Mrs Frisby slept well and soundly, the day just finished having been the longest and hardest she had ever known.
She awoke in the morning with a smile. Her house was warm, and it was safe at last. Her children slept peacefully beside her; Timothy’s breathing was quiet and easy. They could stay in the house, now, as long as they needed to. On some warm day later in the spring, when Timothy was strong again, they would move to the summer house down by the brook. Another nice thing, she thought — when they left the house she would close up the entrance tunnel so that no one could find it; undisturbed by the plough, it would be ready and waiting for them in the fall. It could be theirs forever, thanks to the rats.
The rats! In her half-dreaming state she had forgotten. They were in terrible danger. What would they do? She felt as if she ought to go and offer to help them. But help how? She could think of nothing she could do.
At that moment she heard a voice calling her name from above.
‘Mrs Frisby.’
She left the bed and went to the bottom of the entrance hole.
‘Yes? Who’s calling?’
‘It’s me, Brutus. Can you come up?’
Mrs Frisby climbed up and out of her front door, blinking in the early morning sunlight,
‘Nicodemus wants to know if you can come with me. He’s having a meeting.’
‘Just let me wake the children and tell them.’
Two minutes later she was walking with Brutus towards the rosebush.
‘What does Nicodemus want?’
‘It’s about the men. Justin told us last night. Nicodemus thinks they may be from Nimh. He wants to ask you more about what Mr Fitzgibbon said.’
That morning there were two rats on sentry duty — one just inside the entrance to the rosebush, watching Mr Fitzgibbon’s house, another at the arch where Brutus had stood. All the rest were gathered in the large assembly room Mrs Frisby had seen when she got out of the lift. Nicodemus, Justin, Arthur and two other rats sat on the raised platform at the end. The rest sat facing them, filling every square inch of floor space except for an aisle up the centre.
Mrs Frisby had never seen so many rats. Even the young ones were present; she spotted Isabella, staring up at the platform with wide, round eyes. Some of the mothers held small babies at their sides. Most of them looked anxious; there was an air of tension, but none of panic.
Brutus led her up the centre aisle to the raised platform. There was a table on it, covered with papers, and one vacant space, where a chair had been placed for Mrs Frisby. The rats waited in complete silence while she sat down.
Then Nicodemus said, quite formally: ‘Justin has told us all that happened. Mrs Frisby, it seems you have more than repaid us for the help we gave you in moving your house. Just as your husband did once, you have saved us from a disaster: Death or capture — we do not yet know which.’
Justin gave her a wink. ‘Mrs Frisby had a taste of capture herself last night.’
‘Would you tell us, as well as you can remember it, word for word what Mr Fitzgibbon said — about the rats, about the men who were at the store?’
‘As well as I can remember it.’ Mrs Frisby’s voice sounded small in the big room. ‘Mr Fitzgibbon said a strange thing had happened in the hardware store — Henderson’s, he called it.’
Her memory was good; she had listened with great care to what Mr Fitzgibbon had said, and she was able to recall the whole conversation word for word. The rats sat quietly while she told it.
Then Nicodemus went back over it, asking questions.
‘You say that Mr Fitzgibbon said six or seven rats. Did he ever say which number it really was?’
‘No, I don’t think he paid much attention to the number.’
‘Jenner’s group was seven,’ said Justin. ‘But it could be a coincidence.’
‘Did he say how far away the town was where this happened? Or did he name it?’
‘No. But it must not be very far. He’d been there and back that day.’
‘Did anyone see his car go out?’ Nicodemus asked the others.
‘I heard it,’ Brutus said. ‘I was on duty. It went after lunch.’
‘And he was back by dinner. But which direction? If we knew, we might send someone. You see,’ Nicodemus explained to Mrs Frisby, ‘we need to know who those men are. If they’re from Nimh, things are much worse for us.’
‘We’d never make it,’ said Arthur. ‘Driving at, say, forty or fifty miles an hour, Mr Fitzgibbon might have gone fifteen or twenty miles in any direction, and returned easily the same afternoon. On the map’ — there was a road map on the table — ‘you can see it could have been any one of half a dozen small towns. And each of them might have a hardware store.
‘You’re right, of course,’ said Nicodemus. ‘Without the name, that idea is hopeless.’ He turned back to Mrs Frisby. ‘Mr Fitzgibbon said the rats were grouped around the motor “as if trying to move it”?’
‘That’s what he said the store owner told him. He didn’t see it himself.’
‘And that the motor was plugged in.’
‘“Had been left plugged in”,’ Mrs Frisby quoted.
‘But we don’t know who plugged it in.’
‘I got the impression,’ Mrs Frisby said, ‘from the way he said it, that the storeowner had left it plugged in. But I’m not sure.’
‘That would make sense,’ Arthur said. ‘If it was Jenner, and if they had plugged it in themselves, they’d have known better than to try to move it. So they must not have realized. It was probably pretty dark in the store.’
‘Poor Jenner,’ said Nicodemus. ‘I wish he had stayed with us.’
‘It will be poor us,’ said one of the rats at the table (Mrs Frisby did not know his name), ‘if we don’t get on with this.’
‘He did not mention the doctor’s name,’ Nicodemus said. ‘Did he say even a word about what he looked like?’
‘No.’
‘Did he describe the truck at all?’
‘No. Only that it was full of equipment.’
‘Are you sure about the headlines in the local paper: “Mechanized Rats Invade Hardware Store”?’
‘I’m sure that’s what Mr Fitzgibbon said it was. But I don’t think he saw it. He didn’t say so.’
‘In a way, that’s the most puzzling thing about the whole story,’ Nicodemus said,
‘Why is that?’ asked Justin.
‘Because the headline doesn’t really fit the facts. You don’t call a bunch of dead rats mechanized just because you find them on a shelf near a motor.’
‘Maybe not,’ said the nameless rat. ‘But then why did the newspaper say that?’
‘I’m wondering,’ Nicodemus said, ‘if perhaps there wasn’t more to the story. Some stronger reason to think they were really taking the motor away, or that they knew how to use it.’
‘Maybe some other motors had been stolen,’ Justin said. ‘Or some tools. That would make them seem mechanized.’
‘It would,’ said Nicodemus. ‘And it would explain what the doctor meant when he said they had more checking to do in the town.’
‘They’re looking for the things that were missing,’ Arthur said, sounding suddenly worried. ‘They’re looking for Jenner’s headquarters. And if they find it …’
‘We’re just guessing, of course,’ Nicodemus said. ‘But it’s a possibility.’
‘And a bad one.’
‘It means,’ Nicodemus continued, ‘that we have no choice. We’ve got to assume they’re from Nimh. We’ve also got to assume that by now they may have found Jenner’s headquarters — whatever cave or cavern they were using.’
‘And,’ said Justin, ‘that now they’re looking for us.’
‘Why for us?’ asked one of the rats. ‘Why wouldn’t they think Jenner’s group are the only ones?’
‘They might,’ Nicodemus admitted, ‘but I don’t think so. After all, they know that there were twenty of us originally. Why should there be only seven now? And we already know that they’re coming out here — in quite a hurry at that. So if they’re from Nimh, obviously they are looking for us.’
‘I think,’ said Arthur, ‘that we’ve got to make some plans, and quickly.’
‘I agree,’ said Nicodemus. ‘It’s a new situation, and a tricky one. We won’t be able to do everything we hoped to. There isn’t time. And somehow we have to convince the exterminators, when they come, that we aren’t more of the mechanized rats they’re looking for.
‘We won’t be able to move any more food to Thorn Valley,’ Nicodemus continued. ‘We’ll have to get along on what we’ve already got stored there — about an eighteen-month supply, if we’re careful. The seeds, I believe, are already moved.’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur. ‘The last load went yesterday.’
‘So with luck, we’ll have our own first crops this summer and autumn.
‘We won’t have time to destroy the motors, or the books, or the furniture as we planned. Instead, we’ll move everything to the cave. And then we’ll seal off all the entrances to the cave as if it had never existed.’
‘That can be done,’ Arthur said.
‘But there’s more. We’ve got to pull all the wires and lights from the tunnel — they’re likely to dig it up. And the carpet. We’ve got to tear down the arch.
‘Then, when all that’s done, when everything is hidden in the cave, we’ll fill in the stairway and the lift shaft. We’ll seal off everything except the upper storage room and the tunnels leading in the front and out of the back.
‘When they dig, let them find that room. It’s as big as an ordinary rat hole.
‘Justin, tonight, take a group of a dozen or so. Go to the Fitzgibbons’ dustbin. Bring back a load of the worst-smelling rubbish you can find. The storage room is going to become an ordinary, typical rat hole, not in the least mechanized or civilized.’
Nicodemus turned to Arthur: ‘What do you think?’
‘I think we can do it all. We won’t get much sleep, though.’
Justin said: ‘But there’s one more thing. Won’t they think it’s odd — especially if they’re from Nimh — finding just an empty hole?’
Nicodemus said: ‘I was coming to that.’ He sounded suddenly very tired. ‘Tomorrow morning, as soon as it’s light, the main group leaves for Thorn Valley. But some of us will have to stay behind. As Justin says, if they find just an empty hole, they’re sure to be suspicious, and they’ll keep on digging. So when they come with their gas truck, they’ve got to find some rats here. A rear guard. I’d say at least ten.’
Mrs Frisby walked slowly home, keeping to the edge of the woods, keeping out of sight.
Justin had instantly volunteered for the rear guard. Brutus was second, and behind him, eight more; there were fifty more waiting behind them. ‘Enough, enough,’ said Nicodemus. Isabella, in tears, had run forward. ‘I want to stay, please,’ she had pleaded, looking despairingly at Justin. ‘No children,’ said Nicodemus, and her mother led her away, still weeping.
Those ten, the ten who would remain, did not face certain death, nor certain capture. The exterminators (they presumed) would make noise, especially if they cleared away the rosebush. The rats would be alerted. When the men pumped gas (as expected) into the hole, the pump would also make a noise; the air below would move as the gas flowed in. When they felt that, the rats would scramble out of the back exit, past the sealed-off cave, emerge as noisily as possible in the blackberry bramble — indeed, show themselves — and dash off into the woods.
‘But won’t they block the rear exit?’
‘Or put a net over it?’
‘We’ll give them another exit to block,’ Arthur had said cryptically. ‘One that’s easier to find.’
‘Mother, why are you so quiet?’ asked Teresa. They were sitting down to dinner for the first time in their newly moved house. ‘You seem sad.’
‘I suppose I am,’ Mrs Frisby said. ‘Because the rats are all going away.’
‘But that’s no reason. It’s true, they moved our house, and that was nice of them. But we didn’t really know them.’
‘I was getting to know them pretty well.’
‘Where are they going?’ Cynthia asked.
‘To a new home, a long way away.’
‘When?’
‘Tomorrow morning.’
‘Will you go to see them off?’
‘I think I will.’
‘But why are they moving away?’ asked Timothy.
‘Because they want to,’ said Mrs Frisby. Someday soon she would tell them the whole story. But not that night.