Terry Pratchett - The Bromeliad 2 - Diggers

He'd never been to the barn. Was anyone certain there was food there, or was it just a guess? Perhaps at least it'd be warm.

But there was a flashing light near it, coming toward them.

"Why won't they leave us alone?" shouted Grimma. "Stop!"

The Cat rolled to a halt. The engine ticked over in the chilly air.

"This must lead down to another highway," said Dorcas.

"We can't go back," said Grimma.

"No."

"Or forward."

"No."

Grimma drummed her fingers on the Cat's metal.

"Have you got any other ideas?"

"We could try going across the fields," said Dorcas.

"Where would that take us?" said Grimma.

"Away from here, for a start."

"But we wouldn't know where we were going!" said Grimma.

Dorcas shrugged. "It's either that or paint flowers."

Grimma tried to smile.

"And those little wings wouldn't suit me," she said.

"What's going on up there?" Sacco yelled up.

"We ought to tell people," Grimma whispered. "Everyone thinks we're going to the barn."

She looked around. The car was closer, bumping heavily over the rough track. The two humans were still coming the other way. "Don't humans ever give up?" she said to herself.

She leaned over the edge of the plank.

"Some left, Sacco," she said. "And then just go steadily."

The Cat bounced off the track and rolled over the cold grass. There was another wire fence in the far distance, and a few more sheep. We don't know where we're going, she thought. The only important thing is to go. Masklin knew it. This isn't our world.

"Perhaps we should have talked to humans," she said aloud.

"No, you were right," said Dorcas. "In this world everything belongs to humans and we would belong to them too. There wouldn't be any room for us to be us."

The fence came closer. There was a road on the other side. Not a dirt road, but a proper road with black gravel on it. "Right or left?" said Grimma. "What do you think?" "It doesn't matter," said Dorcas as the digger twanged through the fence. "We'll try going left, then," she said. "Slow down, Sacco! Left a bit. More. More. Steady at that. Oh, no!"

There was another car in the distance. It had flashing lights on the top.

Dorcas risked a look behind them.

There was another flashing light there.

"No," he said.

"What?" said Grimma.

"Just a little while ago you asked if humans ever gave up," he said. "They don't."

"Stop," said Grimma. The teams trotted obediently across the Cat's floor. The digger rolled gently to a halt again, engine ticking over.

"This is it," said Dorcas.

"Are we at the barn yet?" a nome called up.

"No," said Grimma. "Not yet. Nearly."

Dorcas made a face.

"We might as well accept it now," he said. "You'll end up waving a stick with a star on it. I just hope they don't force me to mend their shoes." Grimma looked thoughtful. "If we drove as hard as we could at that car coming toward us-" she began.

"No," said Dorcas, firmly. "It really wouldn't solve anything."

"It'd make me feel a lot better," said Grimma.

She looked around at the fields.

"Why's it gone all dark?" she said. "We can't have been running all day. It was early morning when we started out."

"Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself?" said Dorcas gloomily. "And I don't like milk much. I don't mind doing their housework if I don'? have to drink milk, but-"

"Just look, will you?"

Darkness was spreading across the fields.

"It might be an ellipse," said Dorcas. "I read about them. It all goes dark when the Sun covers the Moon. And possibly vice versa," he added doubtfully.

The car ahead of them squealed to a halt, crashed backward across the road into a stone wall, and came to an abrupt stop. In the field by the road the sheep were running away. It wasn't theordinary panic of sheep ordinarily disturbed. They had their heads downand were pounding across the ground with one aim in mind. They were sheepwho had decided that this was no time to waste energy panicking when itcould be used for galloping away as fast as possible.

A loud and unpleasant humming noise filled the air.

"My word," Dorcas said weakly. "They're pretty darn terrifying, theseellipses." Down below, the nomes were panicking. They weren't sheep, theycould all think for themselves, and when you started to think hard about sudden darkness and mysterious humming noises, panicking seemed a logicalidea.

Little lines of crawling blue fire crackled over the Cat's battered paintwork. Dorcas felt his hair standing on end.

Grimma stared upward.

The sky was totally black. "It's ... all ... right," she said slowly. "Do you know, I think it's all right!"

Dorcas looked at his hands. Sparks crackled off his fingertips.

"It is, is it?" was all he could think of.

"That isn't night, it's a shadow. There's something huge floating above us."

"And that's better than night, is it?" said Dorcas.

"I think so. Come on, let's get off."

She shinned down the rope to the Cat's deck. She was smiling madly. That was almost as terrifying as everything else put together. They weren't used to Grimma smiling.

"Give me a hand," she said. "We've got to get down. So he can be sure it's us." They looked at her in astonishment as she wrestled with the gangplank.

"Come on," she repeated. "Help me, can't you?"

"He? Who he?" said Dorcas. "What he? What do you mean?"

"Him," said Grimma. "I know it's him. You people-help me!"

They helped. Sometimes, when you're totally confused, you'll listen to anyone who seems to have any sort of aim in mind. They grabbed the plank and shoved it out of the back of the cab until it tilted and swung down toward the road. At least there wasn't so much sky now. The blue was a thin line around the edge of the solid darkness overhead.

Not entirely solid. When Dorcas's eyes grew used to it, he could make out squares and rectangles and circles. Nomes scurried down the plank and milled around on the road below, uncertain whether to run or stay.

Above them one of the dark squares in the shadow moved aside. There was a clank, and then a rectangle of darkness whirred down very gently, like an elevator without wires, and landed softly on the road. It was quite big. There was something on it. Something in a pot. Something red and yellow and green.

The nomes craned forward to see what it was.

II. Thus ended the journey of the Cat, and thenomes fled, looking not behind.

-From the Book of Nome, Stranger Frogs I, v. II.

Dorcas clambered down awkwardly onto the Cat's oily deck. It was empty now, except for the bits of string and wood that the nomes had used.

They've dropped things just any old way, he thought, listening to the distant chattering of the nomes. It's not right, leaving litter. Poor old Cat deserves more than this. There was some sort of excitement going on outside, but he didn't pay it much attention.

He bumbled around for a bit, trying to coil up the string and push the wood into neat piles. He pulled down the wires that had let the Cat taste the electricity. He got down on his hands and knees and tried to rub out the muddy footprints. The Cat made noises, even with the engine stopped. Little pops and sizzles, and the occasional ping.

It was going to sleep again. Sleeping was something cats did a lot of, he'd heard. Dorcas sat down and leaned against the yellow metal. He didn't know what was going on. It was so far outside anything he'd ever seen before that his mind wasn't letting him worry about it. Perhaps that thing up there is just another machine, he thought wearily. A machine for making night come down suddenly.

He reached out and stroked the Cat. "Well done," he said.

Sacco and Nooty found him sitting with his head against the cab wall, staring vacantly at his feet. "Everyone's been looking for you!" Sacco said. "It's like an airplane without wings! It's just floating there in the air! So you must come and tell us what makes it go ... I say, are you all right?" "Hmm?"