Chip took the jar. “Sleep. We’re all short of it. This afternoon I’ll provide a frugal meal and we can go out scavenging in earnest.”
“Not too frugal, I hope?” said the smallest rat-girl.
Chip grinned. “We’ve got to make it last, Melene.”
Pistol eyed her and grinned toothily. “Eh, my pretty little rat-maid from school. We can’t eat, but we can drink and do other things. We can make that last too.”
“You should have hung onto one of those little cocktail gherkins, Pistol. You’d have been so much better equipped.”
* * *
Chip spent a couple of hours in sleep, and a couple of hours fossicking about in the workshop. He was surprised to find Nym there too. “Got a liking for mechanical devices,” the big rat admitted. “I know it is not very ratly, but they fascinate me.”
It was he who clambered up on the tractor and, while fiddling around, gave the key a twitch. The engine actually burped and gave a bit of a grumble. The rat was already out of the door. . . . The nose came back first, timidly whiffling around the door. Then Nym followed it back, doing his best imitation of casualness. “Gave me a slight start, that,” he admitted.
“And how fast can you move when you get a real fright?”
“Methinks you should consider that I’m at about the right height to bite one of your balls off,” growled Nym, walking a bit closer to where Chip sat. “So what happened?”
“You turned the key. The motor nearly started. The battery is probably flat, and that was the last bit of juice in it.”
“So why don’t we blow up the battery, pour some more juice into it and start it up?” The rat was bright-eyed at the prospect.
“You don’t know one hell of a lot about these mechanical things that fascinate you, do you, Nym?”
“Give me a break, Connolly. Four months ago, I woke up with all sorts of things inside my head and boot camp to get through. I’ve been in the trenches since then, and from before that I sort of remember a big cage with a lot of other rats.”
Chip swallowed. It was a longer speech than he’d ever heard Nym make in the whole month they’d served together. He’d never really thought about where the rats came from. “Um. Didn’t think. But it doesn’t work quite like that.”
“So how does it work?” Nym asked eagerly.
“Jeez. I dunno. I was a trainee sous-chef, Nym. Not a mechanic or a farmer. Big Dermott could have told you.” That last just slipped out. He had been very carefully trying to avoid thinking about her since they’d arrived at this farm. She would have loved the workshop.
He turned away. The rat wouldn’t understand and he didn’t want him to see.
“She was a good kid, that,” the big rat said quietly, which showed Chip how wrong he could be about rats too.
“Yeah.” His voice was a bit thick. He fumbled blindly through one of the cupboards. Nym discovered other things to poke and pry at. Chip found himself staring blankly at a packet. “The Wonder flexible emery-wire saw.” For no good reason he thrust it into his pocket. “I’m going out to get some air. Don’t do anything dangerous, rat.”
“Go and have a drink, Connolly.”
“You think that’s the answer to everything, don’t you, rat?” Chip was suddenly bitterly angry.
Nym shrugged. “Nah. But ’tis the sort of answer a good rat would give. And I don’t know what else to say.”
Once again Chip was embarrassed at how wrong he had been. Considering that Nym’s intelligence stemmed from a piece of plastic-like stuff the size of lentil, and that the rat had only that and few months of life experience, the rat was remarkably humane . . . and remarkably human.
* * *
In the gathering dusk the foragers went out, following their keen noses. Well, Chip blundered around. For what his effort was worth, he might as well have stayed back at the ruined farmhouse. By comparison to the natural equipment of the bats and rats, even his sensitive chef’s nose and surgically enhanced eyes were feeble.