Melene applauded. "He's dead sexy, isn't he?"
"He'll be dead, never mind sexy, if I catch him," said Pistol grimly, mounting the pile of boxes.
"And so masculine," said Phylla, lasciviously.
"Handsome and well hung, into the bargain." Doll licked her rat-lips and leered at the little primate.
"Effing Hell! I'm going to hang him, if he doesn't shut up." Fal began heaving himself up a clumsy stack of bales. "Come on, Nym. You take the right-hand side."
Bronstein tried again. She'd give him "macho" when she caught him!
The galago easily evaded the bat, and chittered mockingly at her from a pile of grain sacks that would have fed half a regiment. It opened its mouth to start bellowing again.
"Will you be shutting up in here? There are about fifty Maggots coming this way!" Eamon shouted from where he was trying to squeeze through the rat-hole.
The little creature paused in its bellowing, and seemed to consider this news. Then, in a hiss: "Only if you will agree to go and rescue my mistress. And take me to your human-in-charge!"
The galago bounded away from Bronstein, and clung to the tiny knobbles on the wall with seeming ease. He was now out of reach of the rats. His long-fingered black hands were plainly very strong. They were surprisingly humanlike, those hands. "I will shout really loudly, really REALLY loudly, if you do not agree."
"All right!" said Bronstein. "Just shut up."
"Do you promise?" demanded the galago.
"Yes. I promise. Now keep quiet! Eamon, did you kill that Maggot at the entry? Are they coming because of that?"
Eamon struggled the rest of the way through the hole. "No, indade, it had finished its job and gone before we got there. But the Maggots seem to be waking up. Now hush!"
They waited. Then Siobhan said, through the hole: "All clear. But we must be going. Quickly now! The Maggots are getting going."
Bronstein nodded. "To be sure. Come, put some of those boxes in that bag. Take some of those concentrate bars, all of you. You too, little creature."
The little creature raised itself up. "I am not your `little creature'! I am a galago, and I am a hidalgo. Treat me with respect, I warn you!"
Bronstein did not take to this. "I don't care what or who you are. Carry food or go hungry."
"I am no beast of burden," sneered the galago.
Bronstein gave him a look that promised plain and fancy murder. Later. "You're a big mouth and a small brain. Carry food. We don't have any to spare."
"Yeah, and we girls would hate you to lose your sexy figure," said Doll, lowering her lashes. "You might need all your strength."
"And lots of stamina," added Phylla, winking.
"That tail of his is just too, too gorgeous!" Melene hugged herself, quivering.
"And those dreamy bedroom eyes!" husked Phylla throatily. "Wow!"
The male rats were not enjoying this. Not even one tiny bit. The galago, on the other hand, was strutting his stuff. He was also gathering provisions.
Of course, Doll was the first to make a move. "So what is your name, handsome? Heedalgo-go?"
The galago took Doll's paw and bowed over it with an extravagant flourish of his long fluffy tail, before kissing it delicately. "You may call me Don Juan, senorita. My name is Don Juan el Magnifico de Gigantico de Immaculata Concepcion y Major de Todos Saavedra Quixote de la Mancha."
"Ooh! I don't think I'll ever wash this paw again!" Doll said breathlessly.
Melene looked on with longing. "Ooh! He fair makes my insides turn to jelly! So romantic!"
"Huh. I'll turn him into jelly. Effing cream puff," muttered Pistol.
As best they could, the rats hid their hole. Then they had to lug several bags of looted food back through the waking corridors of the Maggot-mound. It was no sinecure.
"You've overfilled this thing," Fal moaned.
Nym grunted. "Well, we can't exactly pour some out here, can we?"
"Why not?" Fal was ready to suit action to the words.
Nym tapped Fal's head with his tail. "Why not just leave a signpost for the Maggots, smooth-pate? Anyway you'll be the one complaining that you cannot compass the waste."
Fal shook his head and tried to wrap his tail around his bulging belly. "I cannot even compass my own waist, but with this sweating I am forced to do, I'm fain to be melting away."
"You've got a fair bit go still, Fal. Umph. And you're letting your corner down," said Nym.
"Hey you, whatsisname… Don Gigolo, come give us a hand," said Fal, ever hopeful.
A bat fluttered up. "Back. There are Maggots coming. Quickly, fools!"
They hid. Scampered. Hid again. Dodged off down a new passage. And finally reached the down-rope.
"What is this?" The galago eyed the rope with suspicion.
"The effing way out, Don Gigolo." Fat Fal might have sounded grimmer than usual because he did not fancy it. Or perhaps he was just tired.
The tiny galago strutted into Fal's personal space. "If you call me that again, I warn you, I shall challenge you to a duel."
"I'm shakin'. I'm shakin'. Oh, Pistol, I'm tho thcared, big bad Don Gigolo will prong me."
The galago was beside himself with fury. "Name your seconds, sir!"
"You leave Don Juan alone. You bunch of big bullies. Don't pay any attention to them, DonJee, sweetie." Doll took him gently by the arm, showing Fal her teeth.
"Will you be stopping this tomfoolery and tie those bags on so Chip can haul them up," hissed Eamon, "before I bite all of you. He's still got to haul you up."
The galago paused. "Who is `Chip'?"
"He's the human member of this circus," replied Bronstein.
"There is a human up there? Then I will go. My mission, she brooks no delay. I am a galago of action." The little primate saluted the cluster of rat-girls and began to climb the rope with consummate ease.
Phylla sighed. "He's sooo masterful!"
Nym shook his head. "He's a complete ass."
Bronstein rolled her eyes. "Siobhan, fly up and tell the silly creature not to go out past the last level. Chip's not expecting him. Chip'll probably turf him down again if he suddenly appears. Now, let's get these bags tied on."
"We could have used the bigmouth. His hands are better for this sort of thing than my paws are."
False dawn had faded the stars. Chip was a very nervous man by now. He couldn't leave his post, or the rats would be unable to get back up. On the other hand, Maggot constructors were already visible in the distance working on the tunnel-mound. Some of the Maggots were sightless, he knew, but some them weren't. It was getting lighter by the second, and he felt very exposed out here in the open, next to the mound. It had been a long, cold, anxious wait up here in the now disappearing darkness. The line began to thrum under his hand.
What could that be? His imagination conjured a climbing-Maggot.
His hand went to the Solingen. If he cut that line now… Splattermaggot. But he couldn't. What if he was wrong? He'd trap them down there. No. He'd have to deal with whatever monstrous thing was climbing as it came through the opening. He waited, nerves as tense as a cheese-slicer-wire.
The little door popped open. Chip lunged forward, knife first. He got a sudden view of cute, huge, dark eyes set in a tiny gray-white furry face. There was a squeak of terror and the face disappeared.
"Dammo!" panted Siobhan. "You daft beast. Come back! Hell! Now I shall have to chase it. And it can climb so fast. It beat me flying up here. Did you have to frighten it out of a year's growth, Chip?"
Siobhan fluttered away, back down into the mound. The three sharp tugs Chip had been awaiting came, and he began hauling. The thin line, with added weight, proved to be hell on the hands. He wrapped his jacket around them and went on slowly hauling. Next thing, the little cute-face came up again. In the improving light he could see that it was a lemur-like thing, complete with what must once have been a delicately embroidered red velvet waistcoat. It looked very, very wary. Siobhan was with it.
"See, you idiot. He's a human, not a monster."
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 17:
The hero to the rescue!
"EXPLAIN," SAID CHIP. Bronstein would have added, "and you'd better make it good,"' but Chip was feeling guilty. The little fellow looked more like some kid's soft toy than a problem. He'd frightened it into a wide-eyed silence because of his own nervousness. He might easily have killed it.
"You are the commander of the rescue force?" The galago sounded doubtful.
"Commander?" Chip shrugged. "Hell, we've never got around to having one of those. Bronstein is the highest ranking of us, but as a human I could claim I was in charge… if I was that stupid."
"Better to make it my fault, to be sure," said the bat, from where she hung on the miraculously intact crystal light-fitting in the tasting room.
"And as for being a rescue force," Fal picked his teeth, "belike what gave you that idea?"
"Indade, we're in need of being rescued, but I don't see how or why it would happen," Eamon chipped in.
The little creature's face crumpled. "You have not been sent to rescue my princess?"
Chip shook his head. "We just got ourselves trapped behind the lines in the last push. We haven't been sent to rescue anyone."
"Yeah. We'd just like to get out alive… Don Gigolo," said Fal, pausing in the very act of getting outside the contents of a bottle of wine.
The big eyes sparkled dangerously. "I warned you before, you fat mouse."
"Mouse?! MOUSE?! Who are you calling a mouse, you… you… whoreson caterpillar!" Fal tried to grab the galago, who leapt onto one of the wall-fittings.
"That's enough!" Chip and Bronstein bellowed in unison.
The galago didn't think so. "He insulted my honor!"
Neither did Fal. "He called me a mouse! And he's trying to seduce our girls!"
Phylla sneered. "Methinks you should grow up, Fal! We're not `your girls.' " There was a very dangerous edge to her voice.
Chip sighed. "Here we are, refugees trapped in the middle of enemy territory, and you're calling each other names and fighting. Now will you both QUIT IT."
"In heaven's name, just don't start the little one bellowing," said Bronstein wearily. "He has a louder voice than you have."
The galago was practically hopping with fury. "Nobody calls Don Juan el Magnifico de Gigantico de Immaculata Concepcion Major de Todos y Saavedra Quixote de la Mancha a-a gigolo!"
"Make me stop," swaggered Fal, his paunch wobbling and his tail doing a little wave.
Chip sighed again. "If I have to, I will, Fal."
"And if he doesn't, we will," said Doll. "Hey girls?"
"And if all that fails, there is always me," added Bronstein.
"You all gang up on me," whined Fal.
"Okay, we all gang up on you," agreed Chip. "Now leave off calling him names and you-Don Whatsisname-you leave off calling fat Fal a mouse. He's an ugly rat and proud of it. Now tell us, Don, who did you think we were here to rescue?"
"But of course I thought you had come to rescue my fair princess from the durance vile and clutches of the wicked, evil Magh'. I was wrong. But, of course, now you will volunteer bravely to do it. You will become heroes!"
"Dream on," snorted Chip. "We're conscripted grunts, sunshine."
"Methinks heroes are the humans with the gold bird-dropping on their shoulders. We just want to stay alive. And out of any volunteering." Fal's nose was plainly out of joint.
"And anyway, we need no other humans," added Eamon. "The one we have is more than enough."
The little galago rocked on his heels, furled its mobile delicate ears, and stared at them. In quite a different voice, with a sob lurking in it, he addressed himself directly to Chip, "But surely-senor!-you cannot leave a beautiful girl to die? Slowly and horribly, she will die! She will die without water or food, walled up, alone, desperate, in the darkness…"
Chip looked at the Maggot-mound. Hell's teeth! He was no hero, damn it. Not one of these handsome devil-may-care idiots whom the Company spent like water to stop the Maggots. He was just an ordinary conscript grunt who kept a low profile and kept himself alive.
"Bugger it…"
"Then I will go back… by myself," interrupted the galago. There was both despair and determination in his voice.
"Let me finish, will you?" grumbled Chip. "I was trying say-bugger it, I wouldn't leave a dog to die trapped down there. A… friend died like that. Buried."
He sighed heavily. "I'll give it a go."
"You, sir, are a hidalgo! A true knight! A Siegfried!"
"I'm a sucker, never mind this Siegfried character. Or was he a sucker, too? Are you sure this girl's still alive?"
"Oh indeed. I was fetching food for her when I met your-" The galago sneered and looked down his nose at animals taller than himself. "Brave companions."
"You watch your mouth or I won't come along," snapped Nym.
"You are coming, senor rat? You are one of great courage!"
"Oh, we'll be there too," piped Melene. "We girls could hardly refuse to follow such a brave-and sexy-caballero."
"Are you all loons?!" Fal was incredulous. "Here we've got away, safe, and you want to go back in again and risk your lives down there?"
Phylla sniffed. "We got away with it once."
"The contentions of this frail mortality in the light of absolute
…"
"Oh shut up," said Fal, sourly. "I suppose you're going too?"
Doc pushed his wire pince-nez back on his snout. "Yes. It is not logical, but yes."
Bronstein tapped her head with a wing-claw. "You're all crazy. Crazy. Loony. Mad. Insane. You're rats. RATS. Rats do not volunteer, ever."
"Well, look at it this way," said Pistol, "We either go, or let that little Molly in the pooftah red jacket show us all up."
"It's a very elegant waistcoat, Pistol," said Phylla, "and you're just jealous."
"What, me?" Pistol gave her the full benefit of his eyepatch. "Jealous of a namby-pamby thing like that? Ha!"
"Well," said Chip, getting to his feet. "I never thought I'd see the day that rats were crazier than bats. What the hell." He gave Bronstein and the other bats a stiff little bow. "It's been nice knowing you guys." To the rats: "I just want to get some stuff together from the workshop before we go."
Bronstein looked amused. "To be sure, who said we weren't going with you?"
"'Tis a foine and noble lost cause to die for!" O'Niel put in.
"Wrap the bat-wing round me, boys…" Siobhan quavered.
Fal turned to Eamon. "I can't stand you, and you can't stand me. I suppose we'll have to join them or I'm fated to be left here with you. But I'm going to stock up for the trip too. With brandy."
Chip stood in the workshop, checking his gear. He didn't want to admit, even to himself, that he was putting off going underground again. "Flexible saw, I've got. I'll need to cut a bigger door. Rope I've got. That'll have to do for an anchor." Chip tossed his attempt with some rusty reinforcing rod and the vise on the pile. It wasn't going to win him any prizes for practical engineering, but he might have gotten one for modern sculpture.
"I better test this idea first, though." He picked up the backpack herbicide sprayer. "I'd back off, you lot, in case the whole thing goes whoof along with me."
He pumped up the pressure. Gingerly, he lit Fal's zippo, held the flame up and then squeezed the trigger to his homemade flamethrower. He'd taken off the original spray pipe and replaced it with an eighteen-inch-long brass pipe, with the spray nozzle from the paint spray gun hammered into the end of it. He'd used a piece of wood to buffer the hammer, but, even so the nozzle was not quite what it used to be. It sprayed diesel rather skewly.
Nothing happened. The mist of diesel drifted back toward him… nothing happened. It probably wasn't atomizing the stuff finely enough. He gave up.
"We will need you to carry a couple of bags of stuff for us," said Bronstein, as Chip stared morosely at the failed flamethrower.
"Sure. What?"
"Two of those. Unless you can manage three or four." The bat pointed a wing at the bags of fertilizer.
Chip shook his head. "For what, bat? It's fertilizer, for crying out loud."
The bat ground her teeth audibly. "I know it is fertilizer, Connolly. It's ammonium nitrate. Don't you know anything about explosives?"
Chip chuckled sourly. "Sure. I'm an experienced sous-chef. If you put an unpunctured squash into a microwave, it explodes."
The bat hissed breath through its long teeth. "Listen. Just take it from me. I know explosives. Using our satchel-charges as detonators we can make that explode."
"You listen, and just take it from me, Bronstein. Those bags probably weigh a hundred pounds each. I know heavy lifting. I'm not going to stagger down into the Maggot-tunnels carrying even one bag."
"Half a bag?" she asked, her voice hopeful and wheedling, hardly like Bronstein at all.
It made him feel guilty. "Half a bag split into two bags."
"Are you sure that's all you can manage? We could do so much.. ."
"Destruction. Eamon's idea of a good time." Chip turned on the rats, lounging against the tractor. "And you? Anything you'd like me to carry? Besides your idle selves, that is. What about that dinky little tractor to lean against? I could put that on one shoulder, and then take a stainless steel vat of wine on the other."
Fal grinned at him. "Don't take it out on us because those bats want you to hump a ton of fertilizer. Anyway, what is the use of carrying wine when we've discovered a vat of brandy? Here, try some of this."
Chip took the proffered glass of clear stuff. Took an unwary mouthful. Spayed it out, coughing. "You stupid bastards! That's lighter fuel!"
The rats seemed to find that very funny. "A bit over-proof, eh?"
"And you don't have to carry it," said Doll. "We'll carry it ourselves. Or in ourselves," she added, with a ladylike belch.
"It's probably wood alcohol," protested Chip. "Methanol. It'll make you go blind, for God's sake."
One-eyed Pistol replied loftily. "No use trying to keep us off the drink, Chip. Can't be done. We're good and proper rats, us."
"It's for your own good, you asses!"
Nym looked at him speculatively. "Tell you what. We need a volunteer to try the stuff out. A bat, that's the ticket! They're loons to begin with. They volunteer for everything. And they're blind as bats, anyway, so if it turns sour-"
All the bats set up an agitated fluttering of their wings. "Begorra! It is sick to death I am of that foul slander!" Even the taciturn O'Niel was stirred into speech. "Blind as a bat! Are ye daft? We see as well as you, or better in low-light conditions. And we don't drink!"
"They don't drink! Hear that girls? So what else is making them blind, methinks?" Fal gave a lewd wink to Phylla.
"Check the palms of their feet," Pistol sniggered.
Chip shook his fist at all of them. "Will you bunch of stupid rodents stop this?"
"Who's your `rodent,' primate?" demanded Behan. "It is more cheek than an intelligent life-form you've got! I am Chiroptera and proud of it!" He folded his wings with affronted dignity, like a magistrate tightening his robes of office.
"And we're macrosceledia/insectivora," chipped in Doc. With a casual wave of his paw: "With a mere dash of rodent thrown in. Couldn't give a toss about it. The term `rat' is purely an honorific."
"Well said," hissed Fal and Pistol in unison. Nym rumbled his own wordless agreement.
Chip shrugged. "All I was trying to do was persuade you not to kill yourselves."
Melene took pity on him. "This was a wine farm, Chip. And believe me, even distilled, I can smell the grapes."
Chip knew it was no use arguing further with them about drinking the stuff. The beggars chorus already had a fair amount in them, by the sounds of it. Not enough to incapacitate them, but enough to make them very troublesome. Rats were very good at attaining that level. The high metabolic rate allowed them to drink more than you'd think they could. And practice kept them from incapacitating themselves. Rats liked drink. It was the one method the army had found to get them to fight. They got a daily issue of grog, much as sailors once had.
Of course, one of the bats still had to try to stop them. "But why take the daemon drink with you?" cried Siobhan. "It'll be the ruination of you! Take things to keep yourselves alive, not to kill you."
"Molotov cocktails," snapped Fal. "That's what we're taking. Do they normally get served with an olive in them, Chip? We're not sure of the traditions, here."
Siobhan seemed shocked. "But surely you cannot just take drink?"
One of the rats picked up a spool of baling wire. "This is heavy enough. Useful stuff, wire."
Chip was still dwelling on his failed flamethrower. An errant thought of flambed crepes went through his mind. "Is there really lots of that… raw brandy?"
Doll grinned. "I' faith, enough to swim in or to keep Fal drunk for a month!"
"Take me to it."
The rats looked shifty. Very shifty. "I suppose there is enough," said Melene finally. Grudgingly.
At a guess, Chip thought that the stainless steel tank had about four or five hundred gallons in it. The rats were still scandalized when he poured the diesel out of the backpack sprayer and then tapped raw brandy into the tank.
"It'll give it a horrible taste, Chip," whined Fal.
"Watch!"
He pumped up the pressure. Lit the lighter and squeezed the trigger. With a sudden BOOM, it caught. Chip held a six foot flame-torch. That would show the Maggots!
"Keep the tip down!" Siobhan fluttered clear, shouting advice. "The thing is dripping! The drips are running down the nozzle-and the flames are following the drips! You idiot!"
Hastily, Chip stopped squeezing the trigger and pointed the nozzle down. After an uncooperative minute, the flames died.
Well, it worked. But as Chip's previous experience with flamethrowers had been caramelizing sugar with a blowtorch, he was more than a bit nervous of the gadget. The whole thing struck him as a recipe for disaster. But if it scared Maggots…
"Where's Don Whatsisname?" he asked.
Nym shook his head. "Dunno. The girls have been looking for him."
"He's probably gone into hiding then."
They found the tiny galago asleep. Deep asleep.
"It is daytime, 'ginia. Not waking up time." The galago curled tighter under his tail.
"Nocturnal," muttered Doc. "That explains the big eyes."
"What sort of guide is it that I have to carry because he's flat out?" complained Chip, picking the creature up.
"He's probably been through a lot in the last while, poor mite," said Bronstein. "He's obviously some rich woman's plaything. Not used to this sort of life. He's probably having the first decent sleep he's had ever since they were captured."
"You falling for him too, Bronstein?"
The bat snorted. "Hah. I'm not one of those oversexed rats. Likely the next time he holds forth about needing a real male for the job, his pretty little ears I'll notch for him. Still, though he was as scared as a rabbit to go back into the Maggot-tunnels, he was still ready to try. That took courage, real courage, for a pampered little thing."
Chip sighed. "That's true enough. But this is a stupid idea, Bronstein. We're never gonna get away with it. Maggots are up and about now. They were asleep when the others went in."
"True. So I think we should wait. Eamon and I have an idea."
"Which involves blowing something up."
The bat had the grace to look faintly abashed. "Uh. Yes. But only if it is needed."
"Oh. You mean Eamon is going to give up a chance at mayhem? Explain that one."
The bat snarled. Restrained herself. "I'll explain what we have in mind! Look, when Siobhan flew after the little fellow, she found out that there are tunnels which go straight across… from one side of the mound to the other. And at the other end there was a down chute. .. I don't know, an air hole, whatever, identical to this side."
Chip raised his eyes to the twinkling force field that was between him and heaven. "Oh wonderful. Now all we need to do is find that there are ones going along as well as across and we can set up a toll booth, or walk straight to the middle of the whole Maggot nest!"
"Will you listen, Connolly? Springing this human, which Eamon and Behan are none too keen on, I'll tell you, is bound to alert the Maggots. If we get out, we will want to come back to the farmhouse. That's where the food is, and that's the right direction for the sea. So what we want to do is to go across to the far side. Set up a shot pattern to get us out into the valley we escaped out of originally."
Chip cocked his head. "Which is the wrong direction."
"Right," Bronstein said, in the tone used to humor a small and annoying child. "We'll set things up so that the Maggots can chase off to where we aren't going to be. That'll give us a head start, at least."
Chip rolled his eyes. "So you're going to cross the whole mound and set up a dummy first. Don't let me stop you."
Bronstein looked uneasy. "Well, we need you to come along. You'll be carrying the fertilizer. And quite a lot of diesel. And that would save us from having to use more than one satchel-charge."
These bats had bats in the belfry and no mistake! "I see. And doubtless you want a couple of rats along for hole digging. Forget it, Bronstein. It's a good idea, maybe, but there is more chance of my falling pregnant than the rats agreeing."
"We… took the liberty of getting Melene and Doc to put a cold chisel and a four-pound hammer in the bag. Those hollow blocks give us really quick shot holes…"
"You're crazy Bronstein, damn you! I'm not doing it!"
Well, at least he was carrying much less weight in fertilizer and less diesel because he'd argued before giving in. He'd been able to talk them down to half again because of having to carry the cans of diesel. And now that the things were set up, what was left in the fertilizer bags couldn't weigh more than twenty to twenty-five pounds. It was nice to have insurance, even if he hadn't agreed to that second booby trap they'd set. And at least they'd waited until dark. It did appear that Maggots slowed down at night, coming to a virtual halt in the wee small hours. But crossing the six hundred yards of mound had been scary as hell, even with the bats flying interference. Still.. . it was easier than climbing over it. He'd gotten there. He'd even gotten back.
Now he was going to have to abseil down, into the depths. Shudder. There would be no safety rope, this time. At least there would be no instructor screaming at him to stop being a wimp.
He steeled himself. The descendure had better work or he would be strawberry jam. He leaned back, knuckles white on his rope-clutching hands… Through gritted teeth, he whispered: "Here goes nothing."
He stayed dead still. He forced himself to relax his clutching hands. Still no movement. The problem eventually proved to be getting the oily old hawser-laid rope to go through the descendure to allow him to move at all. His previous experience had been on a smooth, braided-perlon sheathed rope. The descendure the rats had designed for him made the twisted rope twist more below him. That formed knots he had to spin loose before he could go down at all. His slow descent gave him plenty of time to observe his environment. He was pretty sure this was an air shaft. Little tunnels gave off it at ridges which were probably floor levels.
By the time he got down, the rest of the crew were in foot-stamping impatience. The galago had descended by calmly climbing down Chip's rope, regarding the cursing human en route as a sort of slow-moving rest stop.
"Right. Where now?" Chip didn't want to think about the plan for getting back up. Not so soon after that descent!
"Are you sure you wouldn't be liking to stop for nice cup of tea then? Or maybe a nap?"
Chip was in no mood for sarcasm. "Shut up, Siobhan. Where do we go? Back to the food chamber?"
"Oh, but we need to go back up two levels," said the galago.
Chip missed.
They crept along as silently, Bronstein acidly informed them, as a herd of dancing elephants. The galago had led them up one spiral ramp when the inevitable happened.
Either the Maggot was coming down anyway, or it had heard something.
Bronstein waved them back. They retreated into a side passage.
Scritch, scritch, scritch. It kept coming after them. And this was a dead end… some kind of adobe-closed store chamber. Nobody breathed. Then the galago gave a sudden squeak and skittered away up the wall.
There was a thump. Bronstein appeared. "Be using that four-pound hammer to provide us with bit of masonry, Chip. I don't think it saw me. We better fake a natural death for it."
Chip reached up and knocked a spur loose. "Here. But I think the shit just hit the fan. We'd better move it up. Where is that galago?"
"I am here," replied a small voice from the roof shadows. "I was just about to strike when the wonderful Bat Lady beat me to it."
Bronstein lifted a lip.
"Come on, Duke of Plazo-Toro," chortled Fal. "Let's move out."
The galago drew himself up. "What did you call me?"
"That elevated, cultivated, celebrated gentleman, the noble Duke of Plazo-Toro," replied Fal. His voice was perfectly level.
Bronstein shooed them along, flapping her wings. "Move, move, both of you! And leave that Maggot alone, Pistol! They'll smell a rat for sure if the limbs are missing."
At a dogtrot they continued. Fifteen minutes, and another successful circumvention, brought them to the place where the girl was walled in. The galago suddenly bounded ahead and bounced up to the tiny aperture near the roof.
"It is I, Virginia! I have brought the rescue!"
"Oh-Fluff! Dear God, you've been gone so long. I thought you were dead!" The voice on the other side of the wall was young, female, and sounded thoroughly miserable.
"Fluff?" Fal grinned broadly.
Chip was relieved that it hadn't all been a wild goose chase. He was also not mentally prepared to speak to her. He had privately suspected the "princess" would prove to be some ancient-Shareholder-bitch… if there was going to be anyone at all. "Uh, ma'am…"
The reply was a few seconds in coming, as if she was thinking it over. "Is there somebody else out there…? I heard voices. Am I hallucinating? Fluff?"
"Indeed, it is I, Virginia," said the galago with pride and reassuring affection. "Really. Here is my tail. I have brought some brave soliders. We have come to rescue you!"
"Really? You've come to get me out?" There was wild hope in her voice.
"Yes. Really. Please keep it quiet, ma'am," begged Chip. "Here, Don Fluff, push this end of the flexible saw through."
Bronstein took charge of the rest of the operation. "Okay, the rest of you. While Chip saws, I want you rats to get to the corners. Find somewhere to duck out of sight if possible. Siobhan, you and Behan take those passages. I'll take this one, and Eamon and O'Niel can stake out the others between you."
"Bats always get to do the risky work, indade." But Eamon fluttered off to do it readily enough.
The carborundum-toothed saw hissed through the Magh' adobe. It was easier with two of them working-or it should have been. The "princess" kept jerking his fingers against the wall in her eagerness to be free.
"There's a bunch of digger-maggots down in the big passage coming this way," warned Behan.
"They're coming to get me!" The girl's voice sounded on the edge of hysteria.
She probably was, poor kid, trapped in there for God knows how long. Chip looked at the cut. It was about eighteen inches down, by ten inches across. "How far off are those diggers if they're coming here?"
"At least three minutes." Behan, like all bats, was an expert at time estimation.
Chip looked at the cut; turned to the hovering galago. "How big is she?"
The galago gestured with wide arms. "Immense. Compared to me, that is. Humans are overgrown."
"Compared to me, you ass!"
"Perhaps a little taller," said the galago.
"Stand clear in there," Chip whispered into the hole. "I'm going to shoulder-charge this, to see if I can knock it down. Then be ready to run."
He hit it. The wall cracked. His shoulder felt like it had cracked as well. He tried again, and the whole section fell in. The air, already dusty from their sawing, was full of swirls.
Light reflected off heavy-framed glasses. The girl-prisoner had missed a lot of meals, apparently. Her face was muddy and tear-streaked. With her hair pulled back tightly from her angular face, she looked about twelve years old… except that she was distinctly taller than he was. "Quick! Take my arm. We'd better move out."
Eagerly she scrambled through the hole. She was all ragged clothes, thick glasses and long legs. She struggled to get out of the hole, hooked a foot, and fell out into his arms. Chip found himself being hugged fiercely. "Oh, thank God!"
Poor kid. Poor damn kid. "It's all right." She nuzzled into him. He kissed her cheek, gently comforting. Her lips found his. Parted eagerly…
Chip started back in alarm, but she held onto him.
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 18:
The hero's regrets.
THE PIECE OF MASONRY fell. Lumifungus light streamed into her dusty darkness. He stood there framed by the light. A hero. Her hero. He was Heathcliff, Heathcliff-to the life! She climbed out and fell into his arms…
"Will you two stop behaving like rutting rats!" snapped someone. "We've got to move!"
She looked up. Focused with difficulty though her dusty glasses. And screamed. Briefly. Her hero clapped a hand over her mouth.
It was a huge bat, with a wingspan the size of a full arm-stretch. A satanic apparition, black and evil in the eerie tunnel-light. The monster's long canines gleamed white and cruel. She cowered against her savior.
He was quite muscular, she noted with satisfaction. Just like a hero should be, if perhaps a tad on the wiry side. But why was he pushing her away?
"It's only Bronstein," he gruffed. "Come. We don't want to get you captured again."
"But it's a bat! A giant bat!" She shuddered. "Won't it get into my hair?"
He picked up his pack. "Don't call Bronstein an `it.' And I don't know about your hair, but she can certainly get up my nose."
"Stupid humans," muttered-Bronstein?
What kind of name was that, for a monster?
"Call the rats, Chip, we must go."
They began jog trotting down the passage, the hero hurrying her along. Virginia was a bit nonplussed. The hero was called-Chip? What kind of name was that for a hero?
She started at the sight of the cat-sized rats that joined them, but managed to refrain from comment. Now that she thought about it, she'd heard about the rats and bats that humans had bred to fight against the Magh'. These looked like fighters, just in the way they moved. Not just fighters, but battle-scarred and battered fighters. They all wore harnesses, packs and bandoliers. Briefly, she wondered where their leashes were.
Fortunately, they hurried her onwards before she asked.
"And Fluff? Where is Fluff?" Virginia asked anxiously.
The galago leapt onto her shoulder. "I said to you, `never fear, Fluff is here,' mi Virginia. Now we must run, before the Magh' come."
"Hear that girls?" sniggered Pistol. "Don Macho-shrimp is called Fluff!"
Fal laughed. "Heh heh. Fancy a bit o' Fluff on the side, eh, Phylla?"
"Don't you mean a Fluff on the bint?" asked Nym.
"Come on, rats!" said Chip. "Time for that later. We want to get out before the Maggots stir."
The girl looked at him, startled. "But why are we going out? We must still rescue the Professor."
Chip looked her. "No, Miss Muffet. What we've got to do is get the hell out of here. Now."
Virginia gasped. "But… he's my tutor. You can't just leave him here." She stared in fury at Chip.
"Tutor!" Chip laughed. "I'm not surprised you're a bit crazy, having been stuck in there."
She stopped and stamped her foot. She was not used to being disobeyed. She vaguely remembered that the servants used to play mean tricks on her, before… But no one would ever have dreamed of directly countering an order from her. "You WILL go and rescue him now!" she shouted.
He grabbed her shoulder and hauled her onwards. "I will give you a smart slap if you don't shut your face, and get a move on."
She wrenched herself free. "Do you know who I am?"
He lowered his head and shook it, looking like an irritated, if small, bull. "I couldn't give a toss if you are the Queen of Sheba. Or even the Managing Director's daughter, for that matter!"
"Well, that is just who I am," she informed him imperiously.
He snorted. "The Queen of Sheba? Well, get a move on, your royal majesty-or you'll be Maggot-crap."
"I am Virginia Shaw! And you'd better listen to me, you… you
… Vat-born scum!"
He looked into her face, and gave her a crooked-toothed grin. "Oh yeah. Tell me another one, mademoiselle Shareholder." He snorted derisively. "Your teeth are a giveaway, kid. So you're the only Shareholder on the planet with skew teeth."
Virginia tightened her jaws. How could she tell him that before the implant she'd been too impossible about the orthodontic brace? That her parents had given up, when she utterly refused to cooperate. "I am Virginia Shaw," she repeated sullenly. "Ask Fluff."
"I wouldn't trust that little thing's piece of head-plastic to speak my weight," he said dismissively. He tugged on her arm, trying to get her to walk.
She hit him. She'd never hit anyone before. It made a very satisfying swat noise on his cheek and stung her hand.
Then-she was instantly contrite. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But you mustn't insult Fluff. I am Virginia Shaw. Really."
"S' okay." Chip grinned at her. "I wasn't insulting the little fella. Just that alien-built rubbish in his head. Let's at least keep walking."
She swallowed. She definitely wasn't going to tell him there was a soft-cyber chip in her own head. "I know it doesn't look like it, but I truly am who I say I am! We must rescue my tutor."
From his perch on her shoulder the galago supported her. "She is, senor. Is absolutely true. Ask her about Pygmalion House if you do not believe."
"I wouldn't know what that looked like," said Chip. "So she could tell me anything. Good try, little one."
Dejectedly, she said: "It's true, Fluff. I don't look like a Shareholder, do I? I could tell him about Pygmalion House, or Maxims or Chez Henri-Pierre…"
"Ha! Tell me about that. If you can tell me about that I might believe you, indeed." His tone was again derisive.
She decided to ignore the tone and give him the answer. She had to do something. "Well, it has mirrors everywhere, these delicate little tables and spindly little bentwood chairs with velvet cushions."
He looked startled. "What color?"
"The cushions?" He nodded. She thought a moment. "Sort of red-pink. I didn't like it much."
"Cerise," Chip growled. "Hated it myself."
That was startling too. He should have no idea… "How would you know? Vats didn't… I mean…"
He gave a wry, bitter grin. "You mean Henri-Pierre had a `no dogs or Vats' policy. I worked there. Tell me about the food."
She'd swear she'd never seen him before. He couldn't have been one of the waiters or he would surely have recognized her. Her heart fell at the mention of the food. It was always so… fussy. Besides it reminded her just how hungry and thirsty she was. "You haven't anything to drink, have you?"
He slapped his forehead. "I should have thought. Here."
The water in his issue-waterbottle was tepid and silty. She'd never tasted anything so wonderful. "The food all had those long French names. I had the duck breast with mango slices, sometimes. The breasts were cut into this fan. Somehow, some of the slices were slid out to make a butterfly. The mango was cut into a flower around it. It was always so pretty it seemed a shame to eat it."
It was his turn to stop. "I used to do the cutting… my God, you really must be… I heard about it on the radio." He stepped back, away from her. "Hey, Bronstein. Guess who we just rescued."
The bat gave an impatient flutter. "To be sure, some stupid human who wants be caught again. Keep the noise down and keep moving, Connolly."
"It's the arch-enemy, Bronstein. The Company in person. The Goddamn managing director's daughter!" Chip edged away from her.
The bat snorted. "Stop fooling, Connolly. We don't have time," she said impatiently.
Chip shook his head. "I'm not fooling, Bronstein. It's true. She knows Chez Henri-Pierre. And who else would have a fancy talking pet? Think about it."
Virginia had had enough. "When you've quite finished insulting me, can we go and rescue my tutor? NOW!"
The bat spat on the tunnel floor. "Come on, Connolly. Let's get moving."
"Are you going to do what I ordered you to!?" she shouted.
"No. I wouldn't do anything for you even if you asked me nicely. And if you shout again I'll kill you," added the ugly bat, in deadly earnest.
To Virginia's shame, she started to cry.
If she hadn't started to cry, thought Chip savagely to himself, they wouldn't be having a confab in one of the alcoves. A whispered one-way argument instead of running. He should never have comforted her. Let her have her drizzle and get on with it. It was all very well her claiming that she had nothing to do with the Company's policies. That was true, he supposed. Like her claim that the Company had been set up to build a new and better world for humans. That was true, in concept, even if as far as he was concerned, the practice was flawed to hell. But the idea that they couldn't abandon her precious tutor was going to drive him to drink.
He tried patience and a reasonable tone. "Look, kid. We can't. We need to get out of here. I'm sorry but whoever this guy is, it's just too bad."
"Heighdy! Lack-a-day-dee! We're not sticking our noses out to help some old geezer," said Fal, being honest instead.
Neither approach had any effect. She sniffed. "How can you refuse to help one of the Korozhet? They've done so much for us."
Chip was rather taken aback at this, if no more interested in rescue. "Your tutor is one of them? Those pricklepusses?"
She stamped her foot. "Of course he is! Don't you know anything?"
"We must set up a search pattern," said Eamon.
Chip's mouth fell open. The big male bat had been all for summary justice when he found out who she was. Now he was talking about searching. "Are you crazy? We need out of here."
"She says her tutor is a Korozhet. Is that true, little one?" said Eamon-who had insisted on not being out on flutter patrol because he wanted to scotch any plans this vile human might try to get them to agree to.
"Upon my honor, senor, it is," said the galago.
"We'll take the lower passages," said Fal.
"Has that piece of plastic crap in your heads fried?!" demanded Chip furiously. "It's a Korozhet. So what? You're all behaving like they're something great. What the hell have they done since the war started but sit in that ship of theirs?"
"They provided weapons, slowshields and soft-cyber units," snapped Virginia. "Humanity on Harmony And Reason would be history without them!"
He wasn't buying it. "At a price! At a hell of a price! Anyway, we have absolutely zip chance of finding the alien. We might as well get moving and head out, collect chow, and head for the sea."
The galago raised himself up very erect on her shoulder. "You must not insult them like that, or I will challenge you to a duel!" He slouched, slightly. "And I know where the Professor is."
"Oh Fluff! I knew I could rely on you!" Virginia hugged the small primate. "Where is he? We mustn't waste another minute!"
"There are many Magh' guarding him," he said doubtfully.
She clapped a horrified hand to her mouth. "Oh, Fluff! We must rescue him, at once!"
"You are utterly insane," pronounced Chip.
And found himself a voice in the wilderness. For no reason he could understand, all the bats and rats were entirely in favor of the girl's idiotic proposal. Insane!
They followed the galago. He led them up. And up.
"We're nearly at the level where we came in," muttered one of the rats. Their sense of direction was uncanny.
They crossed the wide main passage hastily. There were few Maggots about, but there was no sense in looking for extra trouble.
Just on the far side of the tunnel in the side passage, Melene paused and sniffed. "Mothballs. And diesel. We must be near that booby trap of yours. What did you use the mothballs for?"
"Didn't. You're smelling something else," insisted Siobhan.
"Hush, we are nearly there, senores. Prepare to fight! There were Magh' here in numbers last time."
Pistol twitched his nose. "Doth think perhaps we've got lucky?"
Indeed, they had. There was not a Maggot in sight. "He was in there." The galago pointed to an open chamber.
"They'll have hauled him hence," said Behan gloomily.
"Let's check it out. If he's in there, there'll be Maggots." Chip took out the Solingen. "Stay back, girl."
"I want to help," she said.
Chip restrained her gently. "You'll be in the way. Please… stay out."
She noticed their postures had changed. Suddenly they looked like a very deadly crew. The big bat said: "Okay. Let's go."
Nobody ran. That didn't help with slowshields. They just moved fast.
There was a terrible scream.
Virginia and Fluff ran into the room. The Korozhet, sitting in a shallow bath, shrieked again.
"Professor! It's me! Virginia! We've come to rescue you."
"Eeeeeeeee!!!!!"
"Shut up or I'll knock your goddam spikes in, Pricklepuss!" Chip swung the four-pound hammer in a menacing arc.
The Korozhet at least stopped screaming. "Virginia! Oh, Miss Virginia! I was so overcome with excitement. We Korozhet are so emotional. I could not contain my delight at seeing my saviors! Have you come to rescue me from this terrible torture?"
Chip looked at the alien in its shallow waterbath. How did you tell whether a ball of prickles is in pain? "What's wrong?" He sniffed. The place smelled like the clothes he'd taken from the poor box, before he'd been apprenticed. The smell brought back a flood of unpleasant memories.
"This liquid immobilizes my spikes," the Korozhet explained.
The rats were already trying to lift the alien. He was too heavy for the efforts of Virginia and the rats, and Chip had to give a hand.
Lifting it by the base of two of the hollow spikes was the closest Chip had ever been to one of the aliens. Sure, they'd given the colonists at least a breathing space, and a chance to halfway prepare for the Magh' invasion. They had even visited Chez Henri-Pierre, in the early days, before the war. He, along several of the other kitchen-vats, had risked thick ears from Henri-Pierre to steal a closer glimpse than they'd gotten as part of the cheering crowd at that first Korozhet motorcade.
Like most Vats, Chip had seen the arrival of an FTL ship as the end of the Company monopoly. Hah. When it had arrived the Korozhet ship's engines were apparently virtually still smoldering from their race to beat the Magh'. The ship had lain in state till weeks ago, being repaired. He'd heard over the radio that it had lifted at last. Well, if this Korozhet was here, they must surely be coming back.
He began to help Virginia dry the spines with some cloths that had been piled near the tank. Not much of a critter if it could be trapped by a bowl of water. Still, it seemed to be well-spoken. It also seemed innocuous enough, although he wished like hell it hadn't screamed like that.
"Maggots!" Siobhan called from the entrance. "Maggots coming."
"We've got to run," said Chip to the alien. "Can you move fast?"
"Yes, the Professor is wonderfully fast on his spikes," Virginia informed him cheerfully.
The Korozhet mournfully contradicted. "Alas, not now, Miss Virginia. My joints are still very stiff. Also I have changed sex. I am now female. Please remember that."
Chip grabbed Virginia's spike-caressing arm. "Come on. Take one side. We're going to have to carry it, even if it is a little double-adaptor. The rest of you will have to deal with the Maggots."
It was possibly the most awkward bundle Chip had ever carried. They were sure as hell not going to make good speed like this. Glancing back hastily, Chip saw Eamon dive onto a Maggot-scorp. There was no way they were traveling around the scorpiary undetected any more. "Hell, Crotchet, I'm going to drop you any minute! Stop wriggling those spines."
"I am most sorry. I am trying to get life back into them!" It sounded most contrite. Chip would rather it had just stopped wriggling.
"Down this side passage! Quickly!" called Behan.
They bundled off at right angles. "With any luck Siobhan and O'Niel will lead them straight past!" said Chip, grinning.
"Eeeeeee!!!!!!"
Chip's grin vanished. He menaced the Korozhet with the hammer again. "Shut up! You damn fool creature…"
"Eeeee! The pain. I cannot help it! The pain. My limbs are in agony!"
"Move it up!" The rats staggered into the passage, carrying one of their number. "We didn't shake them. Phylla's hurt."
"Here. Get her into my magazine pocket." Soldiers in this war might have no use for spare magazines, but the uniform trousers still had the big thigh pockets.
"Just a cut." Chip could hear the pain in the rat's voice as she climbed into his pocket.
"Run!" shouted Bronstein.
Chip was taking strain. Looking across at his companion, he saw that she was doing well, comparatively. It wasn't just that the alien was heavy, it was also just so awkward to carry. The spines kept poking into him, and the two he held were constantly twitching. Whatever they'd done to this poor creature must have been hellish.
They were crossing a ramp-bridge, above a Maggot aqueduct and lower roadway. "Try to stop twitching, will you? If we drop you here you'll go splat. And we're both close to dropping you." The creature was stilled.
Looking at Virginia, Chip saw it was a question of whether she dropped her burden or fell over first. Her face was looking transparent, she was so pale.
"I believe I can manage to ambulate now," said the alien cheerily.
They put it down with great relief. Ambulate it could. But damned slowly. They got over the bridge less than twenty yards ahead of the Maggots. Never had bat-placed explosives sounded so sweet as when they took the pylon out of the middle of the bridge.
"Yes. Way to go!" cheered Chip.
It bought them minutes. But the alien was just so damned slow.
"How far? asked Chip. He'd like to kick that prickly football along. In his pouch Phylla gave a slight groan.
"Quarter of a mile, more maybe," replied Bronstein. "We've just passed the booby-trapped wall."
"I'm buggered. Gonna drop the rest of this fertilizer."
"There's a hole. Drop it into that." Bronstein waved a wingtip.
Chip didn't argue at this stage. He just did as she told him. Twenty-five pounds lighter, legging it was less of a strain.
"There are some ahead of us!" someone cried.
"And they're closing in behind us. But not for long." Bronstein held a detonator trigger-bar in her claws.
"I'll get the ones in front." Chip groped in his pocket for Fal's lighter while sorting out the hose of the backpack sprayer. He ran out in front, ripped the backpack off, and rammed the pressure plunger up and down. He realized he wasn't going to have time to get it on again. With a shaking hand he flicked the lighter, and pulled the trigger. The flame-torch was just in time. Grabbing the backpack by the straps he took off after the fleeing maggots.
"Run, you fuckers, run!" It was good to be on the chasing end for a change.
Behind, the bats triggered their booby trap. Hah! It was all going like clockwork! Chip brandished his torch, pointing upwards and forwards with the triumphal flame. A thin trickle of alcohol ran down the metal pipe. A little flame followed it.
Chip shook the pipe hastily before the fire got to his hand, suddenly remembering he must keep the flame nozzle pointed down. The little tongues of flame went out. Then the flames leaped back again. They were very little flames and mostly followed the drips, so long as he held the pipe slightly below horizontal. The homemade flamethrower was working really efficiently now, the flame-tongue at least six feet long.
WeeeeWOOOOOMH!!
The hammered-in spray-gun nozzle exploded out of the brass pipe. It ricocheted off the next bend in the passage thirty yards away. A huge gout of eyebrow-singeing flame leapt down the passage after it. Before, the alcohol had merely been atomized and burning. Now the small flames had vaporized the stuff inside the pipe. Chip dropped it and danced away from the flames still coming out of the pipe. The backpack was wet with alcohol…
"Back off! RUUUNNN!" He suited action to the words.
The heat still licked at his back. Chip swore. It was all his own fault for thinking it could go like clockwork. In combat, battle plans are by definition screwed. If the enemy didn't mess it up for you, then you did it for yourself. Brilliantly synchronized movements were great for dance companies. Of course getting to the break-out point they'd set up to mislead the Magh'-with the enemy cooperatively doing just what they were supposed to do-had been doomed from the start.
They came back to the caved-in section where the bats had set their "distraction" booby trap. There was a dusty hole through the wall, and the ground underfoot was pure mud. The explosion had resulted in at least one crushed Maggot. A limb twitched at them. Typically, a rat bit through the joint-tissue, and thrust the leg into his pack-straps.
"Through here," called Fal. They slithered up the muddy slope and out of the narrow lumifungus-lit tunnel into a huge hall full of long tanks. The nearest tank was leaking, obviously cracked in the blast. A group of Maggots with large hairy paddle-palps were frantically milling around the crack, trying to stop the crack with their paddles. Their entire attention seemed focused on it. Despite this, Virginia stopped dead at the point where the new adit opened into the hall.
"Go!" Chip pushed.
"I can't," she said, fear in her voice.
Chip could see why. The creature in her way had obviously escaped from a tank-it was alternate rows of tentacles, pincers and spines. And big evil eyes.
The Korozhet flicked the thing aside with a spine. Chip was justifiably grateful.
The Maggots were a lot more interested in their problem with the tank than with a fast leaving bunch of aliens. The newcomers dogtrotted warily past them without any obvious moves from the paddle-palps. The bats scouted ahead as they moved down the long hall full of tanks. Big hungry eyes gazed from the weedy water of the tanks. Occasionally a tentacle would wave from the water.
"You okay, Phylla?" Chip asked when he had the breath.
"I've stopped the bleeding." The rat-girl's voice was subdued. "But I think I've lost half my tail too."
That was serious. Not only was the tail a major part of the rat's balance, but it was a rat's sex symbol, the equivalent of nice legs, a large bust… or well-filled trousers to a human. Chip guessed the rat-girl would rather have lost a limb or an eye.
"That trick of yours with the flamethrower may have turned out for the best," said Eamon, grudgingly. "We've come out nearly at the place we set the charges. No Maggots in sight. All we've got to do is go up a level. Then across six hundred yards and we're out."
The Korozhet sighed. "You'll have to leave me, good human, Miss Virginia… my spines can take no more. Leave me. Save yourselves."
Virginia was shocked. "But we can't leave you."
"Indeed you must! Save yourselves," said the alien, nobly.
Chip looked at Prickles. Carrying it like they had before would slow them down terrifically. He pulled his shirt off, ripping a button in his haste. He tied the two sleeves together, then cut two slits into the material near the tail. He laid it on the ground. "Get onto that, Crotchet."
The Korozhet twitched spines at him. "I do not understand…"
"Just do it!" shouted Chip, pulling the hammer from his belt loops. Whether it understood, or was intimidated, the Korozhet complied. "Right. Now we've got a stretcher, let's go. Take the sleeves… Miss Shaw."
For the first time since they'd rescued the Korozhet, they were able to really get a move on.
"Maggots coming!" shouted Siobhan.
They legged it. At first the Magh' gained on them. Then they began to drop back. "Unfit, these Maggots," said Melene.
"They cannot run for long. They respire through booklungs, which are less efficient than yours," the carried Korozhet explained. "They accumulate oxygen in the respiratory system slowly during normal sluggish movement, and use it rapidly in bursts of speed."
Bronstein fluttered in front of them. "Here we are, comrades. Up. .. Where are you rats going?"
"Span a bit of wire," said Nym. "There is a narrowing back there around that last corner."
Doll sniffed. "If we go up one layer, up that air flue…"
"Take this cord up, bat. We'll have to haul the Korozhet."
Virginia looked at the narrow hole in the wall. "We go in there?"
Chip pointed. "In there and up. Somehow. See that hole there? That's full of explosives."
Siobhan came along, shooing rats. "For what are you still waiting then? Up! Up! Eamon has already started the timer. We've got barely a minute now."
The galago bounced off her shoulder and across to the far wall. "Come, Virginia, mi gorgeous, it is easy."
With obvious trepidation she entered the hole, putting a foot across onto the far wall, into the hole Chip had punched with the cold chisel. Chip followed. He edged up the flue, his back on the inner wall, his feet braced against the outer, and a long way down between his knees. It was not sweet, knowing that a detonator was ticking away inside the hollow-block wall underneath his feet. If he moved fast, he'd fall. If he didn't move fast, he'd fly. He crawled out onto the next level with relief. Virginia was already trying to haul up the shirt bundle with her precious Korozhet tutor in it. Chip added his muscle to the task, and, accompanied by bats, the Pricklepuss arrived.
"Move!" shouted Bronstein. Twenty-five seconds later the side wall of the tunnel blew out.
He could see darkness out there. The floor behind them had cracked too, and fallen in to within ten yards of them.
"Phew! That was too damn close. Let's go," said Chip.
"Not so fast. First, Nym, give Chip that Maggot-leg. Can you cut overshoes, Chip? Then we can travel without a scent trace."
"Let's try the flexible saw on the stuff."
It was easier to cut than Magh' adobe. Virginia was nearly sick when he thrust pieces of meaty Maggot-leg over her hand-tooled expensive leather shoes. There was no time to clean the stuff out first. If Chip had looked at those shoes first instead of her ragged clothing, he would have been a lot quicker to believe she was Virginia Shaw.
He stood up. "Right. All aboard."
The rats chose to cling to him rather than her… except Melene, who ignored Virginia's involuntary shudder and climbed up to the opposite shoulder from Fluff. Why miss an opportunity?
"Right." Bronstein fluttered in front of them. "Siobhan and Behan will run interference for you. Eamon, O'Niel and I are off to sow a bit of confusion along the way we're supposed to have gone. We'll see you back at the farmhouse."
Chip shook his head."Not more bombs?"
Eamon pulled a face, somewhat improving his gargoyle looks. He held out a bag in one foot, gingerly. "Worse! Rat droppings."
Virginia had never realized how sweet the feeling of the night wind on her face could be. She couldn't believe that they were out and free! She could feel the lessening in the tension with the sudden tired-voiced banter among her rescuers.
"No more explosions! I don't understand why you bats are so set on bangs when you never have any," said a rat from the moonlit darkness.
"We're not sex obsessed like you rats," said a bat loftily, from above.
"But you do reproduce sexually," said the odd rat with the wire frame glasses. "It is in my medical datafile. Once a year, and you practice sperm storage."
This produced a stunned silence from the rats for a few moments. Virginia found herself stifling a giggle. Then the one-eyed one said, "I've a theory why bats think once a year is enough. It's the hanging upside down. Don't get enough blood to their privates to shag."
"No blood to the brain is what you rats have!" snapped a bat-voice. That was the female one that Virginia had come to realize was called Siobhan.
The plump rat beside her chuckled and strutted in the moonlight. "Why would we want our brains engorged and swollen?"
The badinage continued as they stumbled their way across the war-and-Magh'-ravaged landscape.
"So tell me about this sperm storage," piped one of the other rat-girls. Melene, Virginia thought. She was getting better at distinguishing the odd synthesizer voices. "Does that mean you can have an instant poke whenever you feel like it, Siobhan?"
The walls of the ruined farmhouse loomed out of the darkness. Two minutes later the party was in the tasting room.
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 19:
Military Intelligence: an oxymoron.
FITZHUGH STOOD WAITING in the antechamber of General Cartup-Kreutzler's office, a sheaf of painstakingly prepared analyses and reports in his hand. The large-busted blond receptionist at the desk was doing her best to ignore the tall scarfaced intelligence officer. Conrad Fitzhugh was prepared to bet she'd never worked so hard in her life as she did while the intelligence officer was doing his weekly champ at the waiting-bit. Well, she could have been worse off. He'd wanted to report daily. Then she might have had to learn to type.
Fitzhugh knew that his "promotion" to the hallways and offices of Southern Front HQ had been punishment for offending the powers-that-be. Besides that, it got rid of an embarrassment to his fellow officers. His piece of the front-line hadn't been pushed back when theirs had.
When he'd been injured, his commanding officer had seized the opportunity to be rid of him. Still, Military Intelligence was a unit with a purpose, General Cartup-Kreutzler had assured him when he'd arrived. He knew that now. The purpose of this department was to take the shit when anything went wrong.
Major Fitzhugh was a rare Shareholder. He'd volunteered for active service. He had actually gone through boot camp with a sea of Vat conscripts for three whole weeks, before a shocked camp-commander had come and personally hauled him out and sent him to Officer Candidate School. Even that hadn't stopped Fitzhugh from getting a front-line posting, where he was supposed to be conveniently fragged or get killed by the Magh'. When he'd failed their expectations, they'd "promoted" him here.
A hearty laugh came from behind the general's door. The beautiful relic-of-Earth polished oak door opened, revealing the joyous sight of the general affably slapping the shoulder of a brigadier with a large curling handlebar moustache. "Heh, heh! I must remember that one, Charlie, old boy. `And the Vat said…' Ho, ho! Jolly good. I must remember that one."
The general caught sight of the waiting major and his expression turned to one of distaste. With pride Fitzhugh successfully kept a poker expression while saluting.
"I'll be seeing you, Charlie. Come in, Major Fitzhugh." The general's tone of voice shifted between the thought of a pleasant afternoon's golf and root-canal work in the span of two short sentences.
The major went into the sumptuous office. It always struck him that Carrot-up put up with the army, but really yearned for cavalry. The gilt-framed horsey pictures that lightened the rich maroon wallpaper certainly showed where the general's interest lay. There was enough expensive horsey-leather hung about the place to start a tack shop. A very exclusive tack shop.
A willowy captain in an elegant tailored uniform leaned an idle elbow on a tasseled velvet-upholstered chair. Although it was just ten-thirty in the morning, the room reeked of whiskey and cigars. Fitzhugh hoped like hell the ambience wouldn't make Ariel sneeze. The decanter and glasses on the acres of gleaming desk bore mute evidence to a hard morning's war-planning.
"The week's intelligence reports, sir." Fitzhugh attempted to hand them to the general.
"Don't give them to me, for God's sake. Give them to Captain Hargreaves. Why you can't just leave them with Daisy, I don't know." The general flopped into his leather-upholstered lounger.
The captain reached a languid hand for the dun folder. Fitz gave him the full benefit of the bad side of his face. With sudden insight, Fitz realized he must have looked like that once. Tall. Blond. Blue-eyed. Features carvedly aquiline and aristocratic.
Bah. Wet tissue paper.
In the glare of Fitzhugh's arctic gaze the aide wilted. The reaching hand pulled back.
"I must discuss certain aspects of this with you, sir," said Fitz.
"Oh, you must, must you?" demanded the general mockingly.
Fitz chose to ignore the sarcasm. "Yes, sir. I must. Satellite imaging shows that the concentration of Magh' troops in sector Delta 355 has diminished. This is the ideal time…"
The solidly larded general stood up. He was as tall as Fitzhugh. He pulled the painstakingly prepared reports from the major's hand; tossed the dun folder into a scatter of mixed papers on the floor in the far corner; and then turned his back on the intelligence officer.
Fitz wondered if his knuckles or the shaft of the bangstick would go first. Carrot-up had him pegged perfectly. He would not give in and stab the man in the back.
The general turned around. "Now hear this, Major who is on the verge of becoming a captain. You presume too much. Understand this. You do not ever again presume to advise me on military matters. You have no grasp of military strategy and your opinions are of no interest or value to high command. Your job is to organize the data the Korozhet's probes bring to us. That's all. Do I make myself clear?"
Fitz restrained himself. He didn't scream "but it's a lot of fucking crap!" His one disciplinary hearing to date had been for daring to question Korozhet data. Events had proved him perfectly correct, and the Korozhet data misleading, but that had been beside the point to the tribunal. "Sir."
"As for that withdrawal, I've already been informed. It is a feint. Since Shaw's death I have been given the honor of having a Korozhet adviser myself. Now, pick up those pieces of paper and give them to Daisy on your way out. Hargreaves, you and I must get on with planning that parade to celebrate our Korozhet allies' return after their victory over that sneak attack by those other aliens. What are they called again, Hargreaves?"
"Jampad, sir," responded the captain, making no move to assist Fitz.
"That's it. Imagine if we'd had to fight off another bunch of damned aliens? Go on, Major. Get on your bike. Leave that folder with Daisy on your way out."
"Sir." Fitz hated to beg. But there were men, rats and bats he'd fought beside, whose lives were riding on this. "Please read it, sir."
The general sighed. "I'll get Hargreaves to read it and give me a summary. But, Major, stop deluding yourself that you have a grasp of military strategy. You should do some reading on the subject. We have excellent field officers to deal with little troop movements. Chaps like Brigadier Charlesworth, who was here just before you came in. People with more know-how about tactics and strategy in their pinkie fingers than you have in your whole body."
"Very well. I'll do some reading, sir," said the major, in the flat even tone that might have made wiser men than the general wary.
But, a small part of his mind reasoned: The useless bastard might just have hit on something. Someone, somewhere must have had to deal with this situation before. And thinking about that beat thinking about that stupid son of bitch, Charlesworth. The brigadier, according to one of the analyses of losses in that folder, was possibly the worst commander on the front. And that was out of an amazing collection of incompetents.
"Do that. Now get along with you."
And Major Conrad Fitzhugh had to obey.
On the way past he put the folder on the general's receptionist's desk. She chewed gum at him.
"'Tis exactly as I said." The rat in his magazine pocket didn't even stick her nose out. "We'll have to do it my way."
"There has got to be another alternative," said Fitz grimly. "Sure, we'd get away with it-once."
"Well, I am still going to sneak in tonight and piss in his whiskey decanter. Try and stop me."
The scarring had done all sorts of things to Fitzhugh's facial muscles. When he smiled now, he looked like an incoming shark. He didn't smile often. It tended to frighten the hell out of people. The two idling typists in the corridor suddenly found good reason to get back to work. "I could withhold your chocolate."
A loud sniff came from his pocket. "You don't love me anymore."
Fitz raised his eyes to heaven. Inescapable female logic! Still, since she'd lost her tail, Ariel needed constant reassurance. "Of course I do."
"Then I want chocolate. Now."
"You'll have to settle for a piece of cheese."
"Don't want cheese! That's an arrant stereotypical slander. I'm an insectivore. Not a dairy-productivore." Another sniff, more like a snuffle. "If you really loved me, you'd give me liqueur-chocolates all the time."
"You'd pop."
"I know. But 'twould be a wondrous way to die!"
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 20:
A stairway to Valhalla.
"NOW I FINALLY UNDERSTAND what Hegel really meant," Doc said quietly. He adjusted his pince-nez and then, in a slight singsong, recited: " `Spirit conceived in the element of pure thought is meaningless unless it also becomes manifest in something other than its pure self and returns to itself out of such otherness. The Absolute is a relation of pure love in which the sides we distinguish are not really distinct. But it is of the essence of Spirit not to be a mere thing of thought, but to be concrete and actual.' "
He began to adjust his pince-nez again; but, instead, simply took them off and wiped his snout wearily. "It was too late. Without surgery it was always too late. Even with it, too late by hours."
The group standing around Phylla's still body were all silent.
Then Nym sighed. "Out, out, brief candle. Well, I suppose I'd better go and fetch some brandy. Or would anyone prefer some wine?"
"You're going to get drunk?" Siobhan's voice rose to a squawk of outrage.
Doc nodded. "Of course. The observance of rites for the dead are what set us apart from the animals."
"But that is to behave like animals, indade!" Eamon sounded genuinely appalled.
"Methinks if we behaved like the animals we came from, we'd eat her," replied Fal reasonably. "Besides, I thought you'd be in favor of a wake. It is a fine Irish tradition."
"It is?" This obviously made a strong impression on a bat who felt himself to be, among other things, heir to the mantle of De Valera.
Fal nodded vigorously. "You don't have to attend, but not to do so is a mark of scanty respect for the dead."
Even Bronstein was caught half-cocked. "But is not our custom.. ."
"It is ours," said Pistol with finality. "And our Phylla was first and foremost a rat."
Virginia sidled up to Chip. "What are they doing to that dead rat?" she whispered, staring in fascinated horror.
"Laying her out. Maybe not the way we humans would understand it, but the way a rat would." Chip's tone was very dry. "Phylla would have appreciated it. Sort of a rat joke."
"What do I do?" she whispered, unable to stop looking at the bizarre rite.
"Well, you can behave like a typical good little Shareholder, look disgusted at the antics of the proles and go off and sleep somewhere. Or you can stay and pay your respects. She only died because she went to rescue you and that smelly Pricklepuss." Chip walked away, leaving her between anger and tears.
"Are you sure I have to drink this filthy stuff?" Eamon eyed the glass of colorless brandy with extreme suspicion.
Nym nodded. "Phylla would have appreciated it. Some with each toast. It's tradition."
The bat looked wary. "Toast? Are you going to cook her…" the bat shuddered, "and then eat her? Or do you mean drink a toast? And since when is it tradition?"
"As far back as anyone can remember," came the sententious reply from Fal.
"About six months," added Nym. "We didn't have soft-cyber implants before that, so no clear memories. And now hush. Pistol is about to start the toasts."
The one-eyed rat raised his glass to the dead. "Phylla was as near to a wife to me as we rats have. I chose her because she was the best screw in boot camp 301. Ask anyone in Alpha Company."
"To the best bonk in boot camp!" The rats raised their glasses and drank. Except for the one-eyed rat. He took his glass and poured some into the mouth of the deceased.
Eamon watched in horror. " 'Tis debauched and debased you rats all are. Just like that rat was in life!"
"Hear, hear! Well said! What a fine eulogy! Go and give her a drink then."
The big bat looked stunned. They weren't joking. He flapped over to the corpse. "To the rat that propositioned even me." He poured some of the firewater into her mouth. At least it got him out of drinking some of the stuff. All round the circle rats cheered and drank. "To the rat-girl that even propositioned a bat!"
Standing next to Eamon, Pistol sniffed. Wiped his long nose with a paw and said, thickly, "Thank you, bat. I'd forgotten about that. You know, you're not a bad fellow for a bat." He sighed. "Such a lovely corpse did you ever see!"
Fal began to tell a story about Phylla, which, were it true, would have frightened Casanova and Don Juan into early retirement and made Dicey Riley look like a temperance union member.
Chip looked at the late-Chairman's daughter. She was still standing there. Red as a beetroot, with eyes nearly as wide as her Fluff's. But she'd stayed. And she managed to take a small sip from the glass with each toast. Well. She had more steel in her than he'd thought. He walked over to her. "Have you got your toast ready?"
"Me?" she squeaked.
"Yes, you, Miss Chairman's daughter. They'll be very insulted if you don't. I notice Pricklepuss has sloped off."
"Will you stop calling me that! I can't help who my father was. And I'd better go and see that the Professor is all right."
"Siobhan had a word with him, I mean her, on her way out. She'll have told him, her, it, not to go too far because of the booby traps. The alien'll be fine here. This place is safe enough. And at least you had a father."
"If you could call him that! I would have given anything for a real father, a father who loved me. Even after-" She fell silent, not wanting Chip to know about her own soft-cyber implant. The bitter thought never passed her lips. A real father would have cared for me even after a horse-riding accident left me brain damaged. My father might have had all the means in this world, but he didn't give me the only thing I wanted in those blurred days.
"All of us Vat-kids wanted that too," Chip said sourly.
"You had that! You had fathers or mothers who cared enough, dreamed enough to send their children twenty-four light-years to found a new utopia, away from the interference and bureaucracy of Earth." Even as she said it she realized she was echoing her father.
"The tissue donor wasn't my father. He was myself. And if this is Utopia for anyone but Shareholders, then I'm a rat's backside."
She pinched her lips together. Then she said, "Anyone can become a Shareholder, Connolly."
He snorted. "Not in my lifetime. Now pay attention. Melene is about to finish her toast. I reckon Pistol will call on you or Bronstein to say something next."
"But I don't know what to say!"
"How gutless and ineffectual can you be?" snapped Chip, cutting her to the core. "Think of something. She died to keep your Professor alive."
"-on the bar counter in the enlisted-rats pub. Three of them!"
The rats cheered. Even a few of the bats did.
"I'll just ask Don Fluffy to say a few words," said Pistol.
The tiny galago rose magnificently to the occasion. "She was a symbol so sexy! And also of an appetite the most insatiable-magnifico! too magnifico!-and a tail so enticing and enchanting." Fluff planted one little hand over his heart and waved the other about dramatically. "Yet! She was a heroine-of courage the most great!-and her heart was as big as a lion! In my dreams she will dance for me, the dance of the extreme privacy. My machogalagohood is rampant at the very thought-but my heart is rent! Torn in my breast!" He began plucking at the fur on his chest. "Ai! Woe is me!"
"Well shed, little one," O'Niel said thickly. "As foine as a bat she were in that last fight." Hiccup. "Calls for shong, me boyos! `Wrap the bat-wing round me boys…' " He fell off the perch he hung from. Brandy was something the bat had never met before. But nonetheless the bats began to sing, "Wrap the bat-flag round me boys, to die is far more sweet, with batdom's noble emblem, boys to be my winding sheet…"
The bats couldn't sing very well. But they sang with feeling. The rats even joined in. And sang along with "We shall Overcome," "The Rifles of the IRA," "Solidarity Forever," "A Nation Once Again," and their own version of an old Scots favorite:
"We were bought and sold for Company gold,
Such a parcel of rogues is a nation…"
Virginia found herself sobbing quietly, and joining in the chorus of songs she'd never heard before. Outside of books this was her first encounter with the emotions of real-people. She found herself singing the words with fervor, even though she barely understood them. When Pistol called on her it was not hard at all to go forward, and simply embrace the dead rat, tears streaming down her face. The fiery brandy was a libation freely given and a prayer for forgiveness.
"We should give her a send-off fitting of a bat," said Eamon thickly to Pistol and Chip.
"She was a rat, all rat. Not a bat."
"Indade, 'twould have to be some thing a rat could appreciate too. A low joke. But she died like a true bat even if she was a rat."
"I'd like to have buried her under a pile of dead Maggots, to take with her for travel-food," growled Chip. "And good bottle or two for the road."
"Why don't we do just that?" mused Bronstein slowly. "What would you say if we gave her the explosive send-off of a bat, with a booby trap rigged so she takes a fair number of Maggots with her. With a couple of quarts of alcohol so she burns along with them."
Melene, swaying slightly, joined them. "I'd say it would be a fine and fitting send-off!"
Pistol nodded. "Heh. She'd have loved it. And it would take a fair number of the blue-bottle rogues with her. Where are we going to do it?"
Bronstein, as always, had been thinking ahead. "On the other side of the mound. That'll help the Maggots to believe we're heading in the opposite direction. We'll fly her body over. If you can rig us some kind of harness, Chip? Somehow we can spread the load between all of us."
Chip looked across at a plumpish bat sitting on the floor with a wing around Doll's shoulders, a glass in the other wing-claw and the bat version of "The West's Awake" on his lips. "Do you think O'Niel is fit to fly?"
Midmorning, and Chip's sleep was disturbed by a distant explosion. So. Phylla had some Maggots for the road on that long staircase to Valhalla. The way those bats used explosives she was probably a fair way up that road already. And it would buy them some time.
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 21:
A joint misunderstanding.
VIRGINIA WAS GAZING out at the high ridges of the Magh' mound that hemmed them. Chip, standing a few feet behind and to the side, studied her for a moment. He was beginning to realize that the girl-young woman-had the sort of looks that grew on you. On him, anyway. Now that she was not frantic with fear, her face was more very-pretty-elfin than gaunt. And while her figure was tall and slender, it was most definitely female. Almost uncomfortably so, in fact. He did not need to get himself She must have become aware of him watching her. She turned to him. "Last night I thought we were out. But we're just as trapped, aren't we? Trapped between those." She pointed at the mounds.
"So we go over the top," he said, with an easiness he did not feel. "I've been over the top of that one. Or maybe we'll go through. We've been through, too. Thirty-two more humps and we're at the sea."
"The sea!" She seemed aglow at very idea.
"Yep."
"That's so romantic!" she said, dreamily. "The sea… and freedom!"
He realized she had a hand on his arm and was staring into his eyes, her head slightly tilted to one side. He reacted like a man who has just found a rattlesnake in his path. He backed off, and kept backing. "Uh. Got stuff to do."
He retreated to the workshop, where he found Nym fiddling and Doc contemplative. He was relieved it wasn't Fal. But Nym was good value, for a rat.
"I've got a problem, guys."
Doc nodded. "The human condition is problematic."
"It's worse than a human problem, Doc," said Chip, despondently. "It's a woman problem."
Doc squinted at him. "Preposterous. How can there be a problem between thesis and antithesis? Simply resolve it with a synthesis, which in this case is obviously-"
Chip scowled fiercely. "Thanks, Doc! With friends like you, I don't need enemies." He turned to the other rat in the workshop. "Nym, that woman is driving me crazy!"
The big rat looked up from his oily fiddling. "They like to tease, to fain disinterest. But she fancies you, Chip."
"Disinterest!" Chip buried his head in his hands. "She can't keep her effing hands off me. She paws at me."
Nym was distinctly puzzled. "Well, what is the problem then? If it's lessons you need, Fal's your man… Mind you, I'd have thought that Dermott gave you sufficient instructions. She used to call them out loud enough for the rest of us to appreciate."
"Will you leave Dermott out of this?" Chip's voice had a dangerous edge to it.
"Surely. I did but mention her gentle instruction." The rat grinned.
"I don't know why I bothered to speak to you," muttered Chip, turning to leave.
The rat took his sleeve with an oily paw. He pointed with his nose to an oilcan-armchair. "Tell us, Chip."
"You wouldn't understand."
"You'd be surprised," said Nym.
That was true enough. He had been surprised by Nym before. "Okay. Well, do you understand the concept `fraternizing with the enemy'?"
Nym looked at him quizzically. "Giving the naked weapon to a Maggot?"
Chip smothered a snort. "That… wasn't quite what I meant. Um. But say I was doing that. You'd say I was a traitor, right?"
The big rat snorted. "I'd say it was a dead Maggot, or you're in grave danger of… coming short." Nym clutched reflexively. Doc grinned.
"Besides, I have seen excretory orifices on them but no reproductive organs," said Doc, pushing the pince-nez back on his nose.
"You haven't gone strange on us and want to bugger Maggots have you?" Nym asked warily. "We haven't been under shell-fire for days. What does this have to do with Dermott or that Virginia Shaw?"
"As far as I'm concerned, the enemy aren't just the Maggots," said Chip fiercely. "Look at it this way. Why the hell do you think we're conscripts? A good kid like Sandy Dermott is dead, instead of back at school, but `Miss Virginia Shaw' is living it up in her mansion, eating at Chez Henri-Pierre, having a good life? We're cloned cannon fodder to the goddamn Shareholders. And then she has the cheek to say, as if butter wouldn't melt in her mouth: `Anyone can become a Shareholder.' Oh, yeah. I can buy a basic share as soon as I'm debt free. All I've got to do is pay off the cost of turning me from a tissue scrap to human, and of educating me into cannon fodder to die for them. Which would take me the rest of my life, even assuming I don't get killed in the war."
"You could be worse off. Such conditions are relative. You could be a rat, created for a war in the Company laboratories." Doc stretched himself out, leaning against the tractor's wheel.
Chip thought about this. "And how do you feel about that?"
"Philosophical. If there was no war there'd be no rats… or bats. But that is the nature of we short-lived creatures. Though the bats find it a bone of sore contention."
Nym got back to the point. "So if I understand this right, you don't want to prong this wench because she's Company."
"Yep."
The big rat grinned. "But you do, because you're as lecherous as a monkey."
Chip looked embarrassed. "Uh. I'm not used to being chased. Hell, I'm not much to look at. I've never had to fight a girl off before."
Nym wrinkled his forehead. "So why do so? 'Tis not hurt you'll be doing to yourself."
Chip blinked. "Because… it'd be treachery to Dermott. Besides, if we ever get out of here, the Shareholder's dear family would see me going over the top, on my own, at a ten thousand Maggot charge, just for touching her. She doesn't understand. To her it's just a game. Something to idle away the time. Nothing to it but a quick bit of amusement."
Nym scratched his long nose. "Your Dermott is dead. And you humans make life hard for yourselves by not having a rattish outlook on life."
She was puzzled by his reactions. She knew she wasn't very pretty, but there wasn't a lot of competition. And he was the most heroic man she'd ever met. Not that she'd been allowed to meet many men…
But Virginia had decided. He was her beau ideal! She'd have to make him notice her, at least. He'd called her gutless and ineffectual. Well, she'd show him that she wasn't. He seemed to like that bossy bat. So, if that was what he wanted…
She went inside and found several bleary-eyed rats and bats eating. "Right, let's get moving. We've got a long way to go before we reach the sea. Bat, I want you to organize the food into manageable parcels."
The silence was absolute. The array of bats and rats looked at her. She'd assumed Chip must be in the alcove. Now she realized that he wasn't.
Fal leaned back and put his paws behind his head. He yawned artistically. "Pistol, tell her I am a trifle deaf."
"I would rather tell her to shog off, Fal." The one-eyed rat put his feet up on the table. "Who do you think you are, wench?"
"I am Virginia Shaw, and I'm a human, rat. And you've got to listen!"
"Oh! Hear that, Fal?" demanded Pistol. "She's a Virgin Shore. Her face hasn't had boat keels up and down it, after all. It must look like that naturally."
Fal snorted. "Are you Shaw she's a Virgin? Mind you, with that homely face and bad complexion…"
"And she reckons she's human. Couldn't be!" Pistol sniggered.
This was all going badly wrong. "You'll do as I tell you!"
"She's got nearly as loud a voice as the Duke of Plazo-Toro," said Fal, with no obvious sign of cooperation. "So where is your ridiculous little fanny-licker, Virgin-ear?"
Pistol laughed coarsely. "Heh. When he's on top, it must be Ridiculous on the Virgin, instead of Virgin' on the Ridiculous!"
Virginia felt herself blushing from the roots of her hair to her toes. She grabbed for Pistol and snatched him up.
Pistol made no attempt to dodge. He just showed a row of sharp teeth, ready to sink into her thumb. "Well," he said conversationally. "Now you've got me. What are you going to with me? You want me to come and sort out that ear of yours, my sweet wench?"
"Screw some sense into her head," said Fal, scratching himself.
"Belike if ever there was a human that would have benefited from a soft-cyber, it's this one," Behan commented.
This was all going wrong! Virginia, to her horror, found herself bursting into tears. Behan's remark had cut right to her heart.
Fortunately, Bronstein intervened. "That's enough! Leave her alone. You let go of Pistol, girl. When you attack something either kill it immediately or incapacitate it so it can't hurt you." The bat unfurled her wings. "Now come," she commanded. "It is high time you and I had a talk. And stop that drizzle, right now."
Meekly Virginia followed after the fluttering Bronstein, leaving the derision behind her-but taking resentment and misery along.
They came to a place that commanded a view across the landscape, an old veranda. The bat hung herself on a trellis wire. "I like to perch here. It allows me to keep an eye out for Maggots. We are still in enemy territory, you know. Now, it's high time someone explained a few facts of life to you."
Virginia looked at her sullenly, wiping the tears away. Then she sat down cross-legged with her back to the wall. "I don't have to listen to you."
Bronstein hissed, showing teeth. "Human brats appear short of a few lessons in elementary survival, never mind manners. Now, listen or I will bite you. It is a lot of silly human ideas that you seem to have about leadership and the right to command. Maybe they work for you humans, although for the life of me I cannot see how. Why who your father was, or how much money you have, should gain you any respect, I myself cannot see. But if that's the system you humans wish to use among yourselves, that is your problem. But here, you are among rats and bats, and respect is earned. Leadership is conferred by those who respect you, not by some piece of metal or cloth or right of birth."
"But I'm a human!" protested Virginia coming up with the age-old defense… which is no defense. "We made you!"
The bat shrugged. "So? We may be artificially engineered creatures, with what Chip calls `head-plastic' in our brains. But it doesn't matter what we came from, it is what we are now. Now for heaven's sake stop trying to push everyone around, especially the rats. You won friends and respect last night. Your arrogance has lost it for you this morning. Just because you're a human, and I have a soft-cyber implant doesn't mean…"
"I've got one too," said Virginia, her voice scarcely audible.
Bronstein was a bat. They can hear crystals grow. She cupped her wings to her ears. "What?"
"I said, I have a soft-cyber implant too."
"But… but… you're human!" The bat nearly lost her grip on the trellis wire.
"Not if you define someone with an implant as not being human. By that definition the rats were quite right. I'm not human. I'm just a piece of head-plastic," Virginia said quietly.
"But…"
"You don't believe me. But it's true," Virginia blurted bitterly. "I was brain-damaged in an accident. My parents thought the soft-cyber implant would make me a good little robot, and no embarrassment to them. But I'm not! I'm a person! I'm still the same person I was before, it's just that I can think again. I am the same… but more."
The bat stared silently at her for almost a minute.
Virginia got up and stared back. "Well. What are you staring at? I know I'm a freak, but you don't have to stare. It doesn't show on the outside."
Possibly for the first time ever, Bronstein sounded apologetic. "No, to be sure, I am staring at the first human being who can really understand that we are neither trained animals, nor cattle for slaughtering in a war. We are people, even if we are not human."
Virginia had never thought of it that way. Even Fluff had just been a clever and beloved pet in her eyes. With sudden insight she realized he wasn't that in his own eyes. She'd bitterly resented the fact that her parents considered her to simply be a less embarrassing talking doll now that she had the implant. She wasn't a doll, and Fluff wasn't a pet.
"Well, this is going to be something to tell the others." Bronstein's tone said she was both delighted and excited by the prospect.
Virginia cringed. "Please don't tell Chip. Please!"
The bat scratched her head with a wing-claw. "Why not?"
This was terribly difficult, Virginia found. More difficult than admitting she had an implant. "Because… because then he'll think that I'm just a talking doll. And I… want him to like me."
The bat nearly fell off her trellis wire again and had to flutter both wings to regain her balance. She shook her black head. "You humans are nearly as bad as the rats. You should be more like bats. Take a longer-term view of things. Connolly! Holy Erin! I mean, he's a decent enough human as humans go, to be sure, but it isn't like his face has interesting and attractive folds. He's rather ugly, to be honest with you, girl. Under that rat's-tail fur his face is quite smooth, I promise."
"Just don't tell him," Virginia begged. "And, um, I don't think he's ugly."
The bat looked the human female up and down. The black crinkled face crinkled some more, in sympathy. "Well, maybe some nice facial folds will still develop. You haven't got many yourself. Anyway, I suppose the important thing is that you like his face. What does he think of yours?"
"Most of the time he doesn't even know I'm alive, never mind notice my face. And the rest of the time he treats me like a bad smell." Virginia twisted her slim fingers.
"Then you must make him notice you." Bronstein, as always, was good at decisiveness.
Virginia grimaced. "That's just what I was trying to do, in there. All I managed to do was to get those two rats to be beastly about my name. And then he wasn't even there."
The bat looked at her with wide, dark eyes. "Why in Erin's name did you think that would impress him? And pay no attention to those foul-mouthed rats. That's just the way they are."
Virginia finally ventured a small smile. "Because he likes you. And that's the way you are."
Bronstein's mouth fell open. "Me? ME!! You think I'm bossy? That's RIDICULOUS, I tell you! I'll not hear such talk!"
"Yes, ma'am. If you say so." Virginia looked down demurely.
They were all gathered together in the tasting room, even the Korozhet, when Chip came back from his long sulk.
Eamon was holding forth. "… so, indade, I reckon we should go through, rather than over. We'll battle to get the Korozhet up and down."
"That is most wise," said Pricklepuss, as if it hadn't nearly got them all killed, and, in a way, been the death of Phylla.
Chip was feeling distinctly otherwise, a common male problem when the testicles are going one way and the mind another. "NO."
"What do you mean `no'? It's decided." Behan's tone was as snappish as the words.
Chip looked at Behan with distaste. Of all the rats and bats, even surly Eamon, Behan was the only one Chip genuinely disliked. The bat was a camp follower if there ever was one. "I mean there is no way I am taking Pricklepuss screaming-mee-meemy on a sneak back through the Magh' tunnels. We go over, and one mistimed shriek or squeak and I'll let go of the ropes."
Siobhan shook her head at him. "Don't be ridiculous, Chip. Tell him, Bronstein."
"I don't want to interfere," said the bat.
Chip almost choked. Bronstein? Not want to interfere? Ha! So she didn't like the idea either. He wondered why she didn't simply ride roughshod over it, then, like she always did.
He decided it must be more bat politics. Chip knew that Bronstein was neck deep in one crazy bat faction, whereas Eamon was a mover-and-shaker in the other. Knowing Eamon, the shaking was probably done with a nice firm grip on someone's throat. Well. Bronstein had backed him up often enough. He'd be glad to be her hired lance for a change.
Chip folded his arms across his chest and said: "You can't do it without me. And I won't do it. And that's final."
Knowing Bronstein was solidly behind him, Chip stood as firm as any pylon, through all the threats, imprecations and cajolery. The truth was that he held the trump cards. Without him to do the camel work, carrying the food, carrying the Korozhet, doing the dexterous work like cutting holes, they couldn't do it. And Bronstein must have wanted his support badly, because, after not saying anything-would wonders never cease?-she fluttered out while the argument raged.
Eventually he won. "Look. We aren't being chased. We can follow the space between the mounds back towards the front. The mounds are much lower there, and not as steep. We can do three a night. The bats can fly the line up-it's thin and light enough for them to carry-the rats and the galago follow, and when they're up, they haul up a decent anchor, and then a rope. Miss Shaw and I climb up, using the rope as a safety line. We'll use those sliding prussik loops-you know, those knots that slide one way, that Nym was telling me about, the ones we didn't need to use getting out last time. Then we haul Old Crotchet up. Lower him down the other side. Easy. Whereas if we cut our way through, we're bound to get caught sooner or later."
Then, just when he'd won, the Crotchet turned the whole thing on its head. "I have been thinking. Miss Virginia, and other good allies in this fight against the vile Magh' scourge, the human male is right. We could escape. But should we? We have within our spines' grasp the most stunning victory. We should not seek to save ourselves, but indeed, strike a blow for our peoples! Never before has a battle-capable group stood within the force field. We can strike at the brood-heart itself! We can strike a brave, heroic blow for Humanity!"
Chip snorted. At least he knew where he stood as to allies. He could just see the bats striking a brave blow for the sake of Humanity. As for the rats, they had a sensible grunt attitude towards volunteering, never mind volunteering for suicide missions. "Oh, that's really a fine idea, Mr. Pricklepuss," he said sarcastically.
"Okay!" piped Siobhan. "So we're all agreed, then?"
Chip was startled to realize she wasn't being sarcastic. Then his startlement turned to outright shock when all the other rats and bats immediately chorused their own support for the Crotchet's loony scheme. For all the world, they sounded like fanatic enthusiasts!
"All right then," he said coldly. He played his trump card. "I'll just go and find Bronstein and tell her that the Korozhet has decreed that we all go on a suicide mission."
He stormed out to find her. She'd put a stop to this nonsense!
Bronstein was on her favorite terrace, peering into the distance. Before Chip could tell her how ridiculous everybody was being, she turned on him. "Do you find me inclined to enforce my will on others?"
Chip grinned. "Yeah. So what?"
"It is a bad tendency in a neo-anarcho-socialist," said Bronstein morbidly. "Down that path lies totalitarianism."
"For foxache, Bronstein! What has got into you now? Sure you boss people around. So what? Has Doc infected you with his philosophical crap? We're in shit and someone's got to make decisions. So you do. Somebody's gotta do it, and you do it pretty well. No one is making us listen to you."
"But do I interfere too much?" asked the bat querulously. She seemed to be seeking comfort from Chip.
But Chip had other things on his mind. "Is piss warm and wet, Bronstein?" he snorted. "Interfering is what you do best-and naturally. Like Eamon thinking of ways to blow things up. He wouldn't be same big stupid bastard if he didn't, and you wouldn't be Bronstein if you didn't interfere. Now can we quit thinking about eternal verities and get you to come and interfere in the insanity that the dumb Korozhet is talking them into now? He wants us to forget escape and go and attack something called the `brood-heart.' "
"The Korozhet said that? I think it is a good idea, then. Like going through instead of over was."
Chip gaped at her. The whole world had gone mad!
The Korozhet used one of her spines to scratch on the dirt. "My species have spent many years studying the Magh' and I too have gained great insights as a captive. I am an academic rather than a warrior, and I know I am too emotional and frail for such exploits, but we must impale the opportunity!"
The alien tapped the diagram. "The Magh' tunnels are built according to a rigid pattern. We know from our victory and conquest of a scorpiary on Korozhet-prime that they are built like this. Each spiral arm has `highways' which follow a central passage to the middle of the scorpiary. Every three hundred and two yit-that is about one point three of your yards to the yit-there is a cross passage and a spiral road leading up and down. The largest of the highways is always just below ground level. If we can follow it, it will lead us to the brood-heart where the Magh' group-mind breeders are."
Virginia shook her head. "Group-mind?"
"Indeed, Miss Virginia. It is one of the things we Korozhet have long suspected, but it was confirmed while they were torturing and questioning me. All the Magh' within this scorpiary are effectively one being. The `head' of that `being' is the breeder-caste."
"Then how come one of you Crochets gave that talk on forces radio saying they were a number of allied species?" demanded Chip. His tone was both skeptical and sarcastic.
The Korozhet was not at a loss for an instant. "This has been an ongoing argument within Korozhet ranks for many years. I can now confirm that the multi-speciesist theory is quite wrong."
"So you're telling us that if we get to the center of the scorpiary, kill the breeder-caste-we win the war. Ha. Tell me another one!"
"No. That might have been true when the Magh' ship landed, but they rapidly began growing new scorpiaries. That is what the long tentacles of conquest do: Seed new brood-hearts. But you will destroy several million Magh' as an effective enemy. Now, your trip to the brood-heart will require that you traverse considerable distance.. ." The alien poked at the diagram.
"Shtupid idea." Pistol was distinctly full of alcohol. But, at least, thought Chip, he'd come to his senses. The idea wasn't just stupid. It was insane. They'd go round in ever-decreasing circles to get to the middle of the scorpiary. Many miles to try and sneak into the group-mind "brood-heart." Of course, they'd be detected. Then, if the Crotchet was right, the whole damn lot would be trying to stop them.
"Hear, hear!" exclaimed Chip.
"Yesh." Pistol blinked owlishly. "Why go round, and round, and round like a whoreson Maggot? Take a short cut!" And with the tip of his tail he drew a straight line across the dusty whorls.
"He's drunk again," sneered Behan. "Never mind being killed by Maggots. If we stay here much longer the daemon drink will have away with those rats." His tone suggested that might be a good thing.
Bronstein, however, looked thoughtful. "To be sure, but he's right though. If we blew down a few walls we could make what looks like a long way…"
"Roughly one hundred thirty-two miles," Virginia put in, looking up from fiddling with the standard issue mini-GPS. Some Shareholder family had the contract… Chip had to acknowledge that the Shareholder-girl was terrifying with numbers. She seemed to have an innate grasp of formulae that made Chip's brain hurt just looking at them.
"Yes. Say one hundred thirty-two miles, to a short distance, say. .."
"Roughly seventeen point two miles."
Chip looked at her in amazement. That's what I call mathematics. How she does it, I don't know. I'd still be here next week counting toes.
The Korozhet tapped the drawing in the dust again. "Taking a short cut is an excellent idea, but unfortunately that is impossible. You do not have sufficient explosives, and even if you did have you couldn't carry them."
Chip smiled nastily at the Korozhet. He still thought the whole idea was nuts, but he couldn't resist the chance to stick it to the snooty alien.
"That's where you're wrong, Crotchet. We've got all the explosive in the world, and we can transport it!"
Eamon looked startled. "Er, Chip, even you and Virginia can't carry that much."
"Would a tractor load do? I'd think that would be enough even for you, Eamon."
Eric Flint
Rats, Bats amp; Vats
Chapter 22:
The gathering.
THE KOROZHET MADE a little humph noise and pointed two of its thick spines at him. "Ridiculous! If you cannot be sensible I shall go back to my rest." Exuding a kind of sea-urchin haughtiness, Virginia's tutor prickle-ambulated out.
Bronstein cocked her head at Chip. Chip reflected, not for the first time, that the gesture was disconcerting coming from a creature hanging upside down.
"That's crazy, Connolly."
Chip stood his ground. "Why is it crazy? Listen, I know you agree with me on this, Bronstein. The way this war has been fought by high command is to use us-rats, bats and Vats alike-as if we were Maggots. Has it worked? Can we can Maggot better than Maggots?"
He glared around at them. "And who's been advising them? The Crotchets, that's who. To hell with what that critter thinks is crazy. I'm telling you this may not work, but-shit!-it'll work better than trying to blunder a hundred miles of tunnels on foot."
They were silent. Chip waited… and then continued. "Think about it. We know Maggots can't run for long. We can outrun them. Well, at least we can for a bit without the Crotchet. We can't keep doing it. But that little tractor can outrun them and we can lug along plenty of explosives and every booby trap you can think of. We can even take Pricklepuss in comfort, faster than we can run with her."
He squatted down and started to draw his own diagram on the floor. "We don't do this like Pistol said. The cross tunnels won't line up anyway. We go as far as we can here between the mounds, blow our way in. We can run down the main tunnel until we find a cross tunnel. Through the interstitial wall, and back onto the main drag. You know Maggots. All of the Maggots in creation will be chasing along behind us, and charging from further inside the mounds to be in front of us. If we do it right, we can come out behind them again. And keep doing it."
"I like it," Nym pronounced. "Besides, I want to ride that thing. Can I drive?"
"Myself I t'ink it a foine idea." O'Niel was the most taciturn of the bats. His support surprised the others.
"To be sure, like all military plans 'tis bound to screw up," said Bronstein gloomily. "They never survive contact with the enemy."
"So what else do you suggest?" asked Chip, trying to be reasonable.
The bat shrugged. Like the head-cocking, the upside-down gesture also struck Chip as weird. "Nothing. We just take plenty of booby traps along, and be prepared for the worst."
"Let's go and have a look at this little tractor again." Eamon swung to wing. "I'm thinking of a fair number of ways to deal with Maggots, given what we've got. And I agree with you, Connolly. Human high command have always fought this war as if they wanted the Maggots to win."
"This is something which my history-download suggests humans have often done," Doc said. "I can only put this down to the intrinsic conservatism of the human intellect, which, in turn, judging from Hegel's remarks on-"
Chip raised his eyes to heaven. "Oh, put a sock in it, Doc."
Fal nudged Pistol. "Do you think he gets girls to let him work his wicked will on 'em by threatening to go on talking?"
The one-eyed rat chuckled. "Or do you think they think all that hot air makes him rise better?"
"Ha, Ancient Pistol," said Fal assuming an attitude of profundity. "He's so windy he probably floats above them."
"It is a good thing no one's sticking a prick into him," cackled Pistol. "He'd whizz around the room."
Fal and Pistol heckled on cheerfully as they walked across to the workshop. Doc, as usual, paid them no mind.
"Are you sure this thing will fit in the tunnels?" Eamon peered doubtfully at the little tractor.
Chip nodded. "Yep. And yep again to the trailer."
Eamon's interest was definitely pricked. "Well, then. Here is some barbed wire… There are many possibilities here." You could almost see more ways of generating mayhem boiling out of Eamon's head as he fluttered around the room.
Chip began to rummage among the pieces of angle iron.
"Why are you doing this?" asked Doc curiously, from a perch on the chain bin. "I know you think that this idea is flawed in concept."
Chip snorted. "I think it is barking insane, never mind flawed. Think about it, Doc. A handful of rat, bat and Vat grunts, and we're going to go and take on a couple of million Maggots. As if that wasn't bad enough, we've got an alien who claims to be `an academic rather than a warrior,' a useless Shareholder girl, and a little big-eyed half-rat-sized monkey as passengers. We should be running and hiding. Doing our best to get out. We've found out all sorts of things about the Maggots that could change the war. We could take flamethrowers to the Maggots… we also know now it is no use trying to trick them, because what one Maggot knows all of them do. Kind of explains why all of high command's `big pushes' have gone spectacularly wrong, doesn't it? And with Shaw's daughter someone might even listen to what we've found out. Instead we're going on this suicide plunge. A mission that can't work."
The rat looked thoughtful, wrinkling his forehead. "Then why have you not decided to go your own way?"
Chip rolled the front wheel of the little tractor up to the axle hub. "Why are you going along, Doc? You sound half crazy spouting that Hegel stuff, but I've noticed there is some good sense underneath it all."
Doc thought over his reply for some time. "Hegelian philosophy contains the essence of logical thought," he mused. "But I do this.. . because I feel compelled to do it."
"If you ask me, that Crotchet-built crap in your head isn't working properly. Well, if we're gonna do this, then let's do this so that the tractor at least works. Pass me that spanner."
"Virginia, this is no occupation for a gentlegalago!" Fluff rubbed his pinched fingers and stared balefully at a pair of pliers nearly bigger than himself.
Virginia could sympathize. She'd never worked with wire before. Her hands felt raw. Yet there was no way she was going to stop. Everybody was working. Well, except for the Professor. He couldn't really manage this sort of thing, and it wasn't fair to expect him-her-to try, no matter what Chip said.
The problem wasn't just the work force, however. It was also a lack of knowledge and dexterity. Chip was the only one who had even been in a workshop before, and that had been simply been basic Vat workshop training. His knowledge of internal combustion engines was limited. When he'd been little more than a pot scrubber at the restaurant, he'd sometimes been chased off to go and help the jack-of-all-trades-mechanic who kept Chez Henri-Pierre and its vehicles running.
The mechanic had been a large, lazy, fat man who'd made his grease monkeys do as much as possible. That was why, when it came to vehicles Chip had the beginnings of an idea… At least when it came to complicated stuff like "put the wheel on the studs and tighten the bolts." He just hoped like hell the rest of his "knowledge" was accurate. Experience suggested it wouldn't be…
Chip decided that responsibility shared was probably responsibility quadrupled, but he'd try it anyway. "Bronstein. We need to plan this lot out. Here, Nym. Come and join us-you're as near to a mechanically inclined rat as the universe has ever seen. I've got the wheel back on the tractor. Virginia and Don Fluff have made a whole load of snares. Eamon wants eleven bags of fertilizer. We need to make brackets for putting fertilizer bags, the barbed wire and other stuff onto the vehicle. Eamon also wants holes drilled in pieces of wood for all the bangstick cartridges. We need to drill, and most of all we need to weld. The trailer has a broken hitch. We're going to need power."
Nym chuckled. "I'll just run across to the Maggots' place with a cable, shall I?"
Chip eyed Nym savagely. The rat had the grace to look embarrassed. "Nym hath heard that rats of few words are the best rats," he muttered. "Sorry."
Chip continued. "Now, there is a little generator here…"
"We should be careful if it makes low-frequency sounds," said Ginny. "The Professor says the Magh', particularly the Magh'tsr and Magh'evh, hear low-frequency sounds over great distances."
Chip tried glaring at her. She hadn't been invited to this conference! But she was distracted just then, by Fluff landing on her shoulder, so he wasted a perfectly good glare.
Bronstein, however, gave attention instead. "So what does that mean? Does this generator thingy make low-frequency sounds? What can we do about it?"
Chip shrugged. "Muffle it in something, I suppose. I'm not too sure what a `low-frequency sound' is. Vibrations and stuff, I guess?"
"There are a couple of battered mattresses half under masonry over in the farmhouse," Virginia volunteered brightly.
"Right, Miss Muffet. Get them," said Chip, pointing at the door. That would get rid of her.
She went, eager to help, and that left Chip feeling bad again. How the hell did the scion of all that money end up being so like an eager little puppy? It was hard to kick a puppy…
His mind turned to other forms of eagerness. She must have some kind of problem. Vat-shagging was a favorite male Shareholder pastime. He'd even heard of Shareholder girls slumming it with a Vat for a night. He'd never heard of a happy outcome though. Not for the Vat involved, for sure.
He pulled his mind back to the task in hand. "Anyway, what I was getting to is this: we need to line up all the projects we need power for. There's a fair chance we'll attract Maggots. We need to get the stuff ready, get the tractor going, and move out."
Bronstein nodded. "As soon as it gets dark we're going to fly up this `valley' and locate the best place for an access hole. Then we'll get everything ready. Siobhan and O'Niel are going to go and sow some more rat droppings, and maybe a booby trap or two."
"Look for a route we can drive the tractor down," said Chip. "It can't be too narrow a hole. And how are you going to find the cross passages?"
Eamon smiled nastily at him. "Relax. We have a length of string for that very purpose, indade. And now that we know of the regularity of the thing, the pattern is just too obvious. Oh, and I have been meaning to ask. You do know how to drive this thing, don't you?"
"Um, yes." There was doubt in Chip's voice. "I know how it works. I've driven something similar. And Miss Muffet will have lots of driving experience. Cars are for the rich."
But when Virginia returned, her glasses dusty and with a nasty scratch on her arm, dragging two still-damp foam mattresses, she had to disappoint them.
Chip found it weird. She must be the only Shareholder kid in existence who didn't drive. Oh well, the Shaws were the top of the heap. Maybe once you got up there you always had someone to drive for you. She went off to ask the Korozhet if he could. Apparently he'd driven the landspeeder all right. Why didn't the idea fill Chip with glee? He went and set up his little radio. They might as well have some music while they worked.
The music helped to lift his spirits. He could see the funny side of a list of booby traps being written on a wine label. A commando-style raid which had a bunch of reluctant grunts planning and executing it was a bit of a joke too.
Heh. It surely would have high command's elegant silk underwear in a twist around their nuts. No carefully orchestrated stuff where everything had to be dead on time and go absolutely right. No elegant strategy which sure as hell they had read about in some book. He could have told the stupid bastards that those plans never had a cat in a dog pound's chance of working, off paper.
"Synchronize your watches, gentlemen." Snort. Yeah. He'd been in one of those operations. Total balls-up. Well, that couldn't happen this time. Nobody had a watch, except the girl. High command could surely have learned from Bronstein: Do it when you have to, or when it's ready. And prepare for the worst. Don't expect things to go right, and when they go wrong, seize the gaps. Not that they'd ever listen to a bat!
"Yoww!"
Something on the high shelf had seized his exploring fingers. It was a mousetrap. Stepping up onto a box he saw there was a whole row of them. Some joker had left this one cocked.
"What's the shriek about, Chip?" Nym and several of the other rats peered at him from where they'd been attempting to maneuver pieces of steel pipe.
"I just found something I have a real use for." He waved the mousetrap at them.
Nym bared his teeth. The others just looked at him with reproachful black beady eyes, their upturned pointy faces filled with horror.
"How low can you sink, Connolly?" Melene couldn't have crammed more disgust into her tone with a shoehorn.
"For Pete's sake! I mean to use it as a detonator, not a rattrap!" Chip's tone was defensive.
Fal was not mollified. "Shogging whoreson! Next he'll be talking about `Rodent operatives.' Bah. Smash the things."
Chip's fingers hurt. "Oh for… crying out loud, you lot aren't even rodents. We had a whole goddamn speech from General Focnose on how calling you rats was derogatory and not to be tolerated because you were insectivores."
"Still disgusting things…" Fal was interrupted as the heavy metal doors creaked and Virginia came in, sunlight reflecting off her thick glasses.
Behind her, the Korozhet prickled along in the dust, bringing its bouquet of old clothes. "No, you will have to abandon your plan to use this thing! I can only drive things with automated controls. Miss Shaw cannot do it either. A shame. You will have to abandon your plans. We will have to resort to stealth after all. A pity indeed. I had almost come to see the merit of your plans. If you climb down into the lower regions there are very few Magh' down there…"
"Oh, it's all right, Professor," Virginia said sunnily. "Chip knows how to drive." The cheerful words were accompanied by a very broad smile. She had a nice smile, Chip noticed. Very nice. Something in his stomach went urp.
"Um," he said. Swallowed hard. "Um."
"We interrupt this broadcast of Forces Favorite Radio with a news-flash. Celtis Observatory reports…"
Crash. The Korozhet had turned abruptly and its spines knocked the radio off the workbench. Then, to add insult to injury, it stumbled and splintered it. "Clumsy me! Oh woe! It is for this reason I am not a technician! Forgive me, all! I did but turn suddenly to see who was speaking to us. A thousand apologies!"
"You did that on purpose!" Chip grabbed the hammer.
"Don't be a loon, Chip," snorted Fal. "How could he-she-plan to do something behind it? Her."
"Of course it was an accident. I saw. I had considered doing it on purpose myself," said the galago. "At least that horrible caterwauling she is stopped. Not one piece of Wagner has been played on it."
"No Strauss waltzes, either. Don't you like classical music, Chip?" Virginia apparently thought any subject was safer than the Professor's clumsiness.
"What I don't like is that self-admitted klutz near this workshop. Get her out of here, Ms. Shaw. And of course I like the classics. I'm a big Jimi Hendrix fan. And I like The Doors and Eric Clapton, too."
"An assembly line is what we need." Bronstein began organizing the rats while Chip still fumed over his smashed radio. "Fal, you and Doc can try to manage the sawing. We need fifty pipe sections. Eamon has marked where the pipe must be cut."
"But we have paws! We're not dexterous." The rats were clearly disgruntled.
Bronstein hissed impatiently, like a bad-tempered kettle. "You can manage a hacksaw between the two of you. It is only plastic pipe, for heaven's sake! Now, while they're busy doing that, I want a window-putty plug, the diesel and ammonium nitrate in and the top full of metal junk. Doll, Melene and you and O'Niel can get to filling those one gallon and five gallon cans with diesel. When you finished that, come back to me."
"Dictator," muttered O'Niel. "Tyrant." But he and the two rat-girls started lugging cans out.
Virginia followed Melene, offering her help. "Load the cans into that barrow, and I'll take them out for you."
"Good idea," said Mel. As soon as they were outside, she added: "Then you and I can have a little talk about males. Bronstein said you had a girl-problem."
Virginia blushed. "Okay," she squeaked.
Bronstein turned on the galago, who was surveying the scene with thumbs stuck in his waistcoat pockets. "And you, little one. Are you up to a man's job?"
"Of a certainty!" he said with pride.
She smiled. "Excellent. You can hammer in nails."
The galago was taken aback. Plainly enough, that wasn't what he'd had in mind. "But, senorita-bat, a man's job is to sit the shade and watch the girls dance or wash the clothes."
"Not while there is breath in this `senorita-bat's' body, it isn't." Bronstein's tone would have intimidated a pro football player. The galago got busy, hastily.
"It would have been nice to have some music with this lot," grumbled Chip.
Virginia came back in just in time to hear the last statement. "Seeing as the radio's broken, we could sing," she suggested brightly, while loading more cans in the barrow.
"And what would you be after having us sing, Miss Shaw?" demanded Eamon. The big bat's tone of voice was surly. " `Four Green Fields'? Or `Joe Hill'?"
"I don't know either. But I'd like to learn both," was her earnest reply. She hefted the handles of the now-loaded barrow, straightened, and pushed it through the door. The effort brought out all the curvature in her slender figure.
A moment later, she was gone. "Humph," grumbled Eamon. Chip said nothing. He was preoccupied with the memory of the departing figure. In the sunlight…
Humph. Forget it!
"Pull the pump handle for a bit," said Melene. "Now, what is the problem with you and Chip? Bronstein actually came to me, believe it or not, and asked me to advise you. She seemed to think you had a rat-type problem."
Virginia blushed again. She'd brought the barrow load of cans out to the diesel pump and now Melene was giving her the fifth degree inquisition. She didn't even know what the problem was herself.
"You can tell me all about it. Bronstein says you're one of us." The rat-girl's tone was kindly.
Virginia swallowed. One of them? Then she realized. She was. And they did not consider themselves inferior. "I'm in love!" she blurted.
"So what's the problem? Can't he get it up? Generally I found if you get them before they have too much to drink…"
Melene continued onward, into anatomical detail that nearly had Virginia's eyes popping out.
Finally the girl interrupted. "Uh. That, um, wasn't what I meant I was having problems with. I meant… um… Romance."
Melene looked puzzled. "Romance? Isn't that what we're talking about?"
Virginia felt her face must be a fiery beacon. "No. You're talking about sex."
The rat-girl was definitely mystified. "What's the difference?"
Virginia felt like a very inexperienced swimmer caught up in an undertow. "Well sometimes, um, romance does lead to sex."
"Methinks it seems an unnecessary complication," said Mel, dismissively. "But tell me then, what it is you're wanting?"
"Well… I don't know." Ginny wrung her hands. "I've never had a boyfriend. Um, in books they bring you flowers or… or candy."
"Instead of giving you a drink? Seems strange to me. Still, humans are rather odd. I don't think Chip has any flowers or candy." She paused. "You say you never had a boyfriend? Does that mean you've never…"
Virginia couldn't do more than nod.
"Whoreson!" Mel giggled. "Don't you tell Fal that. He'd get ambitions!"
Virginia shuddered.
Melene laughed outright. "Don't you let Fal push you around. Bully him back. Tell me, is that the problem? Chip wants to and you don't? That's males for you…"
"NO! It's not like that." Virginia said fiercely. "My nanny told me all men just wanted to… But he doesn't. Doesn't even seem to want to touch me."
Melene put her head on one side and surveyed the miserable human girl. "You mean you would, if he wanted to?"
Virginia stopped pumping. Bit her lip. Wrung her hands. "I suppose so. Yes. If he wanted to. I don't understand. Am I hideous or horrible?"
"Nonsense! Not to humans, anyway," Melene reassured her. "Chip used to behave almost like a rat with that Dermott-girl. And she also had virtually no tail, and an even shorter nose than you."
That news didn't seem to cheer Virginia up.
The organizing had taken some time. Everything that could be done by hand had been done. Now the welding machine had been trundled out and stood ready. The little five-hundred-liter tank trailer with the one severed bar of the Y hitch had been manhandled into position. The plate Chip was going to try to weld on to secure the hitch was clamped in place. The generator reposed on the one mattress, like some oily yellow mechanical baby. The extension cords had been located and, in one case, fixed. Next to the drill press lay the box of cartridge mines-to-be and the pieces of angle iron Chip wanted to bolt onto the trailer. They needed, somehow, to make a rack for the huge and growing pile of stuff they wanted to take along. The windows had been blacked out. The door was chinked. Chip needed his headlight to navigate towards the jenny. Well, in a minute they'd have power and there'd be an extension light on.
He grasped the little handle on the generator and pulled. Fud-dududu… duh again. Again. Again. And again. Sweating, Chip checked the SOB thing out. Ah. Choke. Ooops. On-off cutout.
Fud-dududu… fffopoppop pop.
Well, he'd achieved a curl of smoke. Nearly. So he went back to pulling… and it didn't start. He tried it with the choke both in and then halfway in. Not for all the swearing and sweating in creation was the cantankerous thing going to start.
"Methinks it needs a drink," said a fruity rat-voice from the darkness.
Chip shone his beam savagely at Fal. "Shut up," he snarled. "Anyone else with bright ideas can try pulling it themselves."
"I'll try." Virginia said, eagerness glinting off her glasses.
Chip knew exactly what would happen as soon as he gave her that starter cable. The goddamn thing would start.
Which, of course, it did. First pull.
Maybe the thing had been flooded by his previous attempts… At least it had the decency to die when they put the load on, and then to fail in starting again for her.
He put the choke in, and it started on the second pull. "Now leave it running for a bit before we plug it in."
And then… there was light. A sunrise is a joyous thing, but Chip hadn't realized just how much he'd missed the normalcy symbolized by an ordinary incandescent globe. Once long ago-in a life that seemed to have belonged to someone else-it had been something so… accepted. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed it.
"Right… weld first, I think." His voice was a bit thick.
"It's just so lovely to see the light," whispered Virginia.
Chip felt a twang of sympathy, surprised at the common ground between them. But all he said was "Don't look at the arc light," as he slipped the welding mask over his face. He spoke with a confidence he was far from feeling. True, "Armpits" Jones had showed him how it should be done. Armpits had even let him try. He felt himself blush and was glad of the mask.
"I'm going to try to muffle the sound from the generator," she said.
"Fine." Chip was concentrating on working out the best approach to the welding job. He tapped the rod against the metal. The rod sparked actinic arc light, hissed and…
Stuck. Welding hadn't miraculously gotten easier in the intervening years.
"Well, let's get on to the drilling then," said Nym professionally, rubbing his paws. "Come on, Pistol. You hold that short piece of steel in place. I'll pull the handle down."
The one-eyed rat looked at the drill press nervously. "I'd liefer wait for Chip."
Nym looked at him with scorn. "Stop blithering, rat. It's a basic piece of machinery, for goodness sake. I pull that lever down. The drill comes down. What could be simpler?"
"Get Fal to hold it," suggested Pistol.
Nym's icy gaze would have withered polar lichen. "Tch. He can hold your hand if you like."
Even Pistol wasn't proof against that. "No, if you're sure…"
"Well, we'll do those small pieces first," Nym condescended. "Start with the easiest."
He started the drill. Virginia tried to hold the second mattress wrapped around the generator with two hands, while she tried to tie it in place with a third and a fourth hand she didn't have.
The big rat hauled at the press handle. "Whoreson! This bedamned lever is stiff." He threw his giant-rat weight and strength into the project.
The high-speed drill bit came down fast, and bit into the mild steel. The piece of steel proved an efficient transmitter of torque.
What followed was the first airborne rat-strike in history. A process that went something like "AAAAAHHHH!!!!"
THUD. Fortunately, Pistol hit Virginia's mattress and rolled to the floor unhurt, still clinging to the steel section. He was paralyzed with fear and shock.
Well… except for his mouth.