The Constant Rabbit Read online

  ‘… the building you saw outside is the centralised head office of the Rabbit Compliance Taskforce, and will be featuring impressive IT capabilities to safely administer to the million or so guests we are expecting, and to ensure that legal off-colony movement is both efficient and easily enforced. I would also like to point out that the presence of the Taskforce will bring much-needed jobs to the area, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, one of the many ways in which the presence of MegaWarren is benefitting the local community.’

  She went on to talk about how the 800-million-pound project was completed in under two years, thanked the Welsh government for their support, and especially the two hundred or so residents who were relocated to make way for the facility. She then handed over to Nigel Smethwick, who had been eager to receive the microphone for some time. He started off by saying what a pleasure it was to see so many journalists and dedicated Taskforce professionals, and how MegaWarren would offer something that all the residents of the United Kingdom wanted: a safe place for rabbits from which they could use their many skills to usefully contribute to the UK’s economy. He talked about himself and his achievements quite a lot, and eventually said that we could go wherever we wanted. He then asked, somewhat reluctantly, whether there were any questions.

  ‘When do the rabbit arrive?’ asked a journalist at the back.

  The Senior Group Leader answered the question.

  ‘We will expect,’ said Mr Ffoxe, ‘to start inviting early beta-tester rabbits to move in in about two weeks. Travel will be free to all voluntarily participating rabbits, and generous early relocation payments will be forthcoming at a level which is yet to be decided. The first to arrive will be given the best homes and plots.’

  ‘The Grand Council of Coneys have long insisted,’ said a BBC journalist at the front, ‘that the colonies are little more than gilded workhouses, and have vowed to resist a move to MegaWarren. Do you have any comment on that?’

  ‘Timendi causa est nescire,’ he replied; ‘the cause of fear is ignorance. The old colonies are currently unfit for purpose. They are crowded, unsanitary and often situated in places where the soil is sub-standard and burrow collapse a very real and pressing problem. MegaWarren has been specifically designed with the well-being of the rabbit in mind, and as soon as word gets out about how wonderfully fabulous it is, the rabbit will be heading over here in droves.’

  ‘I’ve heard the speeches,’ said the same BBC reporter, ‘but what about the Grand Council’s reservations?’

  The fox looked testily at the reporter, but he smiled broadly and brought his considerable charm to bear.

  ‘It is indeed a great shame that the Council of Coneys have decided to be so pointlessly obstructive over the issue,’ said Mr Ffoxe, ‘but you must understand that the rabbit does not reason in the same way as the human. They have a simplistic, childlike approach to politics, and reluctantly we have decided that it is necessary to undertake changes for their own good, either with their agreement or not.’

  ‘It looks like a prison to me,’ said another journalist, who had sounded more pro-MegaWarren on the bus, but may have been doing so, it seemed, to actually get an invite, ‘and rabbits are known to be stubborn and will, if pushed, invoke their “Bugs Bunny Protocol” and meet force with force. What if they refuse to be moved at all?’

  ‘They won’t,’ said Nigel Smethwick, taking the microphone. ‘A recent poll conducted by UKARP indicates that ninety-seven per cent of rabbits will be overjoyed to move here. The three per cent of troublemakers whom it will be impossible to convince of our magnanimity may have to be re-educated to persuade them that a non-compliant stance would not be in the best interests of rabbit/human relations. The Rehoming policy is not leporiphobic, it is simply in the best interests of all our species groups. We like rabbits,’ he added, ‘but we like compliant rabbits the most, in a homeland that best suits their needs.’

  ‘We should add,’ said Mr Ffoxe, ‘that rabbits are currently not legally defined as human, so it must be appreciated that what we are doing shows an unprecedented level of compassion and understanding of animal rights. We would like our good intentions to be noted, and at the very minimum, repaid with simple gratitude as good manners dictate. Goats, sheep, chickens, ducks, cows and pigs – actually, most other animals, I hardly need point out – have never, and will never, receive a similar level of care.’

  Oddly, there was a murmuring of agreement at this. There were more questions over cost overruns, and whether the site could be expanded, all of which were expertly evaded or obscured by either Smethwick, Pandora Pandora or Mr Ffoxe. Finally, someone asked the question that I would have asked, if I’d been permitted, or braver.

  ‘What about the hundred thousand legal off-colony rabbits?’

  It was a tricky question, and Ffoxe and Smethwick looked at one another, then passed the microphone to Pandora Pandora.

  ‘MegaWarren is available to all rabbits, irrespective of status,’ she said, ‘and we are fully confident that all off-colony rabbits will be only too happy to relocate here once they see just how wonderful it is.’

  ‘What if they don’t?’ asked someone.

  ‘If there are no more questions,’ said Pandora Pandora, ‘please feel free to wander around the facility and ask as many questions as you like – lunch will be served at 1 p.m. in the Palace of Creative Joy.’

  The group broke up and I made to move away but Whizelle caught my eye and walked over.

  ‘Hello, Knox,’ he said, ‘what do you think of it all?’

  ‘Impressive, sir,’ I replied, as weasels, like foxes, were never ones to cross.

  ‘Attractive to rabbits?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Conducive to happiness and high productivity?’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Good. Listen, have you noticed anything odd about Lugless this morning?’

  I felt my heart start to beat faster and resisted a temptation to scratch my nose or look away.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Odd. Different. Seems … distracted. I went to speak to him about a case we were discussing yesterday and he kind of looked through me.’

  ‘I’ve known him less than a month,’ I said, ‘and he seems as unpleasant now as when I first met him.’

  ‘Humph,’ said Whizelle, then thanked me and moved away. I made a quick exit too, just in case he wanted to question me further.

  I wandered into the Palace of Creative Joy, which was actually one of the factories in which the rabbits would build vacuum cleaners, microwave ovens, kitchen appliances and car engines. There were four of these buildings, all huge, and subcontractors from RabToil were busily installing the moving assembly lines. I could see CCTV cameras everywhere, and knew that this alone could be a deal-breaker. None of the colonies had a single camera. Rabbits hated being surveilled. I suddenly had the strongest feeling that for all the planning and money and effort, not a single rabbit would ever move here. Or at least, not by their own choice.

  I left the Palace of Creative Joy and walked across to the Lago meeting house. The circular building was of tiered seating on six levels that surrounded a central area where a large circular void in the roof bathed the interior with natural light. I paused for a moment, having never been in such a place before, then stepped back outside and looked around. Beyond the admin blocks, factory units and large multilingual call centres, the land stretched away to the steep hills opposite, four or five miles distant. I could see the perimeter fence undulating softly with the contours of the land, and a river wended its way out from the hills through a narrow gorge and what looked like productive farmland, criss-crossed by hedges, spinneys and the odd oak tree in cheerful abundance. It was, I had to admit, a very lovely area of the world. The soil good, the climate pleasant. If you took away the sense of menacing coercion, it was somewhere any rabbit might want to live.

  ‘Hello!’ said a young woman, one of the Pandora Pandora clones – dressed all
in black, with an aggressive attitude of chatty bonhomie and the mandated blond hair, ‘I’m Miss Robyns. Want to see the burrows?’

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  We walked down one of the access roads while Miss Robyns regaled me with all the high points of the facility. About how beautiful it was, how clean, and how there was space to roam and even a sixteen-mile perimeter bouncing track for early-morning jaunts and for beta-bucks to ‘blow off excess humours during the inevitable disappointments of the mating season’.

  We stopped where a six-foot-wide concrete pipe was sticking out of the ground with ‘Section 87D’ stencilled on the side. She led the way into the ground by way of some steps but the tunnel soon levelled out and after fifty feet or so made a sharp right turn.

  ‘Although no ferret was anthropomorphised during the Event,’ said Miss Robyns, ‘the rabbit still like to have defensible bends in their burrows.’

  As we walked, I noted that every ten feet or so a panelled wooden door complete with doorknob, brass knocker and letterbox slot was set into the wall of the concrete pipe. We stopped opposite one marked ‘87D-237’ and I opened the door to find that it led nowhere – facing me was a wall of soft earth, with the imprint of the back of the door neatly impressed upon it.

  ‘The rabbit like to dig their own home,’ explained Miss Robyns, and I closed the door.

  ‘There must be a lot of doors,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Miss Robyns, suddenly looking bored, ‘thousands.’

  We turned the anti-ferret corner and could see the long tunnel stretch out in front of us, doors off to left and right. We also surprised Harvey, whose hearing, I thought later, was probably greatly diminished. He was staring into one of a series of ventilation grilles set into the tunnel wall, each one above a telephone point, postbox and WiFi transmitter.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he said, secreting in his coat what looked like a camera. I was walking in front, so Miss Robyns didn’t notice.

  ‘Oh!’ she said, startled by his appearance. I told her who he was and how he disliked rabbits more than almost anyone I knew, and she shook hands with him, but was at pains to point out that she was only doing this job because it was her job, and not because she was leporiphobic.

  ‘I believe you,’ said Harvey/Lugless in an ambiguous manner, and he joined us as we viewed the communal kitchens, rest, play and nursery areas. We then retraced our steps to the entrance and blinked as we came out into the warm sunshine. Almost immediately we noticed some sort of commotion near by, where Mr Ffoxe was talking to Whizelle and Section Officer Flemming.

  ‘… when did you hear about this, Weasel?’ asked Mr Ffoxe.

  ‘Just now, and it’s pronounced “Whizelle”.’

  The fox then caught sight of our small group.

  ‘You!’ said the Senior Group Leader, jabbing a paw in our direction. ‘You’re in some big f***ing trouble.’

  The game, it seemed, was up, and I think Harvey knew it too as I heard a faint ‘pop’ as he dropped a pellet.52

  If Mr Ffoxe knew Harvey wasn’t Lugless he’d be tortured and killed at the hands of the Senior Group Leader – probably here, right in front of us. But to my shame, I wasn’t really thinking of that. I was thinking that they’d figure out that I knew too – I’d vouched for Harvey’s identity to get him in here. But things didn’t quite turn out that way. As the fox, weasel and human drew closer I realised that the focus of their anger was not Harvey/Lugless at all – but me.

  ‘That’s right, Knox,’ said Whizelle as they encircled me, ‘we’ve heard about your lewd and unnatural associations with your rabbit next-door neighbour. Taskforce guideline 68/5b forbids it. You’re suspended from work and will have all security privileges withdrawn pending an internal investigation.’

  ‘Well now,’ said Mr Ffoxe with a chuckle. ‘I know I asked for deep infiltration, but this is definitely not what I had in mind. In partibus lagomorphium, eh? Mind you,’ he added with a smile, ‘anyone who threatens a fox with a flick-knife does show spirit.’53

  And he turned to Whizelle.

  ‘Weasel, have Knox debriefed back at the office. Tease out the truth, but courteously – Knox remains a valuable asset and one that we would wish to be able to re-educate.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Whizelle, ‘but you pronounce my name “Whi—”’

  ‘So, Tamara,’ said Mr Ffoxe, cutting Whizelle dead and taking Miss Robyns by the arm in a courteous manner, ‘been working for the Taskforce long?’

  ‘How did you know my name?’

  ‘My dear,’ he said, ‘aren’t you all called Tamara?’

  ‘Personally,’ said Whizelle to me, ‘I don’t give a monkey’s what you get up to in your spare time, but rules are rules. Lugless, find a car and get Knox back to the Hereford office. I’ll be a couple of hours behind you, and just in case: no phone calls, no visits, no solicitor.’

  ‘Why me?’ said Harvey, remaining in character.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re told,’ said Whizelle, and Harvey shrugged and flicked his head, indicating I should follow him.

  ‘Bother and blast,’ he said once we were safely out of earshot. ‘That didn’t go as planned. I got barely an hour inside. Even so.’

  He looked at me.

  ‘You want to know what’s going on, don’t you?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I do not want to know what’s going on. I didn’t see anything, I don’t know anything, and as far as anyone is concerned, for now and ever more you are Lugless AY-002.’

  ‘Probably quite wise,’ said Harvey as we walked towards where Lugless’s car was parked, the same late-seventies Eldorado Lugless had used while on Ops in Ross-on-Wye. I started to ask Harvey how it came to be here, but he silenced me, took the keys from where they had been hidden on the top of the rear tyre, unlocked the doors, and told me to hop in the back. He then started the car and reversed out of the parking lot. He drove quite fast – for a rabbit – but I didn’t want to ask him anything because I didn’t want to know anything. I wanted to resign, go home and devote my life to Speed Librarying – a life choice that I made official by designating it with a code: 12-345.

  We took the main road back towards Hereford, picked up some more speed and as soon as the road was clear in both directions, Harvey hauled hard right on the wheel and the car swerved and left the road. There was a double thump as the wheels struck the verge and then everything felt smooth and quiet as we became airborne. There was a steep escarpment beyond the verge and I watched the litter and discarded junk food cartons inside the car suddenly become weightless as we gracefully went into a brief free fall that ended with a teeth-juddering thump, a cracking of wood and the soft implosive noise that toughened windscreens make when they burst. I was thrown hard forward into my seat belt, bounced back into the door pillar and everything went black.

  Car & Custody

  Ninety-seven per cent of all rabbit internet traffic was colony-to-colony. Within the warren and burrow, nearly all conversation and gossip were undertaken nose to nose, and a recent survey found that, given the levels to which rabbits like to gossip, news and views within the colony could travel faster than broadband, and were a lot more fun.

  I came to my senses with a shocking headache, the taste of blood in my mouth and the smell of burning in my nostrils. The car had landed upright and was facing backwards at the bottom of a steep wooded slope. The burned-out Eldorado – much scavenged by tourists – remained in situ for a decade until removed for inclusion in the Event Museum at the repurposed MegaWarren Induction Centre. I visited this site a lot when I ran tours after the publication of my book, eight years after the Battle of May Hill.

  The windscreen had vanished, the car’s bonnet had been folded up almost to the scuttle by the action of a large tree that had fared better than us in the altercation, and a wisp of smoke was rising from under the bonnet. I looked out of my window and could see that the car was resting in a cow pasture; three Friesian heifers stared at us with a look of extreme indiffere
nce while solemnly chewing the cud. Harvey was conscious and having trouble opening the car door, so he lay on his back on the front seat and gave the door an almighty kick with his powerful hind legs. The door was wrenched off its hinges and landed two dozen yards away.

  ‘What happened?’ I said, but Harvey just glanced at me and walked around to open the boot of the car.

  ‘C’mon,’ he said, ‘it’s time.’

  He wasn’t speaking to me. He was speaking to another rabbit, who climbed out of the boot. He was identically dressed and, like Harvey, earless. But unlike Harvey, whose ears had recently been cropped – I could now see the stitches, which were of string – these were long-healed. It was Lugless.

  ‘Change of plan?’ said Lugless in a surprisingly meek tone. ‘That was never eight hours.’

  ‘There was an unforeseen hiccup,’ said Harvey, ‘but a deal’s a deal.’

  Small tongues of flame were now visibly curling around the crumpled bonnet, but I think I was too confused by the turn of events to assess the sort of danger I was in. As I watched from the back seat, Lugless climbed into the car and placed himself behind the wheel.

  ‘You have them?’ he asked.

  ‘Here,’ said Harvey, and handed him what looked like two short and very withered scrolls tied up with red ribbon. Lugless took them with the greatest of reverence and held them tight to his body.

  ‘By the power vested in me by the Venerable Bunty,’ said Harvey, ‘and in deference to the indulgence bestowed upon you, I declare upon the name and spirit of Lago, the Grand Matriarch, that your mortal sins are expunged. You go to your maker as pure, and complete, as the circle of trust that binds us all, which took our saviour, and the unbreakable bond that joins all rabbits.54’

  I saw Lugless take a deep breath, and bow his head, and Harvey made the sign of the circle on his forehead. The flames were quite high now, and Harvey bowed again, took a step back, coughed and looked at me.

  ‘Are you staying in there or what?’