Chapter 4 #3
Back in the day, Skotch was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a Graycoat offensive went spectacularly wrong.
Match, flames, unexpected flammables reservoir that wasn’t on the plans, that sort of thing.
It wasn’t so much hauling the stricken Springer from the fire that means she owes him.
It was getting her far enough away that the Rule One–related shitstorm didn’t get on her charred fur.
And, true, that was because he was doing himself the exact same favour, but she still owes him.
Or owed him. Squirrels live long, but maybe their memories aren’t so good after a while, for who did them a solid once.
Still, of all the Gehirner he can tap with influence amongst the Grays, Springer is the most highly placed and best-connected.
He needs information and he needs access.
Because Sly’s best guess points to Doctor Meece having gone to ground exactly where festivities are about to kick off between the Grays and their rivals.
The Grays are all over the back-city up here.
In the branches over Casa de Alphonse, in the walls, in the service warrens that run behind the kitchens.
The human staff just know that clean glasses are always there when they open the hatches; the wait staff know they always find clean tables when they lead the next set of diners in.
Perhaps there’s a glimpse of a tail, or there are a couple of waistcoated Gehirner just discreetly pushing the previous drinkers’ detritus into the service hatch.
A perfectly presented rat waltzing around the table with a cloth.
The sort of thing that was restricted to kids’ cartoons and bad-cheese dreams back before the deindustrialisation, but that is just part of human lived experience these days.
The shallows of Rule One, where the service industry is actually visible.
And, behind the scenes, the Grays. They don’t wait tables or pick up trash, but they sure as hell take their cut from those who do.
The mood, in back of Alphonse, is like a city that is either occupied or liberated, depending on who’s asking, but is most certainly very keen to ensure that the soldiers at every junction are kept happy.
Springer takes Skotch to a nook and sends a junior squirrel out for lunch, privilege of rank.
“You don’t want to be here right now, Skotch,” she tells him, over standard packs of SLG rations: nutritious, balanced, mostly tasteless.
“I mean, no, not much,” he admits, “but when did that ever matter? I imagine it’s the usual mess out there.
” There’s a reason Meece has holed up in the war zone.
It’s a hard place to be found in. Refugees and deserters and chancers from both sides end up there because the tides and battle lines of the conflict have left them no other place. Or because there’s opportunity.
“When things kick off,” Springer says, “nobody not ours is safe. Reds have bought a lot of freelance muscle.”
“Which is why I was going to ask you for papers,” Skotch points out reasonably.
“When things kick off,” Springer echoes herself, “I can’t guarantee anyone’s stopping to look at papers.”
“I’ll take what I can get,” he tells her. “Come on, what’s it cost, your pawprint on one more piece of filmy?”
“Costs me remembering who you are, next time you come calling,” Springer says flatly.
They stare at each other, into that awkward void that sits between human and beast, the heart of the Gehirner experience.
Two animals who weren’t ever supposed to be having this kind of conversation, talking in a crunched, artificial language that shouldn’t have been able to support it, holding between them a complex, jagged piece of relationship such as neither of them was really designed for.
But that’s how it goes, when you make something complex enough.
These things arise, of their own notion.
The human people who built these animal people—who made these animals just human enough—did not ever plan for them to become little shadows of their creators’ vices, but that’s how it’s turned out.
Turned out in a way subtle enough that most humans have never really clocked onto it. And long may it remain so.
Skotch examines his claws. His nails. The indeterminate things at the ends of his humanised hands.
“Sure you’re riding high now,” he notes.
“You know there’ll come a time when the wind changes, and the Grays will be really glad of a friend in low places.
Someone whose bridges they haven’t burned.
Or maybe just one Gray.” It’s easy for the Graycoat Army to think it’s immortal and indomitable, so long as it keeps winning battles and taking territory.
There are squirrel kits out there who don’t ever remember losing.
But Springer is older than that. She should know better.
Or perhaps it’s because she’s old. Perhaps she hopes that by the time the Grays overextend and get a mauling she’ll be gone.
Still, he sees her weigh his words. The fecund melting pot of the Grunstadt is always throwing up new factions.
Wasn’t so long ago that nobody would have spared the Graycoats a moment’s worry, amongst Neuwien’s established interests.
Maybe tomorrow some other pack of animals will be the city’s enfants terribles, and the squirrels will be on the back foot.
Skotch has a few years left in him, if he doesn’t get himself killed.
There’s a chance he’ll be of use to Springer or her heirs and assigns, should the whirligig of time bring its revenges in due course.
“What’s your angle, Skotch?” she asks him.
“Not working for the Reds. Not working against the Grays,” he says. “Just to get that right out there. Missing person. Very sad. Family want a reunion.”
“Spare me the sob stories,” Springer tells him. “Put up, Skotch. Who are you tracking and is it live or just the skin?”
“Area round here, in back of Alphonse and Franz-Ferdinand’s.” The exclusive club, the swanky restaurant. “Got any mice?”
Springer stares at him. Staying still too long with eyes open, she looks like she’s died. “Mice?” she bursts out in the end. “Who the hell cares about mice?”
“That a no?”
“You’re serious? How many mice?”
“Just one. One mouse.”
“Nobody goes to this trouble for one mouse,” Springer says disdainfully. “Nobody goes to any trouble for one mouse. Just wait. There’s always another one along in a second. Always more mice.”
Which is the puzzler, about this case. Skotch can only agree. Doesn’t change his brief, though. He shrugs. “So maybe I’ve got some rich cat, got buttons to spare. You got mice or you don’t got mice?”
“You don’t mean rats, now? Not losing your Furze?
” In some argots—Espanimàl for example—there’s only the one word for both, and it’s the spin on how you say it that makes the difference.
But US Furze and local Tiersprech are pretty clear about the species delineations. “Mice, as in, country matters?”
Skotch nods patiently. “Only a little bird told me,” he says, “how back of Franz-Ferdinand’s there was a whole kitchen of them making packed lunches.
” Big business, high value, exactly the sort of thing the Grays would want to skim off.
And it was a little dog, not a bird. Sly does business everywhere, and his big-eyed endearing doggies go begging even in the posh places.
Springer’s body language says he’s right and she doesn’t like it. Whatever the mouse community around here are into, it’s valuable enough she doesn’t want him making a mess of it.
“I’m not going into mass rodent smuggling. Just one mouse. One particular mouse. New on the scene. Won’t even have learned the ropes yet.”
She shrugs. “Who keeps track of individual mice?”
“You won’t miss one then, will you? Think of his poor mouse family, how happy they’ll be to know he’s safe and well.”
“You even pick him out of a crowd?” she asks doubtfully.
“Got his scent.”
Springer rolls her shoulders. “This is it, Skotch.” He sees she’s serious. It’s the last time he’s going to be pulling this particular string. “I walk you in. You grab your pet mouse. You walk out.”
“That’s what these feet were made for,” he agrees. A little sad, one more account emptied, and he doesn’t imagine that Uzco goodwill is going to come flooding in to fill the gap.
Springer finishes off her ration block. Flicks crumbs from her fingers. “It’s not this side of the block,” she says. “This kitchen with the mice, it’s the one at Franz-Ferdinand. It’s ours right now. As of yesterday.”
“Lucky me.” Again, Sly’s up-to-date info proving its worth. His dogs can smell what Strain of squirrel is scurrying about in the area, and they noticed a definite shift change.
She hops up, stalks off, slightly stiff, shaking out her legs.
That tail wobbles, stiff and awkward. Not for balance so much as status.
You don’t keep face as a squirrel without covering your ass with something.
Walking carefully in her footsteps, Skotch follows.
Moves carefully between the packs of other Grays, who stare suspiciously after him and finger their guns and knives.