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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 vests, 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 vest as a network of wide belts, easy to wriggle into and out of. On them he’d sewn pockets—and that had been a good idea, like giving yourself extra hands—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.
    â€œAll right, Number Three platoon, you’re on widdling duty,” he said. “Go and have a good drink.”
    â€œOooh, we’re always on widdling,” a rat complained. Darktan pounced on him and faced him nose to nose, until he backed away.
    â€œThat’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, on 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 among them only enough bits to make up about seventeen complete rats.
    But because they were old, they were cunning,since a rat who isn’t cunning and shifty and suspicious doesn’t become an old rat. They’d all been grown-up when the Change 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, the kind of raw cunning that would get you out of the traps that overexcited intelligence got you into. They thought with their noses. And you didn’t have to tell them where to widdle.
    â€œAll right, people, you know the drill,” said Darktan. “I want to see lots of cheeky stuff. Stealing the food out of cats’ bowls, pies from under the cooks’ noses—”
    â€œâ€”false teeth from out of old men’s mouths—” said a small rat, who seemed to be dancing on the spot while he stood there. His feet moved all the time, tippity-tapping on the cellar floor. He wore a hat, too, a battered, home-made thing out of straw. He was the only rat who could make a hat work, by wedging his ears through it. He said to get ahead, you had to get a hat.
    â€œThat was a fluke, Sardines. I bet you can’t do it again,” said Darktan. “And don’t keep on telling the kids how you went for a swim in someone’s bathtub. Yeah, I know you did, but Idon’t want to lose anyone who can’t scramble out of a slippery tub. Anyway…if I don’t hear ladies screaming and running out of their kitchens within ten minutes, I’ll know you’re not the rats I think you are. Well? Why are you all standing around? Get on with it! And…Sardines?”
    â€œYes, boss?”
    â€œEasy on the tap dancing this time, all right?”
    â€œI just got these dancing feets, boss!”
    â€œAnd do