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Chapter 18. Stand Back, I'm Going To Try Science!

by Russel

Too interesting indeed.

The day had progressed at a speed that would have rent the spokes from the gears of Russel's clock, provided it moved as quickly as he felt things had. That morning, Redwall was a safe haven for anybeast looking to survive the winter. Russel could remember with acute accuracy the very flavor of the air as he'd taken a breath out on the abbey lawns, smiled and said, to nobeast in particular, "You know, I wish today was just like every other day. Or every other day was like to day. The second makes a bit more sense."

As of that evening, Redwall was a stronghold preparing for siege.

"If you'll all be seated, we can begin" came the typical call from the abbot.

In this unique case, "you'll all" meant everybeast invited to the…war council wasn't the right word, they weren't having a war. Spat council didn't sound right, either, not exactly the phrase to roll off of the tongue. Siege council? That would do.

Everybeast inside of the room had been invited to the siege council. The occupants included Russel, David, Kapler, who had been invited as Russel's new assistant, Skipper and a few of his crew, Foremole and a few of his crew, Vivienne, who was offering her services as a scout, and Gladys, resident badgermum. And the fox. Russel couldn't forget about her, not after her demonstration earlier. Vidya, he suddenly remembered hearing her name was. Vidya something-with-an-es-sound.

All at once, all eyes were on Russel. The hog shook himself, spikes rattling softly.

" 'm sorry, what?"

"You said to me earlier that you had an idea you wanted to submit for consideration?" said the abbot.

"Oh, right, yes, right. Sorry about that. Drifted off for a moment. Where's my head got to?"

"Tenth shelf."

Russel playfully cuffed his son on the shoulder before continuing.

"Right, well, seems to me our chief concern is that we have a lot of beasts out there who want to be in here and no direct way to fight them. So…"

With a flourish, Russel unraveled the considerable sheet of parchment he had brought with him. The sparse light of the hall lapped against the paper, illuminating every razor straight line, every precise measurement. He felt quite the genius. Nobeast, not even if they had four arms to work with could have drafted up the same diagram in the amount of time Russel had. Although, four arms was a thought. He'd have to have a look into that. Perhaps with some wooden prosthetics, a bit of string tied to the digits so everything could mimic-

"Doctor, you were saying?"

"Oh. Right. Yes. I give you…well, isn't it obvious what it is?"

Skipper scrutinized it for a few ticks before replying, "A weapon?"

Russel put up his paws as though Skipper might jump into the air and attempt soaring out of the window. That would be an odd sight, come to think of it. Certainly one he'd have to note for his research.

Coming swiftly back down to earth, no pun intended in the slightest, Russel corrected Skipper.

"No no, not a weapon, not exactly a weapon…well…yes, yes, actually it is a weapon, but…"

His spikes rattled as he tried to organize his thoughts. Getting them to line up neatly was like herding dibbuns.

"What I mean to say is, we wouldn't use it. Well, not necessarily. Of course we would use it if it came to it, but it'd mainly be a…er…a…"

There it was hovering in the back. The hog grasped the sides of his head as he tried to call it to the front of his mind, tempting it with treats and tea.

"Deterrent, that's the one, deterrent. Mostly. Vermin come up over the crest of the hill,"

"Ditch, Dad."

"Ditch, right. Over the crest of the ditch and what do they see? In an abbey full of peace-loving beasts, what do they see? A roarin' great ballista, a massive wooden spike pointed right at their ranks. One pull of the lever and –"

Everybeast jumped as Russel's paw struck the table. The hog was sure he heard Vivienne utter a shrill tweet of surprise.

"Wham-oo! Half the font line, gone." Russel sniffed. "Well, not exactly, not if we don't use it. But, they don't know that. And we'd have a weapon all lined up. Just in case."

The abbot nodded. "Very wise suggestion."

"Look who it came from!" said Russel as his claws wrapped around the sides of his coat. He nearly slapped himself when he realized he yet again forgot to remove it while inside, thus the sleep-inducing heat he was experiencing.

Russel's ears tuned back into the conversation which had scampered off when he wasn't looking. Listening, rather.

"I had thought perhaps myself and the newcomer Vidya could recruit some abbey beasts, perhaps a few of our 'guests' as well, and teach them how to defend themselves," said Gladys.

"My family knows 'ow to fight, but we're not used t'bows or slings," replied Vidya. "Th' abbey needs more fighters, although, if th' rest of th' army is anything like th' group we fought in th' woods, there's not much t'fear."

"That reminds me," said the abbot. "Skipper, about the crew you sent out to scout."

There was a pause in which you could have heard a peg drop.

"Dead, more than likely," the otter chieftain finally responded.

A heavy sigh filtered through Russel's lungs. He had seen some of the otters who were part of the scouting party. They looked so young.

"We're lucky we only lost a few in the siege earlier today, but we sure could use more bodies willing and able to fight."

"Then you have my permission to train more fighters. I believe a few of the squirrel clans who have joined us recently had warriors among them. There should be fighters among our…vermin guests as well."

It was clear how much the abbot hated that word from the way his tongue acted when he got to it, quickly ejecting it from his mouth. It wasn't because he disliked vermin, Russel knew, but because he disliked the term. Russel had to agree. Some words just sounded far nastier than they should, disgracing the thing they were labeling. Turnip, for example. Although, he remembered, he didn't much care of turnip.

"So, we've got a plan to train fighters, my wonderful machine on the way," summarized Russel as he paced about the room. "Do we have a third thing? No? Oh, come on, every good plan needs a third thing. That won't do, not having a third thing."

"What we have should be sufficient, I assure you, doctor," said the abbot. "Although there is the matter of obtaining more supplies."

Everybeast jumped at the loud bang that resonated throughout the room. Russel rubbed his paw as he apologized.

"Sorry, got carried away. What I meant was, I've thought of that as well. Looked into a few of the old records with Brother Quincy earlier and it looks like this abbeys got quite a few secret passageways though it. Like holes in a big piece of cheese. Funny thing about that, actually, about the cheese I mean, not the abbey. I was wondering to myself just the other day, 'where do we get cheese from?' so, I went down to the kitchens and it turns out –"

"If I might be so bold, Dr. Song," Vivienne piped up, causing Russel to come to a stop with a jerk, "I might be able to help with your machine. I am a bird, after all, and what do we know but flying, eh?"

Russel nodded. "Hard to have a projectile if it doesn't, well, project, isn't it? Just like it's hard to have cheese without –"

"And maybe we'm bees abul t'help yur in buildin' yon gurt big weepon'," said Foremole.

"Aye, zurr, we'm moler's d' be gurtly happy t'help you'm."

"Yezzir, we'm moles know 'bout much more'n jus' holes, burr oi!"

Russel's paws quickly found his pockets. "No cheese story then? Anyway, thank you. Oi gurtly preciate th' help."

He could feel his son's eyes roll at the sound of his accent. Russel thought his mole was impeccable. David thought it was like being pecked in the skull.

At any rate, the meeting adjourned soon after. Most everybeast lingered around to convene with one another, making the hall quite loud. So loud, in fact, that it made it very hard for Russel to concentrate. The hog rattled his spikes in frustration as he began to curl himself up; it always helped him think when the background noise was too noisy or the room was too hot to think or there were too many thoughts rattling around in his brain.

"Dad!"

"What?"

"You have a study."

Russel blinked. "Oh. Oh! Right. That I do, that I do. Come along, Kap, get that one chart over there. I can only carry so much with these two paws…four arms really would be an interesting venture."

"Coming!" said Kapler.

There was a small glass clatter upon the floor accompanied by the shuffling of a beast rushing to pick something up. Russel wheeled on the balls of his feet.

"What have you got there?"

"Hm?"

"Right there, in your paw, what have you got?"

"It's nothing."

"Is it really? You know, I've always wanted to see what nothing looks like. Give it here."

Before the vole could get a proper grip, Russel plucked the object from his shaking paws. The hog stared down at a small glass tincture filled half-way with a dark liquid. He shook it. A dark viscous liquid. A muttered protest dying in Kapler's throat, he unscrewed the cap and sniffed it. A dark viscous medicine.

"Is this yours?"

"I found it," said Kapler much too quickly.

Russel raised in eyebrow. "I'm not accusing you of anything, I was only wondering because I was curious." He held the vial up to the light, watching how it refracted against the glass, against the syrup. "Chances are this belongs to a certain cat we all know and love. Wouldn't be surprised if he's upstairs rooting through my study again trying to find it."

He looked at David. The young hog sighed.

"I'll go check."

As the door clattered shut, a thought clanked against the inside of Russel's skull.

"That reminds me, anybeast seen Benedict? Tall fellow, very quiet, cat-like – well, he is a cat, actually."

"Did 'e 'ave mange maybe?" said Vidya.

"Erm, this doesn't smell like medicine for that, so, no. Why?"

The fox frowned a deep-set frown. "A cat ran into me earlier today. Seemed like 'e was in a rush of t' somewhere.

"Benedict? Oh. Right. Well... I might've seen a cat try to slip out one of the wall gates. Don't know if it was him or not - hard to tell 'em apart, you know, when all you usually see is their teeth." She gave a nervous chuckle and glanced about the room.

"So he's gone for awhile," said Russel. His eyes met the vial. "Kap, fancy some tea back in my study?"

His "tea set" consisted of many glass bottles and tubes. The entire network sprawled across the table like veins inside of a fantastic, complex creature, every bit with a function, every piece useful in some way. Russel's heartbeat slowed just by looking at it. He was admiring the glossy shine off the beaker poised over the oil burner when Kapler's words pulled him away.

"Awful lot of trouble to make one cup of tea, isn't it?"

The hog nodded. "Yes. But, that's all we're doing here, making a cup-a-tea. Nothing else. Noting wrong." While he spoke, he un-corked the tincture. "So, if I were to, say, accidentally spill a little bit of this into a spoon because I thought it was flavoring for the tea and that spoon were to accidentally fall into the bottle over there, I'd just have to sit and watch and see what happened, wouldn't I?"

Russel took the tincture in one paw, a spoon in the other, prepared to pour out some liquid into the utensil until –

"Spikes!" He nearly smote himself upside his head before he realized he lacked a free paw for smoting…smiting? He was sure smoting wasn't a real word, but he liked it better anyway.

"What in the name of science was I thinking? There's not nearly enough her to distil without using up the entire thing." The bottle paused poised over the spoon. "Although he did root through my things…"

With a slight groan, Russel dropped the spoon, set the bottle back onto the table. Courtesy had a way of getting in the way of his work, but he supposed he was all the better for it. Never seemed to get in Lua's way, though.

Instead of pouring a large portion of the mixture, the doctor covered one end with a pawkerchief, tilting the bottle until the fabric stained in a muddy circle.

"If you're not going to use all the equipment, then how are you going to figure out what it is?"

"I'm going to use the simplest, oldest equipment I have, Kap. Hasn't let me down. Well, maybe once. Well, maybe once and a half, but it was easy enough to patch things up with the cook once I let on what I was trying to do. Although I still catch him giving me odd looks now and then."

After a poke from the vole, the doctor came down from his reverie to crawl back into his work. Russel sniffed the brown dot. He retrieved a loupe and stared at the stain. It glared back at him, an earthen pupil in a cloth eye.

"I should know this one."

He could feel the sigh course through him, lifting his shoulders up before it crashed down upon his lungs. He thought he knew the answer to this question before. Medicine. A small vial filled with a muddy liquid. Smells that were familiar, or supposed to be familiar, yet any connection they had to his memory had been severed.

Or clogged.

"Kap, you see that shelf over there, the one with the big volumes in blue covering? If you could get all of those and bring them over here for me. Don't worry, I'll help."

Leather hit against wood. Pages rattled, shuffled, folded, slithered off of each other, layered higher and higher before once again becoming entombed in their covers. Even with Kapler to help him after he'd given the vole specific directions on what to look for, searching his volumes on medicine seemed a hopeless task. The hog believed he may have been putting too much of his brain into this, so he sought a distraction. What was more, he wanted to get to know his assistant and room mate.

"So, Kapler, any family?"

The vole began a motion that started as a nod but died as a shrug. "Mother, father. Pretty unremarkable, actually."

"Aye, me as well. Well, not unremarkable, not completely. Everyone's remarkable. Everyone's got their little quirks. Some like to take things apart, some like to put them together."

Some have particularly sticky claws. Kapler had proved he was a good hearted creature. It wouldn't be fair for him to tread on sensitive ground.

Sooner or later, though, they were going to run out of things to talk about. And Russel didn't want his things to suddenly go missing, even if ownership was transferred to a good hearted beast.

"Just that, mum and pa? No sisters, no brothers?"

"Well, a handful. Four or five. Me, always sort of lost in the fold."

"I see. Benedict didn't drop that tincture. Did he?"

"I…haven't a clue what you're talking about."

"Nor do I and that's all the time. 'Course on a good day I've got an inkling. More of a smidgeon, really. Point is, if you ever need someone to talk to."

"We're talking right now, aren't we?"

"Aye, Kap. That we are. That we certainly are."

The thought occurred to Russel to ask the vole to stay after the winter. He showed an interest in his work, he followed directions well and he was a great help on nights such as this when his son was busy with lessons or else helping Brother Quincy with records or else tending to the cellars with his friends. But he'd have to keep a watch on the vole regardless.

The rhythmic beat of the gears inside of Russel's clock aided his concentration greatly, once he tuned into them. He found his thoughts jumping into rank like soldiers to a drum beat, as much as that analogy didn't appeal to him. Moving as part of the machine, the doctor got up from his chair, walked to the other end of the table, picked up the third text from the right, flicked the pages to the correct passages, all in time with the second hand. His brow furrowed as he scanned the page.

Laudanum

"Well, what's it mean?" asked Kapler.

"Somebeast is very, very sick."

It sprang to his mind, even after part of him managed to hold it back for so long. There at the forefront of his thoughts was the note in his coat pocket, the note in the journal and, at last, all neat and boxed at the end, the corridor. It wasn't a proper memory. It was murkier around the edges, hard to hear, hard to decrypt. Russel could tell two things then. The memory of the corridor had something to do with his Lua. And it most certainly was not pleasant.

"Doctor?"

"I'm fine, Kap, really."

"…I could try to make you some tea? Never done it before, but I'll try."

Distraught as he felt, the hog managed a smile. "That would be wonderful, Kap. Thank you."