rat.
He hid and watched them. They seemed to be scampering between the storage tubes in search of something on the floor. He could not tell what. He watched them until they were gone. They each had a small tin can with a plastic lid.
It was impossible to discover what they carried in them.
“There aren’t any others,” Bitty Belina told him.
“Saw them.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“No.”
“Yes, you are.”
Her hair was so lovely, her face so delicate and perfect, that he hated to argue with her. He wanted only to touch
her hair and her skin, to feel the softness and the golden wealth. But she had long ago refused to let him touch even
the ends of her yellow curls. The only way left to communicate was through words. And he was worst at that.
“Other night. Your room,” he told her.
“What you saw were reflections.”
“Reflections?”
“We had taken the mirrors off the walls and had them on the floor. We were playing with them. You know how puppets like to play. When you opened the door, you saw all the reflections.”
He thought about that a while. It did not explain the two strange puppets in the maintenance levels running around with the cans in their hands. He decided against fighting with her.
“Maybe,” he said.
She smiled. “Positively.”
“I guess so.”
She reached up and touched his cheek then, trailed her slim, quick fingers along the line of his jaw. For a moment of ecstasy, those fingers pressed against his lips. Then she took them away and left him.
He was happy again.
Two days later, in the sewer plant, toward the northern end of the lowest level of the city, as he walked between the towering machinery that shone like new despite its years, he saw three puppets that were not from Bitty Belina’s story. He recognized all three, but could not tell what play they were from. All three had containers of some sort and growled the nooks and crannies of the place, searching.
He left there.
He busied himself elsewhere.
And he told himself that Bitty Belina had lied to him only because they were all planning a surprise for him and didn’t want to have him find out what it was. That would spoil it. He must pretend as if he knew nothing, be quiet and wait.
He chuckled. It was a mark of esteem when your friends went to such lengths to spring a surprise on you. It would not be fair to them to ruin it all by blundering right into it.
He was quiet. And he could hardly wait to find out what was up. No one had ever done anything like this for him
before. He didn’t even think he deserved it. But that, of course, was up to them.
Bitty Belina followed Wissa through the square entrance to the air-conditioning shaft. The access grill had been pried off days before when the puppets began using the hidden metal passageways to structure their plan against Sebastian. Wissa carried a tiny flashlight, no larger than one of Sebastian’s fingers. In her hands, it was almost as large as a regulation electric torch.
“If this is a game of some sort-” Belina began.
“It isn’t, honey,” Wissa said. “I saw him myself. He’s big and has a beard.”
“But what does he want here?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t wait to watch him. I came running for you, first thing.”
They didn’t speak any more as they ran lightly through the largest of the airshafts. Now and then it was necessary to stoop or crawl where the size of the pipes was reduced. They used rag ropes at certain verticle shafts to descend from floor to floor. The ropes had been placed the same day they first scouted the system.
They met only one puppet in their journey. He was slim and dark, with horns on his forehead.
“What’s up?” he asked as they went by.
Belina waved her hand impatiently to indicate she had no time for foolish questions.
The horned puppet followed them. He ran with more grace and with less noise than even the two women.