Only Human (21 page)

Not that he could see an awful lot from where he was cowering: Tarmac, the back tyres of the lorry, the occasional passing boot. He could, however, hear the men talking, and it was disconcerting to find that they weren't speaking English. No linguist, he couldn't make out what the language was. That in itself strongly suggested that he wasn't in England any more. Either that or he was on Tyneside; and even God couldn't hate him enough to send him there, surely.

No, the strange language wasn't Geordie; too many vowels. He twitched his whiskers thoughtfully. Unlikely that he'd been asleep long enough to have left Europe; that narrowed it down a little. Other data? Well, for one thing it was perishing cold, which might help him to rule out Spain and southern Italy. Northern Europe, maybe? Scandinavia?

Scandinavia; well, there'd be a certain malicious logic to that. If Destiny really was out to get him (and if there's one thing you do learn in politics, it's that all conspiracy theories are true), it was so obvious as to be boring. After all, where else would Fate send a born-again lemming?

So. So what? Did it really make any difference
where
he was so long as he was
what
he was?

A fork-lift rumbled by, drenching him in oily mud. As he winced and shook the worst of it out of his fur, he rationalised; and the answer was, quite definitely, yes. In fact, you'd have to be thick or a back bencher not to have seen it coming from the word go.

Lemmings are native to Scandinavia. Lemmings are also gregarious; intensely, lethally so. And they crave leadership, in the same way and to the same effect as humans do. And here he was.

A leader.

It's fairly true to say that most great leaders start off with a sense of having a mission, something that they very much want to do in order to make the world a better place. It's equally true, or more so, that by the time this idealistic zeal has powered its bearer to the pinnacles of achievement, it's undergone a few drastic changes, to the point where making the world a better place and not getting slung out at the next election are so irrevocably fused together in the subject's mind as to render him about as likely to improve the lot of his fellow man as a bad outbreak of plague. But what if (Fraud reasoned) Fate were to give a truly
great
leader a second chance? After all, to the Almighty the lives and wellbeing of rodents are probably just as significant as those of human beings. Perhaps this was where his real mission had been, right from the very start. Perhaps he'd been destined all along to be a truly great leader of
lemmings
. . .

The lorry he'd come on fired up its engine and growled away, showering him with small stones and further supplies of muddy oil in the process. He scarcely noticed. At last, like a homing pigeon in Trafalgar Square, his destiny had finally muddled through and found him out. So that was all right. Now there was nothing left to do but go forth and meet his people.

Cowardice being the better part of discretion, he waited until all the boots and fork-lifts and other big heavy obstacles had cleared off before he crept out, by which time it was dark and even colder than before. In fact it was starting to snow; and it doesn't take a heavy snowfall to bog you down when you're toe-high to a wellie. He struggled along doing Good King Wenceslas impressions for a while, reflecting as he did so that it was an awfully long time since he'd had anything to eat and he owed it to his electorate to keep his strength up. Fortunately he found an abandoned pot noodle lying above the snowline; he crawled in, gobbled until he felt vaguely sick, and set off again, making progress through the deepening snow like a one-seventy-second-scale snowplough. To begin with, it was all highly symbolic and really quite romantic. Then it was bloody hard work. By the time he'd gone three feet he was comprehensively knackered.

‘Hello,' said a voice.

‘Uh?' Fraud replied. He'd have liked to be able to turn his head to see who was talking to him, but it was wedged between two moraines of snow and he didn't have the strength.

‘Why are you doing that?' the voice said.

‘Wha?'

‘I said, why are you doing that?' The voice sounded tolerantly bemused. ‘None of my business, of course. Are you in training for something?'

‘Hoozat?' Fraud croaked.

‘Haven't seen you in these parts before,' the voice went on. ‘New round here, are you?'

‘Yes,' Fraud grunted. ‘Help.'

‘Sorry?'

‘Help. Help. Help. Help.'

‘Oh, you want me to help you out of there, is that it? Right you are. Be with you in a jiffy.'

Although his ears were as deeply frozen as a packet of Sainsbury's prawns, Fraud fancied he could just make out a pattering noise, like distant elves morris-dancing inside a packet of soap powder. Hallucinations, he told himself. Captain Oates and all that. Hey, if this is being a great leader of lemmings, you can stuff it.

‘All right, lads,' said the voice. ‘Gently now. Poor devil's frozen solid. Now, when I say
heave
. . .'

He was too numb to feel anything much; but he was vaguely aware of snuffling and pattering all around him, soft noses prodding his sides and back, rodent jaws clamping shut in his fur; and then he was being lifted, carried, dragged across the top of the snow by a group of fawn-furred animals of approximately his own size and build.

‘Lemmings?' he squeaked faintly.

‘Who else? Right, mind his head on the roof. No, down
your
side . . . Never mind. Okay, put him down, let the poor bugger thaw out a bit.'

The rescue party had brought him into some sort of cover or shelter; he couldn't see what it was, since it was pitch dark, but the strong smell of petrol suggested it was an oil drum. He tried to move his limbs, but couldn't. The fact that they were starting to hurt, however, suggested that he was just beginning to defrost; thanks, no doubt, to all the warm, furry bodies pressed up against him. It was like being in an underground compartment full of people in mink coats; chucking out time at the Royal Opera House, something like that.

Belay that thought. Best not to dwell on fur coats in the present company. A tiny voice in the back of his mind did suggest that if he ever got out of this and back into the mortal body of Dermot Fraud, there was one hell of a commercial opportunity here; but he filed it away for future reference and cleared his mental desk.

‘Thanks,' he muttered.

‘Anything for a fellow lemming,' replied a jovial voice behind his left shoulder.

‘Pleased to be able to help,' said another, just due south of his backside.

‘That's what friends are for,' added a third, directly ahead of him. It occurred to Dermot Fraud that his new-found companions shared with his previous close acquaintances the knack of being able to say the same thing over and over again in slightly different ways. Perhaps he'd stumbled on some sort of lemming parliament. On the other hand, the fact that, having found him helpless and alone, they'd saved his life rather than tearing him into small pieces suggested that that wasn't the case.

Which reminded him. Somewhere in the upper air, Destiny was yawning and drumming its fingers. Mustn't keep Destiny waiting.

‘So,' Fraud said. ‘You're lemmings.'

Short, mildly baffled silence. ‘Yes. We know. So are you.'

Oh Christ, so I am, I'd forgotten. ‘That's right,' Fraud said quickly. ‘I'm one of us, definitely.
Ich bin ein Lemming
.' He paused, struggling to reunite his train of thought. ‘And lemmings united,' he added tentatively, ‘can never be defeated.'

‘Yes we can,' said a voice to his right. ‘Quite easily.'

For a moment, Fraud found himself speculating as to whether Destiny had got the wrong number. ‘Yes, but—' he said.

‘United,' the voice went on, ‘we're an absolute pushover. It's when we all split up and run about in different directions that the predators get confused and go away. About the only thing we do when we're united is jump off—'

‘
Shhh!
'

Dead silence, of the sort that treads on the heel of the truly toe-curling remark. No sound for quite some time, except for the soft murmur of the offending lemming apologising repeatedly.

‘Anyway,' Fraud said, when the silence was threatening to solidify like week-old porridge in an old-fashioned enamel saucepan, ‘that's why I'm here. I mean, I have come to, er, well . . .'

Air of polite expectation. ‘Yes?' prompted a voice somewhere at the back. Fraud breathed in deeply.

‘Friends,' he said, squaring his shoulders, ‘we are standing on the edge of a new dawn, and I put it to you—'

‘Standing on a what?'

Oh
God
. ‘What I meant to say was,' Fraud said, as smoothly as he could, ‘we are poised on the brink of a new dawn, and the light at the end of the tunnel will shine not only on us and our children but our children's children, if only we have the courage to—'

‘What's he on about?'

‘Dunno,' answered a low voice level with Fraud's ear. ‘Making a speech, I think.'

‘A
speech
?'

‘Apparently.'

‘Quite,' Fraud said, his voice suddenly brittle. ‘In fact, as I was just about to say a moment ago, friends, let us go forth together—'

‘Oh,
that
kind of speech.'

‘Sounds like it,' a mournful voice to his left confirmed. ‘It'll be the Great Leap of Faith bit next, you'll see.'

‘It's not that time already, is it?'

‘Doesn't seem like five years,' agreed the voice at the back. ‘Doesn't time fly when you're not jumping off a - oh
shit
. Sorry, everyone.'

Fraud's nostrils quivered. His finely honed orator's senses could detect an opening here. ‘That,' he said urgently, ‘is the whole point. That's why I'm here. Friends, I have a dream. Let us
not
go boldly forth. Let us stay a
very long way away
from the edge of a new dawn. Let's
not
take a great leap of faith. In fact—'

‘What about the small-step-for-a-lemming bit? You haven't done that yet.'

Fraud concentrated. This could be easy, or he could throw it all away. ‘Listen to me,' he commanded. ‘You don't have to do this.There is a better way.' Keep it simple, he reminded himself. ‘Don't jump,' he concluded.

Once again there was a deathly hush inside the oil drum. You could have heard a lemming drop.

‘Who is this prat?' a voice eventually demanded. ‘Calls himself a leader and he's saying
don't jump
.'

‘It's novel,' objected the voice at the back.

‘Might be worth a try.'

‘Yes, but this is
silly
,' the original objector retorted. ‘We don't need a leader to tell us
not
to jump. We all know about
not
jumping. It's getting us to jump that we need leaders for.'

‘That's true.'

‘He's got a point there.'

‘I mean,' the self-appointed leader of the opposition went on, ‘you don't need a leader to tell you to do something sensible. Stands to reason, that does. It's only the bloody stupid things that we've got to be
persuaded
to do. Isn't that right?'

‘I want to hear the bit about the giant leap for lemmingkind. It's supposed to be dead good, that bit. So I've heard.'

A vague but disturbing feeling that the moment was slipping away seeped through into Fraud's brain, and he resolved to go for broke. ‘You see,' he said, raising his voice, ‘I know about these things. I'm not really a lemming, you see. That's why—'

‘You just said you were.'

‘I know, but—'

‘I heard him say it. And now he's saying he isn't.'

‘Cold's addled his brain. Come on, you lot, get in closer. Poor sod's so frozen he's delirious.'

‘But—' Fraud started to object, but his mouth was suddenly full of warm, cuddly fur, and the pressure of friendly bodies squeezed all the breath out of him. He tried to object, to ask them all to back off and let him breathe, but he couldn't manage it. All he could do was squimper feebly, until darkness flooded behind his eyes on the crest of a fawn fur wave.

‘Eeek,' he mumbled, and blacked out.

A short while later, a lemming pointed out that the poor bugger'd gone to sleep. The furry clump drew back. A foraging party was sent off to gather something for him to eat, while a couple of volunteers draped themselves over him to keep him warm.

‘All that stuff about not jumping,' yawned the voice at the back. ‘Out of his head, I reckon.'

‘Bit of sleep and a bite to eat'll set him right,' agreed another. ‘Even so, funny old thing to come out with. I mean to say, not jumping . . .'

‘True. It
is
round about that time, isn't it?'

‘Now you come to mention it.'

‘S'pose we ought to be thinking about finding a leader, then.'

‘S'pose so. Unless . . . No.'

‘What?'

‘No. Nothing. Forget I spoke.'

‘Go on. What were you going to say?'

‘No. It's silly. Please, forget it.'

‘Come on, spit it out.'

‘Oh all right. It's just - how'd it be if we—?'

‘Well?'

‘Didn't jump.'

It wasn't an altogether unprecedented moment. For example, there was that time when a man called Columbus said ‘How'd it be if we just kept on sailing and waited to see where we ended up?' Earlier still, there must have been a moment when one caveman said to another ‘Well, if you were to take four of them and bung 'em on the corners of a wooden box, and then find some way of linking it up to a team of oxen or something . . .' Whenever these crucial turning-points happen, there's generally a moment of stunned, frozen silence when everybody allows themselves to think
Yes, how about that?
before some irritatingly practical soul explains precisely why it's not going to work. In that brief interlude of silence, a tiny seed germinates and begins to grow; and so it was on this occasion, until . . .