To my relief, solemn oaths and so forth didn't seem to be on the agenda. My companions were getting more and more taciturn as we approached the bright circle of light. Stealthily prowling forward, they were getting into a state very familiar to me: eyes narrowed, heads pointed forward into furry ovals, fur itself velvety as if it had been well shampooed. However, this change in them with all its pleasing concomitant phenomena wasn't because they expected petting. No, the cause of their abrupt switch into a trance-like state was the anticipation of something without which our kind would perish miserably: sunlight! But hadn't Saffron said they were blind because they always lived in the dark? Some kind of explanation was in order.
We soon caught up with the others, who were standing motionless, pressed close together, in the man-made crater and letting the dazzling rays of the morning sun shine through them. They all kept their eyes closed, and they seemed more rapt than ever, as if someone had cast a magic spell on them. I felt a sudden sense of happiness myself at seeing the bright sky above me again and feeling pleasant warmth on my coat after so many hours in the dark. I discovered later that we had made pilgrimage to a building site at a main inlet, where the effluent draining away from a whole part of town was diverted into the various branches of the sewage system. Basically, the place was a circular shaft lined with concrete, wide in diameter and deep enough to make you dizzy. There were building tools everywhere: bottles of gas for welding and any amount of steel and wood. The workers must have stopped for their tea break. The sun stood right above this chasm, giving optimum radiation. After the ceremony Saffron told me that the blind community sought out such open building sites once a day when human beings didn't happen to be around, so that they could tank up with energy from the rays of the sun. Even spirits of darkness can't do without the essential life-giving elixir of daylight. So that explained why my brothers and sisters living underground were spared rickets.
However, they displayed some macabre differences from us ordinary mortals when it came to sunbathing. The reason why the blind folk kept their eyes closed in the sun must have been that their atrophied visual nerves would feel dreadful pain at any contact with bright light. But they had also made a solemn, even religious rite out of the absorption of Vitamin D, something we sighted animals take in as we roll on the ground. When Saffron, Niger and I had thrust our way to the centre of the worshippers - a bird's-eye view of them would have given the impression of a sombre patchwork quilt - a very odd thing happened. As if a signal had been given they struck up their shrill 'Yeeeoooowl!' again, first softly, then louder and louder, until the yowling culminated in a symphonic hurricane. At the climax of this happy caterwauling they raised their forepaws, stood on their hind legs and stretched their bodies up, so that they looked like dogs begging. Then they all opened their eyes at the same moment. The glaring light, which must have felt like spurting acid as it fell on their retinas, sent stabbing pains through them, and the emotional 'Yeeeeoooowl!' took on a primeval note that went to the heart. Only now did I understand the full meaning of that cry. Saffron and his people had as close a relationship with the phenomenon of pain as bats with the echo phenomenon. They had suffered violence from youth; their basic experiences as children were not of pleasure but of pain and despair. Even later, down here in the sewers, they hadn't found the salvation they hoped for: theirs was a hard and painful existence. They had to get their food with great difficulty and danger; they had to put up with dirt, disease, crippling injuries and the eternal darkness, and then the monster who persecuted them had taught them the meaning of mortal fear and pain all over again. Their whole existence was bound up with constant pain, which gradually became an essential part of their emotional life and finally a ritual compulsion. Every day they made their way to some place where the sunlight they needed could penetrate, and let it shine on their coats. But necessity had combined with perversion in an extraordinary way, finally degenerating into this grotesque ceremony. It was if they were sacrificing to the god of pain by exposing their most vulnerable parts, their damaged eyes, in an attempt to placate him. They were torturing themselves of their own free will, because a life without pain seemed to be more than they could comprehend.
For a moment it occurred to me that they might have been telling me a pack of lies in their tale of Hugo & Co. Could be they'd committed the crimes themselves, those crimes representing the worst pain they could devise, and I was being asked to spread the story of the Black Knight among our kind outside just to divert suspicion from the real murderers. The Company of the Merciful was to figure as a league of high-minded chivalry, not a bunch of lunatics given to such excesses of violence that they sometimes went right over the top and killed one of their own species. Because look at it soberly, and there was something ludicrous about the idea of a small Sherlock Holmes tracking down two monsters in the wilderness - while at the same time it would be very good PR work for my sewer-dwelling friends.
In spite of these suspicions I dismissed all doubts for the time being. The present atmosphere made clear thinking impossible. By now I was in the grip of religious enthusiasm myself, carried away by the song of suffering which was a musical equivalent of weeping. Finally I got up on my own hind legs, stretched, waved my forepaws ecstatically in the air and wailed in a voice choked with tears: 'Yeeeeooowl! Yeeeeooowl! Yeeeeooowl!'
This strange performance lasted about ten minutes, and was abruptly ended by the approach of the first construction worker. The blind folk retreated into the sewers and then, to my surprise, dispersed. They all scattered in different directions, like the congregation after church on a Sunday. Only when Saffron and Niger took me back to the rat hidden in the alcove did I realise that it was finally breakfast time, and they were all off in search of something to eat. The three of us made a hearty meal, smacking our lips with enjoyment, although I have to admit that rat meat can't really be described as the most Lucullan of delicacies for our palates. As soon as the worst of my ravenous hunger was satisfied, I found myself longing yet again for Gustav and his almost loving manner of opening tins. Ah, the clatter of the tin-opener! It was like a familiar nursery rhyme to my ears. Oddly enough, poor as their own palates are, humans know how to make food for us better than anyone else. Why they let themselves be fobbed off with terrible fast food and never complain is a mystery to me. At least our feast gave me a chance to widen my culinary horizons. Afterwards my blind employers guided me through a complicated system of tunnels which kept branching in a confusing way. Though I had my eyesight, I was lost in the total darkness of this labyrinth, where not even the faintest ray of light could penetrate. On our way I finally got round to telling the others what had brought me down to the underworld. Of course I assured them, hypocritically, that I had no intention of returning to a life of luxury and tin-openers. The journey finally ended at a drainpipe with bright sunlight falling through it like a vision. Saffron and Niger stopped at this point, looking solemn.
'I don't know if we shall ever meet again, my dear Francis,' said the Lord of the Drains, sounding genuinely sad. His wiry second-in-command, on the other hand, kept her face turned away from me so as not to show her emotions. Maybe she felt a certain melancholy on parting too, but it seemed she wasn't going to forgive me for the defeat of Rhodes in a hurry.
'But sometimes a single meeting can change a person's whole life,' Saffron went on. 'We aren't actually asking you to change. We just want you to remember us when we're out of your sight. Don't forget that these sewers contain not only the effluent of an ever-festering world but also the invisible Company of the Merciful, which gives new life to brothers and sisters condemned to death. You have a hard puzzle to solve out there, and no one can ever repay you. But nothing less than the lives of our own kind in the country depends on your solving the case. Because if Crazy Hugo and that brutal dog go on with their butchery the results will be worse than a plague. We outsiders may seem phantom figures, only half alive, yet life is the holiest thing we know. Life seems the most natural
thing in the world to the young, the intact and the carefree, but for those who shake hands with death daily it's a rare exception from the rule. We're fighting for that exception, and I hope you'll fight on our side too, my dear friend.'
As he uttered these solemn words Saffron kept his head tilted to one side, so that the sun falling through the drainpipe shone on his right earring. The glowing, shining gold reflected the light, which dazzled me, transporting me into a state of magical reverie. I couldn't suspect him of doing it on purpose, because he had no way of knowing the exact position of my eyes. On the other hand, down here I wasn't dealing with well-fed old farts lying about in armchairs who'd lost all their instincts. People who were constantly confronting unusual situations in such an inhospitable environment must have unusual methods at their command too. In any case, using suggestive tricks of this kind to bind me to my detective mission showed shrewdness which wasn't to be underestimated.
At last the grimy Goliath bent down to me and gave me the fraternal kiss, rubbing his nose affectionately against mine. For a race of individualists like us, this intimate gesture is the ultimate sign of confidence and trust, rather like - well, let's say rather like one human lending another his credit card.
'I'll do everything I can not to disappoint your blind people, Saffron,' I told him. 'And if a brilliant detective gets washed into this Venice of a sewage system some day minus his head, then you'll know that Hugo and his dog have escaped arrest by underhand means. God protect you!'
I turned away, and was about to scramble up the drainpipe when a paw gently touched my back. I turned back and looked straight into Niger's glowing white eyes. You could tell from her twisted expression that she was forcing herself to whisper a few last conciliating words to me at the moment of farewell. But before she could lose face like that, I took the initiative and rubbed my nose against hers. She returned the caress, and I suddenly thought what victims of circumstance we are. In other surroundings, under other conditions, our meeting would have gone very differently; she and I might even have mated. In another time, Niger, in another world, I said silently to myself, things would have turned out differently ... And as I was trying to overcome this overwhelming fit of melancholy, I suddenly knew with complete certainty that I would indeed see Niger and Saffron and all the other blind ones again, and very soon at that - but in another time, in another world.
CHAPTER 4
A new life, a second life! To leave the old, threadbare, failed life behind and begin all over again: which of us hasn't dreamed of such a wonderful chance? I was prey to this illusion myself as I scrambled through the drainpipe to freedom. The euphoric sense of a new start was boosted by the fact that the scene into which I emerged was one of unrivalled natural beauty. The opening of the drain was at the foot of a small hillock beside a romantically babbling brook. A fallen ash tree lay across this stream, forming a natural bridge. The brook itself wound like an idling snake through breathtakingly lovely wooded meadows. Last night's storm suddenly seemed just a dismal nightmare, for the rays of the sun shone on the thick carpet of flowers as brightly as if they'd had a thorough overhaul in the interim. The dampness left by the rain had raised gossamer clouds of mist which were doing a veil dance round the budding branches. Myriads of bees and butterflies whirled cheerfully in the air like confetti. Starlings and nightingales sang as if competing for a deal with a recording company.
Rather dazed, I tottered off into this sea of light, chlorophyll and intoxicating fresh air, overcome by a sense of being actually reborn. And no wonder; the past few hours had provided me with as much excitement as I'd had in the whole previous year. On entering this green paradise, moreover, I seemed to have left behind not only all physical dangers and unedifying tales of murder, but my entire misspent past. I suddenly felt no great urge to go back to Gustav's cosy flat and have my libido mashed into nut spread. On the other hand, I wasn't particularly keen to carry out my promise, go looking for a chronically ravenous mastiff and a member of my own species with the engaging manners of a Nosferatu, read them their rights and then haul them before a justice blind in both eyes. No, my future, my second life would all be like this happy moment: light-hearted, natural, carefree.
A young tree on the opposite side of the stream attracted my attention. Its buds were fully open. The pink, bell-shaped blossom it bore sent out signals proclaiming the sheer joy of life, and its filigree branches swayed in the warm breeze like angels beckoning. Since I'd involuntarily taken an overdose of liquid in the sewage system, I felt an urgent need, as a convert to nature worship, to pay homage to this gem of the wilderness and promote its survival with some biologically degradable fertilizer. So I trotted over the mossy trunk of the ash to the other side of the brook and hurried on over the outer roots of that centuries-old fallen Methuselah of a tree to the spot I'd picked for irrigation. When I finally reached it, my bladder already relaxing nicely in anticipation - the tree blew up.
First I thought it was an optical illusion, then I thought it was a wonder of nature, and finally I thought it was some kind of hocus-pocus staged by Saffron and Niger for the amusement of all and sundry. I saw the central part of the trunk, which was as thick as a human arm, explode into a thousand splinters, whereupon the crown of the tree folded, tipped over and fell to one side, leaving only a jagged stump behind. Extraordinary: the pretty tree was shattered, like a happy dream when the alarm goes off. A fraction of a second later, however, I realised that while I'd seen the wood splinter at close quarters I'd heard the crack of the explosion somewhere off to one side. I began to entertain nasty suspicions ...
My head swung round, and I inspected the area in alarm. In rapid succession, as if they were snapshots, I registered a series of views of this virgin landscape, which suddenly seemed to be swarming with giant prehistoric ash trees and secret societies of druids. Or was it all just a hallucination, the result of exhaustion and stress? But the tree in front of my nose really had blown up: I could swear it. If it hadn't, if I was going to fall for such an impossible phantasmagoria in broad daylight, then my brilliant mind needed urgent attention. Notwithstanding, I feverishly went on looking for some rational explanation - and I finally found it.
The stronghold of the Evil One rose behind a marshy pool at about the right distance. It might blend into the tapestry of speckled light and shade formed by the undergrowth in the background, but normally it would be easy even for someone with only moderate vision to spot it. My failure to notice it immediately was simply due to my overheated nerves, which had been expecting something wholly supernatural. However, what I saw was nothing but a time-honoured classic of deer-stalking methods: a raised hide, officially for watching so-called game, but in actual fact a sneaky place of concealment for people whose hobby is murder. A tall figure stood in this hide, watching me intently through a pair of field-glasses. Sinister shadows surrounded it, and the reflection of the field-glasses sprang out from these shadows like the eyes of a wolf glowing in the night. However, if a fleeting flash of light hadn't caught my attention I'd have overlooked the figure completely. The brief flash came from the barrel of the gun in the watcher's other hand. As far as I could tell from this distance, the gun was really something special. It didn't have a conventional wooden stock, but consisted of a metal curve all in one piece, resembling a sporting rifle only in outline, with the rather bolt-like barrel resting on this stock and gleaming dull silver. You'd need to be a champion shot to take precise aim with such a massive weapon. The alarming guardian of these meadows was rigged out in the North American version of his profession's costume, with a red and black check lumber-jacket and a matching woollen cap with earflaps. At this point he quickly put his field-glasses down in order to resume his mopping-up duties, and as I watched, wide-eyed, he pointed his gun at me again and concentrated on taking aim. As he did so I got a glimpse of the nickel-framed sunglasses he was wearing; they had mirror lenses. It wasn't likely he could miss me and hit the tree this time; his first failure to hit the targ
et had obviously made him correct his aim. I simply couldn't imagine why he was after me. I didn't look particularly like a rabbit. However, the hunter obviously felt otherwise, and before I had a chance to introduce myself to him as a gentleman of intellect and education, he was blasting away again.
With instinctive presence of mind I took the biggest forward leap of my life, aware at the same time of the final cracking of the tree trunk behind my back. I saw flying splinters of wood whiz past me. Saints above, the bloody lunatic really meant it! The sudden flood of adrenalin into my cells made me act without thought, my mental processes reduced to those of a grasshopper. Everything I did was automatic, unplanned, purely instinctive. Where on earth could I go to escape this fierce salvo of artillery fire? There - there was safety! Like a revelation, a hollow tree with a crack in its trunk loomed up ahead of me, offering the ideal refuge, or anyway temporary cover. But the next bullet was already thudding into the ground only a few centimetres from my paws. It made a little crater, forcing me to swerve sharply off in the other direction, like a hare. If the marksman had been entertaining any lingering doubts about his rabbit theory my behaviour would dispose of them once and for all. In the most remote corner of my upper storey my analytical faculties stirred, despite the mortal danger I was in, and I compared human notions of hunting and our own. While my kind has specialised in the unattractive rodent tribe, man destroys everything he can get in the sights of his gun just for the hell of it, without any obvious necessity, and even prefers members of his own species. A very peculiar way to get your fun. Can it really be true, I asked myself, that nature once dropped a stitch and produced a creature whose megalomaniac inclinations will drive it to murder its own ancestral great-great-grandmother, like some incurable psychiatric case? But why? What for? To set itself up as God the Father? How else can we account for the millions and millions of animals pursued, mutilated and massacred by hunters? How else can we explain all the other monstrous things men do? But in that case nature herself is nothing but a botched monstrosity.
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