Bubble in the Bathtub (16 page)

He held his breath and concentrated. He concentrated on what Eddy had told him, because that was the crux of his new plan. He wasn't sure if it was a particularly
good
plan, but nevertheless he concentrated on a place right next to a bike-repair shop in Belgium. The place was called Waterloo. The date was June 18, 1815.
Napoléon Bonaparte's bedroom, Nilly thought.

When he surfaced again at first he thought he'd messed up somehow, because he could still hear thunder. But then he discovered that it was almost totally dark and that he was in a tent. And he realized that the thunder didn't have anything to do with lightning or bulls. It was a deep, rumbling snore. It was nighttime and Nilly was at the Battle of Waterloo, the most famous military battle in history. And Nilly knew enough history to know that he'd ended up on the side that was going to lose, that was going to be trounced, smashed to smithereens and sent running for their lives.

To summarize: Nilly no longer had any doubt. He was now quite certain that this had
not
been a good plan.

NILLY BLINKED IN the darkness. He was wet, he was scared, and he still hadn't had any breakfast. Basically this day was not starting out the way he would have liked. And now, on top of all that, it was also going to be the worst day in French military history, the day they would be decimated by the wretched English
and the at least equally wretched Germans.

Nilly's eyes adjusted to the darkness and he saw that the thunderous snoring was coming from a bed located in the center of the tent. Next to the bed there was a chair with a uniform draped meticulously over its back. Nilly shivered. Of course the uniform would be way too big, but at least it would be dry. He quietly slipped out of the bathtub and snuck over to the chair, pulling off his wet clothes as he went. He put on the uniform, and—what the heck was this?—it actually fit! Nilly looked down at the bed, at the man lying on his back and snoring with his mouth wide open. Could this really be the great general and dictator, Napoléon Bonaparte? Why, this guy was just as tiny as Nilly! But, no time to think about that now. Nilly hurriedly buttoned all the shiny buttons on the uniform, buckled the belt with the shiny saber that only just barely dragged on the ground, and grabbed the strange, three-cornered hat that was sitting on the seat of the chair. How would you even begin to
figure out which is the front and which is the back of a hat like this? No time to think about that either, because it wasn't going to take Raspa long to read the time soap and be here. Nilly put the hat on his head and pulled the jar of fartonaut powder out of the pocket of his wet pants. And then spun around because he heard someone sneeze behind him. But it wasn't Raspa, who was still in the tub. The sneeze had come from outside the tent.

“Bless you,” he heard a voice outside the tent say.

Nilly exhaled in relief, opened the bag of fartonaut powder, held it carefully over the snoring general's gaping mouth, and poured. But right then the little man exhaled, making a long, wheezing sound and blowing the powder right back in Nilly's face. Nilly's eyes started watering and he got powder in his nose, and before he could stop himself, he sneezed. When he opened his eyes again, he saw that the general's whole face was covered with splotches of wet fartonaut powder. Nilly held his breath.

“And bless you to you, too,” he heard another voice outside the tent say.

Then everything was once again drowned out by one of Napoléon's rattling breathing-in snores, and Nilly hurriedly used the opportunity to pour more powder into his mouth. The breathing-in snore stopped all of a sudden and Nilly's heart did, too. For a few seconds the only thing you could hear was a cricket chirping outside. Then the general's breathing-in snore started again and so did Nilly's heart. Now it was just a question of waiting and counting down. Nilly moved to the back of the tent, closed his eyes, covered his ears with his hands, and counted down to himself.

Six—five—four—three—two—one …

KABOOOM!!!

TWO OF NAPOLÉON Bonaparte's personal bodyguards were standing just outside the tent. Both were half-asleep and both were half-deaf from all the cannon
firings their ears had had to withstand throughout their long careers as soldiers. But both of them jumped to attention when they heard the giant
boom
.

“What in the world was that?” one of the guards asked, taking his rifle off his shoulder and exhaling nervously through his handlebar mustache.

“I thought that was you sneezing again,” the other one said, taking his rifle off his shoulder and exhaling nervously though his Fu Manchu mustache.

“Look,” Handlebar said, pointing at the sky.

And there—silhouetted against the large, yellow moon—they saw something flapping as it flew away, eventually disappearing into the darkness on the other side of the Brussels Road, the side where the English had set up their camp for the night.

“What was that?” Handlebar asked.

“If I didn't know better, I would have thought it was a flailing guy in a nightshirt,” said Fu Manchu. “But then again it is only 1815, so people can't fly yet.”

“True, true. But maybe we'd better go see if everything's all right with the Generator.”

They pulled up the tent flap and stepped in. The first thing they saw was that the moon was shining through a hole in the roof of the tent and that tiny, expensive-looking bits of duvet down were wafting around in the moonlight.

“What the—” Handlebar began, raising his long rifle with the almost equally long bayonet and running over to the bed, where he cried, “The Generator isn't here!”

“His duvet is missing, too!” Fu Manchu cried once he got there.

“Hi there,” Nilly said, stepping into the moonlight.

The two guards jumped to attention again with their rifles at their sides.

“Pardon me, Sire. We didn't see you there, Generator, Sire!” shouted Handlebar.

“As you were, soldier,” Nilly said. “That bang you just heard, do you know what that was?”

“No idea, Generator, Sire!” shouted Fu Manchu.

“That was the English trying to assassinate me. A bomb in my bed. Lucky for France I'm a type-A personality….”

“A what-the-huh?”

“I get up early. I was just standing here brushing my teeth.”

“What?” Fu Manchu said. “But everyone knows that the French never brush their—”

“Shut up, Jacques,” Handlebar said, staring into the shadows with his rifle ready. “Where did the Englishmen go, and how did they get in here?”

“There was only one of them,” Nilly said. “And it's actually an English woman. She's hiding in that bathtub.”

Both of the guards spun around and aimed their rifles at the bathtub, which appeared to be empty.

“I didn't think the French bathed either,” Fu Manchu mumbled from behind his mustache.

“Quiet, Jacques,” whispered Handlebar. “You heard him. She's English.”

“Shh!” Nilly ordered. “Prepare to arrest her!”

The three of them stood, very ready, staring into the bathtub.

“What are we waiting for?” Handlebar finally asked.

“For her to run out of air and have to come to the surface,” Nilly said.

“Couldn't we just pull her up?” Fu Manchu asked.

“Well, we could try,” Nilly said. “But we're talking about the great English spy Double O Point Zero Raspa Hari, who has punctured twenty-six French foil fencers in very honest duels, strangled a boa constrictor, and bench-pressed four Russians. But, be my guest, go ahead.”

“Nah,” Handlebar said. “We're not in any hurry, are we, Jacques?”

“Nothing that can't wait,” Fu Manchu said.

So all three of them continued to stand, very ready, staring into the bathtub.

“This lady's got herself some lungs,” Fu Manchu whispered.

“Like two weather balloons,” said Nilly, who'd noticed that the moonlight was fading and that the darkness was starting to take on a dawnlike gray tinge.

Just then the surface of the water opened up and there she stood: tall and thin in a black overcoat, with her two eyes wide-open over that gaping mouth revealing those small, spiky, predatory fish teeth.

“Whoa,” Fu Manchu said, jumping back in fear.

“Don't move, you hideous water witch!” snarled Handlebar. “I'll shoot if you so much as twitch a nose hair!”

Raspa opened her mouth. Then closed it, opened it, closed it, and so on. But she didn't move.

“Slap the handcuffs on her,” Nilly yelled.

“The hand-whats?” asked Handlebar, still staring and looking quite nervous.

“No, that's right, surely those haven't been invented yet,” Nilly said, scratching his scalp under that strange hat. “Rope, then. Get English spy Double O Point Zero Raspa Hari tied up. Now! That's a … uh, an order!”

At that, the two guards lifted the kicking, screaming, protesting Raspa out of the bathtub and tied her up until she looked like a corncob.

“What a banshee,” Handlebar said. Then he pulled off his tattered left boot, pulled off a holey left sock, and stuffed it into her mouth. All of a sudden it was quiet.

“What now, Generator?”

“Frisk her!”

Handlebar did as Nilly said.

“A jar of powder,” he said. “Hm, smells like strawberries.”

“Toss it here,” Nilly said, catching the mason jar that
came hurtling through the air. “And roll the spy to a dungeon. We've invented dungeons, right?”

“Um, well, yeah,” Fu Manchu said, pulling Raspa onto her feet—well, onto her roller skate—and wheeling her out of the tent. “Come, beautiful spy maiden.”

“You'd better go along and guard her,” Nilly told Handlebar, who hadn't budged.

“But, Generator, our orders from Marshal Grouchy are to guard you at all times.”

“Oh?” Nilly said. “Well, then I'm superseding that order right now. After all, I'm the one who's the … uh, Generator, right?”

“Of course, Generator, Sire!” Handlebar came to attention, saluted, did an about-face, and marched out of the tent.

By the time the tent flap had fallen back into place behind him, Nilly had already rushed over to the bathtub and poured some powder from the soap jar into it. He pulled the saber out of his belt, stuck it into
the water, and started stirring it around. And soon a layer of bubbles starting forming again. Nilly grabbed the jar of time soap and climbed up onto the edge of the tub. He wanted to do another cannonball and lie there on the bottom wishing he were back in the Hôtel Frainche-Fraille where all the others would surely just be hanging out waiting for him by now: Lisa, Doctor Proctor, and Juliette Margarine. Claude Cliché would be history and would never have met any of them. Nilly bent his knees, about to jump in.

“Puis-je entrer?”
demanded a stern voice.

Nilly looked up. A man in a uniform almost as nice as his own was standing in the doorway to the tent. He was thin, tall, and had a scar that formed a
V
on one cheek.

“Good morning, Generator Napoléon.”

“I don't think it's quite morning yet,” Nilly said, hurriedly stuffing the jar of time soap into the inside pocket of his uniform jacket.

The man just strolled right into the tent. “It looks like a little sleep has done you good, Generator. You look younger than you did yesterday.”

“Oh, thank you so much,” Nilly said, trying to figure out the fastest way to get this guy to leave again. “I suppose it's just the clothes. They're new, of course.”

“So it's the Emperor's new clothes?” the man asked, smiling, and flopped down into a chair.

“Am I the emperor?” Nilly gasped, shocked.

The man laughed. “It's up to you. But your last order was that you wanted to be addressed as Generator.”

“That's what I'd surmised. Um, why did I want that again?”

“Did you forget? It's a combination of general and dictator. That makes Generator, right? Well, all right, strictly speaking it was my idea. As most things are these days.” He sighed, contemplating his white gloves. “Shall we get to work, then?”

“Work?” Nilly asked. “As you can see, I'm still
getting ready. I haven't even had a chance to eat my breakfast. So if you could give me a few minutes alone, Mr…. Mr….?”

The man raised his eyebrows: “It's me, Marshal Grouchy.”

“Yes, of course,” Nilly said, laughing nervously and sounding a tad shrill. “That's right, Emmanuel de Grouchy. Pardon me, I have so many marshals.”

“You have two,” Grouchy said caustically. “The other one died on the Englishmen's bayonets yesterday. You don't seem quite yourself, Generator.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. I'm fine, really,” Nilly said. “It's just … just … this … uh, nose clip.”

Grouchy stood up. “If you're done washing your saber, Sire, we have a battle to fight, Generator.”