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  Suddenly Bronstein's face broke into a nasty, toothy smile. "I hope the gluttons are enjoying their Maggot-feast. It is their last one, to be sure. You do realize, rats, that we can't kill any more Maggots."

  "Why not, Bronstein?" demanded Fal. "Do you have a conscience suddenly? I will not stop for that!" His nose twitched. "Maggot's not a patch on a fine grasshopper, mind you, but it is still better than that muck the Company fed us in the trenches. And there is plenty of it."

  "You fool. The minute we kill one they'll be after us again. And there are a million Maggots to every one of us."

  She had the satisfaction of knowing she'd silenced them. Then, Doc spoke up. "Indeed there is more."

  "What!"

  "Well, imprimis there is eating. Then, as the ancient Pistol indicated, secundum, there is sex, and tertius-I said there was more-there is strong drink. These are the philosophical contentions of rats."

  Bronstein buried her face in her wings.

  ***

  Reason's moon was bigger than Earth's. Even the crescent sliver was enough for Chip to see the still-working construction-Maggots. The tunnel-mound was getting wider and higher.

  "I still think it's a crazy plan," he said, looking at the dark bulk of the mound. In daylight, with ropes and things it would be hard enough to climb. They wanted him to undertake a six hundred foot climb

  … as soon as the moon was low enough to have this wall in darkness. And then, on the other side-six hundred feet down again. By that point the moon should be down.

  "All right. Stay here forever then," hissed Eamon.

  "Until you starve or get caught and eaten," Behan backed Eamon up.

  "Until I lose my temper with you," said Bronstein, far more frighteningly. "Now climb!"

  Chip climbed. So did the rats. It was easier for them as their paws were smaller, enabling them to use tiny pockmarks in the rock. Their strength to weight ratio was also much better than Chip's. The rats' problem was simply reach. A handhold Chip could grab, they had to do three extra moves to get to. Chip just had to face up to being too big and too wide and too heavy for the climb. He still had to do it though, feeling for handholds and footholds in the darkness. The rats could see better than he could in low light conditions, and of course the bats, to whom it mattered not at all, were at home in total darkness.

  They'd chosen a zigzag Maggot construction ramp, which began perhaps thirty feet above ground level. Without that they really would have battled. The ramp was about eight inches wide and zigged and zagged its way at a forty-degree angle up nearly a third of the mound's height. For the rats it was a highway. An uphill highway so that they could complain, but a highway all the same. For Chip it was sweating terror and purgatory. He edged his way along, upwards, upwards, not daring to look down… again. He'd nearly plummeted off into the hungry darkness when he'd risked that first brief look. He'd gone all giddy and had to clutch frantically while Siobhan flapped around him like an annoying mosquito, telling him to "be climbing not shaking."

  The rats, by now near the top of the ramp, were pretty full of their climbing ability. "Easy this. Methinks 'tis like a Sunday afternoon stroll, if it wasn't uphill," said Mel.

  "The uphill will waste me away," grunted Fal. "I'm sweating my whoreson chops off."

  "You've plenty to spare, before your waist's away," said Doll.

  Then Eamon and O'Niel had fluttered up. "Over the side. And be quick about it! There is a builder-Maggot coming!"

  "Uh. Over the side?"

  "Now!" snapped the bat.

  They had to cling there in the darkness, while just above them the Maggot click-sauntered past. By the time they got back onto the ledge, the rats were considerably chastened. There was nothing like hanging by your hands in the darkness over a huge drop to make you more appreciative of having something under your feet. At the top of the zigzag ramp, there was an entry into the Maggot-mound. They avoided this and had to traverse across a hundred yards or so to the next ramp.

  From being near-vertical, where Chip had had to use tiny holds to hang on, the angle of the mound had eased off. He discovered that once he pushed away from clinging like a slime mold to the wall, he could actually stand on his feet on the tiny knobs. He was getting quite blase about it when a knob of Magh' adobe decided it wasn't designed for a hundred and sixty pounds of human. He managed to jerk back. Overcorrected. He scrabbled for a real handhold… started to slide.

  Claws dug viciously into his back. Several sets. "Get a hold, Connolly," huffed some bat behind him, obviously through clenched teeth. Whether by bat-lift or luck, his slipping foot found purchase and his hand one of the occasional Magh' adobe struts. Chip clung there, panting. From far below came the sharp sound of the knob hitting the bottom, and bouncing away.

  "I nearly gave myself a hernia," grumbled Eamon, settling on the wall. "What did you go and do a silly thing like that for, Siobhan Illich-Hill?"

  "You and Longfang O'Niel were already clinging to him when I joined in."

  "O'Niel, for what did you do crazy like that!?"

  "Foin," said the normally taciturn O'Niel, "make it my fault then. When you know it was yourself who was first, Eamon."

  "Whoever it was, I owe you," interrupted Chip.

  "Well, if you owe me… then I have favor to ask," said Eamon.

  "Ask away." Chip was feeling sick. Luckily, there was nothing much in his stomach to come up.

  "Just don't tell everyone. The other Batties would expel me," muttered Eamon. He fluttered off into the darkness.

  Chip stared after him. He'd known the bats were divided up into a jillion factions. They seemed to compensate for their infrequent mating by devoting their energies to political disputes. But he'd never once imagined that even the surly Eamon belonged to the extremist "Bat Bund."

  "Ha," said Siobhan, landing on the strut. "He forgets I am not of the Bund. And I was here too-precisely because Bronstein didn't trust him alone with a human. And he was the first to try to hold you! All big talk, that Eamon. His mouth will get him into trouble his teeth can't get him out of, one day. Now, you must go on, Chip. Bronstein reckons that you and the rats must be off the mound by first light, and that is a bare four hours off."

  Chip pressed on, somehow. As the angle eased, so did the climbing. He dislodged a few more fragments of Magh' adobe, but by now it was not enough to make him fall.

  Eventually, Chip and the rats stood on the very top of the Maggot tunnel-mound. They had climbed the entire way in near total moonshadow. Now they could see a last moon-sliver poking its way into a shimmer of sea, perhaps thirty-five miles off. Thirty-five miles with many many stark folds of Maggot tunnel-mounds between them and it.

  The bats hung in the air, twisting about them. "It's a long way to the sea, Bronstein," said one of the rats quietly. It was Fal. Obviously the distance, and perhaps the climbs that lay between them and it, had overawed the normally bumptious rat's nature.

  "I' faith. A long and wearisome way." Doll looked at her paws, as if asking whether they were up to this.

  "To be sure," agreed Bronstein. "It is a long way, for you earthbound creatures. And then we'll have to wait our chances for the force field to go down. Find driftwood. Make a raft. Do you rats have any other ideas? If not, you'd better get to climbing down."

  Chip sighed, and began walking forward. "No other ideas, Michaela. We'd never get through the front lines. The sea is the only option. But it is a damned long shot."

  "So is our surviving behind enemy lines. And what else can we do?"

  "Nothing." Chip frowned. "But a length of rope and a grappling hook or even a few spikes would up my chances of making it."

  "We'll look, then," stated Bronstein. "The forager-Maggots don't take metal away. Perhaps we can find something. But I think you are wishing for a great deal."

  "Right now, all I'm wishing for is getting down from here fast, without getting down too fast," said Chip, looking nervously into the darkness ahead of him.

  ***
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br />   The climb down was the same again, but worse. It was also nearly the end of Melene. The rat-girl was the lightest and smallest of them, and had found the climb the easiest. Then, having paused to help Phylla, she missed her footing. Plunging headfirst past Fal she frantically tried to grab him. Fal's prehensile tail wrapped around her. The plump Fal stood as firm as a pylon as she found holds.

  "I' faith, my hempseed lass, I know you like exotic positions. But this is a bit too bizarre a tail-twisting even for me. Besides I'm getting a little too fat for such athletic cliff-ledge frolics. Couldn't you have waited a few minutes? Was your desire for my body just too inflamed, to even hang on for another moment?"

  Mel was too shaken to say anything at first. Then she started to swear. Chip was impressed by the extent of her vocabulary.

  They headed on down. Chip fell-slithered the last five yards or so, but there were no bones broken, and no Maggot came storming out of the dark to see who was making such a racket. And besides, lying there, groaning, he made a softer landing for Doc.

  "Uh! Did you have to land on me?"

  "My apologies, Chip. When I heard you fall I came with all haste to see if I could render you any assistance. Alas, thesis became antithesis. As always, the unity of opposites is matched by their struggle."

  As Doc said this, Phylla landed on Chip too. "Sorry. A bit steep that last bit," she apologized. "The handholds seem to have been rubbed smooth."

  "Now, are you all right, Connolly?" asked Doc, as Phylla removed her feet from his midriff. "Can you move?"

  "Ooh. Damn right I can move. And even if I can't, I'm going to, before fat Fal is the next to come tumbling down!"

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 9:

  A brave new world.

  IT WAS A PROMISING landscape. The fields, once overgrown with disgusting alien trash, were now suitably bare. Macroscopically sterile. The more the Expediter thought about it, the more remarkable the synergy between the two species was. The Magh' and the Overphyle came from vastly different worlds and ecologies, but it was almost as if the Magh' had been especially created to prepare worlds for the Overphyle. And in the process of farming Magh', the Overphyle also turned a handsome profit.

  There was no denying that Magh' did a magnificent job of clearing undesirable alien life-forms. As far as the Overphyle knew, they'd only failed once in millennia of conquest. True, in several cases it had been against primitives, hardly worth turning a profit from.

  The Magh' did an equally magnificent job of leveling terrain. When the sea level was raised the Magh' adobe crumbled. It made for superbly fertile tidal mudflats.

  The Expediter knew that she, and all those of the Overphyle who had participated in this venture, expected the spawnlings of their spawnlings to live out pleasant full lives on this world. It would be well stocked with prey from home. There would be plentiful slaves to work in the factories. The Overphyle could live the life for which they were destined. It would be several generations before the Overphyle set out after the Magh' slowships again. Conquest by Magh' was a leisurely process.

  She regarded the red tunnel-mounds on either side of her with some satisfaction. The Magh' were doing an excellent job with these "human" vermin. Yes, the scorpiaries were a pleasant sight, indeed.

  The closer prospect made her twitch her interambulacral plates. Her optic-supporting processes clattered in annoyance. The near view was not a pleasant sight. Well, hopefully, if all went well, it would be all over soon. But these humans and their vassals-serfs were very trying. Very trying indeed. They would suffer for this.

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 10:

  Loose Fluff.

  THE GALAGO IS A nocturnal primate. Those huge eyes are well adapted to seeing in the leaf-dappled moonlit forest-margins of Africa. Those beautiful, fragile, erectile ears can hear a woodworm belch at fifty paces. The tiny black hands and long-toed feet are strong, dexterous, and almost adhesive. The long tail is like an extra hand. Agile hunters in the fragile branches of the upper canopy, they are capable of prodigious leaps and silent movement. They also have, weight-for-volume, the loudest voices in the animal kingdom, but this was the one evolutionary advantage Fluff did not use while moving through the dim tunnels of Maggotdom.

  He was still terrified. The first time he had hung silent up near the roof of the tunnel while the Magh' streamed below him, his chattering teeth must have almost betrayed him. At least, by now, he had established that up near the ceiling he was effectively invisible.

  Hanging outside the air hole of Virginia's prison he listened to her tearing material. If only he could get into her prison! He scratched at the hole, but galagos were not much good at digging, and the Magh' adobe was hard. The best he could do was to stick his long tail through the hole. Virginia would stroke that. But this time she had tied something onto his tail. He pulled it out. It was a long strip torn in a careful concentric circle from her skirt. To the end of that was tied another strip from her blouse. "If you soak these in water and bring them back to me, I can at least suck them."

  So Fluff had undertaken several journeys to the water cisterns for her. He could not bring her back much to drink in the dripping cloth. He knew it wasn't enough.

  Food too had been a problem, for both of them. His own natural diet was insects, gum, and fruit. A wild galago wouldn't have said no to occasional scorpions, birds or reptiles either. Of course Fluff had never had to forage for himself. The Company dieticians had made up a special-supplement diet for him, which Virginia enlivened with extra titbits, such as hideously expensive acacia gum. Of course there had also been a daily delivery of fresh termites of which he had been particularly fond.

  Down here the only insect-like things were the Magh'. There was certainly no gum. He'd found ample grain, loads of harvested and decaying greenery, but other than three wrinkled lemons, harvested along with the tree and not yet rotten, nothing much either of them could eat. He'd given them to her. At least they had a little juice.

  "I must go further, Virginia. I must find some more food, and some kind of container for water."

  Her voice was full of anxiety. "Just be careful, Fluff. I couldn't bear it if you didn't come back."

  "I will be. Promise."

  It was a troubled galago that had set out. He'd actually been on one other long foray. He hadn't told Virginia what he'd found, and it was pressing on his mind and conscience. He'd found the Korozhet prisoner. Her Professor. He should go to help the alien. He really should. It was pricking his conscience terribly. He must help the Korozhet. But there were just so many Magh' there with it. He was too scared. He knew if he told her about it she'd insist on him trying to get to the good Korozhet.

  Even braving a journey into the unknown was better than dealing with this dilemma.

  Eric Flint

  Rats, Bats amp; Vats

  Chapter 11:

  Biter bit.

  DAWN COULD NOT be far off. The mound-top was already dark against a lighter sky. "We need cover," said Eamon, looking at the skyline.

  "And sleep and food," Behan added.

  "And strong drink," said Fal, mournfully.

  "And tickets in the Managing Director's box to see a full Monty production of Carmina Burana," put in Chip.

  The bats fluttered off to find a spot. They came back a few minutes later and led the human and the rats to a muddy undercut bank. As a hideout it was lousy. Chip was too exhausted to care.

  "Well, Fal, your tail saved my bacon. I have a haunch of maggot stowed in my pack," said Melene, with real regret in her voice.

  The plump rat had been looking a bit seedy in the dawn light. At the mention of food he perked up. He rubbed his ratty paws together. "Well, good friends, we have a place to sleep. We have food. If only we had a drink…"

  "I have some alcohol impregnated swabs for cleaning injection sites," offered Doc. "We could suck those."

  "Ah! Now, if the b
ats are familiar with this Common Boo Rana, we could just rename this tranquil rural beauty spot, `The Managing Director's Box,' and Chip too would be satisfied," said Fal, contentedly.

  Pistol peered into the muddy puddle just below the hideout. "Hey, Fal, what would a `Rana' be then?"

  "Some kind of frog, I should guess, my ancient Pistol."

  Doc nodded in agreement. "Indeed, there is a genera of frog by that name, I believe."

  "Ah." Pistol gave his best one-eyed wink. "There's a toad in here. That's close enough. I'm sure that would do, eh, Chip?"

  ***

  Gnawing hunger awoke Chip. He'd heard if you stopped eating you stopped feeling hungry. Only he'd been eking out his rations. Eating less and less, but still eating. Now the cupboard was bare. And his stomach was not satisfied with some silt-flavored water.

  Earlier presleep jokes about the toad having to be careful about not becoming a double amputee, with a chef around looking for frogs' legs, stopped seeming so funny. It was time he started to eat off the land, time he got rid of his foibles. He would starve otherwise. The thought of raw toad was still hard going though. Maybe he could toast it over fat Fal's zippo.

  Then he realized he should have woken up earlier. Only a last webbed foot protruded from Fal's face. Then, with a crunch, that too was gone.

  Fal told him it had tasted awful. Anyway, Nym and Phylla had got most of it. "We're going out foraging. We have to. Oh. And I'm afraid we ate your shoes."

  Chip looked down. With relief he realized that they meant the maggot-hide sandals.

  ***

  "We've got a real problem." Chip said to Bronstein.

  The bat hadn't appreciated being awakened. "Other than being stuck behind enemy lines with a crazy human and a bunch of lowlife rats, I have no problems. That one is bad enough. And I love being woken up, to be sure."

  Chip closed his eyes and counted to ten. "Okay, I've got a direct problem. You can just fly away. But, bat, when the Maggots catch on they're going to get serious about hunting you. Really serious. They've got aerial movement detectors. We know that. The Brass got at least a thousand bats killed proving it. They zap your slowshields with rapid-fire tracking projectiles. Keep it hard so that you can't fly. And once you are on the ground, you bats are no match for even the feeblest Maggot. The rats have got to get food. If they don't, they'll turn feral. It's the shrew genes. You heard what happened in that caved-in bunker on the eastern front?"