by Larry Hodges
Zuk stared out the open window above her cubicle desk at the poor, hatless rats chattering and scampering about outside, digging through heaps of garbage for scraps of rotting food. She wrinkled her nose; even from here the stench was like a tail smashing into her face. Pathetic. It should be illegal to have that much fun when you’re homeless.
That’s what happens when you don’t get an education! she wanted to scream, but instead just slapped her tail against the sawdust floor. Saying that would be rude. She herself had a doctorate in ratropology, but often wondered if she’d made a huge career mistake. Aerospace engineering, physics, astronomy, computer science — those were the cool, high-paying careers, and rats with those jobs weren’t stuck working in office buildings next to heaps of smelly garbage and the homeless. Soon they would land the first rat on the Moon, and they’d be heroes, while she’d be stuck at her desk writing stories for tabloids. With her academic skills, she could have breezed her way through astronaut school. She could have been the first rat to scamper on the Moon.
She could have been famous.
“Where’s that article?”
Zuk almost fell off her hard wooden stool. It was the boss, his head thrust through her cubicle’s circular opening behind her, his vantablack moleskin cap askew, as always. How did he always sneak up so silently? Was he part cat? His ragged fur was already graying, almost silver. Hers was light brown, almost blonde, and meticulously combed, every strand in place.
“Almost done,” she said through gritted teeth. She was not a good liar. “Give me a couple of hours.”
“One. Or you know what happens,” he said, feigning a tail yank with his paw before withdrawing, leaving behind the usual nauseous smell of rose perfume.
She sighed. Her tailbone still hurt from yesterday. Forget prancing about on the Moon — she was stuck in a tiny cubicle, typing away like a mindless mouse for a mindless, tail-yanking boss, surrounded by tokens of her trade.
A framed poster hung on the gray cubicle wall to the left of her desk of the Ludy fossil skeleton, two hundred thousand years old. It was considered the first modern rat, with fully opposable thumbs that could rotate freely. An inset showed an artist’s rendition, with the beginning of a brain bulge. Zuk often stared into his eyes. What was Ludy like? Did he have thoughts and feelings like modern rats? She envied the simple life they’d led.
On her desk sat a fifty-thousand-year-old spearhead from their ancient ancestors, now a paperweight. She’d dug it up herself. She often imagined some ancient ancestor spending countless hours rummaging through human ruins to find the perfectly shaped piece of glass for a spearpoint, lashing it to a bamboo stick, and taking down huge, ferocious beasts like rabbits, chihuahuas, and maybe, heroically, a pre-domesticated cat, before they were tamed by those brave catadores. They knew it happened — they’d dug up cat fossils with embedded spearheads. Wow.
Taped to the wall on the right was her top treasure, an actual eagleskin feathered cap once worn by Ambra the Aviator, the first rat to fly around the globe, one hundred years ago. Zuk would never have adventures like that. In her excavations they’d mostly dug up old pottery shards, not exactly something to get excited about. Stop the presses, I have a bit of pottery!
Smiling, she took a sip of sassafras juice from a clay cup, and imagined its shards being dug up someday by some futuristic ratropologist. Maybe it would end up in a museum. How boring.
At least she had her cute toadskin cap, warts and all. It had cost her a week’s pay. She carefully readjusted it over her head.
“Why aren’t you typing?”
This time Zuk did fall out of her stool. The boss snorted.
“Sorry, was planning the big climax.” She jumped back on her stool and attacked the keyboard with a frenzy.
“Hurry up. Words are money.” He withdrew.
As bosses go, he wasn’t totally terrible, as long as Zuk made her deadlines. When she missed one… well, tail-yanking wasn’t so bad once you got used to it. There simply weren’t that many jobs in ratropology, so she had to take what she could get. That’s why she’d joined Emca Writers, a writing mill that churned out sensationalist articles for the tabloids. She was chair of the Ratropology Department.
Or rather, she was the Ratropology Department. Sighing, she took another sip of sassafras.
Ratty Magazine had solicited another article on ancient rats and humans. Why the recent fascination with this long-dead species of huge bipeds? Recent research indicated that early rat began its million-year ascent during the age of humans. The two had lived in harmonic symbiosis for much of their joint history, with humans the alpha partner.
The details were sketchy, extrapolated from the few crumbling human and rat fossils and artifacts that had survived the periodic purges. Modern rats simply did not like the idea that their prehistoric ancestors were primitive creatures that lived off the scraps of humans, but that’s what the evidence showed, no matter what the populist leaders screamed from their pulpits. So, of course, they got rid of the evidence.
Zuk glanced out the window at the homeless, hatless creatures outside that lived off the scraps of society. Little had changed.
Humans had done what rats were only now attempting — they’d gone to the Moon. It was hard to believe that something like that could have been accomplished a million years ago by those huge, buffoonish apes, but that was the only explanation for photos taken of the Moon’s surface by robot explorers. Amidst the mysterious objects found at locations around the Moon were the unmistakable footprints of human shoes, preserved on the unchanging surface.
She needed to finish the article but was tired. Time to get energized. She hopped off her stool. There was no room to really turn in her cramped cubicle so she stood on her hind legs and spun about, and then squeezed out the cubicle door. Had the cubicle been designed for dwarf mice? She scampered to the end of the hallway outside to the office lounge and jumped on the squeaky exercise wheel against the wall. A few minutes of frantic running woke her up. Ideas for the article popped into her head as she ran, including the perfect title: “Humans on Trial: Guilty!” That would grab readers’ attention. With the public all abuzz about the idea of humans on the Moon, she would write about how humans tested their space machines by sending primitive rats into space as test subjects, doomed to die. Those monsters!
That would be the gist of the article, and there were no humans around to rebut her theory. No one really knew what happened to them, but their demise had been fortunate as rats then evolved, scurrying to the top of the intellectual food chain.
She stopped at the bathroom. There were so many droppings on the floor that she had to hold her nose and tiptoe about — how long had it been since they’d changed the newspapers on the floor? She checked and saw that it was dated from last week. Yuck.
Then she stopped by the office water bottle, where the writers liked to congregate until the boss kicked them back to their cubicles. To rationalize her visit she took a few drops from the water tube.
“The boss gave me two stories to write!” exclaimed the albino Jik with the usual big grin. The journalist wore a red rabbitskin hat with a hawk feather stuck in it. “The Bigtail sightings up in the mountains, and guard shrews that turn on their masters.”
“At least you get to use your degree,” said the black-furred Mab, the haggard-looking accountant with a green crabshell hat. “I’ve got a PhD in theoretical math. My dissertation on the equivalency of mass and energy won the Remy Prize for math, for cat’s sake. And the boss has me doing time allocations, product optimization, and calculating bathroom newspaper overhead — can you believe it? All with the wonderful powers of arithmetic.” He snorted. “I’m bookkeeping for a boss who thinks the Unified Field Theory means buying up the local sports fields for furryball.”
“He has me writing about how the stars and planets predict career success,” said Axax, the resident astrology writer. The brown with white splatches rat wore a chipmunkskin turban with an embedded black coal over the forehead. “The stars told me that since Jupiter and Saturn were in the same quadrant, I should take this job.” Axax spat on the ground. “The stars lied to me. Don’t tell my readers.”
Zuk was about to share her gripes as well, but just then the janitor scurried into the room, with a hat made from folded newspaper. It was a bit torn but had been repaired with tape. At least Zuk and the other writers weren’t at the bottom of the tail-yanking hierarchy!
“Hey, janitor,” Zuk said. “Could you put fresh newspaper in the bathroom? It’s really bad in there.”
The janitor stared at Zuk, which made her uncomfortable. She looked away.
“What’s my name?” the janitor finally asked in his strange Eastern accent.
“Um,” was all Zuk could squeak. The other writers averted their eyes. One of them coughed.
“Anyone?” the janitor roared. “I didn’t think so. I have a PhD in marine biology and you want me to change bathroom newspaper?”
“Sorry,” Zuk said. “If you’re a marine biologist, why are you working here?”
“If you are ratropologist, why are you working here?” The janitor kicked the wall, leaving a dent, then turned and left.
“I guess we’re all in the same bottom burrow of the world,” said Mab the accountant.
Zuk was about to respond when she realized Jik the Journalist was sobbing, the big smile long gone.
“I went to my college reunion yesterday,” Jik said, sobbing louder. “They’d all read my story last week on wererats… and they laughed at me!”
“I’m sure they—” began Axax.
“GET BACK TO WORK!” roared the Boss. He gave Jik a tail yank.
They scurried back to their cubicles, sawdust flying. The boss was definitely part cat.
Zuk hopped back on her stool and prepared to type. The stench from outside was as bad as that in the bathroom, but she was used to it, and once you got used to it, it was better than the stale office air. She took a deep breath and glanced outside.
One of the poor homeless, an aged one, stared at her while gnawing on a slice of moldy bread, balding head exposed for all. There should be some sort of community decency standard! The rat looked away and another’s bare head popped out of a hole in the piles of garbage, holding its prize in its mouth—a chunk of gristly meat, probably soaked in the spit of some higher-class rat who’d spat it out. The two chattered back and forth with the cheerfulness of the clueless, their disheveled, filthy fur blowing about in a breeze. Could the Ludy of two hundred thousand years ago have been that primitive? How could anyone live like that? Zuk quivered her whiskers. What type of life was that? At least put a hat on. Jeezers.
Shaking her head, she took another sip of sassafras and went back to typing.
Soon the first draft was done. She stared at the computer screen. Now it was time to embellish. Spreading such misinformation went against all her scientific training, and it killed her to do so, but what choice was there? It was the difference between a page-turner and an eye-glazer, between selling and rejection, between a successful lower middle-class life… and living outside in the garbage.
No way. She slapped her tail against the floor.
“Where is it?” the boss squeaked from the entrance, jarring Zuk from her thoughts. Even a cat couldn’t sneak up that quietly.
“I’ll have it in an hour,” Zuk said.
“Half an hour,” the boss said. With a hairy nose wiggle — did he even own a comb? — he turned and left, tail sweeping side to side.
But… half an hour? Time to buckle down.
She tapped away, about humans ejecting rats into space to see how long they could survive a vacuum, lowering oxygen levels to see when they’d black out and suffocate. Testing how many G-forces it took to kill them. She described the poor rats as their eyes bulged, their faces turned blue, their bodies squeezed thin and bleeding, their bones breaking. She had the poor rats stare lovingly into each other’s eyes as they died. And she gave them exotic striped racoonskin spacehats. Of course, pre-civilized rats went bareheaded, but what’s wrong with a little literary license?
Her tail drooped. But readers would eat it up. Maybe she’d get a raise.
If those stupid rats outside would just stop chattering, maybe she could focus and get the article done on time. She glanced out the window. How come they got to run around doing whatever they wanted, while she was stuck in a cubicle? She was the one with an education! She’d earned what they had.
Even the angry janitor was above the homeless. So why were they so happy?
As the sun sank outside, the homeless rats — there were three of them now — shared a pizza crust, that ancient treat that Zuk so loved. She preferred it in its most basic form, flattened bread covered by coagulated cat milk, mashed tomatoes, and spices. Were those the very crusts she’d discarded at lunch the day before, after eating the tasty cheesy parts? Stale, leftover pizza crusts. She wondered if they were chewy or crunchy.
“WELL?” the boss roared from the cubicle entrance, flexing his fingers. “You want a yanking?”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Zuk said, though she barely heard him as she gulped down the last of her sassafras juice. That stench from outside — if you really parsed it, you could make out the individual yucky flavors. The outside rats didn’t seem to mind it. Perhaps it was an acquired taste.
“Ten,” said the boss. He glanced at the Ludy poster for a moment. “Lovely picture.” His rose scent now drowned out the outside smell.
“And I have another job for you tomorrow,” he said, “about primitive humans living on the moon who’ll eat our astronauts. Some nut job’s been posting all sorts of claims about this online, says they’re fifty feet tall with big, razor teeth, and they’ve evolved so they can breathe vacuum. Lots of quotes you can use — make up the rest, as usual. Remember, you make your deadlines, and this job is yours… forever.”
She stared after him as he left, thinking about what he’d said.
* * *
You can’t go easy on these writers, the boss thought. Gotta keep on them to make product, even if that means yanking a few tails. Tough love was good for them.
He knew that his employees mocked his overuse of rose perfume. His wife had worn rose perfume right up to her death, and he liked the constant reminder of her. But now his employees were his family. But like his wife, why did they keep leaving him? He gave them everything! He sighed, knowing his sacrifices would never be appreciated. Perhaps he should work them harder.
After ten minutes he tiptoed back to Zuk’s cubicle. He didn’t like going there, as she had a habit of leaving the window open, letting in that unbearable stench from outside that no amount of rose perfume could suppress. It was worse than the office bathroom, but he, of course, had a private executive bathroom that was kept spotless. And that poster over her desk of old rat bones was downright creepy.
But he loved scaring her with his sudden, silent entrances.
“Well?” he exclaimed as he scampered in.
The cubicle was empty. Had she gone home early? He’d fire her! But no, he needed her more than she needed him — thank the great cats she didn’t know that. But she’d get a tail-yanking.
Was the article done? Why was her desk covered with the shattered shards of her cup? And was that her cheap toadskin cap sitting on top of her computer? He slapped his tail against the cubicle wall, tearing off a corner of the Ludy poster. Writers are so temperamental.
The boss looked at the computer screen, where there had been a draft of the article.
It said, “File deleted.”
“What!” He frantically pulled up the trash folder, but it had been emptied.
Then the boss heard a familiar voice through the open window. His jaw dropped, and his prized moleskin cap fell to the floor.
Outside, Zuk and three rats, all hatless, chattered back and forth gleefully as they shared a pizza crust.
* * *
About the Author
Larry Hodges, of Germantown, MD, has over 220 short story sales and four SF novels. “Rat Race” is his second sale to Zooscape. (The other was “Philosopher Rex.”) He’s a graduate of the Odyssey and Taos Toolbox Writers Workshops, a member of Codexwriters, and a ping-pong aficionado. As a professional writer, he has 22 books and over 2,300 published articles in over 200 different publications. He’s also a member of the US Table Tennis Hall of Fame, and claims to be the best table tennis player in Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, and the best science fiction writer in USA Table Tennis!!! He’s also had quite a few pets, including (cumulatively) 3 dogs, 1 cat, 50+ gerbils, 30+ snakes, zillions of fish (including sea horses and sea anemones with accompanying clownfish), a few hamsters, box turtles, toads, and crayfish, and a parrot, chinchilla, snapping turtle, iguana, and a tegu . . . but never a rat (so far!). Visit him at www.larryhodges.com.