Diggers (11 page)

“Find a stick long enough to reach up to the cab,” he said. “Please.”

They fell over themselves to obey.

III. The younger nomes spoke, saying, Would that we were the nomes our fathers were, to ride upon the Truck, and what was it like?

IV. And Dorcas said, It was scary.

V. That was what it was like.

From
The Book of Nome,
Strange Frogs Chap. 2, v. III–V

I
T WAS PRETTY
much like the cab of the truck that had brought them from the Store. It brought back old memories.

“Wow!” said Sacco. “And we all drove one of these?”

“Seven hundred of us,” said Dorcas proudly. “Your dad was one of them. You were in the back with your mothers. All you lads were.”

“I'm not a lad,” said Nooty.

“Sorry,” said Dorcas. “Slip of the tongue. In my day girls stayed at home most of the time. Not that I've got anything at all against them getting out and about a bit now,” he added hurriedly, not wanting another Grimma on his hands. “I'm not against that at all.”

“I wish I'd been older on the Drive,” said Nooty. “It must have been
amazing
.”

“It terrified the life out of me,” said Dorcas.

The others wandered around the cab like tourists in a cathedral, gawking. Nooty tried to press a pedal.

“Amazing,” she said, under her breath.

“Sacco, you get up there and take those keys out,” said Dorcas. “The rest of you, no lollygagging. Those humans could be back any time. Nooty, stop making those
brrrm-brrrm
noises. I'm sure nice girls shouldn't make those kind of noises,” he added lamely.

Sacco swarmed up the steering-wheel post and wrestled the keys out of the ignition while the rest of the boys poked around in the cab.

Grimma wasn't with them. She hadn't wanted to come up into the cab. She'd turned very quiet, in fact. She'd stayed down in the lane with a sullen look on her face.

But it had needed saying, Dorcas told himself.

He looked around the cab. Let's see, he thought . . . we've got the battery, we've got the fuel, was there anything else Big John needed?

“Come on, everyone,” he called, “let's be getting out of here. Nooty, stop trying to
move
things all the time. It'd take all of you to shift the gear lever. Come on, before the humans come back.”

He made his way to the door and heard a click behind him.

“I said come on—
What do you think you're doing?
”

The young nomes stared at him, wide-eyed.

“We're seeing if we can move the gear lever, Dorcas,” said Nooty. “If you press this knob, you can—”

“Don't press the knob! Don't press the knob!”

The first inkling Grimma had that something was going wrong was a nasty little crunching sound and a change in the light.

The truck was moving. Not very fast, because the two front tires were flat. But the lane was steep. It was moving all right, and just because it had started off slowly didn't mean there wasn't something huge and unstoppable about it.

She stared at it in horror.

The lane ran between high banks all the way down to the big road—and the railway.

“I said don't press it! Did I say press it? I said don't press it!”

The terrified nomes stared at him, their open mouths a row of O's.

“It's not the gear lever! It's the hand brake, you idiots!”

Now they could all hear the crunching noise and feel the slight vibration.

“Er,” said Sacco, his voice shaking, “what's a hand brake, Dorcas?”

“It keeps it stopped on hills and things! Don't just stand there! Help me push it back up!”

The cab was, very gently, beginning to sway from side to side. The truck was definitely moving. The hand brake wasn't. Dorcas heaved on it until blue and purple spots flashed in front of his eyes.

“I just gave the knob on the end a push!” Nooty babbled. “I only wanted to see what it did!”

“Yes, yes, all right . . .” Dorcas stared around. What he needed was a lever. What he needed was about fifty nomes. What he needed most of all was not to be here.

He staggered across the bouncing floor to the doorway and cautiously peered out. The hedge was moving past quite gently, as if it weren't in a particular hurry to get anywhere, but the surface of the lane already had a blurred look.

We could probably jump, he thought. And if we're lucky, we won't break anything. If we're even luckier, we'll avoid the wheels. How lucky do I feel, right at this minute?

Not very.

Sacco joined him.

“Perhaps if we took a good running jump—” he began.

There was a thump as the truck hit the bank, heeled over, and then bounced back onto the lane.

The nomes struggled to their feet.

“On the other hand, perhaps not a good idea,” said Sacco. “What shall we do now, Dorcas?”

“Just hang on,” said Dorcas. “I think the banks will keep it on the lane, and I suppose it'll just roll to a halt eventually.” He sat down suddenly as the truck bounced off the bank again. “You wanted to know what a truck ride was like. Well, now you know.”

There was another thump. The branch of a tree caught the door, swung it open, and then, with a terrible metallic noise, ripped it off.

“Was it like this?” shouted Nooty, above the noise. To Dorcas's amazement, now that the immediate danger was over, she seemed to be quite enjoying it. We're bringing up new nomes, he thought. They're not so scared of things as we were. They know about a bigger world.

He coughed.

“Well, apart from it being in the dark, and we could see where we were going, yes,” he said. “I think we all ought to hang on to something. Just in case it gets bumpy.”

The truck rolled down the lane and onto the main road. A car skidded into the hedge to avoid it; another truck managed to stop at the end of four long streaks of scorched rubber on the wet road.

None of the nomes in the cab noticed this at the time. All they felt was another thump as the truck bounced gently off the far side of the road and down the lane that ran toward the railway. Where, with red lights flashing, the barriers were coming down.

Sacco peered out of the stricken doorway.

“We've just crossed over a road,” he said.

“Ah,” said Dorcas.

“I just saw a car run into the back of another car, and a truck ended up going sideways,” Sacco went on.

“Ah. Lucky we got over, then,” said Dorcas. “There's some dangerous drivers around.”

The gritty sound of the flat tires rolling over gravel gradually slowed down. There was the snap of something breaking behind the truck, a couple of bumps, and then another thump that brought them to a halt.

They heard a low, booming noise.

Nomes hear things differently from humans, and the shrill clanging of the grade crossing's warning alarms sounded, to them, like the mournful tolling of an ancient bell.

“We've stopped,” said Dorcas. He thought: We could have pressed the brake pedal. We could have looked for something to press it with and pressed it. I must be getting too old. Oh, well. “Come on, no hanging around. We can jump out. You youngsters can, anyway.”

“Why? What are you going to do?” said Sacco.

“I'm going to wait until you've all jumped out, and then I'm going to tell you to catch me,” said Dorcas pleasantly. “I'm not as young as I was. Now, off you go.”

They got down awkwardly, hanging on to the edge of the sill and dropping on to the road.

Dorcas lowered himself gingerly onto the brink and sat with his legs dangling over the drop.

It looked like a long way down.

Below him, Nooty prodded Sacco respectfully on the arm.

“Er. Sacco,” she said, nervously.

“What is it?”

“Look at that metal rail thing over there.”

“Well, what about it?”

“There's another one over
there
,” said Nooty, pointing.

“Yes, I can see,” said Sacco testily. “What about them? They're not doing anything.”

“We're right in between them,” said Nooty. “I just thought I should, you know, point it out. And there's that bell thing ringing.”

“Yes, I can hear it,” said Sacco irritably. “I wish it would stop.”

“I just wondered why it was.”

Sacco shrugged. “Who knows why anything happens?” he said. “Come
on,
Dorcas.
Please.
We haven't got all day.”

“I'm just composing myself,” said Dorcas quietly.

Nooty wandered miserably away from the group and looked down at one of the rails. It was bright and shiny.

And it seemed to be singing.

She bent closer. Yes, it was certainly making a faint humming sound. Which was odd. Bits of metal didn't normally make any noise at all. Not by themselves, anyway.

She looked up at the truck.

As she stared at the truck stuck between the flashing lights and the shiny rails, the world seemed to change slightly and a horrible idea formed in her head.

“Sacco!” she quavered. “Sacco, we're right on the railway line, Sacco!”

Something a long way off made a deep, mournful noise.
Two
deep, mournful noises, one a little deeper and more mournful than the other.

Dee
-dah.

Dee
-dah.

From the gateway of the quarry, Grimma had a good view of the road all the way to the airport. She saw the train, and the truck.

The train had seen the truck too. It suddenly started to make the long-drawn-out screaming noise of bits of metal in distress. By the time it actually
hit
the thing, it seemed to be going quite slowly. It even managed to stay on the rails.

Bits of truck spun away in every direction, like a firework.

I. Nisodemus said unto them, Do you doubt that I can stop the power of Order?

II. And they said, Um . . .

From
The Book of Nome,
Chases v. I–II

O
THER NOMES CAME
running across the quarry floor, with Nisodemus in the lead, and piled up in a crowd around the gate.

“What happened? What happened?”

“I saw everything,” said a middle-aged nome. “I was on watch, and I saw Dorcas and some of the boys go into the truck. And then it rolled away down the hill and then it went over the road and then it stopped right on the railway and then . . . and then . . .”

“I forbade all meddling with these infernal machines,” said Nisodemus. “And I said we were to stop, um, putting people on watch, didn't I? The watch Arnold Bros (est. 1905) maintains should be enough for humble nomes!”