GETTING THEM UP the shaft was slow, and awkward. The oppressive warm darkness was overfull of depressed rats and bats. Bronstein was getting to the stage where if she heard another sigh, she was going to bite whoever did it. Given the way things were going, it would be Eamon or Nym.
She sighed. Then realized what she'd just done.
Oh, well. Fair was fair. She bit herself. "Yow!"
"Hwhat is going on now?" said O'Niel, in a "hope-I-can-bite-somebody" tone.
"Nothing," she said grumpily. Then reconsidered it. "Oh bejasus, O'Niel. There is a decent bit of ledge here. The rats and that galago can stop here. You and I can go for a fly up the shaft and see whether it actually does lead out or not."
O'Niel plainly liked the idea, even if it involved flying. "If it doesn't, we can go back, indade."
"Go to it," grunted Nym from the ledge. "I'll bring the rest up. 'Tis a ridiculous idea to keep climbing, if we just have to come down again. And methinks you should take Eamon. He keeps sighing like a leaky gasbag."
The bats fluttered upwards. And upwards. The shaft curved slightly so that they could not sonar too far ahead but, at length, Bronstein detected what she both longed for and dreaded. Space. And then there was a circle of light.
They flew out into the first rays of early morning sunlight. Daylight was never a bat's favorite. Still, being out of the Maggot mounds felt . . . free. Looking back, and carefully substituting the word "Crotchet" for another word which must not even be thought, Bronstein could see that it had all been rank insanity. All driven by that Crotchet wanting to get back to its true allies. Treacherous, foul alien. She would hate it forever and ever.
She thought about their journey through the tunnels. Scenes came unbidden and clear. Madness! But, ah! What a glorious madness it had been. And they might even have succeeded, despite the traitor. They'd come so close to the group-mind before the Crotchet had misled them. It had taken them down instead of up.
It hit her like the morning sunlight. Warm, beautiful and wonderfully liberating. "Let us go down, fellow bats. Let us go down and finish what we came to do, to be sure!"
Eamon blinked at her "Bring them up here, you mean. 'Tis daylight. It will . . ."
Bronstein shook her head. "No! Eamon, it goes against my grain to admit this, but you are a better bat with explosives than I. Could we be bringing down that roof above the place where we saw the . . . Crotchet?"
Eamon's face shifted from gloom to a savage crinkled grin. "Michaela Bronstein, it goes against my grain, but you are a better thinker than I. Yes, indade, it'd take most of what we still have, but if we blew away those trusses . . . I am sure that the ceiling would fall, anyway. The whole roof it could be. And at the very least we'll avenge them!"
O'Niel looked somber. "We will have to explain it to the rats."
Bronstein bit her lip. Eamon too was silenced. The big bat looked shrunken. He looked like a bat carrying all the weight of the world on tired wings. Then he straightened his shoulders and spread his wings in Harmony And Reason's bright sunlight. "Indade. And you may put the blame on me, where it rightly belongs. But I'll not let my pride stand before our vengeance." He stepped backwards and fell into the shaft.
O'Niel chuckled. "Pistol has the right of it. When he does that, he looks like he's most terrible constipated. Come. Let's get to it, then."
Bronstein dropped into the shaft, and nearly hit the swearing Eamon on his way back up.
The rats and the galago perched uncomfortably on the ledge. Bronstein addressed them even as she fluttered down. "There is a way out. It is morning out there."
"Methinks, not for Chip and Ginny," said Fal lugubriously. "He was just like a rat, that human. Aye, and he was."
"Down to the tail," said Bronstein tartly. "Now listen. We could go back and die beside them."
"Whoreson. Back through that tunnel where I nearly stuck fast like a cork? Ah, well, what must be done, must be done." Fal didn't sound too dejected by the idea.
"Which will serve no purpose, and is what they have begged us not to do," said Bronstein sternly.
"Sometimes a rat has to make up his own mind. I just wish I hadn't squeezed through that tunnel first, just to squeeze back," said Nym. "At least Fal could just suck his gut in . . ."
"Or we can go ahead and do exactly what the Korozhet wanted us to do." Bronstein knew that was dirty pool. But she was playing to win. "When we came out earlier we found our way to above the brood-Magh'. The thinkers. We could go and bring the roof down on them. That would avenge Chip and Ginny. And if they really are the group-mind . . . it could even save our human comrades."
"Whoreson Achitophel!" said Pistol explosively. "Well, come on then. What are you bats waiting for? Move out, move out! We don't need this rope. We can chimney up this shaft."
"No, Pistol. We have to put this to the vote. It will leave us without explosives for our flight," said Bronstein.
"I' faith," Fal grunted. "Next you'll be wanting a sacred bullet, Bronstein."
Sarcasm, as always, passed right over Bronstein's head. "No, a show of hands will do."
"If I show you my hands, I shall fall off this ledge," said Doll. "Besides I can't see anything. I agree with Pistol."
There was a chorus of yesses. Even the galago nervously agreed. With a goal before them, the rats suddenly showed that they could manage the shaft. They just hadn't been ready to try before.
Doc, of course, put his finger on the crucial question. "It occurs to me that you could have told us this before."
Eamon cleared his throat. "I am to blame."
"Usually, but that's because you guzzle so much sauerkraut," said Pistol, from higher up the shaft.
But even Pistol's deflationary cracks weren't going to deprive Eamon of the joys of a histrionic confession.
Eventually, even the galago told him to shut up. Risking damage to life and limb was better than listening to any more bat soul-searching.
A second scorp had followed the first over the narrow bridge. In his mild dose of Korozhet chemically induced hysteria, Chip thought the scorps moved even more tentatively than the humans. The group walked forward into the heart of the scorpiary.
The mushroom hothouse had been brightly colored. This place was just plain garish. It was startling enough to send Chip into the giggles again. And that was enough to set Ginny off also. The two humans came into the presence of the group-mind laughing until the tears ran down their faces. After all, there is nothing quite like laughing in the face of death. Of course, it would have been a good idea to look behind them while they did this.
In the ceiling the sound of their laughter stopped work. Now the entire crew was peering anxiously down.
"Whoreson!" said Pistol admiringly. "They must be stand-up fall-down drunk."
Melene looked at the way the two clung to each other. She smiled.
And then, behind the laughing two came the shock of the rats' lives and the horror of the bats: the Korozhet.
"Whoreson! we have to get down there," said at least three rats, led by Fal.
The little galago agreed. "Indeed, señor rat! But . . . how do we get past the grid?"
"What grid?" asked Fal. "Come on, we need to open this hole a bit more."
The galago looked startled. "The light grid? You cannot see it?" Fluff squinted down into the chamber. "I believe humans could not see it either. She is too far into the ultraviolet for humans to see, and obviously also for the bats. Look, the projector, there she is."
He pointed to a device on the far side of the room. "Señor Shaw, he had one too. A special Korozhet device, very expensive, for the detecting of flying objects. This looks very similar."
Bronstein closed her eyes briefly. "And what happens once they are detected?"
"Ah! She is hooked up to the device of the rapid firing of the projectiles. See." The galago pointed. "That thing she is standing over there. It is locking on to the object and firing."
"Slowshields? Would they help?" asked Melene.
"No," said Doc. "We'd just fall. And keep falling until the shooting stopped."
Below them somebody said something in Korozhet. But it wasn't the Korozhet. It was several of the Maggots speaking together. Still, they all understood. "Where are the tailed and the winged ones?" the group-mind was demanding.
Chip didn't understand the Maggot. That didn't stop him from replying, of course. "Same to you, O High Hemorrhoid. Why do you play with yourself in public?"
Ginny, of course, did understand. "We won't tell you."
The creatures globbered.
"Is it talking Crotchet too?" demanded Chip. "What did I tell you, Ginny? What do the fat uglies say? Tell them we'd give them indigestion."
"They want to know where the rats and bats are. I said we wouldn't tell them." She squeezed his hand.
Chip assumed his best expression of innocence and humility. It certainly would never have fooled Henri-Pierre, but then the Maggot group-mind was less perceptive than the sarcastic little Frenchman. "Tell him it is just too bad that they were all killed when the tunnel collapsed."
She did.
Once again the Magh' spoke in their weird chorus. "That explains why the eggs and larvae were spared. The Korozhet had told us they were vicious, insatiable grub-eaters. The larvae tenders could not believe the grubs were untouched. Of course some will be born stunted and have to be killed."
"What do the bug-uglies say?" Chip wanted to know.
She told him.
He snorted. "Ask them if they always believe what the Korozhet say."
It wasn't a direct questioning of the Korozhet. She could ask.
"Yes," the group mind answered. "The Korozhet always tell us things. How did you find your way through the maze-tunnels of the Magh'mmm? This is the first attack to get near to our precious selves. We must prevent it ever happening again."
Without being asked, Ginny translated.
Chip grinned. "Tell them the Korozhet guided us here. That they sell us arms and advise us."
Ginny felt as if she was walking into a morass. Her head kept saying "this may damage your friends." But it was true, so she could say it. It was difficult until she prefaced it with "My mate says . . ."
"Lies!" The Korozhet spiked forward. "Deception, Magh'mmm! I have told you I was a prisoner and a hostage in their unprovoked attack."
The Korozhet pointed spines at them. "The soft squashy life-forms are pathological liars. We would never sell arms to such a species. Never. We have been your reliable providers for thousands of cycles. Always we provided the group-minds with the finest ships, the best shields. Have we ever failed the Magh? Bah. The one with the long head-filaments claims `her mate says.' But I ask her now: Could we Korozhet ever do anything so evil?"
Now Ginny felt as if her head might explode. What she'd said was true. It was. It was! It was! It was! She knew that it was true. Undoubtedly and incontrovertibly true. And now she knew also, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the soft-cyber implant was influencing her thoughts. Obviously the Korozhet who designed the things had built in a pro-Korozhet programming.
Cold sweat beaded her forehead. She couldn't say it.
"Well?" prompted the Korozhet. "We Korozhet do not sell arms to other species. Tell the Magh'mmm you lied."
Chip squeezed her hand. "What's Pricklepuss saying?"
Ginny forced her vocal chords to do what part of her brain said they should not. Her voice came out in a squeak. But it was a loud determined squeak. "I do not lie."
The ball of prickles raised a spine . . . and lowered it again.
Chip squeezed her. "What's happening, dearest?"
She looked at him, with victory in her eyes. "You were right about that—alien. It's just tried to claim they never sold arms to humans."
The Korozhet might have been out of gas and harpoon darts, but it wasn't out of wind. "This species is incapable of the truth, Magh'mmm!"
"Translate," said Chip quietly.
She did.
"Ask the Maggots if they haven't got another alien they can ask," he said in a whisper.
She did. The Magh'mmm seemed to like that idea.
The Korozhet did not.
Pistol had to be restrained from cheering when Chip called the Maggots hemorrhoids. But when the conversation switched to Korozhet, Bronstein backed off. She knew in her bones that this might be where she had to kill one of their rat-comrades because of the treacherous soft-cybers. She wasn't sure how well the rat psyche would deal with what she was certain would come.
It was a good thing that she was ready. She had to stop three of the rats—from clapping and whistling.
Doc could not restrain himself. "I told you all so!" he hissed. "I told you the Korozhet betrayed us."
Fal sounded positively choked. "Methinks our Ginny is as near to a rat as you'll find in human form. I'd liefer have put ratsbane in my mouth than try to say that!"
Eamon showed teeth. "She's far better than a rat!"
"Begorra!" O'Niel spat, "Be forgetting the silly arguments then. We need to get down there and help."
Nym looked at the gap. "If we made it bigger we could abseil down. The rope is a bit short, but not much. . . ."
"That detection grid. Could the rats avoid it, Don Fluffy?" asked Bronstein.
The big-eyed galago shook his head violently. "No. The beams they move. It would not be at all of a possibility."
"Can't we just do it?" said Melene. "Some of us will make it."
"No. The first one to go will get shot at. That'll activate his slowshield and sever the rope. It is too far to fall," said Nym.
There was a long silence. "We'll have to drop the roof," said Eamon.
"No," said the galago quietly. "I will do it. For my Virginia I will do it. I can see the projector beams. I can climb down and avoid them. I alone am the one who can see them. I too am the only one who can climb upside down along the roof and the wall. Give for me a device of the explosive and I will destroy the projector." The little creature shivered.