In a moment, two officers had jumped out of their car. They pushed past the people near the bus stop and seized AH2.
“All right, all right, what’s this all about?”
AH2 hardly saw the policemen. He clung to Lady Storkhampton as though his life depended upon it.
“GET OFF ME!” Molly shouted. “YOU’RE CRAZY! GET OFF!”
The police snapped handcuffs onto the young man’s wrists and restrained him.
“You don’t understand!” AH2 cried desperately to them. “This woman is an alien.”
“I’m sure she is,” said the first officer. “You can come and tell us all about it down at the station.” With that, they began to push AH2 toward their car.
“We’ve got to change,” Micky said to Molly. He pulled Lady Storkhampton away from the police and the people about them, and swiftly he found a gap in the traffic. Darting between cars, he and Molly crossed the road once more.
“Excuse me, you two,” called one of the policemen after them, waving a notebook at Lady Storkhampton. “You need to come back to give me a statement.”
Micky and Molly ignored him and hurried into the side street near the hat shop.
Miss Hunroe left her hiding place to follow them, but for her, negotiating the traffic was difficult, and crossing impossible.
“Ve vill have to push through,” said Miss Oakkton, returning from another secret pipe break.
Looking ahead, Molly saw the alley where she’d spotted the bins and the rats before. “Quick, Micky!” she said. “Follow me. I’ve had an idea.”
Theobald Black was now leaving the hotel. His eyes moved to the small crowd that had gathered on the other side of the street, where a police car had stopped. One of the policemen was talking to a man inside the car, who was shouting like a lunatic. Black did not feel comfortable at all. First Lady Storkhampton had disappeared, and now there was this trouble outside. He turned his attention to getting home as quickly as possible.
AH2, Malcolm Tixley, sat in the police car. He watched the woman in the fur hat and her large companion with her basket of cats as they made it across the road. Then his eyes darted across the street to look for the glamorous woman who was Molly Moon.
There she was, with her chaperone, crouching on the floor in an alley near some rubbish bins. AH2 held his breath as he expected something to happen. He watched as the fur-hatted woman and her friend trotted toward the bins. Suddenly, the gadget in his pocket began to bleep. His eyes shot toward the woman who had been eating in the Glitz and the waiter beside her. Simultaneously they both slumped onto the ground.
Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton were stopped in their tracks. They let the police rush past them toward the two people beside the bins. They could read the signs. These people weren’t of any use to them now. Molly and Micky had left them.
Ten
A rat was practically the last creature Molly would ever choose to be, so she’d forced herself to want to be the dirty, mangy, whiskered rodent by the bin.
Now she was flying in a state of nothingness toward it. Within a few seconds, Molly felt herself filtering into the rat. And then she became rat. Immediately, she was overwhelmed with ratty sensations. She felt her whiskers twitching as they read the air about her for other rats’ whisker messages. Her new skin was numb from the cold, and all over her body was the horrid sensation of itchy bites from, Molly supposed, fleas. Her ears were erect and alert, and her ratty instinct was to be almost entirely thinking about food—particularly about the overflowing rubbish bin that cascaded down above her, full of delicious, odorous things.
Molly squished the rat’s true character down under her own. It didn’t object. Molly apologized as she did it. She tried to ignore the ratty gut feeling that she had of climbing into the trash to rummage about there for old bones or thrown-away half-full Chinese takeout boxes. Then she saw Micky, who had morphed into a darker gray rat.
“Over here.” He was beckoning, his whiskers twitching. “Fast! Hurry!” he squeaked.
Molly scrunched up her nose at Micky and began to move. As she did, she realized how lithe her new body was. She was all tendon and muscle. Her scabby but svelte form moved like the wind. Molly the rat flattened her body from seven centimeters down to three, her bones dislocating into pancake mode, and she slid through a crack in the pavement. Her clawed feet gripped the underside of the paving stone, and she found herself gracefully landing upright, underneath the ground.
Black stood by an empty taxi stand, waiting for a cab. Then he noticed a scent of lavender and powder and saw Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette hovering in the shadows near him. He was at once suspicious of them, especially when he saw that the fat woman in the cream cape held a basket carrying two of the cats that had been standing by the letterbox. He gripped his bag with the hypnotism book inside it and hailed a cab.
Before climbing into the taxi, he stopped. A tall businessman in a black suit and a bowler hat was walking past, swinging his umbrella and briefcase and whistling the Seven Dwarfs tune “Whistle While You Work.” Black caught his arm and stared into the man’s eyes. At once his whistling stopped. He was hypnotized and ready to do whatever Black wanted.
“I am getting into this cab,” Black told him. “The two woman behind you—the lady in the cream cape and the Japanese woman in red—must not follow me. You will obstruct them so that they cannot catch a cab for ten minutes. What is more, when they try to hypnotize you, you will be unhypnotizable. Afterward, you will go on your way and forget you were ever hypnotized by me, and you won’t remember what happened here. I lock these instructions in with the words ‘Snow White.’”
The man nodded, and Black climbed into the cab. With a kick of exhaust, it was away.
Miss Teriyaki and Miss Suzette immediately stepped out of the shadows. Eagerly they approached the next cab.
“TAXI!” Miss Suzette shouted in a voice surprisingly deep for her tiny, tubby form.
“Follow that cab!” Miss Teriyaki bossily ordered the driver as he wound down his window.
But then the businessman stepped in front of them.
The gutter stank of the smelliest loo Molly had ever encountered, yet in her rat body she rather liked the stench. Now it smelled more sugary than sewage-y. Eager to escape, she followed Micky the dark gray rat farther down into the sewer, to a ledge near a tunnel that flowed with smelly water. The ceiling above the ledge was tall, making the place feel like a hall. It was lit by streetlights that shined through the gutter cover above, and here there were other rats. One bared its teeth at Molly, and at once she felt a pang of fear. Why had she and Micky come down this far under the ground?
“Micky,” she hissed.
But the dark gray rat ahead turned and, in a gruff voice, squeaked back, “Big water come night.”
And in a flash, Molly saw that this rat wasn’t Micky at all. She turned frantically toward the ledge down which she had just been led, but there was no Micky there either. Instead a fat, bushy rat with a scarred cheek and a missing ear stood solid as a tree trunk, blocking the way.
“Ah ooh, darlin’. Like me?” he croaked. The rat’s eyes were beady and mean.
“Not likely!” Molly found herself squeaking back. “Go and jump in the sewer!” And she edged up against the wall. “Micky!” she shouted. “HELP!” The fat rat stepped toward her.
“No callin’. No one carin’,” he snarled. “You call again, I bite, missy.”
The businessman was doing a very good job preventing the two spinsters from catching a cab. Time after time they tried. At one point the two ladies split, hoping that this way at least one of them would catch a taxi. But even though Miss Suzette waddled as fast as she could and Miss Teriyaki did a fast crutch hobble for another taxi, they were too slow for the young man.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” he said. And then he started whistling “Whistle While You Work,” which made him even more annoying. After ten minutes of this game, he stopped and, picking up his briefcase and umbrella, sauntere
d away.
“You stupid woman!” Miss Teriyaki hissed. “You know I haven’t got my hearing aid in today. You should have heard Black hypnotizing that man. He obviously did it just before he got into the taxi. Miss Hunroe won’t be at all pleased with you when she finds out.”
“What are you talking about?” Miss Suzette spat. “No one would be able to hear him hypnotizing from de distance we were to him. It’s your fault. I haven’t got my spectacles on. You should have seen dat he was hypnotizing the man. You should have been able to guess from his body language, you fool. When I tell Miss Hunroe what really happened, she will be disgusted.”
In the sewer, another rat appeared behind the thuggish rat.
“Molly, what are you doing down there?”
“I thought that other rat was you,” Molly spluttered, choking on her fear as the smelly thug rat crept closer.
“Just try and push past it,” whiskered Micky. As he spoke, though, two more rats, both very big, came down the sloped underground path into the hall of the sewer. Nudging Micky the rat along, the new arrivals were soon behind Molly and Micky.
The heavy bull rat lifted his scarred nose to sniff at them. “Ah, oldies!” he salivated. “Nice! Like me?” He spoke with a threatening air, a twisted charm that was laced with aggression. But nasty as his tone was, the new rats weren’t bothered by it.
“Get on your way, you stinking piece of salt cod!” snapped the first. Her mouth twitched into a heart shape.
“You ’eard ze lady. Get lost,” barked the second, baring big, sharp teeth. With a swift move, she nipped the revolting male rat on his back.
The large rat gave a squeal. Then, with a flash of his tail, he fled.
Molly’s relief was short-lived. In a second it turned to utter confusion. For the light gray rat turned to the charcoal gray one and congratulated it. “Perfectly executed, Miss Oakkton!”
The two rats now turned their coal black glistening eyes on Molly and Micky.
“Molly and Micky?” asked the pale gray rat, her mouth pinching into a heart shape again.
“Miss Hunroe?” Molly said dumbly. “It’s you, isn’t it? And you—you can morph?”
The rats in front of the twins smiled and nodded.
“That’s Oakkton,” Micky whispered.
“Have you just learned?” Molly asked. “We really needed your help then. Thanks.”
But as Molly spoke, she felt that something was wrong, for she wasn’t feeling friendliness emanating from the rats that were Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton.
Miss Hunroe licked her paw. “You learned how to morph into animal forms and human forms,” she said. “Well done! Most impressive. Most remarkable.” She came closer.
“When did you all learn to morph, then?” Micky questioned. “You said you didn’t know how to when we spoke to you at the museum.”
Miss Hunroe batted her answer nonchalantly back. “Oh, just now.”
“How?”
“Ze book, ze book taught us, of course,” Miss Oakkton, the charcoal rat, interjected.
“So you’ve just seen the book?” Molly asked. “But I thought Black had it.”
“Yes, ve got it off him,” Miss Oakkton explained. “But ve only had ze time to quickly scan ze pages on animal morphing. We missed the morphing to human part.”
“Would you teach us?” oozed Miss Hunroe. “You’re so lucky to have learned.” She added smoothly, with a toothy smile, “We’d be so terribly grateful.”
Micky glanced at Molly. “We can’t teach you, Miss Hunroe,” he lied. “We never learned. We only found out how to morph into animals.”
“We saw you,” hissed Miss Hunroe. “We saw you reading the book. We were looking through Black’s office window. Checking on you. Making sure you were safe.”
“As rats?”
“As cats!” Miss Hunroe retorted.
“So you had already learned to morph into animals. Get your story straight.”
There was silence. Both Molly and Micky knew that Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton were lying. The magnitude of their deceit was as obvious as the stink in the sewer, and both twins saw how they had been used. As the truth dawned on them, a steeliness, a shared quality in the siblings that was usually latent, now galvanized their replies.
“You’re liars,” said Micky through gritted teeth.
“Think because we’re children, we’re stupid?” Molly asked coolly.
Micky turned to Molly. “Speal,” he said. “She must have learned animal morphing from the book when she saw it as a child. And she taught them,” he spat at Miss Hunroe. “You, Miss Hunroe, have two faces.”
“My dears. What’s gotten into you?” wooed Miss Hunroe, her lip curling. “It’s only fair to let us know—we’re so close to finding out anyway.”
“You’re as bad as Black,” Molly declared, growling. “You tricked us so that we could get you the book for you to learn to morph into humans. Anyway, as Micky said, we don’t know how.”
Miss Hunroe continued, disregarding her. “I saw you both as people just now.” Her voice took on a sing-songy lilt. “A rich lady and a waiter. Very clever!” Then she snapped. “Tell us how!”
Miss Oakkton pushed her face up to Molly’s. She smiled, baring big yellow teeth. “Tell us, or you vill feel ze bite of my teess.” Molly thought hard and tried to keep her cool. The simple escape route, she realized, was for Micky and her to morph into these rats that were Miss Oakkton and Miss Hunroe. But this would be very risky, for the women were strong characters and too knowledgeable about morphing. Molly remembered what the book had said—that it was important to choose your subjects carefully, as a strong personality and one that is alert might fight to stop a successful morph. And then where would Molly be? Stuck at the bottom of Miss Oakkton’s or Miss Hunroe’s mind forever? Her mind raced, and then she had an idea.
Instead of attacking, Molly tried another approach.
“We will tell you how to morph into humans,” she bargained, “if you tell us how to morph back into our own bodies. But you have to tell us first. That’s the deal.”
Miss Hunroe and Miss Oakkton looked shocked. Then they began tittering.
“What’s so funny?” Molly asked.
“You are fools!” Miss Hunroe said, laughing. “So you don’t know how to meego? That is hilarious!” She saw Molly’s puzzled expression, and added, “Meegoing is the term for morphing back into one’s own body.” She gave a shriek of laughter. “Hah! You don’t know how!”
“Hmm. Well, as I said, that’s the deal.”
Miss Hunroe narrowed her eyes. “Us telling you the meegoing secret before you tell us what we want to know is impossible,” she parleyed. “If we told you our secret, you’d never tell us yours. You’d be off out of here like a shot. No, the only way round is that you tell us the secret of morphing into humans first. Then we will tell you how to meego.” She laughed again. “The amusing part of this is that you don’t really have a choice. After all, you can’t keep morphing from creature to human to creature forever. You will hardly be able to sleep. Fall asleep in a body for too long, and you’ve had it. In any case, you can’t be in another creature for more than a few hours, for the creature starts to get its strength back. So, of course, when you sleep for more than a few hours in another creature or another human, its true owner will rise to take control of itself as you sleep. It will squash you, the sleeping you, deep down under it, and you will never get out. You will both be lost. Lost forever, in a rat or a bat or a gnat. Hah! No. You need the meego secret far more than we need the morph-to-human secret.”
Molly gulped and glanced at her brother. She could guess from his eyes that he too had been frightened by what Miss Hunroe had said. And that he too was wondering what other nasty outcomes there were in the world of body borrowing. She started to wish she hadn’t morphed at all.
The rat that was Miss Hunroe turned to the large scruffy rat that was Miss Oakkton. “Until now, I didn’t realize what an advantage we had!” Then,
impatient suddenly, she spat at Molly and Micky. “You’d better tell us now.”
“Time to comply,” said Miss Oakkton, muscling forward. “Tell us! If you don’t, zere will be bad, bad consequences. I have no qualms about biting off your ears!”
Molly and Micky dropped their bodies lower on the shiny, cold floor.
“What, tell you so that you can get whatever you want in the human world? We’d be crazy to tell you,” Molly snarled.
“You can beat us up all you like,” Micky squeaked. “We aren’t going to tell you.”
“Perhaps I can morph into you and get the secret that way,” said Miss Hunroe sinisterly.
“Please do,” bluffed Molly. “You wouldn’t dare. That would be the end of you, you old goat.” She stared with hatred into Miss Hunroe’s eyes, wishing that she could hypnotize her. Miss Hunroe stared back, her eyes mean and cold.
“I look forward to ridding the world of people like you, Miss Moon,” she said nastily. “You have no idea how wonderful the world is going to be when I have my way. You have no idea! There will be hurricanes and droughts, and disease will cull. And people like you all over the world, millions and millions of you, will die. And what an empty paradise the world will then be! With only the chosen few left to enjoy it, it will be heaven!”
Molly stiffened. Miss Hunroe’s words were cruel and mad, but she made her predictions with a horrible certainty.
“Leave zem to me,” said Miss Oakkton, baring her knife sharp incisors. “A little torture will do ze trick.”
Suddenly there was a noise from above. All the rats looked up and froze. A dog had wedged its nose under the side of the drain cover and was now wrenching off the grille. All of a sudden, lots of light poured into the sewer. A Jack Russell stuck its pointy brown-and-white face down into the gutter. To all the rats he was a monster, a huge killer monster with a nightmare mouth. His growl chilled them to the core. His growl meant death.