‘Oh, no,’ he gasped, thrusting a paw at it until the others noticed. ‘Is that...’
‘Min Min?’ said Wanda.
‘Syd to Command Control,’ said Syd, already lifting off. ‘I’ll check it out and report back!’
Syd did his best to hover like a hummingbird, or even a helicopter, just above the treetops, but then there was a blinding flash and a burning smell as the branch under him was sheered clean off, bouncing its way to the ground, barely missing a pair of raccoons still cleaning their whiskers.
‘Battle stations!’ cried Rocky. ‘Is it a hawk, or an eagle?’
‘Much worse,’ muttered Number 12. ‘It’s Mick of the Min Min.’
‘Huh?’ said Clint. ‘I don’t think that DVD has come to the Big Apple yet.’
Tiger could tell that Clint was being serious. ‘These aren’t special effects,’ he said. ‘The Min Min Lights are real. Show him, Tark.’
With a wave of his toe, Tark created a holograph of Mick in his big Akubra hat as they’d seen him at the Lake Eyre Resort. Mick faded in and out of focus, laughing like a demon the whole time.
‘Paul Hogan?’ asked Rocky. ‘But where’s that knife of his?’
With another sweep of his toe, Tark made the holograph vanish. ‘What you see is not what you get with Mick. He’s Sector Commander of the Abell 2218 starship fleet, and their mission is to—’
Just then, they heard a roar overhead and several trees were instantly incinerated, revealing the real Mick, or at least the Mick from Lake Eyre, but this time in gigantic proportions, standing there in the smoky gap.
The raccoons huddled together, and Tiger could hear their teeth chattering.
‘What’s that?’ Mick said, pointing at the GCU.
The raccoons looked at each other, as if wondering if they dared to answer, but, before they could, Mick sent a shockwave through the air and the GCU exploded into a million shards of light winking into darkness, leaving nothing in its wake.
‘Oh, sorry,’ said Mick. ‘Guess I don’t know my own strength!’
‘That was mean of you!’ said Wanda, doing her best to swell up beyond Judge Wanda proportions.
‘To what do we owe this dishonor?’ Tark asked Mick.
Mick laughed. ‘Are you still pretending to be a frog, Tark? How boring!’
Clint looked a bit more closely at Tark. ‘You mean you’re not a frog?’
‘I... was getting around to that,’ shrugged Tark, as much as a Griff disguised as a frog could shrug.
‘He was getting around to that!’ Wanda, Tiger and Number 12 said at once, with Syd echoing them, since he was always a bit slow off the mark.
Rocky poked Tiger in the nose. ‘And what are you?’
‘Excuse me,’ said Tiger. ‘I’m a cat, of course.’
Rocky sniffed his paw and wrinkled his nose. ‘Smells like cat, all right.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ grumped Tiger.
‘DON’T CHANGE THE SUBJECT!’ demanded Mick.
‘What is the subject?’ Wanda said, sauntering right up to him. ‘I thought we made it clear to you that we of Project Earth-mend are well on our way to making a more sustainable planet!’
‘Too little, too late,’ said Mick, rubbing his hands. ‘We have our orders.’
‘Not from Inter-Galactic Command!’ said Tark, joining Wanda.
‘Gee,’ said Clint, all excited. ‘This is like being on the set of ET. Beam me up, Scotty!’
‘That was Star Trek, silly,’ Rocky said. ‘And Captain Kirk actually said “Scotty, beam us up”.’
Clint opened his mouth as if to say something but then didn’t. Tiger could tell that he didn’t like being corrected.
‘And where are your toothless friends from Inter-Galactic Command when you need them?’ Mick said to Tark, ignoring the others.
‘On their way,’ Tark said.
‘They’d better hurry,’ said Mick. ‘The clock is on reserve battery for this polluted planet!’
Arnie sauntered up. ‘Let me get this straight. We’re supposed to be frightened of this see-through ET?’
As if to test the point, he threw a pebble right at Mick. It sailed cleanly through him before dissolving in a puff of smoke.
Mick leaned down and seized Arnie by the scruff of the neck, letting him dangle helplessly in mid-air. ‘Respect, Earthling. Respect!’
‘Don’t hurt him,’ cried Tiger. ‘He didn’t mean any harm.’
‘Yeah,’ said Number 12. ‘Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?’
‘Like a flea-bitten camel?’ glowered Mick.
‘Um, not necessarily,’ said Number 12. ‘Not that I have fleas!’
‘How much time do we have?’ said Tark.
Mick laughed so loudly the ground trembled. ‘You mean, before we destroy the Earth?’
‘No,’ said Tark. ‘Before you try to destroy the Earth!’
‘That’s for us to know and you to find out... after the fact,’ Mick sneered.
And with that, he vanished.
The raccoons tiptoed onto the charred patch of grass above which Mick had been floating and had a good sniff around.
‘How did he do that?’ Rocky said. ‘I mean, make himself see-through, and all that?’
Tark seemed lost in thought.
‘Tark?’ Tiger said, to bring him out of it.
‘Oh, that,’ said Tark. ‘Particulate Projection. Ho-hum. Primitive technology, really.’
‘Particulate...’ Clint said, doubtfully.
‘Projection,’ Tark repeated.
‘You mean he wasn’t really there?’ asked Wanda.
Tark smiled. ‘He was, and he wasn’t. What we saw of Mick was a schematic outline – just enough of his essential molecules to give a sense of his being. In reality, he hadn’t left his starship.’
Tiger scratched his head. His brain cells got a bit soupy when Tark talked like that. He wanted to ask what a schematic was, but maybe it was better just to keep quiet.
‘Think of a shadow on a wall,’ Tark said, as if reading his mind. ‘It looks like a cat or a raccoon, but the real cat or raccoon is somewhere else. A shadow is just 2D, while a Particulate Projection is 3D, with insides as well as outsides. Which is why we could see straight through Mick.’
‘Maybe that’s what ghosts are like,’ said Tiger. ‘Not that I believe in them!’
‘More to the point,’ said Wanda. ‘How are we going to head off Mick and his forces?’
‘Why should we be frightened of something we can see through?’ said Arnie, his sharp teeth glinting in the moonlight. ‘He could be all bluff and no bite!’
‘He picked you up without a problem,’ Number 12 reminded him.
‘Mick and his kind are robots,’ Tark added. ‘95% pre-programed to carry out their mission.’
‘Why only 95%?’ asked Syd.
‘Because,’ said Tark, ‘if they were 100% pre-programed, we could easily second-guess their plans through simple algorithms. It’s that remaining 5% that makes them slightly unpredictable and therefore dangerous.’
Tiger nodded. ‘Sort of like the Grey Cat.’
‘Yeah,’ smiled Wanda, remembering how they’d laid a trap for that bully at Greenhouse Place. ‘That overgrown fur-ball was nothing if not predictable!’
‘Let me get this straight,’ said Rocky. ‘Your Inter-Galactic Command gang are the Good Guys, right?’
‘Right!’ declared the Crew in unison.
‘So, if they’ve decided that Earth is worth saving,’ said Clint, ‘how come they aren’t here when the Bad Guys are?’
‘I’ve been wondering that myself,’ Syd piped in.
‘Clip that beak,’ Wanda warned him.
‘Well,’ said Tark, to fill the silence. ‘It’s all about politics. Coming up with something that delegates to the Supreme Council can pass a motion on isn’t easy, especially when a mega-war may have to be waged.’
‘I understand,’ said Wanda. ‘If our governments here can’t
even agree that Climate Change is happening, how can we expect your Inter-Galactic Command to act quickly?’
‘Never fear,’ said Tark. ‘I have every confidence that they will be here soon.’
‘With all due respect,’ said Rocky, ‘I think we’d better have a plan just in case they trip into a black hole or something on their way.’
‘Acorn Alert!’ shouted Clint. ‘ACORN ALERT!!’
Just like that, almost all of the raccoons gathered around them bounded into the surrounding trees.
‘What’s an acorn alert?’ asked Tiger, admiring the speed at which the raccoons scuttled up the trees without bumping into one another.
‘Well, we can’t call it a red alert,’ said Clint, ‘because, as everyone knows, we raccoons are color blind and can’t see red.’
‘We’re fine with green,’ Rocky explained. ‘But Green Alert isn’t quite as catchy as Acorn Alert, now is it? Although you could argue that it has something to do with sustainability – that is, survival.’
On the subject of acorns, Tiger was quite thankful for having read Winnie the Pooh front to back, inside to outside, and back to front several times to keep from dozing off as he watched Alexander soaking in the greenhouse spa bubbles back in Canberra. He’d become quite curious about haycorn, which seemed to be an improper name for something that was Piglet’s favorite food, so much a favorite in fact that Tiger had to google haycorn to find out it had nothing whatever to do with hay, or even corn for that matter, but more than enough to do with oak trees; it being the seed of the tree and therefore a staple food of squirrels, who had nothing to do with piglets, real or imagined friends of Pooh.
‘Ah ha,’ he nodded, pointing one paw skyward while scratching his chin knowingly with the other. ‘Acorn. Seed of the Genius Quercus tree, right?’
‘I think you mean genus, Tiger,’ said Wanda, who was always much better at reading, and therefore spelling, than he was. ‘Just because the average tree lives a lot longer than your average cat, that doesn’t make them geniuses.’
Leaves and, yes, even the occasional acorn dropped to the ground as the raccoons jostled for the best spot to watch for Mick’s or the Inter-Galactic Command starships to appear for a clash in the night sky. One acorn fell just in front of Tiger, but, just as he bent down to admire it, another plonked him on the head, and the stars he saw then were spinning at the back of his eyes rather than glinting above the trees.
‘Sorry about that,’ smirked Rocky. ‘In any war there will be a few casualties!’
A rather chubby raccoon came up to Rocky just then and gave something of a salute, or as close to a salute as a raccoon could manage.
‘All sentries are in position, Sir,’ he wheezed. ‘We now have 360 degree vision as far as our binoculars can see.’
Clint narrowed his eyes. ‘Maybe we should clue in the rats about what’s up,’ he said to Rocky.
‘The rats?’ said Rocky. ‘Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
Tiger’s lips curled at the thought of rats. Mice could be amusing, even tasty if they lived in organic places, but rats lived in slimy places, and were too big to be trusted.
‘I know our relations with them have been a bit tense in the past,’ said Clint. ‘But they are too numerous to be ignored, and if they should go over to the other side—’
‘Yes, yes,’ Rocky muttered. ‘I suppose it’s better to know where they stand than not.’
‘These aren’t just any rats,’ Clint explained to the Crew. ‘Being from New York, they think they are top of the breed. The Big Apples of Ratdom – if that makes any sense.’
‘If a rat can make it here,’ Rocky hummed, ‘it can make it anywhere!’
in which rats sell out to the only bidder
When Tark saw that Clint and Arnie were having trouble prying off the manhole cover, he let a circular beam of light from his toe finish the job. It was red, so the raccoons didn’t see it, which made the act of lifting the cover up and then easing it off to one side seem all the more magical to them.
‘Hey,’ said Clint, giving Arnie a High-Five. ‘We don’t know our own strength, eh?’
Number 12 took one sniff of the darkness below before backing off. ‘Not good for my sinuses. I’ll just stand guard up here, while you guys—’
‘I didn’t know you had sinus problems,’ Wanda said.
‘Neither did I,’ said Number 12. ‘Until now. That hole smells worse than a camel stable after mealtime – and that’s saying something!’
‘You’d better come along with us,’ Rocky said to Number 12. ‘The streets aren’t safe to hang around on your own.’
‘Ha!’ snorted Number 12. ‘If I could make it on my own for years in the Australian Outback, I can handle anything that New York has to dish out.’
‘With all due respect,’ said Wanda, ‘that was when you were in your prime.’
Number 12 kicked the nearest lamppost, which clanged like a church bell. ‘You see? Haven’t lost the touch. Any muggers would have to be wary around me!’
‘True,’ said Tiger. ‘But we can’t have Mick picking us off one at a time.’
‘Anyway,’ said Number 12, poking his head down the hole, then drawing it out again with something of a forced sneeze. ‘I won’t fit.’
Tark pointed his magic toe at the hole and instantly it widened into a tunnel, complete with track lights running along the ground. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Is that better?’
‘Well...’ Number 12 said, doubtfully.
‘I’ll keep you company,’ Syd urged, hopping onto Number 12’s back and then onto his head.
‘Get off!’ Number 12 grunted, shaking his head until Syd went flying. ‘The day I need a crow’s company is the day I retire for good!’
No sooner had they entered the tunnel than they could see pencils of light up ahead and hear high-pitched engines squealing toward them.
‘What the—!’ exclaimed Rocky.
In a matter of seconds, even before Tark could raise his toe, they were surrounded. The headlights were blinding, so it was all that Tiger could do to make out shadowy rats – dozens of them – on what appeared to be souped-up rat-sized scooters. The revving engines echoed off the tunnel walls, and it was so loud that Tiger had to put his paws up over his ears and press hard to dampen the noise.
They were the largest rats he’d ever seen, but maybe they grew big in New York. They shrank a bit overall once they took off their goggles to stare at their captives. Their eyes were red, not a piercing red like Eudora’s but more of a glinting ruby.
‘How dare you,’ said the first rat, in a surprisingly deep voice. ‘How dare you!’
‘How dare we what?’ asked Tark, stepping forward with his toe pulsing with yellow that Tiger knew to be a warning.
The first rat revved his engine, making the scooter spin around so fast it lifted off the ground, coming down to rest where it started.
‘Your permit for excavation is denied!’ a second rat declared.
Judge Wanda sidled forward, hopping onto the back of the second rat’s scooter. ‘A permit cannot be denied,’ she said, ‘if we never applied for one!’
The second rat wheeled around, and stood on his tiptoes so he could eye Wanda directly. ‘So you admit to being in violation of our planning laws?’
Rocky cleared his throat. ‘Ahem,’ he said. ‘I... I mean, we invited them here.’
‘We might have known that,’ said the first rat. ‘You raccoons always take liberties. Just because you live above ground and think you’re so... sanitary.’
‘And we wouldn’t have bothered,’ said Clint. ‘Except that our guests have a matter of some importance to discuss with you.’
‘We know who they are,’ said the second rat. ‘The Project Earth-mend Crew, right?’
Tiger was impressed. The rats were definitely clued in.
But, before he could speak up, Tark took over. ‘What if we are?’ he said.
‘Then you’re too late,’ said the first rat.
‘We’ve already signed up,’ said the rat, ‘to the other side. Pied Piper Mick is his name.’
‘Pied—?’ asked Tiger, though he knew the Mick part was not good.
‘You need to read more and play video games less,’ Wanda grunted. ‘The Pied Piper entranced the rats of Hamelin and then he took the children of the village deep into his mountain home when their parents didn’t pay him enough for getting rid of the rats.’
‘Oh,’ said the second rat. ‘We thought he made it up – the name?’
‘What exactly did he sign you up for?’ Tark demanded.
‘The Great Cleansing,’ said the second rat.
‘Is that what he’s calling it now?’ said Number 12, narrowing his eyes. ‘Cleansing?’
‘I thought rats liked it... dirty,’ Syd chipped in.
The rats as a whole gave a low growl.
‘We’ve had some bad press,’ said the second rat. ‘We’re actually one of the cleanest creatures around, except maybe for raccoons, who are, I must say, a bit obsessed with washing up.’
‘The facts speak for themselves,’ Arnie said, glaring at him. ‘We didn’t spread plague!’
‘Nor did we,’ said the first rat. ‘That was down to humans – filthy creatures that they are – coughing and sneezing on each other. They needed someone to blame, so that’s where we came in. But, if it was down to us, how come so many people died in Iceland where rats couldn’t be bothered to live?’
With a sweep of his toe, Tark brought up a web browser holograph. A quick search found an article in the Daily Mail, UK, that supported what the rat said.
‘That’s just a theory,’ stammered Arnie, squinting at the holograph. ‘I still reckon it was you rats picking up fleas from the garbage and then spreading them.’
‘Well,’ said the second rat, ‘if you raccoons are so clean, what about rabies?’
The raccoons looked at each other and dropped their gaze.
‘We’re... uh, working on that,’ said Rocky. ‘But don’t change the subject. What exactly did Mick tell you this Great Cleansing was all about?’
Tiger Takes the Big Apple Page 11