Chip snapped the droning hot-airhead off. “Dunno myself, Bronstein. For the music, I guess. And to remind me that there is a world and other people out there. Looking out from here you could forget that there was another life, where we could be huddled in trenches. Beautiful this. Tranquility in desolation.” The farmhouse was on a hilltop. The morning mist, still hanging below them, was kind to the war-shattered and bare-foraged lands. The Maggot tunnel-mounds were red and sharp and clear above the mist-sea.
Bronstein looked. “You’re a human of hidden depths, Connolly. Unexpected. I always thought you were little more than a two-legged rat. . . . Anyway, now that you’ve eaten and slept, come and look at what we’ve found.” Bronstein flew off.
Chip followed. The bat led him to a large shed some distance away from the smart facade of the tasting hall and the winery. The shed must have once been hidden behind the farmhouse. Obviously out of the public eye, it was as utilitarian and plain as the other buildings were ornate. The “Public-eye” buildings must have had wooden doors that the Maggots had taken away. This had ordinary corrugated iron ones, pop riveted onto a steel frame.
“You’ll have to break the lock,” said Bronstein
It was a sturdy, workmanlike padlock, attached to a chain that passed through the doors.
Chip looked at it and shook his head. “I could do it, if I had two trench knives.” There wasn’t a grunt alive who hadn’t broken a padlock or two like that. People were forever losing their keys, aside from anything else. He rattled the doors. They were neatly made and fitted tightly.
“We got in through the eaves. But you’re too big. Let me go and see what I can find.” The bat flew up, wriggled through a narrow gap between the roof and the wall, and disappeared. In the meanwhile Chip looked around. There was a diesel tank up on a stand. A pile of bricks and piece of rusting tarpaulin-covered machinery beneath a lean-to. Chip shook the doors again, wondering if he could lift them off their hinges.
Bronstein reappeared, just as Melene came around the corner. The rat-girl was plainly suffering from a hangover. “Will you stop rattling those things,” she said, irritably.
“To be sure. Stop rattling and start sawing, Connolly.” Bronstein had a hacksaw blade, a shiny new hacksaw blade, in her claws.
It was a substantial lock. Chip looked at the blade. Then at the thickness of the hasp. “Bronstein, this had better not be your idea of joke.”
The bat showed her fangs. “Just get to work, Connolly!”
Chip started sawing. “Flying foxes are considered good eating,” he said, dryly.
Melene took a seat and shook her head. “Bronstein would give anyone indigestion. She’s guaranteed to disagree with you. Besides, they’re only part flying fox. Can’t you saw a bit more quietly? That squeak is making my ears curl.”
“Why don’t you just go away?” grumped Chip.
“What, and have to listen to this thumping in my head on my own?” The rat smiled cheekily at him. “Anyway, I’m curious.”
Chip had a distinct weakness for Melene. “Curiosity killed the rat.” He felt the blade and pulled his hand away hastily. “Shit! This thing is hot.”
Melene chuckled. “As the actress said to the bishop . . .”
“What?
She winked. “Get on with it.”
“Take the other side then.” The rat shrugged her shoulders and did.
They sawed away. At least Chip sawed, with the rat steadying the blade. Rat-paws were lousy for any work that required dexterity. Still, the cut went faster. “We should be able to snap it now,” said Chip, flexing aching fingers.
Of course they couldn’t, but did it at the next try. The metal doors swung open.
Aladdin’s cave could not have been more full of treasures.
It was the farm workshop, and included all the essentials of a good farm workshop. It had everything from the really important dark, oily tins of mysterious miscellaneous bolts and bits, to unused, shiny-new workshop manuals. There were several coils of the most essential of farm-mechanics’ equipment, used to fix everything from wristwatches to combine harvesters: eight-gauge wire. There were two engines in various states of disrepair. There was a cutting torch, an arc welding unit and enough scrap metal to justify a slowship shipment back to Japan on Old Earth. The bits ranged from rusty sections of reinforcing rod to the inevitable pieces of expensive stainless steel mesh, cut-to-measure, just slightly wrong.