The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Maurice had never eaten anything off the dump. A good motto in life, he'd reckoned, was: don't eat anything that glows.

But he'd become intelligent, too, at about the same time as the rats. It was a mystery.

Since then he'd done what cats always did. He steered people. Now some of the rats counted as people too, of course. But people were people, even if they had four legs and had called themselves names like Dangerous Beans, which is the kind of name you give yourself if you learn to read before you understand what all the words actually mean, and read the notices and the labels off the old rusty cans and give yourself names you like the sound of.

The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it. And as far as Maurice was concerned, the rats were thinking a good deal too much. Dangerous Beans was bad enough, but he was so busy thinking stupid thoughts about how rats could actually build their own country somewhere that Maurice could deal with him. It was Peaches who was the worst. Maurice's usual trick of just talking fast until people got confused didn't work on her at all.

“Ahem,” she began again, “we think that this should be the last time.”

Maurice stared. The other rats backed away slightly, but Peaches just stared back.

“This must be the very last time we do the silly ‘plague of rats’ trick,” said Peaches. “And that's final.”

“And what does Hamnpork think about this?” said Maurice. He turned to the head rat, who had been watching them. It was always a good idea appealing to Hamnpork when Peaches was giving trouble, because he didn't like her very much.

“What d'you mean, think?” said Hamnpork.

“I… sir, I think we should stop doing this trick,” said Peaches, dipping her head nervously.

“Oh, you think too, do you?” said Hamnpork. “Everyone's thinking these days. I think there's a good deal too much of this thinking, that's what I think. We never thought about thinking when I was a lad. We'd never get anything done if we thought first.”

He gave Maurice a glare, too. Hamnpork didn't like Maurice. He didn't like most things that had happened since the Change. In fact Maurice wondered how long Hamnpork was going to last as leader. He didn't like thinking. He belonged to the days when a rat leader just had to be big and stroppy. The world was moving far too fast for him now, which made him angry.

He wasn't so much leading now as being pushed.

“I… Dangerous Beans, sir, believes that we should be thinking of settling down, sir,” said Peaches.

Maurice scowled. Hamnpork wouldn't listen to Peaches, and she knew it, but Dangerous Beans was the nearest thing the rats had to a wizard and even big rats listened to him.

“I thought we were going to get on a boat and find an island somewhere,” said Hamnpork. “Very ratty places, boats,” he added, approvingly. Then he went on, with a slightly nervous and slightly annoyed look at Dangerous Beans, “And people tell me that we need this money stuff because now we can do all this thinking we've got to be eff… efit…”

“Ethical, sir,” said Dangerous Beans.

“Which sounds unratty to me. Not that my opinion counts for anything, it seems,” said Hamnpork.

“We've got enough money, sir,” said Peaches. “We've already got a lot of money. We have got a lot of money, haven't we, Maurice.” It wasn't a question; it was a kind of accusation.

“Well, when you say a lot–” Maurice began.

“And in fact we've got more money than we thought,” said Peaches, still in the same tone of voice. It was very polite, but it just kept going and it asked all the wrong questions. A wrong question for Maurice was one that he didn't want anyone to ask. Peaches gave her little cough again. “The reason I say we've got more money, Maurice, is that you said what were called ‘gold coins’ were shiny like the moon and ‘silver coins’ were shiny like the sun, and you'd keep all the silver coins. In fact, Maurice, that's the wrong way around. It's the silver coins that are shiny like the moon.”

Maurice thought a rude word in cat language, which has a great many of them. What was the point of education, he thought, if people went out afterwards and used it?

“So we think, sir,” said Dangerous Beans to Hamnpork, “that after this one last time we should share out the money and go our separate ways. Besides, it's getting dangerous to keep repeating the same trick. We should stop before it's too late. There's a river here. We should be able to get to the sea.”

“An island with no humans or krllrrt cats would be a good place,” said Hamnpork.

Maurice didn't let his smile fade, even though he knew what krllrrt meant.

“And we wouldn't want to keep Maurice from his wonderful new job with the conjurer,” said Peaches.

Maurice's eyes narrowed. For a moment he came close to breaking his iron rule of not eating anyone that could talk. “What about you, kid?” he said, looking up at the stupid-looking kid.

“I don't mind,” said the kid.

“Don't mind what?” said Maurice.

“Don't mind anything, really,” said the kid. “Just so long as no-one stops me playing.”

“But you've got to think of the future!” said Maurice.

“I am,” said the kid. “I want to go on playing my music in the future. It doesn't cost anything to play. But maybe the rats are right. We've had a couple of narrow squeaks, Maurice.”

Maurice gave the kid a sharp look to see if he was making a joke, but the kid had never done that kind of thing before. He gave up. Well, not exactly gave up. Maurice hadn't got where he was by giving up on problems. He just put them to one side. After all, something always turned up. “OK, fine,” he said. “We'll do it one more time and split the money three ways. Fine. Not a problem. But if this is going to be the last time, let's make it one to remember, eh?” He grinned.

The rats, being rats, were not keen on seeing a grinning cat, but they understood that a difficult decision had been made. They breathed tiny sighs of relief.

“Are you happy with that, kid?” said Maurice.

“I can go on playing my flute afterwards?” said the kid.

“Absolutely.”

“OK,” said the kid.

The money, shiny like the sun and shiny like the moon, was solemnly put back in its bag. The rats dragged the bag under the bushes and buried it. No-one could bury money like rats, and it didn't pay to take too much into towns.

Then there was the horse. It was a valuable horse, and Maurice was very, very sorry to turn it loose. But, as Peaches pointed out, it was a highwayman's horse, with a very ornate saddle and bridle. Trying to sell it here could be dangerous. People would talk. It might attract the attention of the government. This was no time to have the Watch on their tails.

Maurice walked to the edge of the rock and looked down at the town, which was waking up under the sunrise. “Let's make this the big one, then, eh?” he said, as rats came back. “I want to see maximum squeaking and making faces at people and widdling on stuff, OK?”

“We think that widdling on stuff is not really—” Dangerous Beans began, but “Ahem,” said Peaches, and so Dangerous Beans went on: “Oh, I suppose, if it's the last time…”

“I've widdled on everything since I was out of the nest,” said Hamnpork. “Now they tell me it's not right. If that's what thinking means, I'm glad I don't do any.”

“Let's leave 'em amazed,” said Maurice. “Rats? They think they've seen rats in that town? After they've seen us, they'll be making up storiesl”

CHAPTER 2