Page 44 of Green City Wars

And he should leave it like that, but those strings of duty and debt they engineered as drivers to Gehirner productivity pull in all sort of weird ways. He owes her. She took a shot for him. He got her hurt, nearly killed. Maybe saw to it that her future’s as free of flight as those little bird Strains they’ve got over New Zealand ways, that shine the humans’ shoes for them. “Okay Lulu, you want your story?” he says, pooling himself down beside the pallet she’s on. “Our hosts worked it out anyway. May as well tell you. Down payment on what I owe you, right?”

Her head bobs, eager for the news even in her current state.

He explains it to her. Just as the rats laid it out. Doesn’t say where, because sure as hell Ratlabs has ears here, but brings her up to speed on the rest of it, quick as he can.

She nods seriously, when he’s done. “You better go, Skotch. Before…”

Before the rats or Szerky or someone else puts a pin in the map and gets it right. Because Skotch isn’t Meece-smart, or even Ratlabs-smart. He’s just a dumb gumshoe raccoon who lucked out into finding a real good hiding place once. As a weird payout for the last job he did for a good friend. And maybe it’s already happened. Maybe Meece is dead, or in the hands of Murnau or Benson. But if not then Skotch needs the mouse in his grabby little hands, because at least that way he gets to decide if he wrings Meece’s neck himself, or else who he hands the squeaker over to.

A million Gehirner in this damn city, he thinks, and not one of them with a straight answer.

He says his farewells to Lulu, hopes to Jeff the rats will keep up the level of care in the hope it’ll buy his quid pro quo. Which it might, honestly. Hard to choose out of this bad lot of options but just maybe the ones who patched up his friend are the ones who win his loyalty when he’s forced to give it.

He creeps out of the infirmary. The eyes that see him are all faceted and belong to roaches, and he reckons the system they’ve got set up here isn’t quite up to reporting his movements to their masters. He has a sense of which way is out, and even though he’s big, he can sneak like a shadow if he’s focusing on it. The whole place smells of rat and bug and industry, but he keeps his ears on the swivel for the little voices of its masters.

Sure enough, as he’s on the way out, he hears a whole gathering of them. Some convocation of scientists, maybe, except one of them’s not talking the same as the rest. Skotch wriggles through to get an eye on what’s going on. There’s a rat voice there making demands. He hears his name. Never a good sign, in his experience. Amazing how few people have fond feelings for Skotch the raccoon.

The identity of that new voice is nagging at him, but somehow all the Plangent in the world doesn’t let him make the connection until he sees the little gathering. A handful of Ratlabs rats, with their toolstraps and belts, and a couple in overalls not a mile away from what Meece was sporting. And a couple of other rats, a bit bigger, a lot more pugnacious. Rats used to the sort of problem-solving stratagems that their current hosts disdain. Eddi and Loui, here to bring the word of Mother Murnau.

And maybe it’s just that her life-support system needs tuning. In fact, Skotch reckons that it’s probably courtesy of Ratlabs that she has it, and that her life has been extended so far beyond her Strain’s carrying capacity. Plenty of innocent reasons a couple of gangsters could be down here talking to the boffins.

But Nimoy’s there, and Skotch hears his name again. “Yes, yes, here, he is. Working on him. Soon, the location, yes.” And if Eddi’s trying to be big and threatening—alpha rat amongst his lessers—there’s no suggestion Nimoy is intimidated, leaving Skotch with no sense of the dominance gradient here. Who’s giving who orders. Just that the Rattenkönig gang and the scientists very much have their whiskery little snouts pointed in the same direction.

Skotch thinks vile things of the world in general and this particular twist of events in particular and reverses his course. In moments he’s back at Lulu’s bedside. She blinks an eye at him.

“I thought you—”

“We need to go,” he tells her. He can’t leave her here, not now he’s seen the underside of Ratlabs. All rats and mice together, hand in hand to the plague apocalypse, maybe. Or maybe it’s just that Ratlabs is the acceptable face of rodent criminality. That there’s an amicable continuum running from Murnau, through the murderous Tybelle, all the way here to Rootspace One: that means he can’t trust them with Lulu’s ongoing health. Too much leverage on him, too much threat to her. He works out what needs to unclip and unsocket to get her off the pallet. She gasps weakly as her feet hit the floor and he feels the phantom pain of it inside him. That empathy, that ability to feel for others, that was maybe just background radiation in his genetics by nature, but which the engineering brought front and centre.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “We’ve got to go.” And they do.

17SKOTCH TAKES THE TRAM

Nobody stands in his way. No death rays or psychic brains, no poison gas or giant robot cockroaches. Not even just sufficient rat medical orderlies to overpower him and strap him to a gurney. Skotch moves swiftly through the heart of Rootspace One, hustling Lulu along even though she’s weak and awkward, one wing splinted. Too big for the place and unable to just squeeze down through gaps like a raccoon. At least she’s light, for all that plumpness. Skotch practically carries her hollow bones, following the tubes of illuminated roaches, passing rats who glance at him curiously but don’t seem to understand who he is or why he’s there. A little alarm, but no instant hue and cry. And then they’re out.

Out and up. Ratlabs is encysted below human street level, and that means Skotch and Lulu come out to just under people’s feet. The layer of conduits, ducts, and pipes that need ready access, that carry the necessities of life around the city. Clean water in, dirty water out, electricity, communications.

There’s a whole layer of Gehirner society here as well. Not the actual science-lords of Ratlabs but presumably the Little Helpers whose help is still required. Skotch gets Lulu a block away from their exit point and ducks into one of those confluences of paths that make a little space in the middle. Here are the working animals he’s used to, or at least a more orderly version of that crowd. Some of them are actually working. He sees a trio of moles squinting down at an illuminated display, a pipe layout, some piece of excavation that needs repairing or re-routing. He sees a bat, hanging from the rafters with an earpiece. Every so often its fanged snout opens, and he can just catch the high, sharp sounds as it responds to some ultrasonic query. Hanging beside it is a bloodbag of what Skotch hopes is coffee, and it sucks at the dangling tube absently as it listens to the reply.

Other Gehirner are here to relax. There’s a cubbyhole at one end of the space from which a family of mice are selling that same coffee. A couple of rats are sharing a tiny roll-up, the scent aromatic and heady. Skotch goes cold when he sees a stoatweasel coil up to them, but it’s not Szerky. Maybe not even in the employ of the farms any more, given that he doesn’t get the impression there’s much love lost between the Country Clubs and Ratlabs.

He has no buttons on him—the Reds and the Grays between them made sure he was shaken down for everything he had. He desperately wants coffee, though. If ever nerves needed steadying it’s his, and now. He has four ampoules of Plangent on him, and that’s wealth. It’s also life and thought and the basic ability to function, but that’s a problem for tomorrow-Skotch. He trades one tab of it for two coffees and a fistful of buttons in change, and the mice know they’ve skinned him alive on the deal, but what’s he going to do?

Lulu doesn’t have the coffee hack, so he gets it all to himself. He asks when she last had a hit of Plangent. She can’t remember, so he gives her a tab herself, then helps her neck it when her claws shake too much. He washes his eyes with another, even though he’s full-on sharp already. One more left in the super, but he reckons the way his luck goes, that’s just the loot someone’ll be taking off his body, like he’s a nameless enemy in a human virtual game.

He knew a Gehirner who worked on games, once. A rat. Strictly forbidden, against Rule One, outside the frame of their functional world. Except the human games developers wanted to code enemies that weren’t human, so they made contact over that shadowy meniscus of the human comms network that touches the Gehirner world. Skotch has no idea how it went, but in the rare cases that human currency filters down to the hands of the Little Helpers it’s a gold standard kind of wealth. Beats the hell out of buttons.

Speaking of flirting with Rule One … “Okay,” he says to Lulu. “How’re you doing? That better?”

She shivers. “I think all you’ve done is let me feel how much it hurts that much more. I can really appreciate all the bits of me that aren’t working.” But she sounds a bit more like her old self, or the ghost of it. The words are coming back. That’s got to be good, right?

“I had to take you out of there,” he says. “Murnau’s mob was moving in. Ratlabs were in bed with them. They were going to … We weren’t safe.”

“It’s all right, Skotch. I understand.”

“You’re going to be okay,” he says, forcing the earnestness into his voice even as his hands wring over one another in a constant round. “I’ll see you right.”

“It’s fine, Skotch. We had to run. The bad guys turned up. That’s how it goes.”