Chapter 17
SKOTCH TAKES THE TRAM
Nobody stands in his way. No death rays or psychic brains, no poison gas or giant robot cockroaches.
Not even just sufficient rat medical orderlies to overpower him and strap him to a gurney.
Skotch moves swiftly through the heart of Rootspace One, hustling Lulu along even though she’s weak and awkward, one wing splinted.
Too big for the place and unable to just squeeze down through gaps like a raccoon.
At least she’s light, for all that plumpness.
Skotch practically carries her hollow bones, following the tubes of illuminated roaches, passing rats who glance at him curiously but don’t seem to understand who he is or why he’s there.
A little alarm, but no instant hue and cry. And then they’re out.
Out and up. Ratlabs is encysted below human street level, and that means Skotch and Lulu come out to just under people’s feet.
The layer of conduits, ducts, and pipes that need ready access, that carry the necessities of life around the city.
Clean water in, dirty water out, electricity, communications.
There’s a whole layer of Gehirner society here as well.
Not the actual science-lords of Ratlabs but presumably the Little Helpers whose help is still required.
Skotch gets Lulu a block away from their exit point and ducks into one of those confluences of paths that make a little space in the middle.
Here are the working animals he’s used to, or at least a more orderly version of that crowd.
Some of them are actually working. He sees a trio of moles squinting down at an illuminated display, a pipe layout, some piece of excavation that needs repairing or re-routing.
He sees a bat, hanging from the rafters with an earpiece.
Every so often its fanged snout opens, and he can just catch the high, sharp sounds as it responds to some ultrasonic query.
Hanging beside it is a bloodbag of what Skotch hopes is coffee, and it sucks at the dangling tube absently as it listens to the reply.
Other Gehirner are here to relax. There’s a cubbyhole at one end of the space from which a family of mice are selling that same coffee.
A couple of rats are sharing a tiny roll-up, the scent aromatic and heady.
Skotch goes cold when he sees a stoatweasel coil up to them, but it’s not Szerky.
Maybe not even in the employ of the farms any more, given that he doesn’t get the impression there’s much love lost between the Country Clubs and Ratlabs.
He has no buttons on him—the Reds and the Grays between them made sure he was shaken down for everything he had.
He desperately wants coffee, though. If ever nerves needed steadying it’s his, and now.
He has four ampoules of Plangent on him, and that’s wealth.
It’s also life and thought and the basic ability to function, but that’s a problem for tomorrow-Skotch.
He trades one tab of it for two coffees and a fistful of buttons in change, and the mice know they’ve skinned him alive on the deal, but what’s he going to do?
Lulu doesn’t have the coffee hack, so he gets it all to himself.
He asks when she last had a hit of Plangent.
She can’t remember, so he gives her a tab herself, then helps her neck it when her claws shake too much.
He washes his eyes with another, even though he’s full-on sharp already.
One more left in the super, but he reckons the way his luck goes, that’s just the loot someone’ll be taking off his body, like he’s a nameless enemy in a human virtual game.
He knew a Gehirner who worked on games, once.
A rat. Strictly forbidden, against Rule One, outside the frame of their functional world.
Except the human games developers wanted to code enemies that weren’t human, so they made contact over that shadowy meniscus of the human comms network that touches the Gehirner world.
Skotch has no idea how it went, but in the rare cases that human currency filters down to the hands of the Little Helpers it’s a gold standard kind of wealth. Beats the hell out of buttons.
Speaking of flirting with Rule One … “Okay,” he says to Lulu. “How’re you doing? That better?”
She shivers. “I think all you’ve done is let me feel how much it hurts that much more. I can really appreciate all the bits of me that aren’t working.” But she sounds a bit more like her old self, or the ghost of it. The words are coming back. That’s got to be good, right?
“I had to take you out of there,” he says. “Murnau’s mob was moving in. Ratlabs were in bed with them. They were going to … We weren’t safe.”
“It’s all right, Skotch. I understand.”
“You’re going to be okay,” he says, forcing the earnestness into his voice even as his hands wring over one another in a constant round. “I’ll see you right.”
“It’s fine, Skotch. We had to run. The bad guys turned up. That’s how it goes.”
She sounds like she understands—not just saying it to salve his conscience but because she’s living an adventure now, she who mostly only gets to record them.
And it may kill her. She might not be okay.
He might not be able to see her right. The rats patched her up but they’d probably have put on white coats and told her to avoid any strenuous activity for a while.
Like escaping. She can’t fly, and she walks funny, off at an angle, one leg weaker than the other.
She was shot. For him. And now he’s dragged her off her hospital bed because he didn’t want her to be used against him.
It’s not a good feeling, being Skotch at this moment.
Feeling that web of connection and obligation, tug and pull, that he was never by nature supposed to have.
His Strain has a reputation for dishonesty, roguishness, sharp dealing. He can only imagine how much easier that would make everything, if it were actually true. Who the hell has a use for a faithful raccoon?
“So this is how it’s going to be,” he tells her.
“Because I can get you somewhere you can get some medicine, get some care. Get word to your human, your employer.” And is he worried, that faceless giant who only exists to Skotch because of what Lulu’s said about him?
Or is he already flicking through the pigeon fancier’s catalogues or however the hell else he managed to get hold of a personal Gehirner emissary?
Hard to imagine anything so vast and distant actually shedding a tear at the fall of a single bird.
Except there is one human who does. “Saint Frances,” Skotch says. “She’ll do you right. She’ll sort you out. I’ll get you to her.”
Lulu’s head bobs, twice, three times. It’s not a nod, just a pigeon trying to see the world properly. “Skotch,” she says, “the rats said this is Rootspace One.”
“They did say that, yes,” he agrees.
“The Chapel is all the way across the city,” she notes. “I mean, it wouldn’t be an issue, but…” She shifts the broken wing, but only slightly. Across the city just became a way bigger obstacle to her than it used to be.
“There must be a cart heading that way, or…” He looks up at the bat, because there’s an entire nocturnal airborne guild that ferries stuff across the rooftops at night.
Couriers, wireless engineers, package delivery.
They have drones and microdirigibles and all sorts, he’s heard.
Maybe a little light bribery, that last ampoule …
The bat is looking right back at him when he looks up. Don’t let anyone tell you they’re blind. Der Fledermaus is giving him the eyeball, sure enough. A couple of the rats are, too, now that Skotch glances around. In the bat’s ear, a tiny tinny voice squeaks and shrills.
“I reckon we’ve used up our welcome,” Skotch says. “You ready to take a walk?”
“Always,” Lulu says, though it takes her a moment to catch her balance when she tries.
They get out of the space as quickly as possible, and Skotch looks for the underground goods train to take them outwards.
Finds a loading point soon enough, where a bunch of animals are waiting.
More rats, a couple of badgers wearing vests festooned with bulging pockets, a tiny, huge-eyed monkey-looking thing half lost in a woollen jumper, talking enthusiastically to an axolotl in a poncho using an argot Skotch doesn’t know.
The sight of them, a pair of prosperous foreign Gehirner here on some kind of exchange of business, makes him think of Shojen and the HengZeico embassy.
I’ll get Lulu safe, and then I’ll go there.
If there’s any safe and neutral ground …
“Skotch,” Lulu says, “I hate to say but I think we might be attracting some attention.”
He looks up, and a half-dozen of the nearby Gehirner look away. And sure, a raccoon and a lame pigeon, not something you see every day, but that’s not the vibe he’s getting from the situation.
This is still Ratlabs turf. He doesn’t reckon they do things the jackboots-and-stormtroopers way, maybe, but if they put the word out on a couple of fugitives, people will listen. Probably the word’s already got back to Rootspace One that their two lost guests haven’t gone far.
“Move,” he decides, and the pair of them break away just as the automatic goods transport shunts into view.
And what was the plan? Would it just not have left, or would it have been diverted to some convenient siding where a Ratlabs crew would be waiting with dart guns and nets?
Skotch has no intention of finding out, except that the other thing he also doesn’t have is a backup plan.
They can’t walk all the way to the Chapel.
Even Skotch would find that an epic trek, and Lulu …
wouldn’t make it. Of that he is sure. So, what’s Plan B?