Dalton, meanwhile—the descendant of a Hommul clan outcast from so many generations ago—had now been born into the once maligned and now dreaded Smiths clan, which had ruled Palan for dozens of floods. The ironic reversal was not lost on Walter at all. Perhaps that was why he longed to be exiled from his own people: He was envious of what that long-ago action had done for Dalton’s great-grandfather and by extension, his greatest rival.
While Walter mused clan history, he scanned the crowd of forty to fifty boys arranged around the uneven rail of the Rats pit. He wondered which of them his uncle and mother would be able to land for the looming finals. The Smiths, by currently holding power, would get the top picks. The Savages would get next, and so on. None of the higher clans would take Walter, no matter how highly he had scored in prior examinations. Too many clans had been sabotaged from within as distant kinsmen wrested power for their own blood clan. At least it meant Walter didn’t have to do anything to try and impress the clan leaders or his peers. There was that.
“You’re nexssst,” Dalton hissed into Walter’s ear, in English.
Walter reached back and shoved the boy away, then dug into his ear to remove the invasive whisper.
“I challenge Walter Hommul!” Dalton yelled over the pits.
Walter watched the group of boys look up from settling their bets.
Murmurs grew to cheers.
Dugan elbowed Walter and hissed some foul-smelling good luck.
“I just got here,” Walter complained.
Boys normally waited hours for their chance to play.
“And it’s my uncle’s place,” Dalton said, “so I can challenge whoever I like.”
With a dozen prods and pushes, the gathering of boys ushered Walter toward one end of the pool. He hissed at the crowd, but found himself slotted into the little jut of railing leaning out over the black side of the pit. A ratpole was placed in his hands, and someone thumped him on the back of his head. Above the pit, the scoreboard was reset to zero and the names “Hommul” and “Smiths” blinked across the LEDs. Dalton took his place in the silver slot and grabbed his paddle from another boy. He waved the long pole out at Walter, taunting him.
Walter held his own pole out and tapped the surface of the mucky water a few times, getting a feel for the heft of it. He’d played enough Rats in his day to wield a paddle with some skill. He could hold a twenty foot pole with a ten pound paddle at arms-length for half a minute, no problem. He also knew Dalton played every day and could do the same with one hand and for twice as long.
A countdown began on the scoreboard, and the crowd chanted along with the falling numbers. Walter tightened his grip on his paddle and glanced up at the underside of the scoreboard to follow the countdown. Dalton whacked Walter’s paddle smartly, and Walter nearly dropped his pole into the water. He tightened his grip even further. When the crowd got to zero, a hole opened in the scoreboard and two rats fell out, each covered in paint. The animals clung to one another in a feisty, hissing, mid-air ball as they tumbled down and splashed into the pit.
The crowd erupted, and Walter and Dalton sparred from opposite sides, using their long paddles to draw the two frightened creatures closer to their own ends.
It was apparent from the start that Dalton was too strong for Walter. Walter could feel the boy’s tugs and shoves through the shaft of his paddle. Already, the two splashing rodents were being drawn toward the other side, and the further away they got, the less leverage Walter would have. He leaned against the rail, the unforgiving metal digging into his ribs, and locked his ankles around the posts to either side.
Dalton separated his silver rat out and pinned it underwater. Walter’s black rat clawed at the surface, its whiskers twitching with deep gasps of air. Walter pushed the animal under, careful not to slap it on the head and get a foul called.
A groan erupted from the crowd as it appeared the two boys would play a game that tested the lung capacity of their rats rather than the wits of the players. Dalton had his rat underwater first, but more depended on what sort of breath each animal had gone down with and their individual lung capacity and tendency to panic while drowning. It did little to satisfy the spectators, but Walter felt perfectly comfortable with the game plan. If he lost, he could blame his defeat on the rat and no credit would go to Dalton.
“How much on yourself?” a boy yelled in his ear.
Walter looked at the betting board. The odds were almost even; Dalton had just a hair of an edge. Even though Walter only had a few bucks on him, he couldn’t not bet on himself.
“Two,” he shouted over his shoulder.
As soon as Walter made the wager, Dalton changed the game, almost as if he’d been suckering him into betting. He let go of his own rat and slashed underwater with his paddle, whacking the side of Walter’s pole. Walter felt his paddle slip off his rat. Both animals briefly bobbed to the surface, and the crowd erupted.
Walter fumbled for his rat, but Dalton had already pulled it further away. The larger kid deftly shifted back and forth between both scrambling swimmers, waving them toward his side. Walter managed to push his rat under, but Dalton slapped him off it. Walter made a grab for Dalton’s rat, but again was knocked aside. Back and forth they went, both animals heading toward the silver side of the pit.
There wasn’t much Walter could do, he quickly realized. The bigger boy could always overpower him, doing pretty much whatever he wanted, especially as his leverage improved. He smacked Dalton’s pole in frustration. Dalton pushed back, then quickly pinned his silver rat below the surface of the water. Walter did the same with his, but now he was using much more pole than Dalton. It would be child’s play for Dalton to knock him off his rat and re-pin his own before it could break the surface and suck in another breath. It was the classic end-game for a dominate Rats position, and one that would cost Walter double his bet.Dalton didn’t disappoint. He slid his paddle to the side and whacked Walter’s rat free. He then fumbled underwater for his own struggling animal as it bobbed toward the surface. He must’ve caught it, for he leaned back into his pole with no sign of the silver rat.
Walter’s rat, meanwhile, bobbed to the surface before he could corral it. He got his paddle on its head and pushed it back down. His brain whirled with some way to overcome the boy’s strength and leverage. As he pushed his rat to the bottom of the pool, he steered it nearer Dalton’s paddle rather than try and pull it back closer to himself. As soon as it reached the bottom, he felt Dalton strike his pole again, pushing him off the animal.
Walter acted quickly on a sudden idea, a way to use Dalton’s strength to his advantage. He felt his rat bobbing for the surface and pushed it back down, but not to pin it. He touched it to the bottom, then slid over and pinned Dalton’s rat as it tried to swim up. He held the other boy’s rat in place and waited while Dalton performed his own maneuvers beneath the murky water. No rat bobbed to the surface. Walter took his eyes off the poles and watched Dalton, who was sneering with concentration. He was holding something down right beside Walter’s paddle, and seemed intent on crushing it. Walter waited. Just as Dalton was about to look up at the scoreboard to check his rat’s vitals, Walter yelled out: “Twenty on black!” Far more money than he had on him.
The crowd hissed. Dalton narrowed his eyes, and Walter could see his face grow dull with nerves and confusion. Walter’s rat had half the breath of Dalton’s, making it an odd wager. The other boy acted swiftly, taking another good swipe at Walter’s pole, and Walter felt his paddle fly off the silver rat.
Dalton’s rat.
He stirred the water furiously as if groping for the struggling animal, and the crowd began to chant Dalton’s name. Walter caught a glimpse of the rat below the water’s murky surface. He moved his paddle clumsily all around it, whipping the dirty water into a froth of wave and bubble, his seeming desperation a ploy to keep the color of the animal hidden while also allowing it to regain its breath. He fought the urge to yell out an even higher bet, knowing that would appear foolish and suspicious. Instead, he hissed and cursed at himself as he pretended to struggle with the long pole. The chants of “Dalton” and “Smiths” grew furious, the last filling the room with a powerful English-like hiss, which made the hair on Walter’s head stand on-end.
Walter had a brief moment of panic when individuals among the crowd began pointing up to the scoreboard and tugging on their neighbors. Walter didn’t look himself, fearing Dalton would grow suspicious. He concentrated on his efforts to conceal the boy’s rat while Dalton unknowingly worked to drown Walter’s.
The end of the game was a confusing, riotous affair. When the flatline buzzer sounded, most of the kids erupted to celebrate their friend’s victory, and money went flying from hand to hand. An observant minority, however, began working to undo the celebrations. The winner’s light pointed toward Walter, and the scoreboard reflected a truth incongruent to their own eyes.
There was a moment of stunned silence before the next wave of yelling—of angry yelling—began. The kids shuffled bets around and looked sternly in Walter’s direction.
Meanwhile, in the pit itself, a black rat bobbed up, its arms curled and lifeless. Nearby, a silver rat pawed at the rippled and muddy surface, looking for a way out.
Walter dropped his pole into the pits and did the same.
34 · The Pits
“You’d better run,” a boy beside Walter suggested.
It sounded more like a threat than a warning. Walter scanned the crowd and realized it was a good idea. He also realized he wouldn’t be seeing the two hundred forty dollars he’d just won on the twelve to one odds against. Nobody was amused with how he’d played the game.
As his pole splashed into the pit, Walter pushed his way out of a crowd still correcting their bets. Kids hissed and shouted at him as he forced his way through, but they weren’t about to give chase until their money was squared. Walter ran up the steps toward the luck machines, turned, and scanned the crowd for Dalton. He saw the boy still in the silver outcrop, gripping the rail with both hands and sneering down into the water. For Walter, it was worth at least half the bet he was leaving behind. He spun around and wove through the maze of machines designed to rob men of their money and confidence, and out to the market beyond.
Walter blended in with the light stream of late-night shoppers and worked to slow his breathing. In the hush of the Palan night, the roar of the mob he’d just escaped rang as echoes in his ears. He had left his apartment looking for a bit of excitement and found more than enough to sate him for a day or two. Leaving the markets behind, he skipped over a gutter bridge and shadow-hopped his way back home.
Walter was in such a good mood as he passed the Regal and turned into the alley by its side, that he nearly made a serious Junior Pirate gaffe. He entered the alley with a loud walk and along the edge of a cone of streetlight. There were only a few apartments behind the Regal, so the daily habit of finding it empty had him growing sloppy over time. If he hadn’t seen the figure at the alley’s end moments before the man turned around, Walter would’ve missed out on the heist of a thousand lifetimes.
By the time the man turned to survey the noise, Walter had flushed his skin to dull the sheen of his exposed flesh and moved quickly and silently into the alley’s darkness. He stood motionless, his back against the rough brick of the Regal, while the man at the far end peered past him and out into the quiet street.
Walter waited.
Nothing on him moved, save his eyes. He picked out several darkened routes to his apartment door, just in case. He also sized up the figure crouching a hundred feet beyond his stoop. By his bulk, Walter pegged him as Human, which was out of the ordinary for this time of the rains. He watched the man wipe his brow—and even though the humidity was creeping up, Walter sensed the gesture was as much from nerves as condensation. He took in deep sniffs of the alley’s air, but the figure was too far away for him to pick up anything.
After a long moment of staring his way, the man turned back to something at his feet. Walter took immediate advantage. He danced through the shadows along the blackest route, halving the distance between himself and the stranger. Crouching behind his apartment’s crumbling landing, he peered through the flood-rusted rails and watched the man sift through the detritus in the alley’s dead-end.
Finally, the man stood and scanned the alley. He shuffled noisily in Walter’s direction and could be heard mumbling to himself as he passed. Walter tried to catch a glimpse of the man’s face, but the figure happened to be glancing over his other shoulder as he hurried by. When he reached the end of the alley, the Human looked one direction, started to head off the other way, stopped, then hurried toward the Regal’s entrance.
The pathetic display did nothing to undo Walter’s disdain for Humans. That such a dull, noisy, numb-nosed race prospered while his people languished could only be attributed to the unlucky geography of his planet. He knew from his own studies that Earth had many continents and very little ocean. Rains there came sporadically and rarely flooded. Give his people such a place and see who’s naming other people’s stars, then. Oh, he would love to hear a Human throat attempt to gurgle his native tongue. And to think of never needing to hiss English again!
Walter stood from his hiding spot and glowered after the departed figure. His joyous mood from the game of Rats had eroded, marred by the presence of the Human. He turned and crept down the alley to see if the man had left any traces of his curious actions, sniffing the air as he went.
The first thing he noticed was a reek of paranoia. The man had left behind a braided odor of lies of such density, only one living in abject terror of discovery—discovery of something bad—could have created it. That certainly got Walter’s attention. He followed the scent to its locus: a heap of alley trash seemingly no different from the rest.