Cruel Zinc Melodies

17

The brain trust had gathered. Singe. Playmate. Saucerhead. John Stretch. With Old Bones in the background, ready to kibitz. Tinnie was in the doorway. She leaned against its frame in an indifferent, sluttish pose wasted on everybody. Me included. She wasn’t happy about that.

Would you care to direct your thoughts in a less prurientdirection?

I said, ‘‘We need to brainstorm the situation at the World. Our efforts yesterday may not have done much more than stir up the bugs.’’

Saucerhead observed, ‘‘It’s freaking hard to get the bugs out of anywhere. Mice and rats, same thing. You wipe out the mess you got, another one moves in.’’

It is notoriously difficult to remove vermin and keep them removed. This instance will be no exception. But it should prove less difficult than the sort of general debugging you would find familiar. There will be a finite number of these mutant insects. Though that could be a large number. A sustained effort should destroy them faster than they can breed.

He was giving this more thought than he pretended.

You are correct, Garrett. Though not in the way you think.

I glimpsed something I didn’t have the mental capacity to grasp. A three-dimensional mind map of the universe in the earth around and under the World. Developed, with John Stretch’s help, from the minds of rats that had gone down there and had brought back memories of sights and smells. Especially smells.

John Stretch assures me that regular rats count on their sense of smell more than dogs do. Thus the thing inside the Dead Man’s mind was a visualized translation of information collected mainly by rat snoots.

Rats are crafty. But rats aren’t much smarter than a sack of hammers. I wasn’t ready to bet my life, fortune, and sacred honor on what my sidekick could put together from their mad, crippled rodent memories.

I said, ‘‘We could handle this whole thing fast if we could dump a million gallons of water into the warrens under the World.’’

Flooding the bug tunnels was an obvious move. Figuring out how to deliver the flood was not.

‘‘How about poison gas?’’ Playmate asked. ‘‘Some kinds would sink down into the bug warrens the way water would.’’

‘‘Like?’’

‘‘Fumes from burning sulfur.’’

John Stretch said, ‘‘I would like to try rats again. Using more of them.’’

The Dead Man touched me privately.Allow John Stretch the effort. Insisting on a much larger effort. Ten thousand rats if that is what is needed. Test the strength of this absurdconjunction.

‘‘Huh?’’

There must be sorcery involved. To explain the size of the bugs. The absurdity arises in the mix of insects that have mutated.

Someone was doing to bugs what had been done to rats in the last century?

You are unlikely to lose much money betting that way.

I announced, ‘‘Guys, this may be a worse problem than I thought.’’

Engage brain before opening mouth, the Dead Man snapped.Think before you pop off.

‘‘Huh?’’

You are getting ahead of yourself. It is possible the problemcan be solved by application of a large number of rats. If it cannot, thenyou have your worse problem.

So I said, ‘‘Never mind. John Stretch. By all means, take another crack. But go for overwhelming numbers. All the rats you can round up. If you can’t run them all at the same time, fine. Use them in shifts.’’

I need to know the outer bounds of the insect infestation. In all dimensions.

He didn’t say it but I understood. He wanted to isolate the point of origin of the giant bugs.

That would be handy to know. We could toss one fire-bomb in there. . . .

Garrett. The most obvious and direct approach may not be the best.

‘‘For who?’’

All concerned. You have to know what is going on before you blow things up and burn things down. You cannot approachall problems with the methods espoused by Mr. Dotes. It is possible that the bugs are an unfortunate by-blow of something positive happening in that area. The creator of the bugs may be unaware of the effect of his work on the insect population.

‘‘Evil spirits and psychotic demons are more likely.’’

No doubt. Nevertheless, it is important to examine and eliminate other possibilities. Unless you trip over some villaincasting spells on cockroaches.

‘‘While practicing his evil laugh. Yeah.’’

The rest of the crowd watched like they expected to be entertained any minute now. Except that fiscal traitoress, Pular Singe, who toddled in with fermented barley soup for all hands. On good old Garrett.

I wouldn’t earn any kudos dancing with the truth. They’d just accuse me of being a skinflint. Again.

It’s so easy to spend the other guy’s dough.