Rat Trap (7 page)

The door to the living quarters slid open. The scientist called out, “LB, what's going on? I thought I heard voices.”

Run!

Lightning reflexes slid the screwdriver into its sleeve and vanished Rat into the air vent. Heedless of the weaker leg, four paws slapped the metal ductwork.
Whap-whap-whap-whap.

Rat ran fast. She ran far. The newly healed leg began to throb. Slow down. Nothing could follow her into these vents. They belonged to Rat alone as long as Nanny was dead. Or until the investigator arrived.

She tucked the hurting leg up beside her ribs and slowed to the three-legged walk.
Click-click-click.

Where was she going so fast anyway? Back to the boy?

Wicked boy! Taking sides against Rat!

Rat eyed the fat pipe that led across the central air shaft. She sat on her haunches. Why was she with this boy anyway, now that the leg was healed? Maybe she did not need the boy anymore. She had her spyvest. She could steal new batteries for the flashlight. No jetpack, but so what? She would never go to the Zero-G room again. Never play pointless tag games again. From now on, everything would be serious.

Except—

The boy was the way back to Earth.

Rat ground her teeth together slowly. She still needed the boy. She must go back. But things would be different. From now on, the boy would obey Rat, even if that meant using some of the scientists' methods of punishment on him.

There he was, sitting on the floor by the door, his head drooping between drawn-up knees. The room was even messier than usual. All his dirty clothes were out of the laundry drawer. Rat squeezed through the grate, letting it clank shut loudly behind her as she dropped onto the bed.

The boy's head came up. “You're back!”

The boy sniffled. He swiped a forearm across his nose. His eyes were red. His cheeks glistened with smeared tears. He had been crying.

Good. The boy
should
be feeling bad.

Rat leaped from the bed to the front of the laundry drawer. She clung to the top edge with her hind legs. That put her close to eye level with the boy. “Very bad boy. Why interfere? Rat almost got laser.”

“Didn't you hear me?” The boy shifted onto his knees, suddenly energized. “Your plan's no good. And taking the laser would …” He paused, and a confused look passed over his face. “It would kill LB.”

“Wicked machine. It knows,” Rat signed. “Needed destroying. Now tells.”

“No. LB won't tell. LB promised to keep your visit a secret.”

This news astonished Rat. “Why?”

“Because I asked LB to, that's why. We're friends.”

“Rat is first friend.”

“Well, you're not acting like one, sneaking off without telling me. Now everything's messed up.”

“Listen to Rat.” Rat's tail smacked the drawer front with a loud whiplash. “Rat is leader.”

“Is that what you think?” The boy sat back on his heels. “I thought we were friends.”

“If friends, why save machine? Without laser, investigator will catch Rat.”

“You're so stubborn! Don't you see? The scientists will just keep coming, and not to catch you, either. Not if you kill someone.”

“Let them come. Kill them all.”

“That's stupid,” the boy said. “It would be like war. There's only you and me on our side, and LB, but he's only three and stuck in a box. How many scientists are there, huh?”

There
were
a lot of scientists.

“You are right,” Rat signed. It made her grumpy to admit her mistake. It made her see how many different ways she had been wrong recently. Maybe she was wrong about the machine, too. Maybe it was not trying to trick Rat about the mother.

“Yeah, well, whoopee,” the boy said, uncrossing his arms. “Now we don't have any plan. I almost had one, but it depended on stale trails. That was important, but now you've made new ones and they lead right here!”

Is that what the boy had been crying about? “Rat can fix that.”

“Really? How?”

“Fire foam.”

“What do you mean?”

With a twitch of her tail, Rat sprang from the edge of the laundry drawer over to the desk. She typed,
WHEN RAT CHEWED THE WIRE IN THE CAFETERIA, THERE WAS A BIG SHOCK AND BIG SPARKS. FIRE FOAM SPRAYED ALL OVER RAT. IT STANK. SNIFFERS COULD NOT SMELL RAT. WLTH FIRE FOAM, RAT CAN ERASE THE NEW TRAILS. THE INVESTIGATOR WILL NOT FIND THEM.

“Oh, wow! This is great. Now we have a chance.”

WHAT IS YOUR PLAN?
Rat looked over her shoulder at the boy.

“Ah … ah … I don't have it yet. I need inspiration.”

WHAT'S THAT?

The boy thought a moment, then said, “A flash of insight—like you had about the fire foam. I've only got hints. I need something else to make it all come together.”

I
NSPIRATION IS MYSTERY
. Rat typed.
TAKES TIME.

“I know.”

They were running out of that. Already they had wasted half the day on the wrong plan. More than half. They needed a new plan soon! But that was the boy's job: to find inspiration. What Rat needed was time alone with the computer.

“Get lunch,” Rat signed.

“Lunch?” The boy looked puzzled. “I guess it's past time, isn't it?”

“Go slow. Think. Rat must study.”

The boy hesitated at the door. “You won't … go anywhere, will you?”

“No,” Rat signed. It was clear to Rat now: She and the boy must work together as a team. “Stay here. Study. Promise.”

C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN

E
UREKA
!

Jeff didn't mind Rat sending him away again. He could use some alone time, too, to try to come up with a new plan.

The cafeteria was empty. Jeff went to one of the food dispensers on the wall, punched in his account, then chose a ham sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup for himself. His hand hovered over the deli meats selector. Heck, why not? Rat needed some strong cheering up. He pressed “liverwurst.” With a slide and a meaty thud, the plastic tube dropped onto the tray.

He put the liverwurst in his pocket, then carried his food to a table, reminding himself to have Rat erase the purchase record in this food dispenser.

Jeff chewed a bite of sandwich thoughtfully.

Mom often said, “Science lurches forward on eureka moments.” Her favorite example was how the ring-like chemical structure of benzene came to Friedrich August von Kekule in a dream where he saw whirling snakes, one eating its own tail.

Jeff desperately needed a eureka moment like that.

Mom also said, “The road to the brink of insight is paved with hard work, constant focus, and by asking the right questions.”

Jeff slurped the last of his soup.

Scritch-rip, scritch-rip.

He took the long way around Ring 9 back to his room and came at last to his door, but still missing was the flash, the spark, the lightning—that eureka moment. How had Rat put it? Oh, yeah, inspiration is mystery.

Tap-tap-tap,

tap-a-tap-a-tap-tap.

When Jeff entered, Rat showed no sign of hearing him, even when he rustled the plastic on the liverwurst package. She was completely focused on a text box on the computer screen. A bigger window behind the text box showed some kind of picture, a blur of pinks and whites and grays from where Jeff stood. Within the text box, the pages flickered strobe-fast to the steady beat of Rat's tail on the page-down key. Her head dropped and rose as she scanned the words.

I wish I could speed-read like that! Jeff thought, moving closer, curious to know what held Rat's attention so completely.

The text box blocked a lot of the picture, but he saw two baby rats along with the tail and hind leg of a third. They weren't much bigger than his little finger. The framework of the mechanical feeding station dwarfed them. A scrap of white hide covered the tiny rubber nipples.

Cute or ugly? Jeff wasn't sure. He felt a little of both reactions.

Now he was close enough to read the label: Rodengenics file #37A456-RR4b, Sibs feeding.

“Rat! Is one of those guys you?” Squinting, he examined the babies. How to tell? They were all pink, all hairless.

Rat never paused. Probably she can't tell, either!

She read through to the end of the file. Jeff couldn't catch a word at Rat's pace. The search window query index read: Modified Organism Registry Definitions & Techniques of Generation. What was she up to?

The final page came up, and Rat closed the text window, revealing the complete picture to Jeff: Ten little babies inside a box. Jeff stared at it. The box wasn't an ordinary cage. It was a special kind—a habitat module—and it was the answer to their problem.

“That's it! Rat! You found the answer!”

Rat turned slowly from the keys. Her ears drooped. Her eyes looked dull and distant. Listlessly, she signed, “There is no mother.”

Jeff did a double take.

“You mean … you didn't know?”

Rat shook her head, then slumped against the keyboard, deflated.

Jeff looked hard at the picture, trying to see it through Rat's eyes. Baby eyes, blind eyes. Only smell and touch and the taste of warm milk were of use to the babies.

To have all that mean “mother,” then learn the truth?

A shock. Big one. Like discovering you were adopted. No, not that. Because you still had a real live mother somewhere.

This was more like in a sci-fi horror movie when the hero learns that he is really a bug-eyed monster, or an android … or Nanny!

“How horrible.” Jeff settled into the chair. The disgusting picture loomed behind Rat's slumped body. “You don't want that on anymore, do you?”

Rat shook her head. Jeff reached over her and shut off the computer. Bringing his hand back, he almost stroked her, but some instinct stopped him. How do you fix a feeling like that?

“Why did you look this up now?”

Rat signed. It took Jeff a moment to puzzle out the unfamiliar sequence of symbols.

“Oh … cousins.” The weird exchange between LB and Rat began to make sense. “LB showed you this?”

Rat nodded. “Machine said both made by scientists. Thought lie. Thought trick. Truth. They mixed Rat, like bread.”

Oh, boy! No wonder LB got called wicked. Rat knew enough to call herself a modified, but obviously the scientists had never told her what that meant. She must hate them even more now.

BANG, BANG, BANG!

Jeff bolted from the chair. Rat didn't react. That alarmed him even more than the pounding on the door.

“Jeff! Let me in! Now!”

Dad!

“Come on, Rat,” Jeff whispered harshly. “Move! Hide!”

But she didn't.

He picked her up, extraordinarily aware of the soft silkiness of her belly as he cradled her in his palm. She draped limply across it, a dead weight. He slipped her into the back of the laundry drawer, then scooped up an armful of clothes and tossed them in on top of her.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

A B
ETTER
P
LAN

The clothes settled around Rat, smothering her with the boy's scent. He was hiding her from danger. Like a mother. Lucky boy. He had a mother
and
a father, even if the father was yelling at him now. What about?

Rat caught the word, “… laser …”

That laser again! It had caused more trouble than Nanny! Thrasing and wiggling, Rat got her ears free of the pile of T-shirts.

“How'd you find out about that?” boy said.

“Just a minute ago. Dr. Wagg called me. She said she found scratch marks around the lock. She thought you might be responsible. Really, Jeff, a
laser
! What were you and that rat going to do with it? And no dodging, I know you're together.”

There was a long pause. Rat found herself nodding, as if giving permission to the boy to end the game of pretend with the father.

“Don't worry,” the boy said at last. “I've got a better plan.”

“A better plan—better than what, for heavens sake?”

“That doesn't matter anymore, Dad.”

The father sighed. “Jeff, look. I think I made a mistake. I'm sorry to admit, what with solar max and all the work, I didn't give this situation another thought until I heard the shuttle was coming. I guess I figured you and a rat … well, it'll help make time pass easier. You were so unhappy here, but now I'm worried you're going to get hurt.”

“Me?” the boy said. “I'm not the one they're after.”

Rat had the same thought. The father was not making sense.

“That's not what I mean. The chance that you can fool the investigator is … well, it's very slim. You've obviously become quite attached to it—”

“Her! Rat's a her,” the boy shouted, a tremble in his voice. The father was upsetting him. Rat, too. “And you're wrong. I'll show you. Look.”

The computer started up. The boy said, “See what they're in? That's a habitat module.”

He was showing the father the horrible picture.

“A what?” the father asked, and the boy began to explain.

Rat knew all about habitat modules. The scientists used them to expose Rat to different environments. They were worse than a cage. Rat could see out of a cage. But a habitat module was solid on all sides. It had a solid door that sealed tight. Once closed, no sound, no smell, no sight came in from outside.

They would leave Rat in that dark silence. Nothing to do but worry and wonder: What will happen next, a hiss of poison gas or a deadly disease? Or the one they called Mars: so cold and dusty and smothery, with air almost too thin to breath.

“… they're self-contained,” the boy said, “like a mini space suit. Once we decontaminate the outside with fire foam, even a sniffer sitting right on top of it would never be able to tell Rat was inside.”

Inside!