Someone screamed.
“Or hear one, for example,” Windle added.
Lupine bounded off down a passageway. Windle lurched swiftly after him.
Someone was on their back, trying desperately to fight off a couple of the trolleys. They were bigger than the ones Windle had seen before, with a golden sheen to them.
“Hey!” he yelled.
They stopped trying to gore the prone figure and three-point-turned toward him.
“Oh,” he said, as they got up speed.
The first one dodged Lupine’s jaws and butted Windle full in the knees, knocking him over. As the second passed over him he reached up wildly, grabbed randomly at the metal, and pulled hard. A wheel spun off and the trolley cartwheeled into the wall.
He scrambled up in time to see Arthur hanging grimly onto the handle of the other trolley as the two of them whirred around in a mad centrifugal waltz.
“Let go! Let go!” Doreen screamed.
“I can’t! I can’t!”
“Well, do something!”
There was a pop of inrushing air. The trolley was suddenly not straining against the weight of a middle-aged wholesale fruit and vegetable entrepreneur but only against a small terrified bat. It rocketed into a marble pillar, bounced off, hit a wall and landed on its back, wheels spinning.
“The wheels!” shouted Ludmilla. “Pull the wheels off!”
“I’ll do that,” said Windle. “You help Reg.”
“Is that Reg down there?” said Doreen.
Windle jerked his thumb toward the distant wall. The words “Better late than nev” ended in a desperate streak of paint.
“Show him a wall and a paint pot and he doesn’t know what world he’s in,” said Doreen.
“He’s only got a choice of two,” said Windle, throwing the trolley wheels across the floor. “Lupine, keep a look-out in case there’s anymore.”
The wheels had been sharp, like ice skates. He was definitely feeling tattered around the legs. Now, how did healing go?
Reg Shoe was helped into a sitting position.
“What’s happening?” he said. “No one else was coming in, and I came down here to see where the music was coming from, and the next thing, there’s these wheels—”
Count Arthur returned to his approximately human form, looked around proudly, realized that no one was paying him any attention, and sagged.
“They looked a lot tougher than the others,” said Ludmilla. “Bigger and nastier and covered in sharp edges.”
“Soldiers,” said Windle. “We’ve seen the workers. And now there’s soldiers. Just like ants.”
“I had an ant farm when I was a lad,” said Arthur, who had hit the floor rather heavily and was having temporary trouble with the nature of reality.
“Hang on,” said Ludmilla. “I know about ants. We have ants in the backyard. If you have workers and soldiers, then you must also have a—”
“I know. I know,” said Windle.
“—mind you, they called it a farm, I never saw them doing any farming—”
Ludmilla leaned against the wall.