The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

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 that 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 That Lives Underground.

“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 centre, 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 rats? Even a cat obeys me!

“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 co-operate or die. Will you… CO-OPERATE?

“Co-operate?” said Maurice. 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 which 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.