‘Let’s not deviate, Gorm,’ said Frych-the-freckled, getting in on the row. ‘If Astrid has discovered a grand obsession for some other rodent, her judgement is not only impaired, it’s probably non-existent for the duration. It’s common knowledge that mice in the throes of new and pristine relationships have their craniums bursting with pyrotechnics. We can’t expect Astrid to behave like a proper possessed-by-Shadows visionary if she’s recently discovered some willing member of the mus muridae to expound on her virtues amongst the culinary implements, now can we?’
‘Will someone please tell me what that gobbledegook means?’ growled Gorm, looking at Tostig.
Tostig obliged. ‘She says that if Astrid is spooning with somebody amongst the pots and pans, she’s probably gone doolally.’
‘Well, anyway,’ growled Gorm. ‘Her judgement’s not the point here. It’s her betrayal of me, I’m concerned about.’
Skrang said, ‘You talk about faithfulness and loyalty as if it was coming out of your ears, Gorm. You? – you change your nest partners at a whim.’
Gorm went low-nose and stared around him dangerously. ‘Right, that’s it! I’m not taking these insults without a fight. Come on, Frych, let’s have you! Come on Skrang! See if I care about your Ik-to bites. I won’t be spoken to like this.’
Pedlar felt that a little calm ought to be injected into the proceedings, before the whole Allthing erupted into a battle which would go down in mouse history. This was why he addressed the meeting for the first time as a participator rather than an Outsider. ‘Aren’t we all supposed to be here under a truce?’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s meant to be a discussion of common interests, isn’t it?’
Gorm snapped, ‘Don’t you stick your whiskers in, yellow-neck, or you’ll be sorry too.’
I-kucheng spoke then, in his usual composed manner. ‘The Outsider is right. Let’s have a few moments’ silence to compose ourselves, and then continue without all this bickering.’
There was quiet for a time, then Gorm broke it.
‘Well,’ he grunted, nodding to Nonsensical, ‘in the light of what’s been said about Astrid, d’you still think your tribe will need her go-ahead?’
Nonsensical shook her head. ‘No, I think probably Skrang is right. If Astrid has found a matching mate, then her judgement is to be suspected. Emotions can interfere with psychic powers. They’re on the same sort of mystical level – they can get tangled with one another. I think we can say that the Invisibles won’t take too much heed of a warning from Astrid in her present condition.’
‘Good,’ grunted the old warlord. ‘Right, well the advantages are obvious. If the nudniks go, so do their creatures – cats, dogs and the Headhunter. The food will be all ours…’
‘What about Kellog?’ said Nonsensical. ‘He’s bound to realize the nudniks have gone.’
‘Ah, yes, the roof rat,’ muttered Gorm. ‘Well, I think we can see he’s so well fed that he won’t bother any mice in the House. There’ll be enough food for even that. There’s not a lot we can do about the owl, except keep out of her way.’
‘You don’t think,’ said Skrang, ‘that Kellog might invite other rats into the House, once he knows it’s safe? He’ll be out of control, you know, without nudniks here to keep him in the shadows. You give him tribute from the larder to keep him quiet at the moment, but he won’t need that if there’s been a Great Nudnik Drive. He’ll be able to take what he wants, and bully us mercilessly. He’ll be lord of all he surveys, with no constraints on him.’
Frych-the-freckled replied, ‘Well, I suppose the Invisibles understand his foibles better than most… but I would have imagined he was too ancient and inflexible to desire companionship. There’s never been anything to stop him issuing invitations to a female rattus muridae, except that he probably doesn’t wish to cohabit.’
‘In any case,’ added Nonsensical, ‘the rat nation is not exactly extensive. How would he contact other rats? He’s been on his own for so long.’
‘There are some rats in the ditch at the bottom of the garden,’ said Pedlar, ‘because I smelt their markings on my way to the House – but they’re common rats, not roof rats. Does that make a difference?’
‘All the difference in the world,’ said Gorm, though his voice had softened somewhat from the last time he spoke to Pedlar. ‘They’re not like us mice. Roof rats would rather die than live with common rats. The roof rats consider themselves above their cousins, and who can blame them? Common rats are pretty low creatures, after all.’
Nonsensical interrupted here, with a quiet statement. ‘Though the Savage Tribe have always fed Kellog, by paying his tribute, since they are the richest tribe in the house, it has always befallen the Invisibles to keep a watch on his affairs. We will continue to make it our business to keep Kellog under control, after the nudniks have gone.’
‘How do you propose to do that?’ asked Gorm.
‘We shall do it,’ replied Nonsensical carefully, ‘and there’s nothing more to be said on that score at this meeting. You and I can speak later, Gorm.’
Gorm shrugged, hearing something in Nonsensical’s tone which stopped his objections. ‘On your heads be it,’ he said. ‘You can talk to me afterwards about the details. Now, we need a plan for the Great Nudnik Drive itself…’
There was a general blitz of ideas then, which were thrown into the arena, and which Skrang sorted through very carefully. It was decided that a campaign of wholesale sabotage was the best resource to see off the nudniks and that, initially, the tribes would each be responsible for one particular line. The Bookeaters would chew through electric cables, their teeth being sharper than most, having been honed on leather and paper. The Savage Tribe would attack sacks of flour, grain, and other kitchen goods. The Deathshead would try to bite into the gas main…
‘And the Stinkhorns,’ said Gorm in a very satisfied tone, ‘can gnaw holes in the curtains and cushions, fittings and furnishings, in the living-room and parlour.’
‘Isn’t that a very dangerous job?’ queried Pedlar. ‘I mean, they’re the domains of the two cats.’
‘Yes,’ said Gorm, smugly.
‘What’s the second plan, if the first fails?’ asked the practical Skrang. ‘We must have a back-up plan.’
Nonsensical suggested, ‘If acts of sabotage fail to drive the nudniks out, then the Bookeaters must attempt to get them out by means of magic spells.’
Frych-the-freckled nodded. ‘Magic is very unpredictable – often the results are not what one expects – so since it is an inexact science I see the need to keep it in abeyance, as a second line of attack.’
Not wishing to spend any more time on magic, Gorm asked, ‘What’s the time in the outside world?’
I-kucheng looked at Skrang, who had recently been out to see Stone.
‘Well, last time I was out,’ she said, ‘the Traveller’s Joy had not yet turned to Old Man’s Beard.’
Gorm said, ‘When it does, I suggest we strike. It will be cold Outside then and the expelled nudniks will need to go far away, to find a new house – they won’t hang around in a cold garden. Nudniks are always a lot slower when the weather turns cold.’
‘So,’ said Nonsensical, ‘the end of summer then. In the House it’s marked by the lighting of the boiler. We’ll need to organize ourselves, make definite plans, but I suggest we strike on the night the boiler gets lit and the iron radiators come on for the first time. That’ll be quite soon by my reckoning, so those of you with nests touching the radiators, and between the walls and pipes, had better move ’em soon. Pass that on to your tribes. The iron gets as hot as anything in the winter.’
‘I distinctly remember the radiators,’ said Frych. ‘It seems like a millennium since they were functioning.’
‘It’s one hundred and eighty nights since the boiler was last alight,’ confirmed Skrang.
‘Is it really as long as that?’ said Hakon to Tostig, across the front of Gorm. ‘Doesn’t time…?’
‘Do you two mind
,’ growled Gorm. ‘Save your chatter for when the Allthing is dismissed.’
‘Yes, lord,’ muttered Tostig and Hakon in unison. The truth was that each of them was shell-shocked by the idea of the coming Revolution, and resorting to common-or-garden trivialities was their way of absorbing its impact.
The historic Allthing then broke up, the mice leaving in ones and twos. The fact that many of them were unusually subdued was a measure of the import of what had just taken place. What lay ahead was a call to arms, and each individual mouse began to worry about his or her role in the Great Nudnik Drive.
Pedlar went with Nonsensical, saying, ‘I’m impressed. Gorm has probably never been out of the House, yet he knows all about autumn. I don’t remember autumn myself – I was born in the spring – but it seems remarkable that a house mouse has all this knowledge of the outside world.’
‘He doesn’t know that much about it,’ said Nonsensical, hurrying towards the Gwenllian Hole. ‘But even in here one picks up things. The Deathshead pay visits to Stone, in the garden, and they teach others what they know. It’s only a matter of passing on knowledge. You don’t have to actually experience it yourself, do you?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Pedlar. ‘Look, are you sure your tribe won’t mind you bringing me back with you? If it’s any problem, I’ll go and find somewhere else.’
‘Of course they won’t mind,’ said Nonsensical. ‘Why should they?’
POLDAR
Astrid had left Iban and was communing with her Shadows. It was a full moon and the light coming through the windows aroused her old friends from their sleep. They came out of the furniture, out of the banisters, out of the corners and landings. They gathered in an eerie silence which might have intimidated anyone but Astrid. They were soft Shadows, misty at the edges, unlike those brittle, sharp creatures who came out when the artificial lights were on. They were her Shadows.
‘Shadows,’ she said. ‘You are my friends… and I have come to talk to you about a very serious subject.
‘Gorm-the-old has suggested we chase the nudniks from the House, so that they will not be able to consume their usual vast quantities of food from the divine larder. He promises that there will be cheese enough for everyone once the House is under mouse rule, and I must admit that sounds attractive to most tribes. Once they hear the word cheese, their eyes glaze and they start to sway from side to side. To promise cheese is to promise untold wealth. What do you think of the plan, Shadows?’
It stinks.
‘Why?’
Any plan of Gorm’s has got to stink.
‘But apart from that,’ said Astrid, profoundly impressed by the keen insight of her Shadows.
Apart from that there’s some strong connection between a full larder and the nudniks.
‘Do you know what it is? Can you tell me?’
We can’t – we just know there is.
Astrid sighed, even more impressed. ‘Oh dear, well I’ll just have to convince the other mice that Gorm is wrong, simply by relying on my mystique as a high priestess. That sometimes works. Anyway, I’d better be getting back to the kitchen. I’ll be accused of meeting with someone on the pots-and-pans shelf if I stay away too long. They’ve got such nasty minds, those mice!’
But you do rendezvous on the pots and pans shelf.
‘That’s beside the point,’ she grumbled. ‘They’ve got no proof – and anyway, it’s not all the time.’
Most of the time.
‘Some of the time. Well, good night Shadows.’
Good night Astrid.
DOUBLE GLOUCESTER
NONSENSICAL WAS FAR LESS RESERVED REGARDING THE secrets of the House than any other mouse Pedlar had so far met. She was quite willing to disclose information on anything Pedlar cared to ask about, and even on anything which he did not. On the way to the attics, through the tunnels and spaces, she pointed out several more holes, naming them for him.
‘Thyra’s Hole – she made it so that she could visit a forbidden mate called Svyen Twistail. They were both caught one hour by Cynan-the-nasty, one of the Savage Tribe’s old leaders. He bit Svyen so badly the wounded mouse ran from the House and was never seen again. Thyra spent the rest of her life sitting high-nose, waiting…
‘Skuli’s Hole… Idwallon’s… now this is the Tangwystl Hole. Tangwystl was a swashbuckling kind of mouse, one of the Bookeaters, but not at all stuffy like most of his tribe. Everybody liked him. A very fast runner too. Then one night he got it into his head that he could beat Eyeball over a long distance – well, the length of the landing, actually. He gnawed this hole ready for the end of the run. Never made it of course. Eyeball caught him halfway, and… well, the rest is too gory to go into. Ahhh, Llandud’s Hole! Llandud was another Bookeater, but quite a different temperament from Tangwystl. He made this hole in order to become a recluse. It doesn’t lead anywhere, except into a sort of cavity in the inner wall. We call them “hermit holes”. There’s quite a few of them scattered over the House, mostly made by the Deathshead, who keep the location of their holes secret…’
Pedlar was impressed by the holes and the histories behind them. There was nothing like this in the Hedgerow, no sense of providing against the future, only the present.
In the ditches a hole might be dug, but if neglected it would be reoccupied by another, perhaps different kind of creature altogether. Abandoned rabbit holes, for instance, were often taken up by ducks. Or the wind and the rain would fill such holes again, with loose dirt, twigs and old leaves. The Hedgerow was cut, the ditches dug, the fields ploughed. That was the cycle. Mutability was the way of the countryside. There were simply no markers on which to dwell, to throw the mind back to an earlier hour. The seasons ruled: grasses grew, hawthorn leaves withered and died, berries fell to the Earth and were consumed. New life came, old life left.
And the future in the wild was too uncertain to worry about. There were not only far more predators, with fewer escape routes – you couldn’t just dash down a hole and hope to be safe in the ditch, for whatever was after you might well dig you out! – but there were also storms to contend with, fierce winters which might freeze your blood solid, poisons from the nudnik machines, a whole host of dangers.
Here in the House, time was revered, was somehow a more solid, established thing. It had majesty and grandeur. It was told by the voice of the Great Clock. It had a kind of formal structure to it. Just as the actual way in which the mice had gathered, sorted themselves out into tribes, and long maintained their lives. This too had a structure to it. Here in the House was a kind of society, not just an accidental collection of mice living in nests built at random. The realization made Pedlar feel in awe of the forces that had brought him here.
But it was the concern with the passing of time that impressed Pedlar the most. Hour by hour mice lived and died with the ghosts of their ancestors here. They also involved themselves with the future, as well as the past, by planning and bringing about what might be. Hence the scheme to drive the nudniks from the House. That sort of combined initiative towards a better future would never have happened in the Hedgerow.
‘Such a lot of famous mice,’ he said to Nonsensical. ‘I’ve never known anyone famous before. Who’s Ulug Beg, by the way? Everyone seemed impressed by him. Is it a secret?’
‘No, not really. He’s a very old mouse, some say he’s almost six hundred nights old. He lives in the abandoned treehouse in the garden. I’ve never actually seen him, because the only way to reach him is by jumping from a sill at the back of the House, on to the washing line, the other end of which is tied to the tree.’
‘Can’t you just go out into the garden and climb the tree?’
‘It’s not as easy as that. The treehouse has been built around the trunk, so when you reach it you have this flat surface going out – the underside, or the floor, of the treehouse – and it’s like trying to walk across a ceiling upside down. No mouse can do that, not on a smooth surface.’
Pedlar nodded, ‘So someone
has to tightrope walk – but isn’t that just as difficult?’
‘It is for most of us, but we usually ask Fallingoffthings to do it. She’s brilliant at balancing.’
‘And Ulug Beg is pretty wise, is he?’
Nonsensical said, ‘He knows everything.’
‘Such famous mice, with such famous skills,’ sighed Pedlar, feeling very inadequate.
‘Where are you from, exactly?’ asked Nonsensical, as they hurried along.
Pedlar shrugged. ‘Oh, just a hedgerow, with a ditch running alongside it. It was a nice place, and I miss it. But—’ Pedlar didn’t feel able to talk about the ancestral voices that had guided him to the House and certainly not about his role as ‘the One’, ‘—I’ve always been one for variety, that’s how I got my name. I would get fed up with eating haws and try to exchange them for blackberries with mice further along the ditch. So I was called “Pedlar”.’
‘That’s rather a good story,’ said Nonsensical. ‘You see, you do know a famous mouse. You’re one yourself. I don’t know anyone who’s been on an expedition into the Unknown, like you. You just gathered your tail and went. An adventurer. That’s something to be proud of.’
‘I suppose it is,’ said Pedlar, impressed with himself for a moment. ‘I don’t know anyone else who’s done it either.’
When they reached the attics, Pedlar was suddenly aware of the strength of the darkness there. He could smell the urine markings put down by the Invisibles, but that was the only evidence of mice – that and the soft, musty smell of dried and drying droppings. There were no mouse sounds, no mice visible.
The only time he had been anywhere near the attics before was when he’d been taken there by Phart, and to his eternal shame, he had been more interested in the cheese than in his surroundings. The atmosphere of the attics was quite eerie and close. It was whispering country.
‘That’s the water tank over there,’ murmured Nonsensical. ‘Kellog the rat lives in a nest on the other side. He’s sworn to kill my mate, Goingdownfast.’
House of Tribes Page 18
