The Great & the Small

by Andrea Torrey (A. T. ) Balsara

  Fin said, “Papa! Please! I need to speak!”

  Bothwell whirled around, his cheeks puffed out. “Oi! I am your superior, my lad!”

  Fin pushed by him. “Oh shut up! Papa! Rats are dying! They’re dying while we sit around scratching our fleas and talking about…about nothing!” He burst into tears. “They can’t escape. They’ve tried and they can’t. A two-leg has them trapped, and—”

  “Silence!” said Papa again.

  Fin looked up, startled. His uncle gazed down at him from the carved platform.

  “Lesson Number One: There will always be those who die. For the Common Good, we who lead must rise above emotion.”

  “But we can save them, Papa!” cried Fin. “I can save them. I’ll lead a squad in!”

  “No. They are lost. We cannot save them from the ugly two-legs.”

  “But, Papa!”

  “Silence! Lesson Number Two: Justice will be done. The two-legs will pay for this crime.” The word “pay” reverberated through the chamber.

  “I don’t understand,” said Fin. “How can we make them pay?” He looked from face to face. The Councillors watched him. The ancient rat Balthazar sat motionless, his face like carved marble.

  “That is the question, Nephew,” said Papa. “How do we make them pay?” He said this slowly, emphasizing each word.

  The Chamber was silent. Papa stared at Fin, waiting. His eyes were wide, his mouth open slightly.

  “I…I want the two-legs to pay for this!” said Fin. “Papa, you know I would do anything to make them pay! But-but there’s no way!”

  Papa smashed his fist into his paw. “Ah, but there is!” he shouted, making the rats next to him jump. “We will make their lives misery. We shall overrun them, plague them. And…that is not all.” Climbing down from the platform, he began to pace in the middle of the Chamber.

  The Council members circled around him.

  “I have smelled something in the air,” said Papa. “An ancient foe of the two-legs. It is far away right now, but it is coming. I can smell it!” Papa swung around. A few younger Council members stumbled back.

  “I have squads searching the docks for this Weapon, this Gift to us from the Old Ones.” Papa stood before Fin. “Nephew, it will give you your revenge. This Weapon has power to kill them all. You asked me what Plague Rats were, and now I—”

  “ENOUGH!” cried Balthazar. He lurched to his feet. Fin stumbled backwards. Other Council members gaped at the old rat.

  “Balthazar!” Papa glowered at him. “Sit down and go back to sleep before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.”

  “I know this weapon, or Gift, as you call it, Koba. Leave it alone!”

  “Leave War to those who are not afraid to fight!” Papa replied.

  “You forget that you are Chairman, not King,” said Balthazar. “There is a Council! And leave this pup out of it.” He motioned toward Fin.

  Fin pushed his way between them. “I’m not a pup! And leave my uncle alone, you…you bully! Papa is good! He cares about the Tunnels, and he knows what’s best. He’s the ‘Father of the Tunnels,’ not you!”

  The old rat swung his nose toward Fin’s voice, his sightless eyes wide. Nostrils quivering, Balthazar snuffled Fin up and down, then smiled. Backing away, he bowed his head and said, “Sincerest apologies, young master.”

  Limping to a corner, the former Chairman dropped like a handful of sticks. Almost immediately a buzzing sound issued from him.

  Balthazar was snoring.

  Bothwell murmured, “Is that him making that racket?”

  “Maybe it is a giant bee going buzz-buzz in Chamber!” said Sergo. The Chamber tittered with nervous laughter.

  Papa laughed with them, but then his face became grave. “Balthazar does not mean to be harsh. It has always been that way between us, since the beginning. But I forgive him. For the good of the Tunnels, I forgive him.”

  He gazed at them. “Perhaps some of you believe Balthazar. You believe the ancient Weapon shouldn’t be found. Even after horrors such as the Killing Chamber! But I say you are wrong.”

  He paced before them, looking at each one, his eyes filling with tears. “I won’t turn away the Old Ones’ Gift! I won’t! I accept my destiny, no matter how difficult. I have seen too much death by the two-legs. I have seen whole colonies writhing in pain because of two-leg cruelty! I have seen my own mother’s neck snapped in a cruel trap! My own father, crushed by a wheel of one of their infernal machines! And now? Now we face the torture of the Killing Chambers! No more. No more, I say!” Papa searched the faces of his Councillors. “Who is with me?”

  They glanced at each other before looking back at him. “Yes, of course, Papa. Yes.”

  Papa’s voice rang out. “We don’t yet have the Gift from the Old Ones, because we haven’t earned it! We must first prove that we are worthy by waging war upon our enemies using our bare teeth! Our claws! Our cunning! For my nephew and his paw that was crushed by the cruel boot! For the lost rats of the Killing Chamber who will die apart from their colonies! For my mother and father who died in humiliation and pain! Let us wage this war for the Common Good! All in favour?”

  “Aye! Aye! AYE!” The cry rose up in the chamber.

  “Let us fight the ugly two-legs!” roared Papa.

  “We must organize!” cried Julian.

  “We will have justice!” shouted Tiv.

  “They will feel MY justice!” said Sergo, snapping his jaws in the air.

  “Bothwell! More ARM squads!” cried Papa. “We need more!”

  Bothwell loped out of the Chamber. One by one, each Councillor left to make war preparations, until Fin was alone with his uncle and the buzzing pile of twigs.

  Papa smiled down at Balthazar’s form, his eyes wistful and sad. “He used to be Chairman, and now look at him. Life is cruel to the weak, my boy.”

  “Yes,” said Fin. “But what Weapon are we waiting for?”

  “Now, now, all in good time. You trust your old uncle, don’t you?”

  “You know I do.”

  They crawled through the tunnel and into the alley, where night had fallen thick, leaving Balthazar behind. The air was warm, heavy with the smell of seaweed and fish.

  “Nephew,” said Papa. He squinted at the stars and breathed deeply. “Remember this night. This night when the glorious War began.”

  EIGHTEEN

  "There will be bloodshed, but the land will be cleansed."

  Brother John Clynn, a Franciscan friar, Ireland, 1349

  After Fin’s report to Council, everything changed. Rats bustled through the tunnels with a sense of urgency. More ARM squads were formed, each patrol with orders direct from Council.

  Fin had his own squad. In recognition of his "heroic work" in the Killing Chamber, Council had given him Disruption of Two-Leg Feeding Stations. Every night, Fin’s squad targeted a restaurant, staging fights in the middle of a crowded room, sprinting across tables loaded with food, causing two-legs to flee. It was satisfying work.

  But the best part of all was that Scratch served with him. Fin had asked him to join, on the condition that he keep it quiet from Zumi. She wouldn’t understand and might even get mad at Fin if she knew, even though he was helping Scratch. He hadn’t seen her since that night in the Forbidden Garden.

  Scratch was his old self again, head-bobbing and all. The thought of disrupting two-leg feeding stations made him giddy with joy. "Finally those ugly two-legs will get their necks bitten, like they’ve done to us! Not that they have really >bitten us. Of course they can’t, they’re too big and clumsy, and we are too fast and nimble! But they’ve poisoned us, squished us… We rats will pay them back! Pay back those ugly two-legs! Count me in! Yes, indeed!"

  Fin had laughed. At least Scratch was back to normal.

  Fin wasn’t. He hadn’t slept well since the K
illing Chamber. During ARM forays he could usually forget. But once he was back in his burrow, memories came without mercy, images of caged rats flashing in his mind.

  And then it happened during a raid.

  That moonrise Fin and Scratch had been tussling in the middle of a fancy two-leg eatery. One moment Fin rolled head over tail with Scratch, snarling and clawing before the ugly two-legs, and in the next, the sad-eyed female from the Killing Chamber stood before him.

  Fin stumbled—everything whirred into slow motion.

  Scratch’s mouth moved, but Fin didn’t hear any sound. Chairs tipped over slowly. There was a rumble along on the floor, slow, like rolling thunder. The lookout shrieked ultrasonic warnings, "The two-legs are coming! The two-legs are coming!" but the warnings vibrated in Fin’s ears like fluttering wings.

  Just in time, Scratch bit Fin’s ear, hard. Just in time, Fin saw the two-leg bearing down on him. Just in time, Fin leaped away as a broom crashed down right where he’d been. After that, others staged the fights.

  The tall nest-towers in the area that housed many two-legs also came under attack. Each moonrise, rat squads slipped through windows, through cracks in the wall, through loose roofing tiles, to bite the sleeping two-legs. No two-leg, no matter how young, was off-limits. As the Beloved Chairman pointed out, baby two-legs grow up to be big two-legs.

  MARKET NEWS

  In spite of recent attempts to curb the local vermin population, vendors continue to complain about the markedly increased infestation. Management advises that although every effort is being made, it is not responsible for loss of revenue due to product spoilage or customer complaints.

  THE FRESH GOURMET

  State health officials have closed down yet another restaurant in the beleaguered market area, due to an escalating problem with pests. Wild rats have been terrorizing local restaurant goers and have been seen running across dinner plates, gamboling around chairs, even biting holes in pant legs while diners eat.

  Multiple lawsuits have been filed against a local restaurant, amid claims that a dead rat was found in its signature soup, Market Gumbo. One distressed patron claims to have eaten part of the tail.

  HARBOUR HERALD

  An explosion in the rat population has harbour residents scuttling for cover. "The city should do something, said one distraught mother whose child had recently been treated for rat bites. The toddler had been sleeping in her crib in one of the city’s many apartment buildings, when she suddenly cried out. The mother was horrified to find bite marks on the child’s cheek. She told reporters, "It was a rat! I saw its disgusting tail before it slipped through the window!"

  The epicentre of the problem appears to be the nearby market. "We’ve always had issues here with pests, but never like this," said a long-time vendor who refused to give his name. Speaking candidly, he said, "I come in the mornings, and there’s rat droppings everywhere. Every morning! It’s everywhere, like they were organized or something." The man shook his head, adding, "Sounds crazy, I know." His comments join hundreds of others who say this is no ordinary problem and demand the city take decisive action.

  NINETEEN

  “Those who were dying were so blessed with God’s grace as to often be joyful as they faced death, no matter how suddenly they died.”

  Jean de Venette, Carmelite friar, France, 1356

  The shadows of night lifted, and dim morning light crept across the ceiling of the burrow. Beside him, Fin’s uncle slept. Papa had been at a Council meeting all night. When he’d come in, Fin pretended to be asleep. His uncle had shuffled around, eaten a bit of the night’s forage, then burrowed in and fell asleep.

  Fin had returned home exhausted after his own duties, but as usual he couldn’t sleep. Faces swirled before him—the caged rats, the female, the young male who couldn’t wake up, the one who was stretched wide. They were why he was fighting the two-legs. They were why Fin prayed to the Old Ones to send the Gift. Anything that stopped the evil Killing Chambers was right. That old rat Balthazar was wrong. Dead wrong. And it was up to Fin to set him straight.

  Fin sneaked out of his nest and slipped from the burrow. He knew approximately where the former Chairman nested. He kept to the shadows, climbing through pipes wherever he could to avoid being spotted by two-legs, until finally he reached the burrow.

  Fin hesitated before the dark hole, chewing his lip. Should he just barge in? It felt ridiculous to call in politely when he was here to sort Balthazar out. Before he could decide what to do, a familiar voice croaked to him.

  “Young Master Fin, what are you waiting for? Come in, come in!”

  Annoyed, Fin stepped inside. Balthazar was settled on a pile of rags in the middle of a small but comfortable burrow. A mound of forage lay gathered before him. He nosed a piece of biscuit toward Fin. “Sit! Eat! You must be hungry.”

  Fin stood rooted by the burrow opening. “How did you know I was coming? Are you spying on me?”

  The ancient rat rolled his milky eyes. “Do I look like a spy? Please sit.”

  Fin stayed standing. Why do you hate my uncle?”

  “Why does your Uncle Koba hate me? Sit.”

  “Answer my question. And why do you call him Koba? No one else does.”

  Balthazar turned to him, his blind eyes wide. He smiled. “Because that is his name. Long ago, when I was Chairman, little Koba played at my feet. I was quite fond of him, and he would come often, asking questions, always full of ideas. But then one day, Koba stopped coming.” Balthazar looked away. He scratched behind his ear with a back paw. “The next time I saw your uncle was the day he challenged me to be Chairman. He won. Koba was gone, and Papa was born. That is all.” Balthazar shrugged.

  “I don’t believe you. You make my uncle sound like a cheat. You’re the cheat. You tried to stop Council from going to war. I saw what the two-legs have done, are doing.”

  “If you say so, then it must be true.”

  Fin exploded. “Stop trying to confuse me, you old goat! You’re a troublemaker. That’s all you are. You’re too afraid to fight, so you make everyone else doubt! You’re…you’re a coward!”

  The old rat only smiled.

  “And stop smiling! You stupid old…I hope the Gift comes! I pray for it! If it will stop the Killing Chambers I’ll take the Gift myself and kill every ugly two-leg there is!”

  Balthazar gazed at Fin, still smiling, but his lips began to quiver. Tears flowed down his cheeks. “I’m so sorry…for you,” he murmured.

  “Sorry for me? Be sorry for yourself! We’re going to win the war, and you’ll see you were a coward!”

  The old rat stared at Fin with his blind eyes, tears wetting his fur. “So sorry…”

  “Shut up! Just shut up!” Fin backed out of the burrow, stumbling into the walls. He could still hear the old rat as he fled.

  ***

  The sun burned hot as Fin travelled through as much shade and shadow as he could find. He groped his way back into the burrow, stumbled into his pile of nesting. I am sorry…so sorry for you… Fin dug his head into his nesting. His chest felt tighter than ever, the faces swirling around him like restless ghosts.

  Beside him, Papa lay curled in a ball, his breathing deep and even.

  TWENTY

  “Has his family been arrested yet? If not, tell me who is responsible for not arresting them!”

  Stalin, after hearing of a Soviet soldier’s defection to Poland

  Day One: The Gulag.

  Ananda stared out her bedroom window. She should have welcomed the break from school, but the humiliation was too sharp. Her only consolation was that Chris Litko was suspended too, and he was going to have to replace her dad’s book.

  She tiptoed into the living room.

  Her mother poked her head out of her office room and snapped, “Start your chores. The list is on the table.”

  Did all mothers ha
ve hypersensitive hearing?

  Ananda grunted, “Yeah, yeah.” She picked up the list and read out loud, “Weed garden, clean bathrooms, vacuum house…Mom! This is way too much!”

  “We discussed this. If you don’t like it, next time don’t get suspended.”

  Ananda snarled and stamped out of the house, slamming the door.

  She opened the garden shed and rummaged for gardening gloves and a trowel. For the next hour she weeded. After grabbing some breakfast, she cleaned the bathroom. And then she vacuumed the house.

  Every so often her mother came and checked her progress.

  It was a Gulag prison camp straight out of the Soviet era. In her mind, she retorted, “Yes, Comrade Stalin, no, Comrade Stalin,” to her mother’s nagging. She didn’t say it out loud.

  In the evening, there was nothing to do. All her electronics had been taken away: no TV, no cell phone, no calls from friends—not that she had any friends. George had been incommunicado since the pond incident. Even social goddesses had limits, Ananda supposed.

  She got out her sketch pad and the art book she’d bought back before the Times of Trouble started. She opened the book and did the second exercise. The first one she’d tried to draw had looked awful. This one was no better. The example in the book looked graceful and easy. Ananda’s looked like a chicken had died on the paper while scribbling with a pencil between its tail feathers.

  Everything felt too difficult. She smacked the book closed in frustration. She sat, her chest rising and falling. Her stomach felt like a knot of concrete. She curled up on her bed and slept.

  Day Two: Drudgery and Boredom.

  That evening she sketched out a cartoon of the Pond Incident: Chris Litko falling into the pond, his unibrow raised in alarm. She made his friends look like escapees from an Early Man exhibit.

  Day Three: Escape.