"WHERE THE HELL have you lot been?" demanded Chip, as the bats fluttered down from the ceiling. "If I didn't know you better, I'd have thought you'd flown off and left us."
He turned and began moving toward Ginny and the rats. "We need to have council-of-war, and that needs you, Bronstein. Otherwise these head-plastic-for-brains bastards expect me to make decisions."
If he'd been setting out to make the three bats look utterly hangdog and guilty, thought Bronstein, he couldn't have done a better job. Fortunately he'd looked across at Virginia, just then.
"You're a good leader, Chip," Bronstein protested.
Chip was hearing the words, not the tone. "Don't be crazy, Bronstein. Have you been drinking or something? I'm a grunt. Even Ginny is a better leader than me. When she's not being illogical about her damned Crotchet, that is."
"Indade, now, that's not true . . ." began Eamon tentatively.
"Don't you start defending the goddamn prickle-ball! I don't know what you've got into your heads about that fucking thing." Chip stopped, sniffed. "You have been drinking!"
"No. I meant I thought you had leadership skills," said the big bat, humbly.
Chip shook his head in amazement and raised his eyes to heaven. "You're as pissed as a newt, Eamon." They'd arrived at the huddle of rats, Ginny and the galago near the doorway.
The self-elected grunt announced in a voice of gloom: "Well, folks, we are in excrement deep and dark and dire. Really deep. Twenty feet over nostril. Deep enough to have Eamon getting so totally rat-assed pissed that he's claiming that humans make good leaders."
"That is an illogical contention," said Doc in a weak voice.
Melene put her tail protectively over him. "Now don't strain yourself. Rest, dearest."
Doc gazed rheumily at her. "I've died and gone to heaven." He choked. "That's philosophically awkward. I thought atheists went to hell, even if they'd been blown to bits. Will I disappear if I say to God I don't believe in him? I suppose it is bit late for the acquisition of religious convictions."
"He's got his wits back," said Fal.
Nym snorted. "Unfortunately."
"You leave him alone," said Melene, in voice that could cut glass.
"Logical extension of the perceptual facts say I cannot be dead and in heaven, despite Melene's most exquisite tail being wrapped around me, because I see Pistol's unbeauteous face. Aspects of heaven and hell belong in mutually exclusive . . ."
"Oh shut up, Doc. Have a drink. It'll fix you up." Fal held out a bottle.
"Indeed, I am in need of that . . . purely for its restorative properties." Feebly, Doc reached for the bottle.
Mel swatted the bottle away. "You're not having any of that until you feel better!"
Doc sat up hastily. "I'm feeling much better," he said, in a far more cheerful voice than his earlier die-away tones. "And I really, really, need a drink. My mouth does not taste good, Melene dearest."
Fal passed the bottle again. This time Melene made no attempt to stop him taking it. But the scholarly rat didn't take an immediate drink. Instead he passed it to Melene. "Have a drink, my dear."
Melene managed to look coy, which is quite an achievement for a rat. "I didn't know you cared, Pararattus."
"Doc, you Bartholomew boarpig! That's my bottle. Get your own bottle or candy!" Fal managed to snatch back the bottle, but not before Doc had had a pull at it.
Doc shook his head and said, mournfully: "I can't get my own bottle. The Korozhet took my pack."
"How can you say that?" demanded Doll, hands on her ratty hips.
Pararattus gave this rhetorical question serious consideration. "It is difficult. But I find if you consider the term Korozhet according to Plato's Forms . . . then it is quite possible to say that the Korozhet gassed me, and placed me on a pile of explosives. Then, while I lay between consciousness and unconsciousness, it killed Siobhan when she tried to come to the Korozhet's aid. She believed that it was helping me."
"Oh, nonsense!" piped Fal. "You got hit on the head and you were seeing things."
"Oft times this happens with too much heavy thinking," said Melene, gently. "Your brain's overheated. Too much blood in the brain. When you're feeling better methinks I have a wondrous way to redirect it." She twisted her tail around him.
Doc forgot philosophical contentions. "I'm really feeling just fine!"
"Still thinking the good Korozhet could have done that?" asked Melene fluttering an eyelash at a hypnotized Doc.
"Er." For a moment Doc wavered. But you don't get to be a rat-philosopher without guts. "Yes. It did."
Melene looked at him fondly. "It must have been a terrible blow on the head."
Bronstein wished like hell that she had some of those forms that this Plato must have filled in. Trying to talk around the soft-cyber was leaving her unaccustomedly tongue-tied.
"I'm surprised," said Ginny to Chip, forgetting that she wasn't ever going to speak to him again, "that you aren't supporting his delusions."
He shrugged. "What good would it do me? It doesn't make any difference now, anyway. We're trapped in here. The Maggots will eventually get in and kill us all. That is, unless the bats have found a way out."
Eamon assumed a heroic bat-pose. "We'll stand beside our good comrades! And bravely fight! Aye, and die too. What can we do more but vow to fight with heart, claw and fang?"
Pistol looked at the bat with amused tolerance. "Well, methinks we could have a baby Maggot barbecue, get drunk, maybe get lucky, and then, with any luck, run like hell."
Ginny couldn't help smiling. Bats and rats! "You didn't answer the question, Eamon. Did you find a way out of here?"
The big bat was silent.
Bronstein answered for him. "Yes. But not for you."
The silence spread like jelly.
Chip stood up. "Well. You lads had better get moving then. Can the rats do it? Or do you have to be able to fly?"
"Well, maybe with that cord," said O'Niel. " 'Tis a vertical shaft, to be sure. But a human wouldn't fit."
"And where do you come out at the end?" asked Virginia. She was stroking Fluff, who had started to shiver.
Eamon shrugged. "Indade, we have no idea. We didn't go all the way."
Chip snorted. "How like bats, eh, Fal? I wonder if that comes under the heading of rat-teasing."
He got no response from the plump rat, except for a slight twitch of a smile, which immediately disappeared. In fact, nobody said anything. So Chip continued. "Well, fortunately I grabbed that roll of cord. What's left of it is in that fertilizer bag. I'd guess there must be at least seventy yards left on the reel."
"Well, we could get the rats up to the shaft with that," said Bronstein slowly. "Then we're coming back."
O'Niel took a pull at his bottle and began to quaver in a mournful tenor, "I had four belfries and each one was a jewel . . ."
"Ah, well," said Fal. "I'm too heavy for that cord, really. The rest of you'd better get on with it."
"To Lucifer's privy with that idea," said Nym. "For myself, I can't see the point of being stuck at the bottom of a shaft. As well to be stuck here."
Rat after rat chimed in with perfectly ridiculous excuses not to leave. Doll said there wouldn't be room for their drink, and Melene claimed to be scared of heights. Pistol said he'd be gone like a shot, but Chip owed him a hundred cases of whiskey, and the minute he was out of sight the damned bilker would do something to get out of it . . . Die, or something equally careless. While this went on the three bats continued with their dirge-like renditions of bat-adapted revolutionary songs, until the last rat had finished.
Well, all the rats except Doc had finished.
The rat-philosopher stood up, a solicitous Melene holding his arm. "ENOUGH!" he said in a voice like thunder, loudly enough to impress even the galago. "I will have none of this sophistry and these silly excuses!"
"Well, we'll take you up to the first stage," said Bronstein.
Doc looked down his long nose at her. "I didn't say I was going. I just said I would have none of this pretense."
"I'm sorry guys. But you're all going." They hadn't heard Chip speak in that tone of voice before.
Doc looked at Chip. "We rats are not naturally brave, or loyal. We're fast, and we're good Maggot killers. But our loyalty can be earned. You've earned it. We won't leave you."
Chip found speaking difficult. "I'm grateful. And I would hate to leave you guys. Honest. I've . . . I've sort of forgotten that you aren't really human. Hell. I think you're . . . better than human." He paused. "But you must get out. You must. Ginny and I can't. Firstly, you must get back over the lines. All the Maggots in creation are around here, nowhere else. If you go right now and hide just inside the shield, some of you should manage to get out when it goes up. You bats especially. You should be able to tell our side so much. Stuff that'll keep grunts who are just like me and Gin—Dermott alive. And . . . you could tell them Doc's story. I'm not saying anyone will believe you. Just tell them."
He sighed. "Secondly, if you feel that way about leaving Ginny and me, we feel just as bad about you staying. Hey, Ginny?"
Behind her glasses her eyes sparkled with tears. "Yes. Go. Please. Please, please go. I couldn't bear it if any of you stayed. You all been my first ever real . . . friends. And Chip is right. So many sacrifices have been made to get us this far. For Phylla, Siobhan, and Behan's sake you must get back to the human side of the lines. For our sakes too. Don't let all of this be in vain. Please . . . dear friends."
There was another one of those jellylike silences.
Then Eamon said. "You're right, indade. We'll get the rats out, and then return to stand by you. Wing to shoulder, eh!"
Chip shook his head gently. "No, Eamon. You must go with them. Without you bats they'd have no chance. You couldn't abandon them while there was still hope, could you? With you, especially you, because you are biggest and bravest, they have some chance. We know we can trust you and rely on you."
The big bat promptly hid his wrinkled face in his wings.
The farewells were done. The bats had taken the line up to the ventilation hole.
Fluff had just clung to Virginia's neck, big eyed and miserable. Besides the contents of sixteen Molotov-cocktail bottles, every single rat except Doc had given Chip a bottle. The thought that the two of them would at least not have to die sober appeared to mean a great deal to Fal. Doc had made up for his lost alcohol with a snippet of philosophical thought that Chip would have found comforting and brilliant . . . if he'd understood one word in ten.
Finally, they went.
Eamon had fluttered down at the last, when the cord had already been pulled up. "If we do get back . . . we'll immortalize you in song. Batdom will never, never forget you."
They were left staring at the roof. Finally, Chip sighed, and drew the Solingen.
"What are you planning to do with that?" she asked, her voice a little tight.
"I dunno. See if I can sharpen it? Maybe I'll get a few more Maggots with it that way."
"What does it really matter?"
"I dunno. I couldn't just give up."
"Um." She spoke now in a very small voice. "I've got something to give to you." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small shapeless lump of what might once have been silver paper. "Melene . . . gave me this to give to you." Her voice was almost inaudible.
Chip looked at it. "Er. Just what is it?"
She looked into his eyes. He saw there were tears starting in the corners of her eyes again. She sniffed. "It was her most precious possession. She'd . . . only ever had one before." Ginny's chin quivered. "It . . . it was a chocolate."
Chip stared at her, open mouthed.
Ginny sniffed determinedly. "Rats don't really understand. I told her, you . . . Uh . . . Anyway, she said I must give it to you. She insisted."
Chip took Ginny in his arms. "Quite a girl, that rat," he said reverently.
She sniffed and held tightly to his tunic. "She's the first girlfriend I've ever had. And she was the best I could wish to have. She said not to waste this time . . ."
"Funny, that's what Nym, Pistol and Doc said. Fal said I should get drunk too, but not too drunk."
Ginny gave a choke of laughter. "Do you know that was almost exactly what Doll said?"
Chip grinned at her. "I can well believe it. That's one wild, bad rat-girl, that!"
She looked at him with big serious eyes and said quietly, "I'm not a wild, bad girl, Chip." She looked down and then looked him straight in the eye. "I don't know what to do. I've never even been kissed before. I don't want die before I've even been kissed properly."
"But all you Sharehol—" Fortunately, this time he caught himself. "This is how you do that."
After some considerable time had passed, he managed to speak. "Seeing as we are going to die anyway, why don't we go ahead and take the rest of that rat advice?"
She opened her eyes and looked at him. "Oh, yes. Oh, yes!"
He looked up. "Well. Let's move away from here a little. I wouldn't put it past Eamon to come back. He really wasn't happy about leaving. And he has a habit of doing his own thing."