Chapter Nineteen
Two days later, Torus was sitting in the middle of the floor in the big attic loft of the building. The loft had been vacant for as long as anybody could remember, with broken windows and holes in the ceiling that let in the rain and snow and wind. Humans had left piles of junk in the corners, but mostly the floor was bare and no human had been up there for dozens of moons. Since no humans lived there the rats had no reason to go there either, so it was off the normal routes. Many rats in the clan didn’t even know it was there, up above the fifth floor apartments. But even so, it was reasonably warm, thanks to the drafts from all the heated human homes below.
Nevi had found the way there after Chello complained her “place” was too close to the beaten path for strategizing and to practice fighting.
“We can’t just run at them,” he said. “We need to be coordinated. We need to have a plan and practice our attacks.”
Nevi had heard about the attic from the other Scouts, but no one seemed to know the way there. She poked around for a while without any luck, but then almost by accident she found an ancient tunnel that followed some electrical wires up to the loft.
There was a piece of cardboard over the entrance to the tunnel, as if someone had tried to hide it, and the tunnel itself was full of dust and cobwebs. It came out at a hole in the wall under a broken window at one end of the vast, empty space. High above was the frame that supported the roof, and here and there long pipes pierced the floor, reaching through the ceiling. One of them was the vent pipe they climbed to reach the hawk’s roost, but Torus couldn’t figure out which one.
He sat surrounded by pieces of cardboard and wire and string and a brand-new roll of tape that Mr. Gumble had acquired for him. He was building a machine, and at the moment he was absorbed in the problem of attaching a large triangular piece to one end of a frail-looking wire frame. He barely flinched when a ball of wadded-up paper flew past his ear.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” came Chello’s voice from behind him. “Like this, see?”
Another ball of paper came flying at him, this time hitting him squarely in the back of the head.
“Yes!” said Chello triumphantly, and Flinka giggled.
“If you’re done using me for target practice, come over and hold this so I can tape it on,” said Torus calmly.
“Part of our plan,” Chello said, walking to him, “is to throw mud and snow at the pigbirds. That’ll mess up their flying, right?” He held up one end of the triangle while Torus carefully applied a piece of tape.
“I guess so,” he said, distractedly. “Interfere with their balance, or something like that.”
“Well, you should know. You’re the flying expert, right?”
Torus squinted at him, trying to see if he was joking.
“I’ve thought about it a lot, if that’s what you mean,” he said. “At least as much as you’ve thought about your attack plans.”
“Whatever,” said Chello, good naturedly, stepping away from the structure. It was an oblong wire frame with two wide pieces of cardboard attached to the side like wings, and the triangular piece on the rear, stretched out like a wide tail. “So, is it done? How does it work, anyway?”
Torus stepped back and pulled a scrap of tape from the fur on his stomach.
“Well, I started by looking at birds. They’re all shaped more or less the same way, right? I mean, they’ve got two wings and a tail, and their wings and tails are wide and flat. Wide, flat things can sail through the air, and wide stiff things can move the air, like the fan in Mr. Nile’s place. So I figured I’d just make the same kind of thing. It straps on my back, and my arms flap the wings and my feet steer with the tail, just like birds do.”
The rest of the group gathered around to look at the flying machine. Juke poked at it with his stick and it rocked gently.
“Will it work?” he asked, bluntly.
“I tried out the wings yesterday. I made them stiffer with some wire along the edges, and when I flap them hard it almost lifts me off the ground.”
“You’ll need to do better than ‘almost’,” said Chello, “if you’re going to help with the attack.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Torus. “I figure I can’t take off from the ground, but if I launch from someplace high up then I’ll be able to stay up at least long enough to scare them off, or at least freak them out a little bit. Have you seen the way the hawk dives down and surprises them? Like that.”
Chello looked skeptical.
“So what does that make you? A Rat-Hawk? A Hawk-Rat? How about a Hark?”
Torus scowled at him.
“No, think about it. Think about your plan. You’re going to go out and wait for the pigeons to dive down and harass you, right? So what if, just as they do that, just as they swoop down on top of you, I swoop down on top of them?”
“Yeah,” said Pryus with false enthusiasm. “And we can all point up into the sky and yell ‘A Hark! A Hark!’ That would totally blow their minds!”
There was general laughter, and Torus was discouraged, but then Juke spoke up.
“It’s a good plan,” he said. “It’s a surprise attack. It’ll work.”
“I agree,” said Nevi. “If it goes like you say, if they attack one of you, and then the rest of us rush them, that will be surprising enough in itself. But if at the same time a rat comes sailing down from above them, it’ll be more than they can handle. There’s never more than two or three of them hanging out at night there, anyway. We can handle them, easy.”
Chello looked unusually thoughtful. Finally he spoke.
“You’re right,” he said. “It will work, at least the first time. They may not let us surprise them that way more than once, but maybe once is all we need.” He looked up at Torus. “Where will you fly down from?”
Torus twitched his whiskers. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I dunno,” he said. “I guess from the top of the wall around the dumpster.”
Chello looked up at the roof, his brow furrowed.
“No, that won’t work. That’s where the birds watch from.” He climbed up to one of the broken windows in the loft and looked out across the street. “And you can’t see all around the dumpster from any one spot on the wall. We don’t know who they’ll attack, or where they’ll fly down to, so you need to be able to go anywhere around there.”
Torus nodded silently, still working on the problem in his mind.
Nevi scrambled up beside Chello and looked out the window with him.
“What about the tree?” she said. “There’s a big branch that reaches out over the dumpster. I’ll bet you could see the ground all around it from up there.”
“Good,” said Chello. “That’s it. Can you get your machine up there? Is it done?”
“Sure,” said Torus. “It’s not too heavy, but it’s awkward. Someone will need to help me with it. Maybe in the middle of the night before, so the birds don’t notice it?”
“I’ll help,” said Juke. “Middle of the night. The next night you sneak up the tree when we go out to the dumpster.”
“So that’s tonight, then, right?” said Flinka. “’Cause tomorrow is a rest day.”
“Uh…right,” said Torus. He hadn’t realized it was so soon.
“And how do we get it down there?” asked Arkon. “It’s too big to go through the tunnels, and we don’t want anyone to see it.”
“Let’s meet up here at midnight,” said Chello. “We’ll take it down the fire escapes.”
“Ouside?” said Flinka, horrified. “On those metal stairs and ladders? You’ll fall off or get eaten by an owl.”
“No we won’t,” said Chello. “There’s no such thing as owls.”
“Yes there is,” said Flinka, indignantly.
“What’s an owl?” asked Arkon.
“We won’t fall, either,” said Chello.
“It’s like a haw
k, but at night,” said Pryus. “They’re made up to scare little rats into staying inside at night.”
“Do you think we should test your machine first?” asked Nevi.
“They are not made up,” said Flinka. “My mom said her mom saw one in the park.”
“Every mom’s mom saw one in the park,” said Pryus. “Come on!”
“Uh, probably we should,” said Torus. “Test it I mean.”
“I believe my mom before I believe you,” said Flinka, her ears turning pink. “She saw it. It had eyes as big as your head, and it flew as silently as a dandelion seed, drifting through the moonlight.”
“Okay, sorry,” said Pryus, trying not to laugh.
“What was your grandma doing out in the middle of the night?” asked Chello.
“You could climb up on that stack of boxes to test it,” said Nevi.
“Yeah,” Torus said. “Test it.”
“Come on, I’ll help you,” she said, lifting up the tail end of the machine. Torus picked up the head and they half-dragged, half-carried it to the tall stack of boxes that stood at the far end of the empty space. The others followed them, and once they got to the boxes they all climbed up to various levels and helped get it to the top.
“If it works, we should put a head with a face on it,” said Arkon, enthusiastically.
“What kind of face does a Hark have?” asked Pryus, grunting has he lifted the machine over his head to the top box.
“No,” said Arkon, “like an owl, you know? With big eyes and a fierce beak!” He made a frightening face and Pryus rolled his eyes.
Torus clambered up to the top with Chello and the rest slipped back down to the floor to watch. He took a deep breath and started struggling into the straps that held the contraption on his back. Chello watched uncertainly and tried to hold it steady.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
Torus shrugged and tied a strap across his belly.
“There’s only one way to find out if it works,” he said. He stood up and reached out to grab the handles on the wings. He gave them an experimental flap and felt them press against the air, pushing him backward into Chello.
“Watch out!” said Chello. “You’re supposed to go forward, right?” He pointed out over the floor. “Only don’t fly into the elevator shaft, okay?”
The elevator shaft was a square hole in the middle of the far end of the room that reached all the way to the basement.
“I think I’ll be lucky if I can get that far,” said Torus. He stepped out to the edge of the box and looked down at the small crowd of rats gathered below. They cheered when they saw him. They looked smaller than he had expected, and he had a sudden lurch in his stomach.
“Go on,” said Chello. “They’re all ready to catch you…”
“Yeah…” said Torus.
“Sooo…do you want a…I don’t know, a shove?” said Chello. “Or something to get you started?”
Torus shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I think I’ll just kick off. Like jumping out of the hole into the alley…”
“Yeah, except the hole into the alley is only two tails off the ground, and this is like –”
“Shut up,” said Torus crouching down. He muttered something unintelligible to himself.
“What’s that?” said Chello. “Last words?”
“This is stupid!” Torus repeated, and with that he launched himself, kicking out as far as he could off the edge and at the same time spreading his cardboard wings.
He glided a short way and the crowd below cheered again, although he could hardly hear them through the sound of his heart roaring in his ears. He reached back and then flapped down as hard as he could. He felt the wings push against the air and for a moment he thought it was working, but then he began to descend more quickly. The machine was still gliding, but at a steep angle toward the floor. He panicked and reached back to flap again, to try to slow his descent and come down to the floor more gradually. But when he pulled forward on the wings again, one of the handles tore loose and the wing began to flutter uselessly as the machine started spinning. He struggled with the remaining wing to try to get control but it was falling too fast. By the time he had righted himself he was already at the ground, and he smashed down into the floor off-center, with one arm still clutching the wing. His free arm took the force of the landing and he felt a sharp pain from his wrist shoot up through his shoulder as he collapsed under the tangle of wire and cardboard that had been the flying machine.
The others came rushing over.
“Wow!” said Arkon. “That was amazing! It looked like it almost worked!”
“You went pretty far,” said Flinka, encouragingly. “Did you dive like that on purpose?”
Torus grunted and struggled out from under the wreckage.
“No,” he said, wincing as he tried to undo the straps with one hand.
“Oh, no, you’re hurt!” said Nevi, pointing to his leg.
He looked down and saw a trickle of blood running down from a deep cut on his knee. He felt dizzy and staggered a little.
Chello pushed his way through the crowd and came up to him.
“Steady there, Hark,” he said, helping to get the straps undone. “Come over here and sit down for a minute.” He held Torus’s good arm over his shoulders and helped him back to the place they had been working in. He eased Torus back onto a scrap of carpet they had spread out on the floor and then examined his bleeding knee and his rapidly swelling wrist.
“Can you help him, Arkon?” asked Nevi.
Arkon looked thoughtful.
“I think I can tape up that cut, but he needs Mr. Nile for his arm.”
Torus shook his head and winced. “I’m fine,” he said, struggling to control his breathing. “I just twisted it. It’ll be okay in a minute.”
Arkon pressed a bit of cloth against the cut on his knee. Once the bleeding stopped he got a fresh piece and held it in place with a piece of tape wrapped around Torus’s leg. Watching him work, Torus gradually calmed down.
“Thanks,” he said. The pain in his wrist was less now, too, but when he tried to stand on it the pain shot up his arm again and he had to stand on three feet.
Juke came up dragging what was left of the flying machine.
“What should we do with this?” he asked.
Torus was suddenly filled with anger. Anger at the machine for falling apart, and anger at himself for his ridiculous ideas.
“I don’t care,” he said. “Leave it. Throw it in the alley.”
“What if humans find it?” said Juke.
“So what?” Torus said sharply. “Let them find it! Maybe they’ll trip over it and break their stupid neck!” He hobbled over to the wreck and tore it out of Jukes paws. It slipped out of his hand and slid away across the floor, spinning slowly to a stop in a dark corner. Torus stared at it wordlessly. He felt completely drained.
“I’m sorry,” said Chello, standing beside him. “It was a good idea.”
Torus sighed.
“No, I’m sorry,” he replied. “The raid will still go okay, though. Your plan is good.”
Chello shrugged.
“Maybe so,” he said. “Or maybe it’s a stupid idea.”
Torus smiled despite the throbbing pain in his wrist and the dull ache in his knee. “It is a stupid idea,” he said, and Chello laughed.
“I know it is,” he said. “I just hope my stupid idea isn’t as stupid as your stupid idea.”
* * *