The Ratkin stood in the shattered warehouse doorway watching the knife-grinder heap his meagre possessions onto his battered cart.  Behind him on the damp cobbled street his heavily pregnant wife waited patiently, a bulging carpetbag on her narrow shoulders.  This was happening every night now in the city.  People fleeing in their hundreds to escape the bombing.  The Ratkin didn’t know where they were going, it seemed to her that everywhere was in ruins.  She’d been downriver to Midship point and seen the devastation of the docks – seen the dead dumped into the pits.  She, a Ratkin; saw everything, but no one ever saw her, or cared. More