The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents by Terry Pratchett Page B

asleep, isn’t it?”
    â€œNot exactly like asleep,” said a rat uncertainly, glancing at the fairly flat thing formerly known as Fresh. “I mean, you don’t get all blood and bits sticking out. And you wake up.”
    â€œSo,” said the rat who’d raised the whole question about the invisible part, “when you wake up, where does the dreaming part go ? When you die, where does that bit that’s inside you go?”
    â€œWhat, the green wobbly bit?”
    â€œNo! The bit that’s behind your eyes!”
    â€œYou mean the pinky-gray bit?”
    â€œNo, not that! The invisible bit!”
    â€œHow would I know? I’ve never seen an invisible bit!”
    All the rats stared down at Fresh.
    â€œI don’t like this kind of talk,” said one of them. “It reminds me of the shadows in the candlelight.”
    Another one said, “Did you hear about the Bone Rat? It comes and gets you when you’re dead, they say.”
    â€œThey say, they say,” muttered a rat. “They say there’s Big Rat Deep Under the Ground who made everything, they say . So it made humans, too? Must be really keen on us, to go and make humans too! Huh?”
    â€œHow do I know? Maybe they were made by a Big Human?”
    â€œOh, now you’re just being silly,” said the doubting rat, who was called Tomato.
    â€œOkay, okay, but you’ve got to admit that everything couldn’t have just, well, turned up, could it? There’s got to be a reason. And when Dangerous Beans says there’s things we should do ’cos they’re right , well, who works out what’s right? Where does ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ come from? They say if you’ve been a good rat, maybe the Big Rat has got this tunnel full of good eating that the Bone Rat will take you to—”
    â€œBut Fresh is still here. And I ain’t seen a bony rat!” said doubting Tomato.
    â€œAh, but they say you only see it if it’s coming for you .”
    â€œOh? Oh?” said another rat, nervous to the point of mad sarcasm. “So how did they see it,eh? Tell me that! Life’s bad enough as it is without having to worry about invisible things you can’t see!”
    â€œAll right, all right, what’s been happening?”
    The rats turned, suddenly incredibly pleased to see Darktan scurry up the tunnel.
    Darktan pushed past. He’d brought Nourishing with him. It was never too soon, he said, for a member of the squad to find out what happened to people who got things wrong.
    â€œI see,” he said, looking at the trap. He shook his head sadly. “What do I tell everyone?”
    â€œNot to use tunnels that haven’t been marked clear, sir,” said Tomato. “But Fresh, well, he’s not a…he never was a good listener. And he was keen to get on with it, sir.”
    Darktan examined the trap and tried to keep his face fixed in an expression of confident purpose. It was hard to do it, though. He’d never seen a trap like it. It looked like a really nasty one, a squeezer rather than a chopper. It had been put where a rat hurrying to the water would be bound to trip it.
    â€œHe’s not going to do any more listening now, that’s for certain,” he said. “The face looks familiar. Apart from the bulging eyes and the tongue hanging out, that is.”
    â€œEr, you talked to Fresh in the muster this morning, sir,” said a rat. “Told him he was raised to be a widdler and to get on with it, sir.”
    Darktan’s expression remained blank. Then he said, “We’ve got to go. We’re finding a lot of traps all over. We’ll work our way back to you. No one is to go any farther along that tunnel, understood? Everyone say, ‘Yes, Darktan’!”
    â€œYes, Darktan,” the rats chorused.
    â€œAnd one of you stand guard,” said Darktan. “There could be more traps up that