Melene, swaying slightly, joined them. “I’d say it would be a fine and fitting send-off!”
Pistol nodded. “Heh. She’d have loved it. And it would take a fair number of the blue-bottle rogues with her. Where are we going to do it?”
Bronstein, as always, had been thinking ahead. “On the other side of the mound. That’ll help the Maggots to believe we’re heading in the opposite direction. We’ll fly her body over. If you can rig us some kind of harness, Chip? Somehow we can spread the load between all of us.”
Chip looked across at a plumpish bat sitting on the floor with a wing around Doll’s shoulders, a glass in the other wing-claw and the bat version of “The West’s Awake” on his lips. “Do you think O’Niel is fit to fly?”
* * *
Midmorning, and Chip’s sleep was disturbed by a distant explosion. So. Phylla had some Maggots for the road on that long staircase to Valhalla. The way those bats used explosives she was probably a fair way up that road already. And it would buy them some time.
Chapter 21: A joint misunderstanding.
Virginia was gazing out at the high ridges of the Magh’ mound that hemmed them. Chip, standing a few feet behind and to the side, studied her for a moment. He was beginning to realize that the girl—young woman—had the sort of looks that grew on you. On him, anyway. Now that she was not frantic with fear, her face was more very-pretty-elfin than gaunt. And while her figure was tall and slender, it was most definitely female. Almost uncomfortably so, in fact. He did not need to get himself—
She must have become aware of him watching her. She turned to him. “Last night I thought we were out. But we’re just as trapped, aren’t we? Trapped between those.” She pointed at the mounds.
“So we go over the top,” he said, with an easiness he did not feel. “I’ve been over the top of that one. Or maybe we’ll go through. We’ve been through, too. Thirty-two more humps and we’re at the sea.”
“The sea!” She seemed aglow at very idea.
“Yep.”
“That’s so romantic!” she said, dreamily. “The sea . . . and freedom!”
He realized she had a hand on his arm and was staring into his eyes, her head slightly tilted to one side. He reacted like a man who has just found a rattlesnake in his path. He backed off, and kept backing. “Uh. Got stuff to do.”
He retreated to the workshop, where he found Nym fiddling and Doc contemplative. He was relieved it wasn’t Fal. But Nym was good value, for a rat.
“I’ve got a problem, guys.”
Doc nodded. “The human condition is problematic.”
“It’s worse than a human problem, Doc,” said Chip, despondently. “It’s a woman problem.”
Doc squinted at him. “Preposterous. How can there be a problem between thesis and antithesis? Simply resolve it with a synthesis, which in this case is obviously—”
Chip scowled fiercely. “Thanks, Doc! With friends like you, I don’t need enemies.” He turned to the other rat in the workshop. “Nym, that woman is driving me crazy!”
The big rat looked up from his oily fiddling. “They like to tease, to fain disinterest. But she fancies you, Chip.”
“Disinterest!” Chip buried his head in his hands. “She can’t keep her effing hands off me. She paws at me.”
Nym was distinctly puzzled. “Well, what is the problem then? If it’s lessons you need, Fal’s your man. . . . Mind you, I’d have thought that Dermott gave you sufficient instructions. She used to call them out loud enough for the rest of us to appreciate.”
“Will you leave Dermott out of this?” Chip’s voice had a dangerous edge to it.
“Surely. I did but mention her gentle instruction.” The rat grinned.
“I don’t know why I bothered to speak to you,” muttered Chip, turning to leave.
The rat took his sleeve with an oily paw. He pointed with his nose to an oilcan-armchair. “Tell us, Chip.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Nym.
That was true enough. He had been surprised by Nym before. “Okay. Well, do you understand the concept ‘fraternizing with the enemy’?”