Strange Highways

challengingly.
     Wild rats weren't white.
      Lab rats were white.
     She knew now what they had been hunting for at the roadblock at Biolomech. She didn't know why their researchers would have wanted to create such a beast as this, and though she was a well-educated woman and had a layman's knowledge of genetic engineering, she didn't know how they had created it, but she knew beyond a doubt that they had created it, for there was no place else on earth from which it could have come.
     Clearly, it had not ridden on the undercarriage of their car. Even as Biolomech's security men had been searching for it, this rat had been here, out of the cold, setting up house.
     On the shelf behind it and on the three shelves below it, other rats pushed through cans, bottles, and boxes. They were repulsively large and pale like the mutant that still challenged her from the cereal shelf.
     Behind her, claws clicked on the floor.
     More of them.
     Meg did not even look back, and she didn't delude herself into thinking that she could handle them with the poker. She threw that useless weapon aside and ran for her shotgun upstairs.

    5

BEN PARNELL AND DR. ACUFF CROUCHED IN FRONT OF THE CAGE THAT stood in one corner of the windowless room. It was a six-foot cube with a sheet-metal floor that had been softened with a deep layer of silky yellow-brown grass. The food and water dispensers could be filled from outside but were operable from within, so the occupants could obtain nourishment as they desired it. One third of the pen was equipped with miniature wooden ladders and climbing bars for exercise and play.
     The cage door was open.
     "Here, see?" Acuff said. "It locks automatically every time the door is shut. Can't be left unlocked by mistake. And once shut, it can only be opened with a key. Seemed safe to us. I mean, we didn't think they'd be smart enough to pick a lock!"
     "But surely they didn't. How could they - without hands?"
     "You ever take a close look at their feet? A rat's feet aren't like hands, but they're more than just paws. There's an articulation of digits that lets them grasp things. It's true of most rodents. Squirrels, for instance: You've seen them sitting up, holding a piece of fruit in their forepaws."
     "Yes, but without an opposable thumb-"
     "Of course," Acuff said, "they don't have great dexterity, nothing like we have, but these aren't ordinary rats. Remember, these creatures have been genetically engineered. Except for the shape and size of their craniums, they aren't physically much different from other rats, but they're smarter. A lot smarter."
     Acuff was involved in intelligence-enhancement experiments, seeking to discover if lower species, like rats, could be genetically altered to breed future generations with drastically increased brain power, in hope that success with lab animals might lead to procedures that would enhance human intelligence. His research was labeled Project Blackberry in honor of the brave, intelligent rabbit of the same name in Richard Adams's Watership Down.
     At John Acuff's suggestion, Ben had read and immensely enjoyed Adams's book, but he had not yet quite decided whether he approved or disapproved of Project Blackberry.
     "Anyway," Acuff said, "whether they could have picked the cage lock is debatable. And maybe they didn't. Because there's this to consider." He pointed to the slot in the frame of the cage door where the stubby brass bolt was supposed to fit when engaged. The slot was packed full of a grainy brown substance. "Food pellets. They chewed up food pellets, then filled the slot with the paste, so the bolt couldn't automatically engage."
     "But the door had to be open for them to do that."
     "It must have happened during a maze run."
     "A what?"
     "Well, there's this flexible maze we constantly reconfigure, half as big as this whole room. It's made of clear plastic tubes with difficult obstacles. We attach it to the front of the cage, then just open their door, so they go straight from the cage into the maze. We were doing that yesterday, so the cage was open a long time. If some of them paused at the door before entering the maze, if they sniffed around the lock slot for a few seconds, we might not have noticed. We were more interested in what they did after they entered the maze."
     Ben