Terry Pratchett - The Bromeliad 2 - Diggers

And there are little black dots on the ground ahead of it. One dotstanding very still, right in the path of the thing, and the others, theothers ...

Breaking away and running. Running for their lives.

They never did find Nisodemus again, even though a party ofstrong-stomached nomes went back much later and searched through the rutsand the mud.

So a rumor grew up that perhaps, at the last minute, he had jumped upand caught hold of part of the car and had clambered onto it somehow. Andthen he'd waited there, too ashamed to face other nomes, until the carwent back to wherever it came from, and had got off, and was living outthe rest of his life quietly and without any fuss. He had been a goodnome in his way, they said. Whatever else you might say about him, hebelieved in things and he did what he thought was proper, so it was onlyright that he'd been spared and was still out there in the world, somewhere.

This was what they told one another, and what they wrote down in the Bookof Nome.

What nomes might have thought in those private moments before they wentto sleep ... well, that was private.

Humans clomped slowly around the train and what remained of the truck.

Lots of other vehicles had turned up at what was, for humans, greatspeed. Many of them had lights on top.

The nomes had learned to be worried by things with flashing lights ontop.

The Land-Rover belonging to the quarrymen was there as well. One of thequarrymen was pointing to the wrecked truck and shouting at the others.

It had opened the smashed engine compartment, and was pointing towhere the battery wasn't.

Beside the railroad the breeze rustled the long grass. And some of thelong grass rustled without any wind at all.

Dorcas had been right. Where humans went once, they went again. Thequarry belonged to them. Three trucks were parked outside the sheds andhumans were everywhere. Some were repairing the fence. Some were takingboxes and drums off trucks. One was even in the manager's office, Leaningup.

The nomes crouched where they could, listening fearfully to the soundsabove them. There weren't many hiding places for two thousand nomes, small though they were.

It was a very long day. In the shadows under some of the sheds, in thedarkness behind crates, in some cases even on the dusty rafters under thetin roofs, the nomes passed it as best they could.

There were escapes so narrow a postcard couldn't have got through them.

Old Munby Confectioner! and most of his family were left blinking inthe light when a human moved the beat-up old box they were coweringbehind. Only a quick dash to the shelter of a stack of cans saved them.

And, of course, the fact that humans never really looked hard at whatthey were doing.

That wasn't the worst part, though.

The worst part was much worse.

The nomes sat in the noisy darkness, not daring even to speak, and felttheir world vanishing. Not because the humans hated nomes. Because theydidn't notice them.

There was Dorcas's electricity, for example. He'd spent a long timetwisting bits of wire together and finding a safe way to stealelectricity from the fusebox. A human pulled the wire bits out withoutthinking, fiddled inside with a screwdriver, and then put up a new boxwith a lock on it.

The Store nomes needed electricity. They couldn't remember a time whenthey had been without it. It was a natural thing, like air. And nowtheirs was a world of endless darkness.

And still the terror went on. The rough floorboards shook overhead, raining dust and splinters. Metal drums boomed like thunder. There wasthe continual sound of hammering. The humans were back, and they meant tostay.

They did go eventually, though. When the daylight drained from thewinter sky, like steel growing cold, some of the humans got into theirvehicles and drove off down the dirt road.

They did one puzzling thing before they left. Nomes had to scramble overone another to get out of the way when one of the floorboards in the manager's office was pulled up. A huge hand reached down and put a littletray on the packed earth under the floor. Then the darkness came backas the board was replaced.

The nomes sat in the gloom and wondered why on earth the humans, after aday like this, were giving them food.

The tray was piled with flour. It wasn't much, compared to Store food, but to nomes who had spent all day hungry and miserable it smelled good.

A couple of younger ones crawled closer. It had the most tantalizingsmell.

One of them took a handful of the stuff.

"Don't eat it!"

Grimma pushed her way through the packed bodies.

"But it smells so-" one of the nomes warbled.

"Have you ever smelled anything like it before?" she said.

"Well, no-"

"So you don't know it's good to eat, do you? Listen. I know about stufflike this. Where we-where I used to live, in the hole ... there was aplace along the highway where humans came to eat, and sometimes we'd findstuff like this among the trash at the back. It kills you if you eat it!"

The nomes looked at the innocent little tray. Food that killed you? Thatdidn't make sense.

"I remember there was some canned meat we had once in the Store," said anelderly nome. "Gave us all a nasty upset, I remember." He gave Grimma ahopeful look.

She shook her head. "This isn't like that," she said. "We used to finddead rats near it. They didn't die in a very nice way," she added, shuddering at the memory.

"Oh."

The nomes stared at the tray again. And there was a thump from overhead.

There was still a human in the quarry.

It was sitting in the old swivel chair in the manager's office, readinga paper.

From a knothole near the floor the nomes watched carefully. There werehuge boots, great sweeps of trouser, a mountain range of jacket and, farabove, the distant gleam of electric light on a bald head.

After a long while the human put the paper down and reached over to thedesk by its side. The watching nomes gazed at a pack of sandwiches bigger than they were, and a Thermos flask that steamed when it was openedand filled the shed with the smell of soup.

They climbed back down and reported to Grimma. She was sitting by thefood tray, and had ordered six of the older and more sensible nomes tostand guard around it to keep children away.

"It's not doing anything," she was told. "It's just sitting there. We sawit look out of the window once or twice."

"Then it'll be here all night," said Grimma. "I expect the humans arewondering who's causing all this trouble."

"What shall we dor'

Grimma sat with her chin on her hands.

"There's those big old tumbledown sheds across the quarry," she said atlast. "We could go there."

"Dorcas said-Dorcas used to say it was very dangerous in the old sheds," said a nome cautiously. "Because of all the old metal and stuff-Verydangerous, he said."

"More dangerous than here?" said Grimma, with Just a trace of her oldsarcasm.

"You've got a point."

"Please, ma'am."

It was one of the younger female nomes. They "eld Grimma in awe becauseof the way she Touted at the men and read better than anyone.

This one held a baby in her arms, and kept curtsying every time shefinished a sentence.

"What it is, Sorrit?" said Grimma.

"Please, ma'am, some of the children are very hungry, ma'am. There isn'tanything wholesome to eat down here, you see." She gave Grimma a pleading look.

Grimma nodded. The stores were under the other sheds, what was left ofthem. The main potato store had been found by some of the humans, whichwas perhaps why the poison had been put down. Anyway, they couldn't lighta fire and there was no meat. No one had been doing any proper huntingfor days, because Arnold Bros. (est. 1905) would provide, according toNisodemus.

"As soon as it gets light I think all the hunters we can spare should goout," said Grimma.