The Tides of Avarice (37 page)

Confused, he looked around him. The kerthump of the chimpanzee hitting the road, and the ensuing torrent of curses, seemed strangely distant.

That was because they were strangely distant, a full fifty yards away.

Sylvester had no recollection of covering the intervening distance. He had no conception of how he'd been able to do so, burdened as he was by about a ton and a half of lifeless Mrs. Pickleberry.

Viola came puffing up to him. He must have overtaken her on the way. All around, lights were coming on in the houses as the chimp's screams of anger woke the neighbors. In a few moments there was going to be a mob out here, a mob that'd think nothing of ripping a few foreign lemmings limb from limb.

“My hero,” gasped Viola, looking as if she were about to fall into Sylvester's arms, even though they were already full.

“Keep running,” he cried. “Keep running for your life. We're not out of the woods yet.”

“You mean we're not into the—oh, never mind.”

They ran.

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They stopped running when Sylvester tripped over a root and went flying, Mrs. Pickleberry shooting out of his arms to fly even farther. Fortunately, they both landed sprawling on soft, mushy ground.

“You all right, boss?” said Rasco hoarsely in Sylvester's ear.

Sylvester swallowed a mouthful of mud and jungle-floor compost. The fall hadn't hurt. Having just run flat-out carrying the heavy Mrs. Pickleberry for at least five hundred miles was what was hurting him. Well, maybe it hadn't been quite five hundred miles. But a pretty hefty distance, anyway.

“I'll be all right,” he managed to say. “I hope. See how Daphne is.”

“I'm all right,” said Mrs. Pickleberry from a few yards away. Sylvester was dimly aware of her sitting up in the moonlight. She cackled. “Wha'ever made you think I wun't?”

“You were uncon—oh, never mind.”

“Me? Unconscious? Not me, I wasn't, but why should I tire out me old legs when there was a young gemmun prepared to tire out his legs fer me?”

She's lying, thought Sylvester dully, nestling his head on a lump of something squishy. She was out cold. The fall must have jolted her awake again. Why's she lying about it? What's she trying to hide?

“Mom?” said Viola in a worried tone of voice. Sylvester couldn't immediately tell where she was, then heard her sit down heavily beside her mother. “Are you all right?”

“'Course I'm all right, you young nincompoop.”

“Mo–om.”

“No need to be bothering your head about an old baggins like me.”

She must be all right, thought Sylvester, shutting his eyes firmly. They're bickering again.

“Don't go to sleep on me,” said Rasco urgently. The mouse tugged at Sylvester's ear – hard. “We're not safe yet.”

“Um-hm.”

“Wake up!”

Sleep seemed an excellent idea to Sylvester. Sleep was an enormous puffy mattress, half the size of the world, and it smelled something like fresh straw, something like warm puppies. He'd just climbed aboard the edge of the mattress, and was now walking in long, bouncy, restful strides towards the center of it. With each new stride he took, his legs bent just a little more than they had the last time, and moved a little more slowly, so that very soon he was going to be crawling along on his tummy and then, perhaps, at last he'd be allowed to …

“Wake up!” Rasco repeated, much louder than the last time. “We can't stop here. We got to get ourselves farther into the jungle than this.”

“Wazzat?”

The mouse called over to the other two. “Hey, you!”

Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry barely paused in their squabbling.

Rasco made a curious noise in his throat. After a moment, Sylvester realized the mouse was growling. The effect of the growl was to make the mattress Sylvester was bouncing along just a little firmer. When Rasco growled a second time the mattress became positively lumpy.

Sylvester shook his head. The mouse was right. However tempting it might be to rest, they were still in danger. If the chimpanzee and his neighbors were still searching for the intruders, they couldn't be far away. Even if they weren't – and through the thunder of blood in his ears Sylvester could hear no sounds of pursuit – by the time the sun was fully up anyone would be able to look in here from the road and see the little party.

It seemed like the biggest effort he'd ever made, even bigger than carrying Mrs. Pickleberry, but he forced himself up from the ground and stood unsteadily on legs that seemed to be made out of custard.

“You two,” he said harshly in the general direction of the Pickleberries.

To his astonishment, they quit their wrangling immediately and stared at him, eyes wide, mouths open mid-insult. It would have been better, he thought, if he could have seen a little respect for his leadership in their eyes, or at the very least a preparedness to listen to what he was about to say. Instead, all he saw there was irritation, as if Viola and Mrs. Pickleberry were impatient for him to get the words out so they could keep going from where they'd left off. But at least they'd shut up.

“We've got to keep moving.”

“We have?” Viola's voice was very flat.

“We have.”

“The boss is right,” chipped in Rasco.

“So we're taking orders from a mouse now, are we?” said Viola.

“This mouse has survived in these parts for the whole of his life,” Rasco pointed out, his forepaws on his hips. “If it hadn't been for him, you lot'd be dead by now. You don't know diddly-squat about a thing here on Blighter Island. I don't know why I didn't just let you all be killed by the pirates, I don't. It'd have been a lot less trouble for me if I had. I could be curled up all safe in my nice warm wine cellar right now, but no, I'm stuck in the jungle with a mob of angry primates after me blood and a pair of spoiled brats arguing with each other like chipmunks, and what thanks do I get? I ask you, what thanks? I don't know why me and Sylvester here don't just leave you two where you are and go off and find me gran and put a few drinks inside us and—”

“Oh,” said Viola.

“Yeah, right,” said Rasco, looking as if he might, should she utter so much as a single further syllable, leap straight down her throat and tie her vocal cords in a knot.

She shut her mouth.

“Now,” said Rasco less pugnaciously, “we gotta do what the big guy says. We gotta get well away from the edge of the jungle. There are trails in here that only the natives know, that only the natives, like me, can even see. I can guide you to my grandma's place, and I can keep you out of the clutches of them brigands want to fry you alive, but only if I get a bit of cooperation. Right? Is that understood?”

Viola looked at Rasco as if she was about to burst into tears. Mrs. Pickleberry stared at him as if she wanted to rolling-pin him until he was just a furry puddle. But neither of the two lemmings said a word. He'd won the argument.

Rasco grinned up at Sylvester.

“Ready to get going, mon?”

“Mon?” said Sylvester.

“Yes, well, ahem, I sort of picked it up on Bojingle Island. I heard that there was a lot of beautiful mademoiselles there.”

“Mademoiselles?”

“It means young ladies,” explained Rasco. “It's a word I picked up in another place. Anyway, I was a stowaway on a ship heading to Bojingle and, wow, were those young ladies a sight! I stayed there for quite a while so I picked up the accent somehow. There you have it . . . mon.”

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For some hours, Sylvester felt as if he was indeed the leader of the quartet, that Rasco was merely his lieutenant and, well, enforcer. The little mouse was able to detect jungle trails where anyone else, glancing inexpertly, would have seen merely a thick tangle of vegetation. The only trouble was that very often obstacles of one kind or another had fallen across their path. Luckily Sylvester, being bigger, was able to shove most of these out of the way or at least help the others climb over them.

“Gee, thanks,” said Rasco about the tenth time this happened. He and Sylvester stood together waiting for the Pickleberries to catch up. Viola and her mom could probably clamber over this fallen branch without Sylvester's assistance, but he wanted to be there just in case Viola should chance to get into any difficulties.

“You're besotted with that so-called babe, ain't you?”

Rasco's question interrupted Sylvester's dreamy thoughts.

“Ah, and, er, which particular babe might it be you had in mind?”

“The one you go all googoo-eyed over. Miss Prancy-Dancy. Viola.”

“Oh, her, you mean?”

“None other.”

“Well, she is, in a manner of speaking, quite lovely, you know.”

“Not to me, she ain't.”

Sylvester beamed down at his smaller companion in a patronizing fashion.

“I don't expect she would be. A bit much for a little fellow like you to handle, I'd say.”

Rasco glowered. “Not just that, puddinghead. There's also the fact that I'm a mouse and she's a—say, what kind of creatures are you folks, anyhow? I never thought to ask.”

“We're lemmings,” said Sylvester, hoping he didn't sound too pompous.

Rasco snickered.

Sylvester's gaze narrowed. He didn't like the sound of that snicker. It hadn't seemed sufficiently … respectful. It had been more like, well, downright derisive. “What's so funny?”

The mouse rolled his little black eyes. “You know. I asked you a question and the answer is a lemming.”

“I don't get it.”

Rasco shrugged. “Never mind. Ask someone to explain it to you sometime.”

Sylvester twisted his lips. The mouse's response didn't seem very satisfactory, but he suspected it was the best he was going to get.

Ignorant of Sylvester's thoughts, Rasco continued, “I've heard about you lemmings. Never seen one, o' course, until you lot came stumbling along.”

A warm glow filled Sylvester's chest. “So the renown of we lemmings has spread as far afield as Blighter Island, has it?”

Rasco nodded, staring back along the path. It was beginning to be worrisome that the two Pickleberries hadn't yet appeared.

“'At's right. Me grandma was talking about your folk a while back. Let me try to remember what it was she said.” He scratched the back of his small head. “Oh, yes, something about the whole caboodle of you being obsessed with suicide.”

Sylvester chuckled. “I'm afraid your grandmother's got hold of the wrong end of that rumor. That's not the way we are at all.”

“You're not? Not constantly looking for cliffs to jump off?”

Sylvester's chuckle broke into a full laugh. “Naturally not! We just—”

His words came to an abrupt halt. If you looked at it from the right angle, which was the wrong angle really, then it was true to say that the inhabitants of Foxglove did spend quite a lot of their time obsessing about jumping off a cliff. It wasn't that they were suicidal, of course. They were as fond of life as the next creature. It was just that …

He winced.

“Look, it's all a matter of context,” he said.

“It is?” responded Rasco absently. “Them gals of yours is taking their time, ain't they?”

“I wouldn't think there's anything to be alarmed about,” Sylvester reassured him. “It's probably just that one or other of them has had to stop for a few moments to . . . powder her nose.”

“In the jungle?” said Rasco, wrinkling his brow as one might on discovering one's sardine was rather more elderly than anticipated.

“I didn't actually mean they were powdering their noses. I meant that—”

“What you said was—”

The mouse broke off suddenly, holding up an open paw to tell Sylvester to hush as well.

“Can you hear?” whispered Rasco after a few seconds.

“Hear what?”

“Voices. Listen.”

“It's just Viola and her mom.”

“Ssh! It's not them.”

Sure enough, Sylvester was beginning to be able to make out a faint sound himself. Those weren't the voices of female lemmings. They were the voices of …

“I know who that is,” he said to Rasco, fear making him speak so quietly that for a moment he thought he might not have spoken at all.

But Rasco heard. “Who? Not Deathflash, is it? The ruffian you call Rustbane?”

“No, not him. One of his men. That's why the others haven't got here yet. They must have recognized his voice and taken cover. A wise move. We should do the same.”

“Okay. Over there.”

Moving as quickly but quietly as they could, the mouse and lemming secreted themselves behind a strange plant that looked more like something out of a nightmare than anything that could actually grow.

“Don't touch them spines,” instructed Rasco just as Sylvester was about to prod one inquisitively. “Them's poisonous.”

“They are?” said Sylvester, recoiling.

“Too right, boss. Stick yourself on one o' them and … best I not tell you what'd happen, but you'd not be having any little Sylvesters in a hurry. Now hush.”

The voices had been getting closer all this while and now, their owners came into view. Although Sylvester already knew who one of them was, he still sucked in his breath in a little hiss of dismay when he recognized the big figure of Jeopord, Cap'n Rustbane's first mate aboard the Shadeblaze, the ocelot whom the captain affectionately referred to as his Jack o' Cups. And now Sylvester recognized the other pirate too, a raccoon with an ear missing and a permanent snarl on his face, although he'd never learned the fellow's name. He didn't have long to wait to discover it.

“That should be far enough,” said the raccoon, looking back the way they'd come. “The rest of 'em are searching 'way to the south o' here for those infernal lemmings, God rot 'em.”