Chapter 13 #3
Skotch is trembling deep inside. He wants to look big but bigger animals than he have gone into those teeth.
His forepaws are crooked into claws and his lips drawn back from his teeth.
The grinder before, the guns behind. Things not looking so good for old Skotch right now.
Makes him wish he’d never decided that this freelance business was a good idea.
Except he’s a freelancer working for his old employer and that seems absolutely the worst of both worlds right now.
“Well then, I reckon you’ve got the wrong raccoon,” he says, and his voice shakes a bit but overall he’s proud of how steady it comes out. “This one’s got a clean conscience on him.”
Szerky oils forwards, eyes fixed on him like he’s prey. “You’ve got one chance to avoid making a final contribution to the city’s diet, Herr Skotch. Where’s the mouse?”
Skotch gives the world an aggrieved look, directs it at each interested party in turn.
“I do not,” he says, very clearly, “have any idea where the damn mouse is. I am literally working the same case as all of you. I get the mouse, I’ll put the little squeaker up for auction and one of you can make me rich. ”
Eddi the rat hunches forwards. “We heard from Tybelle. You and the mouse, you were together. Then she found you and he was gone. You expect us to believe he just slipped through your paws?”
“If this Meece was easy to hold on to, we’d none of us be here,” Skotch tells the rat, pushing the exasperated angle.
“I don’t know if you’ve been out Madparrot Alley ways but it’s not exactly a stable regime they’re running there.
Yes, I had him. Yes, I lost him. Or you’re going to take the word of some dilettante cat over a hard-working raccoon?
” Working himself up into some real righteous indignation.
“I mean I notice she’s not even here. Let me guess, she heard her owner’s can opener, right? ”
“She’s hunting,” Eddi says, with the confidence of a rat who reckons he’s not on the menu, today at least. “But maybe you can shortcut that for us. Where’s the mouse, Skotch?”
“Or do we introduce you to the food chain?” Szerky signals, and one of the crows pecks a lever. The teeth start up their rotary chatter again.
It’s an old piece of agricultural economy, from back when animal-based agriculture was big business.
The cheapest thing to feed to your animals is your animals.
Waste as little as possible. Use every part of the pig.
And the Farm Projects are all about hyper-concentrated and environmentally sound food production, great vertical stacks of green and gold, but Gehirner only get to taste it through the contraband that leaks into the city via Rattenkonig smugglers, or the waste that human diners leave behind in places like Franz-Ferdinand’s.
The regular rations, the SLG bars, come out of the separators.
And what goes into the separators is organic waste.
Not just corpses, but they’re a big part of it.
And there’s a whole system to inject vitamins and minerals and medication, the basic ingredients of a healthy Gehirner.
But organic is organic, protein is protein.
Green cities mean recycling, up to and including the Little Helpers themselves.
“I hope I poison the lot of you,” Skotch tells the world at large.
“I don’t have the mouse.” Looking down into those teeth, feeling the cord of his nerve stretch thin.
Like it was already caught down there and being pulled tauter and tauter every second.
Confession, Szerky said, and right now he’s in a tug of war with his conscience over just what the hell is the right path.
But amongst his audience right now is whoever had Sly killed. Is whoever put an end to Fitch, thinking it was him. Bad people. Whatever else is good or bad in the world, his present company is stinking rotten.
“If I had the squeaker,” he tells them, “I wouldn’t give him to the likes of any of you.”
“Put him in,” says Szerky, but Maria speaks up: “No.”
The possum approaches, giving him all of her teeth in a vicious snarl.
“You were one of us once, Skotch. You were born to the company. What the hell went wrong with your geneware that you ended up like this?” Mad marsupial eyes bugging at him, grey and white fur bristling, that ragged way possum pelts do.
A Strain of animal that always looks a bit like it was put together in a hurry from ill-fitting pieces.
“If you’d have just handed the squeaker over when you had him… ”
Skotch’s hands clutch at one another for comfort.
The vibration of those moving teeth is coming up his legs and making his bladder weak, even though they’re all engineered to only piss in designated areas.
“I appreciate your confidence in my skills, that I somehow kept hold of him while all of you failed, but it ain’t so.
Go ask the anarchists. Go ask the parrots. ”
“We’re asking you,” Maria says. And she steps back, looking left and right at her impromptu co-conspirators. “Or we were.”
That’s when the shooting starts.