Only Human

by Tom Holt

  ‘No he couldn’t,’ said Bag firmly. ‘He’s got food to gather. Arsed, call the boys, they’ll show him the way.’

  ‘All right.’ Arsed turned round in his own length, stuck his head down a small hole in the wall and squeaked, ‘Chet! Atouille! Get up here.’

  ‘Our boys,’ Bag explained, as two sharp, twitching snouts appeared in the hole. ‘They’re good kids, really. But you don’t want to take any buggering about off them. And don’t you go giving the gentlelemming any of your nonsense,’ she commanded the snouts. ‘Just ’cos he’s different from us don’t mean you can go playing silly beggars with ’im.’

  The snouts turned into two more rats, the longer and leaner of which was identified as Chet, the shorter, stockier example being Atouille. They sat quite still as they were told what they had to do; but their small, round black eyes twinkled in a way that Fraud found quite menacing.

  ‘Off you go, then,’ Bag commanded. ‘And watch out for them cats. And come straight back, or I’ll tie yer bleedin’ tails together.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  ‘Yes, Mum.’

  They were, Fraud couldn’t help noticing, big rats. A residual instinct made him want to back away and crawl down something. He resisted it. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘thanks for everything, but I’d better be getting along. It really is terribly important that I make this - that I find a telephone.’

  Arsed wrinkled his snout. ‘Must be the plastic in the bit of string,’ he speculated. ‘Roughage.’

  ‘Quite.’ Fraud nodded, wondering as he did so if the gesture meant anything in Rat body-language. ‘And, er, thanks for the, er, crumb.’

  The tip of Arsed’s tail flicked in what Fraud assumed was a dismissive gesture. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘And best of luck. Don’t jump off too many cliffs.You two, mind your manners.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  Really big rats, Fraud couldn’t help reflecting, as they set off down yet another pitch-dark tunnel. Big and heavy. If those two left a sinking ship, it’d probably stop sinking.

  The first leg of the journey was straight. As far as Fraud could tell, they were in some sort of pipe, only just wide enough for the rats to get through.That at least meant they couldn’t easily turn round and set about him; but he didn’t like the way they whispered and sniggered all the time, apparently in some rodent dialect he couldn’t understand. All in all, what with their soft, hissing voices, their slinking and sudden movements, their rank, matted fur, they reminded him too much of his own back-benchers to allow him to relax his guard for so much as a second. No; revise that. There were at least twelve of his MPs he’d never, ever share a drain with, not under any circumstances whatsoever.

  After three hours nose to tail in the dark, he’d had enough. He stopped.

  ‘All right,’ he said (and what had been intended as a crisp, authoritative bark came out as a querulous queep). ‘You two, tell me what’s so funny.’

  The patter of rats’ feet stopped, and there was nothing but silence and darkness. This state of affairs seemed to go on for a long time.

  ‘I said,’ he repeated, vainly trying to keep his voice from wobbling, ‘what’s so damn funny? Come on, answer me.’

  ‘Wassat he said?’

  ‘Dunno.’

  ‘You talking to us?’

  ‘Yeah, you talking to us?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fraud squeaked back. ‘Come on, out with it.’

  ‘All right.’ Was it his imagination, or was that the scuffling sound of a rat doing a twenty-eight-point turn in a narrow pipe? ‘You’ll like this.’

  ‘Yeah. ’S good, this one.’

  ‘Look, you two . . .’ Fraud tried to say, but his voice drained away into the darkness, as quickly and as thoroughly as the glass of red wine you’d forgotten you’d left on the carpeted floor. The sound, whatever it was, stopped.

  ‘Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fraud whispered. ‘Well?’

  ‘It’s really good, innit, Chet?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Okay. Right. Why did the chicken -’

  ‘Tskkk!’

  ‘- cross the road?’

  Long, long silence, disturbed only by the sound of a large adolescent rat trying not to snigger. Eventually, just at the point where his nerves were about to break through his skin, Fraud licked his dry lips and muttered, ‘I don’t know. Why did the chicken cross the road?’

  Pause. Dramatic effect. The hammering sound that was so loud that it threatened to burst Fraud’s ears was his heart beating.

  ‘To get to the other side!’

  You get weird echo effects in a long, straight drain; and the sound of the two rats laughing themselves almost to death was one of the eeriest things Fraud had ever heard, not excluding the Deputy Chief Whip singing ‘Green Door’. When, at long last, the laughter had subsided into sporadic spluttering noises and random snorts, Fraud asked, ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good joke, innit?’

  ‘Woodlouse told us that.’

  ‘Just before we ate him, yeah.’

  Fraud breathed out through his nose. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Fine.’

  ‘Only thing,’ added Chet, suddenly sombre, ‘we dunno what a chicken is.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘You don’t know,’ Fraud repeated, ‘what a chicken is.’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Never seen one, see.’

  ‘And yet you’ve been laughing about it for the last three hours,’ he persisted. ‘Non-stop,’ he added with feeling.

  ‘Yeah, well, it’s a joke, innit?’ Atouille replied. ‘Bloody good one an’ all.’

  ‘It is?’ Fraud queried.

  ‘Must be,’ answered Chet. ‘Or we wouldn’t be laughing, would we?’

  Fraud considered this for a moment. ‘True,’ he said. ‘You may have a point there, lads. Can we get on now, please?’

  ‘Wot? Oh, yeah, right. C’mon, Chet.’

  ‘All right. Get to the other side, tsssk . . .’

  The pattering started again a few seconds later; likewise the whispering and sniggering. But now, when he listened carefully, Fraud could clearly make out phrases like cross the road and get to the other side. They were still at it when the tunnel went round a corner and abruptly ended, leaving them standing on the edge of a precipice.

  Looked at objectively, it was a break in the pipe. Beyond the lip of the chasm, about a foot away, Fraud could see the tunnel continuing, and ragged edges where something had broken through it. But he couldn’t really take much in; his head was swimming, and all he could think of was how wonderfully satisfying and fulfilling it’d be to backtrack a foot or so, take a nice long run-up and jump over that edge into the empty space below. He could almost hear the wind in his ears, and in his mind’s eye he could clearly see the ground rushing up to meet him, like a long-sundered lover on a station platform. And, in the still centre of his mind, he could hear a small, urgent voice, chanting: Go lemmings! Go lemmings!

  He closed his eyes, but that just made the picture clearer. On the other side the rats, who had jumped the break, were whispering and giggling, apparently still intoxicated with the heady wine of mirth. For Fraud, however, there was another, more compelling intoxication, as the voice in his brain chanted:Go lemmings! Go lemmings! Go! Go! Go!

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘You two. I need a hand.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘I mean paw. How the hell’m I supposed to get across this lot?’

  All he could see was the tip of a tail; and beyond it, he heard Chet’s voice, far away.

  ‘Jump,’ it said.

  Jump. Jump. Jump. No echo this time. He tried to fight the command, but his legs were already backing him away, his muscles contracting for the short, fascinating leap. It would be so . . .

  Stupid? With a snap like a rubber band breaking, his head cleared, and he was no longer a lemming but the Prime Minister, admittedly trapped for some reason in a rodent body
but otherwise the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, standing on the edge of a broken drainpipe. Silly, he muttered to himself. Don’t know what came over me. All right, so I may be a little bit out of touch with my true self right now, but one thing I do know is that statesmen don’t obey weird inner voices commanding them to jump off things. No. No way.

  That’s what the electorate is for.

  Imagine, if you will, John Barleycorn, thrusting his head up through the bare earth in the burgeoning spring. As he breaks through into the light he knows perfectly well that in six months’ time a maniac with a Massey Ferguson will be along to cut his head off and bash his brains out, just exactly the way it’s been these uncounted thousands of years; but he does it nevertheless, because that’s what he does.

  In much the same frame of mind, Karen picked up the phone, tucked it under her ear and said, ‘Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits UK Helpline Desk, can I help you?’ She knew what was going to happen; at the other end of the line there’d be some frustrated, confused keyboard jockey who’d just watched the entire July figures spiral away into cybernetic oblivion, desperate to find somebody to blame.

  In a sense, she often thought, the KIC helpline was like the Samaritans, in that people only tended to call up on it when they were at the end of their rope and suicidal. The difference lay in the fact that where the Samaritans are there to stop the punter killing himself, the Helpline’s function was to channel the helplessness and despair into basically therapeutic rage against the poor fool who answered the call. Hi, I’m Karen. Blame me.

  ‘Hello?’

  Karen frowned. The voice seemed very faint and far away, and was quickly replaced by the sound of payphone pips. These lasted rather a long time; long enough, in fact, for the caller to have gone away and earned the coins by playing the guitar in the bus station waiting room.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kawaguchiya Integrated Circuits UK Helpline Desk, Karen speaking. How can I help you?’

  ‘Hi,’ said the voice. ‘I’m calling from—’ The pips went. Puzzling; there wasn’t anywhere in the country, as far as Karen was aware, where ten pence bought a mere seventeen words. More expensive even than consulting a lawyer.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello,’ Karen said. ‘What can I—?’

  ‘It’s this computer,’ said the voice. ‘It’s not working properly.’

  ‘I see. Can you give me the model number and—’

  The pips, again. Karen swore. There had to be a better way to do this, one rather less likely to fuse her brain into one solid lump of aggravation. Accordingly, when the pips cleared for the third time, she cut in quickly.

  ‘Give me your number,’ she said. ‘I’ll call you back.’

  ‘Um. There could be a problem with that. You see, I’m rather -’

  Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

  ‘- a long way away. And I’m not sure this phone takes incoming calls anyway, you see, because—’

  Beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeep.

  Karen took a deep breath. ‘Let’s try, shall we?’ she said.

  The caller started to dictate a number. It was very long and quite unlike any phone number she’d ever come across before, and the beepbeepbeepbeepbeepbeeps went twice while she was taking it down. Still, she reflected, I’m here to help, and it’s not my phone bill. She put the receiver down and tapped the number in.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Hello. Right then, now where were we? If you could give me the model number and year of manufacture . . .’

  The voice sounded a trifle sheepish as it interrupted her. ‘I don’t think there is a model number,’ it said. ‘Custom job, you see. Only one of its kind.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ Karen pulled a face. KIC didn’t do custom jobs; so the caller was either ignorant, thick or using some cobbled-together mess that probably bore no ongoing resemblance to anything the company had ever made, with the possible exception of the stuff they fished out of the shredder bins once a fortnight. ‘Any identifying marks at all?’

  ‘There’s a name,’ the caller replied. ‘Mainframe.’

  ‘Well, I’m afraid - what did you say?’

  ‘Mainframe,’ the caller repeated. ‘That’s what it’s called. Or at least that’s what we call it. Ring any bells with you?’

  Karen pursed her lips. ‘Only the ones on the other leg,’ she replied. ‘There’s only one KIC called Mainframe and that belongs to - well, there’s only one. What’s yours really—?’

  ‘This is that one,’ said the voice, sounding slightly higher and more querulous. ‘The one and only, so to speak. Really and truly. And it’s not working properly. Look, are you going to help me? You’re my last hope.’

  It was at this point that Karen finally lost her temper; or, to be precise, put her temper carefully away in a safe place where she’d be sure to find it again. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I don’t know who you are, but I’m fairly certain you’re not the President of the United States, so obviously your computer isn’t Mainframe, and—’

  ‘Is that who they told you owns Mainframe? Gosh.’

  ‘Yes, it is, because he does. Now, I do have other callers waiting, so—’

  ‘Is that really what they told you?’

  There is, unfortunately, a rule which says that KIC helpline operators can’t slam the phone down. They can’t even tell callers what they think of them. It’s calculated that the repressed energy wasted by KIC helpline operators not being allowed to let off steam under these circumstances would be enough to light Boston for a week. ‘Yes,’ Karen said. ‘And now...’

  ‘I’ve found a code number, if that’s any help.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘There’s a little bit of paper, with a number scribbled down on it, wedged in this operator’s manual, and someone’s written KIC security code. Shall I read it out to you?’

  Karen sighed, audibly, producing a sound like an InterCity train just entering a tunnel at top speed. ‘If you must,’ she said. ‘Then I really do have to—’

  ‘All right,’ said the caller. ‘It’s One.’

  There was a moment’s silence, during which Karen’s jaw dropped like share prices on a bad day. ‘Could you repeat that, please?’ she eventually croaked.

  ‘Sure,’ the caller replied. ‘One.’

  ‘Please hold.’ Karen put down the phone, blinked four times and rummaged in her desk drawer for the loose-leaf binder where she filed the office memos. After she’d flicked through forty-odd pages of sternly worded directives about paperclip conservation and taking empty coffee cups back to the kitchen after use, she found the one she’d been looking for. She read it, read it again, muttered something under her breath, and picked the phone up.

  ‘Are you still there?’ she asked. ‘Sir?’ she added.

  ‘Still here.’

  How to put this? A difficult question to phrase. She did her best.

  ‘Are you sure,’ she said, ‘that you’re not the President of the United States?’

  ‘Pretty fair average sure,’ the caller replied. ‘It’d be a difficult thing to be without noticing. People’d keep phoning you up, for one thing.’

  Karen kept calm. Not easy; the orchestra who finished their set while the Titanic went down under their feet couldn’t have managed it, but Karen did. She glanced at the folder, open at the memo she’d just looked up. It said, in capitals, italics and bold face, whatever code number One tells you, believe it. Oh well, she told herself.

  ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘who are you?’

  ‘Ah,’ replied the caller.

  Sleep, the thief who breaks into our bodies at night and steals a third of our lifetimes, fancied he heard someone coming and legged it out of Len’s brain, abandoning the bag marked Swag. It contained an idea.

  Accordingly, when Len came round and found himself lying on his back with a crick in his neck and his mouth open, he discovered a perfectly finished, mirror-polished inspiration lying on the floor of his mind, for all the world as if the
stork had left it there. He examined it.

  ‘Yes,’ he said aloud. ‘Why not?’

  He sat up, and at once looked across the workshop at the machine. For one horrible fragment of a second he thought it wasn’t there any more; then he moved his head a little and saw it, and thought Ah, that’s all right then.

  According to the physicists, there’s this stuff called potential energy. It’s what a large stone or a ton weight has in that split second between toppling off the edge of a high cliff and starting to fall. In that moment, all the effort and strength taken in lugging the wretched thing up there suddenly comes to life, as it were; then gravity pounces, like an independent financial adviser leaping upon a defenceless lottery winner, and takes it all away again. Bump! goes the stone on the ground below, and the energy earths itself and runs to waste, leaving the physicist’s assistants with the cheerful job of heaving a ton of research material on to the pallet truck and hauling it back up the hill.

  In the pale light of morning, filtered through a cobwebbed window, the machine glowed with enough potential energy to blow all the fuses in the National Grid. Len stood up, walked over to it and patted the table gently.

  ‘Down, boy,’ he muttered. ‘Be with you in a minute.’

  First, he had to empty some fluids out of his body and put some solids into it. Then he’d need a large sheet of paper, a ruler, a set square, a protractor and a sharp pencil. And some materials, as well; lots of them, specialised stuff like titanium and palladium and tungsten and beryllium copper, as well as twelve different kinds of steel and nine flavours of aluminum alloy. And a computer, of course, and a three-horse electric motor, and a few other bits and pieces. And then . . .

  Was it his imagination, or did a fat blue slug of potential energy just arc across the gap between the cutter and the table? Better hurry, because we’ve got a busy day ahead of us, you and I.

  One of the glorious things about the city of Birmingham is that there are people you can call up on the phone and ask for six feet of three-inch-section square titanium bar; and they don’t say ‘Huh?’ or ‘What in the name of fun’s three-inch-section square titanium bar?’ or anything like that. They just ask you if you want it delivered, and whether you’re paying cash or on account.