Overhead, the mycelium network lights up in waves of twinkling blue, coursing along the roots of our camouflage trees as I pound belowdecks, trying not to cry out as my right ankle and left pectoral spike in pain. The right ankle comes from a hole in RJS Fremantle’s wooden decking where the camouflage’s root system pierced through. The left pectoral comes from tiny, needlelike claws attached to the kitten in my pocket.
Wait, did I close the hatch behind me? I must have. Can I hear the monkeys? No. So it’s closed. Or have they already gone silent?
No time. I slam switches next to the Kitten Room, then run to the galley, almost tripping as I climb through the door. Made it.
I make a beeline to my assigned seat on the hard metal floor, ankle pounding. Okay. Checklist. Identify the monkeys’ overhead predator call, check. Hit the right tree to activate the mycelium network for those belowdecks, check. Close hatch, check. I hope. Lock the Kitten Room and turn off the Button Board Master Switch, check. Go to assigned place for air raid, check. Only thing left is to deactivate the galley button—
“Scritches.”
Oh shit. Toothless must have—I scrabble at my pocket and get a mouthful of teeth on my finger for my trouble. It wasn’t him. It’s not Herc, the white-and-black on duty belowdecks today. He’s lounging on Able Seaman Ila’s lap, busy cleaning his single white sock. None of the other cats should be on duty except Lila, and she doesn’t like the galley’s metal floor, the picky princess.
Never mind who. Have to turn off the button board. If the patrol is already overhead—they say an adult Quetzalcoatlus can hear a dolphin squeal twenty feet under water, and if they alert their pilots to take a closer look at the innocently floating island, one among a chain of hundreds of pretty tropical islands, and the pilots realize the grey and green of the ground is paint, that between the swaying canopy is a command tower . . .
I’m still not quite sure how Able Seaman Pol became Cat Duty Officer Pol (for a single giddy moment, I thought it was an actual officer rating, but it’s just a job description). It might have been because Herc follows me around telling me about his day, or because Stet likes to ride on my shoulder, or because a random alley cat dropped her tiny black kitten into my lap last shore leave, or more probably because Cat Duty Officer Odile died in the Battle and there was no one else without extra duties. But it means I feed the cats and clean the litter boxes and train tiny black kittens that ride in my breast pocket, and it also means if an enemy pilot triggers the load in his Quetzalcoatlus’s belly net onto Fremantle because a cat used the galley button board, it would be my fault. Not the fault of the monkeys that chewed through the wires connecting it to the Master Switch last time they escaped belowdecks. Mine.
Heart pounding, I switch off the board. Just in time, too, as the creature presses the button down again.
It is not a cat.
It’s a grey speckled octopus the size of a dessert plate. It slides off the button and back on again. And again, more frantically. Finally, it sets itself right on top and starts pumping up and down like a miniature plunger, its colour shifting red.
What the living hells?
The pests usually scatter to the bilges whenever there’s an alarm. So why’s this one still here?
I try to catch someone’s eye, but Ila is busy scratching a blissed-out Herc under his chin, scars still raw and red where falling pieces of hull had sliced off the last joints of her hand. The others are looking up at the tangle of roots that now make up most of the ceiling, faces grey and taut as they wait for the brief burst of phosphorescent spores from the mycelium network signaling that the monkeys and birds have gone back to making a racket on deck.
The turned-off button isn’t making a lot of noise, but if the octopus starts twisting at the button cover, it might break it. The monkeys sometimes break the on-deck ones, and I’ve seen the pests unscrew pickle jars. Why pickle jars? No idea. But my duties include the upkeep of the button boards, so . . .
I carefully reach out and scratch it on its bulbous head. I mean, what the heck. The octopus wants scritches, it’s getting scritches. It feels—weird. Firm, but yielding. A little wet, not really slimy, and underneath that, velvety. It stops pumping and leans into my hand, squirming until my nails reach the right spot.
Overhead, a Quetzalcoatlus screeches.
I bite my lip to keep the memories from rising too far—the pain in my ears from the concussive roar of the bombs, the acrid taste of smoke, the triumphant cries of Quetzalcoatlusses.
Have you ever heard a ship die?
Our whole convoy died that day, nothing more than columns of smoke black against the horizon and pinpricks of red plummeting down as our pterosaurs fell, their cries too far to hear. But RJS Adele, our sister ship, was little more than a sweep wire’s length away as metal groaned in agonized screams, the white-crested waves shrieking with the voices of escaping seamen. Some of those sitting here in cold-perspiring silence come from Adele. Some more from Smock, who died a day later as the first patrol caught up with us, just before the concussive force of a bomb displaced something in our engine. Before we became an island.
We’re still barely over complement.
A clammy, nauseous feeling climbs up my throat, and my left thumb strokes Toothless the Kitten’s soft fur as he chomps on my index finger and the right scratches the velvety-wet octopus; stroke, stroke, stroke, to keep it all down where it belongs. The little octopus is also afraid, shrinking into my hand and turning the smooth white of the “scritches” button, complete with little black dots to imitate the writing. That’s how good they are. We used to step on them all the time.
Toothless, the little harridan, is not afraid of anything and keeps attacking my fingers.
Another Quetzalcoatlus calls out.
It’s been three months. Three months of arthritic nights running and day-watches spent cooped up belowdecks, moored to look like an offshore island. Three months of going silent whenever the mycelium network lights up as enemy air patrols scour the skies for us. Three months of the deck above us slowly succumbing to the roots no one expected the trees to put out, cracking and splintering around us. Three months of cutting away roots from pipes and wiring and chasing monkeys out of the galley and peeling octopuses out of—well, everything. Three months, and more to go. We’re almost there. A few more weeks, and we’ll reach our allies. Just a few more weeks.
Air raids are like their own little pocket eternities. Darkness, the loud silence of sixteen people breathing, the scent of stagnant salt air, the lingering aromas of the last meal, and the wet, earthy smell of the roots overhead tickling your nose. Touch is good. It grounds me. Not so much people—people are too many different things at once, skin and hair and fabric and expectations. Soft cat fur. Velvety octopus. Those are better. Time disappears and I settle back into my skin.
A brief flash of blue among the roots startles me. Suddenly, the world is complicated again, a cacophony of people getting up, talking, boots, chairs, lights, colours. Toothless has fallen asleep, hanging limply half out of my pocket. The little octopus shrinks back, then waves an arm in the air before sliding to the floor and disappearing into a drain.
Still overwhelmed by life beginning again around me, I wave back.
• • •
Dazed, I go back to my duties on deck. Until now, my interactions with octopuses had consisted of fishing them out of machinery, pipes, cupboards, or pickle jars, and inadvertently stepping on them.
They turned up shortly after the Battle. Belowdecks, theories ranged from a population of tree-dwelling octopuses brought on board with the camouflage vegetation—along with the green-grey, fist-sized monkeys, a smattering of lizards and six different species of nesting birds—to their getting caught in the fishing nets or climbing aboard via the sweep wire or even the anchor chain.
We—well, I—had managed to teach the cats that “pest” now designated not just the ration-eating rodents that seem to spontaneously spawn on any Navy ship, but also the little chittering monkeys that sometimes stage raids on the pantry, and eight-armed cephalopods. Unfortunately, the cats refuse to hunt them ever since Jerrod got a faceful of ink. For a week after, he cursed “litterbox” whenever he saw one. Word got around, I guess.
I make a note on my clipboard to add octopod button-pressing to my daily report, then jot down the location of some high-hanging fruit for the night watches. It’s another perk of our camouflage—if only the roots and their early warning system weren’t destroying our deck, our pipes and our only gun. I take big, deep breaths of fresh air and let Toothless down to chase the bipedal jeweled lizards that dart about. I won’t have another day watch topside for another two weeks. Everyone gets a turn, but we have to stay hidden under the trees, just in case. We wouldn’t get even that if the mycelium network activated on its own. Well, it does—it reacts in little blinks to a lot of things, but the rolling waves of the alert only happen if you hit this one specific tree. And you have to pay attention because after the first warning, the monkeys and birds go silent.
But listening for monkey alerts doesn’t mean taking my eyes off the kitten. Shit. He probably followed a lizard somewhere. He can take them, but sometimes gets distracted by their long tails and forgets about their front claws and teeth. I start crawling through the underbrush, my trousers catching on twisted roots and the warped, rotting planks of the deck. Monkeys chitter and my breath catches, but they’re just scolding me for my lack of decorum.
Toothless has a very distinct hiss, like a tinny teakettle. It leads me to the button board at the tower base, where he’s telling a burgundy-coloured octopus exactly what he thinks of it. This one’s bigger, rippling its arms at the kitten arching his back and bouncing sideways on all four feet in that ridiculous kitten version of threatening.
Usually, when an octopus sees us, their first instinct is to camouflage, though they’ve learned not to stay camouflaged or they’ll get stepped on. This one waves.
I wave back.
Maybe I’ll get another job title out of this. Octopus waving duty officer or something.
Then it moves over a button on the board.
“Treat,” it says.
I’ve been cat duty officer long enough that some things are automatic. The little bag with the dried sardines we use as cat treats is already in my hand by the time I process what’s going on, so what the heck. I pull out a sardine.
Toothless perks his head up, ears twitching.
“Treat,” the octopus repeats.
I hold out the treat.
Suction-cupped arms snake up and grab it, and it disappears under the octopus to wherever the heck its mouth is.
Then, because I’m supposed to be training fuzzy black kittens, not cephalopods, I nudge the octopus off the button.
“Treat,” I tell Toothless, and give him a sardine. He grabs it, drops it, and pounces on it, determined to make the kill himself. Little weirdo. I love him.
“Treat.”
Something calls out, but it’s only a disagreement between a bird and a monkey. I turn back to the octopus, unimpressed. “I already gave you one.”
“Treat.”
I roll my eyes and press buttons. “Treats all gone.”
Two of the octopus’s arms hover uncertainly in the air. Then it slides over to another button. “All gone.”
“Yes,” I confirm carefully. “Treats all gone.”
It slithers away. Toothless has killed his sardine and is gnawing on the remains of its head. I pick him up and hold him up to my face. “I just talked to an octopus.”
“Mrrrew,” Toothless agrees and twists to lick my sardine-scented fingers.
Somewhere, a monkey calls.
• • •
Something sails down from the top bunk as I’m putting on my shoes. I catch it reflexively. It’s the grey speckled octopus, or one who looks just like it. Who knows?
“Stupid pests,” the top bunk grumbles. It’s Cal, so Rita must have a long watch.
I stare at the octopus in my hand. The suction cups prickle slightly as it latches on, and something scrapes my palm. I pick it up by its head and look underneath.
Huh. I kind of always thought their mouths were rows of tentacles or maybe teeth, like a suckerfish. But it’s a beak. An actual beak, like a parrot’s. I settle it absentmindedly on my shoulder and look over at the orange tabby, Stet, who is playing with a mouse and completely ignoring a red octopus turning a combination lock.
I sigh. The red octopus opens my foot locker. I go over and close it again.
Stet saunters to the barracks button board, mouse in mouth.
“Pest,” she tells me proudly.
“Good job,” I press. I point to the red octopus. “Pest. Catch.”
She deposits the mouse at my feet. “Good job,” she insists.
It is a good job so of course she gets a treat and pets. Stet likes it when you scratch her back.
I throw the dead mouse out the porthole and remove the red octopus from my combination lock yet again. Should I throw it out like the dead mouse? Down a drain? They are horribly rigid and impossible to stuff anywhere until they aren’t and disappear into cracks even a cat can’t get through. I end up just putting it on my other shoulder, because I’m running late. I grab Stet and reach for my clipboard in its holder at the head of my shared bunk, next to one of Ila’s charcoal sketches and Gren’s trading cards. I swallow. Gren didn’t make it. Neither Ila nor I have had the heart to take down their cards.
Stet squirms, her paws twitching, aching to bat the usurpers riding my shoulders, and—oh, shit. Did I even fill out my report for last shift? I scrabble at the forms and—yes. I did. Okay, good. But I forgot to put the talking octopuses in. So I’ll do that this shift, and add the thing with the combination lock. Okay.
First stop is the Kitten Room. I am immediately swarmed by cats who have never in their life had any treats or playtime. This is the best part of my duties as cat duty officer.
While Herc chats, the others demand “feather,” so I play a bit with the feather on a string. No kibble today, they’re on reduced rations like everybody else. Wait—did I change the calendar in the room yet? No, do that—okay, kibble tomorrow. I make a note on my checklist. Right. Shifts. Stet’s off now, Herc’s back on pest control below decks, and Lila’s got medic duty—she’s one of our two therapy cats. Jerrod still needs another rest shift before returning to the engine room. He’s the only one who can be trusted not to push the non-cat buttons. Because, well, that would be bad.
I’m collecting mashed fish from Cook when the alarm sounds.
It’s an actual alarm, because it’s nighttime and the Quetzalcoatlus are not a nocturnal species. Or maybe there are no night patrols because the pilots can’t see in the dark. Whichever.
The alarm is three-long-two-short—a mine. Am I on support duty this shift? Oops. I am.
I race to bring the food to the Kitten Room and convince a clingy Toothless to stay there because it’s nighttime and he’s small and black and will get lost on deck, and then I run up.
Our Specialist for Mine Warfare, Chief Petty Officer Reep, looks like a pirate. I think it’s his face—like weathered tree bark, his lips thin over his large teeth. Or maybe it’s the eyepatch—not all of him made it off Smock. Or maybe it’s the sleeping red-and-green-feathered Sinomacrops on his shoulder. I used to think it was a cute, snub-nosed bat, but apparently it’s a small pteranodon, and it’s diurnal, unlike bats, or Quetzalcoatlusses. Its name is Murray.
I skid to a stop next to Able Seaman Ila. Chief Reep side-eyes me grudgingly, his attention on the kite wire, barely visible in the light of a portable lamp. We used to have proper deck lights, but vegetation happened.
“Line is cut,” he huffs now that everyone is here. “Swimmer’s in the water.”
We nod, nervously eyeing the horizon. We’re a minesweeper, and a minesweeper clears mines. A minesweeper clears mines even when we’re hiding from the enemy after a resounding defeat on a ship that is falling apart.
The problem is that sea mines aren’t built to be opened. We can’t defuse them. And because we’re hiding from the enemy after a resounding defeat on a ship that is falling apart, we can’t detonate them in the water, like we were built for. That, and the vegetation got our gun.
But because we’re a minesweeper, we can’t leave them floating around where anyone could bump into them, either. Just because our convoy’s gone, just because we can’t do a proper formation sweep since our two sister ships died—well, the people living on these islands aren’t our allies. But they aren’t our enemies. They didn’t ask for this war and every mine we cut makes them that much safer. So we have a dozen padded crates hiding under the canopy of trees, draped in vines, and now we’ll have a few more, because there is rarely only one mine. They’re accumulating because the last few islands we got water from were inhabited, so we couldn’t leave them on the beach. Not everybody knows not to hit a sea mine with a hammer.
So now we are living on a floating island where the camouflage that is keeping us safe from things that go boom thrown down on our heads is also destroying the top deck, which is full of sea mines, which will go boom if it collapses on our heads.
Welcome to the Navy. We have peripatetic ecosystems.
A whistle pierces the inky darkness, and Able Seaman Ila and I move to position the crane. It’s a bit of a chimera, cobbled together by the machinists, and it’s hand-cranked because the monkeys chew power cables. I start as the octopuses flop down from my shoulders and into puddles on the deck. I’d forgotten about them.
We get the crane positioned and lower the hook, then, at the diver’s signal, hoist it back up. Chief Reep says nothing, but keeps glancing towards the horizon. It’s heading towards dawn; another hour or two, maybe. We need to get near an island and anchor, soon.
The mine is nothing but a gleaming black nothing-ball aureoled against the deep azure of the horizon, its anchor cable dangling uselessly, cut by our sweep wire. We lower it into a padded crate, holding our breaths, eyes on where the sky meets the sea. It takes more than a tap to set one off, but the difference between a tap and a hit is not always easy to judge. Chief Reep punches the all clear and the engine rumbles and grinds beneath us, whining in protest. This bronchital sound is the reason our mad dash to safety is taking months, not weeks, and apparently, it’s an easy fix if only we could take the engine apart.
We stop twice more to hoist up mines, racing rheumatically against the approaching dawn, ears peeled for the chirps of early-riser birds, the warning cries of monkeys, the screech of a Quetzalcoatlus. The sky is tinged aquamarine and pink by the time the engine splutters to a halt and Chief Reep activates the rollers to pull in the otter and kite that keep the sweep wire with the cutters that save all of our lives at the right depth and the oropesa float that stretches it out behind us.
“Hey, Seaman!” Everybody stops.
“Not you. You.” He’s pointing at me. Oh no, what did I forget? The crane is dismantled, the loose foliage back atop the roller, the oropesa and kites in their cradles—what, what, what?
He gestures to a puddle of water cupped by the warped wood of the deck. There are four octopuses in it, dabbing at each other with their sinuous arms.
“Um . . .”
“Not your pets?”
Oh. I’d put the octopuses on my shoulders because that’s what I do with animals in my hands. But they’re not my pets and I need to go bring Jerrod to the Engine Room and get Toothless and do some training before the shift is over. But Chief Reep is looking at me, petting Murray who is blinking awake on his shoulder, so I kneel down.
“I, uh, only had two.”
“They come up on the sweep wire, and with the mines.”
“Oh.” I pick up the two I think were mine. “Um, sir?”
“Get back to your duties, kid.”
“Aye, sir. Only—they’ve been using the button boards, sir.”
“Say what?”
• • •
RJS Fremantle has six officers. We’d lost several in the Battle and gained Chief Reep and an extraneous lieutenant from the wreck of Smock.
They are all currently staring at me. Well, at the two octopuses on my lap. But also at me.
Toothless doesn’t like that the attention isn’t on him and says so, loudly, but since he’s speaking in High Cat no one is paying attention. It isn’t their trousers being attacked by tiny, prickly claws.
We’re in the Kitten Room because it has the widest array of buttons. Skimble, an elderly tortie, is sleeping curled up next to Stet in a hammock on one of the cat trees. Unfortunately, none of the octopuses seem particularly chatty right now. Should I start? Or should that be the captain, a narrow, tired person who’s actually only a lieutenant commander because Fremantle is too small to rate a real captain?
Toothless bites down hard.
“Biting no,” I press. This I know I am allowed, because this is training, and I’m cat duty officer.
Toothless slinks off, affronted. He meanders around the buttons, tail twitching, then steps on “treat.”
“Treat,” I agree, smiling broadly, and give him a treat. I squeal excitedly. “I think this is his first real press!” Then I remember I’m just an able seaman and who knows what the protocol is when sitting in a room surrounded by all of Fremantle‘s officers, speech buttons, two sleeping cats, a black kitten, and two octopuses.
No one seems to mind, though. So if that’s okay . . .
I put down one of the octopuses near the “Treat” button and press it. “Treat,” I say, and give it a piece of dried fish. It’s the red one I gave a treat to before. Maybe. Then I press “Scritches” and pet the grey one.
The speckled grey octopus slides off the scritches button and seems to be pressing buttons randomly. “Smell.” “Bed.” “All gone.” So much for that.
“Where. Where. Where. Where.” The red one seems to have found one it likes.
Well, in cat training it’s important to affirm even random presses, at least at the beginning.
“What where?” I press.
The octopus undulates its tentacles.
“Where.” It slides off and navigates between buttons, touching them with its arms as if to taste them. “All gone.”
“Where all gone?”
“Yes.” It’s the grey octopus.
“I’m sorry,” I tell them. It’s pretty safe. If something’s all gone, people tend to be sad. Cats, too. Probably octopuses.
“Where scritches tasty,” the grey octopus tells me.
One of the lieutenants shifts. “Well now, that’s just nonsense.”
Maybe. But the thing is, Button Cat—it’s a language, see? It has its own syntax, and it also has a very limited vocabulary, because there’s only so much room for buttons. The cats use “tasty” to mean good, or happy, or fun, just like they use “litterbox” to curse.
The lieutenant-commander-captain sighs. “Look, Seaman—Pol, was it?—see what you can get until the end of your shift. After that, in your own time, okay? And if you could tell them to stay out of the machinery, I think we’d all appreciate it.”
The officers file out to more important things. Chief Reep is still there, feeding Murray mealworms. And Lieutenant Orro. She’s the chief machine specialist; a tall, stocky, dark-skinned woman. She probably just wants to see if I can get them to stay out of the engines.
“Where all gone tasty?” I ask. Not sure I’m saying what I think I’m saying.
“Yes.”
“All gone.”
“Pests”—I don’t know their names and we don’t have buttons for them even if I did—“want where scritches?”
“You’re asking where they want to be scratched?” Jerrod isn’t very talkative, so Lieutenant Orro doesn’t speak much Cat.
I shake my head. “I think they’re using ‘where’ for a place. Question words come at the end of a sentence, see? But there’s ‘where all gone’ and there’s ‘where scritches,’ which I think means here. We don’t have buttons for ‘here’ or ‘home;’ we just have specific places like ‘outside,’ ‘galley’ or ‘Kitten Room.’”
Herc saunters in and heads straight to a water dish. “Water,” he informs me afterwards.
“Yes, thank you Herc,” I tell him as he rubs against me. Herc likes to give me a running commentary on his life.
I think as I run my fingers through his fur. We don’t have a “how” button. We do have “why.”
“Where all gone why?” I ask.
“Ball.”
“I don’t understand.” It’s one button. It’s really useful.
“Ball. Loud,” the grey octopus replies.
“Rude,” the red one specifies.
A loud, rude ball?
Suddenly Chief Reep leans over and presses “Ball loud rude.”
“Where all gone.”
He leans back and pops a mealworm in his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “They come on the sweep wire. The mines—I wonder if the anchors are destroying their homes?”
“But how do they know they’re loud?” Lieutenant Orro asks. “We haven’t detonated any since they came on board.”
“But there were plenty detonating before.” Before. Before the Battle. Before the patrols caught up with RJS Smock. Before we raided some poor island for trees and bonus monkeys. Before we set off for a two-week sprint to whom we hope are still our allies, that is taking us three months.
Lieutenant Orro frowns. “You think they made the connection? That we take the mines away?
Chief Reep shrugs.
“But why come on board?”
“Water. Water. Water,” the red octopus asks. The smaller grey simply plops itself into one of the cats’ water bowls and fills it. I take the red one over and settle it into a second one.
The chief machine specialist is watching the little speckled octopus turn the faucet with an odd expression on her face.
“Say, don’t they open pickle jars?”
• • •
It’s weird to be out in the daylight without a protective canopy of trees, without miniscule monkeys chittering overhead and jeweled bipedal lizards darting over my boots. It’s weird to trust the ground beneath me, to not have an ear constantly peeled for a specific monkey cry.
The allies giving us asylum wanted to press Fremantle into service for their fleet but were rather stumped by a floating ecosystem with minesweeper capabilities.
So I am standing on a dock with five mewling pet crates at my feet and a bigger crate filled with all the button boards.
I also have a tank with two octopuses in it.
People in crisp white uniforms and lots of jangling medals walk up to me. I remember to salute. “Able Seaman Pol. Cat duty officer and chief of cephalopod communication, sirs.” No, it’s not an actual chief rating, but I’m told there might be one in there somewhere, if I play my cards right.
It wasn’t easy. There weren’t enough words. We did add a few to the button boards, but trying to get concepts across turned out to be just as complicated whether you were recontextualising old words or teaching them new ones.
The first thing, you see, is that octopuses can get into almost any hole, and they can open pickle jars.
The second thing is that the octopuses needed a fast ride in our general direction.
Which was hilarious considering Fremantle had been the ship equivalent of an arthritic granny counting her change as she walked, but it was still faster than an octopus can swim. We think they were telling us that the mines were destroying their breeding grounds, or else octopuses have cities nobody knew anything about, because “bed” was the only button we had and frankly none of us had the spoons nor the time to figure out the details.
So Able Seaman Ila, who hasn’t let missing the upper joints of her right hand stop her from drawing, sketched out what exactly the octopuses needed to unscrew and rescrew inside the engine and then two days later they were in their new refugee homes, or busy making baby octopuses, whichever it was. And we—we could actually make significant time during the night. There were still patrols, and the deck finally caved in over the galley so the monkeys got into the pantry meaning even less rations and everyone squeezing into the barracks all day for the last few days, but then we were in range of our ally’s anti-air missiles and Fremantle was still, amazingly, afloat.
Some of the octopuses are staying. They are hoping to keep mines and ship’s anchors away from their homes in the future (we think). The lieutenant-commander-captain is hoping for a medal and Lieutenant Orro is hoping for a new Navy Corps with octopus machinists. The cats, I am told insistently, are hoping for scritches and treats.
I breathe in the harbor air with its faint smell of cars and street vendors and turn to follow the brass. Toothless clambers onto my right shoulder and I set Grey the octopus on my left and I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten something important on board. Behind me, on what is left of Fremantle, the monkeys chitter loudly and there is a brief flash of bright blue.
Who knows, maybe I’ll get that chief rating someday.
• • •