Von Ratte knew what he was up to. “I am not a mouse,” he squeaked, giving each word equal weight. “I am, in some fashion or other, supposed to be a rat.” Here he opened his cape and raised his hood, revealing a face more shimmer than substance, like moonlight slow-dancing across dark waters. Ratlike, yes, but with large roundish ears, blank disks for eyes through which he somehow saw. He wore lederhosen over a black body stocking.
Lederhosen made the colonel think of Switzerland. So he asked, “You some kind of wind-up cuckoo-clock Johnny? Or one of those fancy new marionettes, the what-do-you-call-’em, the Geppetto Wireless?”
“I’m a toy just like you,” Von Ratte squeaked.
The colonel thought his companion gave off a smell of warm celluloid mixed with buttered popcorn when out of temper.
Von Ratte continued, “Those jack-in-the-boxes at Military Intelligence wanted some kind of a magic-lantern thing who could pass for a rat. Well, R and D botched the job big time. So here I am. Oh, the rat recruiters signed me up all right. But they thought I looked so funny they made me entertainment officer.”
Here the face inside the hood winced as though in pain and then dimmed wearily. Von Ratte put a three-fingered glove to his temple. “R and D tried to correct the royal hash they’d made of things by hoisting me up into an electrical storm in a box kite with bolts attached to my neck,” he explained. “I am no stranger to headaches, Colonel.”
When De Filbert opened his mouth to sympathize, Von Ratte cut him off. “I don’t want your pity,” he said, adding an urgent, “Listen, I was not spawned willy-nilly in some dark corner like a mouse or a rat. I was designed by an intelligent hand and created for a purpose, just like you. I asked for this meeting so I could tell you, toy to toy, that we’ve got to call off the Big Push.” He pulled a map from inside his cloak and spread it open. “Something’s very wrong in Sector Five.”
As Von Ratte spoke, the colonel saw the porcupine get up, wave his hat at the bartender, and take the steps up to the open air with the big brass key under his arm.
De Filbert turned back to the map and shook his head. “We’ve finally got the Ratavians looking the wrong way. Daytime tin zeppelin overflights report all enemy troop movements have been out of Sector Five into Sectors Four and Six where we’ve massed our fresh troops. At dawn our seasoned units will break through their front line in Sector Five.” He shoved his hand across the map. “Nothing’ll stand in our way. Then we’ll outflank them, right and left. Why call off a perfect plan?”
“Because the Ratavians are up to something.”
The colonel waited.
“Even after the Ratavians started to pull out I heard stories of heavy night traffic along this road,” said Von Ratte, drawing a finger across the map on a line leading north from the Front through the middle of Sector Five. “Late yesterday I went for a little look-see. I found myself a good spot about here in a hedgerow beside the road and settled in. Just after nightfall along came these two closed wagons with a heavy rat dragoon escort. Now this stretch of road’s rutty as hell. One of the wagons must’ve popped a knothole. After they’d passed I found this narrow trail of sawdust on the road.”
“Sawdust?” The colonel frowned.
Von Ratte tapped the map. “The trail turned off here onto wagon tracks across a field. I followed, and just beyond some trees, there it was: a giant tent all fenced round with barbed wire and crawling with rat dragoons.”
The colonel looked over at the table where the porcupine had been sitting. “So let’s add things up. We’ve got a big tent. We’ve got sawdust. Sounds like a circus to me.”
“I’m entertainment officer,” Von Ratte reminded him. “If there was a circus in Sector Five, I’d be the first to know.”
“So what are we talking about?”
“You tell me,” said Von Ratte. “But the canvas would hide it from the air.”
The colonel cradled his massive jaw in a thumb and forefinger. His one big fear was germ warfare. He knew laboratory rat scientists were working on a spreadable form of the Dutch Elm disease to use against Toyland’s wooden soldiers. Had Von Ratte lucked onto some kind of biological-warfare facility?
The rats already had a perfect delivery system. The Christmas Eve before last they’d used their mortars to hurl glass shells filled with Greek fire into the trenches, causing havoc among the ranks. Today’s wooden soldiers were protected from Greek fire by a fire-retardant lacquer. But Dutch Elm was another kettle of fish.
The colonel stood up. “Come on. Let’s take a closer look at what you’ve found.”
Outside, a cold wind had driven the rain clouds away, leaving a sky decked out like a Christmas tree with starry constellations: there the Great Rocking Horse and there the Lesser.
The colonel had come by wind-up toy motorcycle and parked on the village outskirts. With Von Ratte in the sidecar directing the way, they sped off between hedgerows down a narrow country lane lit by the rising moon.
As he drove, the colonel reflected on how much he’d missed the snow. Last year on night patrol he’d stopped to let his men watch a woods fill up with the stuff. He remembered how peaceful it was with the snow coming down on little cat feet. As it happened, he knew the owner, a stuffed bear who used the property for a picnic ground. Not long afterwards, on furlough in town, he ran into the bear and mentioned stopping there. “Hey, be my guest,” came the reply. Stuffed animals were like that.
Later he told his wise old medical corps buddy Toby, by far the ugliest apothecary jar on the shelf, about that pleasant meeting. Toby understood. He said one of life’s small treasures was a toy village with a real stuffed animal in it.
Squeaking over the whir of the motorcycle, Von Ratte asked, “Ever wonder what the hell this is all about?” By “this” he clearly meant the war.
“The rodents are after the children’s candy canes and sugarplums under the Christmas tree,” replied the colonel.
Von Ratte gave a high-pitched laugh and started to reply. But a loud “sproy-oy-oy-ing!” interrupted him. This was followed by an even louder noise, like the lingering clatter of a tray of flatware being slowly spilled down onto a hard surface. (Noises had become considerably drawn out since 3StoogesRusco won Toyland’s sound-engineering contract.) The motorcycle came to a sudden stop with a huge mare’s-nest of metal spring billowing from its rear end.
Dismounting, the colonel gave the machine a healthy kick, muttering, “Had the damn thing in for a lube and a good wind-up just before I left headquarters.”
Their mission was urgent. Dawn was less than five hours away. They pushed the dead motorcycle into the bushes and hurried off on foot. When they’d walked for a bit, Von Ratte returned to what he’d been saying. “Let the rat bastards have the damn candy. What makes this our fight anyway?”
Raising his hand for silence, De Filbert looked back down the road behind them. In a moment, the Porcupine Brothers Circus caravan came trundling along. A lantern above the driver’s seat revealed Mr. Porcupine nodding behind the steering handle. He’d almost passed them when his head popped from his quilly chest. “Hey, need a lift?” he asked. “Going far?”
“To Bloques,” said Von Ratte, naming a village on the Toyland side of the Front just southeast of Sector Five.
“Kind of close to the action for me,” came the reply. “But I’ll get you to St. Golliwoq-les-Deux-Eglises.”
“That’ll do fine,” said the colonel, though he found it strange that Mr. Porcupine, who left the estaminet ahead of them, had ended up behind. They hadn’t passed him on the road.
“Climb on up, then,” said the circus owner.
The ample driver’s seat was none too big to hold the fat creature in his quill overcoat. But when they slid warily past him they found the cargo of gunnysacks in back made comfortable seating. Mr. Porcupine pulled a lever and the caravan rolled forward.