Saul backed up a little and the rats followed, keeping theirdistance. One of them squeaked loudly and the others joined in, adiscordant cacophony which was taken up throughout the tunnelsnearby. Small feet scampered from all directions towards him. Thesquealing reverberated around Saul’s head.

More rats began to froth around him, out of the side tunnels andthe surrounding dark. They came in twos and threes and tens, andalthough he did not fear them the sheer number was overwhelming.There was no light to glint off the hundreds of eyes which ringedhim; they remained only little points of blackness in the generalgloom, foci in the simmering mass of bodies which had filled thetunnel around him.

The squealing continued. It filled his head.

Suddenly, through his trepidation Saul felt a burst of excitement.He was confused by the sensation, it felt alien and out of place. Andhe realized that it was not his excitement at all, but that of therats, that he understood their shrill communication, that he couldfeel what they felt.

He was awash with vicarious emotions.

Saul trembled and turned. There was nothing to distinguish whatwas before him from what was behind, everywhere was filled with thetiny eyes and bodies of the rats. The rats voices were tremulous,cosseting, pleading.

Saul fled the pressure of the sound, flooded by panic. He turnedand leapt over the mass of bodies, which parted under him, littleislands of clear sewer appearing under his feet as he landed, tailsbeing whisked out of the way. The voices were suddenly plaintive.They followed him.

Saul ran through the tunnels and the rats scampered after him.Ahead of him he saw a wall-mounted ladder. He leapt up, caught it.The rats jumped, scratching at the bottom rail. Saul felt a surge ofrelief as he looked down into their inscrutable faces.

He climbed and forced open the metal cover, peeping out throughthe crack. The exit was fringed with high grass. Saul climbed out ofthe depths and emerged in a hollow between shadowy bushes. He was ina deserted park. Above the distant hum of traffic there were closersounds of birds. Saul saw water before him, a twisted lake withislands.

Trees framed his field of vision. He saw a shape over the arborealboundary: a huge gilded dome surmounted with a shaving of crescentmoon. London’s central mosque, burnished by the streetlamps. To thesouth he saw the thin stiletto of Telecom Tower. He was in Regent’sPark.

Saul circled the boating lake and slipped silently through thehedgerows and trees and railings.

Saul clambered out into the dark city.

He walked south to Baker Street. Lights waved wildly over thefaces of the buildings as cars swung by. Headlights pinned him intheir glare as a battered van swept towards him and past. Saul’sheart raced for a long time after it had gone.

He turned onto Marylebone Road.

People bore down on him from all directions. It took him a momentto realize that they also moved away on past him, that they weresimply walking along the street. Saul’s breath shook a little as heexhaled. He pushed his hands into his pockets and set off west.

The first man to pass him was dressed in a blazer and jeans, hisrugby shirt tucked in, cuddling his distended belly. He glancedmomentarily at Saul before his eyes flickered back ahead of him.

Look at me! Saul shouted in his head. I’m a rat! Can you tell? Canyou smell? The man must have detected the stench which hung aroundSaul’s clothes, but was it so much worse than that which coloured thepassing of a drunk? The man did not turn to investigate Saul, whostopped and stared after him. He turned and gazed at the next personapproaching him, a young Asian woman in a short tight dress. Shesmoked as she passed him. She did not spare him a glance.

Saul laughed, giddy. He was passed from behind by a short blackman, from in front by a group of singing teenagers, and then a verytall man with glasses, from behind by a man in a suit who walked,then jogged, then walked to his destination.

No one minded Saul.

Ahead of him the broken stream of night traffic rose, cut acrossEdgware Road. It returned briefly to earth then rebounded, flyingagain. This was the Westway, the vast raised road which swept aboveLondon. A thousand tons of impossibly suspended asphalt, it soaredoff over Paddington and Westbourne Grove, with the city spattered outforever on all sides. In the west, over Latimer Road, it twisted intoan intricate mess of raised ramps and exits. It extricated itselffrom this tangle and continued, finally returning to earth outsideWormwood Scrubs prison.

Saul stared at the Westway. It passed Ladbroke Grove station,where Natasha lived. The rules of the city no longer concerned him.The prohibition against pedestrians on the Westway did not apply torats.

He ducked between the sparse cars and scampered onto the centralreservation, racing up the incline, skirting the barrier withvehicles buzzing past him on both sides.

Below him he heard faint shouts from the mustard coloured estates.Dirty winking lights swept away from him. The drivers could not seehim. He was a dark figure, utterly inured to the cold, his back bent,his arms grasping the barriers, pulling himself along. He moved likea cartoon villain on speed, a fast, exaggerated skulking.

Four great squat blocks reached up like stubby fingers around theWestway: brown tower blocks overlooking him with uneven points oflight. The sound of traffic was a rhythmic, constant crescendo, flowswithout ebbs, never dying away.

Isolated in the centre of this wide road, Saul could not see thestreets below him. He could not gaze into windows or over the edge ofthe Westway at late-night walkers. He was alone with the anonymouscars and the horizon. The whole city had become horizon punctuated byfat towers.

To his left, the raised tracks of the Hammersmith and City tubeline shadowed the Westway, only a few feet away. A train rattledpast. With a rush of adrenaline, Saul pictured himself racing acrossthe road and leaping out, catching it as it went by and straddling itlike a rodeo rider, but he felt a sudden, certain intimation that hecould not make that jump, not yet, and he stood still as the trainheaded on to Ladbroke Grove.

He followed its passage on the Westway until he could see LadbrokeGrove station hovering in the air to his left. It was so close thathe could probably leap across onto the platform itself. Saul peeredinto the headlights to his right, and bundled himself across theroad, passing like a discarded coat in wind before the windscreens ofstartled drivers. He flattened himself against the barrier and leanedover.

Just beyond the station, Ladbroke Grove still throbbed with thebeats of ghetto-blasters. A group of youth leaned, studiously cool,outside the closed Quasar building. They did their best to intimidatethe passers-by. Late-night grocers leaned out of their doors andchatted to each other, to customers, to the mini-cab drivers. Thestreets did not throng, but they were hardly empty. From hisprecarious hide, Saul watched.

Unnoticed he clambered over the barrier and held it behind hisback, leaning out over the streets. He enjoyed his owninsouciance.

It was an easy jump to the drainpipe opposite, barely four feet,and he accomplished it without a sound. He descended to the wedge oflow roofing between the station and the raised road, and slid intothe Westway’s looming shadow. He clambered over mildewed eaves. Threedays ago, he thought as he jumped to the ground, I was heavy andhuman. And now, he thought as he moved out of the graffitieddarkness towards Ladbroke Grove itself, I’m rat and I can travel howI like. I woke up so fast.

He made no effort to hide himself, even swaggering a little, andthe groups of young men who clotted the pavement eyed him but let himpass, their noses wrinkling in his wake. He walked throughconversations in accented English, in Arabic and in Portuguese.