A Box of Nothing

by Peter Dickinson

  The voles formed themselves into squads and rushed the main gates. The toads thumped off after them without saying thank-you to anyone. The mice stayed in their ranks, trembling, but after a while they crept away too. James was left alone with the rat that had been General Weil dangling from his right hand.

  But not quite alone. There were still the gulls in their cage, watching everything with their wild haughty look as though it were no affair of theirs at all. James picked up his box of nothing, walked across to the cage, and pressed it against the lock. By the time he had put the box back in his pocket the whole cage had tinkled into rusty scraps, which the gulls shook from their backs. They strutted a few steps, stretched their wings, and folded them again.

  “Go on,” said James. “They’ll come to their senses any moment.”

  One gull turned its head, stalked across, picked James up in its beak by the collar of his anorak, and dumped him on the other gull’s back. He scrabbled for a hold as the great wings stretched again. He needed both hands, so he couldn’t help letting go of the rat that had been General Weil. It leapt for the ground as the gull took off.

  Soon they were skimming above the roofs of Rat City. The streets were in turmoil, with barricades blazing at every corner. Nobody bothered about a couple of gulls flying over.

  Chapter 14: Gull Country

  “We thought we might not see you again,” said the Burra.

  “Were you worried?”

  “Not really. We did not think any harm could come to you while you had your box, but we passed a motion expressing our regret.”

  “Oh.”

  The gulls had left James on a high cliff ledge with no way up or down. The Burra was there already, with some of the junk from the airship. The airship itself was moored at another ledge, a bit along the cliff. It looked decidedly floppy after all the gas it had lost, and was only just buoyant even without its load. On the other side of the vast, shadowy valley the peaks of a mountain glittered in the sunset. At this height the air was biting, so James found a blanket and wrapped it around his anorak. He’d been thrilled to see the Burra again, but now, after the excitement of the escape from the camp, he felt a bit of a let-down. And when the Burra said it hadn’t even been worried! That wasn’t fair. James knew he’d had a perfectly rotten time. The Burra didn’t understand. Losing James was probably only like losing the leg the rat patrol had shot up—too bad, that’s all.

  James was brooding on the unfairness when he felt his blanket stir, rumple itself, and rub gently against his cheek like a purring cat. He realized the Burra did understand a little, in its own way.

  At least it knew what it was like to be scared sick, because of its battle with the biplane.

  “What about you?” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “We are so-so. It was all something of a shock. We remember very little about it. We were all taken up with hanging together.”

  “Was it the computer that did that?”

  “Oh, no. It was us. All of us.”

  “It practically blew itself up, fighting the biplane. I’m surprised it’s still working.”

  The computer, with the small portable TV that was its display screen now, lay on the ledge with the other oddments from the airship. Its case looked a bit wrecked, not quite straight anywhere any longer, but the “on” light was glowing and the pink heart shone as if it had just been painted.

  “Working?” said the Burra. “Playing, more like it!”

  “Space Invaders, you mean?”

  “Not that either. It … what’s up?”

  The screen had lit up with a mass of figures and letters and symbols, line after line of them. The lines began to move, dancing around, and as they danced the figures and symbols changed and vanished, sometimes in pairs, sometimes several at a time, until there was only one line left.

  “That is the computer’s idea of a game,” said the Burra. “It does not mean a thing to the rest of us.”

  “Nor me, neither,” said James. “But it’s sort of neat, isn’t it?”

  (Maths was the part of school he liked best. Mrs. Last gave him maths problems of his own because he was way ahead of the rest of the class.)

  “The universe came out of an equation like that, you know?” he said. “I saw it on TV, the night before … before all this started. And in the end it will go back into an equation. The universe, I mean.”

  “That does not help us to get our knots retied.”

  “Are they bad? Can’t you do it just by guesswork?”

  “We unravelled into some quite big holes. The trouble is that if we get one knot slightly wrong, it puts the others out and the net is the wrong shape. It must be a smooth curve or we will not fly straight. So we keep having to go back and try again. The computer could work it all out for us if it chose to, but it seems to think its game is more important.”

  “Perhaps it is, only we don’t know. When you finish mending yourself can we just go?”

  “There are two problems. First, we must find a fresh supply of gas. Second, we will need the gulls’ permission. We are their prisoner, you see. They have not yet worked out that we are all one creature. If we had more gas, the airship could join the rest of us and we might escape by night, but the gulls could easily overtake us the next day. Our force-field modulators are beyond repair, and in any case they depend on the computer to operate them.”

  “Am I a prisoner, too, now?”

  “We are afraid so.”

  “I don’t think that’s fair, after what I did for them.”

  “Perhaps they will take that into account. They seem to have a highly developed sense of honour. Overdeveloped, you might almost say.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, some of their behaviour is extremely ridiculous, but we strongly advise you not to laugh at them.”

  It was a bore being a prisoner again, though at least the food was better and there was the Burra to talk to. But there seemed to be even less chance of getting away from this high, cold ledge than there had been from General Weil’s camp, and all so far from home, and Floral Street, and the family. James was feeling pretty depressed when, halfway through the next morning, he heard a whoosh and a thump and there was one of the great gulls ruffling its feathers into place on the rim of the ledge.

  The gull didn’t do anything. It just stood there, facing out over the cliff edge. If you want to show how haughty you are, James thought, standing still is a good way. Ordinary seaside gulls do a lot of that, on flagpoles and statues and things, but they do quite a bit of quarrelling too. A quarrel between two of these monsters, with their big tearing beaks, would be something to see.

  He was wondering about that when there was another whoosh as a gull swooped by and without landing plucked the Burra off the ledge by one ear. The first gull stalked over to James, pecked down, grabbed him by the scruff of his anorak, and launched itself out over the valley. No please or do-you-mind or anything like that, oh no. James could see the Burra dangling from the other gull’s beak a hundred yards ahead. He only hoped the ear would stand the strain.

  They swung out around a jut of the mountain and then in towards a great curve of cliff where hundreds of the huge gulls roosted on different ledges. James could see nests with fluffy young in them, and others where a parent sat on eggs, just like ordinary gulls. The only difference was that a place like this at the seaside in the real world would have been deafening with squawks and squabbles. Here it was almost silent.

  They landed on a large ledge where a dozen other gulls were waiting. The birds who had brought them put James and the Burra down and stalked over to join their comrades. All the gulls stood quite still. James couldn’t even guess whether they were watching him—a bird’s eye is different from an animal’s. You can tell where an animal is looking, you can’t with a bird. He didn’t think he liked the gulls much. They were
beautiful, but dangerous. He’d hated the rats but he’d been able to understand them, guess what they were thinking and feeling. He hadn’t a clue with the gulls.

  “What’s happening?” he whispered.

  “We do not know. Stand still. Stare back at them. And whatever you do, do not laugh.”

  “Fat chance.”

  So James stood and stared. He tried to imagine what it was like to be a gull, to feel as haughty and fierce as that, Emperor James, ruler of the universe, terror of the skyways, et cetera, et cetera. The gulls didn’t seem to notice but it made him feel better. At last they moved, closing into a ring with their beaks inward, and began a soft bubbling noise, gull talk, probably.

  “Smell anything?” muttered the Burra.

  James sniffed. There was a bad stink—just what you’d expect coming from beneath a cliff where gulls had been nesting for years.

  “We could fractionate some gas out of there,” said the Burra.

  “Wouldn’t you need the computer?”

  “Luckily the equipment has come along as a member of the expedition.”

  “You’ve still got to persuade the gulls.”

  “Shh. Something is happening.”

  The circle of gulls was breaking apart to form an arc facing James and the Burra. The gull in the centre stepped forward. It was slightly larger than the others, and haughtier, and fiercer-looking. It bent its head, pecked something off the ledge, and came forward carrying in its beak what looked like a hairy caterpillar, very dead and floppy. Gull food? A peace offering? Were they going to have to eat … ?

  The gull laid the offering at the Burra’s feet.

  “Why! It is our old leg!” said the Burra.

  It was indeed—the camel leg that had been shot half to pieces by the rat patrol on James’s first evening in the Dump, and then been stolen by a gull. The gulls must have realized it had something to do with the Burra and now they were giving it back.

  At the sound of the Burra’s voice the leg twitched. And James laughed.

  Once he’d started he couldn’t stop. Partly it was sheer relief at not having to eat a hairy caterpillar, partly it was pleasure at getting the leg back—he’d always worried about it slightly in the back of his mind—but mainly it was the sight of that great proud bird facing the idiotic-looking Burra and giving it its own leg as a present. James hadn’t had much to laugh at for quite a long time, and now it felt as though two weeks’ worth were coming out all at once.

  Gulls have no sense of humour, none at all, which makes it hard to understand how this gull knew what the noise James was making meant, but it did. It turned slowly toward James, stared at him, and then stalked away. At the same time another gull walked over and picked the Burra up by its ear, carried it along the ledge, and dumped it in the middle of the circle of birds. James rushed to follow, but one of the gulls immediately grabbed him by his anorak and tossed him clear. Between the yellow legs James could see the Burra waving its arms around, trying to explain something in sign language. Nothing else happened for a long while, and then the circle broke up and the Burra came over.

  “This is somewhat serious,” it said.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

  “No doubt.”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  “Well, it is up to you, James. As far as we can make out, the gulls could not at first decide whether we counted as a rat or a gull. That is how they think. When you rescued two of them from the camp, they decided we must be gulls. But now that you have insulted them by laughing at one of their chieftains, they think we may be rats, after all. If we are gulls, they will help us on our way, but if we are rats, they will take us back into rat country and leave us there.”

  “They can’t! How can we show them?”

  “You can show them by doing what one gull does when it has insulted another. You can, if you are willing, agree to fight a duel.”

  “All right,” said James without even thinking.

  Chapter 15: Duel

  “We have seen this going on several times,” said the Burra. “But we have not understood what was happening. It was too far off. It is how they avoid continual quarrels, of course.”

  “I suppose so,” said James. He was feeling too sick with fright to think about it. The way duels worked in gull country was a bit like old-fashioned duelling with pistols, except the gulls didn’t have pistols so they took turns dropping rocks on each other. There were special rules about how far apart they had to be, and so on. There was even a rule about what happened when one of the duellists couldn’t fly—because it had broken a wing bone in an earlier duel, for instance. They were using this rule for James. He and the Burra, who was his second, were waiting on a special ledge where the cliff sloped away above so that a gull could fly directly over it to drop its rocks. The ledge was on an overhang, so that the gull could go down and circle almost directly below when it was its turn to have rocks dropped on it.

  “It is rather a sensible system, in its way,” said the Burra.

  “I think it’s absolutely stupid,” said James. “I think the gulls are even stupider than the rats.”

  “We think you will be very unlucky to be bit,” said the Burra. “You are a smaller target than a gull. We offered to let the challenger fly lower to take that into account …”

  “You did what!”

  “Well, we decided it was more honourable. Remember we are trying to prove you are not a rat. And we also thought that if we did not offer they might ask, but if we did offer they would feel honour bound to refuse.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  “Ah, it looks as though we are ready. You drop first.”

  “I’m going to aim to miss.”

  “Oh, no. Most unwise. An added insult. This is serious, James.”

  “You’re telling me!”

  A gull swooped down to the ledge and collected the Burra, who waved good luck as it was carried away. James went to the edge of the ledge and picked up one of the rocks that had been laid ready there. There were six of them, three each, about the size of tennis balls. If one of those landed on your head from a height, it would smash right through. Gulls broke wings in duels, didn’t they? That showed.

  He looked over the dizzy drop. Down there his opponent was circling close against the cliff. He tried to work out the problem. If he aimed where the bird was now, how far would it have flown by the time the stone reached it? He had to miss, but not too badly. His answers wouldn’t work. On ledges and crags all around, other gulls were gathered, like spectators at a snooker tournament, silent, intense. At last the signal came, one harsh squawk from the referee. James took his time, making sure they all saw be was doing his best to hit. He almost did, too, much nearer than he meant. The rock whistled down inches beside the bird’s head. The bird sailed smoothly on as though nothing had happened.

  Another squawk and it was James’s turn to be the target. His opponent came soaring up to the ledge, picked up a stone in its beak without landing or looking at James, and spiralled on into the sky.

  James began to walk around and around in a small circle, imitating the way the gull had flown below. He held his head back and looked straight in front of him, but inside he was really scared. It wasn’t like falling out of the airship or being captured by the rats, or even meeting General Weil. Then everything had been sudden and strange and he hadn’t really understood what he was frightened of. This time he knew exactly. A rock was going to fall out of the sky, and if it hit him it would smash his head in. And he mustn’t look up, or dodge, or flinch. Just walk steadily around and around.

  Smack! The rock slapped into the ledge a couple of paces ahead of him. He hadn’t even heard the signal squawk.

  While he waited for his opponent to take its place again below, James looked at the rock he was going to throw. It was just like an ordinary big flint, the so
rt you could pick up in a field. He remembered what had happened to the rat bullets when he’d found the dying gull by the stream and touched it with the box of nothing. Suppose he were to put the box on his head while he was walking around

  Just to see, he took the box out and tried it on the rock. Nothing much happened. The change wasn’t in the stone, but in the way he was looking at it. It was still a flint, but now he noticed that all along one side two lines of flakes had been carefully chipped away in a sort of pattern, leaving an edge that was sharp enough to cut your finger if you weren’t careful. An old flint axe, or something. He’d seen ones like it on school visits to the museum. If that landed on your noggin …

  Dimly he heard the signal to fire. Without even bothering to aim, he tossed the rock away. He was still in the daze of horror when all around him the cliff rang with gull cries. Now he looked over the edge and saw his opponent breaking from the circle and beginning to fly up, while two or three white feathers floated away on the breeze. This time the gull landed on the ledge and looked at James with its fierce, proud stare. Slowly it lowered its head. James put his right arm in front of his waist and bowed, the way he’d learned to for last term’s class play. The gull bowed again.

  They went on bobbing up and down to each other, the way gulls do sometimes, until several more gulls landed on the ledge, one of them bringing the Burra.

  “Well done,” said the Burra. “They seem to have decided that your coolness under fire shows you are a gull, after all.”

  “Did I hurt the one I hit?”

  “A glancing blow only. Most satisfactory.”

  “When can we go? I don’t like it here. I want to get moving.”

  “About two days, if all goes well.”