Only Human (13 page)

‘What did you—?' Dermot Fraud ducked, a fraction of a second too late. ‘Ouch,' he said. He reached up to rub the back of his head, discovered that he couldn't, and fell over.

Of course. Four legs. Bugger.

‘Hurry up,' the rat called out. ‘Haven't got all day, you know.'

Fraud picked himself up, a complicated business for someone who'd been used to having prehensile hands. ‘I'm coming as fast as I can,' he yelled back. ‘What are all these things in the way?'

‘Grass roots. Look, if you're going to dawdle . . .'

‘Hold
on
, will you?' Grass roots; a phrase he used about twenty times a day, and never once stopped to think what it might possibly signify. Odd that it should turn out to mean tough, springy things like tree-branches that kept getting in your way and hitting you. Certainly not what he'd had in mind. Where he came from, the word for awkward obstructions you have to squirm past and duck under was
manifesto promises.

‘Nearly there,' said the rat, in the distance. ‘Left at the next T-junction, then just follow your nose.'

It was, Fraud reflected, a nose long enough to be worth following; if he squinted, he could see right up the side of it and through the whiskers. He located the T-junction by the simple expedient of carrying on in the pitch darkness until he walked into a wall, got up again and turned left. A few more bangs and bashes brought him round a sharp turn and out into—

Daylight?

Presumably; it was bright enough, after two hours without any illumination at all. Hey, he reflected, so this is what the light at the end of the tunnel really looks like. Wish they'd turn it down a bit.

‘Where you been?' squeaked a shrill voice somewhere to his right. ‘I been worried sick. Thought the cat'd got you.'

‘We got a visitor,' the rat replied. ‘Lemming, this is my wife Bag. Bag, this is Lemming. I, er, rescued him.'

Fraud pulled himself together, looked round and saw a large rat. ‘Pleased to meet you,' he said. ‘My name's Dermot, um, Lemming.'

‘There was a big bang,' the rat went on. ‘Building fell down. This one nearly got squished and I pulled him out.'

‘Oh well,' said Bag. ‘Welcome to our humble abode, Mister Lemming,' she added, and twitched her nose. ‘Our hole is your hole, all that sort of thing. Well, don't just stand there, Arsed, you useless article. Get our guest something to eat.'

Bag? Arsed? Odd names these rats had. On the other hand, he reflected, as the male rat pawed him a chunk of stale bread and a split pea, they seem friendly enough. And I won't be staying long. Ten minutes at the most, and then
surely
someone'll come and rescue me.

Surely . . .

‘So?' said Bag. ‘What d'you get?'

‘Him.'

‘To eat, fool. Don't say you didn't get anything.'

Arsed shrugged, necessarily in duplicate. ‘Got sidetracked, didn't I? I'll go out again tomorrow, see if there's anything round the bins.'

After all, Fraud assured himself, it's been hours since the bomb, they must be combing the area looking for me. Or at least, I think it's been hours; could be longer for all I know. Might even be a completely different timescale for rodents.

Rodents . . .

Because of course, the fools, they'd be looking for a human being, not a small rodent with pale-fawn fur and brown spots. No wonder they were taking so long. Oh, if only . . .

‘Excuse me,' he said, interrupting a lively discussion between his hosts on the subject of which of them was the most useless. ‘I wonder if I might use your phone.'

Arsed stared at him, and blinked. ‘Our what?' he said.

‘Telephone,' Fraud said. ‘I just need to - you haven't got one, have you?'

Bag shook her head. ‘Silly bloody things, they are,' she said. ‘I know there's some as likes to nibble the cables, but all you get's wind and a nasty shock if you go too deep. I had an aunt had a litter of seventeen once in a junction box, but it wasn't through choice.'

‘Quite,' Fraud said. ‘You wouldn't happen to know where I might find a telephone, do you? Sorry to be a nuisance, but it's really quite important.'

The two rats looked at him as if he'd just hijacked a scheduled flight from Paris to London and demanded to be flown to Heathrow. ‘Is it?' said Arsed. ‘Oh, right then. There's one in a big red box round the back of here. Not far.'

Fraud relaxed a little. ‘That's good,' he said.

‘Not far at all,' Bag confirmed. ‘Two days' walk, three at the outside.'

‘Three
days—
' Fraud checked himself and remembered; four little stumpy legs, having to move slowly in the open, stopping every yard or so to look out for cats. ‘You're right,' he said hoarsely. ‘Not far at all. Er - could you possibly—?'

‘No he couldn't,' said Bag firmly. ‘He's got food to gather. Arsed, call the boys, they'll show him the way.'

‘All right.' Arsed turned round in his own length, stuck his head down a small hole in the wall and squeaked, ‘Chet! Atouille! Get up here.'

‘Our boys,' Bag explained, as two sharp, twitching snouts appeared in the hole. ‘They're good kids, really. But you don't want to take any buggering about off them. And don't you go giving the gentlelemming any of your nonsense,' she commanded the snouts. ‘Just 'cos he's different from us don't mean you can go playing silly beggars with 'im.'

The snouts turned into two more rats, the longer and leaner of which was identified as Chet, the shorter, stockier example being Atouille. They sat quite still as they were told what they had to do; but their small, round black eyes twinkled in a way that Fraud found quite menacing.

‘Off you go, then,' Bag commanded. ‘And watch out for them cats. And come straight back, or I'll tie yer bleedin' tails together.'

‘Yes, Mum.'

‘Yes, Mum.'

They were, Fraud couldn't help noticing,
big
rats. A residual instinct made him want to back away and crawl down something. He resisted it. ‘Well,' he said, ‘thanks for everything, but I'd better be getting along. It really is terribly important that I make this - that I find a telephone.'

Arsed wrinkled his snout. ‘Must be the plastic in the bit of string,' he speculated. ‘Roughage.'

‘Quite.' Fraud nodded, wondering as he did so if the gesture meant anything in Rat body-language. ‘And, er, thanks for the, er, crumb.'

The tip of Arsed's tail flicked in what Fraud assumed was a dismissive gesture. ‘That's all right,' he said, ‘And best of luck. Don't jump off too many cliffs.You two, mind your manners.'

‘Yes, Dad.'

‘Yes, Dad.'

Really
big rats, Fraud couldn't help reflecting, as they set off down yet another pitch-dark tunnel. Big and heavy. If those two left a sinking ship, it'd probably stop sinking.

The first leg of the journey was straight. As far as Fraud could tell, they were in some sort of pipe, only just wide enough for the rats to get through.That at least meant they couldn't easily turn round and set about him; but he didn't like the way they whispered and sniggered all the time, apparently in some rodent dialect he couldn't understand. All in all, what with their soft, hissing voices, their slinking and sudden movements, their rank, matted fur, they reminded him too much of his own back-benchers to allow him to relax his guard for so much as a second. No; revise that. There were at least twelve of his MPs he'd never, ever share a drain with, not under any circumstances whatsoever.

After three hours nose to tail in the dark, he'd had enough. He stopped.

‘All right,' he said (and what had been intended as a crisp, authoritative bark came out as a querulous queep). ‘You two, tell me what's so funny.'

The patter of rats' feet stopped, and there was nothing but silence and darkness. This state of affairs seemed to go on for a long time.

‘I said,' he repeated, vainly trying to keep his voice from wobbling, ‘what's so damn funny? Come on, answer me.'

‘Wassat he said?'

‘Dunno.'

‘You talking to us?'

‘Yeah, you talking to us?'

‘Yes,' Fraud squeaked back. ‘Come on, out with it.'

‘All right.' Was it his imagination, or was that the scuffling sound of a rat doing a twenty-eight-point turn in a narrow pipe? ‘You'll like this.'

‘Yeah. 'S good, this one.'

‘Look, you two . . .' Fraud tried to say, but his voice drained away into the darkness, as quickly and as thoroughly as the glass of red wine you'd forgotten you'd left on the carpeted floor. The sound, whatever it was, stopped.

‘Ready?'

‘Yes,' Fraud whispered. ‘Well?'

‘It's really good, innit, Chet?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Okay. Right. Why did the
chicken -
'

‘Tskkk!'

‘- cross the
road
?'

Long, long silence, disturbed only by the sound of a large adolescent rat trying not to snigger. Eventually, just at the point where his nerves were about to break through his skin, Fraud licked his dry lips and muttered, ‘I don't know. Why did the chicken cross the road?'

Pause. Dramatic effect. The hammering sound that was so loud that it threatened to burst Fraud's ears was his heart beating.

‘
To get to the other side!
'

You get weird echo effects in a long, straight drain; and the sound of the two rats laughing themselves almost to death was one of the eeriest things Fraud had ever heard, not excluding the Deputy Chief Whip singing ‘Green Door'. When, at long last, the laughter had subsided into sporadic spluttering noises and random snorts, Fraud asked, ‘Is that it?'

‘Yeah.'

‘Good joke, innit?'

‘Woodlouse told us that.'

‘Just before we ate him, yeah.'

Fraud breathed out through his nose. ‘I see,' he said. ‘Fine.'

‘Only thing,' added Chet, suddenly sombre, ‘we dunno what a chicken is.'

‘Nah.'

‘You don't know,' Fraud repeated, ‘what a chicken is.'

‘Nah.'

‘Never seen one, see.'

‘And yet you've been laughing about it for the last three hours,' he persisted. ‘Non-stop,' he added with feeling.

‘Yeah, well, it's a joke, innit?' Atouille replied. ‘Bloody good one an' all.'

‘It is?' Fraud queried.

‘Must be,' answered Chet. ‘Or we wouldn't be laughing, would we?'

Fraud considered this for a moment. ‘True,' he said. ‘You may have a point there, lads. Can we get on now, please?'

‘Wot? Oh, yeah, right. C'mon, Chet.'

‘All right. Get to the other side,
tsssk
. . .'

The pattering started again a few seconds later; likewise the whispering and sniggering. But now, when he listened carefully, Fraud could clearly make out phrases like
cross the road
and
get to the other side.
They were still at it when the tunnel went round a corner and abruptly ended, leaving them standing on the edge of a precipice.

Looked at objectively, it was a break in the pipe. Beyond the lip of the chasm, about a foot away, Fraud could see the tunnel continuing, and ragged edges where something had broken through it. But he couldn't really take much in; his head was swimming, and all he could think of was how wonderfully satisfying and fulfilling it'd be to backtrack a foot or so, take a nice long run-up and jump over that edge into the empty space below. He could almost hear the wind in his ears, and in his mind's eye he could clearly see the ground rushing up to meet him, like a long-sundered lover on a station platform. And, in the still centre of his mind, he could hear a small, urgent voice, chanting:

He closed his eyes, but that just made the picture clearer. On the other side the rats, who had jumped the break, were whispering and giggling, apparently still intoxicated with the heady wine of mirth. For Fraud, however, there was another, more compelling intoxication, as the voice in his brain chanted:

‘Hey!' he yelled. ‘You two. I need a hand.'

‘Huh?'

‘I mean paw. How the hell'm I supposed to get across this lot?'

All he could see was the tip of a tail; and beyond it, he heard Chet's voice, far away.

‘Jump,' it said.

Jump. Jump. Jump.
No echo this time. He tried to fight the command, but his legs were already backing him away, his muscles contracting for the short, fascinating leap. It would be so . . .

Stupid? With a snap like a rubber band breaking, his head cleared, and he was no longer a lemming but the Prime Minister, admittedly trapped for some reason in a rodent body but otherwise the master of his fate and the captain of his soul, standing on the edge of a broken drainpipe. Silly, he muttered to himself. Don't know what came over me. All right, so I may be a little bit out of touch with my true self right now, but one thing I do know is that statesmen don't obey weird inner voices commanding them to jump off things. No. No way.

That's what the electorate is for.

Imagine, if you will, John Barleycorn, thrusting his head up through the bare earth in the burgeoning spring. As he breaks through into the light he knows perfectly well that in six months' time a maniac with a Massey Ferguson will be along to cut his head off and bash his brains out, just exactly the way it's been these uncounted thousands of years; but he does it nevertheless, because that's what he does.