The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (17 page)

Without thinking, he touched the wound. It was healing badly, still leaking blood, and there was going to be a huge scar there forever. He brought his hand up, red with his own blood, and the idea came to him right out of his bones.

He walked along the rows touching each rat just above the eyes, leaving a red mark.

“And afterward,” he said quietly, “people will say, ‘They went there, and they did it, and they came back out of the Dark Wood, and this is how they know their own.'”

He looked across their heads to Sardines, who raised his hat. That broke a spell. The rats started to breathe again. But something of the spell was still there, lodged in the gleam of an eye and the twitch of a tail.

“Ready to die for the Clan, Sardines?” Darktan shouted.

“No, boss! Ready to kill!”

“Good,” said Darktan. “Let's go. We
love
the Dark Wood! It belongs to us!”

 

The smell of light drifted along the tunnels and reached the face of Maurice, who sniffed it up.

Peaches! She was mad about light. It was more or less all Dangerous Beans could see. She always
carried a few matches. Mad! Creatures who lived in darkness, carrying matches! Well, obviously not
mad
when you thought about it, but even so…

The rats behind were pushing him in that direction.

I'm being played with, he thought. Batted from paw to paw so Spider can hear me squeak.

He heard in his head the voice of Spider:
And so, in your despair, you come, at last, to me….

And heard with his ears, far off and faint, the voice of Dangerous Beans.

“Who are you?”

I am the Big Rat Deep Under the Ground.

“You are? Really? I have thought…a lot about you.”

There was a hole in the wall here and, beyond it, the brilliance of a lighted match. Sensing the press of the rats behind him, Maurice sidled through.

There were
big
rats everywhere, on the floor, on boxes, clinging to the walls. And, in the center, a circle of light from one half-burned match held aloft by a trembling Peaches.

Dangerous Beans was standing a little in front of her, staring up at a stack of boxes and sacks.

Peaches spun around. As she did so, the flame
of the match blew wide and flared. The nearest rats jerked away as it did so, bending like a wave.

“Maurice?” she said.

The cat will not move,
said the voice of Spider.

Maurice tried to, and his paws wouldn't obey him.

Be still, CAT. Or I shall command your lungs to stop. See, little rat? Even a cat obeys me!

“Yes. Command, obey…yes. I see you have a power,” said Dangerous Beans, tiny in the circle of light.

Clever rat. I have heard you talk to the others. You understand the truth. You know that by facing the dark, we become strong. You know about the darkness in front of us and the darkness behind the eyes. You know that we cooperate or die. Will you…COOPERATE?

“Cooperate?” said Dangerous Beans. His nose wrinkled. “Like these other rats I smell here? They smell…strong and stupid.”

But the strong survive,
said the voice of Spider.
They dodge the rat catchers and bite their way out of cages. And, like you, they are
called to me. As for their minds…I can think for everyone.

“I, alas, am not strong,” said Dangerous Beans carefully.

You have an interesting mind. You too look forward to the domination of rats.

“Domination?” said Dangerous Beans. “Do I?”

You will have worked out that there is a race in this world that steals and kills and spreads disease and despoils what it cannot use,
said the voice of Spider.

“Yes,” said Dangerous Beans. “That's easy. It's called humanity.”

Well done. See my fine rats? In a few hours the silly piper will come and play his silly pipe, and, yes, my rats will scamper after him out of the town. Do you know how a piper kills rats?

“No.”

He leads them into the river where…are you listening?…where they all drown!

“But rats are good swimmers,” said Dangerous Beans.

Yes! Never trust the rat catchers! They will leave themselves work for tomorrow. But humans like to believe stories! They would prefer to believe stories rather than the truth!
But we, we are RATS! And my rats will swim, believe me. Big rats, different rats, rats who survive, rats with part of my mind in them. And they will spread from town to town, and then there will be destruction such as people cannot imagine! We will pay them back a thousand-fold for every trap! Humans have tortured and poisoned and killed, and all of that is now given form in me and there will be REVENGE.

“Given form in you. Yes, I think I begin to understand,” said Dangerous Beans.

There was a crackle and flare behind him. Peaches had lit the second match from the dying, flickering flame of the first one. The ring of rats, which had been creeping closer, swayed back again.

One more match,
said Spider.
And then, one way or another, little rat, you belong to me.

“I want to see who I am talking to,” said Dangerous Beans firmly.

You are blind, little white rat. Through your pink eyes I see only mist.

“They see more than you think,” said Dangerous Beans. “And if you are, as you say, the Big Rat…then show yourself to me. Smelling is believing.”

There was a scrabbling, and Spider came out of the shadows.

It looked to Maurice like a bundle of rats, rats scampering across the boxes but flowing, as if all the legs were being operated by one creature.

As it crawled into the light, over the top of a sack, Maurice saw that the tails were twisted together into one huge, ugly knot.

And each rat was blind. As the voice of Spider thundered in his head, the eight rats reared and tugged at the knot.

Then tell
me
the truth, white rat. Do you see me? Come closer! Yes, you see me, in your mist. You see me. Men made me for sport! Tie the rats' tails together and watch them struggle! But I did not struggle. Together we are strong! One mind is as strong as one mind and two minds are as strong as two minds, but three minds are four minds, and four minds are eight minds, and eight minds…are one, one mind stronger than eight. My time is near. The stupid men let rats fight and the strong survive, and then
they
fight, and the strongest of the strong survive…and soon the cages will open, and men shall know the meaning of the word “plague”! See the stupid cat? It wants to
leap, but I hold it so easily. No mind can withstand me. Yet you…you are interesting. You have a mind like mine, that thinks for many rats, not just one rat. We want the same things. We have plans. We want the triumph of rats. Join us. Together we will be…STRONG.

There was a long pause. It was, Maurice thought, too long. And then:

“Yes, your offer is…interesting,” said Dangerous Beans.

There was a gasp from Peaches, and Dangerous Beans went on, in a small voice: “The world is big and dangerous, indeed. And we are weak, and I am tired. Together we can be strong.”

Indeed!

“But what of those who
aren't
strong, please?”

The weak are food. That is how it has always been!

“Ah,” said Dangerous Beans. “How it has always been. Things are becoming clearer.”

“Don't listen to it!” Peaches hissed. “It's affecting your mind!”

“No, my mind is working perfectly, thank you,” said Dangerous Beans, still in the same calm voice. “Yes, the proposition is beguiling. And we would rule the rat world together, would we?”

We would…cooperate.

And Maurice, on the sidelines, thought: yeah, right.
You
cooperate,
they
rule. Surely you can't fall for this!

But Dangerous Beans said: “Cooperate. Yes. And together we would give the humans a war they won't believe. Of course, millions of rats would die—”

They die anyway.

“Mmm, yes. Yes. Yes, that is true. And this rat here,” said Dangerous Beans, suddenly waving a paw toward one of the big rats that was hypnotized by the flame, “can you tell me what
she
thinks about this?”

Spider sounded taken aback.

Thinks? Why should it think anything? It is a rat!

“Ah,” said Dangerous Beans. “How clear it is now. But it would not work.”

Would not work?

Dangerous Beans raised his head.

“Because, you see, you just think for many rats,” he said. “But you don't think
of
them. Nor are you, for all that you say, the Big Rat. Every word you utter is a lie. If there is a Big Rat, and I hope there is, it would not talk of war and death. It would be made of the best we could be,
not the worst that we are. No, I will not join you, liar in the dark. I prefer our way. We are silly and weak sometimes. But together
we
are strong. You have plans for rats? Well,
I
have dreams for them.”

Spider reared up, quivering. The voice raged in Maurice's mind.

Oh, so you think you are a
good
rat? But a good rat is one that steals most! You think a good rat is a rat in a vest, a little human with fur! Oh yes, I know about the stupid, stupid Book! Traitor! Traitor to rats! Will you feel my…PAIN?

Maurice did. It was like a blast of red-hot air, leaving his head full of steam. He recognized the sensation. It was how he used to feel before he was Changed. It was how he used to feel before he was Maurice. He'd been just a cat. A bright cat, but nothing more than a cat.

You defy me?
Spider screamed at the bowed form of Dangerous Beans.
When I am everything that truly is RAT? I am filth and darkness! I am the noise under the floor, the rustling in the walls! I am the thing that undermines and despoils! I am the sum of all that you deny! I am your true self! Will you OBEY ME?

“Never,” said Dangerous Beans. “You are nothing but shadows.”

Feel my PAIN!

Maurice was more than a cat, he knew. He knew the world was big and complex and involved a lot more than wondering if the next meal was going to be beetles or chicken legs. The world was huge and difficult and full of amazing things and…

…the red-hot flame of that horrible voice was boiling his mind away. The memories were unwinding and whirling into the darkness. All the other little voices, not the horrible voice but the Maurice voices, the ones that nagged at him and argued amongst themselves and told him he was doing wrong or could be better, were getting fainter—

And still Dangerous Beans stood there, small and wobbly, staring up into the dark.

“Yes,” said Dangerous Beans. “I feel the pain.”

You
are nothing but a rat. A little rat. And I am the very SOUL of ratdom. Admit it, little blind rat, little blind pet rat.

Dangerous Beans swayed, and Maurice heard him say: “I am not so blind that I can't see darkness.”

Maurice sniffed, and realized that Dangerous
Beans was widdling himself in terror. But the little rat didn't move, even so.

Oh, yes,
whispered the voice of Spider.
And you can control the dark, yes? You told a little rat that. You can learn to control the dark.

“I am a rat,” whispered Dangerous Beans. “But I am not vermin.”

VERMIN?

“Once we were just another squeaking thing in the forest. And then humans built barns and pantries full of food. Of course we took what we could. And so they called us vermin, and they have trapped us and covered us in poison, and somehow, out of that wretchedness, you have come. But you are no answer. You are just another bad thing humans made. You offer rats nothing except more pain. You just have a power that lets you enter people's minds when they are tired or stupid or upset. And you are in mine now.”

Yes. Oh, yes!

“And still I stand here,” said Dangerous Beans. “Now that I have smelled you, I know you. You have the smell of the Bone Rat about you. Even though my body is shaking, I can keep a place free from you. I can feel you running round in my head, you see, but all the doors are closed to
you now. I can control the shadows inside, which is where all darkness is. I am more than just a rat. If I am
not
more than just a rat, I am nothing at all.”

The many heads of Spider turned this way and that. There wasn't much left of Maurice's mind to do any thinking now, but it looked as though the rat king was trying to reach a conclusion.

Its reply came in a roar.

THEN BE NOTHING!

 

Keith blinked. He had his hand on the latch of one of the rat cages.

The rats were watching him. All standing the same way, all watching his fingers. Hundreds of rats.

They looked…hungry.

“Did you hear something?” said Malicia.

Keith lowered his hand very carefully and took a couple of steps back.

“Why are we letting these out?” he said. “It was like I'd been…dreaming.”

“I don't know. You're the rat boy.”

“But we
agreed
to let them out.”

“I…it was…I had a feeling that—”