In fact the nomes got on rather well with the local rats, probably because their leader was Bobo, who had been a pet of Angalo’s when they lived in the Store. The two species treated each other with the distant friendliness of creatures who could, at a pinch, eat one another but had decided not to.
“Yeah, the rats’d thank us for getting rid of a human,” he went on.
“No,” said Grimma. “No. I don’t think we should do that. Masklin always said that they’re nearly as intelligent as we are. You can’t go around poisoning intelligent creatures.”
“They tried.”
“They’re not nomes. They don’t know how to behave,” said Grimma. “Anyway, be sensible. More humans will come along in the morning. If they find a dead human, there’ll be a lot of trouble.”
That was a point. But they had shown themselves to a human. No nome could remember it ever being done before. They’d had to do it, or starve and freeze, but there was no knowing where it would end. How it would end was a bit more certain. It would probably end badly.
“Go and put it somewhere where the rats can’t get it,” said Grimma.
“I reckon we should just give it a taste—” said the nome.
“No! Just take the stuff away. We’ll stay here the rest of the night and then move out before it’s light.”
“Well, all right. If you say so. I just hope we’re not sorry about it later, that’s all.” The nomes carried the dreadful box away.
Grimma wandered over to where the human lay. It was well trussed up by now, and couldn’t move a finger. It looked just like the picture of Gullible or whoever he was, except the nomes had got hold of what the nomes in those days had never heard of, which was lots of electric wire. It was a lot tougher than rope. And they were a lot angrier. Gullible hadn’t been driving a great big truck around the place and putting down rat poison.
They’d gone through its pockets and piled up the contents in a heap. There’d been a big square of white cloth among them, which a group of nomes had managed to tie around the human’s mouth after its mooing got on everyone’s nerves.
Now they stood around eating fragments of sandwich and watching its eyes.
Humans can’t understand nomes. Their voices are too fast and too high, like a bat squeak. It was probably just as well.
“I say we should find something sharp and stick it into it,” said a nome. “In all the soft bits.”
“There’s things we could do with matches,” said a lady nome, to Grimma’s surprise.
“And nails,” said a middle-aged nome.
The human growled behind its gag and strained at the wires.
“We could pull all its hair out,” said the lady nome. “And then we could—”
“Do it, then,” said Grimma, coming up behind them.
They turned.
“What?”
“Do it, if you want to,” said Grimma. “There it is, right in front of you. Do what you like.”
“What, me?” The lady nome drew back. “I didn’t . . . not me. I didn’t mean me. I meant . . . well, us. Nomekind.”
“There you are, then,” said Grimma. “And nomekind is only nomes. Besides, it’s wrong to hurt prisoners. I read it in a book. It’s called the Geneva Convention. When you’ve got people at your mercy, you shouldn’t hurt them.”
“Seems like the ideal time to me,” said a nome. “Hit them when they can’t hit back, that’s what I say. Anyway, it’s not as if humans are the same as real people.” But he shuffled backward anyway.
“Funny, though, when you see their faces close to,” said the lady nome, putting her head on one side. “They look a lot like us. Only bigger.”
One of the nomes peered into the human’s frightened eyes.
“Hasn’t it got a hairy nose?” he said. “And ears, too.”
“Quite gross,” said the lady.
“You could almost feel sorry for them, with great big noses like that.”
Grimma stared into the human’s eyes. I wonder, she thought. They’re bigger than us, so there must be room for brains. And they’ve got great big eyes. Surely they must have seen us once? Masklin said we’ve been here for thousands of years. In all that time, humans must have seen us.
They must have known we were real people. But in their minds they turned us into pixies. Perhaps they didn’t want to have to share the world.
The human was definitely looking at her.
Could we share? she thought. They live in a big long slow world and we live in a small short fast one, and we can’t understand each other. They can’t even see us unless we stand still like I’m standing now. We move too quickly for them. They don’t think we exist.
She stared up into the big frightened eyes.
We’ve never tried to—what was the word?—communicate with them before. Not properly. Not as though they were real people, thinking real thoughts. How can we tell them we’re really real and really here?
But perhaps when you’re lying down on the floor and tied up by little people you can hardly see and don’t believe in, that’s not the best time to start communicating. Perhaps we should try it another time. Not signs, not shouting, just trying to get them to understand us.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could? They could do the big slow jobs for us and we could do—oh, little fast things. Fiddly things that those great fingers can’t do . . . but not paint flowers or mend their shoes . . .
“Grimma? You ought to see this, Grimma,” said a voice behind her.
The nomes were clustered around a white heap on the floor.
Oh, yes. The human had been looking at one of those big sheets of paper . . .
The nomes had spread it out flat on the floor. It looked a lot like the first one they’d seen, except this one was called READ IT FIRST IN YOUR SOARAWAY BLACKBURY EVENING POST & GAZETTE. It had more of the great blocky writing, some of the letters nearly as big as a nome’s head.
Grimma shook her own head as she tried to make sense of it. She could understand the books quite well, she considered, but the papers seemed to use a different language. It was full of PROBES and SHOCKS and fuzzy pictures of smiling humans shaking hands with other humans (TABLERS RAISE £455 FOR HOSPITAL APPEAL). It wasn’t difficult to work out what each word meant, but when they were put together they either didn’t mean anything at all or something quite unbelievable (CIVIC CENTER RATES RUMPUS).
“No, this is the bit,” said one of the nomes, “this page here. Look, some of the words, they’re the same as last time, look! It’s about Grandson Richard, 39!”
Grimma ran the length of a story about somebody slamming somebody’s plan for something.
There was indeed a fuzzy picture of Grandson Richard, 39, under the words: “TV-IN-THE-SKY HITCH.”
She knelt down and stared at the smaller words below it.
“Read it aloud!” they said.
“‘Richard Arnold, the Blackbury-based chairman of the Arnco Group, said in Florida today,’” she said, “‘that scientists are still trying to r . . . r . . . regain control of Arnsat 1, the multimillion-pound com . . . communications sat . . . ellite—’”
The nomes looked at one another.
“Multimillion pound,” they said. “That’s really heavy.”
“‘Hopes were high after yesterday’s s . . . s . . . successful l . . . lunch in Florida,’” Grimma read uncertainly, “‘that Arnsat 1 would begin test tr . . . tr . . . transmissions today. Instead, it is s . . . sending a stream of strange sig . . . signals. ‘It’s like some sort of code,’ said Richard, 39—’”
There was an appreciative murmur from the listeners.
“‘It’s as if it had a mind of its own,’” Grimma read.
There was more stuff about “teething troubles,” whatever that meant, but Grimma didn’t bother to read it.
She remembered the way Masklin had talked about the stars, and why they stayed up. And there was the Thing. He’d taken it with him. The Thing could talk to electricity, couldn
’t it? It could listen to the electricity in wires, and the stuff in the air that Dorcas called “radio.” If anything could send strange signals, the Thing could. I may go even farther than the Long Drive, he’d said.
“They’re alive,” she said, to no one in particular. “Masklin and Gurder and Angalo. They got to the Florida place, and they’re alive.”
She remembered him trying to tell her, sometimes, about the sky and the Thing and where nomes first came from, and she’d never really understood, any more than he’d understood about the little frogs.
“They’re alive,” she repeated. “I know they are. I don’t know exactly how or where, but they’ve got some sort of plan, and they’re alive.”
The nomes exchanged meaningful glances, and the kind of meaning they were full of was: She’s fooling herself, but it’d take a braver nome than me to tell her.
Granny Morkie patted her gently on the shoulder.
“Yes, yes,” she said soothingly. “And thank goodness they had a successful lunch. I bet they needed to get some food inside of them. And if I was you, my girl, I’d get some sleep.”
Grimma dreamed.
It was a confused dream. Dreams nearly always are. They don’t come neatly packaged. She dreamed of loud noises and flashing lights. And eyes.
Little, yellow eyes. And Masklin, standing on a branch, climbing through leaves, peering down at little yellow eyes.
I’m seeing what he’s doing now, she thought. He’s alive. I always knew he was, of course. But Outer Space has got more leaves than I thought. Or perhaps none of it is real and I’m just dreaming. . . .
Then someone woke her up.
It’s never wise to speculate about the meaning of dreams, so she didn’t.
It snowed again in the night, on an icy wind. Some of the nomes scouted around the sheds and came back with a few vegetables that had been missed, but it was a pitifully small amount. The tied-up human went to sleep after a while, and snored like someone sawing a thick log with a thin saw.
“The others will come looking for it in the morning,” Grimma warned. “We mustn’t be here then. Perhaps we should—”
She stopped. They all listened.
Something was moving around under the floorboards.
“Is anyone still down there?” Grimma whispered.
The nomes near her shook their heads. No one wanted to be in the chilly space under the floor when there was the warmth and light of the office for the having.
“And it can’t be rats,” she said.
Then someone called out, in that half-loud, half-soft way of someone who wants to make themselves heard while at the same time remaining as quiet as possible.
It turned out to be Sacco.
They dragged aside the floorboard the humans had loosened and helped him up. He was covered in mud and swaying with exhaustion.
“I couldn’t find anyone!” he gasped. “I looked everywhere and couldn’t find anyone and we saw the trucks come here and I saw the lights on and I thought the humans were still here and I came in and I heard your voices and you’ve got to come because it’s Dorcas!”
“He’s alive?” said Grimma.
“If he isn’t, he can swear pretty well for a dead person,” said Sacco, sagging to the floor.
“We thought you were all de—” Grimma began.
“We’re all fine except for Dorcas. He hurt himself jumping out of the truck! Come on, please!”
“You don’t look in any state to go anywhere,” said Grimma. She stood up. “You just tell us where he is.”
“We got him halfway up the lane, and we got so tired and I left them and came on ahead,” Sacco blurted out. “They’re under the hedge and—” His eyes fell on the snoring bulk of the human. He stared at Grimma.
“You’ve captured a human?” he said. He stumbled sideways. “Need a bit of a rest, so tired,” he repeated, vaguely. Then he fell forward.
Grimma caught him and laid him down as gently as she could.
“Someone put him somewhere warm and see if there’s any food left,” she said to the nomes in general. “And I want some of you to help me look for the others. Come on. This isn’t a night for being outside.”
The expression on the faces of some of the nomes said that they definitely agreed with this point of view, and that among the people who shouldn’t be out on a night like this was themselves.
“It’s snowing quite a lot,” said one of them, uncertainly. “We’ll never find them in all the dark and snow.”
Grimma glared at him.
“We might,” she said. “We might find them in all the dark and snow. We won’t find them by staying in the light and warm, I know that much.”
Several nomes pushed their way forward. Grimma recognized Nooty’s people, and the parents of some of the lads. Then there was a bit of a commotion from under the table, where the oldest nomes were clustering together to keep warm and have a good moan.
“I’m comin’ too,” said Granny Morkie. “Do me good to have a drop of fresh air. What you all lookin’ at me like that for?”
“I think you ought to stay inside, Granny,” said Grimma gently.
“Don’t you try the bein’-tactful-to-old-people to me, my girl,” said Granny, prodding her with her stick. “I bin out in deep snow before you was even thought of.” She turned to the rest of the nomes. “Nothin’ to it if you acts sensible and keeps yellin’ out so’s everyone knows where everyone is. I went out to help look for my Uncle Joe before I was a year old,” she said proudly. “Dreadful snow, that was. It come down sudden like, when the men were out huntin’. We found nearly all of him, too.”
“Yes, yes, all right, Granny,” said Grimma quickly. She looked at the others. “Well, we’re going,” she said.
In the end fifteen of them went, many out of sheer embarrassment.
In the yellow light from the shed windows, the snowflakes looked beautiful. By the time they reached the ground, they were pretty unpleasant.
The Store nomes really hated the Outside snow. There had been snow in the Store, too, sprayed on merchandise around Christmas Fayre time. But it wasn’t cold. And snowflakes were huge beautiful things that were hung from the ceilings on bits of thread. Proper snowflakes. Not ghastly things that looked all right in the air but turned into freezing wet stuff that was allowed to just lie around on the floor.
It was already as deep as their knees.
“What you do is,” said Granny Morkie, “you lift your feet up really high and plonk them down. Nothin’ to it.”
The light from the shed shone out across the quarry, but the lane was a dark tunnel leading into the night.
“And spread out,” said Grimma. “But keep together.”
“Spread out and keep together,” they muttered.
A senior nome put his hand up.
“You don’t get robins at night, do you?” he asked cautiously.
“No, of course not,” said Grimma.
“No, you don’t get robins at night, dafty,” said Granny Morkie.
They looked relieved.
“No, you get foxes,” Granny added in a self-satisfied way. “Great big foxes. They get good and hungry in the cold weather. And maybe you get owls.” She scratched her chin. “Cunnin’ devils, owls. You never hear ’em till they’re almost on top o’ you.” She banged on the wall with her stick. “Look sharp, you lot. Best foot forward. Unless you’re like my Uncle Joe—a fox got his best foot, ’e ’ad to have a wooden leg, ’e was livid.”
There was something about Granny Morkie cheering people up that always got them moving. Anything was better than being cheered up some more.
The snowflakes were caking up on the dried grasses and ferns on either bank. Every now and again some of the snow fell off, sometimes onto the lane, often onto the nomes stumbling along it. They prodded the snowy tussocks and peered doubtfully into the gloomy holes under the hedge, while the flakes continued to fall in a soft, crackly silence. Robins, owls, and other terrors of the Ou
tside lurked in every shadow.
Eventually the light was left behind, and they walked by the glow of the snow itself. Sometimes one of them would call out, softly, and then they’d all listen.
It was very cold.
Granny Morkie stopped suddenly.
“Fox,” she announced. “I can smell it. Can’t mistake a fox. Rank.”
They huddled together and stared apprehensively into the darkness.
“Might not still be around, mind,” said Granny. “Hangs about for a long time, that smell.”
They relaxed a bit.
“Really, Granny,” muttered Grimma.
“I was just tryin’ to be a help,” sniffed Granny Morkie. “You don’t want my help, you’ve only got to say.”
“We’re doing this wrong,” said Grimma. “It’s Dorcas we’re looking for. He wouldn’t just be sitting out in the open, would he? He knows about foxes. He’d get the boys to find somewhere sheltered and as safe as possible.”
Nooty’s father stepped forward.
“If you look the way the snow falls,” he said hesitantly, “you can see the air-conditioning is blowing it this way,” he pointed, “so it piles up more on this side of things than that side. So they’d want to be as much away from the air-conditioning as possible, wouldn’t they?”
“It’s called the wind, when it’s outside,” said Grimma gently. “But you’re right. That means . . .” She stared at the hedges. “They’d be on the other side of the hedge. In the field, up against the bank. Come on.”
They scrambled up through the masses of dead leaves and dripping twigs and into the field beyond.
It was desolate. A few tufts of dead grass stuck above the endless wilderness of snow. Several of the nomes groaned.
It’s the size, Grimma thought. They don’t mind the quarry, or the thickets above it, or even the lane, because a lot of it is closed in and you can pretend there are sort of walls around you. It’s too big for them here.
“Stick close to the hedge,” she said, more cheerfully than she felt. “There’s not so much snow there.”
Oh, Arnold Bros (est. 1905), she thought. Dorcas doesn’t believe in you, and I certainly don’t believe in you, but if you could just see your way clear to existing just long enough for us to find them, we’d all appreciate it very much. And perhaps if you could stop the snow and see us all safely back to the quarry as well, that would be a big help.
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