Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (13 page)

'Nicodemus? Come on out. I'll show you how.' He

directed me as I reached through the wire bars of the door and felt beneath it. I found the small metal knob, slid it forward and sidewards, and felt the door swing loose against my shoulder. I followed him up the side of the cage to the shelf above. There we stopped. It was the first time I had met Justin face to face.

He said: 'It's better talking here than around that partition.'

'Yes. Did you get down?'

'Yes.'

'How did you get back up?'

'At the end of this shelf there's a big cabinet - they keep the mouse cages in it. It has wire mesh doors. You can climb up and down them like a ladder.'

'Of course,' I said. 'I remember now.' I had seen that cabinet many times when my cage was carried past it. For some reason - perhaps because they were smaller - the mice were kept in cages-within-a-cage.

Justin said: 'Nicodemus. I think I've found the way to get out.'

'You have! How?'

'At each end of the room there's an opening in the base board at the bottom of the wall. Air blows through one of them and out of the other. Each one has a metal grid covering it, and on the grid there's a sign that says: Lift to adjust air flow. I lifted one of them; it hangs on hinges, like a trapdoor. Behind it there is a thing like a metal window - when you slide it open, more air blows in.

'But the main thing is, it's easily big enough to walk through and get out.'

'But what's on the other side? Where does it lead?'

'On the other side there's a duct, a thing like a square metal pipe built right into the wall. I walked along it, not very far, but I can figure out where it must go. There's bound to be a duct like it leading to every room in the building, and they must all branch off one main central pipe - and that one has to lead, somewhere, to the outside. Because that's where our air comes from. That's why they never open the windows. I don't think those windows can open.'

He was right, of course. The building had central air conditioning; what we had to do was find the main air shaft and explore it. There would have to be an intake at one end and an outlet at the other. But that was easier said than done, and before it was done there were questions to be answered. What about the rest of the rats? There were twenty of us in the laboratory, and we had to let the others know.

So, one by one we woke them and showed them how to open their cages. It was an odd assembly that gathered that night, under the dimmed lights in the echoing laboratory, on the shelf where Justin and I had talked. We all knew each other in a way, from the passing of messages over the preceding months; yet except for Jenner and me, none of us had ever really met. We were strangers - though, as you can imagine, it did not take long for us to develop a feeling of comradeship, for we twenty were alone in a strange world. Just how alone and how strange none of us really understood at first; yet in a way we sensed it from the beginning. The group looked to me as leader, probably because it was Justin and I who first set them free, and because Justin was obviously younger than I.

We did not attempt to leave that night, but went together and looked at the metal grid Justin had discovered, and made plans for exploring the air ducts. Jenner was astute at that sort of thing; he could foresee problems.

'With a vent like this leading to every room,' he said, 'it will be easy to get lost. When we explore, we're going to need some way of finding our way back here.'

'Why should we come back?' someone asked.

'Because it may take more than one night to find the way out. If it does, whoever is doing the exploring must be back in his cage by morning. Otherwise Dr Schultz will find out.'

Jenner was right. It took us about a week. What we did, after some discussion, was to find some equipment: first, a large spool of thread in one of the cabinets where some of us had seen Julie place it one day; second, a screwdriver that was kept on a shelf near the electric equipment -because as Jenner pointed out, there would probably be a screen over the end of the air-shaft to keep out debris, and we might have to pry it loose. What we really needed was a light, for the ducts, at night, were completely dark. But there was none to be had, not even a box of matches. The thread and screwdriver we hid in the duct, a few feet from the entrance. We could only hope they would not be missed, or that if they were, we wouldn't be suspected.

Justin and two others were chosen as the exploration party (one of the others was Arthur, whom you've met). They had a terrible time at first: here was a maze to end all mazes, and in the dark they quickly lost their sense of direction. Still they kept at it, night after night, exploring the network of shafts that laced like a cubical spiderweb through the walls and ceilings of the building. They would tie the end of their thread to the grid in our laboratory and unroll it from the spool as they went. Time and time again they reached the end of the thread and had to come back.

'It just isn't long enough,' Justin would complain. 'Every time I come to the end, I think: if I could just go ten feet farther…'

And finally, that's what he did. On the seventh night, just as the thread ran out, he and the other two reached a shaft that was wider than any they had found before, and it seemed, as they walked along it, to be slanting gently upward. But the spool was empty.

'You wait here,' Justin said to the others. 'I'm going just a little way farther. Hang on to the spool, and if I call, call back.' (They had tied the end of the thread around the spool so they would not lose it in the dark.)

Justin had a hunch. The air coming through the shaft had a fresher smell where they were, and seemed to be blowing harder than in the other shafts. Up ahead he thought he could hear the whir of a machine running quietly, and there was a faint vibration in the metal under his feet. He went on. The shaft turned upward at a sharp angle - and then, straight ahead, he saw it: a patch of lighter-coloured darkness than the pitch black around him, and in the middle of it, three stars twinkling. It was the open sky. Across the opening there was, as Jenner had predicted, a coarse screen of heavy wire.

He ran towards it for a few seconds longer, and then stopped. The sound of the machine had grown suddenly louder, changing from a whir to a roar. It had, obviously, shifted speed; an automatic switch somewhere in the building had turned it from low to high, and the air blowing past Justin came on so hard it made him gasp. He braced his feet against the metal and held on. In a minute, as suddenly as it had roared, the machine returned to a whisper. He looked around and realized he was lucky to have stopped; by the dim light from the sky he could see that he had reached the point where perhaps two dozen air shafts came together like branches into the trunk of a tree. If he had gone a few steps farther he would never have been able to distinguish which shaft was his. He turned in his tracks, and in a few minutes he rejoined his friends.

We had a meeting that night, and Justin told all of us what he had found. He had left the thread, anchored by the screwdriver, to guide us out. Some were for leaving immediately, but it was late, and Jenner and I argued against it. We did not know how long it would take us to break through the screen at the end. If it should take more than an hour or two, daylight would be upon us. We would then be unable to risk returning to the laboratory, and would have to spend the day in the shaft - or try to get away by broad daylight. Dr Schultz might even figure out how we had gone and trap us in the air shaft.

Finally, reluctantly, everyone agreed to spend one more day in the laboratory and leave early the next night. But it was a hard decision, with freedom so near and everyone thinking as I did: 'Suppose…' Suppose Dr Schultz grew suspicious and put locks on our cages? Suppose someone found our thread and pulled it out? (This was unlikely - the near end, tied to the spool, was six feet up the shaft, well hidden.) Just the same, we were uneasy.

Then, just as we were ending our meeting, a new complication arose. We had been standing in a rough circle on the floor of the laboratory, just outside the two screen doors that enclosed the mice cages. Now, from inside the cabinet, came a voice:

'Nicodemus.' It was a clear but plaintive call, the voice of a mouse. We had almost forgotten the mice were there, and I was startled to hear that one of them knew my name. We all grew quiet.

'Who's calling me?' I asked.

'My name is Jonathan,' said the voice. 'We have been listening to your talk about going out. We would like to go, too, but we cannot open our cages.'

As you can imagine, this caused a certain consternation, coming at the last minute. None of us knew much about the mice, except what we had heard Dr Schultz dictate into his tape recorder. From that, we had learned only that they had been getting the same injections we were getting, and that the treatment had worked about as well on them as on us. They were a sort of side experiment, without a control group.

Justin was studying the cabinet.

'Why not?' he said. 'If we can get the doors open.'

Someone muttered: 'They'll slow us down.'

'No,' said the mouse Jonathan. 'We will not. Only open our cages when you go, and we will make our own way. We won't even stay with you, if you prefer.'

'How many are you?' I asked.

'Only eight. And the cabinet doors are easy to open. There's just a simple hook, half-way up.'

But Justin and Arthur had already figured that out. They climbed up the screen, unhooked the hook, and the doors swung open.

'The cages open the same way as yours,' said another mouse, 'but we can't reach far enough to unlatch them.'

'All right,' I said. 'Tomorrow night, as soon as Dr Schultz and the others leave, we'll open your cages, and you can follow the thread with us to get out. After that you're on your own.'

'Agreed,' said Jonathan, 'and thank you.'

'And now,' I said, 'we should all get back to the cages. Justin, please hook the doors again.'

I had latched myself into my cage and was getting ready for sleep when I heard a scratching noise on the door, and there was Jenner, climbing down from above.

'Nicodemus,' he said, 'can I come in?' 'Of course. But it's getting towards morning.' 'I won't stay long.' He unlatched the door and entered.

'There's something we've got to decide.' 'I know,' I said. 'I've been thinking about it, too.' 'When we do get out, where are we going to go?' I could not see Jenner's face in the dark of the cage, but I knew from his voice that he was worrying. I said: 'At first I thought, home, of course. But then, when I began remembering, I realized that won't work. We could find the way, I suppose, now that we can read. But if we did - what then? We wouldn't find anyone we know.'

'And yet,' Jenner said, 'you know that's not the real point.' 'No.'

'The real point is this: We don't know where to go because we don't know what we are. Do you want to go back to living in a sewer-pipe? And eating other people's garbage? Because that's what rats do. But the fact is, we aren't rats any more. We're something Dr Schultz has made. Something new. Dr Schultz says our intelligence has increased more than one thousand per cent. I suspect he's underestimated; I think we're probably as intelligent as he is - maybe more. We can read, and with a little practise, we'll be able to write, too. I mean to do both. I think we can learn to do anything we want. But where do we do it? Where does a group of civilized rats fit in?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'We're going to have to find out. It won't be easy. But even so, the first step must be to get out of here. We're lucky to have a chance, but it won't last. We're a jump ahead of Dr Schultz; if he knew what we know, he wouldn't leave us alone in here another night. And he's sure to find out soon.'

'Another thing to worry about,' Jenner said. 'If we do get away, when he finds we're gone - won't he figure out how we did it? And won't he realize that we must have learned to read?'

'Probably.'

'And then what? What will happen when he announces that there's a group of civilized rats roaming loose - rats that can read, and think, and figure things out?'

I said: 'Let's wait until we're free before we worry about that.'

But Jenner was right. It was a thing to worry about, and maybe it still is.

The next day was terrible. I kept expecting to hear Dr Schultz say: 'Who took my screwdriver?' And then to hear Julie add: 'My thread is missing, too.' That could have happened and set them to thinking - but it didn't, and that night, an hour after Julie, George, and Dr Schultz left the laboratory, we were out of our cages and gathered, the whole group of us, before the mouse cabinet. Justin opened its doors, unlatched their cages, and the mice came out. They looked very small and frightened, but one strode bravely forward.

'You are Nicodemus?' he said to me. 'I'm Jonathan. Thank you for taking us out with you.'

'We're not out yet,' I said, 'but you're welcome.'

We had no time for chatting. The light coming in the windows was turning grey; in less than an hour it would be dark, and we would need light to figure out how to open the screen at the end of the shaft.

We went to the opening in the baseboard.

'Justin,' I said,'take the lead. Roll up the thread as you go. I'll bring up the rear. No noise. There's sure to be somebody awake somewhere in the building. We don't want them to hear us.' I did not want to leave the thread where it might be found: the more I thought about it, the more I felt sure Dr Schultz would try to track us down, for quite a few reasons.

Justin lifted the grid, pushed open the sliding panel, and one by one we went through. As I watched the others go ahead of me, I noticed for the first time that one of the mice was white. Then I went in myself, closing the grid behind me and pushing the panel half shut again, its normal position.

With Justin leading the way, we moved through the dark passage quickly and easily. In only fifteen or twenty minutes we had reached the end of the thread; then, as Justin had told us it would, the shaft widened; we could hear the whir of the machine ahead, and almost immediately we saw a square of grey daylight. We reached the end of the shaft, and there a terrible thing happened.