Superior Saturday(28)

‘Come on, Arthur!’ said Suzy. She hopped over to the bottle and tensed, ready to jump at the neck. ‘Last one in is a stinking ra . . . um . . . rabbit.’

Arthur pulled her back by the scruff of her neck.

‘Not this time, Suzy,’ he said. ‘I go first.’

Suzy wriggled but didn’t really resist as he moved her aside. Even as a Raised Rat, he was unnaturally strong, though it didn’t occur to him that he shouldn’t be able to pick up someone who weighed as much as he did, using only a paw.

With Suzy out of the way, Arthur took a few practice hops across the cabin. Then he stretched his paws and backed up to stand in the open cabin doorway, facing the open neck of the Simultaneous Nebuchadnezzar. Smoke was still wafting out of it, and the interior was dark and cloudy.

Bravery and stupidity can be quite closely related, Arthur thought. I wonder what this is going to be . . .

He bent his legs, rushed forward, and dived straight at the open neck of the bottle.

He was in midair when a terrible last-minute thought slipped into his head:

What if the Raised Rats are lying? What if this bottle takes me somewhere entirely unexpected?





NINE





ARTHUR HAD EXPECTED to land inside the huge green glass bottle, at least for a few seconds before he was transferred, but instead he found himself diving out of the neck of a completely different Nebuchadnezzar, one made of sparkling blue glass. He landed heavily on a floor made of lozenge-patterned iron mesh, which hurt and left an imprint of itself on his fur.

Arthur rolled to a stop and immediately got up. He hardly had a moment to look around before a Raised Rat he only barely recognised as Suzy crashed into him and they both went sprawling on the iron floor again. They were disentangling themselves when a harsh, low voice spoke.

‘Quickly now! Help me move the bottle! They’ll be on to us in a minute or two.’

Arthur jumped up and looked around. The blue Nebuchadnezzar was on a lashed-together wooden trolley with uneven wheels, and pushing it was the strangest, ugliest Piper’s child that Arthur had ever seen. He wore a black cloak and a broad-brimmed hat with a feather, but even under the shadow of the brim, Arthur could see that the boy had a lumpy face and a ridiculously large nose.

The Nebuchadnezzar, Arthur, Suzy and the ugly Piper’s child were all on a broad metal walkway suspended from the ceiling by bronze rods every few yards. Though it was twelve feet wide, it had no rails, and was wreathed in smoke and steam.

Arthur gingerly peered over the edge. There was nothing beneath the walkway, no sign of solid ground. All he could see was a thick cloud of roiling black smoke. He could hear the whoosh, hiss and deep bass beat of big steam engines somewhere down below, but he couldn’t see any sign of them.

Then the smoke currents whorled and shifted and he caught a glimpse of the upper half of a huge bronze wheel as big as a house. It was turning very slowly, but before Arthur could see what it was connected to or what its purpose was, more smoke billowed across and obscured it again.

Closer to the walkway, a black cloud parted to reveal the end of a huge, rusted iron beam that was as long as three school buses joined together. The beam rose up through the smoke like a whale breaching, then descended into the depths with a gargling whoosh, and the industrial fog closed up again.

The metal mesh under Arthur’s feet was vibrating in time to the beat of the engines below, and the bronze supporting rods hummed at Arthur’s touch. The rods were tarnished, Arthur noted with concern, and their connection to the ceiling looked none too secure, though it was hard to see exactly how the thirty-foot-long rods were joined to the stone above. Judging by the occasional clean patches, the ceiling was a solid, pale rock, but most of it was so stained with soot that it resembled a dirty carpet of the blackest plush.

‘Hurry! Help me push!’ cried the Piper’s child. He was struggling to get the bottle moving.

Arthur cautiously ran around the right-hand side of the bottle while Suzy ran around the left. They put their shoulders to the base of the Nebuchadnezzar and heaved. The trolley creaked and rumbled forward, slowly gathering speed. It had a tendency to veer dangerously off toward the edge, so all three pushers needed to be constantly vigilant.

‘Got to get it back to the lubricant store,’ wheezed the Piper’s child. ‘Fill it up with oil again and make ourselves scarce. You’ll need disguises too.’

Arthur glanced across at the boy and did a double take. It wasn’t a Piper’s child at all under the broad-brimmed hat with the scarlet feather, but a Raised Rat wearing a papier-mâché mask painted to look like a human face. The ridiculous nose covered the Rat’s own snout.