Haggis The Rent-A-Cat And The Undermice Of London - Extract

CHAPTER ONE

In the beginning, Haggis the Rent-A-Cat did not have to work for his living. When he had first arrived at Fat Hen’s house by the side of Loch McSodden, he had been a ten-month-old stray, bold and lean and used to looking after himself. His mother had brought him up, licked him into shape and then vanished. All his brothers and sisters worked at the local farms, chasing rats and baiting sheepdogs. But Haggis didn’t want to work on a farm. So he hung out in the town, eating scraps, sleeping by chimneys and waiting for the twice-weekly fish van to appear.

Sometimes he quite liked being on his own. The female cats in the neighbourhood were nice to him, and the man who ran the fish van always gave him sardines. But there were downsides to the outdoor life. He didn’t like being chased by dogs, he hated traffic, and there had been a number of troubling occasions when he had got stuck upside-down inside a wheelie bin whilst looking for food.

The third time this happened, Haggis had spent three days in darkness sulking and eating old teabags until he was rescued by the bin-men. When he got out, he climbed a tree and lay there for a long time, thinking hard. Other cats, he knew, lived better than this. Other cats did not have to go looking for food, or put up with dogs and old teabags. Other cats got proper tasty free food given to them in proper free cat-sized bowls. Other cats had it easy.

And so one morning, Haggis climbed a tree. He lay for several hours in the tree, watching all the different houses in the village very very carefully. When evening came, he climbed down from the tree and set off towards a small cottage at the edge of the loch with a yellow door and a pile of wooden fishboxes stacked outside. He took up his position on the doorstep, assumed his most tragic expression, and waited.

Half an hour later, Fat Hen opened her front door. There on the step, shivering hard and sneezing onto her geraniums, was a cat. The cat had splodge-coloured fur, an orange nose and three bent eyebrows. Fat Hen thought the cat looked rather like a haggis with a tail attached. The cat looked up at her, sneezed again and mewed once. Fat Hen had a generous heart and it melted immediately. Slowly, she stepped back and opened the door a little wider, and slowly, Haggis walked over the threshold into the cottage. For the first time in his life, he had a home.

Once, there had been lots of people in the cottage by the loch, but now there was only Fat Hen. Her husband had left many years ago, and her children were all grown up and had children of their own, so Fat Hen made her living working in the local tourist office. Mostly, she was very happy with her life, but sometimes - despite the grandchildren - she felt lonely. After Haggis arrived, she did not feel lonely again.

Like all good cooks, Fat Hen believed that most things in life looked better with a little padding, and that included cats. Haggis, in her opinion, was far too thin. And so, with Haggis’s enthusiastic co-operation, she set about feeding him up.

Overnight, his life altered completely. Instead of spending all day hunting for food, he now spent most of his time either waiting to eat, eating, or digesting what he’d just eaten. For breakfast, he had prawns. For elevenses, he had cat bobbles. At midday, he had mince and a bit of fish pie. For lunch, he ate burgers. For tea, there was curry. At supper, he had chicken rogan josh, and just before bedtime he settled down with the remains of a sausage. Later, when Haggis looked back on those lost and happy months with Fat Hen, he could not remember a single moment when his stomach had not been full.

Within a few months of his arrival, Haggis had got a lot fatter. By the time he was two, he was obese. Not merely fat, but vast; a great big feline flab-monster. He had three chins, fallen ankles and a stomach that swung from side to side as he walked. His whiskers wobbled and he could only move his tail with difficulty. When Haggis had first arrived on Fat Hen’s doorstep, he had been a delicate cat with an an elegant figure. Now he looked from a distance like a huge fluffy brown slug. The few mice he met laughed at him, and small birds jeered. Haggis didn’t care. Haggis was happy.

And then, only a year and a half after he had arrived, something terrible happened. One morning, Fat Hen got a letter from her daughter in Canada suggesting that she might like to go out and join her family there, certainly for six months, possibly forever. Fat Hen lay awake for many nights worrying about the right thing to do, but finally she decided that her daughter must come first.

Haggis, of course, knew nothing of this. As far as he was concerned, Fat Hen loved him and he loved Fat Hen, and as long as he got his sixteen meals a day, all was right with the world. But one dark day after he had eaten his elevenses, Fat Hen picked him up, placed him tenderly in a specially-adapted extra-large cat-basket and took him out to the car. She got into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. For a minute or two, nothing happened. All Haggis could hear was the sound of muffled sniffing, like the sound of someone crying but trying not to. Then Fat Hen turned the key and drove very slowly away from the cottage through McSodden village towards an unfamiliar house. She lifted him and the cat basket out of the car and into the new house. And then, with many tears and kisses, she left him behind.

Haggis waited. Then he waited a little longer. In fact, he had no option but to wait, since although the lid of the cat basket was open, he was too fat to struggle out of it. He waited and he waited; he waited so long he became faint. He waited past lunchtime, past his post-nap snack-time, past teatime. He waited so long he could practically feel the weight dropping off him. Of course, Haggis did not wait silently. He wailed and shrieked, he yowled and howled, he tried every mew in his range of mewses from small-arms squeak to nuclear roar, but it didn’t make the slightest difference. There was nothing; no sound, no response, nothing at all.

Finally, after Haggis had missed three whole meals and was passing into what he reckoned were the final stages of starvation, the kitchen door opened and in walked Fat Hen’s sister Nan McCrabbit. Haggis and Nan had met before and had not formed a good opinion of each other. Unlike Fat Hen, Nan McCrabbit believed that everything looked better when it was thin and spiky. Where Fat Hen was squashy and warm, Nan was lean and mean. Where Fat Hen was kind and indulgent, Nan was pointy and cross.

Nor was the sight of Nan very reassuring now. Over her head, she was wearing a large pair of pink ear-mufflers designed to block out very very loud noises. Haggis, seeing her and the pink ear-guards all at once, roared his biggest, angriest roar. Nan ignored him. Just before her own dinner was ready, she took down a small cat-bowl and a large tin of New Cheapo Cut-Price Vile McSmice with Added Tripe, and spooned out a portion.

Levering Haggis out of his basket, she set him down in front of the bowl. Haggis stood on the kitchen floor, dizzy with rage, and stared. First Fat Hen had left him, then he’d nearly starved, and now he’d been given this. This was the final insult. Life, he thought, was terrible. Life was a disaster. He bent his head and began to eat.

•

After ten days in his new home, haggard with hunger and five pounds lighter, Haggis realised that he needed a change of strategy. And so Nan found herself under siege. If she walked into the kitchen, Haggis greeted her at the door and let fly with a savage right-and-left hook, followed by a crafty stab to the back of the ankle. When she bent down to get something from the fridge, he threw his full two-stone weight plus extra claws against first one leg and then the other. When she stood by the cooker, Haggis treated her legs like a boxer treats a punchbag, raising himself up on his hind legs as best he could and letting fly with a series of jabs and expert counter-strikes. Nan ignored him.

He followed this up with a further change of tactic. Nan ran a local taxi company from her office at home. When she went to work at the other end of the house, Haggis followed her. Staggering upwards onto her desk, he wobbled forward across a pile of invoices, raised his right paw and gave Nan a hard triple punch on the chin, followed by a brain-numbing warrior-mew of terror. Nan, on the phone to a client, paid no notice at all.

Saddened but not defeated by the lack of response, Haggis persevered. If he levered himself onto the top of her in-tray, he discovered he could slide quite gracefully from one end of the desk to the other, distributing Nan’s neat piles of bills and letters all the way across the floor as he went. Haggis was delighted with his new cat-o-matic surf-board. He tried it again several times, flobbering on to the top of the pile, calculating the perfect moment to jump on and ride the paper-wave, speeding swiftly from left to right and crashing through a sea of paper all the way down from Receipts to Reports. By the time he had finished, a whole year’s worth of bills and letters had moved from one side of the room to the other.

Nan continued talking on the phone, taking bookings. Haggis sat back for a moment, considering. It was time, he felt, for the final killer blow. Splatting heavily across her keyboard, he wrapped one fore-paw around the telephone cord and pulled hard. Nan’s mug of hot sweet tea overturned, spilling its contents all over the desk, the keyboard and the telephone.

It had, reflected Haggis, been a tricky and delicate move, requiring well-trained reflexes and professional skill, and he was deeply satisfied with the result. He sat back and watched the screen with interest. For a moment, it filled with strange angry-looking symbols, __&^!!**££???e!!!!**pphu··k% !!!!!sc√√√√¶••ªhp**$$lattl’83y4*@@???!!!!!y&*¶•ª48 then it made a sad little sound like the cry of something dying, and a little icon of a fizzing bomb appeared. Finally, everything went blank.

•

Haggis spent the night happy in the thought that, from now on, things would be very different. They were. But not in the way he had anticipated. The next morning, Haggis found himself lifted straight from his basket and taken to the front room. Some time overnight, the room had been transformed. The sofa, chairs and TV had been pushed against one wall, and in their place was a child’s plastic dump-truck and an old skateboard with a pair of tights stretched over its sawn-off ends.

Nan set Haggis down, took a small bowl from the shelf and began spooning spicy king prawns into the back of the yellow dump-truck. Haggis raced - or waddled - towards the truck. But just as he reached its side, it began to move slowly across the room. Then it stopped a couple of times, trundled round in a half-circle and sped towards the fireplace. Then it turned again, and came all the way back. Haggis staggered after it. Every time he slowed down, the truck slowed too; every time he got faster, it got faster too. The truck raced around the room, and Haggis raced after it. He was far too preoccupied with his pursuit to notice Nan standing in a corner, turning the switches of the truck’s remote-control.

Then, after giving him a drink of water and a single spicy prawn as a reward, Nan put the remainder of the prawns by the end of the skateboard and placed Haggis on it. The skateboard began to move. Or rather, it felt as if it was moving, though in fact only the pair of tights looped around the board actually went round. The tights slid backwards, and Haggis slid too. Unless he kept running forward, he remained in danger of sliding off the back of the skateboard and away from the prawns. And so he ran, always hoping that if he just kept going fast enough, he’d catch up with the bowl of prawns. Two fat stone of chocolate-coloured fluff-monster prancing up and down in pursuit of a spicy prawn is not a pretty sight, but Haggis was nothing if not dedicated.

From then on, Haggis’s life changed. Every morning, he spent two hours in the feline gym. In the afternoons, after Nan had finished work, he would return to the gym for a further hour’s personal fitness training plus half-an-hour’s outdoor exercise racing the dump-truck several times round the garden, through the flower-bed and over the patio, before finishing with a timed sprint round the poles of the washing-line.

The effect was revolutionary. The cat-flab melted off him; the weight disappeared. Within a month, Haggis had lost a stone. Within two months, he looked very nearly like a normal cat. His whiskers no longer drooped but sprung proudly from the sides of his face, his fur shone, and two of his three chins had almost disappeared. All kinds of things which had previously been impossible for him - checking the end of his tail, for instance, or grooming his eyebrows - were now possible again. He was reunited with parts of his own body he hadn’t seen for years.

Nan was delighted with him. With time, she started showing him off to her friends and relations, allowed him back into her office and lifted a few of the restrictions on his diet. Now, instead of Cut-Price Vile Tripe McSmice, he was allowed one helping of Extra-Fine Prime Nice McSmice plus one helping of mince or fish a day.

The only individual who was not at all pleased with his progress was Haggis himself. He did not like the gym. He did not like the garden. He did not like hunting. He did not like losing weight. And, though he had certainly grown to respect Nan, he didn’t like her much either. True, he quite liked the fact that mice, voles and small birds no longer laughed at him but scattered in terror at his approach. But that was it. He didn’t care if he never saw his toes or his tail again; he didn’t give a damn if he couldn’t polish his whiskers. Inside this thin cat, he knew, was a fat cat trying to get out again. He wanted food 24 hours a day, seven days a week, by any means possible. He wasn’t interested in being fit, and he didn’t want to be thin. He wanted lashings of lard and acres of weight, he wanted substance and surplus and a great big enormous mouse-filled cake. He wanted to stand in front of an open fridge and watch prawns fall in a fabulous neverending cascade into his waiting jaws. He wanted to live in a chocolate house with a cream-filled swimming-pool at the top of a butter mountain. He wanted Fat Hen back, and he wanted to do absolutely nothing at all for the rest of his life.

Unfortunately, it didn’t look as if it was going to happen any time soon. Nan McCrabbit was so pleased with his progress she entered Haggis for Cat-A-Tonic Magazine’s special feline Weight-Watcher’s Furball SuperChallenge. Dan, her eldest son, took a whole series of low-lit glamour shots of Haggis as pin-up and weight-loss hero - Haggis looking manly on the treadmill, Haggis looking dark and brooding near the bird-table, Haggis looking smug on the scales, even Haggis walking away from a full bowl of prawns. Admittedly, most of the photographs had to be altered on Nan ’s new computer to change Haggis’s actual expression (one of supreme disgust) to Haggis’s intended expression (one of beaming, carefree delight), and the one of Haggis walking away from the bowl of prawns was pure fiction from first pixel to last. Dan was preparing to take a few further shots of Haggis in tight pink lycra sportswear with flame-coloured go-faster stripes when Haggis finally mutinied. Timing his attack just as Dan was zooming in for a close-up, he projectile-vomited several precious mouthfuls of Extra-Fine Super-Nice McSmice right onto the centre of Dan’s camera lens. From then on, there were no more photographs.

But nothing could have prepared Haggis for the worst thing of all. Nothing could have prepared him for the world of work.

•

CHAPTER TWO

Far, far away from Scotland and many metres below the streets of London, it had not been a good night’s hunting. Tox and Fume had been down on the tracks for hours, but they had nothing to show for it at all. They’d searched all the way from Firstfound to the Tower, and had found nothing to eat or drink. They’d run into engineering works at Hellebore, and a one-legged pigeon had stolen the remains of the kebab they’d found near the Lost World. They’d had to fight a squirrel for three dry roasted peanuts at Stiffkey, and very nearly been chased from their hiding place by a roaming Deadline squad. If it hadn’t been for the few sips of cold coffee they’d found in a discarded paper cup, they both would have fallen asleep hours ago.

Now daylight was on its way, and the the two Undermice were still searching. The blackbirds had long since started their dawn chorus and the Great Power would soon return. Both the Undermice were cold, hungry, and tired, and Fume’s temper was darkening by the minute.

Tox watched him gnaw a hole through an old burger box on the tracks near the Canyon. When the hole was large enough, Fume disappeared. He reappeared a second later, his whiskers drooping. ‘Slug,’ he murmured under his breath, and delivered a well-aimed punch with one front paw at a nearby cigarette butt.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tox. ‘There’s probably plenty of food back at the Vaults.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Fume, sinking onto his haunches. ‘If there ever was, then the Deadliners will have taken it.’ He looked soulfully upwards towards the gaps in the bricks where daylight now shone through. ‘Starved. Neglected. Oppressed. Forced to deal with complex transport issues.’

‘It’s the pigeons,’ said Tox.

‘No-one appreciates me,’ moaned Fume, ignoring him. ‘No-one needs my art any more. No-one values my creativity. I work alone, a tragic voice in the wilderness, unnoticed, uncelebrated, unfed ...’

‘Of course they appreciate you. It’s just ...’

‘Unloved, unrecognised ...’ Fume’s whiskers wobbled. ‘Unhealthy, unhappy ...’

‘Let’s go,’ said Tox abruptly. ‘I’ve got dry-stores at home.’

Fume drifted slowly to a stop. ‘What sort?’

‘Three days’ worth of wiring and half a poppadom I was using as a mattress.’

‘Poppadoms!’ muttered Fume, getting up and beginning to shuffle towards the platform. ‘Electrical circuitry! A feast!’

But as Tox turned to follow, something stopped him. Without warning, every single strand of fur on his body rose up and stood on end. His whiskers trembled as if tugged by some unseen force and he felt deep within himself the almost unbearable thrill of some great energy nearby, as wild as fire or lightning. The energy made his heart leap and pound, his breath come in great surging gasps and his muscles flicker and twitch. The Great Power had returned. Looking up, he noticed the strengthening light on the station walls and the deepening urgency of the blackbirds’ chorus.

‘We better hurry.’

‘Slow train or bullet?’ said Fume over his shoulder.

‘Bullet.’

The two Undermice climbed over towards the base of the platform. Throughout the system, long coloured cables were strung along the tunnel walls about three feet above the tracks. Most of the smaller cables, they knew, had something to do with the Great Power, and should never be touched. But some of the larger ones were empty. At this point, two of those larger cables - one yellow, one red - curved down to ground level. A couple of inches above the ground, a discreet mouse-sized doorway had been gnawed out of the plastic casing. There were two small buttons on the wall beside it. One had a piece of newspaper with the word HERE written above it, and the other had the word THERE. In front of it was a queue of dejected Undermice.

Tox and Fume took their place in the queue, idly watching the Undermouse ahead of them. He had a thin belly and a sad expression, and had obviously been even less successful at hunting than them. He climbed through the little opening of the yellow cable and closed the doorway behind him. The THERE button lit up briefly, there was a faint protesting whine like the sound of a blocked hoover, and the little round shape disappeared up the cable. At the same time, a lump travelling down the red cable slowed and stopped. Another little doorway opened with a soft thock! and a windblown-looking Undermouse with all his fur and whiskers pointing forwards stepped out and scurried off.

Tox and Fume sidled forward. Fume was just beginning a lovely daydream involving finding a lifetime’s worth of cheese sandwiches when Tox stepped on his tail.

‘Look!’ he hissed. ‘Deadliners.’

Fume followed his gaze. True enough, two of the Undermice in the queue had the distinctive heavy-set appearance of Deadliners. Once, it would have been impossible to tell a Deadliner from any other Undermouse without first seeing their insignia. They had the same glossy black fur, the same bright, intelligent eyes and the same fine pale whiskers. But in the past few months, their strength had begun to mark them out. Now, as other Undermice looked weaker and more fearful, the Deadliners grew. Their bodies became heavier and darker, and the look in their eyes now seemed more predatory than before.

In the past, all Undermice had hunted wherever they chose, whatever their line of birth. With a bit of cunning, there had always been plenty of food for all. But recently there hadn’t been so much food dropped on the tracks, and what was dropped was often cleared away by humans before the Undermice could get to it. Then the Deadliners had moved in. Firstly, they stopped all other Undermice from hunting in the north. Then they began trying to muscle in on the remaining lines. Other Undermice were either forced to give up food to the Deadline gangs or were driven out of the Black Cathedral entirely. By now, most Undermice had to fight for every morsel they found. What the Deadliners were creating was a system full of fear, where one Undermouse distrusted another, and where even mice from the same line now considered each other secretive and false.

But what most frightened Tox and Fume was the Deadliners’ zeal. Though they often hunted in packs, they were not taking orders and were under no authority. They acted for themselves alone, and were driven only by the conviction that if they didn’t attack other Undermice, they would starve. And, as the Deadliners cornered more and more of the food supply, so they grew stronger and harder to resist.

‘Let’s move,’ whispered Tox. ‘We’ll have to take the slow train.’ It was unlikely that two Deadliners would bother attacking them, but it wasn’t worth taking the chance.

The two Undermice turned and scurried off towards the westbound platform, pausing for a second as they did so to admire Fume’s latest artwork: the word FUME in large white letters written fourteen times down one wall. Unnoticed by anything except perhaps the CCTV, they scuttled into the carriage, through the ventilator holes and up under the upholstery. They crouched under the seat, staring out into the darkness. They could sense that the carriage was almost empty; there was no-one sitting on the seat above them, and they could hear only the distant rustling of a newspaper somewhere far away.

Both Undermice settled down, glad of the chance to rest. Hunting took so long now that Fume often complained it was difficult to find any time for his art.

‘I create,’ he whispered now, ‘I suffer. I struggle. I check my spelling sometimes. But does anyone notice? Does it connect?’

Tox closed his eyes. It was part of Tox’s job as Fume’s loyal friend and apprentice to listen to his musings on the nature of art. It had been like that since they first met many months ago in the tunnel near Equator. Fume had been spending the previous four weeks working hard on a punctuation-related piece entitled FULL STOP. After admiring the large round full stop l splodged on the tunnel wall for a while, Tox had suggested that maybe in the future Fume could branch out and try a comma instead. They had been friends ever since.

When the train reached King’s Chaos, it stopped and the doors opened. There was a long pause. The Undermice heard humans getting off and on, but they did not hear the doors closing again. Time passed. They heard the low indistinguishable boom of human voices, and then a louder voice like the sound of an announcement echo through the carriage. Someone came into the carriage and down on the seat above them. The doors stayed open. Nothing happened. Again, they heard the announcement. The person sitting above them got up again, hesitated by the doors for a minute, and then walked back out of the carriage.

And then, somewhere close behind them, they heard a commotion. Someone or something was running towards them at full tilt, sprinting along the backs of the seats. They looked at each other. A Deadliner? Already?

‘Run!’ shouted a panicky voice. ‘RUN!’

A small female Undermouse came pelting into view, running through the spaces under the seats towards the carriage doors. In the instant that they saw her, they knew she was no Deadliner.

‘DOGS!’ she yelled, speeding past them. ‘SNIFFER DOGS! Run for your lives!’

Tox shot out of the ventilator grille into the carriage. Sure enough, he and Fume could now hear the rattle and scrape of men and dogs advancing along the train behind them. The connecting doors between the carriage opened and they could hear the scritter of claws and the sound of rapid panting.

All three mice took a flying leap out of the carriage and onto the platform. The female Undermouse hurtled along the floor, casting around for the nearest hiding place. But there was nothing. Nowhere to hide, no place of safety, only the vast open spaces of the platform. Through the entrance, they could hear and smell more dogs arriving, straining at their leashes, pulling their human handlers along behind them. Through the other end, passengers were still filtering out slowly to the ticket-hall on their way to find another route to work. Nearby, there was only the curved tile walls and the cliff-edge of the platform falling away beneath the train. They had nowhere safe to go, nowhere which would conceal them. If they ran eastwards, they would be crushed in a sea of commuters, and if they ran west, they’d run straight into the jaws of the dogs.

They stopped for a millisecond, panic-stricken. They could hear the dogs right behind them now, hear the clack of their advancing claws and smell the thick, meaty odour of their breath. Tox realised that some of the dogs were unleashed and were being allowed to run and search at will. They had picked up the scent of the mice and were after them, whining excitedly and indifferent to the shouts of their handlers. When Tox looked round, he could see their tongues hanging out and the light of violence in their eyes. It didn’t matter how fast the Undermice ran, they could never outrun the dogs. For an instant, Tox thought of his home, of Fume, and of his few scattered hopes and dreams. This was it, then. This was death, right there on their tails.

But as they hesitated there on the platform, something blocked their way. A vast black rectangle on two wheels, with one end slightly open and something hanging out. Inside the opening, they could see nothing but darkness. They had seen similar black rectangles being carried or pulled along behind humans before, but had never worked out what they were for. They ran towards it, heading instinctively for the safety of darkness. The sound of the dogs got louder behind them. There was no option; there was nowhere else to go. They plunged towards the entrance.

And then they were inside. The noise from the station receded, the sound of the dogs vanished almost completely. But the three mice did not stop there. They turned and pushed further into the darkness. It wasn’t easy; whatever the black rectangle was, it seemed to be full of some kind of soft cloth which smelt overpoweringly of human and which blocked their retreat.

Tox was so busy trying to bury himself further and deeper into the darkness that he did not at first notice that the black rectangle had begun to move. It was only when he stopped nibbling for a second and felt the vibration of wheels revolving somewhere close underneath him that he realised they were no longer stationary. Fume and the female mouse had realised as well, and were poised stock-still where they stood. The black rectangle moved on over lumps and hummocks, crashing against hard surfaces or bouncing along something which seemed to rise horizontally in front of them. The mice grew bewildered by all the different sensations, the turns and pauses, the lifts and drops. Wherever they were now, it was a long way from where they’d started.

And then, finally, the motion stopped for good. Something clicked behind them, and they felt themselves being tipped over. Then there was silence. For a minute or two, they all lay still.

‘Ow!’ shouted a shrill female voice close beside Tox. ‘Get off! You’re standing on my paw!’

‘Oh,’ said Fume, reversing. ‘Sorry.’

‘Who are you?’ said Tox.

‘Angel,’ came the female voice. ‘Waterline, Manacles. Who are you?’

‘Tox,’ said Tox. ‘Lifeline, The Vaults, Eastern Section.’

Fume cleared his throat, rearranged his whiskers and began to speak. ‘I,’ he said grandly, ‘Am an artist and, as an artist, I exist without borders, without boundaries or restrictions, without names or classifications. I exist in the limitless unmediated creative universe of the pure universal creative force, beyond the boundaries of reality and beyond the reality of boundaries. I exist in the quintessence of multi-dimensional time-space, the vast echoing spaces between the stasis of objecthood and the flux of subjectivity. I exist in the time between being and nothingness, between the being of nothingness and the nothingness of being.’

There was a long silence. ‘Eh?’ said Angel.

‘He’s from the East,’ said Tox. ‘His name’s Fume. He’s an artist.’

‘Oh?’ said Angel, ‘He sounds foreign to me. Can’t we get a bit of light around here?’

The three mice turned and tunnelled themselves through the cloth in the direction of the entrance. After a few minutes, the interior grew lighter and the air a little easier to breathe. The cloth was still packed so tightly that they found it difficult to find a flat surface on which to stand or crouch, but after some further gnawing and some careful rearrangement of their surroundings, they cleared a large enough area in which to stand back and look at each other.

‘Angel,’ said Angel again, moving forward and raising her head slightly. This time, she bared her teeth - not in a gesture of aggression, but in order to show the other two mice her insignia: a thin black band around the top of her front right incisor with a ‘W’ inscribed below it.

The ‘W’ Tox and Fume knew, stood for Waterline. The Black Cathedral has many different lines, the Deadline stretching from far north to distant south, the Bloodline reaching all the way round the middle of the city, the Heartline running from west to east, and so on. Over the years and generations, each line has gradually come to be identified with particular groups of Undermice. Bloodline mice, for instance, are notorious for repeating themselves, Lifeline mice for stubbornness and Hardline mice for argument. Deadline mice had always been the most notorious Undermice of all, infamous for being late and angry. Waterline mice, in comparison, were said to be good-natured, but rather slow.

In the past, all Undermice had hunted wherever they pleased, though they would remain fiercely loyal to their line of birth - the more unreliable the line, in fact, the more fidelity it inspired. Since the Deadliners had begun to take over, each group of Undermice had begun to stick more closely to their own lines, driven inwards by fear. But even then, they never lost their belief that the Black Cathedral belonged to all Undermice at all times.

As the Undermice gazed at each other, the rectangle began to move again. It jerked, slid sideways, stopped, and then started again, gathering speed. But this was not the same uneven motion as before. This was a different feeling, one which they all recognised. This was smoother and more constant, with a distinct rhythm. This time, it was not the rectangle which was moving, but the thing the rectangle was in. They were on a train again.

‘Which line?’ said Angel eventually.

‘Not Waterline,’ said Fume, wrinkling his snout. ‘It works, for a start.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the Waterline!’ shouted Angel. ‘The Waterline is lovely! It’s beautiful!’

Tox ignored her. ‘Lifeline?’ he said hopefully. If it was the Lifeline, he might even be able to get home soon. He concentrated, feeling the rhythm of the tracks beneath his feet. ‘It’s not stopping,’ he said eventually. ‘Why isn’t it stopping?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Angel.

The train didn’t slow, it didn’t stop, it just kept going. It made a funny sound as well - a more muffled, outside-ish noise than the tight rattle and clatter they were used to. Tox had the distinct feeling that they weren’t underground any more.

‘Well,’ said Angel, pushing past him and heading for the entrance, ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

‘Hey!’ said Fume. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Out,’ she said. She shoved past the two Undermice and through the entrance.

It seemed a very, very long time before she reappeared. Tox and Fume busied themselves gnawing a more comfortable space in the strange-smelling cloth, and then lay down to wait.

Finally, as Tox was on the point of dozing off, Angel returned.

‘Well, it’s not any line I’ve been on before,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Nice upholstery, though. Comfy. Easy to chew. Here.’ She shoved a ripped ticket at Fume. ‘See if you can work it out from that.’

Fume looked down at the card. He stared at it, blinked, and stared again. He ran a paw over his whiskers, and looked once more at the card as if the words printed on it might have changed. Then he looked up.

‘What’s wrong?’ said Tox, seeing his expression. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘We’re not in the Black Cathedral at all,’ said Fume. ‘We’re on the train to Scotland.’

•

CHAPTER THREE

To begin with, none of them had taken the news well. Angel swore a lot, Tox’s whiskers drooped, and Fume turned round in circles several times declaring that things were a disgrace.

‘What things?’ said Angel.

‘Things in general,’ said Fume. ‘Life. Art. Trains. Can’t we stop?’

‘Like how?’

Fume thought for a minute. The trains in the Black Cathedral only moved around when the Great Power was on, so surely these trains must move the same way. ‘Chew through the cables.’

‘Oh, sure,’ said Angel sarcastically. ‘You go first.’

In fact, all three Undermice were upset by their unexpected journey. They had heard of Scotland - there were sometimes tourist posters in the Black Cathedral - but they knew of it only as a place many millions of miles away full of whisky and icebergs and savage roaming haggis-monsters. It did not sound like a nice place, and they did not want to go there.

It was a while before they began to recover, and even longer before they started to enjoy themselves. Unsurprisingly, it was Angel who adjusted most quickly. She made several further forays out into the carriage, and returned with the news that, though she didn’t think much of the train itself - nothing like as good as the Waterline - the standard of leftovers was very high. There was, she reported, an entire carriage devoted only to food.

‘Rubbish,’ said Tox. ‘Don’t believe you.’

Angel patted her stomach with a satisfied paw. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t, then. All the more for me.’

Intrigued, Tox went to look for himself. Sure enough, this train was nothing like the trains he was used to. For a start, it was possible to run from carriage to carriage, though the manoeuvre did take skill and courage. There were plenty of objects on the floor to hide behind and an excellent supply of litter. Best of all was, as Angel had promised, the carriage-full of food. There was enough here to feed a whole Waterline of mice; sandwiches, crisps, chocolate, great big overflowing bin-bags full of crusts and teabags - a vast shiny high-speed heaven. Tox got so carried away he almost ate too much, and could barely wobble his way back through the train.

It took a while before Fume stopped sulking. Eventually, half-crazed with hunger and fed up with listening to the other two boasting about tea and muffins, he announced that artists had needs too, and made his way out of the black rectangle. He did not return for a long time - so long, in fact, that Angel and Tox began to worry that something terrible had happened. Finally, just as Tox was beginning to believe that nothing remained of Fume but a small, furry heap on a siding far away, there was a scuffling sound at the entrance of the black rectangle.

It was Fume, but not like any version of Fume that Tox had seen before. His fur was bedraggled and damp, his eyes were half-closed, three of his whiskers were missing, and his paws no longer seemed to co-ordinate properly. ‘Lager,’ he said, and burped. ‘Lakes of lager. Lashings of larger. Larders of lagers.’

Tox and Angel glared at him. ‘He’s drunk!’ said Angel disbelievingly. ‘He’s toasted! He’s roasted!’

Fume tottered towards them and then fell over. For a second or two he struggled to turn upright but then gave up and lay back, all four paws in the air. After a minute or two, he began to snore.

It took him an hour to wake up, and another two hours before he was capable of joined-up talking. The story he told them - from the parts that he could remember - was that he had found a can of lager which some human must have placed down between the seats and then forgotten. Fume considered himself to be a capable and experienced drinker, having spent many years finishing off the leftovers of other people’s weekends deep in the Tube system. But the cans he was familiar with usually contained no more than dregs - a few sips here, a drop or two there. Finding a near-full can of lager was something else entirely.

When he had first found it, the can had been standing upright. Fume had climbed up the side, balanced himself at the top and was leaning his head through the hole taking long, satisfying sips when the train braked and he fell through the hole right into the can. For a few terrifying minutes, he thought he was going to drown. But he stayed buoyant, floating in circles round a bright yellow sea. If he wasn’t going to die, he thought, he might as well enjoy himself. So, for hours and hours, he lay on his back in his lake of lager and drank himself daft.

After that, things got a bit fuzzy. He vaguely remembered the train giving another lurch and the can falling over onto its side, but he had no idea how he had got out, or of how he had made his way back to the black rectangle.

‘Disgraceful!’ said Angel. ‘Ridiculous! Do you think there’s any left?’

But Fume did not hear her. He had gone back to sleep.

When he awoke for the second time, the train was stationary and the two Undermice were standing over him. Angel was looking purposeful, and Tox was looking unhappy.

‘Right,’ said Angel. ‘Time to go.’

‘Where?’ asked Fume.

‘Out. Away. Off.’

‘Ah.’ Fume sounded nervous. ‘Well, now. Actually. Um. Are you quite sure?’

‘Yes,’ said Angel. ‘It’s horrible living next to a lager-scented Undermouse. And we’ve eaten all the muffins.’

‘But what about going back to London?’ said Tox.

‘What’s the point? We’re here now. We might as well see what it’s like.’

‘But ...’ said Fume and Tox both together.

Angel was not listening. She scuttled out of the black rectangle towards a crack at the base of the doors and took a flying leap up and out of the train. The other two had no choice but to follow her.

The drop from the train to the ground was a steep one, but all three Undermice landed unhurt in the long grass beside the tracks. They picked themselves up and ran down the bank into the deeper undergrowth, racing to get as far away from the train as possible. Underfoot, they could feel stones and moss, and caught the occasional bright flash from a shard of glass nearby. Just before they made it into the long grass at the top of the embankment, they became aware of a harsh metallic noise coming from somewhere up above. They crouched where they were, breathing hard.

Looking out through the stalks of the tall spring grass, Angel could see daylight. She moved forwards and pushed the grass down a little with one paw. The three Undermice found themselves standing on a raised embankment, gazing down on the great green landscape below.

A few hours in a black rectangle on a train had not prepared the Undermice for Scotland. All three were used to the twilit world of the Black Cathedral, and much of their time was spent in total darkness. They could see in darkness, move in darkness, eat, drink, sleep and travel in darkness. In fact, they were so familiar with darkness that their occasional trips to open-air stations like the Canyon or the Lost World made them feel frightened and exposed. And now suddenly here they were in a place where the daylight didn’t just creep between gaps in walls and roofs and bricks, but surrounded them on all sides, and where the distances between one place and another seemed as immense as planets in the night sky.

The light made them feel fearful enough, but the sounds and the scents were even worse. Instead of the familiar roar and clatter of trains, the air was full of the flutter of leaves and the soft rip of moving car tyres. Even the birdsong seemed frightening. This wasn’t the usual fat cooing of London pigeons, this was a whole rich chorus of birds the Undermice had never heard of. And then there were the smells. The Undermice were used to the stink of soot and sweat, the exhalations of the thousands of humans who used the Tube every day, the scent of burgers and curry, chips and drinks. Here, the few familiar smells - over-ripe garbage, car exhaust, a faint whiff of cigarette smoke - were overwhelmed by new and unfamiliar scents: new vegetation, damp earth, wood-ash, blossom, sheep wool, mown grass and, through it all, the deep blue smell of the sea.

‘What do we do now?’ said Tox.

‘Panic?’ said Angel.

‘How do we get home?’ said Fume.

Angel looked back up the embankment towards the train. It had been there a second ago; now, without their noticing, it had gone. They really were alone; their last thin link with the Black Cathedral had vanished. For a second, she felt a shiver of real fear.

‘We don’t. We’re stuck.’ She looked around, searching for reassurance. ‘At least there don’t seem to be any Deadliners here. Right. Stay together. No wandering off. And if you see a horrible haggis-monster, run.’

She set off away from the tracks and down the embankment, heading towards the only familiar thing she could see; a small village beside an enormous expanse of water. The village held no more than about thirty or forty houses, but above it, and partly hidden by big old trees, was a large, lumpy-looking house. The house was enormous. It had turrets and spires and arches and bells, and Angel thought it looked a bit like one of the great railway stations in London.

Tox and Fume followed silently behind her. It was not always easy going; the grass was so thick and so high in many places they had to cut a path through it with their teeth. All the different smells confused them, and the bright sunshine made them want to bolt.

Ahead of him, Tox saw Angel stiffen. ‘What’s that?’

She was crouched at the edge of a vast green space bordered on three sides by a fence. The grass was low and even, and inside the fence were several large white things with big fluffy bodies and tiny dainty legs. They were moving slowly round the field cropping the grass, and the Undermice could hear the faint ripping sound they made as they chewed. Angel thought the white things looked a bit like low-lying clouds on stilts. Beside them, smaller, whiter clouds lay or played or made sudden vertical leaps into the air.

‘Those,’ said Fume confidently, ‘Are sheeples. Several sheeples, along with their young sheeplets.’

‘What’s a sheeple?’ asked Angel.

‘A sheeple is an animal,’ said Fume. ‘They eat grass and they wear big woolly jerseys all the time because they’re always cold, and they go round and round in circles all following each other to find the one with the best jersey.’

‘Are they dangerous?’ said Angel.

‘No,’ said Fume. ‘Definitely not.’ As he spoke, the sheep nearest to them looked up and gave a violent rumbling croak, as if someone had suddenly punched all the air out of it. The Undermice leapt backwards.

‘Are you sure they’re not dangerous?’ asked Angel, picking herself up.

‘Yes,’ said Fume. ‘I ate a book about it on the Lifeline once.’

‘Where do they live?’

‘Here,’ said Fume, gesturing with his tail. ‘In the field. They have jerseys instead of burrows. Scotland is always full of sheeples and rabblets and crowls and horsels, and they’re all very friendly.’ He sounded so sure of himself that Angel felt reassured.

‘What about mice?’ she said. ‘Are there any mice here?’

Fume sniffed. ‘Only Overmice. No-one important.’

They set off again, skirting round the edge of the field and heading steadily towards the village. The remainder of the journey was not easy. Again and again, they found themselves running for the nearest safe cover, spooked by sounds or smells they had never experienced before. All of them were tired and longing for for the comfort of darkness. But after many hours of stops and starts, they reached the long stone wall around the house. They pushed through the gaps, and stood gazing up.

The wall surrounded the house in an immense and rather wobbly circle. On one side, there was a hedge and a little glass hut. Over on the other was a bench, several large flower-beds and an overwhelming view of the big water. Tucked far away into the back corner of the enormous garden was a small and very ricketty shed nailed together with wonky planks. The mice could smell the rich, familiar scent of wood inside.

One by one, they hurried towards the hut and slipped between the planks. It took a minute or two for their eyes to adjust to the darkness. Around them on all four sides were logs. Big ones and small ones, stacked high up towards the tin roof. They stood for a moment, listening to the whisper of the wind against the walls. They would be safe here.

At that moment, Tox felt something wrap itself round his neck and pull violently. The next thing he knew, he was flat on his back.

•

CHAPTER FOUR

Nan McCrabbit did not like cats. She had only taken Haggis in because her sister Fat Hen was leaving for Canada, and because Fat Hen bribed her with ten years’ worth of prawn curries to do so. But in the months since he had arrived, she and Haggis had formed what she considered to be a productive working relationship: he spent his life on a diet, and she spent Fat Hen’s curry-money on clothes. It wasn’t until after Haggis’s success in Cat-A-Tonic’s Weight-Watcher’s Furball SuperChallenge that she realised Haggis himself might also make her rich.

The only thing she knew about cats was that they caught mice. Haggis, she reasoned, was a very greedy cat. If Haggis could only be persuaded to take up hunting, then he could catch his own dinner, earn Nan money, and get out of her way all in one go. Haggis might not like having to hunt or gather, but he would definitely prefer it to a lifetime of portion-control and Cut-Price Vile Tripe McSmice.

And so Nan went to the bank, took out all her savings and bought a fourth-hand white van. Back at home, she took a can of paint and wrote, ‘HAGGIS THE RENT-A-CAT - Reliable, Traditional, Hungry. House-Mouse Clearance Work: No Job Too Big, No Mouse Too Small.’ She printed up business cards and drove round the nearby towns distributing them. Finally, having considered getting Haggis some form of uniform, she settled instead for giving him a new black leather collar with ‘HAGGIS - SENIOR RODENT-CONTROL OPERATIVE’ printed on it in red.

To begin with, Haggis had not taken to the world of work with good grace. In fact, he had made it plain that he would only co-operate at all under certain circumstances. Firstly, there was to be no-one in the house while he hunted - all residents must be absent for the duration of his contract. Secondly, he would not work with dogs. And finally, there was to be no nonsense about presenting the results of his labours for inspection. If he caught a mouse then he ate it. As far as he was concerned, the only possible advantage of his new job was the ‘Eat As Much As You Like’ clause. If he felt like it, he might possibly lay out a neat line of tails when he’d finished. If he didn’t, then he ate those as well.

Despite this, Haggis’s first few months in his new role went well. With every job, the line of tails lengthened in number, and with every new posting, the clients were more delighted. Their homes were their own again, free from the patter of a thousand tiny feet, and they were grateful - so grateful, in fact, that they told their friends, and their friends’ friends, and the almost-friends of friends’ friends. Nan’s takings for the first four months soared, and after six months she had made enough money to buy a slightly more comfortable second-hand van, complete with a new basket for Haggis with fake mouse trim and special under-fur heating.

And so Haggis now spent his days at work, pacing through the abandoned corridors of cottages or flats or shop storerooms, eliminating suspect activity and earning his keep. On busy days, he could now sometimes manage over five mouse-clearance operations at a go.

After a few weeks, Haggis had got used to his new job. There were, he had decided, good and bad things about the world of work. On the one hand, it was much better to be out of the house than spending his days panting on the feline treadmill. Hunting, he had discovered, was fun, and he had definitely picked up a taste for raw mouse. And he loved the praise and admiration he got from Nan’s clients.

But there were also downsides. Most particularly, he did not like working. The important thing about cats, Haggis knew, was that they were expert at being, not at doing. In the past, people had worshipped cats and considered them gods. Haggis was saddened to realise that 2,000 more years of civilisation seemed to have reversed this view. Gods, in his opinion, should stay gods. They should be worshipped, they should be fed, and they should definitely not have to spend their days waiting for lunch to pop out of the lingerie section of Echelfechan Undergarments.

But most upsetting of all, he knew he was being used. Nan was forcing him to go to work in order that she could take the money. It was, he thought, a humiliation and a disgrace, and something no proper god should tolerate. One day, he swore, he was going to get even.

•

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