"You've really been thinking hard, haven't you?" said Dorcas. He was almost in awe. Grimma was often bad tempered. He thought perhaps it was because her mind worked very fast, sometimes, and she was impatient with people who weren't keeping up. But now she was furious. You could begin to feel sorry for any humans who got in her way.
"I've been doing a lot of reading," she said.
"Er, yes. Yes, I can see," said Dorcas. "But, er, I wonder if it wouldn't be more sensible to-"
"We're not going to run away again," she said flatly. "We shall fight them on the tracks. We shall fight them at the gates. We shall fight them in the quarry. And we shall never surrender."
"What does 'surrender' mean?" said Dorcas, desperately.
"We don't know the meaning of surrender," said Grimma.
"Well, I don't," said Dorcas.
Grimma leaned against the wall.
"Do you want to hear something strange?" she Dorcas thought about it.
"I don't mind," he said.
"There's books about us."
"Like Gulliver, you mean?"
"No. That was about a human. About us, I mean. Ordinary-size people, like us. But wearing all green suits and with little knobbly stalks on their heads. Sometimes humans put out bowls of milk for us and we do all the housework for them. And we have wings, like bees. That's what gets put in books about us. They call us pixies. It's in a book called Fairy Tales for Little Folk.'" "I don't think the wings would work," said Dorcas doubtfully. "I don't think you could get the lifting power."
"And they think we live in mushrooms," Grimma finished.
"Hmm? Doesn't sound very practical to me," said Dorcas.
"And they think we repair shoes." "That's a bit more like it," said Dorcas. "Good solid work."
"And the book said we paint the flowers to make them pretty colors," said Grimma. I Dorcas thought about this.
"Nah," he said eventually. "I've looked at the colors on flowers. They'redefinitely built-in."
"We're real," said Grimma. "We do real things. So why do you think thatsort of thing goes in books?"
"Search me," said Dorcas. "I only read manuals.
It's not a proper book, I've always said, unless it's got lists and linedrawings in it."
"If ever humans do catch us, that's what we'll become," said Grimma.
"Sweet little people, painting flowers. They won't let us be anythingelse. They'll turn us into little people." She sighed. "Do you ever getthe feeling you'll never know anything you ought to know?"
"Oh, yes. All the time."
Grimma frowned.
"I know one thing," she said. "When Masklin comes back, he's going tohave somewhere to come back to."
"Oh," said Dorcas.
"Oh," he repeated. "Oh. I see."
It was bitterly cold in the Cat's lair. Other nomes never came in, because it was drafty and stank. That suited Dorcas fine.
He padded across the floor and went under the huge tarpaulin where theCat lived. It took quite a long time to climb up to his preferred perchon the monster, even using the bits of wood and string he'd painstakinglytied to him ... it.
He sat down and waited until he got his breath back.
"I only want to help people," he said quietly. Like giving them thingslike electricity and making their lives better. But they never saythank you, y°u know. They wanted me to paint signs, so I Painted signs.
Now Grimma wants to fight humans. She's got lots of ideas out of books.
I know she's doing it to help forget about Masklin but no good will comeof it, you mark my words. But if I don't help, things will only getworse. I don't want anybody to get hurt. People like us can't be repairedas easily as people like you."
He drummed his heels on the Cat's. What would it be? The Cat's neck, probably.
"It's all right for you," he said. "Sleeping quietly here all the time.
Having a nice rest ..."
He stared at the Cat for a long while.
Then, very quietly, he said, "I wonder ... ?"
Five long minutes went past. Dorcas appeared and reappeared among thecomplicated shadows, muttering to himself, saying things like, "That's dead, that's no good, we need a new battery," and "Seems okay, nothingthat a good clean couldn't put right," and "Hmm, not much in your tank ..."
Finally he walked out from under the dusty tarp and rubbed his handstogether.
Everyone has a purpose in life, he thought. It's what keeps them going.
Nisodemus wants things to be as they were. Grimma wants Masklin back. AndMasklin . . no one knows exactly what it is that Masklin wants, exceptthat it's very big.
But they all have this purpose. If you have a purpose in life, you canfeel six inches tall.
And now I've found one.
Wow.
The human came back later and it did not come alone. There was the Land-Rover and a much larger truck, with the words Blackbury Stone andGravel Inc. painted on the side. Its tires turned the thin coating ofsnow into glistening mud.
It ~iolted up the dirt road, slowed down as it came out into the openarea in front of the quarry gates, and stopped.
It wasn't a very good stop. The back of the vehicle swung around andnearly hit the hedge. The engine coughed into silence.
There was the sound of hissing. And, very slowly, the truck sank.
Two humans got out. They walked around the truck, looking at each tire inturn.
"They're only flat at the bottom," whispered Grimma, in their hidingplace in the bushes.
"Don't worry about it," hissed Dorcas. "The thing about tires is, theflat bit always sinks to the bottom. Amazing what you can do with a fewnails, isn't it?"
The smaller truck stopped behind the first one. Two humans got out ofthat, too, and joined the others. One of them was holding the longestpair of pliers Dorcas had ever seen. While the rest of the humans bentdown by one of the flat tires it strolled up to the gate, fiddled theteeth of the pliers onto the padlock, and squeezed.
It was an effort, even for a human. But there was a snap loud enough tobe heard even in the bushes, and then a long drawn-out clinking noise asthe chain fell away.
Dorcas groaned. He'd had great hopes for that chain. It was the Cat's; atleast, it was in a big yellow box bolted to part of the Cat, sopresumably it had belonged to the Cat. But it had been the padlock thathad broken, not the chain. Dorcas felt oddly proud about that.
"I don't understand it," Grimma muttered. "They can see they're notwanted, so why are they so stupid?"
"It's not as if there aren't masses of stone around," agreed Sacco.
The human pulled at the gate and swung it enough to allow itself inside.
"It's going to the manager's office," said Sacco. "It's going to make noises in the telephone."
"No, it's not," Dorcas prophesied.
"But it will be ringing up Order," said Sacco. "It'll be saying, in Human, I mean, it'll be saying, Some of Our Wheels Have Gone Flat."
"No," said Dorcas, "It'll be saying, Why Doesn't the Telephone Work?"
"Why doesn't the telephone work?" said Nooty.
"Because I know which wires to cut," said Dorcas. "Look, it's coming back out."
They watched it walk around the sheds. The snow had covered the nomes'
sad attempts at cultivation. There were plenty of nome tracks, though, like little bird trails in the snow. The human didn't notice them. Humans hardly ever noticed anything.
"Trip wires," said Grimma.
"What?" said Dorcas,
"Trip wires. We should put trip wires down. The bigger they are," said Grimma, "the harder they fall."
"Not on us, I hope," said Dorcas.
"No. We could put more nails down," said Grimma.
"Good grief."
The humans clustered around the stricken truck. Then they appeared to reach a decision and walked back to the Land-Rover. They got in. Itcouldn't go forward, but reversed slowly down the dirt road, turnedaround in a field gateway, and headed back to the main road. The bigtruck was left alone.
Dorcas breathed out.
"I was afraid one of them would stay," he said.