The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (4 page)

“That's silly. A loaf of bread shouldn't cost more'n twenty cents,” said the kid.

The man gave him a strange look.

“New here, are you? Got plenty of money, have you?”

“Enough,” said the kid.

“You think so? It won't do you much good, anyway. Look, four loaves of bread and a bun—I can't say fairer than that. I can get a terrier for ten loaves, and they're mad for rats…. No? Well, when you're hungry, you'll give it away for half a slice of bread and scrape
*
and think you've done well, believe me.”

He strode off. Maurice wriggled out of the kid's arms and landed lightly on the cobbles.

“Honestly, if only I was good at ventriloskwism, we could make a fortune,” he grumbled.

“Ventriloskwism?” said the kid, watching the man's retreating back.

“It's where you open and shut your mouth and I do the talking,” said Maurice. “Why didn't
you sell me? I could've been back in ten minutes! I heard of a man who made a fortune selling homing pigeons, and he only had the one!”

“Don't you think there's something wrong with a town where people'd pay more than a dollar for a loaf of bread?” said the kid. “And pay half a dollar for a rat tail?”

“Just so long as they've got enough money left to pay the piper,” said Maurice. “Bit of luck there
already
being a plague of rats here, eh? Quick, pat me on the head, there's a girl watching us.”

The kid looked up. There
was
a girl watching them. People were passing up and down the street, and some of them walked between the kid and the girl, but she stood stock-still and just stared at him. And at Maurice. She had the same nail-you-to-the-wall expression that he associated with Peaches. She looked like the kind of person who asked
questions.
And her hair was too red and her nose was too long. And she wore a long black dress with black lace fringing. No good comes of that sort of thing.

She marched across the street and confronted the kid.

“You're new, aren't you? Come here looking for work, have you? Probably sacked from your last job, I expect. Probably because you fell
asleep, and things got spoiled. That was probably what it was. Or you ran away because he beat you with a big stick, although,” she added, as another idea struck her, “you probably deserved it because of being lazy. And then you probably stole the cat, knowing how much people would pay for a cat here. And you must have gone mad with hunger, because you were talking to the cat and everyone knows that cats can't talk.”

“Can't say a single word,” said Maurice.

“And probably you're a mysterious boy who—” The girl stopped and gave Maurice a puzzled look. He arched his back and said
“Prppt,”
which is Cat language for “Biscuits!”

“Did that cat just say something?” she demanded.

“I thought that everyone knew that cats can't talk,” said the kid.

“Ah, but maybe you were apprentice to a wizard,” said the girl. “Yes, that sounds about right. That'll do for now. You were an apprentice to a wizard, but you fell asleep and let the cauldron of bubbling green stuff boil over, and he threatened to turn you into a, a, a—”

“Gerbil,” said Maurice helpfully.

“—a gerbil, and you stole his magical cat because you hated it so much and—what's a
gerbil? Did that
cat
just say ‘gerbil'?”

“Don't look at me!” said the kid. “I'm just standing here!”

“All right, and then you brought the cat here because you know there's a terrible famine and that's why you were going to sell it and that man would have given you ten dollars, you know, if you'd held out for it.”

“Ten dollars is too much money even for a good ratter,” said the kid.

“Ratter? He wasn't interested in catching rats!” said the red-haired girl. “Everyone's hungry here! There's at least two meals on that cat!”

“What? You
eat
cats here?” said Maurice, his tail fluffing like a brush.

The girl leaned down to Maurice with a dreadful grin, just like the one that Peaches always wore when she'd won an argument with him, and prodded him on the nose with a finger.

“
Got
you!” she said. “You fell for a very simple trick! I think you two had better come with me, don't you? Or I'll scream. And people
listen
to me when
I'm
screaming!”

N
ever go into the Dark Wood, my friend,” said Ratty Rupert. “There are bad things in there.”

—From
Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure

Far below Maurice's paws the rats were creeping through the undertown of Bad Blintz. Old towns are like that. People build down as well as up. Cellars butt against other cellars, and some of the cellars get forgotten—except by creatures that want to stay out of sight.

In the thick, warm, damp darkness a voice said, “All right, who's got the matches?”

“Me, Dangerous Beans. Feedsfour.”

“Well done, young rat. And who has the candle?”

“Me, sir. I'm Bitesize.”

“Good. Put it down and Peaches will light it.”

There was a lot of scuffling in the darkness. Not all the rats had got used to the idea of
making fire, and they were getting out of the way.

There was a scratching noise, and then the match flared. Holding the match with both front paws, Peaches lit the candle stub. The flame swelled for a moment and settled down to a steady glow.

“Can you really see it?” asked Hamnpork.

“Yes, sir,” said Dangerous Beans. “I am not completely blind. I can tell the difference between light and dark.”

“Y'know,” said Hamnpork, watching the flame suspiciously, “I don't like it at all, even so. Darkness was good enough for our parents. It'll end in trouble. Besides, setting fire to a candle is a waste of perfectly good food.”

“We have to be able to control the fire, sir,” said Dangerous Beans calmly. “With the flame we make a statement to the darkness. We say: We are separate. We say: We are not just rats. We say: We are The Clan.”

“Hrumph,” said Hamnpork, which was his usual response when he didn't understand what had just been said. Just lately he'd been hrumphing a lot.

“I've heard the younger rats are saying that the shadows frighten them,” said Peaches.

“Why?” said Hamnpork. “They're not frightened
of complete darkness, are they? Darkness is ratty! Being in the dark is what a rat is all about!”

“It's odd,” said Peaches, “but we didn't know the shadows were there until we had the light.”

One of the younger rats timorously raised a paw.

“Um…and even when the light has gone out, we know the shadows are still around,” she said.

Dangerous Beans turned toward the young rat.

“You're—?” he said.

“Delicious,” said the younger rat.

“Well, Delicious,” said Dangerous Beans in a kindly voice, “being afraid of shadows is all part of us becoming more intelligent, I think. Your mind is working out that there's a
you
, and there's also everything
outside you
. So now you're not just frightened of things that you can see and hear and smell, but also of things that you can…sort of…
see
inside your head. Learning to face the shadows outside helps us to fight the shadows inside. And you can control
all
the darkness. It's a big step forward. Well done.”

Delicious looked slightly proud, but mostly nervous.

“I don't see the point, myself,” said Hamnpork.

“We used to do all right on the dump. And I was never scared of anything.”

“We were prey to every stray cat and hungry dog, sir,” said Dangerous Beans.

“Oh, well, if we're going to talk about
cats
,” growled Hamnpork.

“I think we can trust Maurice, sir,” said Dangerous Beans. “Perhaps not when it comes to money, I admit. But he is very good at not eating people who talk, you know. He checks, every time.”

“You can trust a cat to be a cat,” said Hamnpork. “Talking or not!”

“Yes, sir. But we are different, and so is he. I believe he is a decent cat at heart.”

“Ahem. That remains to be seen,” said Peaches. “But now that we are here, let's get organized.”

Hamnpork growled.

“Who are you to say, ‘Let's get organized'?” he asked sharply. “Are you the leader, young female who refuses to
rllk
with me? No!
I
am the leader. It's
my
job to say, ‘Let's get organized'!”

“Yes, sir,” said Peaches, crouching low. “How would you like us to be organized, sir?”

Hamnpork stared at her. He looked at the waiting rats, with their packs and bundles, and then around at the ancient cellar, and then back
to the still-crouching Peaches.

“Just…get organized,” he muttered. “Don't bother me with details!
I
am the leader.”

And he stalked off into the shadows.

When he'd gone, Peaches and Dangerous Beans looked around the cellar, which was filled with trembling shadows created by the candlelight. A trickle of water ran down one crusted wall. Here and there stones had fallen out, leaving inviting holes. Earth covered the floor, and there were no human footprints in it.

“An ideal base,” said Dangerous Beans. “It smells secret and safe. A perfect place for rats.”

“Right,” said a voice. “And you know what's worrying me about that?”

The rat called Darktan stepped into the candlelight and hitched up one of his belts of tools. A lot of the watching rats suddenly paid attention. People listened to Hamnpork because he was the leader, but they listened to Darktan because he was often telling you things that you really, really needed to know if you wanted to go on living. He was big, and lean, and tough, and spent most of his time taking traps apart to see how they worked.

“What is worrying you, Darktan?” asked Dangerous Beans.

“There
aren't
any rats here. Except us. Rat tunnels, yes. But we've seen no rats. No rats at all. A town like this should be full of them.”

“Oh, they're probably scared of us,” said Peaches.

Darktan tapped the side of his scarred muzzle. “Maybe,” he said. “But things don't smell right. Thinking is a great invention, but we were given noses, and it pays to listen to them. Be extra careful.” He turned to the assembled rats and raised his voice.

“Okay, troops! You know the drill!” he shouted. “Plague rats, in front of me, in your platoons,
now
!”

It didn't take long for the rats to form three groups. They'd had plenty of practice.

“Very nice,” said Darktan, as the last few shuffled into position. “Right! This is tricky territory, people, so we're going to be careful….”

Darktan was unusual among the rats because he wore things.

When the rats had discovered books—and the whole idea of books was still a difficult one for most of the older rats—they found, in the bookshop they invaded every night, the Book. Up until they were Changed, books had only been useful for eating the glue off the bindings and
making nests out of the pages.

They'd never
looked
at one before.

This book was amazing.

Even before Peaches and Donut Enter had learned how to read human words, they'd been amazed by the pictures.

There were animals in there
wearing clothes
. There was a rabbit who walked on its hind legs and wore a blue suit. There was a rat in a hat, and he wore a sword and a big red vest, complete with a watch on a chain. Even the snake had a collar and tie. And all of them talked, and none of them ate any of the others, and—and this was the unbelievable part—
they all talked to humans
, who treated them like, well, smaller humans. There were no traps, no poisons. Admittedly (according to Peaches, who was painstakingly working her way through the book, and sometimes read out parts) Olly the snake was a bit of a rascal, but nothing truly
bad
happened. Even when the rabbit got lost in the Dark Wood, he just had a bit of a scare.

Yes,
Mr. Bunnsy Has an Adventure
was the cause of much discussion amongst the Changelings. What was it for? Was it, as Dangerous Beans believed, a vision of some bright future? Had it been made by humans? The shop had been for
humans, true, but surely even humans wouldn't make a book about Ratty Rupert the Rat, who wore a hat,
and
poison rats under the floorboards at the same time. Would they? How mad would anything have to be to think like that?

Some of the younger rats had suggested that perhaps clothes were more important than everyone thought. They'd tried wearing vests, but it had been very difficult to bite out the pattern, they couldn't make the buttons work, and frankly, the things got caught on every splinter and were very hard to run in. Hats just fell off.

Darktan just thought that humans
were
mad, as well as bad. But the pictures in the Book had given him an idea.

What he wore was not so much a vest as a network of wide belts, easy to wriggle into and out of. On them he'd sewn pockets—and that
had
been a good idea, like giving yourself extra hands—to hold all the things he needed, like metal rods and bits of wire. Some of the rest of the squad had taken up the idea, too. You never knew what you were going to need next, on the Trap Disposal Squad. It was a tough, ratty life.

The rods and wires jangled as Darktan walked up and down in front of his teams. He stopped in front of one large group of younger rats.

“All right, Number Three platoon, you're on widdling duty,” he said. “Go and have a good drink.”

“Oooh, we're
always
on widdling,” a rat complained. Darktan pounced on him and faced him nose to nose, until he backed away.

“That's 'cos you're
good
at it, my lad! Your mother
raised
you to be a widdler, so off you go and do what comes naturally! Nothing puts humans off like seeing that rats have been there before, if you catch my meaning! And if you get the opportunity, do some gnawing as well. And run around under the floorboards and squeak! And remember, no one is to move in until they get the all-clear from the Trap Squad. To the water, now, on the double! Hup! Hup! Hup! One two, one two, one two!”

The platoon headed off, at speed.

Darktan turned to Number Two platoon. They were some of the older rats, scarred and bitten and ragged, some of them with stubs of tails or no tails at all, some of them missing a paw or an ear or an eye. In fact, although there were about twenty of them, they had among them only enough bits to make up about seventeen complete rats.

But because they were old, they were cunning,
since a rat who isn't cunning and shifty and suspicious doesn't
become
an old rat. They'd all been grown-up when the Change came. They were more set in their old ways. Hamnpork always said he liked them that way. They still had a lot of basic rattiness, the kind of raw cunning that would get you out of the traps that overexcited intelligence got you into. They thought with their noses. And you didn't have to tell them where to widdle.

“All right, people, you know the drill,” said Darktan. “I want to see lots of cheeky stuff. Stealing the food out of cats' bowls, pies from under the cooks' noses—”

“—false teeth from out of old men's mouths—” said a small rat, who seemed to be dancing on the spot while he stood there. His feet moved all the time, tippity-tapping on the cellar floor. He wore a hat, too, a battered, home-made thing out of straw. He was the only rat who could make a hat work, by wedging his ears through it. He said to get ahead, you had to get a hat.

“That was a fluke, Sardines. I bet you can't do it again,” said Darktan. “And don't keep on telling the kids how you went for a swim in someone's bathtub. Yeah, I know you did, but I
don't want to lose anyone who can't scramble out of a slippery tub. Anyway…if I don't hear ladies screaming and running out of their kitchens within ten minutes, I'll know you're not the rats I think you are. Well? Why are you all standing around? Get on with it! And…Sardines?”

“Yes, boss?”

“Easy on the tap dancing this time, all right?”

“I just got these dancing feets, boss!”

“And do you have to keep wearing that stupid hat?” asked Darktan, grinning.

“Yes, boss!” Sardines was one of the older rats, but most of the time you wouldn't know it. He danced and joked and never got into fights. He'd lived in a theater and once eaten a whole box of greasepaint. It seemed to have gotten into his blood.

“And no going on ahead of the Trap Squad!” said Darktan.

Sardines grinned in turn. “Aw, boss, can't I have
any
fun?”

He danced after the rest of them, toward the holes in the walls.

Darktan moved on, to Number One platoon. It was the smallest. You had to be a certain kind
of rat to last a long time in the Trap Disposal Squad. You had to be slow, and patient, and thorough. You had to have a good memory. You had to be careful. You
could
join the squad if you were fast and slapdash and hasty. You just didn't last very long.

He looked them up and down and smiled. He was proud of these rats.

“Okay, people, you know it all by now,” he said. “You don't need a long lecture from me. Just remember that this is a new town, so we don't know what we're going to find. There's bound to be plenty of new types of traps, but we learn fast, don't we? Poisons, too. They might be using stuff we've never run across before, so be careful. Never rush, never run. We don't want to be like the first mouse, eh?”

“No, Darktan,” the rats chorused dutifully.

“I
said
, what mouse don't we want to be like?” Darktan demanded.

“We don't want to be like the first mouse!” shouted the rats.

“Right! What mouse do we want to be like?”

“The second mouse, Darktan!” said the rats, like people who'd had this lesson dinned into them many times.

“Right! And why do we want to be like the second mouse?”