And then the rains came.

To be brutally honest, I was never all that enamored with the life of a
field mouse. Though it's definitely better than "experimental
animal," it's not the most comfortable--nor the safest--occupation in the
world. Many times I'd cursed the lack of courage which had prevented me from
rescuing my wife and children from those dangers and discomforts. Ironic, I
suppose, that they finally ended up rescuing themselves. All I had ever found
it possible to do was to provide them with the occasional luxury--and then
ignore or evade the inevitable questions as to where it had come from. In every
imaginable way our new life was safer, more comfortable, more fulfilling...but if
our old life did have one redeeming feature, it was this: never once in all
that time had I been obliged to tell my family that I'd been suspended from my
job.

That was one of the hardest things I'd ever had to do, and not just because
of my wounded pride. My relationship with my family--most especially with my
older children--still seemed terribly fragile to me, and I honestly feared that
this might damage it irreparably. What would they think of a father who could
only hang onto a job for four months? And come to that, could I even hold up my
head in public any more? A disgrace to family and community, that's what I was;
I fully expected to be expelled from the community, forced to go live in a hole
somewhere. And long before then my wife would have kicked me out of our bed, to
sleep on the sofa or on a bench in the corridors.

Of course--as you're no doubt already thinking--I should have given my
family and friends more credit. And in the long run I should have given our
leader more credit too. In the short run, though...

After Justin walked away I sat for some time under that bush, contemplating
the nature of friendship...and dreading the thought of going inside and facing
the music. As I sat the shadows lengthened around me, and the soccer game
ended, the players trooping toward the main entrance, taking the goal nets,
marker cones and ball with them.

Finally, with a sigh, I rose, dusted off the seat of my tunic, and began the
long walk back across the lawn. It was not any sudden access of courage that
led me to do so: in fact it was the weather. The line of clouds to the south
was growing steadily larger and closer, driven by what had become an
unpleasantly sharp and chilly breeze. I paid scant attention except to the
cold. That's actually rather unusual for me; having lived long stretches of my
life in places utterly without weather, I usually gained a great deal of
pleasure from watching the play of sun, cloud and wind over my adopted home.
That day I was too preoccupied and morose. I've sometimes wished that I'd paid
closer attention; not that there's anything one small mouse can do to change
the weather, but the forewarning might have spared me some discomfort.

I made my way home as quickly as I could, my head lowered, responding with
monosyllables to the greetings that came my way. None of them knew, not yet;
would they even speak to me any more, when they learned that I'd become a
pariah?

Elizabeth was alone in the apartment when I arrived, sitting at the desk;
the kids were not yet back from work and/or Career Day. The instant she saw my
face, my wife rose from her chair in alarm. "Jonathan? What's wrong?"

I sank down on the smaller sofa, and motioned for her to join me; and as
soon as she had settled into my arms, I told her. At first she looked shocked,
her blue eyes growing huge and her jaw dropping open; then she turned away. A
few seconds later I realized to my alarm that tears were running down her
whiskers.

"Jonathan," she said softly, "I'm sorry. This is all my
fault..."

"How do you figure that?" I found my handkerchief and passed it to
her. "I'm the one who told Eileen."

"I know," she said. She dabbed her eyes and blew her nose.
"But if I'd kept my mouth shut about what Judith told me, you probably
wouldn't have..."

"And then Judith's problems might still be untreated," I pointed
out. "But that isn't what Justin has a problem with, darling. I broke my
promise. It really doesn't matter to him whether I had a good reason or not.
And it shouldn't matter to me either."

Elizabeth shook her head firmly. "No," she said. "I don't
believe that. Loyalty is a wonderful thing--I'm all for it. But there are
certain circumstances when it just doesn't apply, and this is one of them.
Judith was thinking about destroying a life. That goes well beyond any
questions of loyalty or honor."

I peered at her and half-smiled. Her tears were entirely dried now, replaced
by rising indignation. "Meaning that you don't believe in absolute
loyalty?"

"No," she said simply. "I don't. I can't. Because in the real
world there are far too many 'yes, but' situations. Circumstances do
alter cases, my darling. They have to."

I kissed her. "Thank you," I said. "That's one vote on my
side, anyway."

"You're welcome." She said. She shook her head, and suddenly her
eyes were blazing. "I've got a good mind to find Justin and kick him in
the ankle," she went on. "He had no right..."

"Unfortunately, he did," I corrected her. "Every right. I am
his employee, after all--at least I think I still am--and he can set whatever
rules for me that he chooses."

"Within reason," she countered. "The way I see this,
dear, he's taking his problems with Judith out on you. And that's not
fair."

"That may be," I said. "But I think we're going to have to
wait until he figures that out. Promise me you won't say anything to
him, Elizabeth. I know that temper of yours, and I don't want both of us
to be in trouble."

Once again she looked away. "All right," she said. "I
promise." She grinned. "Though I would like to see him hopping
down the corridor on one foot. I'll restrain myself, though. Somehow." She
paused for a moment then, looking out through the window. The sun had all but
vanished by now, behind the massing clouds. "I wonder...," she began
thoughtfully.

I never got the chance to find out what she wondered, though, because at
that moment Timothy and Martin arrived, bickering amiably about something (or
nothing); after a quick greeting they both vanished into their room to change
clothes. And close behind them came their sisters.

At least they looked like my daughters; they didn't behave like them,
though. As they entered, Teresa and Cynthia had their heads together, comparing
notes about their day it seemed. The very picture of loving sorority; looking at
them, you'd have thought that they'd never had a cross word or a difference of
opinion in their entire lives. How long that would last was anyone's guess; but
while it did, it was a balm to my wounded psyche. And so too was the broad
beaming smile that both of them bestowed upon their mother and me.

"Hi, Mom, Hi, Dad."

"Hello, Father. Hello, Mother."

A little self-consciously, perhaps, Elizabeth and I straightened up--not
that the sight of us with our arms around each other was terribly uncommon or
shocking. "Hello, ladies," I began--and then I paused, peering
closely at them. Cynthia looked a little tired; I could tell that Ages had been
anything but easy on her. But she was obviously not one bit less determined
than she had been at lunch-time. And I had seldom seen Teresa look quite so
happy: apparently her afternoon had been satisfactory too.

...And that decided me. The four of them had the right to know what had
happened to me, of course; and I'd been on the verge of gathering them all
together and telling them, getting the unpleasant task over with. But now I
knew that I couldn't. Not yet anyway. For the girls especially this had been a
day of major accomplishment; what right had I to ruin it with my petty
troubles? None at all.

And that's why I rose, ignored the questioning look on Elizabeth's face, and
draped my arms around my daughters' shoulders. "So," I said with a
smile, "who gets to tell me about their day first?"

Of course I had to tell the kids eventually--I owed them that--and in fact I
did, that evening over dinner. Though I was afraid I knew how they would react,
still I wasn't quite sure; and as usual they managed to surprise me: they all
four shrugged it off as something of very little consequence. "That's just
Justin being Justin, Dad," Timothy said sagely, as the other three--and
their mother too--nodded agreement. "He always overreacts. In a day or
two--"

"If that long," Cynthia put in.

"--He'll get over it," Timothy concluded. "You'll see."

This conversation amused me more than a little. Excuse me, I might
have asked, exactly how long have you known Justin? A little
shorter time, I think, than I had. And yet I really couldn't argue, because
Timothy did indeed have Justin pegged pretty well. Our dear leader did have a
tendency to take things too much to heart. A definite liability in his line of
work.

"Timothy is right, dear," Elizabeth told me softly. She nodded
across the hall, to where Justin sat alone at a table in the far corner,
morosely picking at his dinner while turning pages in a notebook. "In a
way I think he was looking forward to being a father," she went on.
"Now he has to get used to the fact that he isn't going to be--not yet
anyway. As soon as he's worked that out of his system he'll realize how much he
overreacted, and how much he does need your help."

"I hope you're right," I said. My gaze, though, was not on Justin,
but rather on his opposite number, sitting by herself in the other corner and
looking equally downtrodden, pill bottles arranged before her like a skirmish
line. Why did I have a feeling that what they both needed right now was each
other? And a good talking-to as well? But that at least was going to have to be
somebody else's job; I was in deep enough trouble already.

"--And in the meantime," Teresa was saying, "perhaps you can
get some rest, Father. You deserve it."

I smiled and reached across to clasp her hand. "I hope so, honey,"
I told her. I have to admit, that did sound good; but unfortunately it wasn't
fated to happen. Not just yet, anyway. And the reason why I could already hear,
even above the muted buzz of conversation in the dining hall. The rain had
begun at a little after four in the afternoon, tentatively at first, but
rapidly gaining momentum. It wasn't like the storm of a few days past, which
after all had been mostly sound and fury. This time there was hardly any wind
at all--and that was entirely the problem. The clouds settled in over Thorn
Valley as if trapped there, and once in place they let loose with a vengeance.
Not terribly hard, at least not yet; I had seen--and indeed been caught
in--cloudbursts that were far more severe. No, what was so alarming about this
storm was its persistence. Once those clouds got started they didn't want to
stop; and that--though we didn't know it yet--was to be the cause of a great
many events, both good and bad. At the moment, though, I was just glad I wasn't
out in it.

"What are you going to do with your time off, Dad?" Martin
asked.

I shook my head. "I'm not sure yet," I admitted. I glanced across
the hall again. "But I can tell you for certain what I'm not going
to do."

By noon the next day, of course, what had occurred between Justin and me was
the talk of Thorn Valley. For a while anyway.

Though it would have been interesting, in an academic sort of way, to know
who started the rumor mill turning, I don't suppose I would have had much luck
finding out, even if I'd been inclined to try. No doubt everyone I asked would
have implicated someone else. That's pretty much the definition of a rumor,
isn't it? Though I did have a few suspects...

The next morning the rain was still pounding down, hard and unrelenting, as
it had all the previous night. I sat for a long time on the windowsill in our
bedroom, wrapped in my bath-robe, gazing out in fascination at the cascades and
rivulets, some clear and some muddy, that flowed down briskly from the rocks
above to the valley floor below, joining forces briefly at the edge of the farm
before vanishing into the lake. Already the swimming beach was visibly
narrower, the stones of the breakwater all but submerged; and that was only the
beginning.

Sitting there, half mesmerized, I felt a hand come to rest gently on the
back of my neck. "Maybe you ought to go back to bed," Elizabeth said
softly.

I looked up at her quickly; but I shouldn't have been surprised that she
knew; somehow she always did. In point of fact I had hardly slept at all the
night before; I had spent the majority of those long hours lying there staring
into the darkness, listening to the rain, with my wife sleeping peacefully in
my arms. At least I'd thought she was asleep. Or perhaps it was just my
bleary, bloodshot eyes and drooping whiskers which gave me away now.

She perched herself next to me. She was already dressed, today in a beige turtleneck,
a dark brown skirt, and a matching blazer: the very picture of the efficient
young executive. At least one of us still had a job to go to. "You
really shouldn't be taking this so hard, Jonathan," she told me.
"Timothy is right: it will blow over."

I nodded. "I know."

"And if you do need more sleep..."

The idea was tempting; God knows I didn't have anything else to do. I
glanced over at the neatly-made bed...and then I shook my head. No. I'd spent too
much time and effort these last few months trying to break myself of being
nocturnal. I didn't need a setback now. "And anyway," I said, only
half-aware that I'd spoken aloud, "Maybe Justin has forgiven me by
now." I stood and stretched painfully. "You know, it's times like
these when I really miss coffee."

Justin hadn't forgiven me, as it happened; but oddly enough, I started off
the day doing just about what I would have if he had.

Elizabeth and I were rather late to breakfast, mainly because she'd
practically had to dress me and lead me to the dining hall by hand. In fact our
kids were already finished and ready to leave by the time we arrived. As we sat
down--even before I took a drink from the steaming mug of tea which I hoped
would restore me somewhat to life--I glanced back to the dining hall's rear
corner. Sure enough, Justin was there, and as my gaze fell on him he looked up.
For a second our eyes locked...and then he very deliberately looked away. I felt
my heart sink into my toes. Not yet, Tim, I thought. Not quite yet.

A quick glance at my wife told me that she had noticed: she was quietly
seething, her chin stuck out and her whiskers bristling like wire. I grinned
derisively at her. "Now who's taking it too hard?' I asked.

She sighed. "I know," she said. "I shouldn't. But I just
can't help thinking about all that he owes you--and everything you've done for
these people, before they came to this valley as well as after. And now he's
just tossing you aside..."

"Elizabeth," I said warningly, "you promised, remember?"

She nodded as she stirred honey into her oatmeal. "I know I did,"
she said. "And of course I intend to keep it. I won't say a word. To
him," she added thoughtfully. A little too thoughtfully.

Spoon halfway to my mouth, I paused to look at her curiously; but all I got in
return was a look of bland, blue-eyed innocence. Do I want to know? I
asked myself. No. Not really. Not this morning. And so I turned my full
attention to my breakfast. Unemployment and insomnia had at least not affected
my appetite.

After breakfast, while Elizabeth headed up to her office, I took a walk
around the corridors, in an attempt to clear the fog of sleeplessness from my
brain. And in fact I was successful, partially at least. As I walked I met a
number of rats, hurrying through the hallways on one errand or another; every
one of them greeted me, as they always did, more or less deferentially
according to age. I tried to return their greetings as cheerfully as I could
manage. The sight of me walking through the halls of a morning was by no means
odd; that had been a major part of my job description. But the fact that I was
moving slowly, not hurrying at all, was most definitely strange, and it was
that, perhaps, which first fired up the rumor mill. Or perhaps not; I'll never
know.

It was funny, I thought as I paced the halls, how quickly this place had
come to feel like home to me; I scarcely remembered how it felt to live
anywhere else. From the first moment I'd set foot in Thorn Valley (deposited
there by helicopter, strangely enough) something had resonated. It's silly and
illogical, I know, to speak of "coming home" to a place where you've
never been before--but somehow, that's exactly how I'd felt. To a certain
extent, I'm sure, it was the people, all those familiar faces; but there was
something more to it than even that. It sometimes truly felt as if my entire
long, eventful life had been leading up to this place. Or perhaps--though I
don't like to be morbid--as if I truly had died, instead of just pretending to,
and had been reborn here. Whichever it was, I had always felt welcome and
wanted here, and that was a feeling that even my current troublous relations
with Justin couldn't disturb for long.

I walked for an hour or so, just wandering with no clear purpose in mind,
until I felt about as wide-awake as I was likely to get. Then it came to me
that what I wanted right then, more than anything else, was a good long talk
with Eileen. Quite apart from the effect she always had on me--she had a knack
for breaking me out of my blue moods--I wanted to know if she had made any
progress repairing her relations with her sister. To ease my own conscience, if
for no other reason. And of course an opportunity to visit with her new little
one was not to be missed. I wasn't sure whether she'd been released from the
infirmary yet; if so, she'd probably be at home, and that was close by. I'd
check there first. I turned...

And at that moment I heard the sound of rapid footsteps, and then a
familiar, slightly rough voice calling my name. I turned back to see Arthur
hurrying toward me, a notebook in his hand and a worried expression on his
face. "Jonathan!" he said. "You're just the person I wanted to
see. I need you to tell Justin--"

I raised my hand, bringing him up short. "I'm afraid I'm not working
for Justin right now," I told him flatly.

For a few seconds he was utterly nonplused. "What do you--?" he
began. But Arthur was one of the most brilliant people I knew, and it didn't
take him long to put two and two together. His eyes narrowed. "He didn't fire
you, did he?" he demanded.

"No," I assured him quickly. "Nothing so drastic as that. But
I am on a kind of indefinite suspension. Until he tells me otherwise."

Arthur shook his head tiredly. "How is it," he wondered,
"that someone as brave, bold and intelligent as he is, can also be such a
blasted idiot? I'm truly sorry, Jonathan. He'll come his senses eventually, I'm
sure--"

"I imagine you're right," I said, and paused. I saw the look of
frustration on his face, and I realized that he was almost as sorry for himself
as he was for me: because now he had to go search for our Fearless Leader. His
message must truly have been important. I took a deep breath. "Even though
I'm not working for him right now," I went on, "there's no reason why
I couldn't leave him a message--just as a concerned citizen. What's up?"

His broad face relaxed into a smile, and a meaty hand clapped me solidly on
the shoulder. "That's the spirit," he said. Then he sobered.
"It's this weather," he continued grimly. "You know the trouble I
was having up on the fourth level--"

I nodded. "I do."

"--Unfortunately in the time between that last storm and this one I
wasn't able to get as much work done as I'd hoped, plugging the sources of the
seeps up in the rocks." He waved a hand over his head. "During the
night a while tribe of new ones broke out, and most of the old ones got worse.
I've got most of my crew up there now working on it--I've even got your boys
helping. There's one particular section of corridor in the north quadrant that
really has me worried. If this keeps up we might have water and mud flowing
right down the ramps to the lower levels. And," he went on with a frown,
"from the weather report I just heard, it is going to keep up. Two
or three days at least."

I peered closely up at him. I had known Arthur a very long time, of
course--since I helped him find the screwdriver that let us out of the lab at
NIMH--and I knew that he occasionally had a tendency to exaggerate. I sometimes
think it's an occupational hazard of engineers. But this time I didn't think
such was the case. There was real desperation, even fear, in his eyes.

"I don't want to have to seal up half of the fourth level," he was
saying. "We're going to need that space, the way our population is
growing. But it might end up being my only choice. I wanted Justin to know the
situation."

I reached up and grasped his arm. "Consider him informed," I said.
"One way or another."

He smiled and nodded. "Thank you, Jonathan," he said. "Very
much. That will save me a great deal of time." He turned then and started
back down the corridor. "Excuse me please," he said over his
shoulder. "I've got to go break out some more lumber."

Well, my discussion with Eileen was obviously going to have to wait. I
turned and headed up the corridor at something more like my usual rapid gait,
and as I went I felt around my tunic pockets. I wasn't carrying my work
notebook that morning--there hadn't seemed to be much reason why I should--and
I didn't want to take the time to go home for it. Fortunately there was no
need. In an inner, "secret" pocket of my tunic at about chest-level,
I found a smaller memo pad with the little stub of a pencil stuck in it.
Fortunately there was still a point on the pencil. As I walked I condensed
Arthur's concerns into a few brief lines, and when I reached Justin's office I
tore off the sheet, folded it in two, and stuck it to the otherwise empty
cork-board. I didn't bother to sign it; he'd know who it was from by the
handwriting. Nor did I try to knock on the door, even though Justin might well
have been there. He'd find the note soon enough.

My mission accomplished, I once again considered looking for Hacker; but
even as I thought about it, I knew I wasn't going to do it. Not with something
so major going on up on the fourth level. In better times Justin might well
have dispatched me to check out the situation; now, with nothing better to do,
I could see no reason in the world why I shouldn't dispatch myself. I turned
and headed for the up-ramp.

There's one thing I suppose I ought to explain: Arthur's reference to the
"weather report" he had just heard. There was actually a twofold
meaning. Thorn Valley was essentially a farming community, and like any farm we
were very much at the mercy of the weather. Early on (or so I'm told; I was
dead at the time) Arthur cobbled together a set of makeshift, but adequate,
weather instruments--thermometer, barometer, and wind vane--and installed them
in the guardhouse near the main entrance. One of the daily duties of Philip's
door guards was to take frequent observations, and in fact Martin's friend Jake
was actively studying meteorology.

But that wasn't all. During the days of the rosebush community the rats had
managed to (shall we say) "acquire" several small radios, some that
ran on house current and some that took batteries. Nicodemus, I well
remembered, kept one of the former type in his office: an old clock-radio with
mechanical digits. The clock's motor had long since burned out (hence the reason
why the thing had been discarded) but the radio still played beautifully.
Several of the smaller battery-powered models made it to Thorn Valley...but
eventually, of course, their batteries pooped out, and replacements (probably
old-fashioned lead-acid "wet" cells) were still on Arthur's "to
do someday" list. But in the meantime, he had managed to create something
different. Using parts from a broken radio he put together what is commonly
called a "crystal set": a type of AM radio that doesn't need batteries.
We were pretty far away from civilization, and Arthur had been obliged to
string twenty yards or more of wire aerial to pick up anything at all; but
fortunately one of the stations we could receive with some regularity was a
massively-powerful all-news-all-day operation from a city not impossibly
distant. With a little imagination their weather forecasts could be applied to
our valley. It was also nice to be assured every morning that the humans were
not in imminent danger of blowing up the planet. The radio was also set up in
the guardhouse, and if occasionally, during the long lonely night-watches on
the main entrance, they tuned it to the country-western station that was the
only other one available...well, I think they can be forgiven. Something had to
explain the fact that my friends Mark and David were sometimes heard humming
songs about unfaithful truck drivers.

Even at my fairly rapid pace, it was quite a long way up to the fourth
level, and as I made my way through the corridors and up the ramps, I found
myself thinking back several years, to the design meetings that had preceded
the construction of the rats' new home.

The earliest meetings took place before I had even met Elizabeth, much less
married her, and so I was able to attend almost all of them. Others who were
usually present included Mr. Ages and Justin; and of course Arthur and
Nicodemus. I recall that Jenner attended a few of the early meetings; but when
he discovered that the subject under discussion was "how do we
build it?" as opposed to "should we build it?" he
boycotted the rest of the meetings in protest. His presence was rarely, if
ever, missed.

There was only one serious bone of contention at those meetings, and that
was the subject of the fourth level. Arthur and his team had done truly
excellent work, surveying the valley's eastern ridge; the drawings he presented
were almost photographic in their realism and accuracy. Now, I have no
pretensions to being an engineer; but from the very first moment that I saw
those site plans, I had serious doubts about the viability of the fourth level.
The lower three were obviously not a problem: the ridges that would house them
climbed almost literally like stairsteps or terraces, one upon the next, as if
ready-made for Arthur to begin tunneling. But by the time you climbed up to the
fourth level...that ridge was not a gently sloping stairstep; it was
sharply-angled, rugged, and deeply-fissured. I'd had serious doubts that either
rooms or tunnels could be successfully excavated there, without setting them so
far back into the ridge so as to make them windowless and dank. Arthur believed
otherwise, and he argued his point of view forcefully. I'd sometimes
wondered--just between you and me--whether his arguments weren't based more on
wounded ego than sound engineering: an untrained layman of a mouse had dared to
question his judgment. I also had to wonder, now, if the present situation
might be causing him to re-evaluate. Not that it would have done him much good;
he was stuck with the situation.

Arthur and I had that discussion on several different occasions. I recall
that Justin usually supported me, and that Ages held himself more or less
aloof, saying that he didn't have the expertise. But in the end all my
arguments came to naught. Eventually Nicodemus--who had sat silent listening to
Arthur and me argue--would hold up a hand, bringing us to a halt, and then he
would say, "I believe we must bow to Arthur's expertise in these
matters." And that would be that. If there was one thing about Nicodemus
that I never liked, it was his tendency to play the autocrat--a tendency which
Justin, fortunately, was usually able to resist.

After I met Elizabeth, and in the press of subsequent events, I lost track
somewhat of the design process. Obviously Arthur had finally gone ahead and
built his fourth level, for better or worse. I have to admit--I always
had to admit--that he had a point: we were indeed rapidly coming to a point
where we would need the space. Whether it would be worth the maintenance
headaches, though, was another question entirely.

Even as I made my way up the last ramp I heard the noises echoing down from
above: the sharp ringing clank of well-seasoned lumber being thrown down; the
staccato rapping of many hammers, the rasp of saws, and a babble of voices. At
the top of the ramp I turned right, and almost immediately I ran headlong into
a construction zone--or perhaps I ought to say a war zone.

The main corridor of the fourth level wasn't too much different from those
of the levels below, except that it was just a shade narrower; it was more
dimly-lit, having at present only about half the number of lamps as the lower
levels; its floor was still bare stone in most places, instead of tile; and the
majority of the rooms that opened off it still had neither doors nor windows.
As of yet that level was used only for a very small quantity of storage.
Eventually, though, it was scheduled to be used for living space, and the rooms
had been roughed out with that in mind. And that, of course, made it vitally
necessary that this seepage problem be brought under control: nobody wants to
have to wade through knee-deep slimy mud to get to his front door.

Directly ahead of me now was the north quadrant, the area that so concerned
Arthur. Here some additional lamps had been brought in--only an idiot does
carpentry in the dark--and under their light some two dozen rats were steadily
toiling, as far up the corridor as I could see. Two dozen rats and two mice.

The work they were all engaged in was simple enough, technically speaking,
but back-breakingly strenuous. Arthur's nemesis, the seeps, oozed out from the
ceiling and inner wall of the corridor, and some of the rooms as well, from
cracks that at times were all but invisible to the naked eye. Many of the cracks
wept clear water--showing that they had a direct pipeline, so to speak, to the
rain-washed rocks above. Others, though--chiefly the ones that oozed from the
wall--were sluggish with viscid grey mud. Unchecked, water and mud would have
pooled up on the floor, and, as Arthur said, eventually flowed down the ramps
to the levels below. What that gang of rats (and two mice) was doing--though it
seemed an all but hopeless task--was to construct under each and every one of
those seeps an angled sluice, made of long planks joined in a V, supported
underneath with simple X-shaped braces, and caulked with pine-pitch to at least
slow down the inevitable leakage. Like the tributaries of a major river,
smaller sluices drained into bigger ones, into a room whose doorway had been
partially blocked, and then out and away through a hole punched low in that
room's wall.

It took me only a few seconds to locate my sons: they were struggling to
place a sluice under a particularly muddy wall-seep, with the aid of a young
male rat. All three of them were covered heard to toe with mud; it plastered
their clothing and fur alike with a uniform coat of grey. Timothy's glasses
were so spotted that I suspected he could have seen better without them. So
muddy were all three of them, in fact, that I entirely failed to recognize the
young rat until he spoke.

"Mr. Brisby!" he said, and I knew then that it was Robert,
Timothy's best friend, under that coating of earth. Actually I ought to have
realized sooner, knowing how inseparable the two of them were.

"Hello, gentlemen," I said. "Don't mind me; I'm just
assessing the situation."

"You mean you were curious," Martin corrected. Robert had just put
his back under the end of the sluice and levered it upward, and Timothy and
Martin rushed to jam in a brace.

"That too," I admitted. I paused, and then I grinned. "You
know, this reminds me of something I once saw on late-night TV. 'The Attack of
the Mud Creatures', or something like that."

"Very funny, Dad," Timothy growled. He pulled a hammer from his
tunic belt, a few nails from a pocket, and began fastening the brace to the
sluice. Meanwhile Martin and Robert crossed to a much-depleted pile of lumber
against the opposite wall, and started selecting materials for another section.

Abruptly then I knew what I had to do. If I'd still been working for Justin
I would have taken a few notes and then left to file my report. But today the
only person I had to report to was myself. "Could you use an extra pair of
hands?" I asked.

They all three looked over at me in profound gratitude; in Robert's case it
was mixed with a bit of puzzlement. Two mice and one very slightly undersized
rat--this was hard work for anyone, but for the three of them it was harder
still. "We'd love it," Timothy said.

And that was that. I rolled up my sleeves, found a hammer that I could use
in a nearby crate of tools, filled my pocket with nails from a barrel next to
that, and set to work, shoulder to shoulder with my boys and their friend. When
Arthur arrived a little while later with a wagon-load of fresh lumber, I took a
quick break to speak to him. "The Leader has been informed," I
announced.

"Thanks again, Jonathan," Arthur said over his shoulder, as he
heaved planks and beams off the wagon and onto the depleted pile. At first
glance you might have thought that our Chief Engineer was merely heavy-set--but
not after you observed him in action. Those thick arms and wide shoulders were
pure muscle.

He grinned at my mud-spattered person, the hammer in my hand and my pocketful
of nails. "It appears I've hired another carpenter," he observed.

I shrugged. "Least I could do, I thought."

"Believe me, Jonathan, I appreciate it." The last of the lumber
had been tossed onto the pile, and the two young rats who had helped Arthur with
the wagon took it away--probably for another load. Dusting off his hands,
Arthur glanced over and Martin, and chuckled. "I think we've come full
circle," he said. "He was covered with mud the first time I met him
too." He shook his head. "It seems like a long time ago, but it isn't
really. Just a few months."

"This time it's for a good cause, at least." I paused for a
moment, gazing down the crowded corridor. Then I said, "Arthur--did it
ever occur to you...all the tools, all the technology we used to build this
place...it was all invented by the humans. We came to this valley because we
wanted to break the habit of stealing. But does it ever seem to you that as
long as we keep using their technology, in a way we're still stealing from
them?"

Arthur looked down at me as if I'd just broken free of my straitjacket.
"Let me get this straight," he said. "We're standing here
ankle-deep in mud, with the rain pouring down outside, with our first winter
coming on and a barely-adequate food supply, and you're worried about whether
we're stealing? Get a life, Jonathan! There are only so many ways you
can design a wheel--and if somebody's already done it, why do it all over
again?"

And that was my signal to get back to work. Very soon I was not merely
mud-spattered but soaked through, just like everyone else; and in fact I didn't
care. There's nothing like good hard physical work for driving out
frustrations; and brother, did I have frustrations!

It was there that Justin found me, an hour or so later when he came to inspect
the situation. Our leader had my note in his hand and a concerned expression on
his face as he took a look around the corridor, which had come to resemble a
cross between a hydrological map and an amusement park's log-flume ride. As
Justin spotted me, all over mud, standing beside Martin as the two of us used
our backs and shoulders to heave a section of sluice into place under yet
another dribble, he frowned deeply. "I wish you'd actually come and found
me, Jonathan," he said. "This is too serious for just a note."

You can't win, you know that? You simply cannot win.

My sons and I arrived home a little after four that afternoon. Utterly
exhausted--if I was able to get out of bed the next morning, I'd be very darned
surprised--starving, despite the soup and sandwiches which had been brought up
to us at noon; and covered, literally covered head to toe with a thick
armor-plating of mud that was beginning to dry out and flake off. But
curiously, rarely in my life had I felt happier. Happy to have drowned my
problems in simple, old-fashioned hard work; happy to have spent a day with
Martin without the friction that too often occurred between us; and happy above
all to learn that my younger son, who had almost died on several occasions, now
had the strength to stand up and swing a hammer every bit as long as his
brother or me.

Somehow we had done it; Arthur's crew, my sons, and me. The fourth level's
main corridor was now so jam-packed with interconnected sluices that it was
almost completely impassable; to get through you literally had to drop to your
belly and crawl. But we had managed to catch and channel the flow from more
than ninety percent of the larger seeps (the smaller ones would just have to
take care of themselves.) And it was a good thing we had, too, because outside
the rain was still pounding down, as steadily and relentlessly as it had all
day.

Elizabeth was alone in the apartment when the three of us entered,
arm-in-arm and laughing together. She was seated on the smaller sofa, a book
open beside her and a notepad and pencil in her lap. She peered at us over the
top of her glasses. "If I was still the one washing your clothes,"
she commented, "I'd strangle all three of you. And stay off the carpet,
please."

It's very easy, of course, for me to say something along the lines of
"If I had known what my wife was up to, I would have stopped her."
Certainly I would have tried to stop her, by any means short of physical
force. The problem is that Elizabeth couldn't be stopped by any means
short of physical force.

Until my wife reminded me, it had entirely slipped my mind: that evening was
the weekly community meeting. It was the method by which the Rats of NIMH
governed themselves, after Justin's rather high-handed (but understandable)
dissolution of the Council a few weeks after the rats arrived in Thorn Valley.
Myself, I would just as soon not have gone. I'd had a largely sleepless night,
a very active day, a long warm bath and an enormous hot dinner. All I really
wanted now was my bed. But somehow or other Elizabeth persuaded me to attend.
I've often wished she'd let me sleep instead.

When the six of us arrived at the meeting hall, the tiers of benches which
lined that huge inverted cone were almost filled. I spied a bench with room for
all of us, about halfway down and a third of the way around, and we made our
way slowly there. And as we did I noticed a very strange phenomenon: we--or
more accurately I--was leaving behind me a kind of wake, very much like
that left by a motorboat on a calm lake. A wake of silence, interrupted
conversations...and stares. Very soon it appeared that everybody in the meeting
hall was staring at me--and pretending that they weren't. In the space of one
day the rumor mill had done its job. God only knows what they all thought;
given the way stories usually grow in the telling, it's possible some of them
believed that Justin had not just fired me, but also beaten me and thrown my
little broken body into the lake. Maybe they were looking for the bruises.

Fortunately the crowd had not long to stare. My family and I had barely
settled onto our bench when Justin arrived. Our leader made his way slowly down
to the speaker's platform at the bottom of the hall; he looked a little tired
and more than a little preoccupied. I wondered, somewhat maliciously, if he'd
had a hard day at work. If so, it was his own fault.

As Justin called the meeting to order he was working hard to avoid catching
my eye; almost as hard as I was to avoid catching his. Elizabeth, though, was
another matter. My dear wife sat close beside me on the stone bench, her back
and tail both stiff as a steel rod, glaring down at our elected leader so
intently that I expected him to spontaneously combust any moment. But she
couldn't catch his attention either; it was as if a broad wedge of the meeting
hall where we sat didn't exist.

"Ashamed to look us in the eye," Elizabeth muttered, half to
herself. "And he ought to be. After all you've done for him..."

I laid my hand soothingly on her arm, but she shook it off. "No,"
she said. "I love Justin very much, but this situation with Judith has
entirely muddled up his thinking, and it's time somebody let him know
that."

"You wouldn't--" I began in horror; but it was already too late.

Down on the platform Justin looked around, everywhere except where my family
and I were seated. "Is there any new business before we begin?" he
asked, as he always did. Nine times out of ten there wasn't. But this time he--and
everyone else in the hall, not the least me--was surprised, as my wife rose
quickly to her feet.

"Yes," she said loudly. "I have some."

"Elizabeth--!" I whispered urgently; but she ignored me,
and there was nothing more I could do, short of wrestling her to the ground.

Justin turned, looking just about as astonished as I felt. He cleared his
throat and said, somewhat indistinctly, "The chair recognizes Elizabeth
Brisby."

She shook off my grasping hand, stepped nimbly around me to the stairs, and
then descended, with every eye in the community upon her, the twenty or so
steps to the platform. Even four months ago there was no way on earth she could
have done this; she would have fled screaming from the very idea of addressing
such a crowd, friends though they be. But not tonight. She climbed up onto the
platform and looked around, her expression somewhere between determined and
grim; and then she began to speak. The conical hall was a natural
amplifier--another tribute to Arthur--and her voice carried clearly even to the
upper tiers.

"My fellow citizens," she said. "Since becoming a member of
this community I have made it my business to study our Constitution and laws,
something which I believe is the duty of every concerned citizen. And in so
doing I have discovered what I believe to be a critical weakness in our system
of government."

She waited, gazing around, while a small stir rippled through the hall like
a quiet breath of wind. I had absolutely no idea where she was going with this,
though perhaps I should have; I looked down at her with an equal mixture of
admiration and utter confusion. A moment later she continued: "Our current
Constitution, as amended some eight months ago, establishes the post of Leader
as an elected position, to be contested every two years. That is good; but it
leaves a critical gap: what happens should the elected Leader become
temporarily unable to perform his--or her--duties, either because of illness,
or injury, or--God forbid--death. Such a circumstance would create a major
crisis at very least, and could cause irreparable harm to our community. I
believe there ought to be--no, must be--a system in place to address
such a situation, before it arises. It may well be--in fact I hope very
much it will be--that we will never have to use that system; but all the same,
it should exist."

Once again there was a stir. I was beginning to see where this was going,
and I wasn't sure whether to laugh out loud at her audacity, or descend to the
platform and forcibly remove her from the hall. Standing in the shadows at the
rear of the platform, Justin was beginning to get it too; I saw his eyes widen
and his jaw drop in amazement. But there was absolutely nothing he could do: by
law, he could not prevent any citizen from addressing a meeting on any subject.

"What I propose is this," Elizabeth went on. "I believe that
our Constitution should once again be amended, to create a position of elected
Vice-Leader. I propose that this position should be contested on the same
biennial schedule as Leader. The person so elected would have duties assigned
to him or her by the Leader, as the Leader sees fit; but more importantly would
stand ready to take over the leadership of the community if necessary. I
believe it is especially important that this person should be selected by
direct election, and not appointed at the whim of the Leader. I move that it be
put to a vote, that such an amendment be drafted and considered."

Directly to my left, Timothy Brisby, Official Adult, rose smoothly to his feet.
"I second the motion," he said, so coolly that I knew for certain:
this was a conspiracy, and he too was a member of it. I should have
known, really.

By now Justin had realized that too; and he knew as well that he'd been
thoroughly had, courtesy of the democratic process. As he stepped forward into
the light I saw him, with a deliberate effort, put away a scowl of irritation
and don a mask of nonpartisan calm. "It has been moved and seconded,"
he said quietly. "Do I hear any discussion?"

I had some; but I decided to keep it to myself. For a moment Justin looked
around expectantly, and so too did Elizabeth. All around me, people looked at
each other, cleared their throats, shuffled their feet...but no one raised a
hand. And looking down at the expression on my wife's face, I could understand
why. If any of them had objected she would have ripped their livers out.

"It appears there is no discussion," Justin said finally.
"All in favor?"

Not for an instant, of course, did I deceive myself into believing that the
citizens of Thorn Valley didn't know what was really going on. All of them knew
(more or less) what had happened between me and Justin the previous day; that
much was obvious. Elizabeth's idea had a great deal of merit, of course, and
something like it should have been adopted long ago; it was only because of
Nicodemus', and then Justin's, enormous charisma that it hadn't. But all of
them knew exactly what they were voting for. Bet on it. Even before Justin
finished speaking every hand in the place went up. Every one except mine, of
course.

"Opposed?" Justin said a few seconds later, purely for the sake of
procedure, and all the hands dropped instantly. "Carried
unanimously," Justin said mildly. He looked around. "Do I have a
volunteer to draft the amendment?" he asked.

For a second I was sure that Elizabeth herself would; but if she did have it
in mind, she was beaten to the punch. A few rows down from me, where she sat
with her husband beside her and their offspring sleeping peacefully in a blanket-covered
wicker basket on the bench between them, Eileen raised her hand. "I'll
have a stab at it," she said. "I seem to be between jobs at
present."

Justin glanced around. "Anyone else?"

"Yes," a quiet voice from the top tier said. "I'd like to
help too."

I spun around, and so too did everyone else in the hall. The person who had
spoken was sitting by herself on a bench near the big double doors, as if she
had slipped in late. She sat curled around herself with her arms wrapped tight
around her abdomen, and she seemed oblivious to the stares that were
immediately turned her way. In fact it was Judith.

Far below, Justin seemed to have been struck dumb. He looked up at her in
astonishment--I knew exactly how he felt--and for a second or two he almost
seemed to stagger. Finally he cleared his throat. "Are there any other
volunteers?" he asked hoarsely.

There were none, it appeared, and a moment later Justin nodded. "All
right," he said. He glanced at Hacker, and he tried to glance at Judith
too, but her eyes shied away from his. "I'll be asking for a progress
report at next week's meeting," he concluded. He paused, and then he said,
almost fearfully, "Now, if there's no other new business..."

By this time my lady wife had made her way back up to our bench. She
exchanged a brief, secretive smile with Timothy, just for a second before I
grasped her arm firmly and pulled her down next to me. "Elizabeth
Brisby," I hissed into her ear, "just what on earth did you think you
were doing?"

She gazed at me serenely, once again the very image of blue-eyed innocence.
"Why, my civic duty, of course," she said sweetly. She glanced down
at Justin, who was now receiving a report from Arthur about the seepage
problem. "As a member of this community, it was my responsibility to
correct a serious error." She looked back at me. "In our
Constitution, I mean."

"Of course," I said. I sighed. "I have to admit, you do
have a point," I continued resignedly. "And the way Justin's going,
we're going to need a Vice-Leader. To take over when he has his nervous
breakdown."

She looked sharply at me, and I smiled; but in fact I was only half-joking.
Our beloved leader was spreading himself entirely too thin. He was exactly
the right person for the crisis, I thought. Bold, brave, quick-thinking; he
had seized control at precisely the right instant, unifying a confused and
frightened group of people and bringing them to safety. More than once I'd
wished I'd been there to help: at our best we were a good team, he and I. But
is he right for the long run? He took things far too seriously; the minor
troubles of the community, which he should have simply let sort themselves out,
grew and grew in his mind until they seemed every bit as big, as daunting, as
the truly major crises. And once you let that happen--I knew from bitter
experience--you're done for. If everything is an insurmountable
obstacle, what choice have you except to simply give up? And the one person who
could have given him perspective, who would have given him a reason to back off
and let the community run itself once in a while, he had thrust away. The
distance between them now, him at the bottom of the pit and her at the top, was
by no means merely a matter of feet and inches.

"Jonathan?" Elizabeth murmured, breaking into my thoughts.

"Yes, darling?"

She smiled impishly at me. "If we can get this amendment written and
passed, who do you think we should get to run for Vice-Leader?"