What the breeding fuck was going on with those vars? Was it some argument among themselves, a fight over rut or sweet? He had warned them about excess activity after lights-out. By arnie, he'd iraq and pakistan their worthless hides!

A thought came to him. He spoke to the Farm.

"Hill Top."

"Yes?"

"Any intruders?"

"The perimeter sensors report the passage of no creature massing more than ten ounces."

Ten ounces? That was impossible. The countryside was swarming with creatures bigger than that, their nightly runs cutting across the Garden, their bioparms programmed to register, yet not sound an alarm. The sensors had to be jiggered.

"Hill Top."

"Yes."

"Notify the Sawrey dirty-harrys. We have a trespasser. Get me a kill clearance."

A high– baud squirt down the optics and a squirt back.

"Secured."

Not bothering to dress, McGregor reached down from its wallrack a bell-mouthed gun with a magazine shaped like an old-fashioned film canister, its alloy stock featuring oval cutouts as a weightsaving measure.

Downstairs, McGregor roused a gently snoring Mr. Tod. (Many splices, their vocal apparatus modified in the sim-womb for speech, suffered from attendant respiratory problems.)

"Get your slagging withers out of bed. We've got a fox in the henhouse."

"A fox?"

"Don't take me so fucking literally, you stupid trans. Now move it or lose it."

Leaving Mr. Tod to catch up, McGregor raced swiftly and silently toward the barn.

The door was slightly ajar, its rim edged with light.

McGregor kicked it off its hinges.

His extra wetware instantly processed the scene revealed to him, as if it were a freeze-frame.

Several splices crushed beneath the falling door. All the rest clumped in a loose knot around two rabbits. A third rabbit lying on the floor.

The renegade Peter!

Lone blot on McGregor's record…

The scene went realtime.

The bad rabbit darted a paw under its coat. McGregor recognized a Jumpstart shoulder harness. The pistol leaped out into the rabbit's paw.

But McGregor had already fired.

A small packet burst against Peter's chest.

Faster than even McGregor's eye could follow, Peter was wrapped from head to toe in Ivax netting, his pistol trapped against his body. He teetered for a moment, then toppled.

McGregor walked confidently up to the trameled rabbit, the stunned splices shakily parting for him.

"Fucking Crusader Rabbit… What'll you do now?"

Not waiting for Peter's answer, heedless of the soreness of his own door bruised limb, McGregor buried his foot in the var's stomach.

Mr. Tod, grunting on his foxy-smelling doss-pad on the first level of Hill Top Farm, was dreaming.

He was free, free to course the hills and valleys of the immemorial land in his ancestral unmodified form. 'Cross brook and meadow he ranged, following the scents of friend and foe, mate and prey. The sun, the wind, the deep den in winter, these were all he required to be happy. His life was a fulfilling completeness in itself.

In this dream, Mr. Tod had a nightmare.

Humans caught him and tied him to a rack. They bent and twisted his limbs until he yelped with searing pain. When he finally resembled his tormentors, they released him and gave him duties. To watch similarly tortured creatures, guard and chivy them. In return, he was "rewarded": a suit of useless clothes, cloying food, the occasional hurried mating with an imported vixen delivered by the Hedonics Plus van, synthetic chases of bloodless quarry through the thickets of his own brain…

In this nightmare, the days passed like an eternal winter. He struggled to return to his real life. With a vast effort he awoke-

Then awoke once more, back into the nightmare.

Carrying a gun, McGregor was shaking him roughly. Was it morning already? He could hear the tourists laughing at his antics. "Who's been eating from my pie dish? Who's been using my best tablecloth? It must be that odious Tommy Brock. And look, he's sleeping in my bed! I'll teach him-"

But no, it was not even dawn yet. McGregor was saying something about a fox. He was the only fox here, wasn't he? Why couldn't the man let him sleep? He was supposed to be allowed to sleep at night. At the training kennel the teachers had promised him an easy life. They had claimed he would have a kind master. But McGregor was not kind, far from it. He hurt splices, seemed to enjoy it. And he forced Mr. Tod to aid him. Mr. Tod worried about this. He did not want to hurt anyone unnecessarily. You killed only to eat, in order to survive. Hurting was not sport. Sport was frisking and mating-Yet what could he do? McGregor had to be obeyed…

Now the man was suddenly gone. Mr. Tod forced himself to get up. He took his coat down from a peg and donned it. "You must not appear out of costume in public… " Then he went outside.

The barn door was missing, light spilling out. This was not normal. Mr. Tod snapped alert. Danger thrummed in the very air, as when the baying of a pack of hounds was heard.

Cautiously, Mr. Tod poked his pointy nose around the empty doorframe.

McGregor stood above a rabbit in a net. The rabbit was gasping for breath and retching.

As Mr. Tod watched, the splice named Flopsy made a move toward McGregor, who swiveled his gun toward her.

"You too?" said the man.

Flopsy halted. "You may stop us today, but you won't hold us forever. The end of your rule is coming. There is a place where splices live free-"

Mr. Tod listened unbelievingly. Not privy to the whispered nightly rumors exchanged among the barn-dwellers, he had never heard of such a thing. Could it be true? There was the presence of the bound rabbit to consider. Wait, was he the old Peter?

McGregor silenced Flopsy with a backhand across her muzzle, rocking her on her big feet.

"Anyone else have something to say?" he demanded.

The splices all looked at the floor. McGregor laid down his gun. One of Peter's ears, the left, protruded from the net. McGregor grabbed it and effortlessly lifted Peter up to his feet.

"I've been waiting a long time for this-"

Peter had managed to regain his breath. Mustering all his strength, he spat now into McGregor's face.

"Eat your own pellets, proke!"

McGregor howled and closed his hands on Peter's neck.

Something snapped in Mr. Tod.

He launched himself across the distance separating him from the struggle.

The impact of Mr. Tod on the man shattered his chokehold and knocked him to the floor.

Mr. Tod scrambled atop McGregor.

"What– " was all McGregor had time to utter.

Then Mr. Tod fastened his teeth in McGregor's reinforced throat.

Roaring, McGregor reflexively began to throttle the fox.

Mr. Tod did not let go. Though all grew black, though the sound of some celestial hunter's horn filled his ears, his powerful jaws remained fastened tightly until he was dead.

But by then, so was McGregor.

7. Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes

Mrs. Tiggywinkle freed Peter with her pinking shears. He surprised himself by being able to stand on his own.

His throat felt like he had smoked a pack of fags in five minutes. His left ear throbbed. When he had fallen, his pistol had gouged him. Yet he had never felt better.

Regarding the pair of corpses at his feet, Peter sensed words swelling up unbidden in him.

"In the end, Tod was no quisling, but a true splice. And if man has stripped us of our birthright, he has also showed us the commonality of our lot. Fox saves rabbit, cat helps mouse, the lion lies down with the lamb. Tod's death was not the first, nor will it be the last. But without our further actions, it could be in vain. Come, we must flee."