“Really?” said Darktan. “I might say it’d be easier to talk to you if you lay flat on the floor.” He sighed. He was too tired for these games. “Look, if you put your hand flat on the floor, I’ll stand on it and you can raise it up to the height of the desk,” he said, “but if you try any tricks, I’ll bite your thumb off.”

  The mayor lifted him up with extreme caution. Darktan hopped off into the mass of papers, empty teacups, and old pens that covered the battered leather top, and stood looking up at the embarrassed man.

  “Er . . . do you have to do much paperwork in your job?” asked the mayor.

  “Peaches writes things down,” said Darktan bluntly.

  “That’s the little female rat who coughs before she speaks, isn’t it?” said the mayor.

  “That’s right.”

  “She’s very . . . definite, isn’t she,” said the mayor, and now Darktan could see that he was sweating. “She’s rather frightening some of the councilors, ha ha.”

  “Ha ha,” said Darktan.

  The mayor looked miserable. He seemed to be searching for something to say.

  “You are, er, settling in well?” he said.

  “I spent part of last night fighting a dog in a rat pit, and then I think I was stuck in a rat trap for a while,” said Darktan, in a voice like ice. “And then there was a bit of a war. Apart from that, I can’t complain.”

  The mayor gave him a long, worried stare. For the first time he could remember, Darktan felt sorry for a human. The mayor seemed to be as tired as Darktan felt.

  “Look,” he said, “I think it might work, if that’s what you want to ask me.”

  The mayor brightened up. “You do?” he said. “There’s a lot of arguing.”

  “That’s why I think it might work,” said Darktan. “Men and rats arguing. You’re not poisoning our cheese, and we’re not widdling in your jam. It’s not going to be easy, but it’s a start.”

  “But there’s something I have to know,” said the mayor.

  “Yes?”

  “You could have poisoned our wells. You could have set fire to our houses. My daughter tells me you are very . . . advanced. You don’t owe us anything. Why didn’t you?”

  “I asked myself that, too,” said Darktan. “And I told myself: What good would it do? What would we have done afterward? Gone to another town? Gone through all this again? Would killing you have made anything better for us? Sooner or later we’d have to talk to humans. It might as well be you.”

  “I’m glad you like us!” said the mayor.

  Darktan opened his mouth to say: Like you? No, we just don’t hate you enough. We’re not friends.

  But . . .

  There would be no more rat pits. No more traps, no more poisons. True, he was going to have to explain to the Clan what a Watch was, and why rat policemen might chase rats who broke the new Rules. They weren’t going to like that. They weren’t going to like that at all. Even a rat with the marks of the Bone Rat’s teeth on him was going to have difficulty with that. But Maurice had said: They’ll do this, you’ll do that. No one will lose very much, and everyone will gain a lot. The town will prosper, everyone’s children will grow up, and suddenly it’ll all be normal.

  And everyone likes things to be normal. They don’t like to see normal things changed. It must be worth a try, thought Darktan.

  “Now I want to ask you a question,” he said. “You’ve been the leader for . . . how long?”

  “Ten years,” said the mayor.

  “Isn’t it hard?”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Everyone argues with me all the time,” said the mayor. “Although I must say I’m expecting a little less arguing if all this works out. But it’s not an easy job.”

  “It’s ridiculous to have to shout all the time just to get things done,” said Darktan.

  “That’s right,” said the mayor.

  “And everyone expects you to decide things,” said Darktan.

  “True.”

  “The last leader gave me some advice just before he died, and do you know what it was? ‘Don’t eat the green wobbly bit’!”

  “Good advice?” asked the mayor.

  “In his world, yes,” said Darktan. “But all he had to do was be big and tough and fight all the other rats that wanted to be leader.”

  “It’s a bit like that with the council,” said the mayor.

  “What?” said Darktan. “You bite them in the neck?”

  “Not yet,” said the mayor. “But it’s a tempting thought, I must say.”

  “It’s just all a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be!” said Darktan, bewildered. “To be a leader you have to learn to shout! But after you’ve learned to shout, you have to learn not to!”

  “Right again,” said the mayor. “That’s how it works.” He put his hand down on the desk, palm up. “May I?” he said. “I want to show you something.”

  Darktan stepped aboard and kept his balance as the mayor carried him over to the window and set him down on the sill.

  “See the river?” said the mayor. “See the houses? See the people in the streets? I have to make it all work. Well, not the river, obviously, that works by itself. And every year it turns out that I haven’t upset enough people for them to choose anyone else as mayor. So I have to do it again. It’s a lot more complicated than I ever thought it would be.”

  “What, for you, too? But you’re a human!” said Darktan in astonishment.

  “Hah! You think that makes it easier? I thought rats were wild and free!”

  “Hah!” said Darktan.

  They both stared out the window. Down in the square below, Keith and Malicia were walking along, deep in conversation.

  “If you like,” said the mayor after a while, “you could have a little desk here in my office—”

  “I’ll live underground, thank you all the same,” said Darktan, pulling himself together. “Little desks are a bit too Mr. Bunnsy.”

  The mayor sighed. “I suppose so. Er . . .” He looked as if he was about to share some guilty secret and, in a way, he was. “I did like those books when I was a boy, though. Of course I knew it was all nonsense, but all the same, it was nice to think that—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Darktan. “But the rabbit was stupid. Who ever heard of a rabbit talking?”

  “Oh, yes. I never liked the rabbit,” said the mayor.

  “No one likes the rabbit,” said Darktan.

  “It was the minor characters everyone liked,” said the mayor. “Ratty Rupert and Phil the Pheasant and Olly the Snake—”

  “Oh, come on,” said Darktan. “Olly the Snake had a collar and tie!”

  “Well?”

  “Well, how did it stay on? A snake is tube-shaped!”

  “Do you know, I never thought of it like that,” said the mayor. “Silly, really. He’d wriggle out of it, wouldn’t he?”

  “And vests on rats don’t work.”

  “No?”

  “No,” said Darktan. “I tried it. Tool belts are fine, but not vests. Dangerous Beans got quite upset about that. But I told him, you’ve got to be practical.”

  “It’s just like I always tell my daughter,” said the man. “Stories are just stories. Life is complicated enough as it is. We have to plan for the real world. There’s no room for the fantastic.”

  “Exactly,” said the rat.

  And man and rat talked as the long light faded into the evening.

  A man was painting, very carefully, a little picture underneath the street sign that said RIVER STREET. It was a long way underneath, only just higher than the pavement, and he had to kneel down. He kept referring to a small piece of paper in his hand.

  The picture looked like:

  Keith laughed.

  “What’s funny?” asked Malicia.

  “It’s in the Rat alphabet,” said Keith. “It says ‘Water+Fast+Stones.’ The streets have got cobbles on, right? So rats see them as stones. It means River Street.”

  “Both languages on the street signs. Clause One Ninety-Three,” said Malicia. “That’s fast. They only agreed on that two hours ago. I suppose that means there will be tiny signs in human language in the rat tunnels?”

  “I hope not,” said Keith.

  “Why not?”

  “Because rats mostly mark their tunnels by widdling on them.”

  He was impressed at the way Malicia’s expression didn’t change a bit.

  “I can see we’re all going to have to make some important mental adjustments,” she said thoughtfully. “It was odd about Maurice, though, after my father told him there were plenty of kind old ladies in the town who’d be happy to give him a home.”

  “You mean when he said that wouldn’t be any fun, getting it that way?” said Keith.

  “Yes. Do you know what he meant?”

  “Sort of. He meant he’s Maurice,” said Keith. “I think he had the time of his life, strutting up and down the table ordering everyone around. He even said me and the rats could keep the money we buried! He said a little voice in his head told him it was really ours!”

  Malicia appeared to think about things for a while, and then she said, as if it wasn’t very important really:

  “And, er . . . you’re staying, yes?”

  “Clause Nine, Resident Rat Piper,” said Keith. “I get an official suit that I don’t have to share with anyone, a hat with a feather, and a pipe allowance.”

  “That will be . . . quite satisfactory,” said Malicia. “Er . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “When I told you that I had two sisters, er, that wasn’t entirely true,” she said. “Er . . . it wasn’t a lie, of course, but it was just . . . enhanced a bit.”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean it would be more literally true to say that I have, in fact, no sisters at all.”

  “Ah,” said Keith.

  “But I have millions of friends, of course,” Malicia went on. She looked, Keith thought, absolutely miserable.

  “That’s amazing,” he said. “Most people just have a few dozen.”

  “Millions,” said Malicia. “Obviously, there’s always room for another one.”

  “Good,” said Keith.

  “And, er, there’s Clause Five,” said Malicia, still looking a bit nervous.

  “Oh, yes,” said Keith. “That one puzzled everyone. ‘A bang-up tea with cream buns and a medal,’ right?”

  “Yes,” said Malicia. “It wouldn’t be properly over, otherwise. Would you, er, join me?”

  Keith nodded. He stared around at the town. It seemed a nice place. Just the right size. A man could find a future here. . . .

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I think I’ll stay. It’ll make a good story.”

  There’s a town where, every time the clock shows a quarter of an hour, the rats come out and strike the bells.

  And people watch, and cheer, and buy the souvenir hand-gnawed mugs and plates and spoons and clocks and other things that have no use whatsoever other than to be bought and taken home. And they go to the Rat Museum, and they eat Rat Burgers (Guaranteed No Rat) and buy Rat Ears that you can wear and buy the books of Rat poetry in Rat language and say “how odd” when they see the street signs in Rat and marvel at how the whole place seems so clean. . . .

  And once a day the town’s rat piper, who is rather young, plays his pipes, and the rats dance to the music, usually in a conga line. It’s very popular (on special days a little tap-dancing rat organizes vast dancing spectaculars, with hundreds of rats in sequins, and water ballet in the fountains, and elaborate sets).

  And there are lectures about the Rat Tax and how the whole system works, and how the rats have a town of their own under the human town, and get free use of the library, and even sometimes send their young rats to the school. And everyone says: How perfect, how well organized, how amazing!

  And then most of them go back to their own towns and set their traps and put down their poisons, because some minds you couldn’t change with a hatchet. But a few see the world as a different place.

  It’s not perfect, but it works. The thing about stories is that you have to pick the ones that last.

  And far downstream a handsome cat, with only a few bare patches still in his fur, jumped off a barge, sauntered along the dock, and entered a large and prosperous town. He spent a few days beating up the local cats and getting the feel of the place and, most of all, sitting and watching.

  Finally he saw what he wanted. He followed a young lad out of the city. The boy was carrying a stick over his back, on the end of which was a knotted handkerchief of the kind used by people in story circumstances to carry all their worldly goods. The cat grinned to himself. If you knew their dreams, you could handle people.

  The cat followed the boy all the way to the first milestone along the road, where the boy sat down for a rest. And heard:

  “Hey, stupid-looking kid? Wanna be Lord Mayor? Nah, down here, kid. . . .”

  Because some stories end, but old stories go on, and you gotta dance if you want to stay ahead.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I think I have read, in the past few months, more about rats than is good for me. Most of the true stuff—or, at least, the stuff that people say is true—is so unbelievable that I didn’t include it in case readers thought I’d made it up.

  Rats have been known to escape from a rat pit using the same method Darktan used on poor Jacko. If you don’t believe it, this was witnessed by Old Alf, Jimma, and Uncle Bob. I have it on the best authority.

  Rat kings really exist. How they come into existence is a mystery; in this book Malicia mentions a couple of the theories. I am indebted to Dr. Jack Cohen for a more modern and depressing one, which is that down the ages some cruel and inventive people have had altogether too much time on their hands.

  Terry Pratchett’s Carnegie Medal Acceptance Speech

  Chatting with Terry Pratchett

  Read an Excerpt from the First of the Tiffany Aching Adventures: The Wee Free Men

  Terry Pratchett’s Carnegie Medal Acceptance Speech

  I’m pretty sure that the publicists for this award would be quite happy if I said something controversial, but it seems to me that giving me the Carnegie Medal is controversial enough. This was my third attempt. Well, I say my third attempt, but in fact I just sat there in ignorance and someone else attempted it on my behalf, somewhat to my initial dismay.

  The Amazing Maurice is a fantasy book. Of course, everyone knows that fantasy is “all about” wizards, but by now, I hope, everyone with any intelligence knows that, er, what everyone knows . . . is wrong.

  Fantasy is more than wizards. For instance, this book is about rats that are intelligent. But it is also about the even more fantastic idea that humans are capable of intelligence as well. Far more beguiling than the idea that evil can be destroyed by throwing a piece of expensive jewelry into a volcano is the possibility that evil can be defused by talking. The fantasy of justice is more interesting than the fantasy of fairies, and more truly fantastic. In the book the rats go to war, which is, I hope, gripping. But then they make peace, which is astonishing.

  In any case, genre is just a flavoring. It’s not the whole meal. Don’t get confused by the scenery.

  A novel set in Tombstone, Arizona, on October 26, 1881 is what—a Western? The scenery says so, the clothes say so, but the story does not automatically become a Western. Why let a few cactuses tell you what to think? It might be a counterfactual, or a historical novel, or a searing literary indictment of something or other, or a horror novel, or even, perhaps, a romance—although the young lovers would have to speak up a bit and possibly even hide under the table, because the gunfight at the OK Corral was going on at the time.

  We categorize too much on the basis of unreliable assumption. A literary novel written by Brian Aldiss must be science fiction, because he is a known science fiction writer; a science fiction novel by Margaret Atwood is literature because she is a literary novelist. My recent books have spun on such concerns as the nature of belief, politics, and even of journalistic freedom, but put in one lousy dragon and they call you a fantasy writer.

  This is not, on the whole, a complaint. But as I have said, it seems to me that dragons are not really the pure quill of fantasy, when properly done. Real fantasy is that a man with a printing press might defy an entire government because of some half-formed belief that there may be such a thing as the truth. Anyway, fantasy needs no defense now. As a genre it has become quite respectable in recent years. At least, it can demonstrably make lots and lots and lots of money, which passes for respectable these days. When you can buy a plastic Gandalf with kung-fu grip and rocket launcher, you know fantasy has broken through.

  But I’m a humorous writer too, and humor is a real problem.

  It was interesting to see how Maurice was reviewed here in the UK and in the US. Over in the States, where I’ve only recently made much of an impression, the reviews tended to be quite serious and detailed with, as Maurice himself would have put it, “long words, like ‘corrugated iron.’” Over here, while being very nice, they tended toward the “another wacky, zany book by comic author Terry Pratchett.” In fact Maurice has no wack and very little zane. It’s quite a serious book. Only the scenery is funny.

  The problem is that we think the opposite of funny is serious. It is not. In fact, as G. K. Chesterton pointed out, the opposite of funny is not funny, and the opposite of serious is not serious. Benny Hill was funny and not serious; Rory Bremner is funny and serious; most politicians are serious but, unfortunately, not funny. Humor has its uses. Laughter can get through the keyhole while seriousness is still hammering on the door. New ideas can ride in on the back of a joke; old ideas can be given an added edge.

  Which reminds me . . . Chesterton is not read much these days, and his style and approach belong to another time and, now, can irritate. You have to read in a slightly different language. And then, just when the “ho, good landlord, a pint of your finest English ale!” style gets you down, you run across a gem, cogently expressed. He famously defended fairy stories against those who said they told children that there were monsters; children already know that there are monsters, he said, and fairy stories teach them that monsters can be killed. We now know that the monsters may not simply have scales and sleep under a mountain. They may be in our own heads.