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half-pricked, noses inquisitive and eager.
    â€œWhat that mark?” snapped Mrs Trotter. “Why he got the mark?”
    â€œYou’re seeing it the wrong way up, Mother,” said Doctor Trotter in an odd voice, both soothing and teasing. “It’s only a big Q, upside down. Look, the other one’s got a small q.”
    She grunted, unsatisfied. The rats made no mistake in the first section, Quentin reaching the gate a couple of seconds before Queenie. But Quentin made a muddle over the trigger and Queenie was half way along the second section before he got it right.
    â€œThis section’s the mirror image of the previous one,” said Foxe. “They’ve got to take the left fork this time. Look, Queenie’s got it wrong. No … he’s remembered. Now he’ll back out. Quentin’s got it wrong too …”
    Foxe was mildly interested in Quentin’s behaviour, apart from the rat’s status in the experiment. Normally he was careful not to get even distantly involved with any particular animal, partly because his own attention might marginally affect the rat’s behaviour, and partly because he preferred not to finish an experiment mashing up the brains of an animal he had, so to speak, known personally. But sometimes the relationship grew, unwilled.
    Quentin paused, his nose twitching at the blank side wall of the run as though he expected to find a gate there. He lost interest and leaned against the wall like a bum on a street corner. Foxe knew quite well that Quentin was only making room to scratch an ear with a hind leg, but the effect was exactly as if he had yawned, shrugged and lit a battered fag-end.
    â€œYou have a subversive there,” said Doctor Trotter.
    He was joking, of course, but from his tone it was a joke on a serious subject, like a priest’s mild blasphemies. Foxe’s eye was caught by a movement from beyond Mrs Trotter—the brown, long-fingered hand of the man who had so far been no more than a vague presence, sliding up a khaki-trousered thigh to caress the butt of a big pistol that dangled there in a leather holster. Foxe looked back at the runs. Queenie had reached and passed the second gate and was well on his way to the third, but somehow Quentin occupied the attention as he backed lethargically to a turning-space.
    â€œNo-good rad,” said Mrs Trotter.
    â€œYou feel like a God?” said Doctor Trotter. “I do not speak of the Lord Almighty, just in literary terms. A God above Troy, watching the heroes scuttle round the walls. What if we are only rats, and somewhere above us there is a scientist, timing us and taking notes?”
    â€œIf there’s a God like that he’s running a very messy experiment,” said Foxe.
    â€œYou think you could teach him something, Doctor? No, it’s in the nature of the experiment. Man is a messy animal. And you know what that God is looking for? Not intelligence, my friend—oh, no. He is looking for virtue. Have you considered developing a drug which would make men good?”
    â€œGood?”
    â€œGood.”
    Foxe decided to back out.
    â€œI’m not on the development side, sir. My job is controlling and interpreting the behaviour of animals.”
    â€œSo is mine. Let us consider this problem.”
    â€œBesides, how are you going to measure goodness?”
    Again the Prime Minister’s big laugh blanketed the laboratory, but this time not in pure good humour. There was an undertone of roaring.
    â€œHow would you measure goodness, Captain Angiah?” he said.
    The man with the gun moved so that he could look directly at Foxe. He was as tall as Doctor Trotter, but no more than ordinarily broad. He might have been almost startlingly handsome—his face was narrow and fine-boned, his skin a very clear brown, but his nose ended at a curious angle, displaying large black nostrils.
    â€œI begin with crime statistics,” he said. “We