Occasionally we came upon other rats, and a few times we talked with them, but not for long. Because after just a few words they would begin to look at us strangely, and edge away. Somehow they could tell that we were different. I think we even looked different; either the diet or the injections at Nimh had made us bigger and stronger than other rats, and all the strange rats we saw looked, to us, surprisingly weak and puny. So we were set apart from even our own kind.
It was while we were in the country that we had our first important stroke of luck. We had just decided, after nearly four months of freedom and constant roving, to find a place to settle down — if not permanently, at least for the winter. We thought that it should be in the country, but not too far from a town, so that we would have access to grocery stores as well as barns and gardens.
(It was about this time, too, that I began to wonder, and worry somewhat, about the fact that whatever we ate, whatever we needed, must always be stolen. Rats had always lived that way. And yet — why? I talked to some of the others about this. It was the beginning of a discontent and an idea that kept growing, although slowly.)
The season was autumn. We were walking one evening down a winding country road. We never walked really on the road, but along the edge, so that we could vanish into the bushes or a ditch if anyone came along. You can imagine that twenty rats and two mice travelling in procession would cause some comment, and we did not want that.
As we walked, we reached a very high fence of wrought iron, the kind that looks like a row of black iron spears fastened together, with pointed tops — an expensive fence, surrounding a large estate with a big, expensive-looking house in the middle, and well-kept grounds and gardens. We walked along past this fence until we reached a gate.
‘There’s nobody living in there,’ said Justin.
‘How do you know?’
The gate’s padlocked. And look. Dead weeds standing outside it, not even bent. Nobody’s driven in here for a while.’
The house had a quiet, deserted look. There was a letterbox in front, hanging, open, empty.
‘I wonder if we could get in,’ Jenner said.
‘Why should we?’
‘It’s a big place. It would have a big pantry, big cupboard, big freezer. If it’s as empty as it looks …’
We turned into the grounds, moving cautiously, and from beneath some bushes we watched the windows. As dusk fell, lights came on in several of them, both upstairs and down.
Jenner said: ‘That’s supposed to make us think there’s someone there.’
‘Yes,’ said Justin, ‘but there isn’t. I could see one of the lamps when it came on. There was nobody near it. And they all came on at the same time.’
‘Automatic switches. To keep burglars away.’
‘Well, they’re not keeping me away,’ said Justin. He ran to the house, climbed to one of the windowsills, and looked in. He tried another. Then came back. ‘Nobody,’ he said.
So we went in. We found a small window in the back with a cracked pane, knocked out one corner of the glass, and climbed through. At first, we planned just to look for food. We found it, too, enough to last us for a year or more. As Jenner had predicted, there was a big freezer, well stocked — bread, meat, vegetables, everything — and a whole room full of shelves covered with tinned food. The tins baffled us at first, as they had in the grocery stores. We could read what was in them, but we couldn’t get it out. Then Arthur found a machine on the kitchen counter. He read the instructions on the side of it: Slide tin under cutter and press switch. We tried it. The tin turned slowly around in the machine, and when we pulled it out, the top had been cut free. I’ll always remember what was in that first tin — vegetable soup, delicious.
After we had eaten, we wandered around the house. It was a rich man’s mansion, with beautiful furniture and fine rugs and carpeting on the floor. There was a crystal chandelier in the dining room, and a big stone fireplace in the living room.
But the greatest treasure of all, for us, was in the study. This was a large rectangular room, with walnut panelling, a walnut desk, leather chairs, and walls lined to the ceiling with books. Thousands of books, about every subject you could think of. There were shelves of paperbacks; there were encyclopaedias, histories, novels, philosophies, and textbooks of physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, and others, more than I can name. Luckily, there was even one of those small ladders-on-wheels they use in some libraries to get to the top shelves.
Well, we fell on those books with even more appetite than on the food, and in the end, we moved into the house and stayed all winter. We could do that, it turned out, without much fear of discovery. We learned that from some newspaper cuttings I found on the desk in the study: They were about a wedding, and most of them showed pictures of a newly married couple leaving a house to begin their honeymoon. The groom was a Mr Gordon Boniface — ‘heir to the Gould-Stetson fortune’ — and the house they were leaving was the house we were in. According to the clippings, they were going on a trip all the way around the world. They were coming back to the Boniface Estate in May. Until then, it was our estate.
Oh, there was a caretaker-gardener who came three times a week, and once in a while he would check the house in a cursory sort of way. That is, he would unlock the front door, glance around to see that everything looked all right, and then lock it and leave. But he didn’t live there; he lived in a small house down the road. And we were expecting him when he came; we had figured out, from the way the place was kept up, the lawns mowed, leaves raked, gardens weeded and watered, that there had to be somebody working on it. So we posted a watch, saw him coming, and kept watching him all the time he was there. And we made sure, when he looked in the house, that everything did look all right.
This involved a certain amount of work. We had to haul all our empty tin cans and other rubbish at night out into a hidden place in the woods quite far from the house. We cleaned up after ourselves carefully; we learned to use the water taps and the dusting cloths we found in the kitchen cupboard. If the caretaker had looked more closely, in fact, he would have seen that the kitchen counters were somewhat shinier than they should have been in an empty house. But he didn’t. He never even noticed the small corner of glass missing from the back window.
And all winter, far into the night, we read books and we practised writing.
The Main Hall
There came a knock on Nicodemus’s office door; it opened, and Justin and Mr Ages entered.
‘Back so soon?’ said Nicodemus.
‘Soon?’ said Justin. ‘It’s past noon. It’s lunchtime.’
‘Past noon!’ Mrs Frisby stood up, remembering her children waiting at home. Down in the rats’ home, in the artificial light, it was hard to tell the passage of time, and she had been so engrossed in Nicodemus’s story that she had not glanced at the clock.
Justin was wearing a satchel like Nicodemus’s, and from it he took a small paper package. ‘Here’s Dragon’s medicine,’ he said, putting it on the table. He asked Mrs Frisby: ‘Did he tell you about the Toy Tinker?’
Nicodemus said: ‘No. I was just coming to that.’
‘But I can’t stay to hear it now,’ said Mrs Frisby. ‘My children will be waiting for their lunch.’
A plan was worked out. Mrs Frisby would go home to take care of her children. Nicodemus, Justin, Arthur and the other rats involved would work out the details of moving her house which would be done that night at about eleven o’clock — ‘after the Fitzgibbons are asleep and we’re sure Dragon is, too,’ said Nicodemus. Mrs Frisby would return in mid-afternoon to the rosebush.
Mr Ages said: ‘And I’m going to lie down. After making that trip with this cast, I’m tired.’
‘You can have your choice of rooms,’ said Nicodemus. ‘Now that Jenner and his friends are gone, we have seven empty,’
‘Thank you,’ said Mr Ages. ‘Mrs Frisby, when you return I will tell you as well as I can exactly how to put the powder in Dragon’s food.
’
As she hurried home, Mrs Frisby considered just how much she should tell her children about all that had happened — and all that was going to happen. She decided at that stage, at least, she would not tell them about their father’s connection with the rats. Also that she would not say she had volunteered to put the sleeping powder into Dragon’s bowl. That would worry them; she could tell them, perhaps, when it was safely done — when, among other things, there would be no chance for Martin to volunteer in her place.
She would tell them simply that as the owl had suggested, she had gone to the rats and asked for help. She had found them friendly and intelligent, and a group of them were coming that night to move the house to a place where it would be safe from the plough. That would be enough. She could tell them the whole story later — when she knew it all herself.
But it was not enough. The children were sceptical at first, then intensely curious, especially Timothy (who was looking stronger and feeling more energetic, but still staying in bed, primarily because Teresa and Martin had made him).
‘But why should the rats do that?’ said Timothy. ‘We don’t know them at all. Nobody does. They keep to themselves.’
‘Maybe it’s because the owl sent me,’ said Mrs Frisby, searching for an answer that would satisfy him. ‘They seem to be impressed by the owl.’
‘For that matter,’ said Timothy, ‘I don’t even see why the owl wanted to help. He’s no friend of ours, either.’
‘Maybe they thought someday we could do them a favour in return.’
‘Oh, Mother!’ said Cynthia. ‘How could we ever do them a favour?’
‘You forget. I did do Jeremy a favour. That’s what started the whole thing.’
‘That, and my getting sick,’ said Timothy. ‘I wish I could get up. I’m tired of bed.’
‘Not yet,’ said Mrs Frisby, glad to change the subject. ‘You must save your strength, because tonight you will have to get up for a little while, when they move the house. We must be sure you’re well wrapped up and hope that the night is warm.’
‘It will be,’ said Martin. ‘It’s turned quite hot outside.’
They ate lunch.
That afternoon Mrs Frisby told the children that she must leave them to confer again with the rats about moving the house. When she thought of the danger she would face in just a few more hours, she wanted to kiss them all goodbye. But knowing that Timothy, at least, was already suspicious, she did not dare, but told them only that they should not worry if she was a little late getting home for supper.
On her way back to the rosebush she felt quite relieved, almost cheerful. Her problem was nearly solved, and the final solution was in sight. If all went well, Timothy would be saved.
If all went well. Then the thought of what she had to do came back to her like the clanging of an alarm bell. What worried her most was not so much putting the powder into Dragon’s bowl, but the fear that at the last minute she might lose her nerve and bungle it somehow. That could wreck the plans.
She looked towards the Fitzgibbons’ farmhouse, and there, on the back porch, lying in the sun, was Dragon. He was watching a pair of sparrows playing in the grass halfway to the chicken yard; the tip of his tail hardly twitched as he debated whether or not they were near enough to spring for. He looked very big and very dangerous.
At least he was not looking in her direction, and Mrs Frisby hurried on to the bush, directly to the hidden entrance, and slipped inside. When she reached the arched portal, Brutus was standing guard as before, but this time he greeted her politely.
‘I’ve been expecting you,’ he said.
‘May I go in?’
‘If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll get Justin.’ He went inside the arch and pressed a small button on the wall. Mrs Frisby had not noticed it before.
‘A doorbell,’ she said.
‘It rings a buzzer down below. If I pushed it three times, you’d see some action.’
‘Action?’
‘That’s the alarm signal. A dozen rats would come out of this door, ready to fight. All the rest, with the women and children, would be hurrying out of the back door.’
‘I didn’t know there was a back door.’
‘It comes out in the woods, in a blackberry bramble. It’s got a longer tunnel than this one.’
When Justin appeared, they went down the same hallway as before, but this time, when they reached the chamber where the lift and the stairway led down, Justin paused.
‘Nicodemus thought you might like to see our main hall — just a quick look. He said you asked about the Plan.’
‘I did,’ said Mrs Frisby, ‘but he didn’t tell me about it.’
‘It’s more than just a plan now, but we’re used to calling it that. If you see the main hall, you’ll get an idea of what we’re doing.’
So instead of going down as they had before, Justin led the way across the chamber, where as Mrs Frisby had noticed, the tunnel continued. They walked along for what seemed like several more minutes.
‘Somewhere right along here,’ Justin remarked, ‘we’re entering the woods. You’ll notice the tunnel runs a bit crooked. We had to bend it to go around tap roots — some as thick as fence posts.’
They went on until they came to a fork in the tunnel. ‘Right fork leads out to the blackberry bramble,’ said Justin. ‘Left fork leads to the main hall.’ They took the left fork.
‘Now brace yourself for a surprise.’
From ahead came noises: the sound of many rats talking, a sound of hurrying and thumping and of machinery running. They stepped into a room as full of activity as a factory.
It was the biggest room Mrs Frisby had ever seen, half the size of a house, with a ceiling and floor of hard grey rock. It was brightly lit with electric bulbs — here the large-sized ones, strung unshaded — and beneath them were rats at work everywhere. Rats running electric motors that ran belts that ran small circular saws, lathes, drills, grindstones, and other tools Mrs Frisby could not name; rats hammering, welding, cutting. But most of all, rats hauling.
There was a steady procession to and from the far end of the chamber, and each of these rats wore a harness to which was fastened a pair of large, sturdy sacks, one on each side, like a miniature pack horse. As the rats trooped in, their sacks were empty. They disappeared into a part of the room that was hidden by a high wall of wood. When they came out, the sacks were full and heavy.
As she watched, a troop of ten, their sacks bulging, went past her out of the tunnel; they greeted Justin and nodded at her, but they did not pause. She noticed that just inside the entrance an electric fan whirred quietly, aiming inward, pulling fresh air into the room from somewhere out in the woods.
Mrs Frisby stood beside Justin and gaped. She felt dizzy at the sight, the motion, the noise, and the size of the room, which must have measured twenty feet long and almost as wide.
‘How could you ever dig out such a big room?’ she asked.
‘We didn’t,’ said Justin. ‘We found it. It’s a natural cave. You can see that the ceiling and floor are solid rock. That’s the reason, or the main one, we chose this spot to live. Others had lived here before us. Probably, for centuries before there was a farmhouse, bears. Then wolves, then foxes, then ground hogs. We had quite a cleaning job to do, I can tell you.
‘When we found it, there was a large hole, only a few feet long, leading straight in, but it was so full of sticks and leaves you could hardly see it. We closed that entrance entirely and dug another, longer and narrower — our back door. Then we dug our living quarters under the rosebush, and the entrance you came in. But the cave is still our chief workshop. Let’s go in.’
As they entered some of the rats looked up, some waved and smiled, but all quickly turned back to the work they were doing. as if they were in a hurry.
‘They’re all on a schedule,’ Justin explained, talking close to Mrs Frisby’s ear to be heard above the noise, ‘so they can’t stop working.’
One
group, especially busy, was gathered around an odd-shaped object of wood and metal about a foot long. It was curved and had a point at one end; it looked, Mrs Frisby thought, rather like the side of a small boat. Could the rats be making a boat? Then she saw that they were fastening a strong metal ring to the top of it.
Justin led her to it.
‘That,’ he said, ‘is our most important invention, the key to the whole Plan. We made a pilot model last autumn. We tried it out, and it worked. So now we’re making three more.’
‘But what is it?’
‘It’s a plough. Nicodemus designed it himself, after reading every book he could find about farm tools. It’s light and sharp, especially made to be pulled by rats. It takes eight of us to pull it — more if the turf is tough. But with it we can turn over, in a day of hard work, a patch of earth about ten by fifteen feet.’
‘But why? What do you need it for?’
‘Come over here, and I’ll show you.’
He led the way to the back of the cave where the high walls stood. He opened a door and beckoned her through. She stood in a large wooden bin; starting at her feet and rising in a slope to the wall of the cave was a small mountain of grain.
‘Oats,’ said Justin.
He led her on, opened another door on another mountain. ‘Wheat,’ he said.
And others:
‘Barley.’
‘Corn.’
‘Soy beans.’
‘We’ve been building these stockpiles for a long time,’ he said. ‘All from Mr Fitzgibbon’s barn. We now have a two-year supply for one hundred and eight rats, plus enough to plant for two crops, in case the first one fails. In there’ — he gestured towards the last bin in the row — ‘we have boxes of seeds. Seeds for tomatoes, beets, carrots, melons and a lot more.’
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Puffin Modern Classics) Page 11
