And there is a car with lights on the top of it just going through a gatein the fence.
And there are little black dots on the ground ahead of it. One dotstanding very still, right in the path of the thing, and the others, theothers ...
Breaking away and running. Running for their lives.
They never did find Nisodemus again, even though a party ofstrong-stomached nomes went back much later and searched through the rutsand the mud.
So a rumor grew up that perhaps, at the last minute, he had jumped upand caught hold of part of the car and had clambered onto it somehow. Andthen he'd waited there, too ashamed to face other nomes, until the carwent back to wherever it came from, and had got off, and was living outthe rest of his life quietly and without any fuss. He had been a goodnome in his way, they said. Whatever else you might say about him, hebelieved in things and he did what he thought was proper, so it was onlyright that he'd been spared and was still out there in the world, somewhere.
This was what they told one another, and what they wrote down in the Bookof Nome.
What nomes might have thought in those private moments before they wentto sleep ... well, that was private.
Humans clomped slowly around the train and what remained of the truck.
Lots of other vehicles had turned up at what was, for humans, greatspeed. Many of them had lights on top.
The nomes had learned to be worried by things with flashing lights ontop.
The Land-Rover belonging to the quarrymen was there as well. One of thequarrymen was pointing to the wrecked truck and shouting at the others.
It had opened the smashed engine compartment, and was pointing towhere the battery wasn't.
Beside the railroad the breeze rustled the long grass. And some of thelong grass rustled without any wind at all.
Dorcas had been right. Where humans went once, they went again. Thequarry belonged to them. Three trucks were parked outside the sheds andhumans were everywhere. Some were repairing the fence. Some were takingboxes and drums off trucks. One was even in the manager's office, Leaningup.
The nomes crouched where they could, listening fearfully to the soundsabove them. There weren't many hiding places for two thousand nomes, small though they were.
It was a very long day. In the shadows under some of the sheds, in thedarkness behind crates, in some cases even on the dusty rafters under thetin roofs, the nomes passed it as best they could.
There were escapes so narrow a postcard couldn't have got through them.
Old Munby Confectioner! and most of his family were left blinking inthe light when a human moved the beat-up old box they were coweringbehind. Only a quick dash to the shelter of a stack of cans saved them.
And, of course, the fact that humans never really looked hard at whatthey were doing.
That wasn't the worst part, though.
The worst part was much worse.
The nomes sat in the noisy darkness, not daring even to speak, and felttheir world vanishing. Not because the humans hated nomes. Because theydidn't notice them.
There was Dorcas's electricity, for example. He'd spent a long timetwisting bits of wire together and finding a safe way to stealelectricity from the fusebox. A human pulled the wire bits out withoutthinking, fiddled inside with a screwdriver, and then put up a new boxwith a lock on it.
The Store nomes needed electricity. They couldn't remember a time whenthey had been without it. It was a natural thing, like air. And nowtheirs was a world of endless darkness.
And still the terror went on. The rough floorboards shook overhead, raining dust and splinters. Metal drums boomed like thunder. There wasthe continual sound of hammering. The humans were back, and they meant tostay.
They did go eventually, though. When the daylight drained from thewinter sky, like steel growing cold, some of the humans got into theirvehicles and drove off down the dirt road.
They did one puzzling thing before they left. Nomes had to scramble overone another to get out of the way when one of the floorboards in the manager's office was pulled up. A huge hand reached down and put a littletray on the packed earth under the floor. Then the darkness came backas the board was replaced.
The nomes sat in the gloom and wondered why on earth the humans, after aday like this, were giving them food.
The tray was piled with flour. It wasn't much, compared to Store food, but to nomes who had spent all day hungry and miserable it smelled good.
A couple of younger ones crawled closer. It had the most tantalizingsmell.
One of them took a handful of the stuff.
"Don't eat it!"
Grimma pushed her way through the packed bodies.
"But it smells so-" one of the nomes warbled.
"Have you ever smelled anything like it before?" she said.
"Well, no-"
"So you don't know it's good to eat, do you? Listen. I know about stufflike this. Where we-where I used to live, in the hole ... there was aplace along the highway where humans came to eat, and sometimes we'd findstuff like this among the trash at the back. It kills you if you eat it!"
The nomes looked at the innocent little tray. Food that killed you? Thatdidn't make sense.
"I remember there was some canned meat we had once in the Store," said anelderly nome. "Gave us all a nasty upset, I remember." He gave Grimma ahopeful look.
She shook her head. "This isn't like that," she said. "We used to finddead rats near it. They didn't die in a very nice way," she added, shuddering at the memory.
"Oh."
The nomes stared at the tray again. And there was a thump from overhead.
There was still a human in the quarry.
It was sitting in the old swivel chair in the manager's office, readinga paper.
From a knothole near the floor the nomes watched carefully. There werehuge boots, great sweeps of trouser, a mountain range of jacket and, farabove, the distant gleam of electric light on a bald head.
After a long while the human put the paper down and reached over to thedesk by its side. The watching nomes gazed at a pack of sandwiches bigger than they were, and a Thermos flask that steamed when it was openedand filled the shed with the smell of soup.
They climbed back down and reported to Grimma. She was sitting by thefood tray, and had ordered six of the older and more sensible nomes tostand guard around it to keep children away.
"It's not doing anything," she was told. "It's just sitting there. We sawit look out of the window once or twice."
"Then it'll be here all night," said Grimma. "I expect the humans arewondering who's causing all this trouble."
"What shall we dor'
Grimma sat with her chin on her hands.
"There's those big old tumbledown sheds across the quarry," she said atlast. "We could go there."
"Dorcas said-Dorcas used to say it was very dangerous in the old sheds," said a nome cautiously. "Because of all the old metal and stuff-Verydangerous, he said."
"More dangerous than here?" said Grimma, with Just a trace of her oldsarcasm.
"You've got a point."
"Please, ma'am."
It was one of the younger female nomes. They "eld Grimma in awe becauseof the way she Touted at the men and read better than anyone.
This one held a baby in her arms, and kept curtsying every time shefinished a sentence.
"What it is, Sorrit?" said Grimma.
"Please, ma'am, some of the children are very hungry, ma'am. There isn'tanything wholesome to eat down here, you see." She gave Grimma a pleading look.
Grimma nodded. The stores were under the other sheds, what was left ofthem. The main potato store had been found by some of the humans, whichwas perhaps why the poison had been put down. Anyway, they couldn't lighta fire and there was no meat. No one had been doing any proper huntingfor days, because Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) would provide, according toNisodemus.
"As soon as it gets light I think all the hunters we can spare should goout," said Grimma.
>
They considered this. The dawn was a long way away. To a nome, a nightwas as long as three whole days.
"There's plenty of snow," said a nome. "That means we've got water."
"We might be able to manage without food, but the children won't," saidGrimma.
"And the old people too," said a nome. "It's going to freeze againtonight. We haven't got the electric and we can't light a fireoutside."
They sat staring glumly at the dirt.
What Grimma was thinking was: They're not bickering. They're notgrumbling. Things are so serious they're actually not arguing and blamingeach other.
"All right," she said. "And what do you all think we should do?"
Chapter 11
I. We will come out of the woodwork.
II. We will come out of the floor.
III. They will wish they had never seen us.
-From the Book of Nome, Humans I, v. I-III The human lowered its newspaper and listened.
There was a rustling in the walls. There was a scratching under thefloor.
Its eyes swivelled to the table beside it.
A group of small creatures were dragging its packet of sandwiches acrossthe tabletop. It blinked.
Then it roared and tried to stand up, and it wasn't until it was nearlyupright that it found that its feet were tied very firmly to the legs ofits chair.
It crashed forward. A crowd of tiny creatures, moving so fast that itcould hardly see them, charged out from under the table and wrapped alength of old electrical wire around its outflung arms. Within seconds itwas trussed awkwardly> but very firmly, between the furniture.
They saw its great eyes roll. It opened its mouth and mooed at them.
Teeth like yellow plates clashed at them.
The wire held.
The sandwiches turned out to be cheese and pickle and the Thermos, oncethey got the top off, was full of coffee. "Store food," said one nome toanother. "Good Store food, like we used to know."
They poured into the room from every crack and mousehole. There was anelectric fire by the table and they sat in solemn rows in front of itsglowing red bar or wandered around the crowded office.
"We done it," they said, "Just like that Gullible Travels. The biggerthey come, the harder they fall!"
There was a school of thought that said they should kill the human, whosemad eyes followed them around the floor. This was when they found thebox.
It was on one of the shelves. It was yellow. It had a picture of a veryunhappy-looking rat on the front. It had the word Scramoff in big redlettering too. On the back ...
Grimma's forehead wrinkled as she tried to read the smaller words on the back.
"It says, They Take a Bite, but They Don't Come Back for More!' " shesaid. "And apparently it contains polydichloromethylinlon-4, whatever Aatis. 'Clears Outhouses of Troublesome ...'" She paused.
"Troublesome what?" said the listening nomes. "Troublesome what?"
Grimma lowered her voice.
"It says, 'Clears Outhouses of Troublesome Vermin in a Trice!' " shesaid. "It's poison. It's the stuff they put under the floor."
The silence that followed this was black with rage. The nomes had raisedquite a lot of children in the quarry. They had very firm views aboutpoison.
"We should make the human eat it," said one of them. "Fill up its mouthwith Polypuththeketlon or whatever it is. Troublesome vermin."
"I think they think we're rats," said Grimma.
"And that would be all right, would it?" said a nome with witheringsarcasm. "Rats are okay. We've never had any trouble with rats. No callto go around giving them poisoned food."
In fact, the nomes got on rather well with the local rats, probablybecause their leader was Bobo, who had been a pet of Angalo's when theylived in the Store. The two species treated each other with the distantfriendliness of creatures who could, at a pinch, eat one another but haddecided not to.
"Yeah, the rats'd thank us for getting rid of a human," he went on.
"No," said Grimma. "No. I don't think we should do that. Dorcas alwayssaid that they'reg nearly as intelligent as we are. You can't go aroundpoisoning intelligent creatures."
"They tried!"
"They're not nomes. They don't know how to behave," said Grimma. "Anyway, be sensible. More humans will come along in the morning. If they find adead human, there'll be a lot of trouble."
That was a point. But they had shown themselves to a human. No nomecould remember its ever being done before. They'd had to do it, or starveand freeze, but there was no knowing where it would end. How it would endwas a bit more certain. It would probably end badly.
"Go and put it somewhere where the rats can't get it," said Grimma.
"I reckon we should just give it a taste-" said the nome.
"No! Just take the stuff away. We'll stay here the rest of the night andthen move out before it's light."
"Well, all right. If you say so. I just hope we're not sorry about itlater, that's all." The nomes carried the dreadful box away.
Grimma wandered over to where the human lay. It was well trussed up bynow, and couldn't move a finger. It looked just like the picture ofGullible or whoever he was, except the nomes had got hold of what thenomes in those days had never heard of, which was lots of electricalwire. It was a lot tougher than rope. And they were a lot angrier.
Gullible hadn't been driving a great big truck round the place andputting down rat poison.
They'd gone through its pockets and piled up the contents in a heap.
There'd been a big square of white cloth among them, which a group ofnomes had managed to tie around the human's mouth after its mooing goton everyone's nerves.
Now they stood around eating pieces of bread and cheese and pickle andwatching the human's eyes.
Humans can't understand nomes. Their voices are too fast and too high, like a bat squeak. It was probably just as well.
"I say we should find something sharp and stick it into it," said a nome.
"In all the soft parts."
"There's things we could do with matches," said Granny Morkie, toGrimma's surprise.
"And nails," said a middle-aged nome.
The human growled behind its gag and strained at the wires.
"We could pull all its hair out," said Granny Morkie. "And then wecould-"
"Do it, then," said Grimma, coming up behind them.
They turned.
"What?"
"Do it, if you want to," said Grimma. "There it is, right in front ofyou. Do what you like."
"What, we?" Granny Morkie nome drew back. "I didn't ... not me. Ididn't mean me. I meant well, us. Nomekind."
"There you are, then," said Grimma. "And nomekind is only nomes. Besides, it's wrong to hurt prisoners. I read it in a book. It's called the GenevaConvention. When you've got people at your mercy, you shouldn't hurtthem."
"Seems like the ideal time to me," said a nome. "Hit them when they can't hit back, that's what I sav. Anyway, it's not as if humans are the sameas real people." But he shuffled backward anyway.
"Funny, though, when you see their faces close up," said Granny Morkie, putting her head to one side. "They look a lot like us. Only bigger."
One of the nomes peered into the human's frightened eyes.
"Hasn't it got a hairy nose?" he said. "And ears too."
"Like a cow," said Granny.
"You could almost feel sorry for them, with great big noses like that."
Grimma peered into the human's eyes. I wonder, she thought. They'rebigger than us, so there must be room for brains. And they've got greatbig eyes. Surely they must have seen us once? Masklin said we've beenhere for thousands of years. In all that time, humans must have seen us.
They must have known we were real people. But in their minds they turnedus into pixies. Perhaps they didn't want to have to share the world.
The human was definitely looking at her.
Could we share? she thought. They live in a big, long, slow world and welive in a sm
all, short, fast one, and we can't understand each other.
They can't even see us unless we stand still as I'm standing now. Wemove too quickly for them. They don't think we exist.
She stared up into the big frightened eyes.
We've never tried to-what was the word-communicate with them before.
Not properly. Not as though they were real people, thinking realthoughts. How can we tell them we're really real and really here?
But perhaps when you're lying down on the floor and tied up by littlepeople you can hardly see and don't believe in, that's not the best timeto start communicating. Perhaps we should try it another time. Not signs, not shouting, just trying to get them to understand us.
Wouldn't it be amazing if we could? They could do the big slow jobs forus, and we could do-oh, little fast things. Fiddly things that thosegreat fingers can't do ... but not paint flowers or mend their shoes.
"Grimma? You ought to see this, Grimma," said a voice behind her.
The nomes were clustered around a white heap on the floor.
Oh, yes. The human had been looking at one of those big sheets of paper.
The nomes had spread it out flat on the floor. It looked a lot like thefirst one they'd seen, except this one was called READ IT FIRST IN YOURSOARAWAY
BLACKBURY EVENING POST AND GAZETTE. It had more of the great blocky writing, some of the letters nearly as big as anome's head.
Grimma shook her own head as she tried to make sense of it. She could understand the books quite well, she considered, but the papers seemed to use a different language. It was full of probes and shocks and fuzzypictures of smiling humans shaking hands with other humans (ELKS RAISE.455 FOR HOSPITAL APPEAL). It wasn't difficult to work out what eachword meant, but when they were put together they either didn't meananything at all or something quite unbelievable (civic CENTER TAXBATTLE).
"No, this is the bit," said one of the nomes. "This page here. Look, someof the words, they're the same as last time, look! It's about GrandsonRichard, 39!"
Grimma ran the length of a story about somebody slamming somebody'splan for something.
The Bromeliad 2 - Diggers Page 8
