Chapter 21 #3
He’d sat there, and he’d thought, and come to the conclusion that free access to Plangent might not actually be the end of civilization after all.
It would just be the end of a certain flavour of misery.
The end of fearing the encroaching fog of dumbness that came with running out.
The chance for a great many animals to be that much more secure and comfortable with their existence.
And, for some, maybe the chance to find a better way to live, just like the Divine Jeff encourages them to do.
Like Ratlab roaches doing their creators’ job for them, so they can concentrate on science.
Not bugs, but features. Improving the world one tiny rat step at a time.
“I think,” he tells Lulu slowly, “that it’ll be fine.
Just better.” A bit optimistic, because the soldiers are still mustering, a good thirty or more in each camp so far, and Meece is still feverishly working, showing no signs of drawing to a triumphant close.
Right now the maybe-bright future he’s envisaging exists only in the head of one mouse.
“Trouble,” Fischer says shortly, and Skotch jerks his head up. The frog is sighting down his gun at a large figure that leaps from island to island, fastidiously trying to keep its paws out of the water.
“Wait,” he says. “She’s with us.”
“Herr Bandit is mistaken,” Fischer says, but Skotch pushes the popgun barrel aside. Tybelle pauses on the nearest island, looking down at the water with distaste, and then pads her way through it, lifting each foot and shaking it.
She’s seen better days. One ear is torn and there are cuts across her muzzle and swollen stings on her flank, though her upgraded physiology has avoided the anaphylactic response to the bee gun’s stings.
The bell about her neck is dented enough that it probably won’t ring again.
Skotch would really like her to turn up and say, You should see the other guy, but he reckons he knows this cat well enough by now.
As much as he ever wanted to know any cat, honestly.
The victorious strut he’d have expected is absent.
This is not a cat who’s notched up a dead stoat in the recent past.
Her cultists swarm over her as soon as she makes landfall, bringing out unguents and bandages from within their robes, chittering their dismay. She rests her head on her paws, watching Skotch.
“That weasel,” she says, “is fast.” Confirming his fears.
Skotch sits down before her, though far enough that she’ll have to stretch if she wants to get a bite of raccoon as a restorative. “Tell me, Tibbles, since when were we on the same side? Only I reckoned you were out to kill me and the squeaker both right up until you pulled that stunt at Ikelos’.”
Tybelle snickers, then winces. “Oh, Mother Murnau only ever wanted the mouse alive. Alive and in her hands, for preference, but alive most of all. The lot of all rats and mice is to live lives nasty, brutish, and short. She wants to change that, just like these do.” A flick of her tail towards Nimoy’s people.
“If she can change it by controlling Meece and what he knows, all to the good. But next best after that’s just letting Meece live and do what he wants.
” She rolls her eyes as though the whole business bores her.
“For me, Herr Washbear, I’m not on your side.
I’d hunt you in an instant. Maybe I will. You’re fun.”
“But right now?”
“Right now, Mother’s paying me enough to keep me on message.” She stretches, not quite as fluidly as before, working around the discrete pains. “And besides, I want a rematch.”
“Your owner’s going to have a fit, when they see you next.”
Tybelle gives him a sly look. Flicks her bell with her claws, though it just makes a dull clonk noise.
And he wonders, then. Wonders if this collared cat actually has an owner.
Or if she’s just a stray with a bell, taking advantage of the whole myth of pets and humans and Rule One.
And she won’t say and so he’ll never really know.
There’s some more splashing then, and Skotch looks over in case it’s an amphibious squirrel assault. It’s one more lost soldier coming in from the cold, though. A drenched possum shaking the water from her coat. Regarding him with a flat, unfriendly gaze.
“Maria,” he names her.
“Skotch,” she says. She’s got a spiker slung from a bandolier, and a couple of knives as well. And her teeth, if it comes to that.
“Benson had a change of heart?”
“Benson is doing what Benson does best. Waiting for the outcome,” Maria says grimly.
“That old turtle’s got a hundred contingencies.
Live mouse, dead mouse, golden future, or complete collapse of society.
He’ll float to the top whatever happens.
” Sounding simultaneously disgusted by the old reptile’s flexibility and grudgingly impressed.
“And you? Here as his personal exterminator?”
“I went freelance,” she says. “On account of how there’s a stoat out there needs to get a cap in her ass, and Benson won’t give the order since they paid mausgelt on Fitch.”
“Oh she’s all yours,” Skotch says. “Though you may have to race the cat for her.”
Maria looks like she’s up for a spot of cat-racing, but before she can say as much there’s a stir out across the Chapel.
Both camps of soldiers suddenly sitting up and paying attention.
A new figure’s turned up, cutting a line directly between them.
Even at this distance there’s no missing the sinuous figure of Szerky.