Fredric Brown - The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

In the darkness within the wall there was movement, and Mitkey, who was once again merely a little gray mouse, scurried for the hole in the baseboard. Mitkey was hungry, and just outside that hole lay the Professor’s icebox. And under the icebox, cheese.

A fat little mouse, Mitkey, almost as fat as Minnie, who had lost her figure completely because of the Professor’s generosity.

“Alvays, Mitkey,” Professor Oberburger had said, “vill be cheese under der izebox. Alvays.” And there always was. Not always ordinary cheese, either. Roquefort and beerkase and hand cheese and Camembert, and sometimes imported Swiss that looked as though mice had already lived in it, and which tasted like mouse-heaven.

And Minnie ate and Mitkey ate, and it was well that the holes in the walls and the baseboards were large holes, else their roly-poly little bodies would no longer have found passage.

But something else was happening, too. Something that would have pleased and yet worried the good professor, had he known.

In the darkness within a tiny mind there were stirrings not unlike the scurrying of mice within a wall. Stirrings of strange memories, memories of words and meanings, memories of deafening noise within the black compartment of a rocket, memories of something more important than cheese and Minnie and darkness.

Slowly, Mitkey’s memories and intelligence were coming back.

There under the shadow of the icebox, he paused and listened. In the next room, Professor Oberburger was working. And as always, talking to himself.

“Und now ve pudt on der landing vanes. Much bedder iss, mit landing vanes, for vhen der moon it reaches, softly it vill land, iff air iss there.”

Almost, almost, it made sense to Mitkey. The words were familiar, and they brought ideas and pictures into his little gray head and his whiskers twitched with the effort to understand.

The professor’s heavy footsteps shook the floor as he walked to the doorway of the kitchen and stood there looking at the mouse-hole in the baseboard.

“Mitkey, should I set again der trap und—Budt no. No. Mitkey, my liddle star-mouse. You haff earned peace and rest no? Peace und cheese. Der segund rocket for der moon, another mouse vill be in, yes.”

Rocket. Moon. Stirrings in the mind of a little gray mouse cowering beside a plate of cheese under the icebox, unseen in the shadow. Almost, almost, he remembered.

The Professor’s steps turned away, and Mitkey turned to the cheese.

But still he listened, and with uneasiness that he could not understand.

A click. The Professor’s voice giving a number.

“Hardtvord Laboratories, yess? Brofessor Oberburger. I vant mice. Vait, no, a mouse. Vun mouse… Vhat? Yess, a white mouse vill do. Color, it doess nodt madder. Effen a purple mouse… Hein? No, no I know you haff no burple mice. I vass vhat you call kidding, chust… Vhen? No hurry. Nodt for almost a veek vill der—Neffer mind dot. Chust send der mouse vhen convenient, no?”

A click.

And a click in the mind of a mouse under an icebox. Mitkey stopped nibbling cheese and looked at it instead. He had a word for it. Cheese.

Very softly to himself he said it. “Cheese.” Halfway between a squeak and a word it was, for the vocal chords Prxl had given him were rusty. But the next time it sounded better. “Cheese,” he said.

And then, the other two words coming without his even thinking about it, “Dot iss cheese.”

And it frightened him a little, so he scurried back into the hole in the wall and the comforting darkness. Then that became just a bit frightening, too, because he had a word for that, too. “Vail. Behind der vail.”

No longer was it just a picture in his mind. There was a sound that meant it. It was very confusing, and the more he remembered the more confusing it became.

Darkness of night outside the professor’s house, darkness within the wall. But there were bright lights in the Professor’s workroom, and there was brightening dimness in Mitkey’s mind as he watched from a shadowed vantage point.

That gleaming metal cylinder on the workbench—Mitkey had seen its like before. And he had a word for that, too, rocket.

And the big lumbering creature who worked over it, talking incessantly to himself as he worked…

Almost, Mitkey called out “Brofessor!”

But the caution of mousehood kept him silent, listening.

It was like a downhill-rolling snowball now, that growing memory of Mitkey’s. Words came back in a rush as the Professor talked, words and meanings.

And memories like the erratic shapes of jig-saw falling one by one into a coherent picture.

“Und der combartment for der mouse—Hydraulic shock absorbers yet, so der mouse lands softly-safely. Und der shortvafe radio dot vill tell me vhether he liffs in der moon’s admosphere after…”

“Admosphere,” and there was contempt in the professor’s voice. “These vools who say the moon it hass no admosphere. Chust because der spegtroscope—”

But the slight bitterness in the voice of the professor was nothing to the growing bitterness in Mitkey’s little mind.

For Mitkey was Mitkey again, now. Memory intact, if a bit confused and spotty. His dreams of Moustralia, and all.

His first sight of Minnie after his return, and the blackout-step onto tinfoil charged with electricity that had ended all his dreams. A trap! It had been a trap!

The professor had double-crossed him, had given him that shock deliberately to destroy his intelligence, perhaps even to kill him, to protect the interests of the big awkward lumbering race of men from intelligent mice!

Ah, yes, the professor had been smart, Mitkey thought bitterly. And Mitkey was glad now that he had not called out “Brofessor” when it had come to him to do so. The professor was his enemy!

Alone and in the dark, he would have to work. Minnie first, of course. Create one of the X-19 machines the Prxlians had showed him how to make, and raise Minnie’s intelligence level. Then the two of them—

It would be hard, working in secret without the Professor’s help, to make that machine. But maybe…

A bit of wire on the floor under the workbench. Mitkey saw it and his bright little eyes gleamed and his whiskers twitched. He waited until Professor Oberburger was looking the other way, and then softly ran toward the wire, and with it in his mouth he scurried for the hole in the wall.

The professor didn’t see him.

“Und for der uldra-vafe brojector…”

Mitkey safe in darkness with his bit of wire. A start! More wire, he would need. A fixed condenser—the professor would have one, surely. A flashlight cell—that would be hard to handle. He’d have to roll it across the floor after the professor was asleep. And other things. It would take him days, but what did time matter?

The professor worked late that night, very late.

But darkness in the workshop came at last. Darkness and a very busy little mouse.

And bright morning, and the ringing of a doorbell.

“Package for Professor—uh—Oberburger.”

“Yah? Vot iss?”

“Dunno. From the Hartford Laboratories, and they said to carry it careful.”

Holes in the package.

“Yah, der mouse.”

The professor signed for it, and then carried it into the workroom and unwrapped the wooden cage.

“Ah, der vhite mouse. Liddle mouse, you are going a long, long vay. Vhat shall ve call you yet? Vhitey, no? Vould you vant some cheese, Vhitey?”

Yes, Whitey wanted cheese all right. He was a sleek, dapper little mouse with very close-set beady eyes and supercilious whiskers. And if you can picture a mouse to be haughty, Whitey was haughty. A city-slicker type of mouse. A blue-blood of the laboratories, who had never before tasted cheese. Nothing so common and plebian as cheese had entered his vitamin-infested diet.