The excitement over, Flemming returned to her office and Whizelle busied himself with the paperwork, of which there was a lot. I took a break and then, out of a sense of curiosity regarding Connie rather than because of Victor Mallett’s pleas, looked up ‘Clifford Rabbit’ on the RabCoT database. There were two thousand of them, so I narrowed it down to those off-colony and living in Herefordshire. This threw up three hits: one who was single, another who was currently doing time for ‘insider trading on collateralised carrot obligations’10 and one who lived in a temporary address for legal off-colony rabbits in Leominster. I discovered this last rabbit had been married almost exactly a year, and there she was: Constance Grace Iolanthe11 Rabbit, and I double-checked to make sure it was her by accessing her mugshot from the Rabbit Employment Database.
Reading further I learned that she was two years older than me and second generation from the Event. She was a respectable eight short of the rabbit’s ten-child policy, and was twice widowed, which was not unusual. The buck rabbit’s propensity for duelling prior to the breeding season could often have fatal results.
‘What you got there?’ asked Whizelle, looking over from his desk. I explained that a rabbit had turned up in our village and I wanted to know who she was.
‘Local village?’ he asked.
‘Much Hemlock.’
He grunted.
‘Multispecism never worked. Different agendas, you see. It’s not leporiphobic to say they dislike integration – it’s a fact. Does she have any previous you can use to move her on?’
‘She’s not resident in the village,’ I said, then to add plausibility to the data search added: ‘I was just making sure that she wasn’t, um – y’know, on a recce.’
‘Very wise,’ said Whizelle, nodding in agreement, ‘one can never be too careful as far as rabbits are concerned.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Time for the briefing, Knox. Toby, you’ve got two hours’ overtime tonight to make up for Peter’s absence.’
‘No problem,’ said Toby happily, as the Guild of Spotters had negotiated double-time overtime, with generous no-supper-break penalties.
‘Flemming said you weren’t keen on going on Operations,’ said Whizelle as we walked down the stairs towards the briefing room, ‘and even got a bogus note from medical. Any particular reason?’
Whizelle, like Flemming, spoke his mind.
‘I was on Ops the night Dylan Rabbit was misidentified,’ I said, attempting to gain some sort of sympathy, ‘two years ago. The Senior Group Leader’s last operation before promotion.’
‘The whole Dylan Rabbit episode was unfortunate,’ said Whizelle thoughtfully, I think meaning from a PR point of view and not from Dylan’s point of view, as he wound up jugged, ‘but to keep a high level of efficiency in Compliance there has to be a small amount of collateral damage. It’s inevitable. Besides, Dylan Rabbit was probably guilty of something – or would be, given time.’
‘The papers had a field day,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Whizelle, ‘the Smugleftie and Headlights12 had a field day. The others barely covered it. Besides, you weren’t lead Spotter. None of it came back to you.’
This was true. I’d been there on the sidelines only to verify the ID. The fallout over Dylan Rabbit was at least big enough to have Smethwick answer questions in Parliament and required RabCoT to ‘seriously overhaul and thoroughly review their identification criteria’. This reached us as a single memo urging us to ‘show a bit more caution for a few months’ over identification. The thing was, I knew we’d got the wrong rabbit during the hard traffic stop and said so, but I’d been overruled. Not just by the Senior Spotter on duty who had retired once the mistake was made public, but by the Senior Group Leader, who threatened to ‘punch my f***ing lights out’ if I didn’t concur with the identification. And I did.
‘Identification is always a thorny problem,’ said Whizelle, opening the door to the briefing room, ‘and while the Rabbit Support Agency, Grand Council of Coneys and the rest of the woolly-liberal protest groups refuse to countenance RFI chipping or discreetly tattooed barcodes on the ears, we have to rely on Spotters who are only human and can and do make mistakes. Besides,’ he added, ‘if the perfidious bun didn’t pull a Miffy every now and again, none of this would happen. They’ve only themselves to blame.’
Flemming was already there when he walked in the room. She was chatting amiably to five Compliance Officers. I knew them all by sight, but only three by name. Spotters regarded Compliance Officers as gung-ho thugs with only a badge and a union-appointed lawyer to separate them from TwoLegsGood, and COs regarded Spotters as overpaid milksops who had lucked out.
They all introduced themselves to me at Whizelle’s behest, and they remained cordial, as did I, although I could see they were all deeply suspicious of my inclusion on the team. It wasn’t just the Fallen Arches exemption that had kept me off Ops. If you’re going to be part of a politically motivated team, you need a common goal, a common agreement, an understanding.
Our new Intelligence Officer was already there, but wasn’t like any other Intel Officer we’d had, either permanent or loaned.
This one was a rabbit.
Fudds and Flopsies
‘Fudd’ – as in ‘Elmer Fudd’ – was the usual pejorative rabbit term for a human. There were also: Pinko, Fleshy, Homo, Bingo and Rupert. There were others in Rabbity, too, usually reproductive slurs regarding evolutionarily disadvantageous rates of ovulation and shockingly low litter sizes.
The new rabbit Intelligence Officer had a startled look which made it appear that he’d been caught in car headlamps some time in the seventies and was still suffering the trauma. He would have been Labstock owing to his white fur which looked matted and ill-kempt, and he was dressed in an embroidered waistcoat covered by a long duster jacket that had been patched several times with brown corduroy. Rabbits abhorred waste and would often use an item of clothing until it fell off them.
More shockingly, when he removed his battered brown derby hat, there were only two healed-over stumps where his long ears would have sprouted from his head. He’d been, in rabbit terminology, ‘cropped’. His fellow rabbits had meted out the worst possible punishment for his unknown and presumably heinous crime and banished him from the rabbithood. Most rabbits took the honourable way out and dug themselves a lonely burrow in which to expire – but a few, consumed by humiliation and loss, wandered the country as outcasts, attempting to find absolution in any way they could. Some, like this one, flipped to the other side, knowing they could not be hated any more than they were already, but still knowing they would have to wear the burden of their sins for all to see, every day, for ever.
‘A rabbit without ears,’ a rabbit would say, ‘is less of a rabbit than nothing.’
One of the officers might have stared for longer than was polite, for the earless rabbit said in a low and unusually threatening growl: ‘What are you staring at, Fudd?’
‘Nothing,’ said the officer.
‘This is Agent Douglas AY-002,’ said Flemming, introducing the cropped rabbit warmly and to low gasps of recognition from the room, ‘vouched for by the Senior Group Leader, no less, and transferred from the Swindon office. Treat him as you would a human,’ she added, enthused by having a rabbit onside against the rabbit, ‘his record is exemplary, his dislike of rabbits well known.’