Page 24 of Green City Wars

The mouse bares his teeth—bares them further, anyway, because for a mouse they’re always partly on show. “As if I’d need a reason,” he says, “to get out.”

“And you don’t want to go back, right. I get that.” And, again, a perfect point to fight in Uzco’s corner, but that nut is still there in his mind, defiantly unopened. “Do they know what you’re up to?” A nod at the drinking guards, at Fischer and the red. “They going to wake up one morning wondering why the air tastes of almonds or something?”

“This is what they are saying about me,” Meece remarks—to himself, to some invisible but judging audience of scientific posterity. “I, who seek only to bring an equality across our kind, to all Gehirner. To bring us and our creators more to a level.”

The great leveller. It’s a phrase and Skotch knows what it means. But it’s exactly the sort of rhetoric Skotch can see working on the Maulers. Just vague enough to sound like freedom until it turns out you’re talking about murder. “That’s what that is, huh? You brewing up the ol’ freedom juice there? Gonna put it in the human water supply, make sure they can taste the equality?”

He’s watching for the guilt, or maybe it’s the triumph of it. Seeing which way the little squeaker will jump, to tell him how close to the mark he is. Skotch never knew either rat or mouse that could really clamp down on the thousand little tells of an agitated animal. He never met Meece before, though. There’s barely a twitch of whisker, giving Fischer a run in the cold-blooded stakes. And it’s to the toad he looks, saying, “I do not wish to speak to Herr Raccoon any further. I have work to do.”

“Herr Bandit has used up his opportunities,” Fischer announces. “Come now, Herr Bandit. It is time for your exit.”

Which, from a frog with a gun, sounds particularly threatening, and Skotch shrugs off his four-fingered grip.

“Meece,” he says, “this place won’t be safe for you.” At last, and very belatedly, deciding to do what Benson actually paid him for. “There’s more than just the stoat on your trail. I can’t promise Uzco are only thinking of your best interests, but they’re not sending killers after you.” Yet. “They can keep you safer than these clowns can.”

The red squirrel practically puts the end of his popgun into Skotch’s ear, hissing furiously and lashing his tail like a tiny lion.

“Herr Bandit should leave now,” Fisher says. “Or it may be his safety that cannot be guaranteed.”

“Seriously, Doctor,” Skotch insists, even as the toad gets hold of him. “How long do you think they can shield you here?”

The weird, inorganic stare of the bulging lenses bores into and around him. “How long do you think I have?” Meece asks softly. “How long do you think I need?” One little clawed hand caresses the centrifuge, now spun down to stillness. “The work is all.”

Skotch’s blood is running colder than any amphibian’s right then. He is desperately glad he can’t see the mouse’s eyes because they’re surely bulging, pregnant with madness. Fischer hauls at him, pulling the fur of his arm painfully where those blunt fingers are clasped. Punchy the squirrel is hissing and snarling like he’s auditioning for the role of the tiger in some cheap drama, visibly willing the raccoon to cross the line. And Skotch has blown his chance to get Meece to come peaceably, for sure. But he’s absolutely established that Meece is about some terrible piece of business. That all those questions he was asking, maybe he actually doesn’t want to find out the answers. In case it means that what comes later is in some way his fault.

Fischer and Would-be-Tiger get him most of the way from the chamber before he decides he needs to make one last appeal, one desperate call to a conscience they probably couldn’t fit into a mouse’s tiny skull during the engineering process. He turns, twisting in the toad’s grip. The pair of them are focusing on him, Meece is looking at the readout of the centrifuge, the various other Maulers devoted to their particular pastimes. Only Skotch sees.

He breaks away from his escort, knocks the squirrel backwards with a flailing foot. Just enough purchase to get him scrabbling back across the organocrete floor towards Meece.

The mouse hears, reacts as fast as prey. Leaps up onto the centrifuge, ready to kick off and away. Flee! The constant companion thought of anything whose ancestors were on the menu for half of creation. So when Tybelle descends, slunk in from some high gap in the chamber, she doesn’t pin the mouse between her front paws, just knocks him and all his science gear sideways.

There is a frozen moment, every single Gehirner there just staring at the cat. The meanest thing in the room, and simultaneously the fastest and most graceful. The art class, the drinkers, the literato, all goggling at her. Tybelle’s face is a study in feline anticipation, eyes wide, the corners of her mouth pulled back to show all that carnivore cutlery.

She flicks a claw against the bell on her collar. It sounds a pure, clear note. And it’s on.

The Maulers, secure here in their den, are off balance but come back swinging as best they can. The boozers are fumbling for their popguns, knocking over the stack and scattering the weapons across the smooth ’crete of the floor. Punchy the squirrel has his up and starts shooting before it’s anywhere near pointing at Tybelle, because his Strain are notoriously jumpy when their adrenaline gets pumping. Fischer, ectothermic, cooler on the trigger, is lining up his shot. Skotch goes wide, because going straight for Tybelle or Meece, aside from any other considerations, will get him shot.

His calculations are complicated by Tybelle not sitting still. The direct lines between her and any given gun barrels are a spider’s web of possibilities covering half the chamber. Several of them pass through Skotch no matter where he goes and a few probably go through Meece too. Most likely Tybelle would be a bit disappointed if Meece got himself shot but would take the credit with her employers anyway.

She goes for Punchy first, a single pounce from where she is to where he is, so swift it barely seems she passes through the intervening space. She is the single largest creature in the chamber after Skotch, yet even rodent reflexes are barely a match for her. Skotch, nimble as raccoons are, feels himself lumber, scrabbling to change direction.

He hears a high, harsh yap and Punchy goes past him like a bullet, twisted at an awkward angle, trailing blood. Tybelle goes halfway after him, the cat chasing the moving object, but it’s only a fake-out to draw Fischer’s aim. Skotch has a moment when the toad’s popgun is pointed right at him, right between the eyes, and he’s convinced he’s about to die. Herr Fischer has trigger discipline, though, and is midway through dragging the gun back when Tybelle reaches him.

He tries a jump, but he’s more a creeping-about sort of frog than a leaping one. She bats him back and forth, one-two-three, very quick, rattling his brains round in his skull, then turns to the drinkers, still with that murder-grin, her slit pupils gone wide with excitement.

You don’t kill cats. Not owned ones with a collar and a human master. That’s Rule One. But the Maulers are anarchists and even that primary rule doesn’t bind them like it does most Gehirner. They start shooting with a clack of springs and air reservoirs and the bullets ricochet about the chamber as Tybelle walks in between them.

By that time, Skotch has got to Meece. The mouse is picking himself up, goggles askew. Skotch spends a fraction of a second canvassing the exits and then just grabs the mouse and goes for the nearest one while Tybelle makes trouble for the Maulers. Meece fights him; bites him, the little bastard. Skotch is trying to get over the concept that he’s on Meece’s side and that he’s trying to help, at least one of which is true. He’s in full action mode, though, and that little effort it takes for any Gehirner to actually talk, is muscled out by the other demands on his neurology.

He hears Tybelle make a sound behind him. Not pain. Not the sound of a shot cat. A pleased sound. Her prey is going to be entertaining today, and there’s nothing she likes more.

He bursts out of the chamber, which very nearly translates into vaulting into open space twenty floors up. A flailing hand and foot catch the green cladding of the building and then he’s scurrying down as best he can. Meece is still squirming and he manages to find some words. “Going to let you go. Stick with me. She’ll be right on us.”

He lets go of Meece, and the mouse does not stick with him, instead going off at a tangent along the wall of the building, leaping from branch to branch. Skotch swears and follows, and at least he’s got the hands and feet for climbing, a miniature bear that parallel evolution has sent halfway towards becoming a monkey. The mouse flees ahead, and only the flash of his protective overalls lets Skotch keep eyes on him.

There’s a platform ahead. Not a part of the original building, but bolted on by the Maulers or the parrots. Spattered with droppings, rickety as all hell. Meece zips out onto it, that straight line dash mice can do that makes them look fired from a gun. Scrabbles, stares back at Skotch for a fractured second through bulbous lenses. Doesn’t see the shadow.

“Move!” Skotch yells. Meece does. Rodent decision trees: Run first, ask why later.