"EXPLAIN," SAID CHIP. Bronstein would have added, "and you'd better make it good,"' but Chip was feeling guilty. The little fellow looked more like some kid's soft toy than a problem. He'd frightened it into a wide-eyed silence because of his own nervousness. He might easily have killed it.
"You are the commander of the rescue force?" The galago sounded doubtful.
"Commander?" Chip shrugged. "Hell, we've never got around to having one of those. Bronstein is the highest ranking of us, but as a human I could claim I was in charge . . . if I was that stupid."
"Better to make it my fault, to be sure," said the bat, from where she hung on the miraculously intact crystal light-fitting in the tasting room.
"And as for being a rescue force," Fal picked his teeth, "belike what gave you that idea?"
"Indade, we're in need of being rescued, but I don't see how or why it would happen," Eamon chipped in.
The little creature's face crumpled. "You have not been sent to rescue my princess?"
Chip shook his head. "We just got ourselves trapped behind the lines in the last push. We haven't been sent to rescue anyone."
"Yeah. We'd just like to get out alive . . . Don Gigolo," said Fal, pausing in the very act of getting outside the contents of a bottle of wine.
The big eyes sparkled dangerously. "I warned you before, you fat mouse."
"Mouse?! MOUSE?! Who are you calling a mouse, you . . . you . . . whoreson caterpillar!" Fal tried to grab the galago, who leapt onto one of the wall-fittings.
"That's enough!" Chip and Bronstein bellowed in unison.
The galago didn't think so. "He insulted my honor!"
Neither did Fal. "He called me a mouse! And he's trying to seduce our girls!"
Phylla sneered. "Methinks you should grow up, Fal! We're not `your girls.' " There was a very dangerous edge to her voice.
Chip sighed. "Here we are, refugees trapped in the middle of enemy territory, and you're calling each other names and fighting. Now will you both QUIT IT."
"In heaven's name, just don't start the little one bellowing," said Bronstein wearily. "He has a louder voice than you have."
The galago was practically hopping with fury. "Nobody calls Don Juan el Magnifico de Gigantico de Immaculata Concepcion Major de Todos y Saavedra Quixote de la Mancha a—a gigolo!"
"Make me stop," swaggered Fal, his paunch wobbling and his tail doing a little wave.
Chip sighed again. "If I have to, I will, Fal."
"And if he doesn't, we will," said Doll. "Hey girls?"
"And if all that fails, there is always me," added Bronstein.
"You all gang up on me," whined Fal.
"Okay, we all gang up on you," agreed Chip. "Now leave off calling him names and you—Don Whatsisname—you leave off calling fat Fal a mouse. He's an ugly rat and proud of it. Now tell us, Don, who did you think we were here to rescue?"
"But of course I thought you had come to rescue my fair princess from the durance vile and clutches of the wicked, evil Magh'. I was wrong. But, of course, now you will volunteer bravely to do it. You will become heroes!"
"Dream on," snorted Chip. "We're conscripted grunts, sunshine."
"Methinks heroes are the humans with the gold bird-dropping on their shoulders. We just want to stay alive. And out of any volunteering." Fal's nose was plainly out of joint.
"And anyway, we need no other humans," added Eamon. "The one we have is more than enough."
The little galago rocked on his heels, furled its mobile delicate ears, and stared at them. In quite a different voice, with a sob lurking in it, he addressed himself directly to Chip, "But surely—señor!—you cannot leave a beautiful girl to die? Slowly and horribly, she will die! She will die without water or food, walled up, alone, desperate, in the darkness . . ."
Chip looked at the Maggot-mound. Hell's teeth! He was no hero, damn it. Not one of these handsome devil-may-care idiots whom the Company spent like water to stop the Maggots. He was just an ordinary conscript grunt who kept a low profile and kept himself alive.
"Bugger it . . ."
"Then I will go back . . . by myself," interrupted the galago. There was both despair and determination in his voice.
"Let me finish, will you?" grumbled Chip. "I was trying say—bugger it, I wouldn't leave a dog to die trapped down there. A . . . friend died like that. Buried."
He sighed heavily. "I'll give it a go."
"You, sir, are a hidalgo! A true knight! A Siegfried!"
"I'm a sucker, never mind this Siegfried character. Or was he a sucker, too? Are you sure this girl's still alive?"
"Oh indeed. I was fetching food for her when I met your—" The galago sneered and looked down his nose at animals taller than himself. "Brave companions."
"You watch your mouth or I won't come along," snapped Nym.
"You are coming, señor rat? You are one of great courage!"
"Oh, we'll be there too," piped Melene. "We girls could hardly refuse to follow such a brave—and sexy—caballero."
"Are you all loons?!" Fal was incredulous. "Here we've got away, safe, and you want to go back in again and risk your lives down there?"
Phylla sniffed. "We got away with it once."
"The contentions of this frail mortality in the light of absolute . . ."
"Oh shut up," said Fal, sourly. "I suppose you're going too?"
Doc pushed his wire pince-nez back on his snout. "Yes. It is not logical, but yes."
Bronstein tapped her head with a wing-claw. "You're all crazy. Crazy. Loony. Mad. Insane. You're rats. RATS. Rats do not volunteer, ever."
"Well, look at it this way," said Pistol, "We either go, or let that little Molly in the pooftah red jacket show us all up."
"It's a very elegant waistcoat, Pistol," said Phylla, "and you're just jealous."
"What, me?" Pistol gave her the full benefit of his eyepatch. "Jealous of a namby-pamby thing like that? Ha!"
"Well," said Chip, getting to his feet. "I never thought I'd see the day that rats were crazier than bats. What the hell." He gave Bronstein and the other bats a stiff little bow. "It's been nice knowing you guys." To the rats: "I just want to get some stuff together from the workshop before we go."
Bronstein looked amused. "To be sure, who said we weren't going with you?"
"'Tis a foine and noble lost cause to die for!" O'Niel put in.
"Wrap the bat-wing round me, boys . . ." Siobhan quavered.
Fal turned to Eamon. "I can't stand you, and you can't stand me. I suppose we'll have to join them or I'm fated to be left here with you. But I'm going to stock up for the trip too. With brandy."
Chip stood in the workshop, checking his gear. He didn't want to admit, even to himself, that he was putting off going underground again. "Flexible saw, I've got. I'll need to cut a bigger door. Rope I've got. That'll have to do for an anchor." Chip tossed his attempt with some rusty reinforcing rod and the vise on the pile. It wasn't going to win him any prizes for practical engineering, but he might have gotten one for modern sculpture.
"I better test this idea first, though." He picked up the backpack herbicide sprayer. "I'd back off, you lot, in case the whole thing goes whoof along with me."
He pumped up the pressure. Gingerly, he lit Fal's zippo, held the flame up and then squeezed the trigger to his homemade flamethrower. He'd taken off the original spray pipe and replaced it with an eighteen-inch-long brass pipe, with the spray nozzle from the paint spray gun hammered into the end of it. He'd used a piece of wood to buffer the hammer, but, even so the nozzle was not quite what it used to be. It sprayed diesel rather skewly.
Nothing happened. The mist of diesel drifted back toward him . . . nothing happened. It probably wasn't atomizing the stuff finely enough. He gave up.
"We will need you to carry a couple of bags of stuff for us," said Bronstein, as Chip stared morosely at the failed flamethrower.
"Sure. What?"
"Two of those. Unless you can manage three or four." The bat pointed a wing at the bags of fertilizer.
Chip shook his head. "For what, bat? It's fertilizer, for crying out loud."
The bat ground her teeth audibly. "I know it is fertilizer, Connolly. It's ammonium nitrate. Don't you know anything about explosives?"
Chip chuckled sourly. "Sure. I'm an experienced sous-chef. If you put an unpunctured squash into a microwave, it explodes."
The bat hissed breath through its long teeth. "Listen. Just take it from me. I know explosives. Using our satchel-charges as detonators we can make that explode."
"You listen, and just take it from me, Bronstein. Those bags probably weigh a hundred pounds each. I know heavy lifting. I'm not going to stagger down into the Maggot-tunnels carrying even one bag."
"Half a bag?" she asked, her voice hopeful and wheedling, hardly like Bronstein at all.
It made him feel guilty. "Half a bag split into two bags."
"Are you sure that's all you can manage? We could do so much . . ."
"Destruction. Eamon's idea of a good time." Chip turned on the rats, lounging against the tractor. "And you? Anything you'd like me to carry? Besides your idle selves, that is. What about that dinky little tractor to lean against? I could put that on one shoulder, and then take a stainless steel vat of wine on the other."
Fal grinned at him. "Don't take it out on us because those bats want you to hump a ton of fertilizer. Anyway, what is the use of carrying wine when we've discovered a vat of brandy? Here, try some of this."
Chip took the proffered glass of clear stuff. Took an unwary mouthful. Spayed it out, coughing. "You stupid bastards! That's lighter fuel!"
The rats seemed to find that very funny. "A bit over-proof, eh?"
"And you don't have to carry it," said Doll. "We'll carry it ourselves. Or in ourselves," she added, with a ladylike belch.
"It's probably wood alcohol," protested Chip. "Methanol. It'll make you go blind, for God's sake."
One-eyed Pistol replied loftily. "No use trying to keep us off the drink, Chip. Can't be done. We're good and proper rats, us."
"It's for your own good, you asses!"
Nym looked at him speculatively. "Tell you what. We need a volunteer to try the stuff out. A bat, that's the ticket! They're loons to begin with. They volunteer for everything. And they're blind as bats, anyway, so if it turns sour—"
All the bats set up an agitated fluttering of their wings. "Begorra! It is sick to death I am of that foul slander!" Even the taciturn O'Niel was stirred into speech. "Blind as a bat! Are ye daft? We see as well as you, or better in low-light conditions. And we don't drink!"
"They don't drink! Hear that girls? So what else is making them blind, methinks?" Fal gave a lewd wink to Phylla.
"Check the palms of their feet," Pistol sniggered.
Chip shook his fist at all of them. "Will you bunch of stupid rodents stop this?"
"Who's your `rodent,' primate?" demanded Behan. "It is more cheek than an intelligent life-form you've got! I am Chiroptera and proud of it!" He folded his wings with affronted dignity, like a magistrate tightening his robes of office.
"And we're macrosceledia/insectivora," chipped in Doc. With a casual wave of his paw: "With a mere dash of rodent thrown in. Couldn't give a toss about it. The term `rat' is purely an honorific."
"Well said," hissed Fal and Pistol in unison. Nym rumbled his own wordless agreement.
Chip shrugged. "All I was trying to do was persuade you not to kill yourselves."
Melene took pity on him. "This was a wine farm, Chip. And believe me, even distilled, I can smell the grapes."
Chip knew it was no use arguing further with them about drinking the stuff. The beggars chorus already had a fair amount in them, by the sounds of it. Not enough to incapacitate them, but enough to make them very troublesome. Rats were very good at attaining that level. The high metabolic rate allowed them to drink more than you'd think they could. And practice kept them from incapacitating themselves. Rats liked drink. It was the one method the army had found to get them to fight. They got a daily issue of grog, much as sailors once had.
Of course, one of the bats still had to try to stop them. "But why take the daemon drink with you?" cried Siobhan. "It'll be the ruination of you! Take things to keep yourselves alive, not to kill you."
"Molotov cocktails," snapped Fal. "That's what we're taking. Do they normally get served with an olive in them, Chip? We're not sure of the traditions, here."
Siobhan seemed shocked. "But surely you cannot just take drink?"
One of the rats picked up a spool of baling wire. "This is heavy enough. Useful stuff, wire."
Chip was still dwelling on his failed flamethrower. An errant thought of flambéd crêpes went through his mind. "Is there really lots of that . . . raw brandy?"
Doll grinned. "I' faith, enough to swim in or to keep Fal drunk for a month!"
"Take me to it."
The rats looked shifty. Very shifty. "I suppose there is enough," said Melene finally. Grudgingly.
At a guess, Chip thought that the stainless steel tank had about four or five hundred gallons in it. The rats were still scandalized when he poured the diesel out of the backpack sprayer and then tapped raw brandy into the tank.
"It'll give it a horrible taste, Chip," whined Fal.
"Watch!"
He pumped up the pressure. Lit the lighter and squeezed the trigger. With a sudden BOOM, it caught. Chip held a six foot flame-torch. That would show the Maggots!
"Keep the tip down!" Siobhan fluttered clear, shouting advice. "The thing is dripping! The drips are running down the nozzle—and the flames are following the drips! You idiot!"
Hastily, Chip stopped squeezing the trigger and pointed the nozzle down. After an uncooperative minute, the flames died.
Well, it worked. But as Chip's previous experience with flamethrowers had been caramelizing sugar with a blowtorch, he was more than a bit nervous of the gadget. The whole thing struck him as a recipe for disaster. But if it scared Maggots . . .
"Where's Don Whatsisname?" he asked.
Nym shook his head. "Dunno. The girls have been looking for him."
"He's probably gone into hiding then."
They found the tiny galago asleep. Deep asleep.
"It is daytime, 'ginia. Not waking up time." The galago curled tighter under his tail.
"Nocturnal," muttered Doc. "That explains the big eyes."
"What sort of guide is it that I have to carry because he's flat out?" complained Chip, picking the creature up.
"He's probably been through a lot in the last while, poor mite," said Bronstein. "He's obviously some rich woman's plaything. Not used to this sort of life. He's probably having the first decent sleep he's had ever since they were captured."
"You falling for him too, Bronstein?"
The bat snorted. "Hah. I'm not one of those oversexed rats. Likely the next time he holds forth about needing a real male for the job, his pretty little ears I'll notch for him. Still, though he was as scared as a rabbit to go back into the Maggot-tunnels, he was still ready to try. That took courage, real courage, for a pampered little thing."
Chip sighed. "That's true enough. But this is a stupid idea, Bronstein. We're never gonna get away with it. Maggots are up and about now. They were asleep when the others went in."
"True. So I think we should wait. Eamon and I have an idea."
"Which involves blowing something up."
The bat had the grace to look faintly abashed. "Uh. Yes. But only if it is needed."
"Oh. You mean Eamon is going to give up a chance at mayhem? Explain that one."
The bat snarled. Restrained herself. "I'll explain what we have in mind! Look, when Siobhan flew after the little fellow, she found out that there are tunnels which go straight across . . . from one side of the mound to the other. And at the other end there was a down chute . . . I don't know, an air hole, whatever, identical to this side."
Chip raised his eyes to the twinkling force field that was between him and heaven. "Oh wonderful. Now all we need to do is find that there are ones going along as well as across and we can set up a toll booth, or walk straight to the middle of the whole Maggot nest!"
"Will you listen, Connolly? Springing this human, which Eamon and Behan are none too keen on, I'll tell you, is bound to alert the Maggots. If we get out, we will want to come back to the farmhouse. That's where the food is, and that's the right direction for the sea. So what we want to do is to go across to the far side. Set up a shot pattern to get us out into the valley we escaped out of originally."
Chip cocked his head. "Which is the wrong direction."
"Right," Bronstein said, in the tone used to humor a small and annoying child. "We'll set things up so that the Maggots can chase off to where we aren't going to be. That'll give us a head start, at least."
Chip rolled his eyes. "So you're going to cross the whole mound and set up a dummy first. Don't let me stop you."
Bronstein looked uneasy. "Well, we need you to come along. You'll be carrying the fertilizer. And quite a lot of diesel. And that would save us from having to use more than one satchel-charge."
These bats had bats in the belfry and no mistake! "I see. And doubtless you want a couple of rats along for hole digging. Forget it, Bronstein. It's a good idea, maybe, but there is more chance of my falling pregnant than the rats agreeing."
"We . . . took the liberty of getting Melene and Doc to put a cold chisel and a four-pound hammer in the bag. Those hollow blocks give us really quick shot holes . . ."
"You're crazy Bronstein, damn you! I'm not doing it!"
Well, at least he was carrying much less weight in fertilizer and less diesel because he'd argued before giving in. He'd been able to talk them down to half again because of having to carry the cans of diesel. And now that the things were set up, what was left in the fertilizer bags couldn't weigh more than twenty to twenty-five pounds. It was nice to have insurance, even if he hadn't agreed to that second booby trap they'd set. And at least they'd waited until dark. It did appear that Maggots slowed down at night, coming to a virtual halt in the wee small hours. But crossing the six hundred yards of mound had been scary as hell, even with the bats flying interference. Still . . . it was easier than climbing over it. He'd gotten there. He'd even gotten back.
Now he was going to have to abseil down, into the depths. Shudder. There would be no safety rope, this time. At least there would be no instructor screaming at him to stop being a wimp.
He steeled himself. The descendure had better work or he would be strawberry jam. He leaned back, knuckles white on his rope-clutching hands. . . . Through gritted teeth, he whispered: "Here goes nothing."
He stayed dead still. He forced himself to relax his clutching hands. Still no movement. The problem eventually proved to be getting the oily old hawser-laid rope to go through the descendure to allow him to move at all. His previous experience had been on a smooth, braided-perlon sheathed rope. The descendure the rats had designed for him made the twisted rope twist more below him. That formed knots he had to spin loose before he could go down at all. His slow descent gave him plenty of time to observe his environment. He was pretty sure this was an air shaft. Little tunnels gave off it at ridges which were probably floor levels.
By the time he got down, the rest of the crew were in foot-stamping impatience. The galago had descended by calmly climbing down Chip's rope, regarding the cursing human en route as a sort of slow-moving rest stop.
"Right. Where now?" Chip didn't want to think about the plan for getting back up. Not so soon after that descent!
"Are you sure you wouldn't be liking to stop for nice cup of tea then? Or maybe a nap?"
Chip was in no mood for sarcasm. "Shut up, Siobhan. Where do we go? Back to the food chamber?"
"Oh, but we need to go back up two levels," said the galago.
Chip missed.
They crept along as silently, Bronstein acidly informed them, as a herd of dancing elephants. The galago had led them up one spiral ramp when the inevitable happened.
Either the Maggot was coming down anyway, or it had heard something.
Bronstein waved them back. They retreated into a side passage.
Scritch, scritch, scritch. It kept coming after them. And this was a dead end . . . some kind of adobe-closed store chamber. Nobody breathed. Then the galago gave a sudden squeak and skittered away up the wall.
There was a thump. Bronstein appeared. "Be using that four-pound hammer to provide us with bit of masonry, Chip. I don't think it saw me. We better fake a natural death for it."
Chip reached up and knocked a spur loose. "Here. But I think the shit just hit the fan. We'd better move it up. Where is that galago?"
"I am here," replied a small voice from the roof shadows. "I was just about to strike when the wonderful Bat Lady beat me to it."
Bronstein lifted a lip.
"Come on, Duke of Plazo-Toro," chortled Fal. "Let's move out."
The galago drew himself up. "What did you call me?"
"That elevated, cultivated, celebrated gentleman, the noble Duke of Plazo-Toro," replied Fal. His voice was perfectly level.
Bronstein shooed them along, flapping her wings. "Move, move, both of you! And leave that Maggot alone, Pistol! They'll smell a rat for sure if the limbs are missing."
At a dogtrot they continued. Fifteen minutes, and another successful circumvention, brought them to the place where the girl was walled in. The galago suddenly bounded ahead and bounced up to the tiny aperture near the roof.
"It is I, Virginia! I have brought the rescue!"
"Oh—Fluff! Dear God, you've been gone so long. I thought you were dead!" The voice on the other side of the wall was young, female, and sounded thoroughly miserable.
"Fluff?" Fal grinned broadly.
Chip was relieved that it hadn't all been a wild goose chase. He was also not mentally prepared to speak to her. He had privately suspected the "princess" would prove to be some ancient-Shareholder-bitch . . . if there was going to be anyone at all. "Uh, ma'am . . ."
The reply was a few seconds in coming, as if she was thinking it over. "Is there somebody else out there . . . ? I heard voices. Am I hallucinating? Fluff?"
"Indeed, it is I, Virginia," said the galago with pride and reassuring affection. "Really. Here is my tail. I have brought some brave soliders. We have come to rescue you!"
"Really? You've come to get me out?" There was wild hope in her voice.
"Yes. Really. Please keep it quiet, ma'am," begged Chip. "Here, Don Fluff, push this end of the flexible saw through."
Bronstein took charge of the rest of the operation. "Okay, the rest of you. While Chip saws, I want you rats to get to the corners. Find somewhere to duck out of sight if possible. Siobhan, you and Behan take those passages. I'll take this one, and Eamon and O'Niel can stake out the others between you."
"Bats always get to do the risky work, indade." But Eamon fluttered off to do it readily enough.
The carborundum-toothed saw hissed through the Magh' adobe. It was easier with two of them working—or it should have been. The "princess" kept jerking his fingers against the wall in her eagerness to be free.
"There's a bunch of digger-maggots down in the big passage coming this way," warned Behan.
"They're coming to get me!" The girl's voice sounded on the edge of hysteria.
She probably was, poor kid, trapped in there for God knows how long. Chip looked at the cut. It was about eighteen inches down, by ten inches across. "How far off are those diggers if they're coming here?"
"At least three minutes." Behan, like all bats, was an expert at time estimation.
Chip looked at the cut; turned to the hovering galago. "How big is she?"
The galago gestured with wide arms. "Immense. Compared to me, that is. Humans are overgrown."
"Compared to me, you ass!"
"Perhaps a little taller," said the galago.
"Stand clear in there," Chip whispered into the hole. "I'm going to shoulder-charge this, to see if I can knock it down. Then be ready to run."
He hit it. The wall cracked. His shoulder felt like it had cracked as well. He tried again, and the whole section fell in. The air, already dusty from their sawing, was full of swirls.
Light reflected off heavy-framed glasses. The girl-prisoner had missed a lot of meals, apparently. Her face was muddy and tear-streaked. With her hair pulled back tightly from her angular face, she looked about twelve years old . . . except that she was distinctly taller than he was. "Quick! Take my arm. We'd better move out."
Eagerly she scrambled through the hole. She was all ragged clothes, thick glasses and long legs. She struggled to get out of the hole, hooked a foot, and fell out into his arms. Chip found himself being hugged fiercely. "Oh, thank God!"
Poor kid. Poor damn kid. "It's all right." She nuzzled into him. He kissed her cheek, gently comforting. Her lips found his. Parted eagerly . . .
Chip started back in alarm, but she held onto him.