King Rat (11 page)

His hands were shaking and his knees quivered, for to do this in the half light, lying propped on one elbow, screening the bottles with his body, was very awkward.

Night swarmed across the sky, adding to the closeness. Mosquitoes began to attack.

When all the bottles were joined together, Mac stretched the ache from his back and dried his slippery hands. Then he pulled out the earphone from its hiding place in the top bottle and checked the connections to make sure they were tight. The insulated source wire was also in the top bottle. He unrolled it and checked that the needles were still tightly soldered to the ends of the wire. Again he wiped away his sweat and rapidly rechecked all the joining connections, thinking as he did that the radio still looked as pure and clean as when he had finished it secretly in Java - while Larkin and Peter Marlowe guarded - two years ago.

It had taken six months to design and make.

Only the lower half of the bottle could be used — the top half had to contain water — so he not only had to compress the radio into three tiny rigid units, but also had to set the units into leakless containers, then solder the containers into the water bottles.

The three of them had carried the bottles for eighteen months. Against such a day as this.

Mac got on his knees and stuck two needles into the guts of the wires that joined the ceiling light to its source. Then he cleared his throat.

Peter Marlowe got up and made sure no one was near. He quickly unsnapped the light bulb and turned the light switch on. Then he went back to the doorway and stood guard there. He saw that Larkin was still in position guarding the other side, and gave the all-clear signal.

When Mac heard it, he turned up the volume and picked up the earphone and listened.

Seconds mounted into minutes. Peter Marlowe jerked around, suddenly frightened, as he heard Mac moan.

“What’s the matter, Mac?” he whispered.

Mac stuck his head out of the mosquito net, his face ashen. “It does na’ work, mon,” he said. “The fucking thing does na’ work.”

Six days later Max cornered a rat. In the American hut.

“Look at that son of a bitch,” the King gasped. “That’s the biggest rat I’ve ever seen!”

“My God,” Peter Marlowe said. “Watch out it doesn’t bite your arm off!”

They were all surrounding the rat. Max was gloating, a bamboo broom in his hands. Tex had a baseball bat, Peter Marlowe another broom. The rest wielded sticks and knives.

Only the King was unarmed, but his eyes were on the rat and he was ready to jump out of the way. He had been in his corner, chatting with Peter Marlowe, when Max first shouted, and he had leaped up with the others. It was just after the breakfast.

“Look out!” he shouted as he anticipated the rat’s sudden dash for freedom.

Max swiped at it savagely and missed. Another broom caught it a glancing blow, turning it on its back for an instant. But the rat whirled to its feet and ran back into the corner and turned, hissing and spitting and working its lips from its needle teeth.

“Jesus,” said the King. “Thought the bastard got away that time.”

The rat was nearly a hairy foot long. Its tail was another foot in length and as thick at the base as a man’s thumb and hairless. Small beady eyes darting left and right seeking escape. Brown and dirt-obscene. Head tapering to a sharp muzzle, mouth narrow, large — very large — incisor teeth. Total weight near two pounds. Vicious and very dangerous.

Max was breathing hard from the exertion and his eyes were on the rat. “Chrissake,” he spat, “I hate rats. I hate even looking at it. Let’s kill it. Ready?”

“Wait a second, Max,” the King said. “There’s no hurry. It can’t get away now. I want to see what it does.”

“It’ll make another break, that’s what,” Max said.

“So we’ll stop it. What’s the hurry?” The King looked back at the rat and grinned. “You’re clobbered, you son of a bitch. Dead.”

Almost as though the rat understood, it made a dart at the King, teeth bared. Only the wild flurry of blows and shouts drove it back, again.

“That bastard’d tear you to pieces if it got its teeth in you,” the King said. “Never knew they’d be so fast.”

“Hey,” Tex said. “Maybe we should keep it.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“We could keep it. A mascot maybe. Or when we had nothing to do, we could let it out and chase it.”

“Hey, Tex,” said Dino. “Maybe you got something there. You mean like they did in the old days. With foxes?”

“That’s a lousy idea,” said the King. “It’s okay to kill the bastard. No need to torture it, even if it is a rat. It never did you any harm.”

“Maybe. But rats’re vermin. They got no right to be alive.”

“Sure they have,” said the King. “If it wasn’t for them, well, they’re scavengers, like microbes. Weren’t for rats, why the whole world’d be a stink-pile.”

“Hell,” Tex said. “Rats ruin the crops. Maybe this’s the bastard that ate the bottom out of the rice sack. Its belly’s big enough.”

“Yeah,” Max said malevolently. “They got away with near thirty pounds one night.”

Again the rat stabbed for freedom. It broke the circle and fled down the hut. Only through luck was it cornered again. Once more the men surrounded it

“We’d better finish it off. Next time we mayn’t be so lucky,” wheezed the King. Then suddenly he had an inspiration. “Wait a minute,” he said as they all began to close on the corner.

“What?”

“I got an idea.” He whipped around to Tex. “Get a blanket. Quick.”

Tex jumped for his bed and ripped off the blanket.

“Now,” the King said, “you and Max get the blanket and trap the rat.”

“Huh?”

“I want it alive. Come on, get the lead out,” the King snapped.

“With my blanket? You crazy? It’s the only one I got!”

“I’ll get you another. Just catch the bastard.”

They all gawked at the King. Then Tex shrugged. He and Max took hold of the blanket, using it as a screen, and began to converge on the corner. The others held their brooms ready to make sure the rat would not escape around the edges. Then Tex and Max made a sudden dive and the rat was caught in the folds of the material. Its teeth and claws ripped for an escape, but in the uproar Max rolled the blanket up and the blanket became a squirming ball. The men were excited and shouting at the capture.

“Keep it quiet,” the King ordered. “Max, you hold it. And make sure it doesn’t get out. Tex, put on the Java. We’ll all have some coffee.”

“What’s this idea?” Peter Marlowe asked.

“It’s too good to let out, just like that. Well have the coffee first.”

While they were drinking their coffee, the King stood up. “All right, you guys. Now listen. We’ve got a rat, right?”

“So?” Miller was perplexed as they all were.

“We’ve no food, right?”

“Sure, but —“

“Oh my God,” Peter Marlowe said aghast. “You don’t mean you’re suggesting we eat it?”

“Of course not,” the King said. Then he beamed seraphically. “We’re not going to. But there’re plenty who’d like to buy some meat —“

“Rat meat?” Byron Jones III’s eye popped majestically.

“You’re outta your mind. You think someone’d buy rat meat? Course they wouldn’t,” Miller said impatiently.

“Of course no one’ll buy the meat if they know it’s rat. But say they don’t know, huh?” The King let the words settle, then continued benignly, “Say we don’t tell anyone. The meat’ll look like any other meat. We’ll say it’s rabbit —“

“There aren’t any rabbits in Malaya, old chap,” Peter Marlowe said.

“Well, think of an animal that is, about the same size.”

“I suppose,” Peter Marlowe said after a moment’s reflection, “that you could call it squirrel — or, I know,” he brightened. “Deer. That’s it, deer —“

“For Chrissake, a deer’s much bigger,” Max said, still holding the squirming blanket. “I shot one up in the Alleghenies—“

“I don’t mean that type of deer. I mean Rusa tikus. They’re tiny, about eight inches high and weigh perhaps a couple of pounds. About the size of the rat. The natives consider them a delicacy.” He laughed. “Rusa tikus translated means ‘mouse deer.’”

The King rubbed his hands, delighted. “Very good, old chap!” He looked around the room. “We’ll sell Rusa tikus haunches. And that ain’t gonna be a lie either.”

They all laughed.

“Now we’ve had the laugh, let’s kill the goddam rat and sell the goddam legs,” Max said. “The bastard’s gonna get out any minute. And I’m goddamned if I’m gonna get bit.”

“We got one rat,” the King said ignoring him. “All we’ve got to do is find out if it’s a male or female. Then we get the opposite one. We put ‘em together. Presto, we’re in business.”

“Business?” Tex said.

“Sure.” The King looked around happily. “Men, we’re in the breeding business. We’re going to make us a rat farm. With the dough we make, we’ll buy chicken — and the peasants can eat the tikus. So long as no one opens his goddam mouth, it’s a natural.”

There was an appalled silence. Then Tex said weakly: “But where we gonna keep the rats while they’re breeding?”

“In the slit trench. Where else?”

“But say there’s an air raid. We might wanna use the trench.”

“We’ll fence off one end. Just enough to keep the rats in.” The King’s eyes sparkled. “Just think. Fifty of these big bastards a week to sell. Why, we’ve got a gold mine. You know the old saying, breed like rats…”

“How often do they breed?” Miller asked, absently scratching his pelt.

“I don’t know. Anybody know?” The King waited, but they all shook their heads. “Where the hell we gonna find out about their habits?”

“I know,” Peter Marlowe said. “Vexley’s class.”

“Huh?”

“Vexley’s class. He teaches botany, zoology, that sort of thing. We could ask him.”

They looked at one another thoughtfully. Then suddenly they began to cheer. Max almost dropped the fighting blanket amid cries of “Mind the gold, you clumsy bastard,” “Don’t let go, for Pete’s sake,” “Watch it, Max!”

“All right, I got the bastard.” Max drowned out the catcalls, then nodded at Peter Marlowe.

“For an officer, you’re all right. So we’ll go to school.”

“Oh no you won’t,” said the King crisply. “You got work to do.”

“Like what?”

“Like liberate another rat. Whichever sex this one isn’t. Peter and I’ll get the info. Now let’s get with it!”

Tex and Byron Jones III prepared the slit trench. It was directly under the hut, six feet deep, four feet wide and thirty feet long.

“Great,” Tex said excitedly. “Room for a thousand of the bastards!”

It took them a few minutes to devise an efficient gate. Tex went to steal chicken wire while Byron Jones III went to steal wood. Jones grinned as he remembered some fine pieces belonging to a bunch of Limeys who weren’t too careful about guarding it, and by the time Tex returned, he had the framework already made. Nails came from the roof of the hut, the hammer had also been “borrowed” from some careless mechanic up in the garage months ago, along with wrenches, screwdrivers, and a lot of useful things.

Once the gate was in position and neat, Tex fetched the King.

“Good,” the King said as he inspected it. “Very good.”

“Damned if I know how you do it,” Peter Marlowe said. “You work so fast.”

“You got something to do, you do it. That’s American style.” The King nodded for Tex to get Max.

Max crawled under the hut to join them. He gingerly dropped the rat into its section. The rat whirled and frantically sought an escape. When there was none to be found, it backed into a corner and hissed at them violently.

“It looks healthy enough,” the King grinned.

“Hey, we got to give it a name,” Tex said.

“That’s easy. It’s Adam.”

“Yeah, but say it’s a girl.”

“Then it’s Eve.” The King crawled from under the hut. “Come on, Peter, let’s get with it.”

Squadron Leader Vexley’s class had already begun when at length they tracked him down.

“Yes?” asked Vexley, astonished to see the King and a young officer standing near the hut in the sun, watching him.

“We thought,” began Peter Marlowe self-consciously, “we thought we might, er, join the class. If, of course, we’re not interrupting,” he added quickly.

“Join the class?” Vexley was bewildered. He was a bleak, one-eyed man with a face of stretched parchment, mottled and scarred by the flames of his final bomber. His class had only four pupils and they were idiots who had no interest in his subject. He knew that he only continued the class as a sop to indecision; it was easier to pretend that it was a success than to stop. In the beginning he had been enthusiastic, but now he knew it was a pretense. And if he stopped the class he would have no purpose in life.

A long time ago the camp had started a university. The University of Changi. Classes were organized. The Brass had ordered it. “Good for the troops,” they had said. “Give them something to do. Make them better themselves. Force them to be busy, then they won’t get into trouble.”

There were courses in languages and art and engineering — for among the original hundred thousand men there was at least one man who knew any subject.

The knowledge of the world. A great opportunity. Broaden horizons. Learn a trade. Prepare for the Utopia that would come to pass once the goddam war ended and things were back to normal. And the university was Athenian. No classrooms. Only a teacher who found a place in the shade and grouped his students around him.

But the prisoners of Changi were just ordinary men, so they sat on their butts and said, “Tomorrow I’ll join a class.” Or they joined and when they discovered that knowledge comes hard they would miss a class and another class and then they would say, “Tomorrow I’ll rejoin. Tomorrow I’ll start to become what I want to be afterwards. Mustn’t waste time. Tomorrow I’ll really start.”

But in Changi, as elsewhere, there was only today.

“You really want to join my class?” Vexley repeated incredulously.

“You sure we won’t be putting you to any trouble, sir?” the King asked cordially.

Vexley got up with quickening interest and made a space for them in the shade.

He was delighted to see new blood. And the King! My God, what a catch! The King in his class! Maybe he’ll have some cigarettes . . . “Delighted, my boy, delighted.” He shook the King’s extended hand warmly.

“Squadron Leader Vexley!”

“Happy to know you, sir.”

“Flight Lieutenant Marlowe,” Peter Marlowe said as he also shook hands and sat down in the shade.

Vexley waited nervously till they were seated and absently pressed his thumb into the back of his hand, counting the seconds till the indentation in the skin slowly filled. Pellagra had its compensations, he thought. And thinking of skin and bone reminded him of whales and his pop-eye brightened. “Well, today I was going to talk about whales. Do you know about whales? Ah,” he said ecstatically as the King brought out a pack of Kooas and offered him one. The King passed the pack around the whole class.

The four students accepted the cigarettes and moved to give the King and Peter Marlowe more space. They wondered what the hell the King was doing there, but they didn’t really care — he’d given them a real tailor-made cigarette.

Vexley started to continue his lecture on whales. He loved whales. He loved them to distraction.

“Whales are without a doubt the highest form that nature has aspired to,” he said, very pleased with the resonance of his voice. He noticed the King’s frown. “Did you have a question?” he asked eagerly.

“Well, yes. Whales are interesting, but what about rats?”

“I beg your pardon,” Vexley said politely.

“Very interesting what you were saying about whales, sir,” the King said. “I was just wondering about rats, that’s all.”

“What about rats?”

“I was just wondering if you knew anything about them,” the King said. He had a lot to do and didn’t want to screw around.

“What he means,” Peter Marlowe said quickly, “is that if whales are almost human in their reflexes, isn’t that true of rats, too?”

Vexley shook his head and said distastefully, “Rodents are entirely different. Now about whales…”

“How are they different?” asked the King.