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Изменить стиль (Регистрация необходима)Выбрать главу (14) The roar of voices made dust fall down from the ceiling. “The Trap!” “And don't you forget it,” said Darktan. “Take 'em out, Specialoffer. I'll be with you in a minute.” A younger rat stepped forward, and faced the squads. “Let's go, rats! Hut, hut, hut…” The trap squads trotted away. Darktan walked over to Dangerous Beans. “That's got us started,” he said. “If we can't get the humans looking for a good rat-catcher by tomorrow, we don't know our business.” “We need to stay longer than that,” said Peaches. “Some of the ladies are going to have their babies.” “I said we don't know it's safe here yet,” said Darktan. “Do you want to be the one to tell Big Savings?” said Peaches, sweetly. Big Savings was the old head female, widely agreed to have a bite like a pick-axe and muscles like rock. She also had a short temper with males. Even Hamnpork kept out of her way when she was in a bad mood. “Nature has to take its course, obviously,” said Darktan, quickly. “But we haven't explored. There must be other rats here.” “Oh, the keekees all keep out of the way of us,” said Peaches. That was true, Darktan had to agree. Ordinary rats did keep out of the way of the Changelings. Oh, there was some trouble sometimes, but the Changelings were big and healthy and could think their way through a fight. Dangerous Beans was unhappy about this but, as Hamnpork said, it was either us or them and when you got right down to it, it was a rat-eat-rat world… “I'm going to go and join my squad,” said Darktan, still unnerved at the thought of confronting Big Savings. He moved closer. “What's up with Hamnpork?” “He's… thinking about things,” said Peaches. “Thinking,” said Darktan, blankly. “Oh. Right. Well, I've got traps to see to. Smell you later!” “What is the matter with Hamnpork?” said Dangerous Beans, when he and Peaches were alone again. “He's getting old,” said Peaches. “He needs to rest a lot. And I think he's worried that Darktan or one of the others is going to challenge him.” “Will they, do you think?” “Darktan's more wrapped up in breaking traps and testing poisons. There's more interesting things to do now than bite one another.” “Or do rllk, from what I hear,” said Dangerous Beans. Peaches looked down, demurely. If rats could blush, she would have done. It was amazing how pink eyes that could hardly see you could look straight through you at the same time. “The ladies are a lot more choosy,” she said. “They want to find fathers who can think.” “Good,” said Dangerous Beans. “We must be careful. We don't need to breed like rats. We don't have to rely on numbers. We are the Changelings.” Peaches watched him anxiously. When Dangerous Beans was thinking, he seemed to be staring into a world only he could see. “What is it this time?” she asked. “I have been thinking that we shouldn't kill other rats. No rat should kill another rat.” “Even keekees?” she queried. “They are rats too.” Peaches shrugged. “Well, we've tried talking to them and that didn't work. Anyway, they mostly stay away these days.” Dangerous Beans was still staring at the unseen world. “Even so,” he said quietly, “I should like you to write it down.” Peaches sighed, but went off anyway to one of the packs the rats had carried in and pulled out her bag. It was no more than a roll of cloth with a handle made from a scrap of string, but it was big enough to hold a few matches, some pieces of pencil lead, a tiny sliver of a broken knife blade for sharpening the leads, and a grubby piece of paper. All the important things. She was also the official carrier of Mr. Bunnsy. “Carrier” wasn't quite correct; “dragger” was mostly more accurate. But Dangerous Beans always liked to know where it was and seemed to think better when it was around, and it gave him some comfort, and that was good enough for Peaches. She smoothed out the paper on an ancient brick, picked up a piece of lead and looked down the list. The first Thought had been: In the Clan is Strength. This had been quite a hard one to translate, but she had made an effort. Most rats couldn't read human. It was just too hard to make the lines and squiggles turn into any sense. So Peaches had worked very hard on making a language that rats could read. She'd tried to draw a big rat made up of little rats: The writing had led to trouble with Hamnpork. New ideas needed a running jump to get into the old rat's head. Dangerous Beans had explained in his strange calm voice that writing things down would mean that a rat's knowledge would go on existing even when the rat had died. He said that all the rats could learn the knowledge of Hamnpork. Hamnpork had said: not likely! It'd had taken him years to learn some of the tricks he'd learned! Why should he give it all away? That'd mean any young rat would know as much as him! Dangerous Beans had said: We co-operate, or we die. That had become the next Thought. “Co-operate” had been difficult, but even keekees would sometimes lead a blind or wounded comrade, and that was certainly cooperation. The thick line, where she'd pressed heavily, had to mean “no”. The trap sign could mean “die” or “bad” or “avoid”. The last Thought on the paper was: Not to Widdle where you Eat. That one was quite simple. She grasped the piece of lead in both paws and carefully drew: No Rat to Kill Another Rat. She sat back. Yes… not bad… “trap” was a good sign for death, and she'd added the dead rat to make it all more serious. “But supposing you have to?” she said, still staring at the drawings. “Then you have to,” said Dangerous Beans. “But you shouldn't.” Peaches shook her head sadly. She supported Dangerous Beans because there was… well, something about him. He wasn't big or fast and he was almost blind and quite weak and sometimes he forgot to eat because he came up with thoughts that nobody—at least, nobody who was a rat—had thought before. Most of them had annoyed Hamnpork no end, like the time when Dangerous Beans had said, “What is a rat?” and Hamnpork had replied, “Teeth. Claws. Tail. Run. Hide. Eat. That's what a rat is.” Dangerous Beans had said, “But now we can also say ‘what is a rat?’” he said. “And that means we're more than that.” “We're rats,” Hamnpork had argued. “We run around and squeak and steal and make more rats. That's what we're made for!” “Who by?” Dangerous Beans had said, and that had led to another argument about the Big Rat Deep Under The Ground theory. But even Hamnpork followed Dangerous Beans, and so did rats like Darktan and Donut Enter, and they listened when he talked. Peaches listened when they talked. “We were given noses,” Darktan had told the squads. Who had given them noses? The thoughts of Dangerous Beans worked their ways into other people's heads without them noticing. He came up with new ways of thinking. He came up with new words. He came up with ways of understanding the things that were happening to them. Big rats, rats with scars, listened to the little rat because the Change had led them into dark territory and he seemed to be the only one with an idea of where they were going. She left him sitting by the candle and went and looked for Hamnpork. He was sitting by a wall. Like most of the old rats he always stuck close to walls, and kept away from open spaces and too much light. He seemed to be shaking. “Are you all right?” she said. |
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The shaking stopped. “Fine, fine, nothing wrong with me!” snapped Hamnpork. “Just a few twinges, nothing permanent!”
“Only I noticed you didn't go out with any of the squads,” said Peaches.
“There's nothing wrong with me!” shouted the old rat.
“We've still got some potatoes in the baggage—”
“I don't want any food ! There is nothing wrong with me!”
… which meant that there was. It was the reason he didn't want to share all the things he knew. What he knew was all he had left. Peaches knew what rats traditionally did to leaders who were too old. She'd watched Hamnpork's face when Darktan—younger, stronger Darktan—had been talking to his squads, and knew that Hamnpork was thinking about it, too. Oh, he was fine when people were watching him, but lately he'd been resting more, and skulking in corners.
Old rats were driven out, to lurk around by themselves and go rotten and funny in the head. Soon there would be another leader.
Peaches wished she could make him understand one of the Thoughts of Dangerous Beans, but the old rat didn't much like talking to females. He'd grown up thinking females weren't for talking to.
The Thought was:
It meant: We Are The Changelings. We Are Not Like Other Rats.
CHAPTER 4
The important thing about adventures, thought Mr. Bunnsy, was that they shouldn't be so long as to make you miss mealtimes.
—From “Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure”
The kid and the girl and Maurice were in a large kitchen. The kid could tell it was a kitchen because of the huge black iron range in the chimney breast and the pans hanging on the walls and the long scarred table. What it didn't seem to have was what a kitchen traditionally had, which was food.
The girl went to a metal box in the corner and fumbled round her neck for a string which, it turned out, held a large key. “You can't trust anybody,” she said. “And the rats steal a hundred times what they eat, the devils.”
“I don't think they do,” said the kid. “Ten times, at most.”
“You know all about rats all of a sudden?” said the girl, unlocking the metal case.
“Not all of a sudden, I learned it when—Ow! That really hurt!”
“Sorry about that,” said Maurice. “I accidentally scratched you, did I?” He tried to make a face which said Don't be a complete twerp, OK? which is quite hard to do with a cat's head.
The girl gave him a suspicious look, and then turned back to the metal box. “There's some milk that's not gone hard yet and a couple of fish-heads,” she said, peering inside.
“Sounds good to me,” said Maurice.
“What about your human?”
“Him? He'll eat any old scraps.”
“There's bread and sausage,” said the girl, taking a can from the metal cupboard. “We're all very suspicious about the sausages. There's a tiny bit of cheese, too, but it's rather ancestral.”
“I don't think we should eat your food if it's so short,” said the kid. “We have got money.”
“Oh, my father says it'd reflect very badly on the town if we weren't hospitable. He's the mayor, you know.”
“He's the government?” said the kid.
The girl stared at him. “I suppose so,” she said. “Funny way of putting it. The town council makes the laws, really. He just runs the place and argues with everyone. And he says we shouldn't have any more rations than other people, to show solidarity in these difficult times. It was bad enough that tourists stopped visiting our hot baths, but the rats have made it a lot worse.” She took a couple of saucers from the big kitchen dresser. “My father says that if we're all sensible there will be enough to go around,” she went on. “Which I think is very commendable. I entirely agree. But I think that once you've shown solidarity, you should be allowed just a little extra. In fact, I think we get a bit less than everyone else. Can you imagine? Anyway… so you really are a magical cat, then?” she finished, pouring the milk into a saucer. It oozed rather than gushed, but Maurice was a street cat and would drink milk so rotten that it would try to crawl away.
“Oh, yes, that's right, magical,” he said, with a yellow-white ring around his mouth. For two fish-heads he'd be anything for anybody.
“Probably belonged to a witch, I expect, with a name like Griselda or one of those names,” said the girl, putting the fish-heads on another saucer.
“Yeah, right, Griselda, right,” said Maurice, not raising his head.
“Who lived in a gingerbread cottage in the forest, probably.”
“Yeah, right,” said Maurice. And then, because he wouldn't be Maurice if he couldn't be a bit inventive, he added: “Only it was a crispbread cottage, 'cos she was slimming. Very healthy witch, Griselda.”
The girl looked puzzled for a moment. “That's not how it should go,” she said.
“Sorry, I tell a lie, it was gingerbread really,” said Maurice quickly. Someone giving you food was always correct.
“And she had big warts, I'm sure.”
“Miss,” said Maurice, trying to look sincere, “some of those warts had so much personality they used to have friends of their own. Er… what's your name, miss?”
“Promise not to laugh?”
“All right.” After all, there might be more fish-heads.
“It's… Malicia.”
“Oh.”
“Are you laughing?” she said, in a threatening voice.
“No,” said Maurice, mystified. “Why should I?”
“You don't think it's a funny name?”
Maurice thought about the names he knew—Hamnpork, Dangerous Beans, Darktan, Sardines… “Sounds like an ordinary kind of name to me,” he said.
Malicia gave him another suspicious look, but turned her attention to the kid, who was sitting with the usual happy, faraway smile he wore when he didn't have anything else to do. “And have you got a name?” she said. “You're not the third and youngest son of a king, are you? If your name starts ‘Prince’ that's a definite clue.”
The kid said, “I think it's Keith.”
“You never said you had a name!” said Maurice.
“No-one ever asked before,” said the kid.
“Keith is not a promising name-start,” said Malicia. “It doesn't hint of mystery. It just hints of Keith. Are you sure it's your real name?”
“It's just the one they gave me.”
“Ah, that's more like it. A slight hint of mystery,” said Malicia, suddenly looking interested. “Just enough to up suspense. You were stolen away at birth, I expect. You probably are the rightful king of some country, but they found someone who looked like you and did a swap. In that case, you'll have a magic sword, only it won't look magic, you see, until it's time for you to manifest your destiny. You were probably found on a doorstep.”
“I was, yes,” said Keith.
“See? I'm always right!”
Maurice was always on the lookout for what people wanted. And what Malicia wanted, he felt, was a gag. But he'd never heard the stupid-looking kid talk about himself before.
“What were you doing on a doorstep?” he said.
“I don't know. Gurgling, I expect,” said Keith.
“You never said,” said Maurice, accusingly.
“Is it important?” said Keith.
“There was a magic sword or a crown in the basket with you, probably. And you've got a mysterious tattoo or a strange-shaped birthmark, too,” said Malicia.
“I don't think so. No-one ever mentioned them,” said Keith. “There was just me and a blanket. And a note.”
“A note? But that's important!”
“It said ‘19 pints and a Strawberry Yoghurt’,” said Keith.
“Ah. Not helpful, then,” said Malicia. “Why nineteen pints of milk?”
“It was the Guild of Musicians,” said Keith. “Quite a large place. I don't know about the strawberry yoghurt.”
10
CHAPTER 10
And as night fell, Mr. Bunnsy remembered: there's something terrible in the Dark Wood.
—From “Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure”
Why am I doing this? Maurice asked himself, as he squirmed along a pipe. Cats are not built for this stuff!
Because we are a kind person at heart, said his conscience.
No, I'm not, thought Maurice.
Actually, that's true, said his conscience. But we don't want to tell that to Dangerous Beans, do we? The little wobbly nose? He thinks we're a hero!
Well, I'm not, thought Maurice.
Then why are we scrabbling around underground trying to find him?
Well, obviously it's because he's the one with the big dream about finding the rat island and without him the rats won't co-operate and I won't get paid, said Maurice.
We're a cat! What does a cat need money for?
Because I have a Retirement Plan, thought Maurice. I'm four years old already! Once I've made a pile, it's me for a nice home with a big fire and a nice old lady giving me cream every day. I've got it all worked out, every detail.
Why should she give us a home? We're smelly, we've got ragged ears, we've got something nasty and itchy on our leg, we look like someone kicked us in the face… why should an old lady take us in instead of a fluffy little kitten?
Aha! But black cats are lucky, thought Maurice.
Really? Well, we don't want to be first with the bad news, but we're not black! We're a sort of mucky tabby!
There's such a thing as dyes, thought Maurice. A couple of packets of black dye, hold my breath for a minute, and it's “hello, cream and fish” for the rest of my life. Good plan, eh?
And what about the luck? said the conscience.
Ah! That's the clever bit. A black cat that brings in a gold coin every month or so, wouldn't you say that's a lucky cat to have?
His conscience fell silent. Probably amazed at the cleverness of the plan, Maurice told himself.
He had to admit that he was cleverer at plans than at underground navigation. He wasn't exactly lost, because cats never got lost. He merely didn't know where everything else was. There wasn't a lot of earth under the town, that was certain. Cellars and grating and pipeways and ancient sewers and crypts and bits of forgotten buildings formed a sort of honeycomb. Even humans could get around, Maurice thought. The rat-catchers certainly had.
He could smell rats everywhere. He'd wondered about calling out to Dangerous Beans, but decided against it. Calling out might help him find out where the little rat was, but it'd also alert… anyone else to where Maurice was. Those big rats had been, well, big, and nasty-looking. Even an idiot dog would have trouble with them.
Now he was in a small square tunnel with lead pipes in it. There was even a hiss of escaping steam, and here and there warm water dipped into a gutter that ran along the bottom of the tunnel. Up ahead was a grating leading up to the street. Faint light came through it.
The water in the gutter looked clean. At least, you could see through it. Maurice was thirsty. He leaned down, tongue out—
There was a thin, bright red streak curling gently in the water…
Hamnpork seemed confused and half asleep but he knew enough to hold on to Sardines' tail as the rats made their way back from the stables. It was a slow journey. Sardines didn't think the old rat would manage the washing lines. They skulked along gutters, and along drains, hiding in nothing more than the cloak of night.
A few rats were milling around in the cellar when they finally arrived. By then Darktan and Sardines were walking on either side of Hamnpork, who was barely moving his legs.
There was still a candle burning in the cellar. Darktan was surprised. But a lot of things had happened in the last hour.
They let Hamnpork sink to the floor, where he lay, breathing heavily. His body shook with each breath.
“Poison, guv?” whispered Sardines.
“I think it was just too much for him,” said Darktan. “Just too much.”
Hamnpork opened one eye. “Am… I… still… the… leader?” he said.
“Yes, sir,” said Darktan.
“Need… to… sleep…”
Darktan looked around the circle. Rats were creeping towards the group. He could see them whispering to one another. They kept looking at him. He stared around, trying to spot the pale figure of Dangerous Beans.
“Nourishing… tells me… you saw the… tunnel… of the… Big Rat…” said Hamnpork.
Darktan glared at Nourishing, who looked embarrassed. “I saw… something,” he said.
“Then I shall dream there and… never wake up,” said Hamnpork. His head sagged again. “This isn't… the way a… an old rat should die,” he mumbled. “Not… like this. Not… in the light.”
Darktan nodded urgently at Sardines, who snuffed out the candle with his hat. The damp, thick underground darkness closed in.
“Darktan,” Hamnpork whispered. “You need to know this…”
Sardines strained his ears to hear the old leader's last words to Darktan. Then, a few seconds later, he shivered. He could smell the change in the world.
There was movement in the darkness. A match burst into life and the candle flame grew again, bringing shadows back into the world.
Hamnpork was lying very still.
“Do we have to eat him now?” said someone.
“He's… gone,” said Darktan. Somehow, the idea of eating Hamnpork didn't feel right. “Bury him,” he said. “And mark the place so we know he's there.”
There was a sense of relief in the group. However much anyone might have respected Hamnpork, he was still a bit on the whiffy side, even for a rat.
A rat at the front of the crowd looked uncertain. “Er… when you say ‘mark the place’,” it said, “do you mean like we mark other places where we bury things?”
“He means by widdling on it,” said the rat beside him.
Darktan looked at Sardines, who shrugged. Darktan had a sinking feeling inside. When you were the leader, everyone waited to see what you said. And there was still no sign of the white rat.
He was on his own.
He thought hard for a moment, and then nodded. “Yes,” he said at last. “He'd like that. It's very… ratty. But do this, too. Draw it on the ground above him.”
He scraped a sign on the ground:
“‘He was a rat from a long line of rats and he thought about rats’,” said Sardines. “Good one, boss.”
“And will he come back like Darktan did?” said someone else.
“If he does, he'll get really mad if we've eaten him,” said a voice. There was some nervous laughter.
“Listen, I didn't—” Darktan began, but Sardines nudged him.
“Word in your ear, guv?” he said, raising his charred hat politely.
“Yes, yes…” Darktan was getting worried. He'd never had so many rats watching him so closely. He followed Sardines away from the group.
“You know I used to hang around in the theatre an' that,” said Sardines. “And you pick up stuff in the theatre. And the thing is… look, what I'm saying is, you're the leader, right? So you got to act like you know what you're doing, OK? If the leader doesn't know what he's doing, no-one else does, either.”
“I only know what I'm doing when I'm dismantling traps,” said Darktan.
“All right, think of the future as a great big trap,” said Sardines. “With no cheese.”
“That is not a lot of help!”
“And you should let them think what they like about you and… that scar you've got,” said Sardines. “That's my advice, guv.”
“But I didn't die, Sardines!”
“Something happened, didn't it? You were going to set fire to the place. I watched you. Something happened to you in the trap. Don't ask me what it was, I just do tap-dancing. I'm just a little rat. Always will be, boss. But there's big rats like Inbrine and Sellby and a bunch of others, boss, and now Hamnpork's dead they might think they should be the leader. Get my drift?”
