“Move!” shouted Bronstein. Twenty-five seconds later the side wall of the tunnel blew out.
He could see darkness out there. The floor behind them had cracked too, and fallen in to within ten yards of them.
“Phew! That was too damn close. Let’s go,” said Chip.
“Not so fast. First, Nym, give Chip that Maggot-leg. Can you cut overshoes, Chip? Then we can travel without a scent trace.”
“Let’s try the flexible saw on the stuff.”
It was easier to cut than Magh’ adobe. Virginia was nearly sick when he thrust pieces of meaty Maggot-leg over her hand-tooled expensive leather shoes. There was no time to clean the stuff out first. If Chip had looked at those shoes first instead of her ragged clothing, he would have been a lot quicker to believe she was Virginia Shaw.
He stood up. “Right. All aboard.”
The rats chose to cling to him rather than her . . . except Melene, who ignored Virginia’s involuntary shudder and climbed up to the opposite shoulder from Fluff. Why miss an opportunity?
“Right.” Bronstein fluttered in front of them. “Siobhan and Behan will run interference for you. Eamon, O’Niel and I are off to sow a bit of confusion along the way we’re supposed to have gone. We’ll see you back at the farmhouse.”
Chip shook his head.”Not more bombs?”
Eamon pulled a face, somewhat improving his gargoyle looks. He held out a bag in one foot, gingerly. “Worse! Rat droppings.”
* * *
Virginia had never realized how sweet the feeling of the night wind on her face could be. She couldn’t believe that they were out and free! She could feel the lessening in the tension with the sudden tired-voiced banter among her rescuers.
“No more explosions! I don’t understand why you bats are so set on bangs when you never have any,” said a rat from the moonlit darkness.
“We’re not sex obsessed like you rats,” said a bat loftily, from above.
“But you do reproduce sexually,” said the odd rat with the wire frame glasses. “It is in my medical datafile. Once a year, and you practice sperm storage.”
This produced a stunned silence from the rats for a few moments. Virginia found herself stifling a giggle. Then the one-eyed one said, “I’ve a theory why bats think once a year is enough. It’s the hanging upside down. Don’t get enough blood to their privates to shag.”
“No blood to the brain is what you rats have!” snapped a bat-voice. That was the female one that Virginia had come to realize was called Siobhan.
The plump rat beside her chuckled and strutted in the moonlight. “Why would we want our brains engorged and swollen?”
The badinage continued as they stumbled their way across the war-and-Magh’-ravaged landscape.
“So tell me about this sperm storage,” piped one of the other rat-girls. Melene, Virginia thought. She was getting better at distinguishing the odd synthesizer voices. “Does that mean you can have an instant poke whenever you feel like it, Siobhan?”
The walls of the ruined farmhouse loomed out of the darkness. Two minutes later the party was in the tasting room.
Chapter 19: Military Intelligence: an oxymoron.
Fitzhugh stood waiting in the antechamber of General Cartup-Kreutzler’s office, a sheaf of painstakingly prepared analyses and reports in his hand. The large-busted blond receptionist at the desk was doing her best to ignore the tall scarfaced intelligence officer. Conrad Fitzhugh was prepared to bet she’d never worked so hard in her life as she did while the intelligence officer was doing his weekly champ at the waiting-bit. Well, she could have been worse off. He’d wanted to report daily. Then she might have had to learn to type.
Fitzhugh knew that his “promotion” to the hallways and offices of Southern Front HQ had been punishment for offending the powers-that-be. Besides that, it got rid of an embarrassment to his fellow officers. His piece of the front-line hadn’t been pushed back when theirs had.
When he’d been injured, his commanding officer had seized the opportunity to be rid of him. Still, Military Intelligence was a unit with a purpose, General Cartup-Kreutzler had assured him when he’d arrived. He knew that now. The purpose of this department was to take the shit when anything went wrong.