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  They came back to the caved-in section where the bats had set their "distraction" booby trap. There was a dusty hole through the wall, and the ground underfoot was pure mud. The explosion had resulted in at least one crushed Maggot. A limb twitched at them. Typically, a rat bit through the joint-tissue, and thrust the leg into his pack-straps.

  "Through here," called Fal. They slithered up the muddy slope and out of the narrow lumifungus-lit tunnel into a huge hall full of long tanks. The nearest tank was leaking, obviously cracked in the blast. A group of Maggots with large hairy paddle-palps were frantically milling around the crack, trying to stop the crack with their paddles. Their entire attention seemed focused on it. Despite this, Virginia stopped dead at the point where the new adit opened into the hall.

  "Go!" Chip pushed.

  "I can't," she said, fear in her voice.

  Chip could see why. The creature in her way had obviously escaped from a tank-it was alternate rows of tentacles, pincers and spines. And big evil eyes.

  The Korozhet flicked the thing aside with a spine. Chip was justifiably grateful.

  The Maggots were a lot more interested in their problem with the tank than with a fast leaving bunch of aliens. The newcomers dogtrotted warily past them without any obvious moves from the paddle-palps. The bats scouted ahead as they moved down the long hall full of tanks. Big hungry eyes gazed from the weedy water of the tanks. Occasionally a tentacle would wave from the water.

  "You okay, Phylla?" Chip asked when he had the breath.

  "I've stopped the bleeding." The rat-girl's voice was subdued. "But I think I've lost half my tail too."

  That was serious. Not only was the tail a major part of the rat's balance, but it was a rat's sex symbol, the equivalent of nice legs, a large bust… or well-filled trousers to a human. Chip guessed the rat-girl would rather have lost a limb or an eye.

  ***

  "That trick of yours with the flamethrower may have turned out for the best," said Eamon, grudgingly. "We've come out nearly at the place we set the charges. No Maggots in sight. All we've got to do is go up a level. Then across six hundred yards and we're out."

  The Korozhet sighed. "You'll have to leave me, good human, Miss Virginia… my spines can take no more. Leave me. Save yourselves."

  Virginia was shocked. "But we can't leave you."

  "Indeed you must! Save yourselves," said the alien, nobly.

  Chip looked at Prickles. Carrying it like they had before would slow them down terrifically. He pulled his shirt off, ripping a button in his haste. He tied the two sleeves together, then cut two slits into the material near the tail. He laid it on the ground. "Get onto that, Crotchet."

  The Korozhet twitched spines at him. "I do not understand…"

  "Just do it!" shouted Chip, pulling the hammer from his belt loops. Whether it understood, or was intimidated, the Korozhet complied. "Right. Now we've got a stretcher, let's go. Take the sleeves… Miss Shaw."

  For the first time since they'd rescued the Korozhet, they were able to really get a move on.

  "Maggots coming!" shouted Siobhan.

  They legged it. At first the Magh' gained on them. Then they began to drop back. "Unfit, these Maggots," said Melene.

  "They cannot run for long. They respire through booklungs, which are less efficient than yours," the carried Korozhet explained. "They accumulate oxygen in the respiratory system slowly during normal sluggish movement, and use it rapidly in bursts of speed."

  Bronstein fluttered in front of them. "Here we are, comrades. Up. .. Where are you rats going?"

  "Span a bit of wire," said Nym. "There is a narrowing back there around that last corner."

  Doll sniffed. "If we go up one layer, up that air flue…"

  "Take this cord up, bat. We'll have to haul the Korozhet."

  Virginia looked at the narrow hole in the wall. "We go in there?"

  Chip pointed. "In there and up. Somehow. See that hole there? That's full of explosives."

  Siobhan came along, shooing rats. "For what are you still waiting then? Up! Up! Eamon has already started the timer. We've got barely a minute now."

  The galago bounced off her shoulder and across to the far wall. "Come, Virginia, mi gorgeous, it is easy."

  With obvious trepidation she entered the hole, putting a foot across onto the far wall, into the hole Chip had punched with the cold chisel. Chip followed. He edged up the flue, his back on the inner wall, his feet braced against the outer, and a long way down between his knees. It was not sweet, knowing that a detonator was ticking away inside the hollow-block wall underneath his feet. If he moved fast, he'd fall. If he didn't move fast, he'd fly. He crawled out onto the next level with relief. Virginia was already trying to haul up the shirt bundle with her precious Korozhet tutor in it. Chip added his muscle to the task, and, accompanied by bats, the Pricklepuss arrived.

  "Move!" shouted Bronstein. Twenty-five seconds later the side wall of the tunnel blew out.

  He could see darkness out there. The floor behind them had cracked too, and fallen in to within ten yards of them.

  "Phew! That was too damn close. Let's go," said Chip.

  "Not so fast. First, Nym, give Chip that Maggot-leg. Can you cut overshoes, Chip? Then we can travel without a scent trace."

  "Let's try the flexible saw on the stuff."

  It was easier to cut than Magh' adobe. Virginia was nearly sick when he thrust pieces of meaty Maggot-leg over her hand-tooled expensive leather shoes. There was no time to clean the stuff out first. If Chip had looked at those shoes first instead of her ragged clothing, he would have been a lot quicker to believe she was Virginia Shaw.

  He stood up. "Right. All aboard."

  The rats chose to cling to him rather than her… except Melene, who ignored Virginia's involuntary shudder and climbed up to the opposite shoulder from Fluff. Why miss an opportunity?

  "Right." Bronstein fluttered in front of them. "Siobhan and Behan will run interference for you. Eamon, O'Niel and I are off to sow a bit of confusion along the way we're supposed to have gone. We'll see you back at the farmhouse."

  Chip shook his head."Not more bombs?"

  Eamon pulled a face, somewhat improving his gargoyle looks. He held out a bag in one foot, gingerly. "Worse! Rat droppings."

  ***

  Virginia had never realized how sweet the feeling of the night wind on her face could be. She couldn't believe that they were out and free! She could feel the lessening in the tension with the sudden tired-voiced banter among her rescuers.

  "No more explosions! I don't understand why you bats are so set on bangs when you never have any," said a rat from the moonlit darkness.

  "We're not sex obsessed like you rats," said a bat loftily, from above.

  "But you do reproduce sexually," said the odd rat with the wire frame glasses. "It is in my medical datafile. Once a year, and you practice sperm storage."

  This produced a stunned silence from the rats for a few moments. Virginia found herself stifling a giggle. Then the one-eyed one said, "I've a theory why bats think once a year is enough. It's the hanging upside down. Don't get enough blood to their privates to shag."

  "No blood to the brain is what you rats have!" snapped a bat-voice. That was the female one that Virginia had come to realize was called Siobhan.

  The plump rat beside her chuckled and strutted in the moonlight. "Why would we want our brains engorged and swollen?"

  The badinage continued as they stumbled their way across the war-and-Magh'-ravaged landscape.

  "So tell me about this sperm storage," piped one of the other rat-girls. Melene, Virginia thought. She was getting better at distinguishing the odd synthesizer voices. "Does that mean you can have an instant poke whenever you feel like it, Siobhan?"

  The walls of the ruined farmhouse loomed out of the darkness. Two minutes later the party was in the tasting room.

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 19:

  Mili
tary Intelligence: an oxymoron.

  FITZHUGH STOOD WAITING in the antechamber of General Cartup-Kreutzler's office, a sheaf of painstakingly prepared analyses and reports in his hand. The large-busted blond receptionist at the desk was doing her best to ignore the tall scarfaced intelligence officer. Conrad Fitzhugh was prepared to bet she'd never worked so hard in her life as she did while the intelligence officer was doing his weekly champ at the waiting-bit. Well, she could have been worse off. He'd wanted to report daily. Then she might have had to learn to type.

  Fitzhugh knew that his "promotion" to the hallways and offices of Southern Front HQ had been punishment for offending the powers-that-be. Besides that, it got rid of an embarrassment to his fellow officers. His piece of the front-line hadn't been pushed back when theirs had.

  When he'd been injured, his commanding officer had seized the opportunity to be rid of him. Still, Military Intelligence was a unit with a purpose, General Cartup-Kreutzler had assured him when he'd arrived. He knew that now. The purpose of this department was to take the shit when anything went wrong.

  Major Fitzhugh was a rare Shareholder. He'd volunteered for active service. He had actually gone through boot camp with a sea of Vat conscripts for three whole weeks, before a shocked camp-commander had come and personally hauled him out and sent him to Officer Candidate School. Even that hadn't stopped Fitzhugh from getting a front-line posting, where he was supposed to be conveniently fragged or get killed by the Magh'. When he'd failed their expectations, they'd "promoted" him here.

  A hearty laugh came from behind the general's door. The beautiful relic-of-Earth polished oak door opened, revealing the joyous sight of the general affably slapping the shoulder of a brigadier with a large curling handlebar moustache. "Heh, heh! I must remember that one, Charlie, old boy. `And the Vat said…' Ho, ho! Jolly good. I must remember that one."

  The general caught sight of the waiting major and his expression turned to one of distaste. With pride Fitzhugh successfully kept a poker expression while saluting.

  "I'll be seeing you, Charlie. Come in, Major Fitzhugh." The general's tone of voice shifted between the thought of a pleasant afternoon's golf and root-canal work in the span of two short sentences.

  The major went into the sumptuous office. It always struck him that Carrot-up put up with the army, but really yearned for cavalry. The gilt-framed horsey pictures that lightened the rich maroon wallpaper certainly showed where the general's interest lay. There was enough expensive horsey-leather hung about the place to start a tack shop. A very exclusive tack shop.

  A willowy captain in an elegant tailored uniform leaned an idle elbow on a tasseled velvet-upholstered chair. Although it was just ten-thirty in the morning, the room reeked of whiskey and cigars. Fitzhugh hoped like hell the ambience wouldn't make Ariel sneeze. The decanter and glasses on the acres of gleaming desk bore mute evidence to a hard morning's war-planning.

  "The week's intelligence reports, sir." Fitzhugh attempted to hand them to the general.

  "Don't give them to me, for God's sake. Give them to Captain Hargreaves. Why you can't just leave them with Daisy, I don't know." The general flopped into his leather-upholstered lounger.

  The captain reached a languid hand for the dun folder. Fitz gave him the full benefit of the bad side of his face. With sudden insight, Fitz realized he must have looked like that once. Tall. Blond. Blue-eyed. Features carvedly aquiline and aristocratic.

  Bah. Wet tissue paper.

  In the glare of Fitzhugh's arctic gaze the aide wilted. The reaching hand pulled back.

  "I must discuss certain aspects of this with you, sir," said Fitz.

  "Oh, you must, must you?" demanded the general mockingly.

  Fitz chose to ignore the sarcasm. "Yes, sir. I must. Satellite imaging shows that the concentration of Magh' troops in sector Delta 355 has diminished. This is the ideal time…"

  The solidly larded general stood up. He was as tall as Fitzhugh. He pulled the painstakingly prepared reports from the major's hand; tossed the dun folder into a scatter of mixed papers on the floor in the far corner; and then turned his back on the intelligence officer.

  Fitz wondered if his knuckles or the shaft of the bangstick would go first. Carrot-up had him pegged perfectly. He would not give in and stab the man in the back.

  The general turned around. "Now hear this, Major who is on the verge of becoming a captain. You presume too much. Understand this. You do not ever again presume to advise me on military matters. You have no grasp of military strategy and your opinions are of no interest or value to high command. Your job is to organize the data the Korozhet's probes bring to us. That's all. Do I make myself clear?"

  Fitz restrained himself. He didn't scream "but it's a lot of fucking crap!" His one disciplinary hearing to date had been for daring to question Korozhet data. Events had proved him perfectly correct, and the Korozhet data misleading, but that had been beside the point to the tribunal. "Sir."

  "As for that withdrawal, I've already been informed. It is a feint. Since Shaw's death I have been given the honor of having a Korozhet adviser myself. Now, pick up those pieces of paper and give them to Daisy on your way out. Hargreaves, you and I must get on with planning that parade to celebrate our Korozhet allies' return after their victory over that sneak attack by those other aliens. What are they called again, Hargreaves?"

  "Jampad, sir," responded the captain, making no move to assist Fitz.

  "That's it. Imagine if we'd had to fight off another bunch of damned aliens? Go on, Major. Get on your bike. Leave that folder with Daisy on your way out."

  "Sir." Fitz hated to beg. But there were men, rats and bats he'd fought beside, whose lives were riding on this. "Please read it, sir."

  The general sighed. "I'll get Hargreaves to read it and give me a summary. But, Major, stop deluding yourself that you have a grasp of military strategy. You should do some reading on the subject. We have excellent field officers to deal with little troop movements. Chaps like Brigadier Charlesworth, who was here just before you came in. People with more know-how about tactics and strategy in their pinkie fingers than you have in your whole body."

  "Very well. I'll do some reading, sir," said the major, in the flat even tone that might have made wiser men than the general wary.

  But, a small part of his mind reasoned: The useless bastard might just have hit on something. Someone, somewhere must have had to deal with this situation before. And thinking about that beat thinking about that stupid son of bitch, Charlesworth. The brigadier, according to one of the analyses of losses in that folder, was possibly the worst commander on the front. And that was out of an amazing collection of incompetents.

  "Do that. Now get along with you."

  And Major Conrad Fitzhugh had to obey.

  On the way past he put the folder on the general's receptionist's desk. She chewed gum at him.

  ***

  "'Tis exactly as I said." The rat in his magazine pocket didn't even stick her nose out. "We'll have to do it my way."

  "There has got to be another alternative," said Fitz grimly. "Sure, we'd get away with it-once."

  "Well, I am still going to sneak in tonight and piss in his whiskey decanter. Try and stop me."

  The scarring had done all sorts of things to Fitzhugh's facial muscles. When he smiled now, he looked like an incoming shark. He didn't smile often. It tended to frighten the hell out of people. The two idling typists in the corridor suddenly found good reason to get back to work. "I could withhold your chocolate."

  A loud sniff came from his pocket. "You don't love me anymore."

  Fitz raised his eyes to heaven. Inescapable female logic! Still, since she'd lost her tail, Ariel needed constant reassurance. "Of course I do."

  "Then I want chocolate. Now."

  "You'll have to settle for a piece of cheese."

  "Don't want cheese! That's an arrant stereotypical slander. I'm an insectivore. Not a dairy-productivore." Another sniff, more like a snuffle. "I
f you really loved me, you'd give me liqueur-chocolates all the time."

  "You'd pop."

  "I know. But 'twould be a wondrous way to die!"

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 20:

  A stairway to Valhalla.

  "NOW I FINALLY UNDERSTAND what Hegel really meant," Doc said quietly. He adjusted his pince-nez and then, in a slight singsong, recited: " `Spirit conceived in the element of pure thought is meaningless unless it also becomes manifest in something other than its pure self and returns to itself out of such otherness. The Absolute is a relation of pure love in which the sides we distinguish are not really distinct. But it is of the essence of Spirit not to be a mere thing of thought, but to be concrete and actual.' "

  He began to adjust his pince-nez again; but, instead, simply took them off and wiped his snout wearily. "It was too late. Without surgery it was always too late. Even with it, too late by hours."

  The group standing around Phylla's still body were all silent.

  Then Nym sighed. "Out, out, brief candle. Well, I suppose I'd better go and fetch some brandy. Or would anyone prefer some wine?"

  "You're going to get drunk?" Siobhan's voice rose to a squawk of outrage.

  Doc nodded. "Of course. The observance of rites for the dead are what set us apart from the animals."

  "But that is to behave like animals, indade!" Eamon sounded genuinely appalled.

  "Methinks if we behaved like the animals we came from, we'd eat her," replied Fal reasonably. "Besides, I thought you'd be in favor of a wake. It is a fine Irish tradition."

  "It is?" This obviously made a strong impression on a bat who felt himself to be, among other things, heir to the mantle of De Valera.