The Constant Rabbit

Within an hour there were certainly a hundred or so, all standing in the road outside, ears flat on their backs. I could hear them murmuring, too, but not words – numbers. Rabbits weren’t fond of glib and pithy yet ultimately meaningless political slogans so used protest longevity as their chief tool. Since that could get very boring, they took to crowd-crunching extremely tricky mathematical calculations to pass the time, which was oddly disconcerting as the murmuring made little sense to non-mathematicians and at a distance sounded soft and restful, like falling water. The rabbits remained fairly motionless during a riot, but would eventually start to keel over from dehydration or lack of sleep after a couple of days. At which point they would be removed to a tent to be revived – and then replaced by a fresh rabbit, who would have been queuing patiently to have the honour of participation.

The longest riot in history took place in Runcorn over the arrest of two juvenile rabbits accused of stealing a packet of Ryvita, which might have ended without drama but for a stubborn regional commander who refused to give in. It lasted ninety-six days. Mass-arresting the rioting rabbits, waiting until they dropped or even using water cannon and tear gas made no difference – they were simply replaced by more rabbits. Even cordoning off the location of the riot didn’t work as the rabbits just shifted the protest a hundred yards to the left, and carried on as before.

The Runcorn Ryvita Riot was a resounding win by the rabbits and, as a mathematical crowd-crunching side note, led to the discovery of a fifteen-hundred-digit prime number that someone had missed. More importantly, it made the authorities concede, with great reluctance, that any rabbit riot had to be dealt with using dialogue and compromise if any useful resolution could be achieved.

The first mass email arrived within the hour, informing the building what we’d already been told fifty-five minutes before: we were on lockdown. The despondency soon gave way to a cheery school-end-of-term atmosphere, with everyone gathering in the corridors to look out of the windows, knowing that since they were semi-silvered, none of the rabbits could see in. While I tried to get some work done, we were interrupted by Dennis, the Taskforce employee who always organised the office sweepstakes: pick a rioter and if your rabbit falls over first, you win the kitty.

‘The only slots that are left are the fifth, ninth and seventeenth rabbit from the right,’ he said, a bag of tenners in one hand and a clipboard in the other. ‘Can I put you down for one each?’

Toby obliged but I didn’t. I made some excuse about having no cash.

After an hour of tantalisingly complex three-body gravitational mathematics, Patrick Finkle turned up with a Labstock that I recognised as Ansel DG-6721, a cousin of Fenton and the local representative of the Grand Council of Coneys. They both came to the front door of the Taskforce HQ and demanded the release of the four prisoners. They were told that this was quite impossible as, firstly, they weren’t ‘prisoners’ but ‘guests’, and secondly, the release would require confirming who was in custody – which would be a potential breach of the rabbit’s data protection rights. Finkle replied that if the Senior Group Leader wouldn’t negotiate within sixty minutes they’d have a thousand rabbits outside within twenty-four hours and five thousand within the week – and an unwanted and potentially embarrassing civil disobedience on their hands.

‘Do you think Finkle is kidding?’ asked Toby when the news filtered back to us.

‘No,’ I replied, having heard numerous tales of Finkle’s unswerving dedication to rabbits. It was rumoured he was in a relationship with one, but if he was, he kept it secret. Not out of shame, but because his partner’s liberty would rapidly become a bargaining chip. The Senior Group Leader was already on his way in, and arrived fifteen minutes after Finkle and Ansel’s ultimatum. I got the call I was dreading ten minutes after that, demanding I attend a meeting in the fox’s office.

Mr Ffoxe was already there when I arrived, still dressed in his Sparco overalls as he’d been track-testing his racing Bentley when he got the call. He didn’t look very happy. Lugless and Whizelle had been called down to join us along with heads of departments, Legal, Sergeant Boscombe and the local representative of RabToil, the government-owned company that oversaw the many work contracts the rabbit fulfilled. Nigel Smethwick was also there – coincidentally, as it turned out. Although he was prime minister, his constituency had always been Hereford East, and he still liked to maintain strong links with his core supporters.