Beauty and the Beast Read online

  Joe chuckled. “That’s brilliant! Now, what am I supposed to do in Catherine’s building?”

  Chuck explained. “You go down to the basement, and Diana will take you into the tunnels. That is one of our access points, which Catherine used to use to get to Father’s world. Meanwhile, as we speak, Mouse and Kanin are working on an access point in the basement of your apartment building. They will be done with it by the time Diana is finished showing you something you need to know about. Then shell take you back to your own building through the tunnels.”

  Joe laughed. “That should leave those scoundrels scratching their heads!”

  Chuck grinned into the rearview mirror. “That’s the idea! They should be thoroughly confused. Hopefully, Adrian won’t be at all pleased with their report.”

  When Joe got out of the cab, he walked up onto the sidewalk, turned around, and yelled over the traffic for Chuck to wait for him. Then he went into Catherine’s apartment building. The unhappy memory of the last time he had come to this building, to answer the call that Catherine had been found murdered in her apartment, washed over him, and he winced. He went through the lobby to the elevator on the right and pushed the button. When the door opened, he stepped in and saw a tall man in a patchwork coat, wearing blue jeans and dark tennis shoes, standing in the back corner.

  Joe stepped in, hit the basement button, and let the elevator door close before he spoke. “Cullen?”

  Cullen was obviously relieved, and answered. “Yes,

  Joe. We didn’t get to meet the other day, because I was obsessing over finishing a cradle for one of our couples expecting a new baby.”

  Joe shook Cullen’s hand, and asked, “Is that the couple that Kanin was working on a new chamber for?” Cullen replied as he and Joe were exchanging coats. “Yes, we all get very excited over new babies in our world.” Joe took his baseball cap off and gave it to Cullen, who put in on. Then Joe said, “Well, your world is a wonderful place to raise children in. That rocking chair you created in Vincent’s room is an inspiring piece of art! You are very talented.”

  Cullen smiled, “Thank you, Joe. It was just fun for

  „ _ » me.

  Joe looked at the two of them in the mirror on the wall of the elevator. “It looks like we’re ready for the shell game to begin!”

  Cullen laughed. “Yes, I guess it’s time for me to go confuse Adrian’s goons! You are going to really like it where Diana is taking you, Joe.”

  The elevator had landed in the basement, and when the door opened, Diana was standing there waiting for him. Joe stepped off, and they both said good-bye to Cullen as the door closed, and he went back up to the lobby.

  Joe turned to Diana. “Everyone is being really mysterious about where you are taking me, Diana. Are you going to tell me now, or is it going to be a surprise

  again?”

  Diana smiled at him. “It’s going to be a surprise, but I know that you are really going to like it, Joe. Come on, Father is waiting in the tunnel for us.”

  She took him to a small door at the back of the basement, where they climbed out onto a short ladder leading down to the tunnel floor. Father was at the bottom waiting for them.

  “Hello, Father,” Joe said. “I understand I’m in for a surprise.”

  Father smiled at him. “Yes, Joe, one I know you will be very happy about.”

  Diana and Father began leading Joe through the tunnels to Peter’s home. Along the way, they chatted about Father’s world.

  Joe asked, “When is the children’s choir recital? I heard them practicing as Jamie was taking me to the antique car show last Saturday. They are really good!” Father replied, “They are good! We are very proud of them. They will be performing in my Council chamber this coming Saturday evening. If you and Diana get finished at Gabriel’s mansion in time, you are definitely invited to come.”

  Diana smiled. “I hope we are! That would be a real treat.”

  Joe continued the conversation. “It will sure be a lot simpler to have the access-way under my building that Mouse and Kanin are working on. I’m really happy that

  you thought of doing that. Keeping Adrian’s criminal workforce confused up top is hazardous at best. Access from our own apartment buildings will be a whole lot safer.”

  Father nodded. “Wherever possible, we have always added access-ways like yours whenever we are blessed with new Helpers up top. It is a much more discreet way for them to get to our world than manholes or storm grates. We were very fortunate with both of your apartment buildings this time. Your building already had sub-basement access to a water main service tunnel adjoining our tunnels. So, Kanin and Mouse just had to use a torch to cut an access door between the service tunnel and our tunnel system. Diana’s building is older. Someone in the past had already installed an access doorway to our tunnels in the basement, but it had been sealed up. All Kanin and Mouse had to do with hers was to reopen that access door.”

  Joe went on. “Father, if you don’t mind my asking, there are a number of questions about your world that have come to my mind since my visit there last Saturday.” Father smiled at Joe. “Ask away. Ill answer any question I can.”

  Joe started asking his questions. “Since we are already on the subject of Kanin, how did you manage to obtain all of the cutting and drilling equipment and tools that I saw his team working with?”

  Father answered with a smile, “Our entire community

  has learned how to salvage all kinds of useful things your world throws away. Equipment and tools like Kanin and his team were working with are frequently junked by construction crews above long before their useful life is over. Even equipment that is damaged or non-functional can usually be repaired with some patience by Mouse and his team of electricians and engineers.

  “We have access to several freight elevators in our Helpers’ warehouses and storage buildings around Manhattan to transport some of the larger, heavier equipment we have salvaged down into our tunnels. We were only able to accomplish access via freight elevators in the Helpers’ facilities which were directly over our tunnels. In those warehouses and storage buildings, Mouse and Kanin together with their teams extended the elevator shafts down into our tunnels. They set up the floor indicators in the buildings above, so that they don’t show our tunnel levels, but our floor indicators below do. Then they put in tunnel floor buttons on the elevators behind service panels inside the cars, which can only be accessed with keys that we and our Helpers have. We never use those freight elevators except after our Helpers’ business hours, but just to be sure, Mouse installed cameras in the cars with monitors in our tunnels, so we can be sure that no one who shouldn’t know about us is in the elevators when we need to use them. The freight elevator modifications constituted a very complex engineering project, and Mouse was thrilled by the technical challenge.

  “When Kanin first started creating new chambers down here around eighteen years ago, he painstakingly did it all with just an hammer and a chisel. It took many months to sculpt each new chamber from the caves he started with, but each was a work of art when he was finished. At that time, there were only a very few community members with the skills and aptitude necessary for him to train to help him. Now, with the power equipment Mouse scavenges and keeps in running order for him, and with a bigger team to assist him, it only takes him a few weeks to craft each new chamber. Of course, with Catherine’s trust fund, we can afford new equipment, but the salvaged equipment is still working perfectly right now, so there isn’t any need to buy any.”

  Joe smiled, “He does impressive work! How many community members do you have in your world now?” Father answered, “At present count, we total two-hundred-sixty-three souls. When I first began organizing the tunnel-dwellers into a community, I started a record of our people. I recorded everyone’s name and birthday, and kept a running record of every birth, every death, made entries for those who joined our community from above and why, and for those who felt ready to leave our world and why. We
had to make an educated guess about the birth dates of some of the children we rescued from above, because they were too young to even know themselves.

  Our records also include the family genealogies and everyone’s medical records.”

  Joe was amazed. “Wow! You have carefully accounted for everyone and their needs. These people really are blessed that you took an interest in their welfare. They are obviously healthy, happy, and productive. The tunnels and chambers in your community are very comfortable, even though we are in the dead of winter.

  How do you manage to heat them? I didn’t see heaters of any kind anywhere.”

  Father smiled at Joe. “When I was first brought to the tunnels, we had no heating system. It was cold, but not completely unbearable, because we were protected in the tunnels from exposure to the chilling winds. However, even very warmly dressed, it was not comfortable. During the summer, we have no need for air-conditioning, because the tunnels are naturally cool, even on the hottest days, but winters were a problem. It was especially hard on the children. Fortunately, we ended up with a few of our members who had electrical skills. At that time, we had to tap into the city’s abandoned electrical lines, and those electricians of ours devised a way to adapt an idea they had seen above for heating the tunnels. They had our stone cutters carve out channels along the tops of the tunnel and chamber walls. Then they electrified oil filled pipes in those channels, which provided radiant heat for the whole community. It was safe, because the stone walls weren’t going to catch fire. Having the heat at the top of the walls also kept the children we have running around safe from burn injuries. Next, they scavenged fans from abandoned and condemned buildings, repaired them, and placed them in strategic places around the community to effectively circulate the heated air. Those fans run during the summer too, so we have proper ventilation.”

  Joe had one more question. “There is one last thing that I’ve been wondering about. I saw the washers and dryers that you have in the sewing cavern, and I know that you have a major water source from that beautiful Waterfall Cavern you took me to. What do you do for bathrooms? Everyone is obviously clean and well-groomed.”

  Father actually laughed at that one. “That explanation is a little more complicated, but it is really pretty funny.

  We owe our modern plumbing to Mouse.”

  Joe interrupted Father. “Before you tell me about Mouse’s plumbing, please tell me about Mouse. He sure is an odd duck, but I get the impression from everyone in your world that he is nothing short of a genius.”

  Father then explained. “Mouse is one of our children for whom I had to make up a birth date. By that guess, he is twenty-two now. When he was five, we all began to notice small amounts of food disappearing on a regular basis. Vincent staked out the pantry one night to try to catch the culprit, and it turned out to be Mouse. Vincent caught him and picked him up, biting, kicking, and screaming, and brought him to me. He was filthy, dressed in rags, and malnourished. Obviously, he had been surviving on his own for a very long time. He couldn’t even speak. He was so wild, only Vincent could handle him. Vincent was very patient with him, though. He bathed him, dressed him in clean clothes, fed him properly, and then he began the long process of teaching him to speak and then to read. The result is the man you have seen. He is strange, and he still keeps his speech to only the necessary minimum, but he is an absolutely brilliant engineer, inventor, and craftsman. When we noticed his extraordinary gift for figuring out how to make things work, we began letting him work with our electricians and engineers. It wasn’t long before they were learning from him!”

  Joe shook his head. “If Vincent hadn’t caught Mouse, all of that talent would have been wasted. He probably would have met an early death pilfering from the wrong people. Tell me about how he managed to take care of your plumbing needs.”

  Father went on. “Mouse really blessed our community by solving that critical need. Before he set us up with modern plumbing, we were making do with chamber pots, with a few out-houses we were able to dig out in some of the lower caverns where we infrequently found areas with dirt, rather than rock floors, and with the use of our Helpers’ facilities or public restrooms. It was inconvenient, messy, and definitely not the healthiest way to handle our sanitation needs. Bathing wasn’t a very serious problem, because we do have ample water from

  the Waterfall Cavern, some springs we located, and even a few hot springs, which we still sometimes use for bathing during the winter. Even now, each member still has a water pitcher and basin in their own chamber for immediate washing needs. Mouse improved our situation dramatically.

  “When Mouse was ten, he disappeared on us. We were pretty frantic until Jamie told us that he and she had gone to the closest train station to use the bathroom. They had been exploring above, and Mouse had wanted to stay in the bathroom when Jamie was ready to go. She took William and Cullen to the bathroom where she had left Mouse, and they found him studying the toilets. It was a good thing they got there when they did, because he had pulled his tools out of his pocket and was ready to take one of the toilets apart. They practically had to drag him away from it, and he was very unhappy. He insisted for days afterwards that he wanted to figure out how those toilets worked. He was sure he could put toilets into our world.

  “I had an opportunity to talk to one of our Helpers about Mouse’s obsession with toilets, and he told me to bring Mouse to his home. He took Mouse out to his guest house, which wasn’t being used then, and showed him where the water cutoff was. He told Mouse to go ahead and dismantle the toilet. Mouse spent two days taking the toilet apart and putting it back together again. He wouldn’t even leave it alone to eat, and he slept on the floor by it. Our Helper and his wife ended up taking meals out to him and hand feeding him, because he wouldn’t stop working on that toilet in order to eat. The Helper told me that Mouse finally asked him for a new wax sealing ring, whatever that is. He got it for Mouse, and Mouse put that toilet back together in perfect working order.

  “Well, then our ten-year-old Mouse had a new obsession, finding toilets for our world. We knew we weren’t going to hear the end of it until we found him some, so Kanin and Cullen went scouting above to find toilets for Mouse. Meanwhile, Mouse asked to look at the maps of our world, and he made up detailed drawings of how to access the water from the Waterfall Cavern, which would provide the water pressure he needed, and how to hook into the city’s sewer lines. He also found the perfect central location for his very complex project. It was an huge cave that we really couldn’t do anything with, because it was so big. He drew up plans to partition it off and install plumbing pipes.

  “When Kanin and Cullen returned, they had found the perfect source for Mouse’s toilets. It was a large hotel which was scheduled for demolition in just a few weeks, and it was filled with bathroom fixtures. When Mouse went through the building with them, he was very excited. He didn’t just want the toilets then. He wanted the tubs, the sinks, the water heaters, the huge commercial dishwasher in the hotel kitchen, and the washers and dryers in its laundry room! When the community

  members saw his plans, and realized that Mouse knew what he was doing, they also became excited over the prospect of having actual plumbing fixtures.

  “Our electricians hooked up the electricity to the hotel freight elevator temporarily. Kanin cut out an access door in the basement of the old hotel, and then everyone began carrying out plumbing and water fixtures as fast as Mouse could take them apart. It always amazes me how wasteful people can be up top. All of those beautiful, useful things were just going to be blown up and destroyed! Mouse made sure that we salvaged even the pipes from that building to use for our communication system and heating in our extended tunnels and the newly constructed chambers. I know we at least saved that company some money on trips hauling the rubble away.

  “Within six months, with everyone’s help, and some more building materials salvaged from a construction site that was throwing them away, Mouse had an assigned private ba
throom with a tub, sink, and toilet set up for each single community member, couple, and family. He built ten extra ones to accommodate visiting guests and for new community members. He also built enough of them for the orphaned children that Angela cares for, so that no more than three children would have to share a bathroom. He set up the washers and dryers in the sewing chamber you saw, and installed the dishwasher in William’s kitchen. We have four areas outside of that central bathroom cave, where we have men’s and women’s bathrooms nearby. Those four places are our Great Hall, where we have our holiday celebrations, William’s kitchen chamber, our hospital chamber, where Mouse installed two full baths, and a boys’ and a girls’ bathroom just down the tunnel from the children’s sleeping chambers.

  He then set up a large storage chamber where he organized and cataloged the remaining fixtures for future use. Catherine left us a very generous trust fund, so the washers and dryers, along with William’s kitchen appliances and dishwasher, have all been updated. Mouse’s bathroom fixtures, though, are still in perfect working order.”

  Diana spoke up at that point. “All of that happened because a child the world threw away was fascinated with a toilet! That is a truly awe-inspiring story!”

  Joe added, “Nothing seems to be impossible in your world! It sounds just like Cathy to leave your community well provided for.”

  When they arrived at the elevator in Peter’s basement, they slipped into silence as they rode it up to Peter’s hospital wing. When the doors to the elevator opened again, Diana took Joe’s hand and said, as they stepped off the elevator, “Joe, what we are going to show you will undoubtedly take you by surprise, but it will make you very happy. Are you ready?”

  Diana was so intensely serious, that Joe felt a touch of apprehension. “I’m ready. Go ahead and show me.”

  Father and Diana led Joe down the hallway, and took him into Catherine’s room. Joe stood frozen in the doorway and stared at Catherine for several minutes.