Megan (yawning): Me too.
Joey: I’m hungry. There’s nothing to eat here except that cereal. And look—Megan knocked it over.
Megan: I did not. It was Joey. Must have been. Why does he always—
Susie: Hey, you guys, cool it.
Jake: Let me tell you about your mom, Megan. Sir Brian was so impressed with her paper on hairy-nosed wombats. She asked him for suggestions, but he thought it was perfect. Just about ready to publish.
Susie: So now that little job’s out of the way, we can forget about wombats and Sir Brian and have a great time. Why don’t I book a ride on the London Eye for tomorrow? Then on Friday we can go to the Palace, see what the Queen’s got to show us.
Joey: And a soccer game, Dad? Can we go to a soccer game? Chelsea’s playing Manchester United on Wednesday.
It was a strain, giving St. Paul’s Cathedral at Dawn the impression they’d stay in this apartment for at least a week, when in reality there was only one thing to do. Don’t even unpack. Get out of here. Now.
There had to be one last scene for the benefit of St. Paul’s Cathedral at Dawn: the scene that prepared it to expect silence for at least a few hours. So just before the humans picked up all their belongings and left, they told each other (and the picture) that they were heading out to eat, after which they would find a tour bus to take them on a long, slow ride around London.
And in case St. Paul’s Cathedral at Dawn could measure the wavelengths of voices and tell that some were not human, no mouse uttered a peep until they were in the car.
Just to be on the safe side, Jake drove south for a couple of blocks first and ducked into side streets as mice surveyed the traffic from the back window, making sure they were not being followed. Then he drove north across Vauxhall Bridge and pulled into a parking space so they could catch their breath and find out what part of England they should head for next.
It was Ken who spoke first, from the cupholder he was sharing with Sir Quentin.
“Who’d have thought it?” he said. “Getting rumbled like that. And you know what? If it hadn’t been for this guy”—he gave Sir Quentin a thump on the back—“we’d have been dead meat! I was thinkin’ you was a bit of a stuffed shirt, know what I mean? Didn’t expect no heroics.”
“Heroics?” said Sir Quentin. “I accept your adulation in the spirit in which it was undoubtedly meant. However, notwithstanding appearances—perhaps I should say notwithstanding the evidence of my speech—I am at heart a mouse, and will therefore always endeavor to act for the preservation of my Nation and of the bi-species enterprise in which we are engaged.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said Ken. “I get it. Once a mouse, always a mouse. And you didn’t want to let those guys get away with it. Still, that was good stuff, me old codger.”
And Sir Quentin did not seem to take offense.
Susie reached out to pat him on the back.
“I know how much you wanted to see London,” she said. “Let’s hope we have some time after this meeting to go to the Tower and Buckingham Palace. Things like that.”
“You deserve it, Sir Q,” said Jake. “You are one brave mouse. Who knows what those guys would have found out if you hadn’t been there. Let’s see the picture you took. See if it gives us any clues.”
He fished out his Thumbtop, clicked to the photo, and showed it around, as one magnifying glass after another peered at it.
It still looked like any old burglar. The bald man in jeans and sneakers and a hoodie, his face framed by a beard.
For a moment Megan wished her mom was, well, just a mom. Someone who didn’t stick her neck out. Not a famous climate scientist who got herself followed.
“Don’t worry, Megan,” said Jake soothingly. “No way they’re following us now. And we’ll find somewhere really safe to stay until the meeting starts. Right, Ken?”
“You got it,” said Ken, who’d been working on Susie’s Thumbtop. “My Headquarters says you can go straight to that secret meeting place now, yeah? A bit early, like. Somewhere safe as houses, as we says over here. They’ve given me a link and…”
He clicked and his mouth fell open, then he staggered backward, as if blinded by what he saw.
“Cor blimey,” he said. “Stone the crows! Did I say ‘safe as houses’? Safe as palaces, more like.”
At the word palaces Sir Quentin ran forward to peer at the screen.
“Oh, my stars!” he said. “Do my poor eyes deceive me? Or is that indeed Buckford Hall? Home of the Duke of Wiltshire, sixteenth of that ilk?”
Jake reached down for the Thumbtop.
“Holy Toledo,” he said. “Kids, you are not going to believe this.”
It was indeed a palace, a massive house with at least forty windows facing them, flanked by two round towers.
“One of our best stately homes,” said Ken proudly. “Yer can’t get much statelier, to be honest. The old duke what owns it lives in one of them towers now, and most of the rest is for conferences and such, for the bread and honey. By which I mean money, to keep the place up. And what makes it so great? I’ll tell you what makes it so great. The old duke wants his guests to think they’re still in the nineteenth century! That’s his gimmick, like. There’s no Internet, and your phones won’t work there neither, so no hacking problem for you.”
“Won’t that make it hard to do business at all?” asked Susie. “I mean, what if we need to get in touch with Coconut Man’s relative? Or Cleveland?”
“I was coming to that,” said Ken, as he read to the end of the e-mail from his Headquarters. “There’s something else that there duke don’t allow.”
He gazed around the car, as if waiting for guesses.
“Cats!” he said triumphantly. “His Grace is allergic! So we got one thousand three hundred and eighty-one guys there at the last count, yeah? Biggest clan in the country, I reckon. And they’ve got Thumbtops with satellite connections, so no worries. You’ll be able to communicate all you want. Oh, and one other thing,” Ken added, looking around to make sure he had everyone’s full attention. “To be extra secret, like, your meeting isn’t about rain forests at all.”
“Huh?” said Jake and Susie together.
“What’s big and wet and getting a bit closer all the time, from that there climate change?” asked Ken.
“The ocean?” Megan guessed.
“Got it in one, my love,” said Ken, doing a somewhat cramped pirouette in his cupholder. “That’s what my Headquarters has booked you in as. Sir Brian Mason’s Sea-Level Task Force.”
As Ken gave Jake directions to Buckford Hall, Megan sank back in her corner, so glad that mice were in control again. She tried to imagine their arrival at the massive palace, wondering if it would be anything like the television series she’d sometimes watched with her mom, where maids and footmen lined up at the entrance bowing to visitors. One footman. Two footmen. Three footmen….
Before the car had even reached the suburbs of London she was deep into a sleep that should have happened at thirty-five thousand feet, ten hours ago. And while she was asleep Trey used her Thumbtop to write to Headquarters and tell the Big Cheese everything that had happened.
It was still early in Cleveland, and as he did most mornings, weather permitting, the Big Cheese was taking a stroll on his balcony.
It was one of the best things about the new Headquarters, that balcony. It had been Mr. Fred’s idea—to drill a mouse-sized hole through the wall of the Big Cheese’s office, with a flap on it to keep out the drafts. Now for the first time in his life the leader of the Mouse Nation could go outside whenever he had the urge. Sniff the breeze. Feel the warmth of the sun.
This morning, as always, the Big Cheese sent a couple of muscle mice through the hole first to check for hawks. When they signaled that the coast was clear, he followed them outside, breathing deep in the crisp air, admiring the last bright leaves of fall against a deep blue sky.
One of his morning pleasures was to look down on The Fishery and specul
ate about what might be going on there. A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Jake had happened to glance up and must have seen that a mouse was peering down at him, because he waved. Now the Big Cheese looked forward to that wave every day.
This was such a great change, since the days at the old Headquarters in Silicon Valley! There, he seldom, if ever, saw a human. The larger species was an abstraction, known mainly through the Internet. Sometimes the Big Cheese had even privately wished that he could have been an ordinary mouse, a run-of-the-mill mouse in daily contact with a host family, so he could observe that species at close range. But living next to the Fishers was almost as good—which was why he felt a little empty this morning, as empty as the silent house he gazed down on.
He was still looking at it when a secretary mouse came barreling through the hole and onto the balcony. An e-mail had just arrived from Trey, Talking Mouse Three.
“Why would he e-mail me?” asked the Big Cheese. “He knows he can make an appointment to speak to me any time.”
A shiver went through the secretary mouse. His boss didn’t know? The news of the Great Smuggling Adventure had zipped through Headquarters at the speed of light, but no one had dared tell the boss?
The secretary mouse quickly ran back through the hole in case he caught any blame once the Big Cheese learned the truth. Because there’d be more than enough blame to go around, right? Blame that could fall not only on the three absent mice, who’d left their posts without permission, but also on all those at Headquarters who had known the truth but hadn’t told their leader.
The Big Cheese followed the secretary mouse into his office and found the Director of Security waiting for him. And although the director was trying to look stern, his paws kept coming up to his face in the fleeting sign for “Smile” (a paw to each corner of the mouth, pulling outward).
“Something’s amusing you?” asked the Big Cheese.
Puzzled, he read Trey’s e-mail about spies in London, and the efficiency of the British branch of the Mouse Nation, and a drive deep into the countryside. Now the truth filtered through the words. That at least Trey, and possibly others, had smuggled themselves to Britain without permission.
Of course he had to pretend to be outraged, so he thundered, “They will be punished for this,” because that was expected of him. But he turned away so the director couldn’t see his own paws stretching the corners of his mouth outward in a smile. Partly it was a smile of relief. Although the Big Cheese trusted his humans most of the time, he’d had some doubts about sending them off on such a delicate mission without adequate mouse support. Given Loggocorp’s reputation for ruthlessness, it was good to know that Trey was in charge. Of all talking mice, he was the one most likely to keep his head in an emergency. And as it was now clear from his e-mail, emergencies were all too likely to happen.
here were no rows of bowing servants to welcome the humans to Buckford Hall. Just one man in a footman’s livery who opened the massive front door and gazed with horror at the four Americans, whose clothes looked as if they had been slept in (which they had).
“I’m afraid you have made a mistake,” he said. “Tours of the house are over for the season.”
He started to close the massive door, but Jake stuck a foot in it.
“We’re expected,” he said. “We’re here for the sea-level meeting. Where do we check in?”
“I regret to inform you, sir,” said the footman, “that registration for that meeting does not take place for two days. I am told that the public house in the village provides a reasonable bed-and-breakfast.”
Megan put her hand in her pocket and gave Trey a little squeeze. Was it possible that the British mice hadn’t managed to fix the reservation after all? That they simply weren’t good at that sort of thing?
“Now, wait just one minute,” said Jake. “I think if you check your bookings—”
The footman gave a courtly bow that Megan recognized. It was the one Sir Quentin used when he wanted to imply that even if you thought you had won an argument, you really hadn’t.
The footman left the door open while he whispered to someone who looked like a butler, who whispered to another footman, who vanished behind the huge staircase that soared upward from the entrance hall, wide enough to drive a horse and carriage up and down.
It didn’t take long for a man in a business suit to bustle out from behind the stairs and almost run toward them.
“Oh, Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, welcome! Welcome!” He glared at the footman. “Please accept my apologies for the misunderstanding. My name is Peabody, and I have just been informed of your early arrival. Your reservation is for the deluxe package, which means you will be housed in the Royal Suite. It is where King George the Fourth once stayed on his travels around the kingdom and where Queen Victoria herself was once accommodated, so I trust that it will meet with your approval.”
The four humans looked at each other. Deluxe package? Royal Suite? How had mice pulled that one off?
Mr. Peabody turned to one of the footmen.
“When you have unloaded the luggage, take the car down to the parking lot. You may have seen the sign, sir,” he said to Jake. “No vehicles may remain on the grounds.”
“What, even for houseguests?” asked Jake.
“For everyone,” said Mr. Peabody. “His Grace chooses to provide his guests with an experience free of distracting devices such as the automobile and the telephone. Now, if you will follow me.”
He led the way through a series of rooms that looked more like museum setups than places where humans could actually live. Red ropes kept visitors marching in a straight line under ceilings where cupids frolicked, past huge pictures where figures from ancient myths did strange things.
At last they reached a massive door leading to a spiral staircase.
“I apologize for the fact that we have no lift in the South Tower,” said Mr. Peabody. “His Grace has installed one in the North Tower for his own use because he is unfortunately not as mobile as he once was.”
With footmen carrying their bags, the four humans climbed up the spiral stairs to the Royal Suite. Here a massive bedroom occupied half the space of the tower, and a magnificent sitting room the other half. Mr. Peabody waited until everyone had finished exclaiming over the view from the windows in the rounded wall. The magnificence of the four-poster bed. The beauty of the tapestries that lined the walls. The bathtub as big as a Volkswagen Beetle (in a bathroom the size of a garage). Then he led them all up one floor to see two smaller bedrooms. Smaller, yes, but still vast by Cleveland standards, and lined with dark tapestries in which archers shot at animals that seemed to be leaping out of the walls to escape.
“I will leave you now,” said Mr. Peabody. “A footman will be here at seven twenty to escort you to dinner. It will be served promptly at seven thirty, and His Grace will be present.”
“His Grace?” said Susie. (Actually more “squeaked” than “said.”)
Mr. Peabody inclined his head.
“The deluxe package,” he said, “includes one dinner with the duke.”
“But we didn’t bring a lot of clothes,” said Jake. “Are we meant to get all dressed up for dinner?”
Mr. Peabody looked a little pained.
“Dinner jackets are not required,” he said. “His Grace understands that Americans favor less formal attire. However,” he added, looking sideways at Joey’s Cleveland Browns T-shirt, “for the gentlemen, a tie is de rigueur.”
Meaning tux, no—tie, yes.
As soon as Mr. Peabody had given a final courtly bow and left, the humans gathered in the big sitting room. Almost immediately there was movement behind one of the tapestries and two mice emerged, followed by a nervous-looking gaggle of twenty smaller ones who could only be a Youth Chorus.
One of the adult mice—one with a blue thread around his neck marking him as a director—launched into a dance of MSL that seemed to Megan to be a bit more restrained in its swoops and waggles than the speech of American mice.
>
Ken ran forward to translate, but at his first words, “This here’s the Director of Hospitality and he’s saying…” Sir Quentin rushed to stand in front of him.
“Allow me to translate,” he said. “The Director of Hospitality, for this is indeed he, would bid you bend an ear, or an eye, to the dulcet moves of the Youth Chorus under the direction of the Master of Mouse Musick. That’s musick with a ‘k,’” he added sternly, glaring at his humans as if they might contradict, “maintaining the orthography preferred for centuries by the nobility of this great realm.”
The Master of Mouse Musick waved his baton and the Youth Chorus lurched and waggled and swayed into song as Sir Quentin translated:
Hip hip hurrah
For friends afar
From lands beyond
Our little pond
Each honored guest
To us is best.
Megan had heard a number of mouse “songs for all occasions” since her welcome to the Headquarters of the Mouse Nation almost a year ago, and she knew they were seldom meant to be funny, but all the humans had a hard time keeping straight faces at the lines:
Now let us pray
You’ll save the day
If humans bungle
Protecting jungle.
“Thank you, thank you,” said Jake, his voice a bit strained from trying not to laugh. “We are indeed honored. Now if the Director of Hospitality can answer a few questions?”
“Indeed,” said the director.
“First, how did your clan swing the deluxe package thing?” asked Jake.
“Fortunately the computer for conference bookings—the only computer His Grace allows on the premises—was unguarded during the lunch hour,” said the mouse. “We were thus able to enhance your application for early arrival.”
“Of course,” said Susie with a laugh, “Mr. and Mrs. Fisher, Nobel Prize winners.”
“The Nobel was not mentioned,” said the director, who like American mice had a hard time telling when humans were kidding. “However, the fact that your conference involves climate change was of interest to His Grace, as we knew it would be. He has some concern about the future of the planet, of which he owns a sizable share.”
Mouse Mission Page 7