one desperate idea after another, till finally Lucy raised her paw again and suggested they might need an outside perspective.
“What do you mean?” Mrs. P. said.
“Phoenix is from New Jersey,” Lucy said. “Maybe he’d have an idea.”
All eyes turned toward Phoenix. To his surprise, most of the rats looked more hopeful than repulsed—as if he might actually have an answer. He racked his brain. What meant the world to humans? He remembered his father taking him to their watering hole. The humans seemed to like swimming. But there was so much water around this city that he couldn’t imagine how to keep them from it. What else did he know about them? He thought of Tyrone getting electrocuted and Great-Aunt Flo saying electricity was “vital to humans.” The reason the two humans in shiny hats had climbed the tower was to restore it. He looked out at the humans’ glowing buildings, which put the few paltry stars in the sky to shame.
The rats were growing restless, but when he cleared his throat, most of them quieted down.
“One thing that means the world to humans is their electricity,” Phoenix said.
“What’s electricity?” someone asked.
“It has to do with elections,” Augustus said knowledgeably. “They have them just like us. Very important.”
“Actually, I think electricity may be what makes their light bulbs glow,” Mrs. P. said.
As Augustus frowned, Beckett gave a start and turned to Lucy.
“Remember that building with no windows?” he said. “The flag had a light bulb on it, and three words: ‘Con Ed Electrical.’ And there were more words etched over the doorway. ‘Consolidated Edison Substation.’ ”
Lucy repeated this louder for all to hear.
“Now that’s interesting,” Mrs. P. said.
“But what good does it do us?” Junior asked.
Augustus sniffed in agreement.
“Yeah, what good does it do us?” others echoed.
When it beca
me clear that Mrs. P. had no answer for them, Augustus turned and started back toward the pier. No one could miss him, since he was the tallest of them all, and most of the rats followed his lead, many casting wistful looks up at the front of their beloved pier before slipping in under the door.
11
ALMOND JOY
AS THE ASSEMBLY BROKE UP, Lucy and Beckett and Phoenix helped Mrs. P. down from the cleat. Mrs. P. hadn’t been this far from her crate since last summer, and on the way back she got a little unsteady, so her three young friends supported her till she collapsed on her favorite cushion. Phoenix then led Lucy and Beckett into the fromagerie, where he pointed out the tainted wheel of cheddar. Though a piece had been cut out of it, they were still able to roll it into the parlor and out the door. It didn’t escape Lucy’s notice that Phoenix turned his head away and tried not to breathe to escape the smell, and after they dumped the cheese off the dock, she pulled Beckett aside.
“Phoenix shouldn’t have to stay in that fromagerie,” she said. “Since Father’s not home . . .”
Beckett approved the idea. But when they offered Phoenix the spare shoe in their crate to sleep in, he said nothing.
“Are you thinking about New Jersey?” Lucy asked, following his gaze to the lights across the river.
He was. The idea of sleeping in an old shoe had made him think of his comfy nest, just a few trees away from his parents. How he missed them! But even if he could find the bridge Mrs. P. had mentioned and cross it, how could he ever get all the way home? How could he negotiate that vast industrial area with the smokestacks? And if he somehow made it all the way back to his beloved woods, how could he show up looking like this? His parents wouldn’t even recognize him. Giselle wouldn’t nuzzle with him anymore—of that he was quite certain. So what was the point of returning? At the same time, why would he want to stay on this doomed pier with a bunch of rats?
As he was thinking he might have been better off sticking to his resolution to waste away and die, his stomach gave a loud growl.
“Er, is it okay if I bring the nuts over to your place?” he asked.
“You like them?” Lucy said, brightening. “I’m so glad.”
Mrs. P. was snoring when Phoenix tiptoed in to get the nuts. He gobbled down a few, then put on the plastic top and rolled the can over to Lucy and Beckett’s. It was getting late; they had already crawled into their shoes.
“Use that one,” Beckett said, pointing at his father’s.
Phoenix hesitated. The father’s shoe didn’t smell bad, but somehow the idea of it made him squeamish. Plus it looked like it would be a pretty tight squeeze.
Noticing his wavering, Beckett asked where he slept at home.
“In a hole in a tree,” Phoenix said.
“On what?”
“My nest’s mostly leaves.”
Beckett got up and ripped apart a periodical he’d already read, fashioning a nest out of the paper shreds. When Phoenix tried it, he was amazed at how much it felt like home.
“Thanks,” he said, snuggling in. “Thanks a lot!”
They were all tired, and it was nice and dark, yet none of them slept. Lucy was worried about the looming disaster, of course, but at the same time she felt strangely excited. They’d never had a houseguest before. After a while she whispered, “Anyone still awake?”
Beckett and Phoenix both grunted.
“That was so interesting, Phoenix,” she said. “About humans and their electricity. Do you use electricity where you come from?”
“Not exactly,” Phoenix said.
He told them about the pylons in the cornfield near his woods, and about Tyrone getting electrocuted.
“He shorted the grid,” he said.
“Come again?” Beckett asked.
“He shorted the grid. All their lights went out.”
“Maybe . . . maybe we could short the grid here?” Lucy said. “Imagine all those buildings at night with no lights!”
“The humans wouldn’t like it,” Beckett agreed. “But, it wouldn’t do much good unless they knew we were responsible.”
After a moment Lucy said: “What if you told them, Beck? We could take that notice off the door and you could write on the back. Then we could tack it up again.”
The idea of using Mrs. P.’s pen to compose an actual message appealed to Beckett. “But how would we get the notice off the door?” he asked.
“I’ve heard squirrels are good climbers,” Lucy said suggestively.
Phoenix allowed that he might be able to do it. “But first wouldn’t you have to figure out how to short the grid?” he said.
“How did your friend Tyrone do it?” Lucy asked.
“By touching two coils at once. But it got him killed.”
“Would you recognize them if you saw two similar coils?” Beckett asked.
“I suppose.”
“Then our first step would probably be to check out that substation.”
“Oh, let’s!” Lucy said. “But it’s a big building. We’ll need all the help we can get.”
“We can round up a crew in the morning,” Beckett said.
With that settled, Beckett soon dozed off. Lucy lay awake a while longer, wondering if Phoenix was still awake, thinking what a pity it was he’d fallen into their lives at such a perilous juncture. Phoenix was lying awake, too, wondering if she was still awake and thinking how dramatic life with these rats was. But eventually they both must have conked out, for suddenly it was morning.
As early as she thought acceptable, Lucy went to get Mrs. P. her breakfast cheddar and report on their plan. When she returned, Phoenix and her brother were up and about, but Beckett thought she should round up the scouting party on her own.
“We’d make lousy recruiters,” he said. “I’m a wimp, and he’s not even a rat.”
Lucy insisted they go as a team, but Beckett may have had a point. They explained their plan to everyone they met, but they got no volunteers.
“Where’s your beau?” Beckett finally asked. “He might help.”
Junior was with his parents in their topmost crate, serving as a test audience along with his mother for his father’s campaign speech. The speech was stirring, but when Junior tried to take off afterward, his mother corralled him into helping her hang a new postage stamp in the sitting room. It looked perfectly straight to him, but she kept insisting it was crooked. After adjusting it for her a dozen times, he threw his paws in the air.
“I have to go, Mum.”
“Why?” Helen—such was his mother’s name—could never understand wanting to leave their crate. It was such a showplace that she only left it under duress.
“It’s broiling out,” he said. “I want to take a swim.”
“Just a whisker higher on the right,” was Helen’s response.
But he finally escaped—and soon proved Beckett right again. With Junior on their recruiting team they had no trouble rounding up a platoon for their mission. They couldn’t head for the substation till nightfall, however, so Beckett crept off to practice his writing while most of the young rats followed Junior to the dock for an afternoon swim. It was so hot that even Phoenix went along, and he soon discovered that his insides hadn’t changed as much as his outsides. When rats oohed and aahed over a dive Junior did from a piling, he felt just as annoyed as when squirrels had oohed and aahed over Tyrone’s high-wire act. He figured that even if he wasn’t as good a swimmer as the rats, he was a better climber, so he flailed out to a piling twice as high as Junior’s—as it happened, the same one Martha, the pigeon, had landed on—and scrambled to the top. He had to close his eyes before jumping, but he surfaced to a rousing hand.
Now it was Junior’s turn to feel aggravated, and later on, when they got ready to leave for the mission, he objected to Phoenix’s coming along on the grounds that he might be a spy. This amused Phoenix, who had no stake in being part of the ratty expeditionary force. But it exasperated Lucy.
“He’s the only one who knows what the
coils look like, for goodness sake,” she said.
With that, Lucy led them all out into the night. The jogging path was deserted, but the West Side Highway was a torrent of vehicles with glaring headlights. When they finally made it across, they slinked along single-file in the gutters and took detours to avoid sidewalk cafés.
A Con Ed truck was parked in front of the substation. Phoenix and the rats huddled underneath it, peering up at the building’s floodlit facade. The substation had gone up in the lavish era of the great shipping lines, and the corners were embellished with ornate carvings. But the doors were closed, and the place looked impregnable as a fortress.
Around the side of the building, however, they found a ventilation grate just above street level. One by one they squeezed into a duct that led right into the power station. The place was enormous: brightly lit and pleasantly cool, housing three gigantic transformers that towered four or five stories high, each with a floor-level control panel manned by a human. Two other humans sat at a table, one eating a gyro, the other staring into a phone. None of them noticed the troop of rodents touring the premises. Lucy kept Phoenix up front with her, but he saw nothing resembling the two coils that had electrocuted Tyrone.
“Well, it was worth a try,” she said when they got back to the duct.
“Where’s Beckett?” Phoenix asked.
No one knew. Lucy frowned and suggested the rest of them wait while she retraced their steps. When she spotted her brother, partway up a tall spiral staircase in a back corner of the place, he gestured for her to come up. The risers were just short enough to be climbable. When she reached him, Beckett pointed to a diagram of the substation mounted under plexiglass on the wall. It indicated that there was another, smaller chamber above this one.