Tuesday, October 16, 15:37 PM
Linguini has thumbed his safety-belt open and is over to the radio before I can register anything. "Maypole! Maypole!" he screams into the microphone. "We're flight number – ah…" He looks around at the plane. "We should have been going to Nice and we aren't, we're in the culinary… HELP! MAYPOLE!"
"IT'S MAYDAY," Colette yells, as dryly as she can over the screaming wind, as she undoes her own belt and supports herself up out of the chair with her arms. "And is the radio even working? Who exactly do you think is going to hear you?"
Linguini looks at her in panic. "But we're going down!"
"COME ON!" She reaches out for him, patting the parachute strapped to her back. "We've got to jump!"
Linguini eyes her belly dubiously, then her face, which is beaded with sweat. "Are you sure you're okay with it?"
The plane shifts crazily and I roll my eyes even as I scramble deeper into his flight pocket. Dying in a fiery grave would be better for the baby perhaps?
She rolls her eyes as she grabs his hand, guiding it to the release cord. "Dying in a fiery grave would be better for the baby perhaps?" Oh man, I love that woman.
"Uh… oh, okay." They both have a grip on the release cords now. "Okay, Little Chef?" I button the pocket closed and stick out an arm in a thumbs-up. Linguini gives the pocket a little pat.
They make their way to the bay, holding hands. Colette grabs the doorframe, looking down at the countryside far below us, letting out a yell that's suspiciously like a cry of pain. I see Linguini cut his eyes at her, but there's no room for second thoughts as the airstream grips at our clothes and the earsplitting din blasts in, drowning us. The roaring wind howls through the cabin, threatening to pull me right out of the flight suit, the wounded engine's screeching making the metal groan and vibrate like nothing I've ever heard before. "READY?" bellows Linguini. "A-one.. and a-two.. and a…"
And then there's no floor beneath us, nothing but empty air and wild wind around us, both the humans screaming as we plummet through the sky.
"PULL THE CORD! PULL THE CORD!" yells Colette.
They grip each other's hands more tightly, yank on their cords…
And nothing happens.
I shall never forget the terror on their faces in that moment.
Where I get my calm, I'll never know. "Pull the spare," I yell into the void. "PULL THE SPARE!"
But Linguini's already resigned, his acceptance of certain death clear in his eyes as he looks into Colette's, and all the love he ever felt is reflected right there in his eyes. "I'm sorry, Little Chef," is all he says. His hand snakes up to his pocket to hold me…
Blast it, anyway. Digging my claws into the rippling, grimy material of his suit, I crawl out of the pocket, grabbing his hand and guiding it to the spare cord. We're still hurtling through empty air at hundreds of kilometers an hour, yet everything seems to be happening in slow motion. Bless Colette, her face lights up in comprehension, and she raises her own hand to fumble behind her, coming up with the cord for her spare 'chute. They lock arms, gripping one another's shoulders. She meets Linguini's eyes, and with a nod of agreement, they yank both cords simultaneously.
Nothing happens.
I don't often get so mad I literally see red with murderous rage, but I almost blank out with fury for a second. The dawning of hope on their faces, so abruptly dashed… That low-down, dirty bâtard! He must have sabotaged the cords. I claw my way across to Colette's suit to look at the 'chute. Yes, there it is, deliberately knotted and tangled up…
And then it comes to me in a shock of realization. Who better to untangle cords than a rat?
Clinging with claws fully extended to Colette's parachute pack, the wind ruffling my fur so violently my flesh ripples along with it, I yell in Linguini's face. "I'M GOING IN TO FIX THE 'CHUTE! DON'T GIVE UP!" Then I gesture wildly at the pack, miming repairing it.
His face lit up. "Little Chef… Do you think you can do it?" But I've already dived into the tangled mess. We three have no time for doubts – I know, from TV, that the maximum you can freefall was only a few minutes. And as I've no idea how high we were when we jumped, there's no way of knowing how much time we have left.
One thing about being a rat – teeth are your best friend. I sift frantically through the mess of cords, concentrating fiercely on straightening them out, Linguini's voice in the periphery of my awareness explaining to Colette what I'm doing. She screams at him to hold on to her; bless her, again. He's got to cling on to her and hope her 'chute will hold them both: there's just no time to fix both. Getting even one parachute fixed will be a miracle, never mind two.
Somewhere in the howling wind is Colette screaming to Linguini to zip open her overlarge flight suit and stick his legs into the huge pant openings, but I can hardly hear. My world had tunneled down to the task that'll save or kill us all. Wherever I find a knot, I chomp through it, straighten out the cord and retie it so that pulling on the line will strengthen, not weaken it. Chew, straighten, tie. Chew, straighten, tie… My paws are getting sweat-slick as I work, and I wipe them on the inside of the bag. The cords are nylon, and strong, but no match for a rat's sharp teeth. How many precious seconds have gone by? I'm not tense – I'm strangely calm, focused, with an internal clock ticking away what are probably the last moments of my life.
One cord done, now the second, now the third. Slowly now…
"Whoa!" Suddenly the cords snake out of my hands like living things. I almost tumble out of the pack, but just manage to hold on by wrapping my tail around the handle. Grabbing handfuls of the fabric, I dig my claws in and swing back in time to see the ropes I've straightened out already being yanked out of the pack by a force stronger than all of us combined, and the flash of a glance shows me Linguini clinging to Colette limpet-wise, legs stuffed into her pant legs, arms wrapped around her shoulders, flailing for me with one hand, looking at something above us, his shouts swept away by the wind, drowned out by the frantic whip-whip-whip of the cords unraveling faster than I can slow them, mingling with the rush of air and billowing out above me, and I'm overwhelmed with despair because the 'chute is surely flying out of control and I've failed—
WHUMP
The parachute opens completely. Colette lets out a scream like nothing I've ever heard before. A tug and jerk and our downward rush is abruptly halted, and the rush of air stops as though it had never been. All is silence, and there we are, hanging in the middle of the sky, high above the Languedoc landscape, swinging at the bottom of the blue-and-white canopy suspended above us.
Linguini's the first to recover. He whoops with joy. "You did it, Little Chef! You did it!"
"Uh… Alfredo?"
"Colette! We did it! The beautiful little rat did it! …Colette? You okay, chérie?"
"Mon amour, could you unzip my flight suit and get the baby out, please?"
Hey, I always said the one thing that's predictable about life is its unpredictability. Seems the shock jolted the baby loose. Here Linguini was, all fired up about getting her this enormous bouquet of roses in her hospital room, and the kid pops out with the jerk of the parachute. I know rat babies just pop out, but I'd read human babies take a bit more effort than that. There's Colette for you, with her weird great-grandmothers. Go figure.
So there we are, swinging at the end of the 'chute, and Linguini's trying to get the baby out. I scramble to Colette's front and haul on her zipper, and she kind of reaches in – he has his hands full hanging onto her – and pulls out this little lump of baby human. He – for it's a he – looks all bloody and disgusting, but kinda cute, really. And no membrane covering him – that's what surprises me most. Linguini's wittering on – can't say I blame him, really.
"Shouldn't you hold him upside-down, chérie?"
"What? Why?"
"Well, they do it in hospitals – you know, to get them breathing…"
"Oh, okay." She holds the kid upside-down, and he starts to wail. "Now look! You made him cry!"
"That's healthy, Colette."
She holds him to her chest, and he shuts up. "You sure?"
"Uh, yeah. Pretty sure."
"Get something to cut the cord, Alfredo!"
For a moment I think she means the parachute cord, but then I see she means the umbilical cord still dangling between them.
"Can't this wait, Colette?"
She sets her jaw. "If we are to die, I want my baby to die independent!"
"Oh, for…"
She looks at me. "Could you find something to tie off the cord, mon Chef?"
I end up doing most of the work, as Colette has her hands full of baby and Alfredo has his arms full of Colette and we're all still swinging at the bottom of a 'chute, in case you've forgotten. I fumble around and end up chewing a bit of drawstring off Linguini's suit. Scrambling around like crazy, I tie off the umbilical cord, and Linguini hands me a utility knife. Sterilizing it is a joke in mid-air, so I just go ahead and slice. A rather nasty lump of afterbirth, which I know some people pride themselves on cooking with, falls away to the distant ground.
The thing done, I notice Colette has only been holding the baby with one hand. The other has been hovering the whole time, to catch me if I fall.
"Can we give a bit of thought to where we're landing now?" I ask, seeing a body of water surrounded by concrete come up beneath us. Probably the safest option. I tug at Linguini's hair and point.
"You're right Little Chef. Let's aim for the lake," says Linguini, bless him. He always does understand me when it matters most.
The rest of the descent flashes by in a panic of steering and maneuvering. The burnished sheen of the reservoir's sunlit surface comes up beneath us, so fast it sends a chill through me, and I push all thoughts of too-shallow water and getting crushed against a concrete bottom out of my mind. We haven't come this far to fail now.
"WHOOOOOA!" is the last thing I hear as we plunge beneath the surface.