The Last of the Gullivers (5 page)

But Burra spent every minute working, all day and all through the night. She couldn't afford proper materials and built her model from scraps she scavenged in the village, from cardboard and kindling. When she was at last done, she brought it to the town center. A crowd gathered for another good laugh.

But there was no laughter that day.

Her model was unlike anything they'd ever seen: simple, graceful, beautiful, it towered over the others in every way. Its slender walls were cut with long flowing windows, as lively as waterfalls, rising from the ground to an immense stone-tiled dome. The thing was colossal and delicate, majestic, yet welcoming, vast and personal, classical and revolutionary; like their music, it was many ideas at once.

“But this is ridiculous!” someone snorted. “Un
build
able!” another sniffed. Those walls will never support the dome! The whole thing will crash down and kill everyone inside!

But the Dean of the Architects studied Burra's work and checked each dimension, calculating, recalculating, testing its engineering and the stresses it could hold. The structure, he finally announced, was sound. Burra Dryth had designed a perfect building. In a show of respect, he removed his own model from the competition and Burra was chosen the winner.

Work began right away. A building this size would need all their effort. They would hew massive timbers, carve giant columns, cast thousands of tiles. Michael helped as he could, chiseling stones into blocks. He worked every day until his hands were cramped and blistered.

One day, a Tuesday, he lost all track of time. He stayed too long, making stacks of blocks, and was about to be late for his Court check-in. He raced from the garden and ran the miles back to Moss-on-Stone.

He was running up Sheep Street when Nick and the Boys found him and boxed him in the narrow lane. “We need to talk.”

“Can't talk now, Nick. I'm going to be late.” The town bell was ringing six fifteen.

But Nick needed to know: “Why do you keep letting me down?”

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE
MAHARAJA'S DAUGHTER

A
police car slowed and swept its spotlight over the dim street. The Boys slipped into shadow and Nick called from the dark, “Last chance, you dumb squit. Be at the mill tonight, ten o'clock.”

Michael hurried on to the Court and was there in time for check-in, barely. He was home and in bed and asleep by nine. When he didn't show at the mill at ten, ten thirty, or eleven, Nick angrily told the Boys they'd deal with him later.

They were hitting another big house on the hill; Peter had checked it and found the owners were away on holiday. The place was long and narrow and golden stone, set close to the street, a long hedge to one side. Nick waited down the block in the old Victor, and the Boys set to work on a window. They jimmied it partway, but it wouldn't go wider. Michael could've slipped through with no problem, but it was a tight fit for the rest of them.

Phil and Peter got in, but Gordy's thick gut wedged him tight. “Somebody help me,” he squealed.

“What's your problem?” Peter snapped.

“I'm stuck, for God's sake! Can't you see I'm
stuuuck
!” Gordy squealed.

“Stop squealing,” Phil told him.

“I'm not squealing!” Gordy squealed again.

The house was empty, Peter was right about that. Except for the German Shepherd. The dog hadn't taken a holiday. Gordy's squeals brought it running. It raced for the Boys and they ran for the nearest door. But Gordy was still jammed in the window and the dog turned on him. Now the barking and screaming brought the whole neighborhood. Nick didn't wait, but took off in the old car.

Police flooded the street in short minutes. Peter and Phil got away, but Gordy only got a face full of dog bites and a year in YOI.

Nick drove all the way to the crossroads. He turned off the engine and sat in the car and pounded the dash. Why was this happening? He was losing control of everything; nothing was going right for him. Michael wouldn't have gotten stuck in that window. It would've been all right if
he'd
been here to help. Nick had put a lot of time and effort into the kid, and Michael kept letting him down.

Maybe Freddie was right: maybe the boy needed a good beating.

When Michael went back to the cottage the next day, he found Lemuel in a far corner of the back garden, where the little farms gave way to forest, clearing late-autumn leaves from the wall drains. It was a chore he had to keep up.

“If this gets blocked in a hard rain,” he said, “the whole city will be underwater.”

The two of them carried leaves and twigs from the garden. Michael went looking for a wheelbarrow, but found none. He tried the barn, but its doors were padlocked. He asked Lemuel if there might be one in the barn and the old man said no, there was only a car in there.

“A car? I didn't know you drove.”

“Never have, never will.”

“Then why,” the boy asked, “do you have one?”

Lemuel answered with this story.

“When I was young, I captained my own ship, one of the last on the India route. It was mid-July as I set off on another voyage. The sailing was smooth at first and my ship soon rounded the African Cape. We were in the middle of a calm sea when the monsoon hit and the whole ocean turned on us. The storm thundered across the water like a thousand horses. Clouds as big as mountains hid the sun, the air turned bitter cold, and the rain hit like hornet stings. Gale winds lifted the waves higher and higher still, each peak shredding into foam. Lightning came in blinding blasts and rattled every plank of the ship, every bone in my body.

“I called the crew to haul up the foresail and square the yards as we raced over one wind-driven swell and into the deep trough below. We were blown miles off-course, but there was nothing we could do. We went where the storm took us. My men climbed the rain-slicked rat lines and clung to the yardarms and pulled in more sail; but even then, it was too late. The wind was driving us onto a rocky shore.

“By dawn, the worst of the monsoon had passed. We'd been blown halfway up a beach, the mainmast splintered and barely standing. But we were alive, not a man lost.

“Some farmers took me and my crew by ox-cart to the nearest village, and I hired woodworkers to repair the ship. As my crew settled in for a long wait, I decided to explore. I set off one morning, alone, into the wilderness, through a steaming rhododendron jungle, under tamarind trees full of screaming parrots and monkeys, and across hot mud-thickened rivers flowing with crocodiles.

“As I moved through a narrow canyon, I began to hear a sound, a strange new sound, a music like I'd never heard. I followed and it led me through an overgrown pass, where the mountain walls opened onto a plain. There was something here, mostly lost to trees and jungle vine. If I hadn't looked twice, I might not've seen it.

“It was a temple, hid in the wild growth, a hundred feet high and half a mile wide, carved from one mountainous rock, thousands of years ago. It was so old, its gods had been forgotten. The entrance was flanked by sixty-foot stone Elephant Kings, settled on haunches, trunks raised in trumpet, crowns on their great smiling heads. The rest of the façade was a maze of dancing monkeys, some real, some not. And still there was the music, coming from within the temple.

“I had a lantern with me and made my way into an overpowering dark where night snakes hunted as they liked. I chased away a krait, small, deadly thing, and went deeper into the man-carved cave, following where the music led. The air was cooler here by twenty degrees and a few monkeys followed me in, but lost interest soon enough. I moved down a long corridor, lined with angry stone tigers.

“Next, I came to a domed chamber, full of bat-smell and lit by candles. Dancers spun across every surface, as they had since the day they were carved. It was an otherworldly place, quiet and still. There is a word here,
nirvana,
for heaven, perfection, and it can be translated as ‘beyond the wind.' And that's what this was: a perfect place, beyond all wind.

“In the middle of the room, surrounded by a hundred flickering candles, a young woman sat playing a flute. It was an extraordinary music, with no beginning or end. I stood there listening for a long time before she turned and saw me.

“She started to scream, but smiled. I learned that her name was Maya and she came to this place to practice the music she composed. The perfect dome played her song back in echo and she studied its sound. Her father, a Maharajah, had brought her here earlier that day. He was off on a tiger hunt, and she chose to stay and make music in the old temple.

“Maya was as beautiful as the melody she played, still and serene, dark-haired, with emerald eyes that seemed set on some distant future. She didn't wear the red bindi on her forehead, mark of a married woman.

“I was about to speak when we were both knocked from our feet. Our candlelight went out and we were blind in that windless dark. It was an earthquake, the worst in three hundred years, and the cave began to crumble around us. I found my way to Maya and realized she was hurt, her leg near crushed under falling stone. I carried her, climbing over rubble, both of us fighting to breathe the dirt-thick air. Each step seemed to take an hour, and the next one longer. But, in time, we saw a dim gold glow—last rays of a setting sun—and I went toward it.

“We were hardly out when the shrine collapsed, great Elephant Kings peeling away and crashing to bright dust. Her white dress was orange, dyed by dirt and sweat and blood.

“The night came fast and Maya was falling in and out of consciousness. I knew she needed a doctor, and soon. Landslides had blocked our path from the canyon, and I had to carry her up an unsteady rock slope.

“We were out of the canyon and surrounded by jungle—dark and alive with animal sounds, every creature in mindless panic. Tigers were passing a few feet away, running from a fear they'd never known. Maya was unconscious again and I had no idea where we were or should go. I was lost, without map or compass.

“Her father found us then. When the earthquake hit, he and his entourage of forty, all on elephant, came charging back. A Mahout, an elephant driver, helped settle Maya in the covered howdah and we began the journey home.

“The Maharaja's palace, untouched by the quake, was built of brilliant marble and set on an island in a man-made lake. A gold-and-ivory-trimmed barge carried us to it. The infirmary here was better than many hospitals, and a team of personal doctors set Maya's leg.

“The Maharaja was grateful to me for saving his one child, and he offered me many gifts. I thanked him, but turned these down. Not long after, my ship was repaired and I sailed home and forgot about the Maharaja—but I never forgot his daughter.

“Then, on a stormy afternoon the following spring, a truck showed up at the farm with a crate, from Bois-Colombes, in France. The Maharaja had ordered a motorcar built for me. Three hundred horsepower, fourteen feet long, an incredible Hispano-Suiza, full of carved ivory and rosewood. The company called it
Adventure
, after my ship. There were plans to build more, but it was too expensive to make in mass. So I had—I have—the only one. Never drove it, never learned how. But it's still there, in the barn, in the crate.”

“Did you go back?” the boy wanted to know. “Did you see her again?”

CHAPTER NINE

THE
27TH ARTICLE
OF
WAR

T
hat's another story,” Lem answered, “for another time.”

Over the days and weeks that came, the boy stayed busy helping the Little Ones rebuild their city. Burra Dryth's design for the Great Hall was rising in the town center. When Michael had cut enough stone, he left the Construction Crews to their work. He wandered the little town and found jobs that needed doing: he shoveled the gulley that ran through the Nation, raked the Farmer's fields of cut hay, and re-roofed the church spire.

The more he learned about these People, the more curious he became and the more he wanted to understand them. He saw how most of them met life without complaint: when things went wrong, they didn't look for anyone to blame. They didn't curse or celebrate their fate, but took the good and the bad and went on.

When he was around them, the problems in his own life didn't seem as big. If they could get by, even thrive, so could he.

For their part, the Lesser Lilliputians were fascinated and confused by the new giant. They wrote books about him, taught classes on him at the University, even had a musical play based on him. They knew what they needed from Michael, but they wondered if he could really give it.

Some days, when the weather was cold or the Little Ones were taking a holiday, Michael helped Lemuel clean the old cottage. “I've lost control of this house,” he said. “I need to get it in order.”

Together, they cleared over-packed shelves and sorted papers. The old man asked about Mr. Fenn and the boy said he was fine, a fine little ordinary man. “But not too ordinary,” said Lemuel. “He started the Parish Pantry and that wasn't ordinary at all.”

Michael had been to the Pantry many times. Each week, grocers in the county gathered unsold goods, food near the end of its shelf time, and took it to the church where it was given to anyone who needed it. “That was Mr. Fenn's doing. He made the whole thing happen.” Michael had never known this. “Sometimes, you have to look twice to see real worth,” Lem was saying when an awful sound rose in the garden: a donkey's panicked braying, wretched as a rusted gate.

The old man called for Michael to get the gun.

When the little Farmer shouldered open the door of his barn, he found huge hideous monsters eating his geese and prized pig. He'd never seen anything like these grisly beasts, each bigger than two of his horses together. They darted at him, screeching and snapping their sharp wet teeth. Evet Butz grabbed a rifle and fired and reloaded and fired again, and again and again, but hit only hay. With angry hisses and barks, the creatures slid into dark corners of the barn. But he could see their breath in the cold, still air.

Philament Phlopp was near and heard the gunshots and livestock squeals. He came running and found a scythe and helped Evet fight off the beasts.

“What are these things?!” the Farmer cried. “Where'd they come from?!”

As they flushed the creatures from the barn, Phlopp called back, “I guess they're from over the Wall. I always thought they were a myth. But just look at them . . . !”

In fact, they were common weasels.
Mustela nivalis
, by the Latin name, among the smallest carnivores, cousin of the stoat, and often found around farms. Usually night hunters, weasels were sometimes active in the daylight, too. It had been years, decades, whole Lilliputional generations, since one had dared to cross Flestrin's Wall.

Before this, the worst the People had to fear were the Sparrow Hawks. Two centuries before, the Little Ones built a stone tower and assigned a lookout to warn when a hawk-shadow crossed the sky. When the tower bell rang, they knew to run for the shelters. They were careful and cautious, and no one had been lost in a hundred and fifty years.

But the weasels were new, and the weasels were different.

Phlopp went running and yelling for the Tower Watch to sound the alarm, man, sound the alarm! As the bells began pealing, the People dropped what they were doing and hurried to the underground rooms they'd built around the city. There were hundreds, maybe a thousand shelters, expertly hidden: false rubbish bins held ladders to subterranean dens, plaster tree stumps hid chutes, some public toilets were portals to a hideaway. Every Little One heard the alarm and took refuge. Schoolchildren knew the drill and marched, single file, to the basement. Meals sat half-eaten on tables and life simply stopped. Lesser Lilliput was abandoned in seconds.

Lemuel and Michael found the weasels racing madly around the town square. The old man fired once, twice, three times and left three weasels dead and bleeding by the fountain. The dog Whitby carried them from the garden, one after the other, and the little town slowly came back.

News of what happened to the farm animals moved quickly through the city. For the first time in their history, Flestrin's Wall had failed them. For the first time in memory, monsters straight from the Land of Naught and Nil had invaded the Sovereign Nation of Lesser Lilliput.

Burton Topgallant couldn't speak the thoughts echoing around his head: when the weasels were done eating the Farmer's livestock, they'd move on to the villagers themselves.

“These People have always been safe here,” Lemuel told the boy. “They are small and vulnerable and take care of themselves as best they can. Still, they can only do so much.”

The old man settled into a chair and Michael saw it had taken a lot out of him. He was pale and his breath was loud and raw: “It's getting late. You'd better be going.”

“You're not going to stay here all night.”

“No sleeping on watch,” said Lem. “Twenty-seventh Article of War forbids it.”

“Isn't there some other way?” the boy asked. “It'll be cold and wet and . . .”

But Lemuel didn't answer and Michael left.

Snow fell that weekend, mounding by tree trunks and walls, dangerous drifts at a Lilliputian scale. Michael came on Sunday to sweep the garden clear, moving street to street. Pale ribbons of smoke rose from chimneys across the city. The Great Hall stood half-built, open to the weather, its dome unfinished. These days were too cold for the Little Ones. What was a chill to Michael could mean much worse for a race this small.

He was sure there was something
more
he could do, some better way to help them. But he didn't know what it was.

The Lesser Lilliputians kept mostly to their houses, day after arctic day. Cooped and cramped, their tempers grew sharp and short. They argued over meaningless things and forgot all that mattered.

Hoggish Butz spent the long nights alone, counting up the slights that had been done to him. Take the Great Hall—what a monumental waste of time and energy! Nobody asked his opinion. It was Topgallant who was behind that. How had
he
become Grand Panjandrum, and not Hoggish?

One such night, Dr. Ethickless Knitbone brought a nice Dunch Dump Pudding and Hoggish shared his bitter thoughts with her. “It makes no sense!” he howled as he ate. “Why should
THAT FOOL
wear the Golden Helmet!?” he yowled as he ate. “It's not fair!” He dropped his head to the table in a puddle of sour tears.

But the sobbing slowed as Dr. Knitbone said, “Burton Topgallant is a bogglesome nobkin.”

“Bogglesome nobkin?! He's a Blefuscudian Lump!” (
Blefuscudian
, a term of uncertain origin, was probably meant as an insult to one's lineage.)

“Precisely,” she told him, “and we both know it.”

“Yes, Dr. Knitbone, dear. I know it and you know it, but
THEY
don't know it! Oh, the unholy
THEM,
the great unwashed rabble, the mindless masses, the ill-bred and easily led!”

Hoggish had given himself a Nervous Stomach now and he took to his great sagging bed, calling for Knitbone to bring the pudding and quickly, dear, quickly.

“The other day, I had a long talk with Topgallant,” she said to him, soothing him. “I could tell he was uncomfortable being around someone of my intellect. So I took his hand in mine, holding it gently, you see, stroking it softly, as one would a stupid cat,” she said, she soothed. “I looked in his eye and what did I see, Hoggish?”

“What did you see, dear Dr. Knitbone?”

“I saw a man with the I.Q. of a worm!”

“A
WORM
!” Hoggish gasped. “And not a smart one, I imagine.”

The doctor nodded. “Not smart at all.”

“Why don't the others see these things!?” cried Hoggish and his great gut bubbled and burbled.

“We see the truth. The others see what they are told to see.”

“They are dumb!” Hoggish wept. “Dumb, dumb, dumb!”

“As always,” Knitbone nodded, “your insights are keen and to-the-point.”

“Drown the World! I should be Grand Panjandrum. I should wear the Golden Helmet!” He swallowed a wad of pudding.

Knitbone nodded again and said, “The Golden Helmet was
made
for your head,” and she stroked that head as one would a stupid cat. “You are no one's fool, Hoggish Butz.”

“No one's!”

“You are cunning, clever. You are independent, a freethinker. Intellectual, cerebral!”

“I'm cunning, clever, a freethinker!” he shouted. “I'm—I'm—those other things you said.”

She fed him still more pudding and said, “I've been thinking, Hoggish, and I have come up with a plan. If you do as I tell you, the Golden Helmet will soon be yours.”

“I will, Dr. Knitbone, I'll
do just as you say!” said Hoggish, eyes wide and wet with joy. “Tell me, please! What is our plan . . . ?”