“We'll rescue Hamnpork together, then,” said Darktan. “We'll—” He spun around at the sound of a rat coming along the pipe, and then wrinkled his nose. “It's Sardines,” he said. “And… let's see, smells female, young, nervous… Nourishing?”
The youngest member of the Trap Disposal Squad was trailing after Sardines. She was wet and dejected.
“You look like a drowned rat, miss,” said Darktan.
“Fell in a broken drain, sir,” said Nourishing.
“Good to see you, anyway. What's happening, Sardines?”
The dancing rat did a few nervous steps. “I've been climbing up more drainpipes and along more washing lines than is good for me,” he said. “And don't ask me about krrkk cats, boss, I'd like to see every last one of 'em dead—savin' yer honour's presence, o'course,” Sardines added, eyeing Maurice nervously.
“And?” said Peaches.
“They've gone to some kind of stables right on the edge of the town,” said Sardines. “Smells bad. Lots of dogs around. Men, too.”
“Rat pit,” said Maurice. “I told you. They've been breeding rats for the rat pit!”
“Right,” said Darktan. “We're going to get Hamnpork out of there. Sardines, you will show me the way. We'll try to pick up others as we go. The rest of you should try to find the kid.”
“Why are you giving orders?” said Peaches.
“Because someone has to,” said Darktan. “Hamnpork might be a bit scabby and set in his ways but he's the leader and everyone smells that and we need him. Any questions? Right—”
“Can I come, sir?” said Nourishing.
“She's helping me carry my string, boss,” Sardines explained. Both he and the younger rat were carrying bundles of it.
“You need all of that?” said Darktan.
“You should never say no to a piece of string, boss,” said Sardines earnestly. “It's amazing, some of the stuff I've been finding—”
“All right, so long as she's useful for something,” said Darktan. “She'd better be able to keep up. Let's go!”
And then there was just Dangerous Beans, Peaches, and Maurice.
Dangerous Beans sighed. “One rat can be brave, but a bunch of rats is just a mob?” he said. “Are you right, Maurice?”
“No, I was… look, there was something back there,” said Maurice. “It's in a cellar. I don't know what it is. It's the voice that gets into people's heads!”
“Not everyone,” said Peaches. “It didn't frighten you, did it? Or us. Or Darktan. It made Hamnpork very angry. Why?”
Maurice blinked. He could hear the voice in his head again. It was very faint, and it certainly wasn't his own thoughts, and it said I will find a way in, CAT!
“Did you hear that?” he said.
“I didn't hear anything,” said Peaches.
Perhaps you have to be close, Maurice thought. Perhaps, if you've been close, it knows where your head lives.
He'd never seen a rat so miserable as Dangerous Beans. The little rat was huddled by the candle, staring unseeing at “Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure”.
“I hoped it would be better than this,” said Dangerous Beans. “But it turns out we're just… rats. As soon as there's trouble, we're just… rats.”
It was very unusual for Maurice to feel sympathetic to anyone who wasn't Maurice. In a cat, that is a major character flaw. I must be ill, he thought. “If it's any help, I'm just a cat,” he said.
“Oh, but you are not. You are kind and, deep down, I sense that you have a generous nature,” said Dangerous Beans.
Maurice tried not to look at Peaches. Oh boy, he thought.
“At least you ask people before you eat them,” said Peaches.
You'd better tell them, said Maurice's thoughts. Go on, tell them. You'd feel better.
Maurice tried to tell his thoughts to shut up. What a time to get a conscience! What good was a cat with a conscience? A cat with a conscience was a… a hamster, or something…
“Um, I've been meaning to talk to you about that,” he muttered.
Go on, tell them, said his shiny new conscience. Get it out in the open.
“Yes?” said Peaches.
Maurice squirmed. “Well, you know I do always check my food these days…”
“Yes, and it does you great credit,” said Dangerous Beans.
Now Maurice felt even worse. “Well, you know how we've always wondered how come I got Changed even though I never ate any of that magical stuff on the dump…”
“Yes,” said Peaches. “That has always puzzled me.”
Maurice shifted uneasily. “Well, you know… er… did you ever know a rat, quite big, one ear missing, bit of white fur on one side, couldn't run too fast 'cos of a bad leg?”
“That sounds like Additives,” said Peaches.
“Oh, yes,” said Dangerous Beans. “He disappeared before we met you, Maurice. A good rat. Had a bit of a speech… difficulty.”
“Speech difficulty,” said Maurice, gloomily.
“He stammered,” said Peaches, giving Maurice a long, cool stare. “Couldn't get his words out very easily.”
“Not very easily,” said Maurice, his voice now quite hollow.
“But I'm sure you never met him, Maurice,” said Dangerous Beans. “I miss him. He was a wonderful rat once you got him talking.”
“Ahem. Did you meet him, Maurice?” said Peaches, her stare nailing him to the wall.
Maurice's face moved. It tried various expressions one after another. Then he said, “All right! I ate him, OK? All of him! Except for the tail and the green wobbly bit and that nasty purple lump, no-one knows what it is! I was just a cat! I hadn't learned to think yet! I didn't know! I was hungry! Cats eat rats, that's how it goes! It wasn't my fault! And he'd been eating the magic stuff and I ate him so then I got Changed too! Know how that feels, seeing the green wobbly bit like that? It doesn't feel good! Sometimes on dark nights I think I can hear him talking down there! All right? Satisfied? I didn't know he was anyone! I didn't know I was anyone! I ate him! He'd been eating the stuff on the dump and I ate him so that's how I got Changed! I admit it! I ate him! It wasn't my faauulltt!”
And then there was silence. After a while Peaches said, “Yes, but that was a long time ago, wasn't it?”
“What? You mean have I eaten anyone lately? No!”
“Are you sorry for what you did?” said Dangerous Beans.
“Sorry? What do you think? Sometimes I have nightmares where I burp and he—”
“Then that's probably all right,” said the little rat.
“All right?” said Maurice. “How can it be all right? And you know the worst part? I'm a cat! Cats don't go round feeling sorry! Or guilty! We never regret anything! Do you know what it feels like, saying ‘Hello food, can you talk?’ That's not how a cat is supposed to behave!”
“We don't act how rats are supposed to behave,” said Dangerous Beans. And then his face fell again. “Up until now,” he sighed.
“Everyone was frightened,” said Peaches. “Fear spreads.”
“I hoped we could be more than rats,” said Dangerous Beans. “I thought we could be more than things that squeak and widdle, whatever Hamnpork says. And now… where is everyone?”
“Shall I read to you from Mr. Bunnsy?” said Peaches, her voice full of concern. “You know that always cheers you up when you're in one of your… dark times.”
There was a nod from Dangerous Beans.
Peaches pulled the huge book towards her and began to read. “One day Mr. Bunnsy and his friend Ratty Rupert the Rat went to see Old Man Donkey, who lived by the river—”
“Read the bit where they talk to the humans,” said Dangerous Beans.
Peaches obediently turned a page. “‘Hello, Ratty Rupert,’ said Farmer Fred. ‘What a lovely day it is, to be sure—’”
This is mad, thought Maurice, as he listened to a story about wild woods and fresh bubbling streams, being read to one rat by another rat while they sat beside a drain alon
g which ran something that certainly wasn't fresh. Anything but fresh. To be fair, though, it was bubbling a bit, or at least glooping.
Everything's going down the drain and they have this little picture in their heads about how nice things could be…
Look at those little pink sad eyes, said Maurice's own thoughts in Maurice's own head. Look at those little wobbly wrinkly noses. If you ran out on them and left them here, how could you look those little wobbly noses in the face again?
“I wouldn't have to,” said Maurice, out loud. “That's the point!”
“What?” said Peaches, looking up from the book.
“Oh, nothing…” Maurice paused. There was nothing for it. It went against everything a cat stood for. This is what thinking does for you, he thought. It gets you into trouble. Even when you know other people can think for themselves, you start thinking for them too. He groaned.
“We'd better see what's happened to the kid,” he said.
It was completely black in the cellar. All there was, apart from the occasional drip of water, were voices.
“So,” said the voice of Malicia, “let's go over it again, shall we? You don't have a knife of any kind?”
“That's right,” said Keith.
“Or some handy matches that could burn through the rope?”
“No.”
“And no sharp edge near you that you could rub the rope on?”
“No.”
“And you can't sort of pull your legs through your arms so that you can get your hands in front of you?”
“No.”
“And you don't have any secret powers?”
“No.”
“Are you sure? The moment I saw you, I thought: he's got some amazing power that will probably manifest itself when he's in dire trouble. I thought: no-one could really be as useless as that unless it was a disguise.”
“No. I'm sure. Look, I'm just a normal person. Yes, all right, I was abandoned as a baby. I don't know why. It was something that happened. They say it happens quite a lot. It doesn't make you special. And I don't have any secret markings as if I was some kind of sheep, and I don't think I'm a hero in disguise and I don't have some kind of amazing talent that I'm aware of. OK, I'm good at playing quite a few musical instruments. I practise a lot. But I'm the kind of person heroes aren't. I get by and I get along. I do my best. Understand?”
“Oh.”
“You should have found someone else.”
“In fact, you can't be any help at all?”
“No.”
There was silence for a while and then Malicia said, “You know, in many ways I don't think this adventure has been properly organized.”
“Oh, really?” said Keith.
“This is not how people should be tied up.”
“Malicia, do you understand? This isn't a story,” said Keith, as patiently as he could. “That's what I'm trying to tell you. Real life isn't a story. There isn't some kind of… of magic that keeps you safe and makes crooks look the other way and not hit you too hard and tie you up next to a handy knife and not kill you. Do you understand?”
There was some more dark silence.
“My granny and my great-aunt were very famous story-tellers, you know,” said Malicia eventually, in a strained little voice. “Agoniza and Eviscera Grim.”
“You said,” said Keith.
“My mother would have been a good story-teller, too, but my father doesn't like stories. That's why I've changed my name to Grim for professional purposes.”
“Really…”
“I used to get beaten when I was small for telling stories,” Malicia went on.
“Beaten?” said Keith.
“All right, then, smacked,” said Malicia. “On the leg. But it did hurt. My father says you can't run a city on stories. He says you have to be practical.”
“Oh.”
“Aren't you interested in anything except music? He broke your pipe!”
“I expect I'll buy another one.”
The calm voice infuriated Malicia. “Well, I'll tell you something,” she said. “If you don't turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else's story.”
“And what if your story doesn't work?”
“You keep changing it until you find one that does.”
“Sounds silly.”
“Huh, look at you. You're just a face in someone else's background. You let a cat make all the decisions.”
“That's because Maurice is—”
A voice said, “Would you like us to go away until you've stopped being human?”
“Maurice?” said Keith. “Where are you?”
“I'm in a drain and believe me, this has not been a good night. Do you know how many old cellars there are here?” said the voice of Maurice, in the blackness. “Peaches is bringing a candle in. It's too dark even for me to see you.”
“Who's Peaches?” whispered Malicia.
“She's another Changeling. A thinking rat,” said Keith.
“Like Pilchards?”
“Like Sardines, yes.”
“Aha,” hissed Malicia. “See? A story. I am smug, I gloat. The plucky rats rescue our heroes, probably by gnawing through the ropes.”
“Oh, we're back in your story, are we?” said Keith. “And what am I in your story?”
“I know it's not going to be romantic interest,” said Malicia. “And you're not funny enough for comic relief. I don't know. Probably just… someone. You know, like ‘man in street’, something like that.” There were faint sounds in the darkness. “What are they doing now?” she whispered.
“Trying to light their candle, I think.”
“Rats play with fire?” Malicia hissed.
“They don't play. Dangerous Beans thinks lights and shadows are very important. They always have a candle alight somewhere in their tunnels, wherever they—”
“Dangerous Beans? What sort of name is that?”
“Shssh! They just learned words off old food tins and signs and things! They didn't know what the words meant, they just chose them because they liked the sounds!”
“Yes, but… Dangerous Beans? It sounds as if he makes you”
“It's his name. Don't make fun of it!”
“Sorry, I'm sure,” said Malicia, haughtily.
The match flared. The candle flame grew.
Malicia looked down at two rats. One was… well, just a small rat, although sleeker than most of the ones she'd seen. In fact most of the ones she'd seen had been dead, but even the living ones had always been… twitchy, nervy, sniffing the air all the time. This one just… watched. It stared right at her.
The other rat was white, and even smaller. It was also watching her, although peering was a better word. It had pink eyes. Malicia had never been very interested in other people's feelings, since she'd always considered that her own were a lot more interesting, but there was something sad and worrying about that rat.
It was dragging a small book, or at least what would be a small book to a human; it was about half the size of a rat. The cover was quite colourful, but Malicia couldn't make out what it was.
“Peaches and Dangerous Beans,” said Keith. “This is Malicia. Her father is the mayor here.”
“Hello,” said Dangerous Beans.
“Mayor? Isn't that like government!” said Peaches. “Maurice says governments are very dangerous criminals and steal money from people.”
“How did you teach them to speak?” said Malicia.
“They taught themselves,” said Keith. “They're not trained animals, you know.”
“Well, my father does not steal from anyone. Who taught them that governments are very—?”
“'Scuse me, 'scuse me,” said Maurice's voice hurriedly, from the drain gate. “That's right, I'm down here. Can we get on with things?”
“We'd like you to gnaw at our ropes, please,” said Keith.
“I've got a bit of broken knife blade,” said Peaches. “It's for sharpening the pencil. Woul
d that be better?”
“Knife?” said Malicia. “Pencil?”
“I did say they weren't ordinary rats,” said Keith.
Nourishing had to run to keep up with Darktan. And Darktan was running because he had to run to keep up with Sardines. When it came to moving fast across a town, Sardines was champion of the world.
They picked up more rats on the way. Nourishing couldn't help noticing that these were mostly the younger ones, who'd fled because of the terror but hadn't gone far. They fell in behind Darktan readily, almost grateful to be doing something with a purpose.
Sardines danced on ahead. He just couldn't help it. And he liked drainpipes, roofs and gutters. You got no dogs up there, he said, and not many cats.
No cat could have followed Sardines. The people of Bad Blintz had strung washing lines between the ancient houses and he leapt onto them, clinging upside down and moving as fast as he would on a flat surface. He went straight up walls, plunged through thatch, tap-danced around smoking chimneys, slid down tiles. Pigeons erupted from their roosts as he sped past, the other rats trailing behind him.
Clouds rolled across the moon.
Sardines reached the edge of a roof and leapt, landing on a wall just below. He ran along the top and disappeared in the crack between two planks.
Nourishing followed him into a kind of loft. Hay was piled in parts of it, but a larger part was simply open to the ground floor below, and supported by several heavy beams that ran right across the building. Bright light shone up from below, and there was the buzz of human voices and—she shuddered—the barking of dogs.
“This is a big stables, boss,” said Sardines. “The pit's under the beam over there. Come on…”
They crept out on the ancient woodwork and peered over the edge.
Far below was a wooden circle, like half a giant barrel. Nourishing realized that they were right over the pit; if she fell now, she'd land in the middle of it. Men were crowded around it. Dogs were tied up around the walls, barking at one another and at the universe in general in the mad, I'm-going-to-do-this-for-ever way of all dogs. And off to one side was a stack of boxes and sacks.
The sacks were moving.
“Crtlk! How the krrp will we find Hamnpork in this lot?” Darktan said, his eyes gleaming in the light from below.
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