King Rat (42 page)

His eyes looked at the things of the past — the table where his arm had rested, the bed where he had recovered, the bench he and the King had shared, the chairs they had laughed in — already ancient and molding.

In the corner was a wad of Japanese dollars. He picked them up and stared at them. Then he let them drop, one by one. As the notes settled, flies clustered on them, swarmed and clustered back once more.

Peter Marlowe stood in the doorway. “Good-by,” he said with finality to all that had belonged to his friend. “Good-by and thanks.”

He walked out of the hut and along the jail wall until he reached the line of trucks that waited patiently at the gate of Changi.

Forsyth was standing beside the last truck, glad beyond gladness that his work was finished. He was exhausted and the mark of Changi was in his eyes. He ordered the convoy to begin.

The first truck moved and the second and the third, and all the trucks left Changi, and only once did Peter Marlowe look back.

When he was far away.

When Changi looked like a pearl in an emerald oyster shell, blue-white under a bowl of tropical skies — when Changi stood on a slight rise and around was a belt of green, and farther off the green gave way to blue-green seas, and the seas to infinity of horizon. And then, in his turn, he looked back no more.

That night Changi was deserted. By men. But the insects remained.

And the rats.

They were still there. Beneath the hut. And many had died, for they had been forgotten by their captors. But the strongest were still alive.

Adam was tearing at the wire to get at the food outside his cage, fighting the wire as he had been fighting it for as long as he had been within the cage. And his patience was rewarded. The side of the cage ripped apart and he fell on the food and devoured it. And then he rested and with renewed strength he tore at another cage, and in the course of time devoured the flesh within.

Eve joined him and he had his fill of her and she of him and then they foraged in consort. Later the whole side of a trench collapsed, and many cages were opened and the living fed on the dead, and the living-weak became food for the living-strong until the survivors were equally strong. And then they fought among themselves and foraged.

And Adam ruled, for he was the King. Until the day his will to be King deserted him. Then he died, food for a stronger. And the strongest was always the King, not by strength alone, but King by cunning and luck and strength together. Among the rats.

The End