Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction

by Nalo Hopkinson

  I shuddered. Researchers in the Lemming community were basically sacrificial lambs. They came and did the surveys to determine who would be their big predator in the fourth year, offering themselves as food after the data was delivered back to their community. All this data was compiled in the second and third year and a major enemy was predicted. I’d never seen if this was effective. I’d heard from the bears it was not. According to them, the lemmings became paranoid by their own data and panicked in the third year, and bred like crazy to survive the coming “holocaust,” making the fourth year a feast for all predators. It was a terrible cyclical event, but it happened. Lemmings on our side of the window had spurts in population as well. It had never been a crisis, as far as I knew.

  But then, I wasn’t a lemming.

  “I want to be cooked on that beautiful blue flame,” one of the females pointed over to our small gas hot plate, which we hadn’t used in awhile since we were running out of fuel and wanted to conserve it. It would be a nine-month winter.

  “You can’t,” I said coldly. I waved the pen at them threateningly. “We aren’t going to use that very much anymore.”

  “But I get a request,” she demanded.

  “Sorry. I’m not even going to eat you. You might as well pick another subject to interview.”

  They were undeterred. “Did you come here specifically for lemmings?” a male asked.

  Dr. Kitashima came in the door and I felt as if I were saved. “Doctor,” I said, “what have you heard?”

  “Mr. Stout believe the landing gear completely out of commission. Will not be able to fly the plane without it.” He took off a stocking cap and placed that on another desk. He went to the removable panel in the floor and took a rake that leaned against the wall and raked the coals beneath the wood, nestled just down a few inches into the ground. It was not the best heater, but it worked.

  I’d already heard some of that news, yesterday. But I didn’t want to believe it.

  I looked away. I told myself that I could be as stoic and as practical as the next scientist. I could make do with what we had, live a life here in the Arctic, watching plays put on by bears, talking to lemmings who are doomed, shooing away nosy birds and foxes. I certainly didn’t want to be the weak and emotional one on this expedition — the one who couldn’t pull her weight. No reason to accuse me or fulfill their expectations.

  “You have remained busy?” he asked.

  I hoped he didn’t really listen to my voice. There was a catch in it. “I’ve been working on reports.” I stuck the letter to David underneath another pile of papers.

  He smiled. “Good. That will pass the time.”

  He was short like me and his face looked like a windshield after it was broken. He seemed much older than he actually was. I thought he was fifty or so. Really no need for him to look as old as he did. Despite his sometimes annoying habit of treating me like his research assistant, I got along well with him.

  “You have been talking to our friends,” he said to me, indicating the lemmings.

  “I don’t really want to—,” I started to say, but one of the lemmings interrupted.

  “We are in the midst of an interview,” he reminded me. “Did you come here for lemmings?” he asked me again.

  I ignored them, getting up and moving to where Dr. Kitashima stood. I started telling him how these lemmings were driving me batty.

  “Are you perhaps avoiding the question?” one of them asked. “We’ve had that happen before.” He turned to the others. “I would put, yes, she has come for lemmings.”

  “You can’t put that!” I said. “I didn’t confirm.”

  “You confirmed by your avoidance.”

  “That’s not research,” I told them.

  “We hypothesized that many subjects lie and avoid. This just proves our hypothesis is a true one.”

  I blew up. “If all your data is skewed to answer your hypothesis then why go do research at all? Why not stay in your lab and make up whatever you want?”

  They were quiet for a moment.

  One of them said, “When data relies on the answers of individuals isn’t there always a margin for error due to the unreliability of interviews?”

  “If they are unreliable — why would you do them?”

  “How else will we collect data?” they said.

  “Look, I don’t have all day to explain to you how research is done. But I’ll tell you this — there are other ways to calculate threat in a closed system besides interviews. What am I saying?”

  Interviews — we’d never tried interviews before now. No one — no animal could tell us what they were thinking. And, come to think of it, if they had been able to, we would have solved a lot of the mysteries of how animals communicate, what they are thinking; what a boon to science! ‘Course, that’s called anthropology.

  I walked over to them. “Okay, what you are doing is more of a psychological survey. Now, that’s not my field. But I do know this: surveys have a large margin of error and that error margin rises when you are dealing with personal questions. You are asking predators if they are planning to eat you. Now let’s think about this: why would a predator tell you he was going to eat you?”

  “They all tell us they will eat us.”

  “So how do you determine which one is the most threatening in a given year?”

  “We go by intuition — in the way that the predators answer the questions.”

  “Intuition? That’s not scientific.”

  “But it has been accurate for generations.”

  I said, “Wait. You are telling me that the questions are a front — a disguise — for you to assess each predator through nonverbal cues?”

  They conferred among themselves for a moment in Lemming-speak. It was a high-pitched chittering.

  One of them looked up, “We cannot answer the question without skewing our results.”

  I was ready to throw something. “You are a walking, talking insult to science!” I said.

  Dr. Kitashima swept the floor around me, asking me to lift my feet one at a time.

  “Perhaps this is opportunity.”

  “What opportunity?” I snapped at him.

  “To spend time. Teach them about science. Real science. Help them see.”

  He swept the cabin methodically, in rows, until the dust was in one pile and then, without another word, swept the pile out the door.

  That’s why we are here, now, the five of us, me and my team of protegés, approaching on our bellies a snowy owl nest. In the distance, a snowy owl sits. It’s a female, as they alone incubate the eggs. Males are usually gathering food. This is about the distance that we need to be. She can probably see us, but that doesn’t matter because my point will still come through.

  “All right, let’s stop here.”

  “Why don’t we go up to her?” one of them says.

  “We don’t want to alter the results of observation. A scientist has to keep objective distance at all times. She doesn’t want to influence the results of her research. Of course,” I pause to remove a small rock from underneath me, “there is a theory that every observer has an effect on the thing she is observing. The Heisenberg Principle.”

  They scribble on a notepad and repeat, “Heisenberg Principle.”

  “But we’re going to forget that,” I say. “We are going to maintain our distance. The first thing you have to learn is how to observe.” I look at the owl through my binoculars. She looks sedated.

  “Okay, what is the owl doing?” I ask. “Observe her and tell me what you see.”

  They look for a few seconds. A female says, “She is looking for us.”

  “What makes you say that?” I ask.

  “She is looking straight at us,” she says.

  I look through the b
inoculars, “No, actually she looks like she’s asleep.”

  “She is faking,” they say.

  “You don’t know that. You have to go by what you can see.”

  “She is stalking us,” they say.

  “No, you are missing the point. You can’t make up things — you can’t interpret the data you don’t have. You have to look at what she’s doing and just write that down. Can we do that? Can you just write down what you see?”

  They scribble for a few moments, looking up at the owl periodically, and then return to scribbling. One of them even draws a nice picture of the owl.

  “That’s very good. See, now this guy over here has drawn a sketch to go with his observations. That’s very cool, uh…” Suddenly I want to name them again. “Are you Luxor?” I ask.

  “I’m Orleans,” he says. I’m embarrassed because I named them after casinos, but I wasn’t feeling quite myself that day — a little excited, a little unprofessional. But now they were colleagues and not subjects, so it was different.

  “Orleans, yeah. Okay, Orleans here has drawn a picture,” I say again.

  “It’s a very nice picture,” Mirage says. “Should we all draw pictures?”

  “Well, pictures are nice,” I prop myself up on an elbow. The wind whistles under my hood. “But not necessary. Just writing down notes of what you’re observing is the important part.”

  Bellagio says, “She’s awake! I saw her move.”

  “Good,” I turn back and look through my binoculars. “All right. Now, look at what she’s doing.”

  “She’s cleaning herself,” Mirage says.

  “She is,” I confirm. “Good, write that down.” They proceed to write down this information.

  “Why is this important? It doesn’t tell us if she will eat us?” Luxor says.

  “Animal behavior is an indication of their patterns, their habits. If we know the routine of this owl we can then predict behavior,” I tell them, feeling a bit like a professor instead of a graduate student.

  “How long before we know if she will eat us?”

  “Well, Mirage, you have to observe her over time. Like a long time. Like a really long time.”

  “A couple of days?” asks Bellagio.

  “Well, some of these can last for months or years. Depends on funding.”

  “Funding?” they ask.

  “Not important here,” I say. “We have to watch this owl and find out what she’s like, what she does, what her habits are. Habits don’t lie like statements about your habits can.”

  “Like when we caught you lying,” Luxor says.

  “I wasn’t lying,” I sigh. “Okay, it’s true I came here to observe lemmings. I’m a biologist. I want to do this for a living. I was going to do just what we’re doing now.”

  “Look at us through binoculars?” they ask.

  “Yes, basically. Yes.”

  “What’s basically?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “You would have snacked on us,” Bellagio says.

  I look back at the owl and she has something in her mouth. It’s a lemming.

  “You guys better see this,” I say.

  They all hum in chorus and breathe in, and then a world of scratching on notebooks.

  “Well, we’re done here,” they say.

  “What?” I look back as they start to leave. Bellagio has the audacity to cross over my back. “Where are you going? You’re not done.”

  “We observed her eating a lemming. That answers our question.” Luxor wipes his hands on his fur, smearing it with ink.

  “You don’t know how often she does that,” I say to these science neophytes. “You don’t know if the lemming was days old.”

  “But she was eating her. Clearly, she has the appetite and the habit,” Bellagio turns to go.

  Mirage stops, “But we don’t know how often this owl does that, or if all the snowy owls follow her pattern. Kate is right. We have to stay and watch longer.”

  Good job! I think.

  Orleans and Luxor are off, crossing the tundra. “I have a better idea,” says Orleans, “we’ll just ask her.”

  “That won’t give you real data!” I call out after them. It gets lost in the wind. “This is not part of the scientific method! Wait!” But they are heedless.

  “Men,” I say.

  “Males,” Mirage and Bellagio say, but they aren’t as upset as they need to be. They say it in a dreamy sense. “They always have the confidence.”

  “Listen,” I tell them. “That’s an owl. What’s to stop her from eating them?”

  Mirage titters, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be swooped up by an owl? Feel that rush of excitement, even as the talons surround you!” She clasps little paws in front of her and her eyes are wide.

  I underestimate their death wish.

  I stand up, brush off my coat and walk quickly to catch up to the two others in my team. Back home, in Las Vegas, I was in charge of the Mendor Lab. Diane Mendor really ran it, but when she got engaged, she became wrapped up in a lot of other things, and I just naturally took over. This feels like a lab all over again, a bunch of young grad students who think they know what they are doing, blustering right into a big pit. Live and learn.

  Orleans and Luxor have scampered right up to the owl, but the owl is not reacting to them in the way I expect. She sees me, obviously, and this alarms her. Even though I’m shorter than the average human, there is no average here to work from, so I look tall. I’ve always wanted to be tall. Perhaps I stretch a little when we get up to her. I’ve also only seen dead owls this close. I know a fellow student who’s going into zoo science. She visited an owl sanctuary in California. Said they scratched a lot, and they were flighty. I wonder what owls here are like.

  This one has her feathers ruffled, but she’s not hissing. She’s not moved off the nest either, but I can’t tell if she’s upset or excited to see us.

  “Hello,” I say to her. “My name is Kate.”

  “Well, these are nice. Thank you very much, Kate,” she says, eyeing my lemmings.

  “They’re not for eating,” I say.

  “We’re here to ask questions,” Luxor announces, pulling out his notebook.

  “Ah, I already had a team asking questions. I told them everything I knew,” she says, but her tone of voice is cheeky. She swivels around and pulls out a lemming from her nest. “You might recognize this one.”

  The lemmings chitter among themselves, some high-pitched squeaks, which are either terror or delight, or maybe both. They obviously know the lemming.

  Mirage turns to me, “He was a colleague.” But it’s a fact, not much emotion. I haven’t gotten used to facial expressions yet.

  “The agreement, you know,” says the owl.

  “Of course,” says Luxor.

  I say, “What do you mean, the agreement? These are my lemmings.”

  Orleans looks me square in the eye and damned if he didn’t put his little paw on his hip, “You won’t be eating us. You told us that.”

  “Well, I might. I might just get a hankering for lemming in the middle of the night,” I say, with a little jealousy on top of my voice. “Listen,” I turn to the owl, “these are my lemmings and I’m training them to do things differently. So you can’t eat them. They’re experimental.”

  The owl blinks, “Dear, why do you want to change a good system?”

  She knows. She knows the lemmings are basically naïve and knows that their questions don’t amount to anything. She’s taking advantage of them.

  She nestles her wings close to her, “Feel free to ask me any question you wish — for the agreement,” she adds firmly. She doesn’t look at me.

  “Luxor, Orleans. You guys come home. I’ll talk with you.”
>
  They aren’t listening. Luxor has a notebook out, is flipping back through small pages. Orleans has the inkwell and props it up between the two of them.

  Luxor looks back at me to show me how this is done. “Now,” he says, turning to the owl, “about how many lemmings do you eat in a given day?”

  “About two,” she says, without pause.

  “And how large is your territory?” Luxor asks.

  “It is squares 45-53 on the loo-tow field.”

  Luxor beams, as much as a lemming can. “Well now, that’s a large area. And you only eat two lemmings a day? Do you have a mate?”

  “I do,” says the owl.

  “And how many lemmings does he eat?”

  “He eats two a day as well, on average. Although, lately he has been flying off into other squares.” She turns to her right. “He could be anywhere right now.”

  “Exactly,” said Luxor. “And if you had to predict your appetite in say a year’s time, would you say that you would on average eat the same amount of lemmings?”

  The owl thinks, blinking, and then widens her eyes, little explosions of yellow. “Well, I don’t know. Let me see. A year’s time. Why, just thinking of that makes me terribly hungry. You know, anything can happen in a year’s time.”

  Without warning, she lunges forward and gobbles Orleans up, slapping her beak against the inkwell. A squirt of red and inky black runs down the owl’s feathers. Luxor and the others are entranced. I move forward and grab the owl by her throat and place a hand around her legs just above the talons — I don’t want to be scraped. I squeeze until the owl’s beak thrusts open. She must be in shock because she doesn’t try to resist, and I turn her head towards the ground and shake her, trying to make her gag by pressing her throat. Nothing is coming out. The owl has swallowed the lemming whole, but I know she can regurgitate. I’ve seen them do it. And with the size of Orleans, there should be a lot more ripping and tearing before she swallows. She’s just trying to make a point.

  So am I.

  The lemmings are clapping behind me, and I can’t tell if they are clapping because of what I am doing to save Orleans, or if they are cheering for the “beautiful” death of their colleague.