The Rats, the Bats and the Ugly trtbav-2

by Eric Flint

  "Macbeth?" He looked puzzled. "Oh. The play."

  "The Scottish play. Life often resembles it," said Sanjay, going back to her paper-laden desk. "You'll be safe enough here… till Birnam Wood to Dunsinane doth come," she said wryly.

  "Well, I wish you'd give as much attention to my problems as that rubbish. I've sent a request to my contact on the Korozhet ship, but I haven't got a reply yet."

  "Patience. You might try calling them up on that communicator of theirs again. You've been Thane of Glamis as the master of the colony Security. When Shaw died… you became Cawdor. Now, offer them enough, and they will make you King."

  "You know, sometimes I think you're entirely mad! We don't have a king," he said irritably. Nonetheless, he went to fetch his Korozhet-built communicator.

  ***

  She looked at him from under lowered brows. "Double, double, toil and trouble." It was a trifle awkward him using a Korozhet instrument, but the room pickups would doubtless still get it. Liepsich's computer enhancement tools back at the ship would take all the feeds and make it an audible recording.

  A few minutes later he bustled over, looking far more cheerful. "Maybe you're right. Maybe I should aim for a monarchy. It's a novel idea. It would sort out a few problems."

  "So what have you arranged, Talbot?" Sanjay thought that no statement of hers deserved an award for dramatic integrity more. She could only bottle down her disgust by pretending it was a stage performance.

  "Tirittit had to take it to their high-spines," said Talbot. "But what they really wanted from Connolly was to interrogate him properly. So, as soon as they've done that, as long as I deal with this anti-Korozhet sentiment, hard, they'll release him. I'll be getting audio-recordings from them tomorrow, reassuring Shaw. I had to give them certain guarantees, something of a more formal alliance and certain… what they call 'levies' of Vats, but they've promised to back me up, militarily if need be. The last thing I thought I'd do was come out of this mess stronger. But I've got the votes of-"

  He proceeded to list Shareholders that Sanjay had tried for years to establish the names of. "-in my pocket. I've still got control over the Special Branch. We set up a redundancy for this sort of contingency. Special Operations Director Perros is still in place. I'd better contact the others and then Shaw. Damned good thing Perros' men failed to take her out at that Vat meeting. You can be sure I'll reward you well for this, Sanjay."

  She raised her eyebrows. "All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten it. Call them."

  "You could confuse a saint. I meant a portfolio on the new Council. Not perfume," said Cartup.

  She stood up. "I don't want to confuse saints. Make your calls, Talbot. I'll use my mobile. I make you one prophecy. You can be sure that no man of woman born will kill you."

  "More of your gibberish. I suppose I'm safe then." He picked up the 'phone and began dialing.

  Sanjay walked out onto her balcony and drew the glass door closed behind her. She looked out across the city. Hard to believe it had been nothing but scrub once. Now the suburbs and trees looked like they'd always been there. The remains of the great slowship that had brought them here still dominated the skyline, with the huge pumpkin-shape of the Korozhet ship a close second.

  She drew a deep breath, ignoring the stabbing pains in her chest, and dialed. She was not in the least surprised that the answerer enquired "And who doth call?" in a haughty tone. She'd always had a soft spot for Pooh-Bah. He'd always struck her as the perfect example of successful socialism in one body.

  ***

  The little golf cart swayed dangerously around corners. The candy-striped vehicle's steering was being pushed to its limits and microns beyond. Virginia didn't even seem perturbed. "How good is this information?"

  "As good as itself," said Gobbo, clinging onto the rail. "And the tears of it are wet."

  Virginia had no time right now for Shakespearian sophistry. "How do you know we can trust her?"

  "Meilin said she was one of the founders of the VLO. She gave some passwords that no one else would know."

  "It just seems insane. Why should he go to someone like that to hide?" asked Virginia, suspiciously.

  "And thereby hangs a tail," said Melene. "Methinks she hath cozened a cozening rogue."

  "She said something about giving him enough rope. Perhaps she thought he would go into rope-selling, and when he did not, she decided to turn him in."

  Pooh-Bah found this quite logical. "Marry, 'tis passing strange to a person like myself, of haughty and exclusive pre-adamite descent, to engage in vulgar trade. But I believe that the Master of the Buckhounds and the Groom of the Back Stairs have invested heavily in a scheme to make inflatable rattesses."

  Before there could be any more startling commercial revelations, they arrived at Sanjay Devi's home on the hill that overlooked the town. The rats poured off the golf cart and began moving in. Virginia followed them, and the paratroopers following the golf cart, followed her.

  ***

  Eric Flint

  The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly

  Dunsinane

  "No answer from Shaw," said Talbot Cartup, pacing.

  "She is coming here," said Sanjay, tranquilly.

  "What!"

  Sanjay looked askance at him. "You do seem to have trouble understanding things, Cartup. Perhaps it is because you're so stupid. But then, I did choose you for your stupidity. And your vanity."

  "What?" Talbot stared at her.

  She'd never insulted him before. She relished it. And she was playing the role of her lifetime. "I've betrayed you to her," she explained.

  Talbot gaped at her. "But…"

  "It was necessary," said Sanjay. "I selected you as the vilest of weeds when I discovered Shaw was dead. You were a useful weed. You choked all the others out, and brought out and fed the resentment of the Vats with your stupid brutality. Some of the other weeds might have allowed more freedom. But you made sure, for me, that the only way out for them was by destroying the HAR Shareholders' monopoly on power. You did more for the VLO than I could."

  "What? How could you?"

  "Is that all you can ever say, Cartup? 'What?' " She cackled. "Cauldron bubble… Like the witches did to Macbeth… I didn't make you fall, Talbot Cartup. I simply gave you the opportunities to choose your own fate. To imagine that your petty vendettas against Fitzhugh or this Vat-boy Connolly could succeed. To not see my plans with two new intelligences… What you have done is to erode the very ground under your feet. You've done what I could not, Talbot Cartup. Your greed has poisoned this sick system enough to bring it down. Now your crimes can take you down with it."

  "You bitch," he said, incredulously, "you're neck deep in all the things I've done. You advised me! You hid me. You're an accomplice and I'll take you down with me."

  She shrugged. "If I'd kept my hands out of your affairs… you'd have crawled off and hidden in legal evasions and poisoned this society for years. I had to make sure you were eliminated. You've known all along that a second Korozhet ship landed with the Magh'. You and Aloysius Shaw both knew from the initial satellite data."

  "Shaw was an idiot. He didn't believe it could be true. He said that it would cause unrest to start such rumors."

  "I had wondered about that. He was a pompous fool, but not as much of a villain as you. And, in a way, this society needed a true villain, or it would have limped on for generations, oppressing more and more people. You were perfect for my purposes in that way, Cartup. You've colluded with the Korozhet and become wealthy and powerful. But we could never catch you. The evidence was hidden, and you had a powerful team of hiders backing you. So: when this blew up, I gave you houseroom. Recordings of all your conversations have gone out from here to the three people I trust: John Needford, Len Liepsich, and Lynne Stark. You've been entrapped redhanded. A sting, you might say."

  "You bitch." He snatched at his car keys. "You won't get away with this."

  She shook her head. "The doors on this house are ver
y secure, Cartup. Old ship doors. At the moment they're set to only be openable from the outside. You haven't got a hope."

  He snarled, and dropped the keys for a knife lying on the table. She'd been sharpening it earlier. "I've got you, Devi. That'll do."

  She smiled tranquilly. "But not for long, Cartup. I'm dying of cancer. It's quite incurable. I wanted to see Harmony and Reason free of your sort before I went. I wanted to see our dream drawn back from the nightmare that people like you and Aloysius Shaw were prepared to delve into, for the sake of your own power and greed. Go ahead and kill me if you dare. Or are you afraid?"

  Outside, vehicles screeched to a halt. "Not of you, you old witch!"

  As he stabbed, she whispered: "I hear the wailing of the women, for the Queen is dead."

  The words were finished with a bloody froth on her lips. But, like everything in her life that she'd set out to do, Sanjay Devi had succeeded in using the line that had prepared her for that moment.

  ***

  Talbot Cartup was still standing above Sanjay Devi with a bloody knife in his hand, when rats and bats burst into the room, with Virginia and half a dozen paratroopers behind her. There was a glass door and a balcony behind him.

  And, in the end, Sanjay Devi had chosen the right line again. It wasn't any man of woman born that killed him. Tripping over a rat, as a bat flew at his face, and falling off the balcony to the rocks below did it.

  Two paratroopers were trying to give Sanjay first aid. Another one was calling for an ambulance. She waved the one who was trying to staunch the blood away. "I'm dying, anyway. I want to speak to her."

  She beckoned Ginny closer. "I knew he might weasel out of anything but red-handed murder, my dear. I'm dying. I give my children into your care, Virginia Shaw. Take good care of them or my ghost will haunt you. Be sure of it."

  "Your children? Who?" Sanjay Devi was a well known Shareholder. She'd never married, and if she'd ever had children they'd been kept a complete secret.

  "The uplifted ones, first-the rats and bats I created in my witch's vats. I was the one who persuaded your father to put an implant into you, my dear. Because I saw you as their best chance. My other children are the Vats. I bred them up. I have millions of children, and I wanted a future for them. Not slavery. Either from our culture or… the Crotchets. You take over now. I've worked in secret. The time for that is over. Raise the revolution."

  The ambulance arrived, but Virginia Shaw had a feeling the medics were too late.

  All she could do was nod.

  ***

  It took the police some time to recover Talbot Cartup's body from the dangerous and slippery rocks below the balcony. The bats had been able to tell them that he was indeed dead and not worth risking life and limb for.

  Since then the bats had been locked in deep discussion, while the rats had cheerfully looted some booze.

  "We have decided, Virginia. You have here as many rats as are likely to fight, but we need more bats for any raid on such a target. So we need to send Eamon south to raise the standard with our organizations."

  "And I might have guessed that both the Red Wing and the Battacus League would steal our password," grumbled Eamon irritably. "We used 'Easter Uprising' first."

  "First or last. We need them all," said Bronstein. "And I'd like to go myself, but you're a stronger flier and will not be turned to drink and forget your mission like this wastrel." She pointed a wing at O'Niel, who had just accepted a stoup of Sanjay's single malt from Doc.

  "Just because I am sometimes taken with drink, doesn't mean I can't think, Bronstein," said O'Niel. "Not that Eamon is not a better flier, even if Shamus Plekhanov is a better bat with explosives."

  "Hmph," said Eamon. "Well, I'd better be going. 'Tis a long fly."

  One of the paratroopers had been listening in. "Where to?"

  "To divisional headquarters, Sector 3-350," answered Eamon.

  "You should take one of the transport planes," said the paratrooper with a wry smile. "You could be there in two hours."

  Eamon nodded thoughtfully. "I'll be doing that."

  He flapped upward. "I'll return with a mighty bat brigade."

  "Is he serious?" asked the paratrooper.

  "He's always serious," said O'Niel. "Sensible, no. The airfield is the other way, to be sure. I'd better get after him and tell him."

  Fortunately, for short-sprint-flights, O'Niel was quite capable, for a plump bat.

  Eric Flint

  The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly

  Chapter 49

  Eric Flint

  The Rats, the Bats amp; the Ugly

  In the green and naphthalene reeking ship-halls of the Korozhet slave-ship.

  Chip knew that it was bound to end, sooner or later. He could stay in here until he starved or the slave supervisors came to haul him out.

  He'd yet to find any way of killing himself in this room. Besides, the soft-cyber in his head said that would be a disservice to the masters. So: he waited. When the time came he would find a way. The slaves were apparently supervised by low-order young Korozhets, small, short-spined and very orange. Neuters and males, according to Yetteth. They were neither very intelligent nor very strong. They tended to use aliens that the other prisoners called Nerba as brute force. Your mind would let you resist Nerba. Your body was ill-advised to. They looked like armored bipedal water buffalo, with too many joined limbs and long mobile tails which split into a two-fingered "hand."

  There was no way of telling night from day here in the vast bowels of the Korozhet ship, but Chip kept count of the food sirens. It was just after the seventh one that a Korozhet supervisor came for him, with two Nerba to carry him if need be. "Come," ordered the Korozhet. "Medium-spine Natt is to interrogate you."

  He got up from the sleeping shelf to walk. A lash of some kind snaked across his naked back. "Walk lower. It is not fitting that you stand taller than even a First-instar, slave."

  He hunched his shoulders and bent his legs and walked as slowly as he thought he could get away with. His eyes darted around looking for a death-chance. He waited too long. The small orange-spined Korozhet clattered his spines with impatience. "Pick him up, Nerba. Do not break his shell. We will go through the power section and save me much ambulating."

  Chip found himself carried through a section of the ship where the air smelled distinctly of hot metal, even above the naphthalene reek. Much of the machinery was so alien he could not even begin to recognize it. But one piece he did. The last time he'd seen one, a fountain of sparks had been showering from it.

  At a guess that was a force-field generator, near as dammit identical to the one in the brood-heart of the scorpiary.

  Chip was eventually tossed down in front of a slightly redder and longer-spined Korozhet, sitting in a shallow waterbath.

  Chip was planning to lie as much as he could. He'd just never realized quite what an effort defying the Korozhet and the soft-cyber had been for Ginny.

  The medium-spine asked questions. Chip answered. He could hate the Crotchets, but to refuse to answer a direct question-from a Korozhet, in Korozhet-that was near impossible. And he was struggling to think fast enough to come up with evasive answers. At length the medium-spine started to clatter his spines. "Call Third-instar Clattat. This must be heard by him. The slaves rebel!"

  The small, orange short-spined one raised his killing spines. Chip desperately wanted to dodge, but felt that would not be serving the master. "We kill any slave who rebels," said the small Korozhet.

  "Unfit-to-spawn one! It is not this slave that rebels. It is the others. I have been instructed to hand this one intact to Sixth-instar Tirritit."

  So, soon, Chip found himself being questioned by a larger Korozhet. When this one asked if the rats and bats could disobey, Chip had to answer in the affirmative.

  "A direct order?"

  "Yes"

  "How do they do this?" demanded the Korozhet inquisitor.

  Chip struggled to defend his friends. They fo
und cover in the English language. He found refuge in Doc. "It is possible with the use of Plato's forms."

  The last two words were English. And that too came to his rescue.

  "How does this Platoforms tool work?"

  "I do not know. I do not understand it." That was true.

  "Is it used by all?"

  "No."

  "Will it be used by humans on the soft-cyber?"

  "It is a human thing. It was done to one rat as an experiment." That was true.

  "But there are many of these slaves who broke their conditioning!" said the Second-instar.

  Perhaps he could make them afraid? Fluff had tried to stop the Korozhet shooting Virginia by clinging to the laser. "One attacked the weapon of the Korozhet," volunteered Chip.

  The resultant clattering of spines and reek of naphthalene was almost overwhelming. The Third-instar Clattat spined away hastily to seek an interview with the High-spine.

  "What do we do with this slave?" asked the small orange Korozhet. "Are we to kill him because he rebelled? Any slave that rebels must die."

  "Soft-spined sexless it, that will never even become male. He has not rebelled, as I said. Send him back to his quarters. You heard the Third-instar. He is wanted in good condition."

  ***

  Yetteth was once again on cleaning duties for the High-spines when a Third-instar dared to come clattering in, and interrupted. Yetteth had seen a Fourth-instar killed for less. "Most High-spine. I have news of slave revolts among the implants we have placed among the humans."

  That was enough to lower the dart-spines on the Deep-Purple Tenth-instar High-spine.

  "Speak. Revolts? How is this possible? There is sometimes a rare malfunction or a slave of great will who overcomes some of the programming. But it is a rare thing. Our statisticians tell us that it is unlikely in low-order uplift minds in a proportion of less than one in twenty million."