King Rat looked at Saul. He clenched his hand into a fist, extended a pointing index finger, and his hand described an elaborate twisting path through the air, playfully circling, till it spiralled down and came to rest pointing into the sewer. King Rat stood at the edge of the thin circle. He stepped out over the hole and dropped through the pavement. There was a tiny echoing damp sound.
King Rat’s voice emerged from underground.
‘Down you come.’
Saul squeezed his hips through the hole.
‘Tut a lid on it,’ said King Rat from below, and laughed briefly. Saul fumbled with the metal cover. He was half in, half out of the sewer. He sank under the weight of the metal. He held it above his head and descended. The light disappeared.
Saul shivered in the cold of the sewer. His feet clapped on the metal. He stumbled as his feet hit wetness. He backed away from the ladder and rubbed himself in the darkness. Air gusted and hissed; freezing water flooded his shoes.
‘Where are you?’ he whispered.
‘Watching,’ came King Rat’s voice. It moved around him. ‘Wait. You’ll see. You’ve never tried this, laddie, so hold your horses. The darkmans is nothing to you.’
Saul stood still. His hands were invisible before him.
Shapes moved in front of him. He thought they were real until the corridors themselves began to emerge from the darkness and he realized that those other fleeting, indistinct forms were born in his mind. They were dispelled as Saul began to see.
He saw the muck of the drains. He saw the energy it contained spilling out, a grey light that showed no colours but illuminated the damp tunnels. Before him a study in perspective, the shit-and algae-encrusted walls of the shaft meeting in the distance. Behind him and to his right more tunnels, and everywhere the smell, rot and faeces, and the pungent smell of piss, rat piss. He wrinkled his nose, his hackles rising.
‘No worries,’ said King Rat, a figure saturated in shadows, drenched in them, a mass of darkness. ‘Some cove’s staked a claim and made a mark, but we’re royalty. His territory doesn’t mean fuck to us.’
Saul looked about him. A thin rivulet of dirty water seeped by at his feet. His every movement seemed to set off an explosion of echoes. He stood in a twisting brick cylinder seven feet in diameter. From everywhere came the noises of streaming water and falling stones, and organic sounds of squeaks and scratches, peaking, dying out and being replaced, sounds far away being written over by those nearby, a palimpsest of noise.
‘I want to see you leg it, staying mum as you like,’ said King Rat. He startled Saul. His voice wandered through the tunnels, exploring every corner. ‘I want to see you shift your arse, climb sharpish. I want to see you swim. School is in.’
King Rat turned to face the same direction as Saul. He pointed into the charcoal grey.
‘We’re off that away. And we’re off sharpish. So pull your ringer out and keep up. Ready, my old lad?’
Saul shivered with excitement, the cold irrelevant now, and crouched in a starter’s position.
‘Come on, then,’ he said.
King Rat turned and bolted.
Saul did not feel his legs moving as he followed. The rapid, faint beat of footsteps he heard was his own; King Rat was soundless. Saul could feel his nose twitching and he felt like laughing.
He panted with exhilaration. King Rat was an ill defined blur before him, his coat flapping vaguely in the noisome wind. Tunnels passed by on either side, water spattered him. King Rat disappeared suddenly, cutting sharply left down a smaller tunnel where the water pressure was greater, swirling insistently around Saul’s legs. He pulled his legs up out of the stream.
King Rat turned his head for a second, a flash of pale flesh. He crouched as he ran and pulled to a sudden halt. He waited briefly while Saul caught him up, then ducked into a claustrophobic shaft barely three feet high. Saul did not hesitate, but dove in after him.
Saul’s breath and the sound of his flesh on the brick came bouncing back at him, as loud and intimate as if they existed only in his head. He stumbled, mud smearing his legs, careering along the tube in a messy, effective fashion.
His nose hit wet cloth. King Rat had stopped suddenly.
Saul peered over King Rat’s shoulder.
‘What is it?’ he hissed.
King Rat jerked his head. He raised his hand, pointing perfunctorily.
Something moved in the flat, leaden light. Two small creatures edged backwards and forwards uneasily in the brick warren. They crept a few ineffectual inches in one direction, then in another, without once taking their eyes from the figures before them.
Rats.
King Rat was quite still. Saul hovered, bewildered.
One rat stood on either side of the dirty water. They moved in concert, forward together, backwards together, a tentative dance, staring at King Rat.
‘What’s happening?’ whispered Saul.
King Rat did not answer.
One of the rats scuttled forward and sat up on its hind legs, six feet in front of King Rat. It paddled its front legs aggressively, squeaked, bared its teeth. It returned to all fours and crept a little further forward, baring its teeth, clearly afraid but apparently angry, contemptuous.
The rat appeared to spit.
King Rat suddenly barked in outrage and lurched forward, his arm outstretched, but the two rats had bolted.
King Rat picked himself silently out of the muck and continued along the tunnel.
‘Hey, hey, hold on,’ said Saul in amazement. King Rat kept moving. ‘What the fuck was that all about?’
King Rat kept moving.
‘What’s going on?’ shouted Saul.
‘Stow it!’ screamed King Rat without turning. He crept on. ‘Not now,’ he said more quietly. ‘That’s the seat of my sorrow. Not now. Just you wait till I get you home.’
He disappeared round a corner.
Saul became lulled by the sewers. He kept King Rat in his sights, losing himself in the damp brick convolutions. More rats passed them, but no more taunted them as the first two had seemed to do. They stopped when they saw King Rat, and then quickly ran.
King Rat ignored them, winding through the complex at a constant quick trudge.
Saul felt like a tourist. He investigated the walls in passing, reading the mildew on the bricks. He was hypnotized by his own footsteps. Time passed as a succession of brick tributaries. He was ignorant of the cold and intoxicated by the smell. Occasional growls of traffic filtered through the earth and tar above, to yawn through the cavernous sewers.
Presently King Rat stopped in a tunnel through which the two explorers had to crawl. He turned to face Saul, a trick which looked impossible in the tiny space. The air was thick with the smell of piss, a particular piss, a strong, familiar smell, the smell which permeated King Rat’s clothes.
‘Righto,’ murmured King Rat. ‘So have you clocked your whereabouts?’ Saul shook his head. ‘We’re at the crossroads of Rome-vill, the centre, my very own conjunction, under King’s Cross. Hold your tongue and prick up your ears: hear the trains growling’ Got the map in your bonce? Learn the way. This is where you’ve to get to. Just follow your I Suppose. I’ve marked out my manor nice and strong, you can sniff it out from anywhere underground.’ And Saul felt suddenly sure that he could find his way there, as easy as breathing.