"I will write the note and have the money collected," said Nerissa. "Then, Ripred, have you need of me?"
Nerissa had turned so white her veins looked purplish-black against her skin. The strain of Lizzie's arrival must have beeri too much for her. Surely she would pass out at any moment.
"No," said Ripred. "Go, see to the nurse, and then rest."
"Yes," Nerissa said, making her way to the door by supporting herself against the wall. "Yes."
"Nerissa, you have been invaluable today," added Ripred, and she acknowledged this with a nod.
Boy, the rat really was in good spirits if he was complimenting Nerissa! If Ripred was happy, Gregor was not. But he knew that arguing with Lizzie at this point was no good. And Ripred had made up his mind to keep her.
A couple of Underlanders came in wheeling carts of steaming food, and Gregor realized how hungry he was. He made a gigantic roast beef sandwich smothered in mushrooms and sat back against the wall to try to figure out another plan while he washed it down with a quart of milk.
Lizzie, whose stomach was also empty, took a slice of buttered bread at Ripred's insistence. "Now come and meet the rest of the code team," said the rat, wrapping his tail around her and guiding her around the room. "I know they all must look very strange to you, but believe me, you've got more in common with them than you do with Prince Gregor over there."
"Why?" asked Lizzie, shooting a nervous look back at Gregor.
"Because you think alike," said Ripred. "Oh, by the way, you don't sing, do you?"
"Not much. I don't like music with words," said Lizzie.
An audible sigh of relief came from around the room.
"Good. Good," said Ripred. Then he leaned and whispered in Lizzie's ear so Gregor could barely hear it. "You'll have to be patient with some of them. They're very shy."
It was the perfect thing to say to Lizzie, who could be almost crippled by shyness herself. She'd always had great difficulty making friends. To be honest, she'd only ever had one friend, a weird kid named Jedidiah. He was in her grade at school and, like Lizzie, way beyond the other kids academically. He was just eight, but he could tell you how anything worked. A car, a telephone, a computer. Once, when he'd come over for a play date, he'd spent, like, an hour talking about their oven. Gregor had finally taken the pair of them out to the playground and tried to get a game of kick-ball going. Lizzie got cold and Jedidiah became fascinated with a traffic light. It was hopeless. Also, Jedidiah always insisted on calling Lizzie by her full name, Elizabeth, and got very upset if you called him Jed or something. Listening to the two of them having a conversation made Gregor feel like he was hanging out with a couple of Pilgrims. "What do you think, Jedidiah?" "I do not know, Elizabeth." Still, the whole family was grateful for Jedidiah. If it weren't for him, Lizzie would have no friends at all.
The fact that the other code-breakers were also shy seemed to give Lizzie courage. She gave them each a polite "hello" as they were introduced. They must have liked her, because they began to come out of their rooms. Daedalus fluttered out almost at once, but bats and humans were most comfortable with one another. Min emerged slowly. She was an old cockroach, so old in fact that she made creaking noises when she walked, and her shell had a funny grayish tint to it. Heronian struggled to her feet, dragged herself up to Lizzie, and gave her a little bow, to which Lizzie gingerly bowed back. And finally, Reflex delicately stepped out, greeted her, and scurried back to his web. Then Ripred took her over to the tree carved on the wall. "This is the Tree of Transmission. It was created years ago to make communication easier over long distances. Humans, rats, mice, spiders, cockroaches, and bats developed it together, which was, in itself, an extraordinary achievement. It was in one of our rare times of peace, you see. We can all still use it today, though. Look at it a moment and tell me your impressions," he said.
Gregor gave the tree a hard look and this is what he saw:
"It looks like a Christmas tree decorated with the alphabet," was Gregor's first thought. But even he could see it must be related to the code.
"I think ..." began Lizzie hesitantly.
"Go on, don't worry about being wrong," said Ripred.
"Well, maybe you use these sounds ... click, scratch, tap ... to make letters," said Lizzie. "One click is an E, one scratch is an A, and one tap is an I. Right?"
"Exactly right," said Ripred. "So what if you heard one scratch and then two taps?"
Lizzie followed the tree branches with her finger as she spoke. "One scratch takes you up to A, the first tap takes you to the right to D, and the second tap takes you to the right to the letter O." Her eyes lit up. "It's sort of like Morse code. The way we use sounds to send messages on a telegraph. With dots and dashes."
"Yes, except Morse code only uses two sounds and we use three sounds. How do you know about Morse code?" asked Ripred.
"My dad showed me," said Lizzie. "Only he didn't have a tree; he had a chart with dashes and dots next to each letter."
"More like this?" asked Ripred, nodding to the floor.
For the first time Gregor noticed the chart carved into the floor. He stood up to get a better view of it.
"Yes, this is like the Morse code chart," said Lizzie. "So, it's just another way of showing the Tree of Transmission."
"Right again," said Ripred. "Some find it to be a helpful learning tool. Of course, the best way to learn it is by hearing it. Scratch-scratch-click. Tap-tap-scratch. Because that's how it's transmitted."
Gregor had been there during the Morse code lesson with his dad, too. It had been somewhat interesting but hadn't stuck much in his brain. Lizzie had been fascinated by it, though, and wanted him to learn it as well so that they could send each other messages. The only thing he could ever decipher was the SOS distress signal that they used on ships and stuff to call for help. Dot-dot-dot-dash-dash-dash-dot-dot-dot. SOS. It was sent as one string with no gaps to even indicate there were three separate letters. SOS. She'd really drilled that one into him. She had played it on the bedroom wall, tapped it out with her fork at dinner, and even used a flashlight to send it with quick flashes for the dots and longer ones for the dashes. Finally Gregor had to cut her off. Lizzie would have had them practicing five hours a day. Like Gregor didn't have enough homework without her assigning him more.
"Well, if you already know how this code thing works, what's the problem?" said Gregor.