Bronstein, however, looked thoughtful. “To be sure, but he’s right though. If we blew down a few walls we could make what looks like a long way . . .”
“Roughly one hundred thirty-two miles,” Virginia put in, looking up from fiddling with the standard issue mini-GPS. Some Shareholder family had the contract . . . Chip had to acknowledge that the Shareholder-girl was terrifying with numbers. She seemed to have an innate grasp of formulae that made Chip’s brain hurt just looking at them.
“Yes. Say one hundred thirty-two miles, to a short distance, say . . .”
“Roughly seventeen point two miles.”
Chip looked at her in amazement. That’s what I call mathematics. How she does it, I don’t know. I’d still be here next week counting toes.
The Korozhet tapped the drawing in the dust again. “Taking a short cut is an excellent idea, but unfortunately that is impossible. You do not have sufficient explosives, and even if you did have you couldn’t carry them.”
Chip smiled nastily at the Korozhet. He still thought the whole idea was nuts, but he couldn’t resist the chance to stick it to the snooty alien.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Crotchet. We’ve got all the explosive in the world, and we can transport it!”
Eamon looked startled. “Er, Chip, even you and Virginia can’t carry that much.”
“Would a tractor load do? I’d think that would be enough even for you, Eamon.”
Chapter 22: The gathering.
The Korozhet made a little humph noise and pointed two of its thick spines at him. “Ridiculous! If you cannot be sensible I shall go back to my rest.” Exuding a kind of sea-urchin haughtiness, Virginia’s tutor prickle-ambulated out.
Bronstein cocked her head at Chip. Chip reflected, not for the first time, that the gesture was disconcerting coming from a creature hanging upside down.
“That’s crazy, Connolly.”
Chip stood his ground. “Why is it crazy? Listen, I know you agree with me on this, Bronstein. The way this war has been fought by high command is to use us—rats, bats and Vats alike—as if we were Maggots. Has it worked? Can we can Maggot better than Maggots?”
He glared around at them. “And who’s been advising them? The Crotchets, that’s who. To hell with what that critter thinks is crazy. I’m telling you this may not work, but—shit!—it’ll work better than trying to blunder a hundred miles of tunnels on foot.”
They were silent. Chip waited . . . and then continued. “Think about it. We know Maggots can’t run for long. We can outrun them. Well, at least we can for a bit without the Crotchet. We can’t keep doing it. But that little tractor can outrun them and we can lug along plenty of explosives and every booby trap you can think of. We can even take Pricklepuss in comfort, faster than we can run with her.”
He squatted down and started to draw his own diagram on the floor. “We don’t do this like Pistol said. The cross tunnels won’t line up anyway. We go as far as we can here between the mounds, blow our way in. We can run down the main tunnel until we find a cross tunnel. Through the interstitial wall, and back onto the main drag. You know Maggots. All of the Maggots in creation will be chasing along behind us, and charging from further inside the mounds to be in front of us. If we do it right, we can come out behind them again. And keep doing it.”
“I like it,” Nym pronounced. “Besides, I want to ride that thing. Can I drive?”
“Myself I t’ink it a foine idea.” O’Niel was the most taciturn of the bats. His support surprised the others.
“To be sure, like all military plans ’tis bound to screw up,” said Bronstein gloomily. “They never survive contact with the enemy.”
“So what else do you suggest?” asked Chip, trying to be reasonable.
The bat shrugged. Like the head-cocking, the upside-down gesture also struck Chip as weird. “Nothing. We just take plenty of booby traps along, and be prepared for the worst.”
“Let’s go and have a look at this little tractor again.” Eamon swung to wing. “I’m thinking of a fair number of ways to deal with Maggots, given what we’ve got. And I agree with you, Connolly. Human high command have always fought this war as if they wanted the Maggots to win.”