“PAY… pay… pay… ”
The words echoed round the room just like before. But it wasn’t the words that made Mr Mouse jump, or Wizzie snarl, or a cold shiver run down Dot’s back.
They all knew the sound of that voice – only too well.
CYBER-RATS!
There was no mistaking that whining, snarling tone, with its slithery sliminess – like someone sneaking up to you in the playground at school, someone who isn’t even your best friend, trying to tell you something nasty about someone else.
Yuk. Double YUK.
The Zildiths were totally shocked. NOTHING like this had ever happened before, in the whole history of Phargon. No-one had EVER barged into an Extrapolation Extraordinary like that!
Everyone started talking at once, looking round wildly to see where the horrible sneering voice was coming from. Even Zamlelqa the Regent looked totally amazed, as if she didn’t know what was going on.
But it wasn’t long before she did!
“Looky there!” said Mr Mouse suddenly, pointing up to the fluffy gold and pink clouds above the great meeting hall of the Extrapolation Extraordinary. “What in heck is THAT?”
THAT was one of the fluffy clouds – only it wasn’t gold and pink any more – it was turning a nasty sludgy green colour. It was changing shape, too – instead of being all round and curly (like one of those ice creams you can get in Cornwall with a big dollop of clotted cream on the top, yum!) it had changed into a kind of jagged shape with spiky bits sticking out of it.
It looked like the leaves of one of those plants that eat insects, all bunched up together. And all the other clouds – the proper Phargon ones – were moving away from it, as if it was making a bad smell.
Pooh! It WAS making a bad smell! Wizzie wrinkled up his nose in disgust. Then he bark-barked his special warning bark.
“Cyber rats all right! That’s how they’re coming, through that Phargon cloud!” he said, his doggy voice echoing out all over the hall (of course, they were still on Allspeak, the system that meant everyone could hear them.) “But I don’t know this one!”
It’s amazing how dogs can tell who you are by smell – but this cyber rat was new to Wizzy.
And to Dot and Mr Mouse too – because in the next moment, there he was!
With a kind of splintering crash, the sludgy green cloud fell apart. It cracked open like a big, bad egg. All the Zildiths gasped in horror, and Zamelqa lifted up her had as if to protect herself.
It was just as well she did – because suddenly sticky, yukky bits from the cloud were falling all over the hall. Dot tried to brush some off her jeans, but it left a nasty smeary mark. It reminded her of the time she’d got some smuts from a steam train on her when she was going on a special trip with her Dad (he loves steam trains.)
They smeared in just the same way – her Gran told her afterwards that it used to be like that everywhere when everyone had coal fires and there were steam trains everywhere on the railways.
But there was no time to think about smuts – because out of the cracked open cloud rode a Cyber rat – one Dot had never seen before!
He sat on his roaring cyber bike in a long greasy cloak covered in food and drink stains. In his mouth was a black cigarette, with smoke coming out of it in grey puffs. On his head was a helmet with two horns growing out of it. Beneath it were wraparound mirror sunglasses.
He had the usual messy cyber rat moustache drooping down, but also a forked beard, with little bells on the end of it. He wore black gloves without any fingers so you could see his dirty claws, and his scaly tail hung down over the edge of his bike, twitching slowly from side to side.
As he rode down towards them, he flicked his sunglasses off – and Dot could see straight away it was his eyes that were the worst. They were jet black, glinting in the light from the proper Phargon clouds around him as he slowly flew down towards Zamelqa.
They were cruel, hard, greedy eyes. Horrible!
He landed the bike with a crash on the stage next to the Regent, splashing up more sludgy sticky bits from the broken cloud.
Then he laughed – a horrible, sneering laugh.
“OK, Regent lady” he said. “I’m Cruncher. You want your Drindel back – you gotta make a deal. Right NOW
