Johnny and the Bomb (25 page)

‘Oh dear oh dear oh dear,' said Maurice, shaking his head. ‘Ho for the island, eh? The Kingdom of the Rats! Not that I'm laughing at your dream,' he added hastily. ‘Everyone needs their little dreams.' Maurice truly believed that, too. If you knew what
it was that people really,
really
wanted, you very nearly controlled them.

Sometimes he wondered what the stupid-looking kid wanted. Nothing, as far as Maurice could tell, but to be allowed to play his flute and be left alone. But … well, it was like that thing with the coconuts. Every so often the kid would come out with something that suggested he'd been listening all along. People like that are hard to steer.

But cats are
good
at steering people. A miaow here, a purr there, a little gentle pressure with a claw … and Maurice had never had to
think
about it before. Cats didn't have to think. They just had to know what they wanted. Humans had to do the thinking. That's what they were for.

Maurice thought about the good old days before his brain had started whizzing like a firework. He'd turn up at the door of the University kitchens and look sweet, and then the cooks would
try to work out
what he wanted. It was amazing! They'd say things like ‘Does oo want a bowl of milk, den? Does oo want a biscuit? Does oo want dese nice scraps, den?' And all Maurice would have to do was wait patiently until they got to a sound he recognized, like ‘turkey legs' or ‘minced lamb'.

But he was sure he'd never eaten anything magical. There was no such thing as enchanted chicken giblets, was there?

It was the rats who'd eaten the magical stuff. The dump they called ‘home' and also called ‘lunch' was round the back of the University, and it was a university for wizards, after all. The old Maurice hadn't paid much attention to people who weren't holding bowls, but he was aware that the big men in pointy hats made strange things happen.

And now he knew what happened to the stuff they used, too. It got tossed over the wall when they'd finished with it. All the old worn-out spell-books and the stubs of the dribbly candles and the remains of the green bubbly stuff in the cauldrons all ended up on the big dump, along with the tin cans and old boxes and the kitchen waste. Oh, the wizards had put up signs saying ‘Dangerous' and ‘Toxic', but the rats hadn't been able to read in those days and they
liked
dribbly candle ends.

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 the 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
stories
!'

Terry Pratchett is the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld® series, the first of which,
The Colour of Magic
, was published in 1983. His books have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he is the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal, as well as being awarded a knighthood for services to literature. After falling out with his keyboard he now talks to his computer. Occasionally, these days, it answers back.

The Discworld® Series

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3. EQUAL RITES

4. MORT

5. SOURCERY

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7. PYRAMIDS

8. GUARDS! GUARDS!

9. ERIC
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15. MEN AT ARMS

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17. INTERESTING TIMES

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23. CARPE JUGULUM

24. THE FIFTH ELEPHANT

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28. THE AMAZING MAURICE &
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THE SCIENCE OF DISCWORLD

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TURTLE RECALL: THE DISCWORLD COMPANION . . . SO FAR
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NANNY OGG'S COOKBOOK
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THE PRATCHETT PORTFOLIO
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Shorter Writing

A BLINK OF THE SCREEN

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THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN

STRATA

THE UNADULTERATED CAT (illustrated by Gray Jolliffe)

GOOD OMENS (with Neil Gaiman)

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