The Rats, the Bats & the Ugly

by Eric Flint

  Fitz shook his head. "No," he croaked. "I need to see her. To tell her I loved her. No matter what she looks like."

  So Van Klomp took him to where he'd laid the little body. And, at Fitz's request, left him to his grief.

  * * *

  Robert Van Klomp walked back over to the ramp, and got back into organizing mode. Someone had to do it, although he noted that Ogata made an even better field officer than he did lawyer. Mike Capra came up to him. "Guess what I just carried out of that ship in an interesting state of undress?"

  "What?"

  "Major Tana Gainor. The stitcher, in person. She probably thought she could screw her way out of trouble with the Pricklepusses, but this time she got screwed. They've mindwiped her and put an implant into her head. We found her in solitary, in the ship. All the other slaves were in dormitories, but Tana Gainor was in well-sealed solitary. Maybe the Korozhet were brighter than we gave them credit for."

  Van Klomp snorted. "Almost a pity that those command-phrases Liepsich said the Korozhet used don't work any more. That's a woman I'd have cheerfully used for cannon fodder."

  He shook his head. "Now, I have a problem fit for your lawyerly talents. One of the sergeants has just pointed out that there are that herd of human-sheep out on Webb Fields in those Korozhet enclosures. He's been over and he says there are about fifty in one enclosure that might be dead. They're just lying about whereas there's a clamor coming from the bigger enclosures. Get yourself a squad and head over there. Check it out. Liberate them. And document the bastards. Take names. We know some people were cooperating with these Pricklepusses. I want to know who they were when this is all over."

  * * *

  Someone tapped Fitz tentatively on the shoulder, as he sat on the ground next to the small body resting on Van Klomp's bush jacket.

  "Excuse me, Major," said the medic respectfully. "I don't want to bother you, but we've got a woman who has just come round in the aid-station. She seems a bit confused. She's insisting on seeing you. She . . . Ah, well, she threatened to bite us if we didn't get you immediately. It might just be something urgent, sir."

  Wordlessly, Fitz covered the small body with his own jacket, and got up to follow the medic. Dawn was beginning to break over George Bernard Shaw City, and already the scene was assuming some kind of normality. Vehicles were coming and going. The aid station now seemed full of humans rather than aliens. Fitz recognized one of the women on a stretcher as General Cartup-Kreutzler's blond and buxom former secretary, Daisy. She stared upward with vacant eyes. He was damned sure she hadn't been part of the assault. "What happened here?" he asked the medic.

  "Dunno, sir. They're from the compound on Webb Fields. There are forty-three of them. Physiologically there's nothing we can find wrong. But they're not really responding to stimulus, except in the most basic way."

  "In Daisy's case," said Fitz sardonically, "that's just about situation normal. Still, even for her, this is extreme. What are you doing with them?"

  "Just stabilizing them. Cleaning them, keeping them warm. They've no more sense than a newborn. Less, if anything. The woman who wanted you is in this ambulance."

  Fitz ducked his head and looked in. "Fitzy!" said the woman lying there, sitting up and shedding the sheet that had covered her nudity.

  "Major Gainor." Fitz's smile had no humor it in at all. "Talk about the original bad penny. Are you in that much of a hurry to resume prosecuting me? You worthless bitch."

  She blinked at him. "Doth not love me any more?" she said tragically.

  Fitz frowned. "What the hell are you talk—"

  Suddenly, from nowhere, an old line of poetry came to him. From something by Keats, if he remembered right.

  Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

  He stared at the Pacific—and all his men

  Looked at each other with a wild surmise—

  Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

  His eyes flashed to Major Gainor's head. The hair had been shaved away from part of it. There was a small, fresh scar on the scalp.

  And Ariel's head had been split open, to remove her soft-cyber implant.

  " 'Twas not that I meant to persecute you," insisted the woman on the bed. "Well. Except for the chocolate. If you loved me, you would give me more dark chocolate Cointreau straws."

  "Ariel?" he croaked.

  The implant-scarred head nodded. " 'Tis an ugly tailless body, true. 'Twill take some getting used to, especially these dullard teeth. But 'tis now mine own, Fitz."

  * * *

  The aid center had seen a lot of strange sights since they'd set up shop at about two that morning.

  Aliens of various sizes and shapes.

  Bats full of laughing gas and Irish song.

  A large rat weeping over his golf cart's scratched paintwork.

  A pair of blue-furred creatures having a "who-can-jump-highest" competition while making ear-shattering hooting noises.

  But they all agreed afterward that the sight of Major Conrad Fitzhugh swinging a naked woman around in his arms until they both fell down together too dizzy to stand, too happy to care, laughing and crying, was perhaps the oddest.

  "Kinky, you ask me," muttered one of the medics. "She's the one who was prosecuting him, you know. The guy's a freaking masochist."

  Epilogue

  Endings in books are neat. Endings in real life tend to be more ragged and indeterminate. Nonetheless, this was an ending of sorts. Gradually, within a few days, a semblance of order had been reestablished in GBS City. Van Klomp found he had to impose most of it. Still . . . he had the voice for it.

  By the end of the week there was even power in several parts of the city.

  Dr. Wei had a Korozhet prisoner to study; though, first, he had to get the Super-Glue off.

  The remnant of the army high command that still had its mind was back in Military Headquarters, spending its time constructively trying to think up excuses for its former behavior—which the charitable were calling "utter incompetence" and a distressingly large number of people were calling "treason"—and thus not interfering with actual military affairs.

  Virginia and Chip had stopped making love long enough to be abused by Liepsich for causing such damage in the Korozhets' former ship, which the scientist seemed to regard as his personal new toy. And conspire . . . well, argue with the bats.

  A certain candy-striped vehicle had been resprayed and given the freedom of a grateful city. Within the week, every other motorist on the streets was deeply regretting that spontaneous gesture.

  And . . .

  * * *

  Ogata took himself out to see Conrad Fitzhugh, whom no one had gotten around to returning to court or pre-trial confinement yet. Fitz and Ariel were staying—at Virginia Shaw's insistence—at Shaw House. The place was something of a menagerie these days. The doors were being repaired and replaced and one wing was becoming a bank.

  Fortunately, the bats didn't mind flying in windows.

  "And how is Ariel fitting into her new residence?" asked Ogata with a smile.

  "She's making a lot of changes. Fortunately, she disapproves of mauve lipstick. Any kind of lipstick, in fact. She finds walking without even a vestige of a tail awkward. She made a bonfire out of all of Gainor's high-heeled shoes. And she complains at least once an hour about her useless teeth. Or do you mean where we're living?"

  "It seems a good answer to both questions," said Ogata. "You do realize that, despite the Korozhet having put Ariel's soft-cyber chip into Tana's mindwiped brain so that they could question her, as far as the Army is concerned you are now cohabiting—I assume lewdly, yes?—"

  Fitz grinned. The grin, on that scarred face, looked as serene and self-satisfied as a shark's. "She's still a rat, sir. In almost everything that matters, anyway. A rat's idea of slow seduction is waiting until she finishes her chocolates. And, as it happens, Ariel wasn't in a slow mood." He cleared his throat. "Neither was I."

  Ogata rolled his eyes. "Yes, well. What I thought.
So you are now living in sin with the person who is supposed to be prosecuting you. This is, to put it mildly, a conflict of interest. As far as the army is concerned, Ariel is still Major Tana Gainor, and she's AWOL."

  "That's the least of your problems," said Fitz. "You're a lawyer, Colonel Ogata. Until it's changed—and even then it won't apply retroactively—the law on Harmony and Reason considers the woman's body that of Tana Moira Gainor. So long as the mind is sound, which this one sure as hell is, and never mind who it belongs to. Legally speaking, Mike Capra tells me, that last is a mystical and meaningless abstraction."

  Ogata looked a little taken aback. "That would surely depend on the definition of 'sound.' "

  "That might be true. But having acquired a perfectly usable but large and empty mind the person that is Ariel is expanding her Ratshipness into it all. She was a bright rat and Gainor was a smart woman. The combination has made Ariel intimidatingly intelligent. I pity anyone who tries to prove in court that there's anything 'unsound' about her mind. Trust me on this one."

  "But her personality . . . uh, that is . . ." Ogata, unusually, seemed to be groping for words.

  Fitz shrugged. "From what I can see, it's all Ariel. I admit, it's a bit hard to tell sometimes. Tana Gainor was a predatory person and, well, in a lot of ways that describes Ariel to a T. The rats are predators, technically speaking, since their personalities are based mainly on shrew genetic stock. On the other hand, Ariel's as loyal as they come, which God knows Gainor wasn't. She even told me she's willing—though I'd have to make it up to her with plenty of chocolates—to abandon sensible ratly promiscuity for this silly human 'faithful' business."

  Fitz's grin seemed fixed in place. "Have you any idea of just how rich Tana Gainor was, Colonel Ogata? Ariel was down at the bank finding out, the day after she 'woke up.' Trust a rat to check her loot first. Ill-gotten gains, most of it, I don't doubt for a minute. But there's no proof of that, and—legally, legally—it all now belongs to Ariel."

  Ogata's skin color made it difficult for him to turn pale. But he did a pretty fair imitation. "Oh, no," he groaned.

  "Oh, yes," countered Fitz. "Have you any idea what the ex-2IC of the Ratafia is planning on doing with all that money? I did get her to swear that she'd wouldn't actually break any laws, although I'm sure she'll interpret that promise with a ratly twist. The bats might be altruistic with Virginia's fortune . . . but I promise my Ariel is not, with her own."

  * * *

  The taller of the two surviving conspirators sprinkled soil on the grave. "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet princess, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."

  He dusted off his hands. "I shall miss her. I surely will."

  The other conspirator, in a well-practiced gesture, hitched up his pants. "Now that she's not around to hear it . . . Well. So will I. A lot. She was the only one around who could really give me a good match, insult-wise."

  General Needford gave Liepsich a level stare. "There are times when you remind me of a five-year-old. I admit, you're precocious."

  The scientist smiled. "Not that you aren't so bad yourself. Courage, courage. We'll still need to work together, in the years ahead, even if our conspiracy is now over."

  "True. Now that Sanjay's dead, her children will need godparents for a while. But only that, henceforth. We will manipulate them no longer."

  "Don't think there's much need to, anyway."

  The general shrugged. "Even if there were, I'd insist we forego it. We conspired because we needed to. The need now gone, we must be careful that the habit does not develop its own dynamic. Let Sanjay Devi's final gift to us be her favorite saying: 'All life is an imitation of the Scottish play.' Beware the danger of ambition."

  Needford looked every inch the judge, now. Even Liepsich shied away.

  "Hey, relax! The thought never crossed my mind. Besides . . ."

  Liepsich's laugh was almost a cackle. "Manipulating that lot, now that they're out of their cages—much less controlling them—is something only a madman would choose for a hobby."

  * * *

  The quartermaster was practically livid.

  "It's all very well getting the cooperation of the miserable creatures. 'Winning their hearts and minds,' all that blather. But what kind of military requisition is a million pairs of rat-sized blue suede shoes?!"

  Acknowledgements

  I'd like to express my thanks to several people who helped me greatly during the writing of this book. With trepidation, I wandered into the arena of military law. Major Rich Grove, of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Air Force, provided me with much advice, help and an amazing level of tolerance for stupid questions. Any errors in this area are of course mine and not his. I blame the bad lawyer jokes on him entirely, though. Judith Lasker helped not only with the proofing, but also with the legal side. Gunnar Dahlin did possibly the most meticulous job of proof-reading I've encountered. As I am the world's most inventive speller I'm very grateful. Rog and Cheryl Daetwyler were also most helpful in that regard. Jim Crider gave some much needed help with auto matters. And, as always, my deepest thanks to my coauthor Eric and my wife Barbara. Between the two of them they steer the supercharged golf cart of my writing along.

  —Dave Freer

  THE END

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