Truckers (2 page)

It was amazing. They were all on board. He'd worked with an ear cocked for the sound of footsteps on gravel and the slamming of the driver's door, and it hadn't happened.

“Right,” he said, shaking with the effort. “That's it, then. Now if we just go—”

“I dropped the Thing,” said old Torrit. “The Thing. I dropped it, d'you see? I dropped it down by the wheel when she was blindfoldin' me. You go and get it, boy.”

Masklin looked at him in horror. Then he poked his head out from under the tarpaulin, and yes, there it was, far below. A tiny black cube on the ground.

The Thing.

It was lying in a puddle, although that wouldn't affect it. Nothing touched the Thing. It wouldn't even burn.

And then he heard the sound of slow footsteps on the gravel.

“There's no time,” he whispered. “There really is no time.”

“We can't go without it,” said Grimma.

“Of course we can. It's just a, a thing. We won't need the wretched object where we're going.”

He felt guilty as soon as he'd said it, amazed at his own lips for uttering such words. Grimma looked horrified. Granny Morkie drew herself up to her full, quivering height.

“May you be forgiven!” she barked. “What a terrible thing to say! You tell him, Torrit.” She nudged Torrit in the ribs.

“If we ain't taking the Thing, I ain't going,” said Torrit sulkily. “It's not—”

“That's your leader talkin' to you,” interrupted Granny Morkie. “So you do what you're told. Leave it behind, indeed! It wouldn't be decent. It wouldn't be right. So you go and get it, this minute.”

Masklin stared wordlessly down at the soaking mud and then, with a desperate motion, threw the line over the edge and slid down it.

It was raining harder now, with a touch of sleet. The wind whipped at him as he dropped past the great arc of the wheel and landed heavily in the puddle. He reached out and scooped up the Thing—

And the truck started to move.

First there was a roar, so loud that it went beyond sound and became a solid wall of noise. Then there was a blast of stinking air and a vibration that shook the ground.

He pulled sharply on the line and yelled at them to pull him up, and realized that even he couldn't hear his own voice. But Grimma or someone must have got the idea because, just as the big wheel began to turn, the rope tightened and he felt his feet lifted off the mud.

He bounced and spun back and forth as, with painful slowness, they pulled him past the wheel. It turned only a few inches away from him, a black, chilly blur, and all the time the hammering sound battered at his head.

I'm not scared, he told himself. This is much worse than anything I've ever faced, and it's not frightening. It's too terrible to be frightening.

He felt as though he were in a tiny, warm cocoon, away from all the noise and the wind. I'm going to die, he thought, just because of this Thing that has never helped us at all, something that's just a lump of stuff, and now I'm going to die and go to the Heavens. I wonder if old Torrit is right about what happens when you die. It seems a bit severe to have to die to find out. I've looked at the sky every night for years, and I've never seen any nomes up there. . . .

But it didn't really matter, it was all outside him, it wasn't real—

Hands reached down and caught him under the arms and dragged him into the booming space under the tarpaulin and, with some difficulty, pried the Thing out of his grip.

Behind the speeding truck, fresh curtains of gray rain dragged across the empty fields.

And, across the whole country, there were no more nomes.

There had been plenty of them, in the days when it didn't seem to rain so much. Masklin could remember at least forty. But then the highway had come; the stream was put in pipes underground, and the nearest hedges were dug up. Nomes had always lived in the corners of the world, and suddenly there weren't too many corners anymore.

The numbers started going down. A lot of this was due to natural causes, and when you're four inches high natural causes can be anything with teeth and speed and hunger. Then Pyrrince, who was by way of being the most adventurous, led a desperate expedition
across the highway
one night, to investigate the woods on the other side. They never came back. Some said it was hawks, some said it was a truck. Some even said they'd made it halfway and were marooned on the central reservation between endless swishing lines of cars.

Then the cafe had been built a little farther along the road. It had been a sort of improvement. It depended how you looked at it. If cold leftover fries and scraps of gray chicken were food, then there was suddenly enough for everyone.

And then it was spring, and Masklin looked around and found that there were just ten of them left, and eight of those were too old to get about much. Old Torrit was nearly ten.

It had been a dreadful summer. Grimma organized those who could still get about into midnight raids on the litter bins, and Masklin tried to hunt.

Hunting by yourself was like dying a bit at a time. Most of the things you were hunting were also hunting
you
. And even if you were lucky and made a kill, how did you get it home? It had taken two days with the rat, including sitting out at night to fight off other creatures. Ten strong hunters could do anything—rob bees' nests, trap mice, catch moles,
anything
—but one hunter by himself, with no one to watch his back in the long grass, was simply the next meal for everything with talons and claws.

To get enough to eat, you needed lots of healthy hunters. But to get lots of healthy hunters, you needed enough to eat.

“It'll be all right in the autumn,” said Grimma, bandaging his arm where a stoat had caught it. “There'll be mushrooms and berries and nuts and everything.”

Well, there hadn't been any mushrooms, and it rained so much that most of the berries rotted before they ripened. There were plenty of nuts, though. The nearest hazel tree was half a day's journey away. Masklin could carry a dozen nuts if he smashed them out of their shells and dragged them back in a paper bag from the bin. It took a whole day to do it, risking hawks all the way, and it was just enough food for a day as well.

And then the back of the burrow fell in, because of all the rain. It was almost pleasant to get out, then. It was better than listening to the grumbling about him not doing essential repairs. Oh, and there was the fire. You needed a fire at the burrow mouth, both for cooking and for keeping away night prowlers. Granny Morkie went to sleep one day and let it go out. Even she had the decency to be embarrassed.

When Masklin came back that night, he looked at the heap of dead ashes for a long time and then stuck his spear in the ground and burst out laughing, and went on laughing until he started to cry. He couldn't face the rest of them. He had to go and sit outside where, presently, Grimma brought him a shellful of nettle tea.
Cold
nettle tea.

“They're all very upset about it,” she volunteered.

Masklin gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, yes, I can tell,” he said. “I've heard them: ‘You ought to bring back another cigarette-end, boy, I'm right out of tobacco,' and ‘We never have fish these days; you might find the time to go down to the river,' and ‘Self, self, self, that's all you young people think about, in my day—'”

Grimma sighed. “They do their best,” she said. “It's just that they don't realize. There were hundreds of us when they were young.”

“It's going to take
days
to get that fire lit,” said Masklin. They had a spectacle lens; it needed a very sunny day to work.

He poked aimlessly in the mud by his feet.

“I've had enough,” he said quietly. “I'm going to leave.”

“But we need you!”

“
I
need me, too. I mean, what kind of life is this?”

“But they'll die if you go away!”

“They'll die anyway,” said Masklin.

“That's a wicked thing to say!”

“Well, it's true. Everyone dies anyway.
We'll
die anyway. Look at you. You spend your whole time washing and tidying up and cooking and chasing after them. You're nearly three! It's about time you had a life of your own.”

“Granny Morkie was very kind to me when I was small,” said Grimma defensively. “You'll be old one day.”

“You think? And who will be working their fingers to the bone to look after me?”

Masklin found himself getting angrier and angrier. He was certain he was in the right. But it
felt
as if he was in the wrong, which made it worse.

He'd thought about this for a long time, and it had always left him feeling angry and awkward. All the clever ones and the bold ones and the brave ones had gone long ago, one way or the other. Good old Masklin, they'd said, stout chap, you look after the old folk and we'll be back before you know it, just as soon as we've found a better place. Every time good old Masklin thought about this, he got indignant with them for going and with himself for staying. He always gave in, that was his trouble. He knew it. Whatever he promised himself at the start, he always took the way of least resistance.

Grimma was glaring at him.

He shrugged.

“All right, all right, so they can come with us,” he said.

“You know they won't go,” she said. “They're too old. They all grew up around here. They like it here.”

“They like it here when there's us around to wait on them,” muttered Masklin.

They left it at that. There were nuts for dinner. Masklin's had a maggot in it.

He went out afterward and sat at the top of the bank with his chin in his hands, watching the highway again.

It was a stream of red and white lights. There were humans inside those boxes, going about whatever mysterious business humans spent their time on. They were always in a hurry to get to it, whatever it was.

He was prepared to bet they didn't eat rat. Humans had it really easy. They were big and slow, but they didn't have to live in damp burrows waiting for daft old women to let the fire go out. They never had maggots in their tea. They went wherever they wanted and they did whatever they liked. The whole world belonged to them.

And all night long they drove up and down in these little trucks with lights on. Didn't they ever go to sleep? There must be hundreds of them.

He'd dreamed of leaving on a truck. Trucks often stopped at the cafe. It would be easy—well, fairly easy—to find a way onto one. They were clean and shiny—they had to go somewhere better than this. And after all, what was the alternative? They'd never see winter through here, and setting out across the fields with the bad weather coming on didn't bear thinking about.

Of course, he'd never do it. You never actually did it, in the end. You just dreamed about following those swishing lights.

And above the rushing lights, the stars. Torrit said the stars were very important. Right at the moment, Masklin didn't agree. You couldn't eat them. They weren't even much good for seeing by. The stars were pretty useless, when you thought about it. . . .

Somebody screamed.

Masklin's body got to his feet almost before his mind had even thought about it, and sped silently through the scrubby bushes toward the burrow.

Where, its head entirely underground and its brush waving excitedly at the stars, there was a dog fox. He recognized it. He'd had a couple of close shaves with it in the past.

Somewhere inside Masklin's head the bit of him that was really him—old Torrit had a lot to say about this bit—was horrified to see him snatch up his spear, which was still in the ground where he had plunged it, and stab the fox as hard as he could in a hind leg.

There was a muffled yelp and the animal struggled backward, turning an evil, foaming mask to its tormentor. Two bright yellow eyes focused on Masklin, who leaned panting on his spear. This was one of those times when time itself slowed down and everything was suddenly more real. Perhaps, if you knew you were going to die, your senses crammed in as much detail as they could while they still had the chance. . . .

There were flecks of blood around the creature's muzzle.

Masklin felt himself become angry. It welled up inside him, like a huge bubble. He didn't have much, and this grinning
thing
was taking even that away from him.

As the red tongue lolled out, he knew that he had two choices. He could run, or he could die.

So he attacked instead. The spear soared from his hand like a bird, catching the fox in the lip. It screamed and pawed at the wound, and Masklin was running, running across the dirt, propelled by the engine of his anger, and then jumping and grabbing handfuls of rank red fur and hauling himself up the fox's flank to land astride its neck and drawing his stone knife and stabbing, stabbing, at everything that was wrong with the world. . . .

The fox screamed again and leaped away. If he had been capable of thinking, then Masklin would have known that his knife wasn't doing much more than annoying the creature, but it wasn't used to meals fighting back with such fury, and its only thought now was to get away. It breasted the embankment and rushed headlong down it, toward the lights of the highway.