The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

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. 'OK, people! You know the drill!' he shouted. '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, troops, 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 ones - they found, in the bookshop they invaded every night, the Book.
    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 waistcoat, 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) Oily 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 waistcoats, 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 waistcoat as a network of wide belts, easy to wriggle in and out of. On them he'd sewn pockets - and that had been a good idea, like giving yourself extra paws - 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 it and faced it nose to nose, until it 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, at 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 between them only enough bits to make up about seventeen complete rats.
    But because they were old they were cunning, because a rat who isn't cunning and shifty and suspicious doesn't become an old rat. They'd all been grown up when the intelligence 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,