The acceptance of the unacceptable was a kind of reactionarystoicism, a dynamic that dulled his feelings for these others. Hecould feel it within him, a growing cunning, a hyper-real focus onthe here and now. It frightened him. He could not battle it head on,he could not decide what to feel and what not to feel, but he couldchallenge it with his actions. He could change it by refusing tobehave as if it were how he felt. He abhorred his own reaction, hisown feeling. It was an animal trait.

Saul could tell something was wrong as soon as he stepped into thesewers.

The sounds, the sounds he had become accustomed to walking into,were absent. As his feet hit the trickling water, he dropped into acrouch, suddenly full of feral energy. His ears twitched. He knewwhat was missing. He should walk into the sewers into a barelyaudible network of scratching and skittering, the noises of hispeople. He should hear them at the very edge of his rat-hearing, andsubsume them within him, make them part of him, use them to definehis time in the darkness.

The sounds were missing. There were no rats around him.

He lowered himself effortlessly, sliding into the organic muck. Hewas utterly silent, his ears twitching. He was trembling.

He could hear the constant soft drip of the tunnels, the thicktrickle of viscous water, the mournful soughing of warm subterraneanwinds, but his people were gone.

Saul closed his eyes, stilled himself from his toes up. His jointsceased to work over each other; he banished the sound of his blood,slowed his heart, dispensed with all the tiny noises of his body. Hebecame part of the sewer floor, and he listened.

The quiet of the tunnels appalled him.

He rested one ear gently against the floor. He could feelvibrations from all around the city.

A long way off, something sounded.

A high-pitched sound.

Saul snapped to his feet. He was sweating and tremblingviolently.

The Piper had come here? Was he in the sewers?

Saul raced through the tunnels. He did not know where he wasrunning. He ran to kill the shuddering of his legs, the terror hefelt.

What was he doing here?

He sped past a ladder. Maybe he should leave, maybe it was time heleft the sewers and ran for it through the streets above, he thought,but damn it, this was his space, his safe haven… he could not haveit taken from him.

He stopped still suddenly and cocked his head, listeningagain.

The sound of the flute was a little closer now, and he could heara scratching around it, the sound of claws on brick.

The flute slid violently up and down the scale, a cacophony ofquavers chasing each other in mad directions. The flute and the clawswere strangely static. They did not grow nearer or further away.

There was something strange, Saul realized, about the sound. Helistened. Unconsciously he braced himself against the tunnel walls,spread his arms, one above him, one to his side, his legs slightlyparted, each climbing the gentle incline of the cylindrical tunnel.He was framed by the passageway.

The flute trilled on, and now Saul could hear something else, avoice raised in anguish.

Loplop. Squawking, emitting meaningless, despairing cries.

Saul moved forward, tracking the sounds through the labyrinth.They remained where they were. He wound his way through the darktowards them. Loplop still shrieked intermittently, but his crieswere not pained, not tortured, but miserable. Loplop’s voice roseabove the scrabbling — an orderly scrabbling, Saul realized, anunearthly timed scratching.

The sounds were separated from him now only by thin walls, and heknew he was there, around the corner from the congregation. Thetremors had returned to Saul’s body. He fought to control himself.Terror held him hard. He remembered the numbing speed with which thePiper moved, the power of his blows. The pain in his body, the painhe had managed to forget, to ignore, reawakened and coursed throughhim.

Saul did not want to die.

But there was something not right about this sound.

Saul pressed himself hard against the wall and swallowed severaltimes. He edged forward, to the junction with the tunnel whichcontained the sounds. He was very afraid. The mad piping, Loplop’srandom cries, and above all the constant, orderly scrabbling againstbrick — everything continued as it had for minutes. It was loud, andso close it appalled him.

He looked around. He did not know where he was. Deep somewhere,buried in the vastness of the sewer system.

He steeled himself, drew his head slowly, silently around the edgeof the brick.

At first, all he could discern were the rats.

A field of rats, millions of rats; a mass that started a few feetfrom the entrance to the tunnel and multiplied, bodies piling uponbodies, rat upon rat, a sharp gradient of hot little bellies andchests and legs. A moving mountain, replacing those that fell withnew blood, defeating the urge of gravity to level its impossiblysteep sides. The rats boiled over each other.

They moved in time, they moved together.

All together they pushed down with their right forefoot, then alltogether with their left. Then the back legs, again in time. Theyclawed each other, ripped each other’s skin, trampled on the youngand dying — but they were one unit. They moved together, in time tothe hideous music.

The Piper was nowhere. On the other side of the rat mountain Saulcould see King Rat. Saul could not see his face. But his body movedon the same beat as those of his rebellious people, and he dancedwith the same disinterested intensity, his body stiff and spasming inperfect time.

Loplop cried again and again, and Saul glimpsed him, a desperatefigure before King Rat, his fists flailing against King Rat’s chest.He pushed King Rat, tried to move him back, but King Rat continuedwith his stiff zombie dance.

And behind them all, something hanging from the ceiling…something emerging, Saul saw, from a shaft to the pavements above. Ablack box, dangling at a ridiculous angle, its handle tied to a dirtyrope…

A ghetto-blaster.

Saul’s eyes widened in astonishment.

The fucker doesn’t even have to be here, he thought.

He stumbled into the tunnel and approached the seething mass. Theflute was ghastly, loud and fast and insane like an Irish jig playedin Hell. Saul edged forward. He began to pass straggling rats. Theghetto-blaster swayed slightly. Saul waded into the mass of rats. Somany already, all around him, and he had at least six feet to walk.It seemed as if every rat in the sewer had found its way here;monstrous foot-long beasts and mewling babies, dark and brown,crushing each other, killing each other in their eagerness to reachthe music. Saul pushed forward, feeling the bodies squirm around him.A thousand claws ripped at him, never in antagonism, only in theecstasy of the dance. Under the rats he could see were layers thatmoved sluggishly, tired and dying; and below them were rats who didnot move at all. Saul walked knee deep in the dead.

King Rat did not turn, stayed where he was, dancing at the head ofhis people once again. Loplop saw Saul. He shrieked and pushed pastKing Rat, launched himself through the living wall towards Saul.

He was ruined. His suit was filthy, and in tatters. His facecontorted, rage and confusion fleeting across it.

He waded forward two, three steps, then stumbled under the weightof enthralled bodies. He went under, drowning in the seething mass.Saul ignored him, contemptuous of him, disgusted.

But he too found it difficult to move; he pushed through the rats,killing, he was sure, with each step, unwillingly but inevitably. Heswayed, regained his balance. The cacophonous flute was utterlydeafening. Saul went down suddenly on one knee and the rats used himas a springboard, leapt from him, tried to fly to the danglingstereo.