Switchers (7 page)

‘Oops,’ said her guide in rat language. ‘Narrow, narrow. Us two, oooh, very, very thin, huh? Squeeze.’

Tess scrabbled with her claws and they managed after a brief struggle to break free. They ran on, and made up some of the ground they had lost. It was quite dark down there beneath the houses, and Tess realised that she was acting by an unknown sense which wasn’t sight. She was aware of the spaces around her and the way the tunnels changed ahead and behind, even though she could actually see very little. After a while, they emerged into the open space of a basement, where light flooded through a grating from a lamp post on the street above. The rats stopped and looked around cautiously, before scuttling together across the empty space, which seemed huge after the narrow tunnels. At the other side they formed a line again to slip through a hole in the corner of the floor. Kevin was ahead of Tess and as he disappeared she noticed that his right hind foot had only three toes. But before she had a chance to wonder about it, her companion was back alongside her.

‘Long nose,’ he said.

‘Huh?’

‘Long nose.’

They were approaching another tight gap, and this time Tess stopped and thought as clearly as she could of the two of them going through it quite sensibly and politely, one at a time. But to her annoyance, her guide stopped as well, and said again: ‘Long nose.’

She made a sprint for the hole, but he was too quick for her and there was no doubt that they would have got stuck again if Tess hadn’t stopped in time. He grabbed hold of her whiskers and pulled her round to face him. She could just see the outline of his face in the darkness.

‘Long nose,’ he said, and he caught hold of his own nose and pulled it. She noticed for the first time that he did have an unusually long nose.

‘Long nose,’ she said, and was pleased to find that sarcasm was a readily available quality in the rat language. ‘Yep, yep. Sunny days, happy rats, long nose. Me through the hole, you through the hole behind me, huh?’

He wrinkled his nose. ‘Yep, yep,’ he said, and she darted through before he had time to change his mind.

Kevin and his friend were waiting, but ran on when they saw the other two coming.

‘Long nose,’ said Tess’s companion yet again.

Tess was beginning to get really fed up. ‘Long nose,’ she said. ‘Small brain.’

‘Huh?’

Tess mimicked his grin. ‘Long nose, happy you, happy me, huge sack of oats in a big barn with no cats.’

‘Nanananana. Long nose. You, huh?’

‘Short nose.’

‘Nanana. Short-nosed rat in a hotel basement, many many streets.’

At last Tess understood, and she felt slightly foolish. Long Nose was his symbol, his mark, his name in the visual language of rats.

‘You, huh?’ he said again.

Tess was at a loss. Her name was meaningless in this world. There was no way to translate it. And as far as she could tell, she was a completely ordinary rat with no outstanding features at all. Her mind searched for images, but none of them seemed suitable.

‘Owl, huh?’ she said at last.

‘Nanana,’ said Long Nose. ‘Nanananana. Owl carrying off young rats, us rats sad, us rats angry.’

There was another narrow opening ahead, and this time Tess managed successfully to communicate the idea of single file. She ran ahead of Long Nose into the dark gap, and was surprised to find that it stayed dark and narrow. It was sludgy and slippery underfoot, and there was a strong smell of drains. She waited for the tunnel to broaden out, but it didn’t, and it soon began to seem as though it never would. Tess began to feel claustrophobic. The only reassurance was the sound of Kevin’s pattering feet before her, and those of Long Nose behind. Gradually the smell grew stronger, and Tess realised that it was more than just drains. It was sewers. The stone passage they were in was sloping downwards now, and Tess found herself beginning to slither on the slimy stuff beneath her feet.

‘This is the most foolish thing I’ve ever done,’ she thought to herself. ‘What on earth am I doing here? How could I have allowed myself to be talked into this?’

She had no time to dwell on it, however, because the next moment Kevin flashed her an image of a rat wearing a parachute, and then they were falling through the air in the darkness.

T
HEY LANDED WITH A
splash, a shock of cold water that made Tess gasp and splutter. But she found that, before she knew it, she was swimming, and quite strongly too. For someone who had never swum before, either as a girl or any other creature, it was pretty exciting and completely took her mind off the nature of the liquid they were travelling in. There was just enough light for her to see the shapes of the other rats ahead of her and she swam up close beside Kevin before Long Nose had a chance to move in and monopolise her again. Kevin looked across and acknowledged her with a brief nod. His eyes sparkled and she caught the image he gave her of an underground train speeding along beneath a huge city. Then he gave her a second one, of four rats going twice as fast through their own underground system. If she had known how, she would have laughed. Before long, the four of them came to a wider canal, and they swam with a gentle current until they came to a shoal of sludgy stones and trapped paper, which allowed them to climb out of the water and into another system of pipes and drains.

Tess was beginning to get tired. The drains seemed to go on for ever, always sloping gently upwards and always wet and slimy underfoot. It took all her strength and concentration to keep close to Kevin, who seemed to find the going no problem, and the whole business was made worse by the irritating presence of Long Nose, who trod on her tail at every possible opportunity.

She called in Rat to Kevin: ‘Boy and girl, out in the open, deep breaths, sleeping.’

He called back: ‘Boy and girl squashed in drainpipe. Spaghetti.’

By the time they emerged, quite suddenly, into the cold, clear air, Tess was so exhausted that she felt she couldn’t travel another yard. She wanted badly to be human, at least for a while, but before she could repeat her request to Kevin they were off again. They had come out on to another piece of waste ground which lay between two huge warehouses. Tess followed the others out on to a wide street. There was no sign of people or dogs, but they stuck to the deepest shadows all the same, running in single file close up to the walls and sprinting across the open spaces in between. At the end of the street lay the river. Ships were tied up beneath cranes, waiting for loading or unloading, but there was no activity now. All was still and silent.

The fresh air had given Tess a second wind and she was comfortable enough now as the little group followed the warehouse walls parallel to the river for several hundred yards. There were lights here, and they were much more exposed to possible danger than they had been in the drains, but Tess was happier nonetheless. The others, however, did not relax until they left the warehouses behind them and crossed through the wire fence which surrounded an area of huge coal heaps. Then they slowed their pace and picked their way among the loose slag at leisure.

‘Dawn,’ said Kevin, dropping back beside Tess.

‘Happy us,’ said Tess. ‘Boy, girl, sitting on the coal, huh? Boy smoking cigarette, huh? Talking, huh?’

‘Us four sleeping,’ said Kevin. ‘Curled together, warm.’

It was not an image that appealed to Tess, though it clearly did to him. She was still not entirely comfortable about being a rat and, besides that, it would be the first time that she had allowed herself to sleep as an animal. It was an idea that had always scared her a little, not only because she might sleep longer than she meant to and arrive home late, but because sleeping was a kind of forgetting and she was afraid that she might not remember who she was when she woke up.

Kevin nudged her with his shoulder and wrinkled his nose. Then he darted on ahead and, resigning herself, Tess followed.

The four rats slept throughout the day in a snug and well concealed hole beneath a portakabin at the entrance to the coal-yard. It was far from being a sound sleep, because the floor above their heads was walked on almost constantly, and the sounds of men’s voices filtered through the wood. Lorries passed in and out all day, their tyres crunching on the coal dust, alarmingly close. But Tess didn’t mind. Rat dreams were strange and frightening and it was a relief to be woken from time to time and to be able to remember where she was and why. Sometimes Kevin woke with her and they would exchange a few images and touch noses for comfort before they went back to sleep. Sometimes the rat with the bitten ear woke too and moved in small, irritated circles, trying to get comfortable again. Long Nose, it seemed, didn’t wake at all, but snored and sighed throughout all the coming and going in ignorant contentment.

The best sleep came in the three or four hours between the closing of the yard and the arrival of darkness. Those hours passed like minutes but refreshed the four rats better than any before them. They spent a few minutes cleaning themselves when they woke, then emerged, bright-eyed and sleek, into the strange, orange gloom that covers cities at night. A few flakes of snow were falling, but there was little wind, and the rats were in no danger of getting cold as long as they kept moving. They were hungry, though, and Tess was about to discover that the hunger of a rat bore no relation to any hunger she had ever known. It began as a warm and rather pleasant sensation which made her feel energetic and strong, but within an hour it had grown larger and more demanding, and her feeling had changed to one of enormous courage and pride. She was sure that she would have stolen a bone from a dog at that moment, and longed for a chance to prove it.

‘Eat, huh?’ she blasted at Kevin.

He jumped at the force of her message but answered calmly: ‘Basement, dark, black bags, flash restaurant, a few streets.’

Tess held on to the image of the diners in their expensive clothes, taking their time over their food. Her parents brought her to that kind of place from time to time, but she was sure that Kevin would never have been in one, at least not while he was human. She decided that she would bring him out, when all this was over. She had her own account in the post office, and she would buy him some new clothes, if he would let her. It was a pleasant fantasy. She would be on familiar territory. He would be on edge, worse than usual, but she’d make him feel at ease and make sure he got the best the restaurant had to offer.

‘Long Nose.’

Not again. Tess almost squeaked in annoyance. She was tempted to use the pent-up urgency of her hunger to jump on him and box his ears, but just in time she realised that he was probably hungry, too. By now they were back among the rat runs that honeycomb the foundations of the city, and Tess had allowed herself to fall back behind Kevin again and into the company of Long Nose.

‘You, huh?’ he said.

Tess was as stuck as before. To make time, she said: ‘Him, huh?’ and sent an image of the rat with the chewed ear.

‘One black whisker.’

Tess hadn’t noticed. ‘Him, huh?’ she said, indicating Kevin.

The image that came back was a disturbing one, an awful random mixture of rat features combined with the rat’s version of what a boy is. Tess had no desire to have a name-image anything like that.

‘You, huh?’ said Long Nose again.

Tess said nothing.

‘Huh? Huh?’

When she still made no reply, he gave her a command that no rat will ever refuse, because too often their lives depend upon it.

‘Freeze!’

Tess froze. But Long Nose did not. He walked all around her from her nose to her tail, muttering to himself. ‘Huh? Huh? Nananana. Nope. Huh?’ He tugged at her tail and her whiskers, prodded her nose and looked into her ears. He lifted her feet and counted her teeth and made her sit up on her tail while he examined her belly, all the while saying: ‘Huh? Nope. Nanana. Nope.’ At last he went round behind her and started fiddling with her tail again.

‘Tail two toes short, huh?’ he said.

Tess didn’t catch the image. ‘Huh?’ she said.

‘Three toes, four toes, huh?’

‘Huh?’ She turned around to see what he was doing, just as he bit off the last inch and a half of her tail.

Tess squeaked and swung round ready to attack, but Long Nose looked amazed and offered his throat in defence.

‘Hurt!’ she said. ‘Tail, yowch!’

‘Seven toes,’ said Long Nose, holding up the end of her tail and measuring it against his front paw. ‘You, Tail Short Seven Toes.’

Tess examined the wound on her tail and was surprised to see that it was hardly bleeding at all. Nor was it anywhere near as sore as she had expected. She could live with it, she decided, and would almost have forgiven Long Nose had she not turned round to find him contentedly eating the end of her tail for his breakfast. She shot him an insult that even he could not fail to understand, and ran ahead to find Kevin.

The rats feasted on the rubbish in the basement of the restaurant. There were other rats there, too, pleased to meet the newcomers and exchange the latest gossip. One of them, a handsome fellow who introduced himself to Tess as Stuck Six Days in a Gutter Pipe, showed her how to recognise rat poison and scatter bits of it around to make it look as if it had been eaten. Then he helped her to find the choicest bits of leftover food, such as fish spines, chicken hearts and slivers of soap. Tess accepted them as graciously as her rat nature permitted, but it seemed to her with her great hunger that anything she ate was as good as the next thing, and that was even better.

There was plenty for everyone and the place seemed to have a constant turnover of rodent customers who came and went in a leisurely fashion. Stuck Six Days in a Gutter Pipe wrinkled his nose suavely at Tess as he left, but the effect was slightly spoiled by the chicken leg in his mouth that he was taking home for the children.

When Tess had eaten all she could, she joined Kevin and One Black Whisker in a quiet corner where they were chatting with two unknown rats.

‘Guides,’ Kevin told her. ‘Long Nose, One Black Whisker curled up asleep in the couch on the waste ground. Little old woman sitting beside a fire, many streets. Long Nose and One Black Whisker confused, lost.’