Rumbelows
(July 14, 2016)
11
"But I came back!" Mr. What's-His-Face wheedled.
"That," said Ford sternly, "is beside the point! You were ready to abandon us just to save your own integument! How could you expect me ever to trust you again? Besides, you returned only because you were being chased by three guards."
"But I helped in the fight," the faceless monster said.
Ford snorted. "Ha! You were running away from the officials! You just happened to run in our direction! I ought to just cut you loose and let you take your chances!"
Bikvidge, kneeling on the floor, looked up and said, "Mr. What's-His-Face was a respected merchant of the Crawlspace before he mysteriously disappeared four falls ago. Alone, he cannot survive what is above. He must have help to live. We all must. I will speak on his behalf."
"Well . . .will you help make sure he doesn't desert us again?" Ford asked.
"I give my word."
Ford looked dubious. "Well . . . all right, Mr. Face, under those conditions, you can come along with us. But I don't see why I should keep my end of the bargain and try to return you home if we survive this. You did nothing to help us!"
Mr. What's-His-Face pointed to the slight, ragged figure that stood beside him. "I did! I protected the Wandering Dude from harm."
"I miss water," the Wandering Dude murmured nostalgically.
Wendy, sitting next to Dipper on the Hindquarters floor, said to the wizened old man, "Sorry, man, I brought about everything other than a canteen. I'm thirsty, too."
"Me, too," Dipper said. "And I'm getting hungry." He raised his voice and called to Bikvidge: "Kerskup,* sir? Is there any water?"
Bikvidge had been examining his wounded man, Horker, who said he thought his spine had knitted and that he might be able to walk, if he had a staff to lean on. "You take it easy for a while," the officer said testily.
"Kerskup," said Horker, "I agree with the Dude and the human kid, sir. I could really use a drink. Maybe I could go as far as the Hollow Well and fetch us back some water."
"No!" yelled Bikvidge. Not that he was angry, but he just made it a policy to yell at his men in general. "You're not well enough!"
"Sir?" asked Phrappf, "Permission to laugh?"
"Denied!" Then, in a somewhat less furious tone, Bikvidge screamed, "Laugh at what, nank'lbait'r?"
Wincing from having been called, essentially, a snot-nosed kid, Phrappf asked tentatively, "Your pun? Uh, he's not well enough to go to the well?"
"That was not a pun!" Bikvidge exploded. "Look, I will tell you when I make a joke and I will give you a direct order to laugh! Got that?"
"Got it!"
"Good!"
Wendy pushed herself up to her feet, using her axe like a cane. "Yo, Dr. P.! These guys say there's water somewhere not far. Let me and Dipper go bring some back? We're all gonna need it!"
"Is the Hollow Well far?" Dipper asked Bikvidge.
"Not far. Down the shtipshish tunnel to the end."
"Man," Mabel said, "Why do all your words got to sound like something nasty?"
"They are what they are," Bikvidge said. "Who'll go with these two as guide?"
"If I may have a drink of water," said the Wandering Dude, "I will gladly lead them."
"You know the way?" Bikvidge asked him in an amazingly soft and kindly voice. The Maul Chop chief had got over his initial anger after learning that the Wandering Dude had not, after all, engineered his own escape, and truth to tell, the big guy always felt rather friendly toward the elderly creature. It was true, too that the Dude had not ever been charged with anything, but merely held on suspicion of possibly being suspicious. The ancient fellow had been the Maul Chops' guest in the cells for as long as Bikvidge had been alive and even longer, and many years ago he had told the infant Bikvidge bedtime stories, and all in all, the Stockholm Syndrome works in both directions.
"Oh, sure, yes, I do," the Dude replied. "Up the tunnel forty Chop strides, behind the fallen boulder, and then down the steep way to the Well."
"Very well," Bikvidge said. He glared at his men. "Laugh, you maggots!"
Horker almost hurt himself again laughing, and Pfrappf rolled on the floor, which was a mistake because it had not really been mopped in, well, in this geologic age.
"Water pail's in the bottom right drawer of my desk," Bikvidge said. "My men steal everything I don't hide, the sodd'n bistards."**
"Let's go, Dip!" Wendy said.
The water pail turned out to be an ingeniously constructed collapsible container. Full of water, it would stand under its own weight. Empty, it flattened and partly rolled up. It seemed to be made of a tough but lightweight leather, though from what animal skin it probably was better not to ask.
"This way," the Dude said, leading them out of the Chop office and a short way up the tunnel. "If it hasn't collapsed, it should be right over here, um, no, over there. See the little opening behind the boulder?"
"Tight squeeze for a Chop," Wendy observed.
"They generally send the children to get water," the Dude said. "That way it doesn't matter."
"What doesn't matter?" Dipper asked.
"That some of them never make it back alive," the Dude said. "They're just children. Not much use in policing the Crawlspace."
"That's not nice!" Wendy growled.
"No," agreed the Dude. "But it is practical."
The crack behind the boulder was larger than it had first appeared in the beam of Dipper's flashlight. They all made it in with no trouble, and then they walked some way through a narrow tunnel—more like a wide fissure—that led steeply downward. At the far end, they saw a dry-laid wall of rock nearly as tall as Wendy—she could just look over it—and the Dude said, "There it is. If the water hasn't been spoiled by all the shaking and smoke and so on."
They saw a bucket, made of dark wood bound with iron, hanging from a windlass, but it was too high for them. In the end, the Dude held the flashlight while Dipper made a stirrup of his hands to raise Wendy up, and she pulled a lever that released a pawl that allowed the windlass to turn that allowed the dipping bucket to drop down maybe a hundred feet on a long rope.
They heard an echoing splash, and Wendy said, "There's water down there, anyhow. You tired, Dip?"
"I'm braced," Dipper said. "It's OK. Pull it back up."
Wendy cranked the windlass, the pawl clacked in the teeth of a gear, and after what seemed like a long time, the bucket came dripping up as high as the lip of the wall. She snagged the pail by holding her axe out and hooking the head over the rope. Then she tugged and unwound until she could reach the bucket and haul it in.
"Better let me taste it first," the Wandering Dude said. "If it's poison, I'll know, but it won't kill me." He held out his cupped palms, and Wendy tipped them full of water. The old man sucked up the (roughly) half-cup of water and stood as though savoring the taste, a bit like a highly cultured oenophile.*** "Not poison," he said with a nod.
So they emptied the draw bucket into the portable one, drew one more for good measure, and then set off back up the steep tunnel, Dipper and Wendy hauling the drinking pail between them, sharing the load. "Jack and Jill," Wendy said.
"Yeah, well, let's not fall down and break our crowns," Dipper said.
"Oh, I didn't know you were royals," said the Dude, just ahead of them in the narrow tunnel. "I'm sorry for not showing you proper obeisance, your majesties."
"Man, we'll never be royals," Wendy said with a chuckle.
"No," Dipper agreed. "We have a different kind of buzz."
"Your words are strange," the Dude said. "But anyway, thanks for the water."
Everyone in the Hindquarters drank, and Bikvidge found four Chop canteens, each holding nearly a half-gallon, to pack more water for the ordeal to come. "Are we ready?" Ford asked.
"What are we doing, now?" Dipper asked.
"We're going up to the main level. I have two gas masks and one spare for you, Mabel, and Mr. Kobold. I'm sorry I don't have more for the Hurukh-Ha'i, but they say they can tolerate the gases for a short time, Mr. What's-His-Face can survive for a while without one, and the Wandering, erm, Dude says he doesn't need one. If the heat permits, those of us with some protection or immunity from poisonous air will try to approach the Rumbelow, which apparently has claimed Sadist Square as its own territory. I will attempt to destroy the creature with my destabilizer pistol."
"I love it when a plan comes together!" Mabel said.
Ford raised his hand and continued: "But should the heat or the poisonous vapors be too intense, we'll try for two emergency escape routes that Mr. Bikvidge knows about. They lead to the surface, the preferable one—as far as I can tell—in the woods not too far from the Shack, the other, more difficult one to the fumarole field a few miles from Ghost Falls. It has the appearance of an extinct lava tube, but the Kersanzi Kuzpa says it was intended for the evacuation of the smaller monster species in case of emergency."
"Wait, smaller?" Mabel asked. "What about Bikvidge and his men? Will they be able to use it too?"
"Mr. What's-His-Face might just squeeze through. We," Bikvidge said firmly, "will not fit. It is no matter. We are Hurukh-H'ai! We will remain behind and fight to the end."
"No!" Mabel said, reaching high to grab hold of his remaining hand. "The Mystery Twins never leave a man behind!"
The huge creature stared at her for a moment, his one eye round with surprise. Then, astonishing everyone, the Chop officer impulsively knelt and gathered Mabel against him in a tight embrace. "O Daughter of Men," he said in an unusually thick voice, "t'a pompu z'seze moxina ke t'a tinkter!"****
His two soldiers, the nervous Pfrappf and the wounded Horker, snapped to attention and saluted Mabel—their salute was making a fist and pounding it against their foreheads—and then both exclaimed, "Well said, Sarge!"
Mabel patted the huge shoulder as the monstrous, sniffling Chop officer let go of her. "Yeah, uh, thanks, but you and your men got a job to do and we do, too, and we're all in the same boat together, and nobody stays behind, so, uh, shape up and ship out," Mabel said, thinking that after she got home she'd need three baths in boiling water to get Bikvidge's smell off. She stuck a defiant fist in the air. "Come on, everybody! We're off on the adventure of a lifetime!"
"Another one?" asked the Wandering Dude in a despondent tone.
*Kerskup, a shortening of Kersanzi Kuzpa, is the Dark Tongue's rough equivalent of "Sarge." Dipper didn't know that, but he had picked up the term from hearing Horker and Phrappf use it.
**Sodd'n=crew, bistard=enterprising. A term of approval in the Dark Tongue. The sound of s on the end of the adjective makes the phrase approximate the meaning "Crew of clever thieves."
***No, oenophile is a real word. It means a drunk with lots of money.
****Bikvidge was married and he and his wife had one daughter, younger than Mabel in Hurukh-H'ai terms. He hoped they both had escaped in the evacuation, but was unsure whether they had survived or not. He was tough, even brutal, but a dad is a dad, and at that moment he badly needed to embrace somebody's daughter, because he was about ninety per cent sure that whatever happened to the rest, he and his men were doomed and he would never see his own child again. That is why he said very tenderly to Mabel, "Your heart is much larger than your brain."