Pest Control tried desperately to stem the flow at the gate, using nets to capture and toss back as many as possible while leaning dangerously far over the rail of Porta Romae's gate platform. For every batch of five or six they caught and hurled back, twelve or fifteen more got through, falling messily to their deaths on the now enormous pile of silent, brown-fin-red bodies. Tourists, aghast at the slaughter, were demanding that Pest Control do something, it was cruel, inhuman
Kit interrupted a group of five women dressed in the latest Paris haute couture, all of them badgering Sue while she tried to direct one group at the gate, tried to get another squad into position from a different angle, and put a third squad to work shoveling the bodies into large bags.
"'Scuse me, ladies," he smiled engagingly, "I couldn't help overhearing you."
They turned as one, then lost breath and color in the same moment as they recognized him. Kit hid a grin. Sometimes world-famous reputations weren't such a curse, after all.
"Mr.-Mr. Carson?"
He bowed. "As I said, I couldn't help but overhear, your conversation." He drew them adroitly away from Sue Fritchey a few steps at a time and was rewarded with Sue's preoccupied smile. "Are you ladies by any chance acquainted with the behavior patterns of the ordinary lemming?"
They shook their heads in time, well-practiced marionettes.
"Ah ... let me help you understand. Lemmings are rodents. Some live on the Arctic tundra, where predators generally keep their populations in check. But they also live in cold, alpine climates like you'd find in, say, the northern tip of Norway. Without sufficient predators our sweet little rodents breed out of control, until they've destroyed their environment, not to mention their food supply" Five sets of eyes went round. "When that happens--and it does to many a herd of lemmings, I assure you-then something in their genes or maybe in their brain structure kicks in and causes them to leave their environment, sometimes by the thousands. You see, that unknown signal is a warning that their population has become too large for the land to sustain it. It's as unstable as that gate up there."
He pointed, and waited for five sets of shocked eyes to return to him. "So they leave. Now, the herds that live in very rocky country, with lots of cliffs, have the perfect suicide mechanism built right into their habitat. Some of those cliffs drop into deep, jagged valleys. Some shadow a deep, narrow bay. One full of water," he added, not sure that their collective IQ's were above those of alive lemming. "And you know what those cute little buggers do? They run straight for those cliffs, almost as though they knew, wanted, to throw themselves and their pups over the edge. Those," he pointed to the avalanche of small rodents still falling through the gate, "have jumped off a cliff somewhere. They'd be dead already, even if the gate hadn't opened ten feet over the station floor. You can't change history-or the deep genetics of certain species. Fool about with their genetic structure, get rid of the signal-if you could-that triggers the suicidal migrations, and pretty soon you'd be hip deep in starving lemmings. And there wouldn't be anything green left for thousands of square miles."
Round eyes stared at him from pale, pinched faces. He tipped an imaginary hat and left, humming a delighted tune under his breath. He gave out a short, humorless bark of laughter, wondering what those five would say when they went back uptime?
He then joined the crew sweeping bodies into containers supplied by shopkeepers and other willing 'eighty-sixers. Kit found himself scooping warm, still little bodies into an ornate brass wastebasket that could only have come from the Epicurean. Delight. Kit grinned, then got to business filling it. He sighed. It was a shame; lemmings were so darned... cute. But their biology and behaviors were as they were, which meant that on this particular day and time in La-La Land, Kit Carson was shoveling up hundreds of dead rodents, same as everybody else on volunteer duty. Really, anything was better than attending pointless meetings!
Of all people, Goldie Morran appeared in the crowd, sniffing disdainfully but eyeing all those lemmings with speculation. What in God's name was she up to now? Hadn't she been in the infirmary recently? Didn't take her long to recover. I sometimes think Goldie's too mean to die. She turned on a stilt heel and sought out Sue Fritchey, who listened intently for a moment, then nodded impatiently and shook Goldie's hand. The look on Goldie's face as she tried to figure out where to wipe her hand, covered now with blood and lemming hair, was priceless. Then, when she leaned over an intent newsie's vidcammer and cleaned her hand thoroughly while asking him sweet-voiced questions to distract him from the motions she was making against his back, it was almost too much to bear.
In fact, when one film crew caught it on camera, Kit did laugh-but softly enough Goldie couldn't possibly hear him.
Whatever she'd wanted, she'd clearly gotten, as she left with a contented smile on her face. Kit worked his way toward Sue.
"What'd Goldie want?"
"Hmm? Oh, hi, Kit. She wanted the skins. Said she'd pay a downtimer to skin 'em and tan the skins for her, then maybe the big sternbergi might take a fancy to lemming meat. God, I hope so. Have you got any idea what it's going to smell like, all through the station, if we have to incinerate these little beasts?"
Kit shuddered. "Yeah. I got a real good idea."
She glanced sharply at him. "Oh, damn, I'm sorry, Kit. I was distracted ... forgot all about that witch's burning you were forced to watch ... ."
He forced a shrug. "Thanks. I appreciate the apology, but that's one of 'em I sometimes still wake up screaming over. And it's the smell that lingers with you, like a spirit as malicious as the goddamned inquisitors who ordered the burnings in the first place." He cleared his throat and pointed his gaze into the far distance. "Sue, one of those so-called witches was a little girl, curly red-blond hair, couldn't have been above two years old, screaming for her mommy-who was burning on the stake right next to her."
Sue had squeezed shut her eyes. "I will never, ever again complain about my job, Kit Carson."
Kit thumped her on the shoulder. "Go ahead and complain away. Makes me feel good to hear other people's problems. Not my own."
Sue swallowed hard, then managed a shaky smile. "Okay, Kit, one helluva big job complaint, comin' at you. Why the hell are you just standing there in that bloody three-piece suit? Pick up a goddamned shovel and start shovelin'!"
Kit laughed, hugged her, then swung his own shovel like a baton, whistling as he returned to work.
At last Pest Control hummers with attached sidecars for hauling whatever needed hauling, pulled up. The cleanup crew dumped their loads into the hoppers. Kit did the same, then turned back for more.
Fortunately, the unstable gate closed before the entire herd of several thousand fell into TT-86, but a final lemming, halfway through as the gate closed shut, was sucked back with an almost startled look in its button-black eyes, the inexorable shutting of the gate sending the animal back into its own time-and a probable fall with its fellows off whatever cliff they'd found. Judging from the size of the piled little bodies, at least a quarter of that herd had ended up on the floor. It took hours of back-breaking work to get them all into hoppers, never mind cleaning bloodstains from the floor. The newsies from uptime covered the whole event, not only for the on-station television network but for the hope of a potential scoop by getting the video through Primary first.
They tried, without success, to interview him where he knelt hip deep at one edge of the miniature mountain, blood all over his expensive three-piece suit and previously immaculate white silk shirt. Despite his absolute, categorical refusals-"I'm busy, can't you see? Talk to someone else."-they hovered around him like hornets, vidcams whirring with the sound of hornets' wings.