Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (10 page)

'No,' said Mr Ages. 'There are so many different powders in my storeroom. You wouldn't know which to bring back. I'll go with you. But we'll go slowly.'

'And I,' said Arthur, 'will see about the equipment for tonight. We'll need shovels, crowbars, block and tackle, rollers…" He left, still listing tools.

Nicodemus said to Mrs Frisby, 'I think that we, too, should leave the library. There will be others coming in, like Isabella, to practise reading, and some to do research.'

'Research?'

'We've got some new books on agriculture - farming, gardening, fertilizing, things like that - and we're studying them. It's part of the Plan.'

'I don't know what the Plan is.'

'No,' agreed Nicodemus, 'but when I've told you our story, you'll understand that, too.'

He opened the door and led Mrs Frisby down the corridor past several more doors, all closed. He stopped before one, which he opened.

'My office,' he said. 'Please come in.'

The room she entered was smaller than the library, but much more comfortably - almost elegantly - furnished. There was a rug on the floor (the same pattern, she noticed, as the carpet in the hallway above), a light recessed in the ceiling and another in the wall next to a table. There were bookshelves; on one shelf an electric clock hummed quietly to itself. A book lay open on the table, with a chair in front of it; against the opposite wall stood a small sofa, neatly upholstered in cloth. But what attracted Mrs Frisby's attention most was a box in one corner of the room, a box with dials and a small light shining on the front; from this box came the soft sound of music. She listened entranced.

'You like music?' said Nicodemus. 'So do I.'

'That must be a radio.' Again, something vaguely remembered from what Jonathan had once told her. Music. She had heard it only two or three times in her life, when the Fitzgibbons had left a window open and someone was playing inside. And never up close. It was a lovely sound.

'Yes,' said Nicodemus. 'We didn't get it for music, of course, but to hear the news. Still, as long as it's here - why not use it?'

He sat down, and so did Mrs Frisby.

'Now,' he said, 'I will tell you about Nimh. You'll be interested, I think, because your husband was part of it. And when I'm finished, I think you will see why he felt he could not tell you himself.'

The story begins (Nicodemus continued) not at Nimh, but at a marketplace on the edge of a big city. It was called the Farmers' Market, a great square of a place with a roof over part of it and no walls to speak of. There early every morning the farmers arrived from all over the surrounding countryside, with trucks full of tomatoes, corn, cabbages, potatoes, eggs, chickens, hams, food for the city. One part of it was reserved for the fishermen who brought crabs and oysters and bass and flounders. It was a fine place, noisy and full of smells.

We lived near this market - my father, my mother, my nine sisters and brothers and I - underground in a big pipe that had once been part of a storm sewer, but was no longer used. There were hundreds of other rats in the neighbourhood. It was a rough life, but not so hard as you might think, because of the market.

Every evening at five o'clock the farmers and the fishermen would close up their stalls, pack their trucks, and go home. At night, hours later, the cleaning men would arrive with brooms and hoses. But in between, the market was ours. The food the farmers left behind! Peas and beans that fell from the trucks, tomatoes and potatoes, pieces of meat and fish trimmed as waste -they lay on the pavements and in the gutters; they filled great bins that were supposed to be covered but seldom were. There was always ten times more than we could eat, and so there was never any need for fighting over it.

Fighting? Quite the contrary, the marketplace was a perfect place for playing, and so we did, the young rats at least, as soon as we had finished eating. There were empty boxes for hide-and-seek, there were walls to climb, tin cans to roll, and pieces of twine to tie and swing on. There was even, in the middle of the square, a fountain to swim in when the weather was hot. Then, at the first clang of the cleaning men in the distance, one of the older rats would sound a warning, and everyone would pick up as much food as he could carry home. All of us kept a reserve supply, because some days - Sundays and holidays - the market would be closed, and we were never quite sure when this would happen.

When I went to the market, it was usually with two companions, my elder brother Gerald and a friend of ours named Jenner. These were my two closest friends; we liked the same games, the same jokes, the same topics of conversation - even the same kinds of food. I particularly admired Jenner, who was extremely quick and intelligent.

One evening in early autumn Jenner and I set out for the marketplace. It must have been September, for the leaves were just turning yellow and some children were throwing a football in a vacant lot. Gerald had to stay at home that night; he had caught a cold, and since the air was chilly, my mother thought he should not go out. So Jenner and I went without him. I remember we promised to bring him back some of his favourite food, beef liver, if we could find any.

We took our usual route to the market, not along the streets but through the narrow alleys between the buildings, mostly commercial warehouses and garages, that bordered the square. As we walked, we were joined by more rats; at that time of day they converged on the marketplace from all directions. When we reached the square, I noticed that there was a white truck of an odd, square shape parked on the street bordering it, perhaps a hundred yards away. I say I noticed it - I did not pay any particular attention to it, for trucks were common enough in that part of town; but if I had, I would have noticed that printed on each side of it were four small letters: NIMH. I would not have known what they were, of course, for at that time neither I nor any of the other rats knew how to read.

It was growing dark when we reached the market, but through the dusk we could see that there was an unusually large supply of food - a great mound of it - near the centre of the square, away from the roofed-over portion. I suppose that should have served as a warning, but it didn't. I remember Jenner's saying, 'They must have had a really busy day,' and we ran joyfully towards the pile along with several dozen other rats.

Just as we reached the food it happened. All around us suddenly there was shouting. Bright, blinding searchlights flashed on, aimed at us and at the mound of food, so that when we tried to run away from it, we could not see where we were going. Between and behind the lights there were shadows moving swiftly, and as they came towards us I could see that they were men - men in white uniforms carrying nets, round nets with long handles.

'Look out!' cried Jenner. 'They're trying to catch us.' He darted in one direction, I in another, and I lost sight of him.

We all ran - straight towards the men with the nets. There was no other way to run; they had us encircled. The nets flailed down, scooped, flailed again. I suppose some rats got through, slipping between the men and past the lights. I felt a swish - a net just missed me. I turned and ran back towards the mound, thinking I might hide myself in it. But then came another swish, and that time I felt the enveloping fibres fall over me. They entangled my legs, then my neck, I was lifted from the ground along with three other rats, and the net closed around us.

Mrs Frisby said: 'But why did they want to catch you? And how did you ever get away again?'

'At first,' said Nicodemus, 'I thought it must be because they didn't like our stealing the food. And yet you could hardly even call it stealing - it was waste food, and all they did with it was haul it away to the city incinerator. So what harm if we ate some of it? Of course, there are people who just dislike rats, whether they're doing any harm or not.

'And mice, too,' said Mrs Frisby.

'True,' said Nicodemus. 'Though not so much as rats. I think. Anyway, that wasn't the reason at all; but what the real reason was, I didn't find out for a while. As to getting away - that, too, didn't happen until much later.'

No, I was firmly and inextricably caught, snared in the net and helpless (Nicodemus continued). When the man who held it saw that he had four rats, he pulled a draw string that closed it up. He put the net down and picked up another, an empty one. He moved on into the square, leaving us to lie there. I tried gnawing my way out, but the strands were made of some kind of plastic, as hard as wire.

The noise and movements began to die down eventually; I supposed the rats in the square had all either been caught or had escaped. I heard one man call to another: 'I suppose that's the lot.' Someone else was turning a light this way and that, searching the rest of the market area.

'Not a one to be seen.'

'We could hide and wait for another wave.'

'There won't be another wave. Not tonight. Probably not for four or five nights.'

'Word gets around.'

'You mean they communicate?' A third voice.

'You bet they communicate. And the next time they do come, you can be sure they'll case the place carefully. We were lucky. These rats hadn't been bothered for years. They'd grown careless.'

'How many did the lab order?' Someone was turning out the lights one at a time.

'Five dozen. How many have we got?'

'About that. Maybe more.'

'Let's load the truck.'

In a minute or so I felt myself being lifted up; and swinging back and forth in the net, I was carried with my three companions to the white truck I had seen earlier. Its back doors were open, and it was lighted inside. I could see that its whole interior was a large wire cage. Into this our net was thrust; the man then opened the draw string and we were dumped on to the floor, which was covered with sawdust. The other nets were emptied one at a time the same way; and in a few minutes there was a good-sized crowd of us on the floor, all more or less dazed and all (if I was typical) terrified. The cage was locked, the doors clanged shut, and the lights went out. I heard the truck motor start; a second later the floor lurched beneath me. We were moving. Where were they taking us? For what purpose?

Then, in the dark, I heard a voice beside me.

'Nicodemus?' It was Jenner. You can imagine how glad I was to hear him. But I was sorry, too.

'Jenner. I thought maybe you got away.'

'I was in the last net. I thought I saw you across the floor.'

'Where are we going?'

'I don't know.'

'What's a lab?'

'A laboratory.'

'Yes, but what is it?'

'I don't know. I've just heard the word somewhere.'

'Well, I think that's where we're going. Whatever it is.'

The truck rumbled along through the dark, over bumpy streets at first, then, at a higher speed, over a smooth road. There were no windows in the back, so it was impossible to see where we were going - not that I would have known anyway, never before having been more than half a dozen streets from home. I think we drove for about two hours, but it might have been less, before the truck slowed down, and turned, and finally came to a stop.

The back doors were opened again, and through the wire wall of the cage I saw that we had come to a building, very modern, of white cement and glass. It was square and big, about ten storeys tall. Night had fallen, and most of its windows were dark, but the platform to which our truck drove us was lighted, and there were people waiting for us.

A door opened, and three men came out. One of them pushed a cart, a trolley piled with small wire cages. The man beside him was dressed in a heavy coat, boots, and thick leather gloves. The third man wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a white coat. He was obviously the leader.

The men from the truck, the ones who had caught us, now joined the men from the building.

'How many did you get?' asked the man in the white coat.

'Hard to count - they keep moving around. But I make it between sixty and seventy.'

'Good. Any trouble?'

'No. It was easy. They acted almost tame.'

'I hope not. I've got enough tame ones.'

'Oh, they're lively enough. And they look healthy.'

'Let's get them out.'

The man with the gloves and the boots then donned a wire face-mask as well, and climbed in among us. He opened a small sliding trapdoor at the back of our cage; a man outside held one of the small cages up to the opening, and one at a time we were pushed out into our individual little prisons. A few of the rats snarled and tried to bite; I did not, and neither did Jenner; it was too obviously futile. When it was finished, the man in the white coat said, 'Sixty-three - good work.' A man from the trolley said, 'Thanks, Dr Schultz.' And we were stacked on the hand truck and wheeled into the building.

Dr Schultz. I did not know it then, but I was to be his prisoner (and his pupil) for the next three years.

We spent the rest of that night in a long white room. It was, in fact, a laboratory, with a lot of equipment at one end that I didn't understand at all then - bottles and shiny metal things and black boxes with wires trailing from them. But our end held only rows of cages on shelves, each cage with a tag on it, and each separated from its neighbours by wooden partitions on both sides. Someone came around with a stack of small jars and fastened one to my cage; a little pipe led through the bars like a sipping straw - drinking water. Then the lights were dimmed and we were left alone.