Switchers (23 page)

Tess tuned into it as accurately as she could. It was a strange feeling, being drawn to something she could neither see nor hear, but which exerted such a powerful attraction on the rat part of her mind. It wasn’t an active call; none of the rats was being asked to do anything except be there. It was as though they had been drawn by some sort of magnetism and were now held within its field of force, powerless to move away.

When she looked round, Tess saw Algernon struggling across the backs of the other rats towards the opposite side of the room. She tried to call him, aware that walking on another rat’s back without permission is extremely bad manners. But if he heard her at all, he ignored her and carried on, oblivious to the warning clouts and nips that the other rats were giving him. Tess bared her teeth in exasperation and followed. There is no equivalent of an apology in the rat language; instead, Tess tried to convey a sense of urgency to the rats whose backs she crossed. It was of little use, however, since all but the eldest and wisest rats in the gathering were feeling a similar sense of urgency and had little patience with shovers. By the time Tess caught up with Algernon on the other side of the room, she was covered in little cuts and bruises and thoroughly fed up.

Algernon was scratched and bitten too, but he didn’t seem to care. He was wriggling into a small hole that had been chewed in the bottom of the door which led into the hall. Tess followed. This narrow space was full of limp cardboard boxes and dusty trunks, long since abandoned. Rats were packed into every available space, level upon level of them, like the audience at a mega pop concert. A flight of stairs ran down from the floor above, and Tess noticed something which filled her rat mind with wry amusement. On the top step a cat was sitting, its face turned away in silent uninterest, as though it had no idea that it was surrounded by its worst enemy. Tess knew that the nonchalance was feigned, that beneath its smug exterior that cat was absolutely terrified. It was another measure of the single-mindedness of the gathered rats that they didn’t set upon the poor creature and tear it to shreds. Despite herself, Tess hoped that they wouldn’t change their minds.

Ahead of her, Algernon was slithering through the gathering again, over and under and around, any way that he could see of getting across the room. Tess followed, steeling herself against another series of bites and blows. From time to time she looked around her, hoping to catch a glimpse of friends from the past; Long Nose, perhaps, or Stuck Six Days in a Gutter Pipe, but she had no luck. They could have been anywhere. There was no way for Tess to tell how many rats had gathered, or if any were exempt from the call.

Algernon scuttled along beside the wall and Tess followed, determined to try and hold him still by force if once she managed to catch up with him. But as they slipped through the open door into the front room, a new message began on the stranger’s mental wavelength. It was electrifying. Every rat in the place sprang to attention, some sitting up on their tails or standing on their hind legs in an effort to understand.

Tess was no less attentive than the others. The images coming into her mind were quite clear. The rats were to search beneath the city for a certain type of large, stone container. Some of these structures would be open to the human world, in huge basement rooms where they were regularly visited. Others would be buried in the ground where no humans could reach, and these were the kind that the rats had to go and find. If and when they succeeded they were to return and report.

That was all. As abruptly as it had started, the communication ended, and for a moment there was a profound silence. Then the visual babble began again, becoming pandemonium as a hundred thousand rats began to react. Tess resisted the temptation to join the confusion and looked round. Rats were pouring out of the room as though someone had let the plug out. She caught a glimpse of Algernon disappearing into a hole, like a piece of white paper being swept by the current into a drain, and a moment later she was alone.

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Copyright © 1998 by Kate Thompson

Cover design by Michel Vrana

978-1-4804-2420-3

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