Chapter 10 #3
A couple of Maulers turn up then. A rat and the gray squirrel who was part of his escort.
They’ve got spikers and rush in to jab them through Tybelle, or possibly Skotch.
That makes them just enough threat that the cat writhes off him.
One idle flick of her paw sends the rat off the sagging platform entirely.
Gray discharges his spiker; the flash of its little bolt glitters out into the air as it flies wide. Tybelle’s murder-grin widens.
Skotch drops. The flash of Meece’s overalls comes from below and he lets himself descend as fast as is safe, knowing the cat will be coming right after.
The moment’s grace the two Maulers have given him lets him work out precisely how screwed he is, because what’s he going to do, exactly?
Not just right here and now with Tybelle breathing cat-breath down the back of his neck, but overall.
If he gets Meece out of the Alley, does he hand the squeaker over to Benson at Uzco Towers and call it a job well done?
Does he want Benson to have whatever the hell the mouse is cooking up?
More than Mother Murnau or the Maulers, maybe, but still not actually that much.
Or does he get his own hands on Meece and wring the rodent’s neck?
Stick a single maus of gelt on the tally and report that kind of success.
Strangle whatever it is that’s brewing in the mouse’s brain and hope he didn’t leave cogent enough notes for someone to take up the great work?
From everything he’s seen, that seems like the sensible raccoon’s choice.
Skotch plays the hard freelancer. Not like anyone’s handing out bonuses for being nice in this world.
And sure, there’s blood on his hands, but less than you’d think and only in self-defence.
And maybe stopping one mouse from poison-gassing a city block might count as self-defence if it’s a block you could be in when the capsule bursts, but that’s not an eventuality close enough to trigger Skotch’s fight-or-flight response.
If he’s going to solve the mouse problem he needs a humane solution.
Which leaves only one option: Where the hell can the mouse go, where someone isn’t just going to track him down? You’d think hiding a mouse in this city would be easy, but every part of the Gehirner world has some animal’s beady eyes on it.
With these ideas jangling about in his skull, he scrabbles down towards Meece. Above, Tybelle finishes playing with the Maulers and drops towards him.
Meece hits ground level, mostly by bouncing off branches, because at his mass-to-surface-area ratio you can survive a lot of fall that would inconvenience something as big as a raccoon.
Down on street level he dodges away from human feet, then from a cyclist knifing past like a swift discontinuity in the fabric of the world.
“Meece!” Skotch calls. “I can help you!”
The mouse looks up. Sees Skotch. Sees what’s coming past Skotch.
Bolts out into the human traffic, dodging their ponderous, crushing footfalls.
And a mouse can maybe just get away with that.
A couple of humans see his fleet scurry and jerk aside, there’s a cry of shock.
Rule One teeters, but humans do know about the Gehirner.
And so seeing a mouse out in the open has become not a vermin problem but a gauche pulling back of the curtain on the city’s infrastructure.
Maybe there will be complaining messages to the civic centre.
A whole-ass raccoon barrelling through that human traffic is more than Rule One would bear, though.
Skotch can’t follow across the road at ground level, but the Maulers have strung lines between buildings at two storeys up.
Skotch goes across one, hand over hand over foot.
Meant for squirrels so it sags a bit, but the anarchist architectural subcommittee was obviously organised enough to make something that can take his weight.
Halfway across he feels the line move to a different drummer.
Looking back past his own belly he sees Tybelle walking along it, impossibly poised, like a special effect in a human movie.
His own suddenly hurried progress jerks and twangs the line and she adjusts effortlessly, tail high to show him just how much fun she’s having.
He drops down on the far side of the street, catching himself on the foliage of the wall, then to the ground.
Just about right on Meece’s tail because the mouse has been playing dodge with human footfalls all the way over.
“Go!” he shouts needlessly: The mouse is already going.
Skotch is almost straddling him, Meece darting between his feet, under his belly.
Behind them, Tybelle drops soundlessly to the ground and takes up the chase.