"We done it," they said, "Just like that Gullible Travels. The biggerthey come, the harder they fall!"
There was a school of thought that said they should kill the human, whosemad eyes followed them around the floor. This was when they found thebox.
It was on one of the shelves. It was yellow. It had a picture of a veryunhappy-looking rat on the front. It had the word Scramoff in big redlettering too. On the back ...
Grimma's forehead wrinkled as she tried to read the smaller words on the back.
"It says, They Take a Bite, but They Don't Come Back for More!' " shesaid. "And apparently it contains polydichloromethylinlon-4, whatever Aatis. 'Clears Outhouses of Troublesome ...'" She paused.
"Troublesome what?" said the listening nomes. "Troublesome what?"
Grimma lowered her voice.
"It says, 'Clears Outhouses of Troublesome Vermin in a Trice!' " shesaid. "It's poison. It's the stuff they put under the floor."
The silence that followed this was black with rage. The nomes had raisedquite a lot of children in the quarry. They had very firm views aboutpoison.
"We should make the human eat it," said one of them. "Fill up its mouthwith Polypuththeketlon or whatever it is. Troublesome vermin."
"I think they think we're rats," said Grimma.
"And that would be all right, would it?" said a nome with witheringsarcasm. "Rats are okay. We've never had any trouble with rats. No callto go around giving them poisoned food."
In fact, the nomes got on rather well with the local rats, probablybecause their leader was Bobo, who had been a pet of Angalo's when theylived in the Store. The two species treated each other with the distantfriendliness of creatures who could, at a pinch, eat one another but haddecided not to.
"Yeah, the rats'd thank us for getting rid of a human," he went on.
"No," said Grimma. "No. I don't think we should do that. Dorcas alwayssaid that they'reg nearly as intelligent as we are. You can't go aroundpoisoning intelligent creatures."
"They tried!"
"They're not nomes. They don't know how to behave," said Grimma. "Anyway, be sensible. More humans will come along in the morning. If they find adead human, there'll be a lot of trouble."
That was a point. But they had shown themselves to a human. No nomecould remember its ever being done before. They'd had to do it, or starveand freeze, but there was no knowing where it would end. How it would endwas a bit more certain. It would probably end badly.
"Go and put it somewhere where the rats can't get it," said Grimma.
"I reckon we should just give it a taste-" said the nome.
"No! Just take the stuff away. We'll stay here the rest of the night andthen move out before it's light."
"Well, all right. If you say so. I just hope we're not sorry about itlater, that's all." The nomes carried the dreadful box away.
Grimma wandered over to where the human lay. It was well trussed up bynow, and couldn't move a finger. It looked just like the picture ofGullible or whoever he was, except the nomes had got hold of what thenomes in those days had never heard of, which was lots of electricalwire. It was a lot tougher than rope. And they were a lot angrier.
Gullible hadn't been driving a great big truck round the place andputting down rat poison.
They'd gone through its pockets and piled up the contents in a heap.
There'd been a big square of white cloth among them, which a group ofnomes had managed to tie around the human's mouth after its mooing goton everyone's nerves.
Now they stood around eating pieces of bread and cheese and pickle andwatching the human's eyes.
Humans can't understand nomes. Their voices are too fast and too high, like a bat squeak. It was probably just as well.
"I say we should find something sharp and stick it into it," said a nome.
"In all the soft parts."
"There's things we could do with matches," said Granny Morkie, toGrimma's surprise.
"And nails," said a middle-aged nome.
The human growled behind its gag and strained at the wires.
"We could pull all its hair out," said Granny Morkie. "And then wecould-"
"Do it, then," said Grimma, coming up behind them.
They turned.
"What?"
"Do it, if you want to," said Grimma. "There it is, right in front ofyou. Do what you like."
"What, we?" Granny Morkie nome drew back. "I didn't ... not me. Ididn't mean me. I meant well, us. Nomekind."
"There you are, then," said Grimma. "And nomekind is only nomes. Besides, it's wrong to hurt prisoners. I read it in a book. It's called the GenevaConvention. When you've got people at your mercy, you shouldn't hurtthem."
"Seems like the ideal time to me," said a nome. "Hit them when they can't hit back, that's what I sav. Anyway, it's not as if humans are the sameas real people." But he shuffled backward anyway.
"Funny, though, when you see their faces close up," said Granny Morkie, putting her head to one side. "They look a lot like us. Only bigger."
One of the nomes peered into the human's frightened eyes.
"Hasn't it got a hairy nose?" he said. "And ears too."
"Like a cow," said Granny.
"You could almost feel sorry for them, with great big noses like that."
Grimma peered into the human's eyes. I wonder, she thought. They'rebigger than us, so there must be room for brains. And they've got greatbig eyes. Surely they must have seen us once? Masklin said we've beenhere for thousands of years. In all that time, humans must have seen us.
They must have known we were real people. But in their minds they turnedus into pixies. Perhaps they didn't want to have to share the world.
The human was definitely looking at her.
Could we share? she thought. They live in a big, long, slow world and welive in a small, short, fast one, and we can't understand each other.
They can't even see us unless we stand still as I'm standing now. Wemove too quickly for them. They don't think we exist.
She stared up into the big frightened eyes.
We've never tried to-what was the word-communicate with them before.
Not properly. Not as though they were real people, thinking realthoughts. How can we tell them we're really real and really here?
But perhaps when you're lying down on the floor and tied up by littlepeople you can hardly see and don't believe in, that's not the best timeto start communicating. Perhaps we should try it another time. Not signs, not shouting, just trying to get them to understand us.
Wouldn't it be amazing if we could? They could do the big slow jobs forus, and we could do-oh, little fast things. Fiddly things that thosegreat fingers can't do ... but not paint flowers or mend their shoes.
"Grimma? You ought to see this, Grimma," said a voice behind her.
The nomes were clustered around a white heap on the floor.
Oh, yes. The human had been looking at one of those big sheets of paper.
The nomes had spread it out flat on the floor. It looked a lot like thefirst one they'd seen, except this one was called READ IT FIRST IN YOURSOARAWAY
BLACKBURY EVENING POST AND GAZETTE. It had more of the great blocky writing, some of the letters nearly as big as anome's head.
Grimma shook her own head as she tried to make sense of it. She could understand the books quite well, she considered, but the papers seemed to use a different language. It was full of probes and shocks and fuzzypictures of smiling humans shaking hands with other humans (ELKS RAISE.455 FOR HOSPITAL APPEAL). It wasn't difficult to work out what eachword meant, but when they were put together they either didn't meananything at all or something quite unbelievable (civic CENTER TAXBATTLE).
"No, this is the bit," said one of the nomes. "This page here. Look, someof the words, they're the same as last time, look! It's about GrandsonRichard, 39!"
Grimma ran the length of a story about somebody slamming somebody'splan for something.
There was indeed a fuzzy picture of Grandson Richard, 39, under thewords: TV-IN-THE-SKY HITCH.