week.’
‘Really? That’s a relief. Will you let me go, then?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘In a minute. I need your help.’
‘Help?’
I flicked through the rat’s memory. I found the rat’s family tree, which was more like a thicket of blackberries than a tree, with branches in every direction. I found the branch labelled ‘Argus’ and could see that this rat was Argus’ nephew.
‘Nobby Bill Blinkalot,’ I thought.
‘You know my name?’
‘Yes, I met your uncle Argus. Now, Nobby Bill, I wonder if you could tell me everything you know about Titania.’
The rat shivered. ‘It lives next door. I’ve never seen it. Nobody really has. We only hear it. Oh, and the smell.’
‘Next door? How do I get there?’
‘You don’t understand. You don’t want to get there. Nobody wants to go there.’
‘But I do. One of my best friends is heading there right now and I have to get her out. Please help me.’
The rat sighed. ‘High up on the wall behind you is where the smell comes from.’
I thanked Nobby Bill and set him on the nest at my feet. He scampered off at the speed of light.
The fan wasn’t exactly high on the wall, unless you were a rat. I could reach the ledge and a single chin-up put me in the path of the putrid exhaust. I held my breath.
I searched around in the nest for something to stop the fan from turning. A rock or a brick perhaps. I did find a stick. A stout stick with little ratty tooth marks all over one end. I threw the wood into the fan. There was a loud clatter, an electrical hum and the sound of grinding metal.
It stopped turning.
I heaved myself onto the ledge and crawled between the blades of the fan, still effortlessly holding my breath. I crept along a short tunnel to a metal grille and peered through the gaps into the room beyond.
The light was dull. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. I could hear what sounded like a beehive, but as I listened harder I realised it was snoring. Not just one person, but a whole apartment block of snores. Little snuffy ones and diesel-engine snores that made the air rattle about my ears. It did sound a little like a beehive and when I finally realised what I was looking at, my eyes almost popped out.
The room beyond the grille was like a wide corridor that stretched into shadow in both directions and slumped along its length was a Thing. A monstrous Thing. A collection of limbs – arms and legs and heads and bottoms and hands and feet – all attached to each other higgledy-piggledy. There was no order to the arrangement at all. Feet poked into the air and bottoms perched beside faces in one long, pulsing mass. There was no way that thing could move. It would be like a game of stacks-on-the-mill walking across the room. Impossible.
This was Titania.
If the place really was called the Hive then I was looking at the Queen Bee.
And that explained the smell, too. Hundreds of unwashed bodies all slumped together in the one mass. Half the detachable people in the world must have been in that room.
I realised, in a moment of horror, that one of the faces snoring in my direction was actually a bottom.
‘Crystal?’ I whispered at the grille. Had that mess swallowed her already? Surely not.
Using Ravi’s granddad’s old penknife, I levered the grille away from the wall, just enough to lower my body through. I quietly hung my feet into the room and slipped down the concrete.
My feet didn’t touch the floor. There was no rats’ nest on this side of the wall to bunk me up and I was hanging there when an announcement came over the Hive’s intercom.
‘Ahem, is this working?’ said a very familiar Indian boy’s voice. ‘Yes? Good. This is your captain speaking. Ahem. As a gesture of our goodwill and the kindness of our hearts, I would like to inform you that your cell doors have all been automatically unlocked. Please feel free to exit the building in an orderly manner. Thank you for your involvement in this program. Have a nice
‘Really? That’s a relief. Will you let me go, then?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘In a minute. I need your help.’
‘Help?’
I flicked through the rat’s memory. I found the rat’s family tree, which was more like a thicket of blackberries than a tree, with branches in every direction. I found the branch labelled ‘Argus’ and could see that this rat was Argus’ nephew.
‘Nobby Bill Blinkalot,’ I thought.
‘You know my name?’
‘Yes, I met your uncle Argus. Now, Nobby Bill, I wonder if you could tell me everything you know about Titania.’
The rat shivered. ‘It lives next door. I’ve never seen it. Nobody really has. We only hear it. Oh, and the smell.’
‘Next door? How do I get there?’
‘You don’t understand. You don’t want to get there. Nobody wants to go there.’
‘But I do. One of my best friends is heading there right now and I have to get her out. Please help me.’
The rat sighed. ‘High up on the wall behind you is where the smell comes from.’
I thanked Nobby Bill and set him on the nest at my feet. He scampered off at the speed of light.
The fan wasn’t exactly high on the wall, unless you were a rat. I could reach the ledge and a single chin-up put me in the path of the putrid exhaust. I held my breath.
I searched around in the nest for something to stop the fan from turning. A rock or a brick perhaps. I did find a stick. A stout stick with little ratty tooth marks all over one end. I threw the wood into the fan. There was a loud clatter, an electrical hum and the sound of grinding metal.
It stopped turning.
I heaved myself onto the ledge and crawled between the blades of the fan, still effortlessly holding my breath. I crept along a short tunnel to a metal grille and peered through the gaps into the room beyond.
The light was dull. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. I could hear what sounded like a beehive, but as I listened harder I realised it was snoring. Not just one person, but a whole apartment block of snores. Little snuffy ones and diesel-engine snores that made the air rattle about my ears. It did sound a little like a beehive and when I finally realised what I was looking at, my eyes almost popped out.
The room beyond the grille was like a wide corridor that stretched into shadow in both directions and slumped along its length was a Thing. A monstrous Thing. A collection of limbs – arms and legs and heads and bottoms and hands and feet – all attached to each other higgledy-piggledy. There was no order to the arrangement at all. Feet poked into the air and bottoms perched beside faces in one long, pulsing mass. There was no way that thing could move. It would be like a game of stacks-on-the-mill walking across the room. Impossible.
This was Titania.
If the place really was called the Hive then I was looking at the Queen Bee.
And that explained the smell, too. Hundreds of unwashed bodies all slumped together in the one mass. Half the detachable people in the world must have been in that room.
I realised, in a moment of horror, that one of the faces snoring in my direction was actually a bottom.
‘Crystal?’ I whispered at the grille. Had that mess swallowed her already? Surely not.
Using Ravi’s granddad’s old penknife, I levered the grille away from the wall, just enough to lower my body through. I quietly hung my feet into the room and slipped down the concrete.
My feet didn’t touch the floor. There was no rats’ nest on this side of the wall to bunk me up and I was hanging there when an announcement came over the Hive’s intercom.
‘Ahem, is this working?’ said a very familiar Indian boy’s voice. ‘Yes? Good. This is your captain speaking. Ahem. As a gesture of our goodwill and the kindness of our hearts, I would like to inform you that your cell doors have all been automatically unlocked. Please feel free to exit the building in an orderly manner. Thank you for your involvement in this program. Have a nice
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