Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (18 page)

'He would have told you eventually; I know he intended to. Indeed, you would have found it out yourself, you would have seen it happening. But it was hard; he kept putting it off, then, finally, it was too late.'

'Poor Jonathan,' said Mrs Frisby. 'He should have told me. I wouldn't have minded. But will my children…'

'Also have longer lives?' said Nicodemus. 'We don't know yet. We think so, but our own children are not yet old enough to be certain. We do know they have inherited the ability to learn. They master reading almost without effort.'

He stood up, took out his reading glass, and looked at the clock. But Mrs Frisby interrupted again.

'One more thing,' she said. 'What happened to Jenner?'

Nicodemus said: 'He left. He was against the Plan from the start. In our discussions, he tried to persuade others to oppose it, too. Only a few joined him; though there are some others who are still doubtful about it, they're going to stay with us and try it.

'The arguments stayed reasonably friendly, but the last straw, for Jenner, was when we decided to destroy the machines.'

'Destroy them!'

'For two reasons. One, so that if anyone ever finds the cave, there won't be any evidence of what we've been doing - nothing but broken bits of metal, debris that will look like ordinary junk. We'll pull out our electric cable, our lights and our water pipes. We'll close up all the tunnels leading in.

'The other reason is more important. When we move to Thorn Valley, we're going to have some hard times. We know that, and we're braced for it. If this cave is still open, with the machines and lights, the carpets and running water still here, there will be a terrible temptation to give up and move back to the soft life. We want to remove that temptation.

'But when Jenner heard the decision - it was made at a meeting - he grew really angry. He denounced us all as idiots and dreamers. He stamped out of the meeting, and a few days later he left the group forever, taking six of his followers with him. We don't know where they went, but we think they will try to find a place where they can set up a new life like this one.

'I wish them luck, but they'll have trouble. There won't be any Toy Tinker this time. They'll have to steal their machines - everything. That worries us a bit, because if they get caught, who knows what might happen? But there's nothing we can do about it. We're going ahead with the Plan; and once we get to Thorn Valley, I think we can stop worrying.'

Justin stood up. 'It's time to go.' He picked up the paper with the sleeping draught in it.

Mrs Frisby, Justin and Mr Ages walked together up the long corridor to the rosebush.

'Remember, when you come up through the hole in the kitchen floor,' Mr Ages said, 'you'll be under a cabinet. It's low, but there's room to move. Go a few steps forward, and you'll be able to see out into the room.

'Mrs Fitzgibbon will be there, getting dinner for her family. They eat at about six. When she's got their dinner ready, she'll feed Dragon. He won't be in the kitchen, but he'll be waiting just outside the kitchen door on the porch. She doesn't let him in while she's cooking because he makes such a pest of himself, rubbing against her ankles and getting between her feet.

'If you look to your right, you'll see his bowl. It's blue, and it has the word Kitty written over and over again around the side. She'll pick it up, fill it with catfood, and put it down again in the same place.

'Then watch closely. She'll walk over to the door to let him in, and that's your chance. Her back will be towards you. She's got to walk about twenty feet - it's a big kitchen. The bowl will be about two feet away from you. Be sure the paper packet is open - then dash out, dump the powder into the food, and dash back. You don't want to be in sight when Dragon comes in. I can tell you that from experience.'

'Is that how you got hurt?'

'I got there a few seconds late. I decided there was still time. I was wrong.'

At the arch in the rosebush Mr Ages left them. With his cast, he would not be able to climb through the hole to the kitchen; there was no point in his going further.

Mrs Frisby and Justin moved out of the rosebush and looked around them. It was still light, though the sun was low on the horizon. Straight ahead of them, perhaps two hundred feet away, stood the big white farmhouse. Dragon was already on the porch, sitting just outside the door, looking at it expectantly. To their right was the tractor shed, and beyond that was the barnyard fence and the barn itself, casting a long shadow. Behind them rose the woods and the mountains; to the left Mrs Frisby could see the big stone in the middle of the garden, near which her children waited. As soon as her task was done, she thought, she must hurry to them and get ready for the move.

'We go under the right side of the house,' Justin said quietly. 'Follow me.' They made their way around the edge of the yard, staying in the shadows, keeping an eye on Dragon. Justin still wore his satchel and had put the powder package in it.

There was a basement under the main part of the Fitzgibbons' house, but the big kitchen had been added later and stood on a foundation of concrete blocks, with only a crawl space beneath. As they approached this grey foundation, Mrs Frisby saw that near the middle of it, a few inches off the ground, there was a square patch of darker grey. It was a hole, left for ventilation, and there was a screen over it. When they reached it, Justin caught hold of the screen and pulled the corner. It swung open.

'We loosened it a bit,' he explained, holding it open for her. Mrs Frisby crept through.

'Careful,' he said. 'It's dark. There's a drop of about a foot. Just jump. We put some straw at the bottom, so it's soft.'

Holding her breath, Mrs Frisby jumped blindly into the blackness, and felt the cushion of straw under her feet. In a moment Justin landed beside her. They were under the Fitzgibbons' kitchen.

'Now,' he said softly, 'look to your left. See the patch of light? That's the hole. The light comes from the kitchen. We've piled earth up under it, so it's easy to reach. Come on.'

Mrs Frisby followed him; as they got near the bright hole she could see around her a little. They were walking across bare earth, dry and cool to the touch; overhead there were heavy wooden beams holding up the floor, and above those the floorboards themselves. Under the hole rose a small round hill of earth. They walked up this, and then Justin whispered:

'This is as far as I can go. There's not room for me to get through. I'll wait here. Come back down as soon as you've finished. Here's the powder.' He handed her the paper packet. 'Remember to tear it open before you go out to Dragon's bowl. Hurry, now. I can hear Mrs Fitzgibbon moving around. She's getting the dinner. Be careful, and good luck.'

Mrs Frisby first pushed the packet up through the hole. Then, as quietly as she could, grasping both sides, she pulled herself up and into the kitchen.

It was light there. But Mr Ages had not been joking when he said the ceiling was low. There was less than an inch between the floor and the bottom of the cabinet, so that she could not walk properly but had to flatten herself out and crawl. She did, a few steps, and discovered that she was trembling. 'Stay calm,' she told herself. 'Don't get panicky, or you'll do something foolish and spoil everything.'

Thus admonished, she crept forward again until she was near the edge of the cabinet. She stopped. From there she could see out into the kitchen fairly well. Straight across from her stood a big white gas stove, and in front of it, putting the lid on a pot, was Mrs Fitzgibbon. Because the edge of the cabinet was so low, Mrs Frisby could not see her head, but only up to her shoulders.

'There,' Mrs Fitzgibbon said, as if to herself. 'The stew is done, the bread's in the oven, the table is set.'

Where was the cat's bowl? Mrs Frisby looked to her right as Mr Ages had said. There it was, blue, with words inscribed around the side. Yet something was wrong. It was not two feet from the cabinet, but more like four or five. In the corner, where it should have been, rose four round wooden legs. She realized that she was looking at the bottom of a kitchen stool.

No matter, she thought. The extra distance is just a couple of feet. Mr Ages had not mentioned a stool, but perhaps they moved it around. She crawled to her right as close to the bowl as she could get without showing herself, and tore open the package.

Just as she did this Mrs Fitzgibbon walked over from the stove. Her hand appeared, picked up the bowl, and Mrs Frisby heard it thump on the counter over her head. A cutting sound - a tin opener - the scrape of a spoon, and the bowl was back on the floor. The strong fishy smell of catfood. Mrs Fitzgibbon walked away.

Now.

Mrs Frisby moved swiftly out into the room, across the open floor, holding the powder, her eyes intent only on the bowl. She was no longer trembling. She poured in the powder, which instantly dissolved in the moist catfood. Still clutching the paper, she turned and sped towards the cabinet.

With a bang, the lights went dim. The ceiling, which had somehow become curved, was filled with little round moons. Mrs Frisby kept running, and her face struck a cold, hard wall of metal.

A voice shouted:

'Mother! Don't let Dragon in yet. I've caught a mouse.'

Billy, the young Fitzgibbon son, had been sitting on the kitchen stool, his feet up on the rung, eating berries from a colander. The colander, upside down, was now over Mrs Frisby.

From a birdcage, Mrs Frisby watched the Fitzgibbons eat dinner. There was dinner for her, too - breadcrumbs, cheese, and bits of carrot - on the floor of the cage, along with a small bowl of water. The cage had been occupied until a few months before by a yellow canary named Porgy, who had lived in it for five years and then died of old age.

To get her out from under the colander, Billy had slid a piece of cardboard beneath it, pinching her foot sharply in the process, so that it hurt when she walked. She had been transferred first to a shoebox.

'Can I keep it?' Billy had asked his mother.

'What for? It's just a field mouse.'

'For a pet. I like it.' Billy had tried to look at Mrs Frisby through some holes he had punched in the top of the box, but it was dark inside.

'I suppose so. For a few days. You'll have to feed it.'

'I think I'll put it in Porgy's cage. I can't see it in this box. It must be hungry. It was trying to eat Dragon's food. Dumb mouse. It might have been killed.'

No one had noticed the small torn piece of paper at first; then Mrs Fitzgibbon had absently picked it up and tossed it into the wastebasket.

A few days! Mrs Frisby felt sick. And after a few days - then what? Would they let her go? Or would Billy plead for a few more? But even if they did set her free - her children were alone; the rats were coming tonight to move her house. Why had Billy picked today, of all days, to sit on the stool? She had not the heart to eat the food that lay on the cage floor. She felt like weeping.

Paul came in for dinner, followed by his father. He looked at her in the cage.

'Why don't you let it go?' he said to Billy. 'Poor little thing. It's scared to death.'

'No it's not. It's just not used to the cage.'

'I bet it will die.'

'I bet it won't.'

'You can't just put wild animals in cages. You have to catch them when they're babies.'

'They do it in zoos.'

'Yes, but they know more about it. Anyway, a lot of those die, too.'

'It's strange that it was in here at all,' said Mrs Fitzgibbon. 'I haven't seen any signs of mice. I didn't think we had any.'

They sat at the table, and Mrs Fitzgibbon served the stew. It was a long, square-cut farm table, big enough to feed, besides the family, the four hired hands who would be working with Mr Fitzgibbon during the planting and harvesting. The Fitzgibbons sat together around one end of it.

Mrs Frisby's cage hung from a metal stand in the corner on the opposite side of the room, quite high up, so that the floor where she crouched was above their heads. She could watch them, looking down; but if she retreated to the far side of the cage, they could not see her, nor she them. She kept hoping that Paul would resume the argument with Billy and win it, or at least convince Mr or Mrs Fitzgibbon that they should let her go; but Paul was now busy eating. So, moving quietly, she crept to the back of the cage. There was a sliding door halfway up the side, which Billy had lifted to put her in. Remembering Nicodemus's story, she looked at it, wondering if she could climb to it, if she could get it open if she did. Not now, but later, when they had left the kitchen. Maybe. But it looked quite big and heavy. She thought about her children again. Surely, when Justin had waited a little longer, he would realize that something had gone wrong. He would go and talk to them. But what could he tell them? 'Children, your mother went into the kitchen with Dragon and she hasn't come out.' No. But whatever he said, they would be dreadfully frightened and worried. Poor Cynthia! Poor Timothy - poor all of them.

She had one small satisfaction. Dragon, who had been admitted after she was safely caged, had eaten his bowl of catfood greedily, sleeping powder and all, purring as he licked the last scraps from the bottom.