DAWN COULD NOT be far off. The mound-top was already dark against a lighter sky. "We need cover," said Eamon, looking at the skyline.
"And sleep and food," Behan added.
"And strong drink," said Fal, mournfully.
"And tickets in the Managing Director's box to see a full Monty production of Carmina Burana," put in Chip.
The bats fluttered off to find a spot. They came back a few minutes later and led the human and the rats to a muddy undercut bank. As a hideout it was lousy. Chip was too exhausted to care.
"Well, Fal, your tail saved my bacon. I have a haunch of maggot stowed in my pack," said Melene, with real regret in her voice.
The plump rat had been looking a bit seedy in the dawn light. At the mention of food he perked up. He rubbed his ratty paws together. "Well, good friends, we have a place to sleep. We have food. If only we had a drink . . ."
"I have some alcohol impregnated swabs for cleaning injection sites," offered Doc. "We could suck those."
"Ah! Now, if the bats are familiar with this Common Boo Rana, we could just rename this tranquil rural beauty spot, `The Managing Director's Box,' and Chip too would be satisfied," said Fal, contentedly.
Pistol peered into the muddy puddle just below the hideout. "Hey, Fal, what would a `Rana' be then?"
"Some kind of frog, I should guess, my ancient Pistol."
Doc nodded in agreement. "Indeed, there is a genera of frog by that name, I believe."
"Ah." Pistol gave his best one-eyed wink. "There's a toad in here. That's close enough. I'm sure that would do, eh, Chip?"
Gnawing hunger awoke Chip. He'd heard if you stopped eating you stopped feeling hungry. Only he'd been eking out his rations. Eating less and less, but still eating. Now the cupboard was bare. And his stomach was not satisfied with some silt-flavored water.
Earlier presleep jokes about the toad having to be careful about not becoming a double amputee, with a chef around looking for frogs' legs, stopped seeming so funny. It was time he started to eat off the land, time he got rid of his foibles. He would starve otherwise. The thought of raw toad was still hard going though. Maybe he could toast it over fat Fal's zippo.
Then he realized he should have woken up earlier. Only a last webbed foot protruded from Fal's face. Then, with a crunch, that too was gone.
Fal told him it had tasted awful. Anyway, Nym and Phylla had got most of it. "We're going out foraging. We have to. Oh. And I'm afraid we ate your shoes."
Chip looked down. With relief he realized that they meant the maggot-hide sandals.
"We've got a real problem." Chip said to Bronstein.
The bat hadn't appreciated being awakened. "Other than being stuck behind enemy lines with a crazy human and a bunch of lowlife rats, I have no problems. That one is bad enough. And I love being woken up, to be sure."
Chip closed his eyes and counted to ten. "Okay, I've got a direct problem. You can just fly away. But, bat, when the Maggots catch on they're going to get serious about hunting you. Really serious. They've got aerial movement detectors. We know that. The Brass got at least a thousand bats killed proving it. They zap your slowshields with rapid-fire tracking projectiles. Keep it hard so that you can't fly. And once you are on the ground, you bats are no match for even the feeblest Maggot. The rats have got to get food. If they don't, they'll turn feral. It's the shrew genes. You heard what happened in that caved-in bunker on the eastern front?"
Bronstein looked at him. "You mean . . . where they ate the others? I thought that was just a story."
"No. It was true. I knew one of the kids on the cleanup squad. The platoon was trapped in there for four days. Without food. The rats ate the humans. They managed to catch and eat the bats. Then they started on each other. There was only one left to face court-martial. We've got to feed those rats, because otherwise they'll go out of their minds hunting food. Sure, they'll start on me. Then they'll go out hunting Maggots. And then the Maggots will be onto you."
Bronstein shook her head. "I'll get the others. It's nearly twilight. We'll see what we can find."
"Good-o. I'll start turning over rocks. The Maggots have cleaned up all the surface stuff. But I might find worms or something."
"Be careful that the rats don't bite the hand that feeds them, Chip."
Chip grinned wryly. "Never mind biting it. They'll probably eat it."
"It's about half a mile off," said Siobhan. "The farmhouse itself must have copped a direct hit. It is pretty well flattened. But the outbuildings are intact, or mostly so. The ground is stripped bare, but surely there must be some food in sealed containers?"
"There can't be less than here," grumbled Chip, looking at his muddy hands. "Let's go. It looks like it is coming on to rain yet again, and I'd rather have a roof over me, than be one for you lot."
The farmhouse must once have been a very large and beautiful one. Now it was nothing more than a masonry shell. Chip poked through the remains of the kitchen. The pickings weren't very good, so far. Three jars of marmalade, which had miraculously survived the explosion. There had been a walk-in freezer room and cold room, but these had been blown open and thoroughly gutted by the Magh'-foragers.
"Hey!" There was a shout. "Methinks we're going to die happy! Look at this, you bacon-fed knaves!" Chip went to see, visions of a secret food hoard lending him speed.
Fal had found an outbuilding such as the place where good rats think they will go when they die. It was a small winery. The rat was eagerly sounding stainless steel vats. "This one is nearly full! And there is a pot-still here! That means brandy!"
"There is something down here too," called Pistol. The Maggots had taken the wooden doors, leaving the dark stairway into the cellar unguarded. Here were ten thousand bottles, packed in their serried ranks.
"Well strap me, if I don't crack a bottle or two to celebrate!" said Pistol, cheerfully. "Can I offer you a drink, Fal?"
"I never thought to hear those words! Pistol offering someone else a drink, instead of scrounging it! Indeed you may!"
"Stop!" said Chip. "Don't touch that stuff! Do you hear me, Fal?"
"Boy, tell him I am deaf," said Fal, ignoring Chip pointedly.
"You must speak louder sir. My master is very deaf," said Pistol, obligingly, cracking a bottle neck against a pillar.
Chip snatched the bottle from the one-eyed rat. Red wine sloshed onto the floor. Pistol looked startled. "Now, Chip. There is plenty for all of us."
"Don't be fools, Pistol, Fal. You're both still starving-hungry, right?"
"Yes. But what we want for in meat we'll have in drink." The fat rat eyed the bottle greedily.
"While you're sober, you're keeping your wits. Keeping your hunger in check. Get a bit drunk and all you'll want is food, and once you're good and drunk, and this hungry, you won't care where you get that food. You'll eat me. You'll eat each other. We've got to find food first—before you drink."
The rats were silent.
"You can put the bottle down," said Fal, seriously. "Food first, eh, Pistol?"
"I reckon. I wouldn't want to eat Chip. Not while he owes me a crate of whiskey." The rat sniffed at the robust, berry-rich inky bouquet of the spilt wine. "And it is a lousy vintage, anyway."
"A rat! I have found a rat!" Nym bellowed.
They all ran back upstairs. The big Nym had cornered a large black rat. The real thing, too—a descendant of unwanted stowaways on the slowship, not a creation of genetic engineers. A real, non-cyber-uplifted rat. It bared its yellow rodent teeth at them.
"Dinner!"
Fal lifted his long nose. "Sexy smelling dinner!"
"Yeah. Nice body!" said Pistol, eyeing the rat lecherously. "Shame we're just gonna eat it."
Fal straightened. "Hur. That's where you're wrong, Ancient Pistol. There is something we've got to do first. 'Tis our soldiering duty after all. Tradition! Tradition's clear as crystal on the subject. Says soldiering's got killing, looting and rapine." Fal rubbed his paws and eyed the rat. "Fighting Magh', o' course, 'twas a moot point. But now methinks we've gotten lucky!"
"Hark at him, lads!" cried Pistol. "This soldiering business has really got it all!" He turned his head to let his one good eye get a proper look at the captive.
"You're a bunch of paltry rogues," sneered Melene. "Kill it and let's eat."
"Well, just now!" protested Pistol. "I mean a rat's gotta do what a rat's gotta do!"
Fal nodded solemnly. "Duty first! We're just going to have to steel ourselves to it." He smiling toothily at the captive rat. It hissed back at him.
Nym looked at the wild rat. Then at Pistol. "You know what his ideas usually get us into."
"What, good Nym?" exclaimed Fal. "Can I believe my ears? A valorous whoreson rat not willing to put up his naked weapon? What manner of rat are you?" Fal strutted back and forth before them, his paunch wobbling, his chest out and his head back. He flourished his bristly tail. "Where is your martial vigor?"
Nym still looked skeptical. "I'm remembering that time when you . . ."
"Don't be disgusting, you lot!" Phylla did not look amused. "Get on and just kill it. My stomach thinks my throat has been cut, while you fool around."
Siobhan had fluttered in. "You are not going to eat that rat, surely?!" she said in tones of horror. "Why, it is nothing better than cannibals that you are!"
"In sooth. Doth it speak? Is it a tame shrew?" demanded Pistol.
Doc had wandered in, by now, and immediately begun pontificating. "Indeed, that is the question. The morality of the deed rests on this. Does it think deep thoughts? If it does not, then wherein lies the problem? Not in the mere fleshy envelope."
"There is as much going through its mind as there is going through one of you rats' minds!" snapped Siobhan.
"Therefore," said Fal reasonably, "as you bats have assured us nothing goes through our heads, the killing of this rat is no sin."
"They're planning to rape it first," hissed Phylla.
The bat looked as if was going to throw up.
Fal put on a mournful expression. "We really don't want to, of course—but the soldierly duty's to be done, to be done!"
The fat rat, paunch wobbling gloriously as he resumed strutting back and forth, gestured histrionically and burst into a singsong rendition from Henry V:
"But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger:
Stiffen the sinews, conjure up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favoured rage!"
"Tradition!" chorused Pistol. "Anyway, what difference does it make? We're going to kill it and eat it, anyway. It's a dumb animal, even it looks a bit like us. What difference does it make if, uh, we do our soldierly duty first?"
"It makes a difference to you!" Siobhan was practically choking from indignation. "Rape! How can you even think of it? I'm going to call Bronstein."
"Hmm." Doc's eyes were almost crossed, as he pondered the ethics of the matter. "But consensual sex implies and indeed presupposes an intellect. Therefore, where there is no intellect . . ."
"You know, Doc, you're about as much fun as an enema!" snarled Fal. "I'm proposing soldierly rapine! That's not a matter of intellect. It is a matter of tradition! Like pillaging and burning! We soldiers have a reputation to keep up. It is our soldierly duty!"
"Since when, you buffoon?" Chip had the average conscript's respect for his uniform, but this was a bit much.
"Always! 'Tis in my memory banks!"
Nym finally came to his own conclusion. "I know. We'll kill it first. Then it won't mind."
"Take the logic through to the end," Doc immediately countered. "Eat it first, kill it later and rape it after that."
Chip shuddered. "I'm going to kill it now and get it over with, you sick bunch."
Fal sighed. "Chip, you are a sorry gutless hobgobbin. A spoilsport. You won't let me get drunk. You won't let me force my will on this svelte little rat-maiden . . . and she rather fancies me. Don't you, my sweetness?" The plump rat reached out for the wild rat.
She bit him, and ran.
"Yow! After her!"
But they were too slow, and the rat dived down a hole.
Fal nursed his paw. "She bit me."
"Good," said Bronstein, who had come in behind them.
"Now, where is our dinner?" demanded Doll. "Get down that hole after it, you idiots!"
"That's dinner that bites. Besides I don't think I'd fit down that hole."
"I've a good mind to kick you down it!" Phylla snapped. Hunger made her very irritable.
"Hullo. What is going on here?" asked Melene, who had just wandered in.
"These stupid, randy, male sots have just let our dinner get away, in their quest for more bawdy lechery. They've let a tasty wild rat escape away entirely with their dumb oversexed behavior!" Phylla aimed a kick at Fal, who was still sucking his paw.
"That's males for you," sniffed Melene. "Come, I have found us something to eat. We'll leave them to their bit of wild-tail, seeing as we're not good enough for them." She linked arms with Doll and Phylla.
"Wait . . ." said Fal, hastily.
"Stick your private parts in the rat hole, you tripe-visaged sots." Doll smiled nastily back at them. "Maybe the wild one will bite them off."
Shamefaced, the male rats followed them.
"No, no, stick to your 'soldierly' duties," said Phylla, showing teeth.
"Ah, come on . . ." begged Nym.
Doll showed teeth. "Bugger off and go and enjoy your wild rat."
"We too have found some useful things, Connolly, although not to eat," said Bronstein. "I was just on my way to find you."
"Fine. Let's just go and see what the rats have found. The honest truth is, Bronstein, I could have eaten that rat myself. Raw. A bit of a come-down for a former sous-chef, eh?"
The bat chuckled. "We also need food, Chip. We aren't as voracious as the rats, to be sure, but flying is an energy-expensive exercise."
"Well, let's go and see what they've found. But, knowing their tastes, don't expect smoked salmon," said Chip, with a half-smile.
He was quite correct. The smoked salmon, presliced and inadequately preserved, had gone off. In the tasting room next to the cellar, where the wine farm had provided delicate little snacks for its wealthy Shareholder clientele, was a small fridge. Without power, much of what was inside was simply gag-making rotten. One or two of the soft cheeses had actually evolved to self-awareness, and had to be forcibly suppressed. But there were a fair number of sealed bottles and tins. And up on the wall was a cupboard full of cellophane-sealed packets of dry crackers.
A few minutes later the male rats came along. The bats, Chip, and the female rats were gathered around a table on the terrace. The trellis above, which must once have been vine hung, was now festooned instead with batforms. Their dark silhouettes were stark in the moonlight. Occasionally one would swoop down on the table.
"We can't get to it . . . have you got anything to spare?" the male rats asked from below, an edge of dangerous hunger in their voices.
Food had had a mellowing effect on the rest of them. "All right. Come up. There just might be a few scraps left." Phylla gestured at the stairs with a slopping wine glass. "Connolly made us some fancy chow."
The male rats fairly galloped up the stairs.
Chip, on seeing what they had found, had pushed the rats and bats aside. "I'll prepare it. Go and find us a bottle of wine." This was what he had done for five years . . . well, for the first year he had scrubbed pots . . . but he had an eye for this sort of thing.
Several by now half-empty filigree-edged silver platters rested on the table, filled with an array of delicate, elegantly presented canapes. Even the starving rats could only gape.
"Here, Fal. Try one of these bits of meatloaf," said Mel cheerfully. "What's it called again, Chip?"
"Pâté de foie gras, with truffles and cognac." Chip winced, watching the fat rat shove it into his face and chew. Twice. Gulp.
"Methinks 'tis not bad for tinned meatloaf, really," Fal pronounced, washing down the exquisite delicacy with a draft tipped straight from the bottle.
"Hey! What do you think glasses are for, you Philistine?" demanded Nym, helping himself to a glass and a biscuit piled with slices of pickled quail's eggs in chopped aspic, topped with mayonnaise and dusted with caviared trout-roe.
"Dunno. What?" Fal had another pull at the bottle, and another piece of "meatloaf."
"Drinking out of," said Chip, raising his glass, swirling the ruby liquid and savoring the bouquet.
Fal clung to the bottle, pointedly ignoring the glasses. "A waste of time, when the bottle is handy." This time he examined the pâté briefly, before putting it in his face. He gave it a cursory chew before asking in a spray of crumbs: "What was the little black bits in it? Con nyak, it's called? Some sort of testicle?"
"Cognac is brandy, you pleb," said Nym, looking curiously at the strange thing on the toothpick.
Fal grabbed for the platter. "Gimme. Gimmeee! Food and drink at once!"
"Too late, Pistol got there first." Nym chewed the toothpick. By the looks of it, he had decided that the stick tasted better than that pickled fishy-roll.
The odd food had even mellowed Eamon. "Just watch out for those little black balls he's put on those round biscuits. Chip's admitted 'twas just buckshot softened in fish oil, indade."
"What about the big ones in that bowl? Some kind of droppings?" inquired Pistol, reaching happily for them.
Siobhan swooped down and took a spiral of smoked oyster and gherkin slivers. "Black olives," she said, distastefully. "Beware, I tell you. There are pips in them. Nearly broke my teeth on one."
"Besides, what kind of fruit is salty?" demanded Phylla. Suspiciously: "I think Chip was having us on."
"S'like t'ose snake eggs." The plumpest bat belched and pointed a wing.
"Pickled quail's eggs, O'Niel," said Chip, grinning over his wineglass.
O'Niel condemned them with a lordly flap. "T'ay taste just like the eggs in boot camp."
Melene laughed "The ones we used to bounce?"
"Myself, I like those little bits of fish with green bits in the middle." Doll burped in an unladylike fashion and swilled back some of the Director's Reserve '03 Cabernet.
"Which do you mean?" inquired Doc. "The ones with the crunchy green-bits or the dark red ones with the wrinkledy bits of stuff in the middle." He inspected the one of each in each paw, squinting through his spectacles.
"The crunchy ones. What did you call it, Chip? Oh yeah. Roll-ups."
"Are you sure you're not supposed to smoke them?" asked Fal. "And the other fishy ones? Tried those?"
Doll swilled back some more wine, dripping it down her chin. "Nah. I thought they was bad. I mean, going green in the middle. I was just being polite and not saying so."
Chip chuckled. "It's an anchovy rolled around a caper, you ass."
"That wrinkled green thing is not a caper!" Doll leaped on the table, and pirouetted clumsily. "Thish ish a caper!" Fortunately Chip caught her before she could land on the snack platter.
"Bah, drunken rat revelers!" Eamon's temper was rising. "They can think no further than the ends of their long noses. Wasters and drunks!"
Phylla fixed him with a slightly glazed eye. "You know what, Eamon? You're right."
The big bat was taken aback. "I did not expect . . ."
"And you know what else?" She winked at him.
"Er . . . what?" asked the bat, in the cautious fashion of one who has just received praise from very unexpected quarters.
"You're really dead sexy when you're angry." She hefted the bottle. "What do you shay we shlip off and get totally rat-assed together?" Another thought crossed her ratty-soft-cyber mind. "Or what 'bout flying? Never tried that. Fly 'nited." She giggled and slumped forward onto the table.
Eamon hung on the trellis wires, gaping. Bronstein and Siobhan were definitely laughing at him.
He was not a bat that took kindly to being laughed at.