The Constant Rabbit

‘I hope not,’ said the earless rabbit, ‘and you can call me Lugless; every other Fudd does.’

‘I’d be happy to call you anything you want,’ I said, trying to be accommodating.

‘And I’d be happy if you didn’t speak to me at all,’ said Lugless, ‘but I have a feeling I’m going to be disappointed. The Senior Group Leader told me to report directly to him if you get pointlessly sentimental over our little furry friends.’

‘Lugless is a straight talker,’ said Flemming in the awkward silence that followed. ‘Agent AY-002, let me introduce you to the rest of team.’

‘You come highly recommended,’ said Sergeant Boscombe as they shook hand/paws. ‘Your kind loathe you.’

‘They aren’t my kind,’ said Lugless in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘They took everything from me and I owe them nothing.’

‘Good to hear,’ said Boscombe, and introduced the others. Lugless greeted them all in a distant yet businesslike manner, but didn’t direct any terse words towards any of the others. I had the sudden worrying realisation that I was on Operations today to be tested. If my loyalty to the department remained in question, I was probably finished, in spite of my skill at spotting.

‘Take a seat, everyone,’ said Lugless, switching on the overhead projector and pulling a bundle of acetate sheets from his case. Rabbits – all rabbits, not just ones who worked in Compliance – despised PowerPoint presentations, and not because it meant fiddling around with paw-unfriendly keyboards or pointers. No, it was rather the rabbit’s wholly practical approach to technology. If something worked perfectly adequately and did not actually need to be replaced, they’d stick with it. Most of the colonies still used fax machines, printing presses and manual telephone switchboards, although this was probably not just a technological issue, but the fact that rabbits like to gossip, and manual switchboards made eavesdropping not only easy, but irresistible.

‘An unidentified Labstock rabbit,’ said Lugless placing the first acetate on the projector, ‘similar to thousands like him. For the purposes of this operation, he’ll be known as John Flopsy¹³ 7770.’

We stared at the nondescript white rabbit that had come up on the screen.

‘What’s he done?’ asked one of the compliance officers.

‘It’s not what he’s done,’ said Lugless, ‘or about what he will do. It’s about what he knows. Deep intel says the Bunty might be hanging out in Colony One, not twenty-five miles from where we’re standing right now.’

The ‘Bunty’ to whom he referred would be the Venerable Bunty,¹⁴ the rabbit’s spiritual leader for the past decade and a rabbit of considerable influence. Her whereabouts were a closely guarded secret as Smethwick had once said in public that ‘if we had Bunty in our hands, the rabbits would do anything we asked of them’. She remained a rabbit of great interest to the authorities, but had always evaded capture. Quite how she had done this was a mystery, as she routinely moved from colony to colony in order to offer spiritual and culinary guidance, as Lago, the Grand Matriarch, was as big on home cooking as she was on metaphysical well-being. It didn’t help that no one knew what she looked like, and she usually gave sermons in disguise so few rabbits knew either – insurance against any rabbits who could be turned by the Compliance Taskforce.

‘She has a pernicious influence on the rabbit,’ said Flemming, ‘and the Senior Group Leader wants her in custody to more fully ascertain her motives.’

By this he probably meant that it was actually Smethwick who wanted her for questioning, but the PM liked to stay one step removed from anything too controversial.

‘Are we thinking of snatching the Bunty from inside the colony?’ asked Boscombe, seemingly quite excited about the idea as it probably involved several helicopters, lots of hardware and a totally knock-out cool code name.

‘Eventually,’ said Whizelle, ‘but in truth it’s only rumoured she’s in Colony One, figuring out ways to “Complete the Circle”.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Boscombe.

‘We think,’ said Flemming in the manner of someone more comfortable with conjecture than truth, ‘that it may relate to the rabbit’s plan to weaponise their reproductive capabilities in order to overrun the UK.’

‘Quite,’ said Whizelle. ‘The geographically restricting environment of MegaWarren is needed now more than ever to curb the ugly spectre of a sustained campaign of LitterBombing.’

Everyone in the room nodded sagely at this; it was an ongoing concern, but with little evidence to support it. The Council of Coneys branded the LitterBomb notion ‘patently ridiculous’, along with other leporiphobic conspiracy theories, such as a desire for ‘Universal Veganism’, a change to running the country ‘the Rabbit Way’ and a wholesale switch to the worship of Lago, the rabbit goddess.