Page 16 of Green City Wars

That’s bad, Skotch reckons. Bad for a number of reasons. Bad for how well-informed they are, that he’s after a mouse. Bad for how badly informed they are, because apparently he’s supposed to know where Meece actually is. Which, despite a few leads, he really doesn’t.

He opens his mouth to at least earn the buttons Benson’s paying him with a few stock denials. Murnau has given Eddi a nod, though, and the rat bruiser whacks a stick across Skotch’s toes. Pretty much the part of him most vulnerable to a bit of bruising given their relative sizes and Skotch’s thick pelt. He hisses in pain, hopping back. Eddi shows him the stick—just a knotted length of root, hardened and polished—then swaps it for a knife. The message is simple: That time we didn’t break the skin.

“We know the old shell-head at the Uzcogebäude put you on his trail,” Mother Murnau says. “We know you caught up with him at Franz-Ferdinand’s, Herr Washbear.”

“You got it all then.” Skotch might hate that particular piece of slang for his Strain, maybe even more than “bandit,” but right now he swallows it right down.

“Herr Washbear, you’re known. Sometimes, these things you do to make a living, they are an irritation, like a flea,” Murnau tells him. “Sometimes, they are like scratching the flea. Some action of yours removes some little parasite trying to get its beak into us. And so we tell ourselves, that Washbear, Skotch, he’s all right. No need to have a word with him. Just let him get on with his life.”

“That’s mighty good of you,” says Skotch, although he can feel the other conversational shoe about to stomp on his tail.

“Where’s the mouse, Herr Washbear?” Mother Murnau says again. “Because, as you can see, now you’re here and we’re having words.”

And Skotch has some obvious options here: outright denials, evasions, spilling his guts—figuratively, he hopes. Instead, some part of the mess of his geneware decides turning the questioning tables is the best gambit. “What’s this mouse to you, Mother?” And, because him piping up like that is unexpected enough that Eddi doesn’t go for him with the knife, “What’s this mouse to everyone?” The unspoken question: Is Herr Doctor actually the monster? “Why’s he so important?” Because the Rattenkönige are dirty with all kinds of crime but he’d have thought they’d stay clean of the sort of filth Meece might be cooking up. Tell me it’s just drugs or some damn thing. Please.

“Eddi,” Mother Murnau says, after a reflective pause. “Herr Washbear has a lot of fingers. So many. I think they must be distracting him. Maybe one less would help him focus.”

Eddi moves in, and so do his two friends and about half a dozen other rats who’ve just slithered into the barrel. Enough to overcome one raccoon. Skotch tries to back off but there aren’t many places to back off into when you’re in a barrel. Then Lulu has strutted between him and the rats. Head ducking forwards and back.

“You can’t!” the pigeon announces. “I won’t let you treat Skotch like that. He’s my friend.”

It’s news to Skotch, honestly. He isn’t really sure what Lulu is, but pain in his raccoon ass is probably closer to the mark. Here she is, though, apparently in the belief she can defend him.

“Eddi, what is this?” Mother Murnau asks, sounding weirdly fascinated. “Is it chicken we’re having, for dinner? Shouldn’t you have plucked it already?”

“Mother.” Eddi hunches, twists, then actually rolls over, exposing his belly to Murnau as though she might jump down from that seat and put her steel teeth into him. “Mother,” Eddi says from that submissive posture, “she’s the pigeon. The pigeon. The one who works with the Schreiber.”

Murnau’s glass eyes peer at Lulu, at the ring on her proudly presented foot. “Is that so.”

“That is so, thank you very much,” Lulu confirms. “And I would love to talk to you, about whatever you want. This is such an opportunity for me, and you must have such incredible stories to tell. But you can’t hurt Skotch. He’s just a raccoon. He’s doing his best.” And honestly Skotch would rather go back to the Washbear stuff because this is embarrassing, has the rat thugs snickering into their whiskers. Patronised by the liberal pigeon literati.

“And what,” says Murnau, “do you propose to do, should I decide that I just have to hurt Herr Washbear, regrettable as that might be?” She speaks very pleasantly, hunched forwards, watching Lulu strut like the pigeon’s some precocious rat two-week-old who’s learned a trick.

“Well I’d have to stop you,” Lulu says earnestly. Another two steps of strut, that ring presented very prominently. Her guarantee of safe conduct.

“What’s the mausgelt on a pigeon, Eddi?” Murnau asks softly.

“But Mother,” Eddi manages, half-twisted up from his prone position, caught between desperate options.

“I asked you a question, Eddi.” Her voice still smooth as poison.

“Seven maus, Mother,” the rat bravo gets out, “but Mother—”

“But she’s the famous pigeon,” Murnau agrees. “She’s the Schreiber’s pigeon. Oh my, whatever will we do? Worth more than all our pelts together if we so much as ruffle a single one of her feathers, yes. My oh my, what an impasse we are in. What a fool I was to think I could pit my little might against such a luminary of the city.”

Honestly, Tiersprech wasn’t ever really designed for that level of sarcasm—one more feature the genetic engineers didn’t think their diminutive creations would have any use for. Murnau manages magnificently, however.

“Loui,” she tells one of the other rats. “Go ring the bell, will you?”

The rats all go still. Skotch, by dint of base animal instinct, goes still too. Lulu keeps strutting, because she doesn’t do well with sarcasm. Maybe pigeons don’t use it.

Loui the rat skulks out, plainly not happy to be the one tasked with ringing the bell, whatever the hell that signifies. Mother Murnau sighs, scratches at her belly, shakes her head at the foolishness of the world.

“I do not hold,” she says, “with all this trafficking across the boundaries of Rule One.” As the human-made medical machinery beyond the barrel labours to prolong her unnaturally protracted life. “When we meddle with that border, we take pains to be circumspect, you understand? We do not just stride around telling everyone that we’re working directly for some human, some individual human, and expect that to make us invulnerable.”

Distantly a bell rings, high and tinny. Skotch’s ears twitch, and so do those of every rat present save Murnau herself.

“Herr Schreiber places a great deal of value on my services,” Lulu says proudly. “I’m very important to him. If any Gehirner laid a foot on me, it wouldn’t be a matter of mausgelt.” She looks around, judges herself in control of the situation. “But Mother, it doesn’t have to be like this. I’m a great admirer of yours. It’s an honour to be in your presence. I’m sure that you and Skotch and I can just sit down and be friends and talk. Without anyone needing to lose—”