Mr. Peabody & Sherman Junior Novelization (Mr. Peabody & Sherman) (11 page)

Sherman couldn’t bear to see his father treated that way. “What’s going to happen to Mr. Peabody?” he asked anxiously.

Miss Grunion fixed him with a dark look. “Don’t you know what happens to dogs that bite?” she said threateningly.

Sherman’s eyes widened as he realized what Miss Grunion meant. They were going to take Mr. Peabody to
the city pound! He couldn’t let that happen.

“Wait!” Sherman shouted. “Mr. Peabody is the only one who can fix this problem!”

“Mr. Peabody
is
the problem!” Miss Grunion snarled. “He has systematically broken all the rules!”

“Sure, he has,” Sherman said, “but isn’t that what all geniuses do? What if Einstein had stopped at E equals mc, with no square? What if Galileo had just said, ‘Oh yeah, the sun goes around the Earth, that totally makes sense!’? What if the guy who invented penicillin just threw away the moldy bread? Where would we be then?”

The police stopped in their tracks to consider what Sherman was saying. They looked uncertainly at the talking dog wearing the red bow tie.

Miss Grunion noticed the police officers’ hesitation and stomped her foot angrily. “He’s through with chances. Now he has to pay for his mistakes!”

Sherman hung his head. He was the one who had made all the mistakes, not Mr. Peabody. “I’m the one who used the WABAC without permission,” he confessed. “The only mistake Mr. Peabody ever made … was me.”

“Sherman?” Mr. Peabody said quietly, his eyes filled with concern.

Miss Grunion whipped her head around and fixed
Sherman with a hard stare. “You’re absolutely right, Sherman!” she told him smugly. “A DOG should never have been allowed to adopt a BOY in the first place!”

Sherman knew Miss Grunion thought Mr. Peabody was a bad parent—mostly because he was a dog. But suddenly, he realized that the most important thing Mr. Peabody had taught him was that there was nothing wrong with being a dog—especially a dog like Mr. Peabody.

Sherman’s eyes lit up as the truth dawned on him—and with it, a way to save his dad. He squared his shoulders and looked Miss Grunion in the eye. “Maybe you’re right, Miss Grunion, but there’s one thing you haven’t considered,” he said.

“What’s that?” she asked skeptically. She knew there was nothing this boy could say that would change her mind.

“I’m a dog, too,” Sherman answered proudly.

“What?” Miss Grunion said, annoyed.

“If being a dog means you’re like Mr. Peabody, who never turns his back on you, and who’s always there to pick you up when you fall and loves you no matter how many times you mess up, then yeah,
I’M A DOG, TOO!
” Sherman declared.

Mr. Peabody was so proud of Sherman, he could’ve
howled in delight—but he wasn’t really a howler. Instead, he nodded to his boy with a great deal of fatherly affection.

“I’m a dog, too!” yelled Leonardo da Vinci.

“I’m a dog, too!” King Agamemnon shouted.

“I’m a dog, too!” cried Robespierre. “A French poodle.”

Sherman’s declaration started a chain reaction. One by one, figures from the past and the present came forward to declare themselves dogs. Even Paul Peterson, who’d gotten off to a very rocky start with Mr. Peabody said, “Ditto on that dog thing!”

Last but not least, Penny stepped forward. She’d teased Sherman about being a dog, but now he made her proud to be one. “I’m a dog, too,” she said. Penny took Sherman’s hand and squeezed it gently.

Sherman blushed and swallowed hard before looking expectantly at Miss Grunion.

Even though he’d won the crowd over, Miss Grunion remained unmoved by Sherman’s stirring speech. “All right, fine, you’re all dogs, but you can’t change the law,” she said menacingly.

“
He
can!” Penny said, pointing at a figure in the crowd. It was George Washington, the first president of the United States. He bowed deeply and made his way through the crowd to Mr. Peabody.

G
eorge Washington cleared his throat. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men—and some dogs—are created equal,” the president proclaimed. “I hereby award Mr. Peabody a presidential pardon.”

The crowd cheered. The French peasants waved their torches in delight. The Greeks and Trojans beat their swords against their shields. Even King Tut’s Egyptian servants set down his royal litter to applaud.

The police released Sherman’s father from the dogcatcher’s collar. As his first act of freedom, he ran straight to Sherman and gave him a huge hug.

Miss Grunion’s frown deepened and her eyes narrowed with rage. “But this is a travesty of justice! He bit me! He should be put down!” she yelled.

Suddenly, a strange whistling noise came from the sky. The time vortex shuddered and spat out a giant Egyptian sphinx. The enormous stone statue with the head of a human and the body of a lion landed with a crash at the opposite end of Central Park.

Everyone turned to look up at the wormhole—Miss Grunion included. It had grown even larger in the past few minutes. Now it took up nearly half the sky. Lightning crackled ominously from its depths.

All the historical figures standing around gathered close to Mr. Peabody.

“Ve have to go home!” said Sigmund Freud in his thick Austrian accent.

“Oui,”
Marie Antoinette agreed.

“Oui,”
Robespierre added.

“Dat’s vhat I said, ve have to go home!” Freud said insistently.

Mr. Peabody interrupted the three of them and their dueling accents to prevent further misunderstanding. “Unfortunately, it’s not going to be that easy. We can’t go back to the past,” he explained. “But we do have some of the greatest intellects ever assembled. Surely we can work together and come up with a solution!”

Leonardo da Vinci was the first to step forward with an idea. “Why don’t we build a giant catapult and fling everyone home?”

Freud didn’t like that idea. It might have had something to do with his unconscious fear of flying. He brushed Leonardo’s idea aside and asked what kind of relationship the wormhole had with its mother.

Mr. Peabody grimaced. So far, the geniuses were striking out in terms of plans to save the universe.

“Oooh, oooh!” Agamemnon raised his hand excitedly. “I’ve got an idea! We build a horse and hide inside!”

The French flat-out booed that suggestion, and the historical figures all fell to talking at once.

In the middle of the chaos, Sherman looked up at the time vortex. There had to be a way to set things right. He thought about all the trips he’d taken in the WABAC over the years. He’d traveled to the past and he’d traveled to the present, but he’d never traveled to the future. Sherman’s eyes lit up. He had an idea!

“We can’t go back to the past, but what about the future?” he said.

“What’s that, Sherman?” Mr. Peabody asked. The historical figures fell silent.

“Why not go to the future?” Sherman suggested.
“I’ve never been there before, so it’s probably not as messed up!”

Mr. Peabody turned the idea over in his head. “How would that work, Sherman?”

“If we fly into the future, it’ll create a gravitational pull, which will turn the wormhole inside out and send everyone home,” Sherman explained.

“Sherman, you’re a genius!” Mr. Peabody said, racing toward the WABAC.

Sherman beamed. He dashed after Mr. Peabody but couldn’t resist glancing over his shoulder at Penny. “You hear that, Penny? I’m a”—Sherman tripped and stumbled—“genius!”

Penny smirked and waved at Sherman as he stumbled toward the future.

M
oments later, Mr. Peabody and Sherman climbed on board the WABAC and sat in front of the controls. Sherman watched as his dad punched buttons, flipped levers, and made adjustments to the navigation system.

“So, how far into the future are we gonna go, Mr. Peabody?” Sherman asked eagerly.

“One. Whole. Day,” Mr. Peabody answered.

“That doesn’t sound very far,” Sherman said.

“Far enough to fix the problem,” Mr. Peabody replied with a smile. He knew a lot could change in a day. “Would you like to drive, Sherman?”

“Woo-hoo! Yeah!” Sherman nodded enthusiastically. He turned to the controls and activated the time machine’s power cells.

The WABAC’s engines kicked on.

The whole ship began to vibrate.

“What do you think the future’s gonna be like, Mr. Peabody?” Sherman asked.

Mr. Peabody shrugged. “No one has the answer to that question, Sherman.”

“Not even you?”

“Not even me.”

Sherman pondered for a moment. He looked up at his dad. “Then I guess we’ll see it together.”

Mr. Peabody smiled, fiercely proud of his son. “I love you, Sherman,” he said, his voice full of emotion.

Sherman grinned. “I have a deep and abiding regard for you as well, Mr. Peabody.”

Mr. Peabody—scientist, inventor, explorer, Nobel Prize winner, and Olympic gold medalist—opened his arms wide and pulled his son, Sherman, into a hug. He might have studied all the theories of child development, but there was nothing that could have prepared him for the overwhelming love he felt for his son.

He should have known. After all, it didn’t take a genius to figure that out, just an average dad.

Sherman leaned forward and punched the glowing red launch button. The WABAC rocketed into the sky and flew straight into the time vortex. There was a giant
flash of light, and then suddenly, the wormhole began to close, sucking the historical figures in one by one.

“Auf Wiedersehen!”
called Freud.

“Arrivederci!”
shouted Leonardo da Vinci.

“Zut alors!”
cried Robespierre, which didn’t mean goodbye, but it was close enough.

Miss Grunion watched it all from the middle of the park. She was still mad at Mr. Peabody, even though he was saving the world. “You haven’t seen the last of me, Peabody!” she shouted, shaking an angry fist. “You’ll make a mistake eventually, and when you do, I’ll be there!”

The wind picked up as the final historical figure was swept toward the wormhole. It was Agamemnon, and at the last possible moment, he snaked an arm around Miss Grunion. “I’ve captured the Grunion!” he yelled triumphantly.

It was the last thing anyone heard before the wormhole swallowed them up.

And that, dear reader, is the end of the story. But if you are wondering what happened, Sherman’s idea worked wonderfully. Taking the WABAC into the future caused the space-time continuum to snap back into place like a giant rubber band, and the world was saved.

We returned to the dinner party before any of this happened, and I snapped the Petersons out of their trance. The party went on to be a roaring success.

Penny and Sherman became best friends, and she accompanied us on many adventures in the WABAC. But you’ll have to read about those some other time.

Yours truly,

Mr. Peabody