I said, "You don't know them, do you?" They were aquatic nightmares, with their insatiable appetites and their merciless ways. One of our oldest enemies.
"Don't worry. The ones down here are practically blind. One of them is going to take you home."
I looked down at her. "Take me to the treatment plant."
"They're extremely primitive creatures. They run daily routes that hardly change during their lives, and they have little interest in anything else. That's why they're the stars of human labs. The one who goes to your neighborhood every day just came in."
She started swimming me toward the rat. Its twitching whiskers flicked shit in the air. The eyes were blanker, more red and murderous, up close. I didn't want to go near the thing. When I got a whiff of rodent stench, I almost jumped off her back.
"It will put its snout on that ledge for a short rest," she said. And it did. She pulled up beside it. "Now grab hold of the fur and climb on."
"I want to stay here with you. It is great down here."
"It's perfectly safe. You'll see."
"I'm charming and well-read. I'd make a perfect companion."
"Up you go." She bucked, and I rolled onto the rat's back. It was disgusting, covered with cold clammy shit, quite unlike the cold clammy shit I had been floating in all along. When it twitched, its entire body spasmed, primitive and brainless, like a jellyfish. I had thought better of rats. I settled into the long, secure fur of the nape. I faced the back, doing my best to forget whose paws my fate was in.
My savior moved away, blowing water through her spiracles like a fire boat. "Thank you," I said.
"Drop in any time." I hoped to.
After a few minutes of rest, the rodent turned and headed back up the pipe, as she had said it would. It swam determinedly, drawing its paws through the sewage, saying to itself, "Left, right, left, right..." At first I thought this was a joke, but it didn't stop. Did it fear it might get the stroke wrong, or let its mind stray? Or was this just another discharge of the regimented brain?
I climbed across the side of the neck and said into its ear, "Right, left, right, left..." The rat flicked its ear. When I persisted it shook its head, almost tossing me into the drink.
It was a foolish thing to do, because I wanted to get home as soon as possible. But this was too enticing a challenge. I climbed back to its ear and said, "Rat pussy. Nice warm rat pussy. Hot juicy rat pussy. Just behind you. If you let her catch up..." There was no reaction, so I tried, "Rat tits. Nice big full rat tits." I assumed this was a male rat, though I was not going below to check. Still, there was no harm either way in "Rat cock. Nice big hard rat cock."
And the rat said, "Left, right, left, right..."
The innocent-looking can be the most deviant, so I said, "Rat feet. Rat feet in black high heels." Though this human perversion is the only one to have caught the imagination of other species, my rat was indifferent. Next I tried, "Rat babies. Illegal rat babies, smuggled from a sewer out of state." And finally, "Rat whips. Rat whips held by rat dominatrices in black leather rat corsets, flaying your little rat behind."
"Left, right, left, right..." Nothing would stay this rodent from swift completion of its appointed round.
I returned to the nape. The route was so complex that even if I knew how to swim I never would have made it. Bless the rat and the roach.
An occasional wave of shit washed over us; it was still too complex for me. The codes on the ceiling remained impenetrable. Since we were going upstream, it was safe to go too far. I could always float back to Ira's.
The rat paddled tirelessly for hours. Other rats passed now and then, but were too absorbed in their little quests to take notice of us. When several rats were close together, the pipe would echo with a chorus of, "Left, right, left, right."
Blattellae were riding quite a few of them. "Where are you headed?" I called. Visiting. Shopping. One was going surfing. The rats were mere mass transit.
Mine took a sharp turn. "Whoa, Nelly!" I cried. The sewage that broke over us indicated a change in neighborhood. Small bits of carbon were suspended in large slicks of oil, remnants of things overfried, along with potato chips and other junk food, lots of sugar, and a great deal of alcohol end-products. We had passed Ira's area and reached the ghetto.
"So long, Mickey," I said, and leaped into the scum. The rat paddled away upstream with unflagging concentration. "Left, right, left, right..."
Legs spread in a float position, I watched for hints of my location; I didn't want to get out too soon and have to face keen-eyed ghetto rats on the surface. I still couldn't decode the ceiling. Pipe after pipe expelled refuse in my path.
I felt a nudge from behind. "Take it easy," I said. It bumped me again. "Look, pal, there's plenty of room to pass."
It wasn't until the third hit that I turned to look at it. I had never before seen this species, a mutant of the sewer. It was my length, but our proportions couldn't have been more different. It had a huge swollen-head, bent down and tucked over its belly. Its eyes, pointing out to the sides, were closed; I wondered if that's why it hit me. The short forelimbs look like pieces of cauliflower, the rear ones like stubby paddles. It was the only creature I'd ever seen with two tails: a segmented reptilian tail extended beyond the body; the other was wispier and far longer. The creature's skin was a naked pulpy purple brown, which looked like something's innards. It made me queasy to think that it had touched me.
I was streamlined and balanced compared to this thing. I said, "Look, Romeo, if you want to go faster, do it over there. I'm looking for something."
It closed in and butted me yet again. This was it. I leaned to the side and blasted it with my back leg. It reared as if I had shot it, its repulsive head rising completely out of the water. Then the head dunked back in, and the miscreant rolled over.
It lay there for some time. I prodded it with my leg. "Turn over, you ugly scuzz." It didn't try. This was no more an aquatic animal than I was. I must have killed it. I didn't mean to. I felt bad.
What was wrong with me? I was attacked and I responded. That’s what animals do. So the stupid thing was dead.
The Bible was kicking up in me, the meek shall inherit the earth and all that. But I wasn't buying. I retaliated with a salvo from Psalms: His enemies shall lick the dust.
The critter hit something and turned over. The long tail had wrapped around its neck. That's what killed it. Not that it mattered.
Why have a tail that can undo you? Was it prehensile, while the other one was for balance? Did they meet the body at a common trunk, or were they completely separate? It was hard to tell in the shit, so I rolled the beast over again.
I should have seen it from the beginning. The longer tail didn't begin anywhere near the segmented tail. It came out of the middle of the gut. This was no tail. It was an umbilical cord.
This was not a disgusting new creature. It was a disgusting old one. It was a human fetus. I didn't kill it. It had never lived.
A primordial rage gripped me—this was the only time in my life I would face a human my own size. "Had you lived, you would have been the same as the rest. Boric acid. Motels. Sprays. Stepping on us, mashing, squealing. And we've never done one spot of harm to your species since the day it fell to earth." I couldn't contain myself. I cracked it across the swollen head. It bobbed back. I kicked it in the gut and then in the sliver of exposed thorax. I loved the impact. I kicked it in the eye, which was still closed. The lid caved in, and my leg punched into the hollow. It was revolting. I planted the other legs on the face and yanked myself free.
Covered with bruises and gouges, the fetus drifted downstream, its head bobbing, as if to apologize for all of its kind.
I climbed up the next conduit. A crack of light led me to the street.
It was great to be on terra firma. A bus blanketed me with exhaust. I didn't mind. It helped dry me off. I walked down the curb. At the intersection the signs told me I was only five blocks from home. I was so excited that I didn't w
ait for nightfall.
Checking In
3B—GRAVEYARD of friends and family and many to follow. Why had I come back? Hadn't I suffered enough here? Yet as soon as I crossed the threshold, I realized that this was my true home, and I would do anything to keep it.
Since I had avoided the colony the week after the Defeat, I didn't know how they had taken it. The hallway was empty, and I feared the worst.
When I turned into the dining room I saw the unimaginable: a herd of hundreds of citizens, slowly crossing the center of the floor in the bright light of day, with the deliberate, exaggerated motions of creatures in a trance. On their backs some hauled useless mementoes—hairs, dust, slivers of wood—while others leaned on makeshift walking sticks, an unaccountable affectation for six-leggers. They were trying to look even more hungry and long-suffering than they were. I hadn't imagined deterioration would take hold this fast.
I trotted to the front of the pack. The leader held the longest stick, almost half a toothpick. His mannerisms were the most pronounced. It was Exodus. I was not surprised.
I said, "What are you doing? Where are you taking them?"
"Who are you to ask me this, you, who smelleth as if the goat and the cow and the chicken hath taken you to wipe their dirty bottoms upon!"
"I'm your brother. Don't you recognize me?"
His eyes focused way beyond me. "If you are one of us, join us. If not, be gone."
"Ruth and Ira are going to be home in a few hours. You're leading everyone to slaughter."
He said, "I am bringing them out of that land unto a good land and a large one, unto a land flowing with milk and honey."
"In the living room?"
"The place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites."
I said, "But Exodus, we're in the land of the Fishblatts, and the Grubsteins, and the Wainscotts, and the Tambellinis. There's death all around."
"Sojourner, the only death I sense, it radiates from you; a fabulous stench, like the corpse of the boar in the summer sun. If you have suffered and it was not just, I pity you. But do not lead astray my flock." He motioned with his back leg. "A mighty six hundred thousand."
I grabbed his stick, but he ripped it back. Faith made him strong. "It's that book, remember? This is not Sinai, Exodus, it's apartment 3B. Lead them back, I beg you."
But he kept on. I saw many of my once perceptive and quick-witted friends in the pack behind him. How had they been divested of their reason? I approached Snot. "Why the living
room? There's nothing there. You know that. You'll be killed."
"The route might be a long one, and difficult," he said. "But the land is promised to us."
"We used to laugh at lines like that."
"We blasphemed. We should have made the exodus long ago, as it was intended to be."
Exodus intoned, "At evening ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread."
"Amen!" roared his flock.
They continued across the hall into the living room.
When they reached the far wall, beneath the windows, they stopped. Unable to divine whether to turn left or right—there was no verse concerning this choice—Exodus just stood there.
Prophet's block had come at the perfect time—they were in the safest part of the room, hidden from human view by the couch back and by shadows from the standing lamp. If he agonized for six more hours, I might have a chance to get everyone back to the baseboard during the night.
Ira and Ruth came home. After dinner they repaired to the living room, but a TV documentary on Seminole pottery protected the flock from their attention. If they would just stay still.
Exodus was more demented than I suspected. This was no pose; he was living in ancient Sinai. He turned and walked through the flock to his sacred mount, the coffee table. He climbed to the glass top, reared, and held his mighty staff over his head, proclaiming, "If a man shall steal an ox, or a sheep, and kill it, or sell it, he shall restore five oxen for an ox, and four sheep for a sheep."
"Huzzah!" cried the colony.
"Jesus Christ!" cried Ira, looking over the top of the newspaper. He brought the business section down on Exodus, who made a crunching sound that made me feel very mortal. When Ira lifted the paper, Exodus was gone; but IBM, which a moment ago was up one point for the day, had surged to close up eleven.
The others were sure he had gone to confer with God. They would be very patient. I could come back for them later. I returned to the dining room. Fresh boric acid was scattered along the baseboard. The Exodus phenomenon began to make some sense.
I carefully entered. No one was inside, dead or alive. If there hadn't been a slaughter, what had happened? Perhaps Ira had seen a poor starving patrol in the area, and then laid down poison. The colony had crowded at the cracks to watch. The vigil must have been hell: would he see the opening and pour in the boric acid, massacring them all? The first bitter molecules wafting inside terrified the colony, making them desperate to flee. Who could resist the promise of a land flowing with milk and honey?
I jumped from the opening over the acid.
It was late night now, and the kitchen was dark. Before I returned to the living room, I had to quell my hunger—no easy task, because my sewage marinade made it hard for me to smell anything but myself. I looked in the usual places without success. But when the fan beneath the refrigerator went on, it issued an aroma of pure sweetness that defeated even the sewer. Why hadn't Exodus led his flock toward this honey?
I tried to locate the source of the scent. At the edge of the refrigerator I heard the muffled sound of full-mouthed revelry. The aroma became very strong in the gap beside the refrigerator. The voices rose, shrieking and growling. It was a bacchanal. I was more than willing to pay for my meal with sperm.
I followed the voices through the black. Three days wasted. Instead of drifting in shit I could have been here, overeating and overfucking. Now it was my duty to catch up. When the voices were close, I bounded in beside them, yelling, "Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die!"
Two steps. That was it. Then I was stuck, my legs sunk in something absolutely unyielding. Maple syrup, I figured. I would just have to eat my way out.
But I figured wrong.
Now I could hear the voices with perfect clarity.
"Help me!"
"Pull me loose, I beg you."
"Numbers, don't let me die here."
A stupid illiterate with a taste for Kandy Korn—I had walked into the Roach Motel.
It was my idea to push it here, out of the way, in the dark, where no one could read the warnings. How could I forget so soon? How could I fail to recognize its disgusting odor?
"Well-chosen adage, Numbers. Here's another one for you to think about—and you'll have plenty of time. 'As a dog returneth to his vomit, so a fool returneth to his folly.'" It was Bismarck. I had doomed him too. "You taught me that."
I pulled up my left foreleg so hard that the adhesive rose into a small cone around it. But when my joints started to crack I had to stop; if I broke off a leg my body would settle into the mire, and I would have no freedom of motion and absolutely no chance of escape. As if I had one now.
Once my eyes had adjusted to the dark, I saw that my legs were caught on a pad of adhesive which looked like chewed, flattened gum. Bismarck was far worse off than I was. Not only his legs, but one antenna and the front of his head were stuck in it too, as if he had used them for leverage to try to pull up the legs. There were eight other guests, some grunting and cursing, the rest silent and still.
Bismarck said, "We checked it out, and we checked in after all."
I said, "In that case, get the manager. The decor stinks. Room service doesn't answer. The rug is an abomination. And there are cockroaches in here. I say we check out."
"I'm with you." His laugh sent an eerie, muffled echo through the motel. "You said that putz Ira would never miss this thing. We really pu
t one over on him."
"No!" A scream from the back. The motel jerked as someone thrashed.
I was caught in a Roach Motel. I was going to live here for a long time, get thin here, then die here. Years from now, when the refrigerator breaks, or the alien's work is redone by a new tenant, someone will find the motel, throw it away, and it will end up in a dump. Other garbage will bury and compress it. Millions of years from now, long after humans are extinct, my fossils might be uncovered by a scientist of a wiser species.
Eternity in the motel was the single most unbearable thought of my life. I started to jump up and down. Then I calmed myself. It was time to accept my fate: no more grape nuts. No more pastry crumbs. No more pheromones (that one smarted). But then again, no more disinfectants, and vacuuming, and overstuffed baseboards. No more boric acid and poison sprays. No more waterbugs. And thank God, no more trying to get Ira Fishblatt's penis into a woman he was too terrified to touch.
Howls from the back of the motel threatened my equanimity. I needed chatter, distraction. "I've got to tell you, Bismarck, you don't want to go out with your head stuck to the floor like that. Not at all elegant."
"That really hurts, Mr. Muff Diver. What did you think this was, one of those kinky motels?"
"Very kinky, watching you suck tar."
We heard exploratory scratching outside the motel. Bismarck yelled, "Get away! This is a trap." Anxiously we watched the opening. The steps receded. He had saved a life.
The event sobered me. I said, "A couple of months ago we were smart. The colony had purpose. And look at us tonight, divided between hopeless places: the living room and a motel. What happened?"
Bismarck paused, then said, "I've had a chance to think about that, and for what it's worth, this is my opinion: when we were nymphs, anyone who came out of the bookcase with a scheme to improve the species was laughed at. We had our instincts; we knew exactly how to manage.
"Then you began your operations. The vacuum cleaner, the lock, the wires for the circuits, and let's not forget the Roach Motel. I supported you because you were practical, not ideological. I still think that with a little luck we would have won our new life. And you made the colony believe in a future even as food was running out.
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