by Unknown
Alex drew himself up haughtily. “Do you imply that I, your plenipotentiary, can't stop twenty ships?”
“Oh, no,” said the mayor. “Not at all. By all means, my dear sir. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must have the town crier inform the people. They'd never forgive me if they missed such a spectacle.” He bustled away.
“Darling!” Tanni grabbed his arm. “You're crazy. We don't have so much as a raythrower—they'll kill you!”
“I hope not,” said Alex, bleakly. He stuck his head out the window. “Come in, Olaf. I'll need your help.”
The corsair fleet moved in under the silent guns of the fort and dropped anchor at the quay. Whooping, shouting, and brandishing their weapons, the crew stormed ashore and rushed up the main street toward the mayor's palace. They were mildly taken aback to see the way lined with townsfolk excitedly watching and making bets on the outcome, but hastened on roaring bloodthirsty threats.
The palace lay inside a walled garden whose gate stood open. Nearby, the redcoats of the garrison were lined up at attention. Olaf watched them gloweringly: it was his assignment to keep any of them from shooting. Overhead, great lanterns threw a restless yellow light on the scene.
“Fillet and smoke me, but there's our admiral!” shouted Captain Hook as the tall green-bearded figure with drawn cutlass stepped through the gateway. “Three cheers for Admiral Greenbeard!”
“Hip, hip, horray!” Echoes beat against the distant rumble of surf. The little round pirates swarmed closer, drawing to a disorderly halt as they neared their chief.
“Aha, me hearties!” cried Alex. “This is a great day for the Brethren of the Coast. I've got no less than Alexander Jones, the Plenipotentiary of Toka, here, and I'm about to split him like squab!” He paused. “What, no cheers?”
The pirates shuffled their fee.
“What?” bellowed Alex. “Speak up, you swabs. What's wrong?”
“Stab me!” mumbled Hook. “But it don't seem right to spit the plenipotentiary. After all he done for this planet.”
Alex felt touched, but redoubled the ferocity of his glare.
“If it's glory you're after, Admiral,” contributed Captain Kidd, “blast me if I'd waste time on the plenipotentiary. There's no glory to be gained by spitting him. Why, he's so feeble, they say he has to have a special chair to carry him around.”
This description of the one small luxury Alex had purchased after three years of saving—a robot chair for his office—so infuriated him that he lost his temper completely.
“Is that so?” he yelled. “Well, it just happens that he's challenged me to a duel to the death, and I'm not going to back out. And you scuts will stay there and watch me kill him and like it!”
“No, I won't have it!” cried a soldier, raising his musket. Olaf took it away from him, tied it into a knot, and gave it back.
Alex ducked inside the portal, where Tanni and the mayor waited in the garden, still muttering furiously to himself.
“What's wrong now, dear?” asked Tanni, white-faced.
“Blankety-blanks,” snarled Alex. “For two cents I'd kill myself, and then see how they'd like it!” He stamped over to a large brass urn that had been placed in readiness.
“En garde!” he roared, fetching it a lusty swipe with his cutlass. “Take that!”
The gathered pirates jumped nervously. Billy Bosun tried to go through the gateway to see what was happening, but Olaf picked him up and threw him over the heads of Henry Morgan and One-eye. “Private matter,” said the viking imperturbably.
Viciously, Alex battered the clamoring urn with his blade, meanwhile yelling imprecations. “Don't try to get away! Stand and fight like a man! Aha! Take that, me hearty!”
Hammering away, he fumbled in his pocket with his free hand and brought out some ammonia-soaked cotton. The beard came loose and he gave it to Tanni, who was dabbing him with ketchup here and there, as he shouted in a slightly lower pitch.
“Is that so? Take that yourself! And that, Greenbeard! Didn't know, did you--” he thrust his clean-shaven face around the edge of the gate--”that I was on the fencing team as a boy?”
Impulsively, the pirates cheered.
“As well,” said Alex, circling back out of view and belaboring the urn, “as having my letter in track and swimming. I could have made the basketball team too, if I'd wanted. Take that!”
Hurriedly, he stuck the beard back on and signaled for more ketchup.
“Burn me and blister me,” he swore, backing a little ways out of the gate and scowling horribly at the buccaneers, “but you've a tricky way about you, Jones. But it won't save you. The minute I trap you in a corner, I'll rip you up for bait. Take that!” He stepped out of sight again. “Ouch!” he cried in the lower voice.
The pirates looked sad. “It don't seem right,” muttered Long John Silver. “It just never come to me, like, that people might get hurt.”
Captain Hook winced at the din.
“Aye,” he said, shakily. “What've we gotten ourselves into, mates?”
“Don't be too cocky, Greenbeard!” cried Alex, appearing with a bare chin and lunging while Tanni struck the urn. “Actually, I've got muscles of steel. Take that! And that! And that!”
Vanishing again, he fetched the urn three ringing blows, dropped his cutlass, and clapped the beard back onto his face, giving vent to a spine-freezing scream.
“You got me!” he yammered. Clasping ketchup-soaked hands over his heart, he reeled across the gateway, stopping before the terrified visages of the pirates.
“Oh,” he groaned. “I'm done for, mates. Spitted in fair and equal combat. Who'd ha' thought the plenipotentiary was such a fighter? Goodby, mates. Clear sailing. Anchors aweigh. Don't look for my body. Just let me crawl off and die in peace.”
“Goodby,” wept Anne Bonney, waving a handkerchief at him. The whole buccaneer band was dissolving into tears.
Alex staggered out of sight, removed his beard, and breathed heavily for a while. Then he picked up his cutlass and strode slowly out of the gate and looked over his erstwhile followers.
“Well, well,” he said scornfully. “What have we here? Pirates?”
There was a pause.
“Mercy, sir!” wept Captain Hook, falling to his knees before the conqueror of the terrible, the invincible, the indispensable Greenbeard, “We was just having our bit of fun, sir.”
“We didn't mean nothing,” pleaded Flint.
“'Specially to get nobody hurt,” added Billy Bosun.
“Silence!” commanded Alex. “Do you give up?” There was no need to wait for an answer. “Very well. Mister Mayor, you will have these miscreants hanged at dawn. Then put them on their ships and let them go. And—” he scowled at the pirates—” see that you all behave yourselves hereafter!”
“Y-y-y-yes sir,” said Black Tom Yardly.
Alex felt someone shyly plucking at his sleeve. He looked around, and saw it was the mayor.
“Oh... I don't know.” the mayor looked up at him. Wistfulness edged his tone. “They weren't so bad, now were they, sir? I think we owe 'em a vote of thanks, damme. These colonial outposts get infernally dull.”
“Why, thank'ee, mayor,” said Anne Bonney. “We'll come sack you any time.”
Alex interrupted hastily. Piracy seemed to have become an incurable disease, but if you can't change a Hoka's ways you can at least make him listen to reason... on his own terms.
“Now hear this,” he decreed loudly. “I'm going to temper justice with mercy. The Brethren of the Coast may sack Bermuda once a year, but there must be no bloodshed--”
“Why should there be?” asked the mayor, surprised.
“—And the loot must be returned undamaged.”
“Slice and kipper me!” exclaimed Captain Hook indignantly. “Of course it'll be returned, sir. What d'ye think we are—thieves?”
Festivities lasted through all the next day, for the pirates, of course, had to sail away into the sunset. Standing on a terrace of the pal
ace garden, his arm about Tanni and the mayor nearby, Alex watched their masts slip over the horizon.
“I've got just one problem left,” he said. “Olaf. The poor fellow is still hanging around, trying to find someone who knows the way to Constantinople. I wish I could help.”
“Why, that's easy, sir,” said the mayor. “Constantinople's only about fifty miles due south of here.”
“What?” exclaimed Alex. “No, you're crazy. That's the Kingdom of Natchalu.”
“It was,” nodded the mayor. “Right up till last month it was. But the queen is a lusty wench, if you'll pardon the expression, madam, and was finding life rather dull until a trader sold her some books which mentioned a, hm,” the mayor coughed delicately, “lady named Theodora. They're still getting reorganized, but its going fast and--”
Alex set off at a run. He rounded the corner of the house and the setting sun blazed in his eyes. It gilded the helmet and byrnie of Olaf Button-nose, where he learned on his sword, gazing out to sea.
“Olaf!” cried Alex.
The Hoka viking turned slowly to regard the human. In the sunset, above the droop of his long blond mustaches, his face seemed to hold a certain Varangian indomitability.
Dr. Birdmouse
Reginald Bretnor
If there is any “given” in anthropomorphic fantasies, it is that the animals in a multispecies society will stick to their own kind for biological matters. From the fellowship of the Disney funny-animal stars to the explicitly erotic societies of Kyell Gold’s alternate worlds, the mice will date and wed other mice, the otters will date and wed other otters, and so on. If animals do marry outside their species, they will be childless or will adopt children. Both the other characters and audiences of DreamWorks Animation’s June 2008 Kung Fu Panda knew (or “strongly suspected”) that Po the panda was not the natural son of Mr. Ping, his goose father, which was confirmed in Kung Fu Panda 2.
“Dr. Birdmouse” breaks this rule. It is (almost) the only story in which all the species are happily interfertile, resulting in such horrors to the visiting Earthman as the camelbat, the snakepig, the moosevulture, and Miss Cowturtle whom he is expected to marry. Bretnor has to keep this a rollicking farce for the reader to suspend disbelief enough for the concept to work at all, which he does surprisingly smoothly.
How might such a society work out in the long run? Presumably all the species would eventually blend together until they are all as homogenous as the dog-nosed background characters in Carl Barks’ Duckburg stories. It is similar to what W. S. Gilbert described in his & Arthur Sullivan’s 1889 The Gondoliers; "when everyone is somebody, then no-one's anybody". This rather defeats the allure of an anthropomorphic society; to see humans and other distinct species coexisting as equals.
I said that “Dr. Birdmouse” is almost the only story to feature an interfertile multiple species. The only other example, to my knowledge, is the Dutch novella Van den vos Reynaerde (About Reynard the Fox) by Robert van Genechten (De Amsterdamsche Keurkamer, March 1941). This has the reputation of being “the Nazi equivalent of Animal Farm”. It was published in the German-occupied Netherlands in 1941, and was quickly removed from sale in May 1945, after the Liberation. It is extremely anti-Semitic, and could not be republished today because of almost all Western nations’ laws against Hate literature. It is written as a modern sequel to the medieval folk-tale about Reynard the Fox at the court of King Lion. Rhinoceroses come into the Animal Kingdom (with many coy comparisons of the rhinos’ nose-horns and the Nazi caricatures of Jewish hooked noses) and inveigle themselves into the animals’ aristocracy. They convince the other animals that species fidelity is very old-fashioned. "Then there was a great confusion amongst the animals. They had become true brothers and mated amongst each other. The bull and the goat, the hare and the fish, the ferret and the wild boar; because they didn't recognize each other, and confused each other's names and habits, they ate their own children." These animal-mongrels are all ugly and stupid, illustrating the Nazi “science” of Racial Purity. Only Reynard is smart enough to realize that the rhinoceroses are undermining the Animal Kingdom so they can take it over. Van Genechten (who was sentenced to death by a war-crimes trial in October 1945; he committed suicide before the sentence was carried out) makes interspecies mating a thing of shame. Bretnor implies that it is a way to universal brotherhood.
DR. BIRDMOUSE needed only two weeks to learn English. He met Vandercook every morning at the door of the spaceboat, and they walked – or, at least, Vandercook walked while Dr. Birdmouse flitted and fluttered – out over the crisp bluish grass into the pink trellistrees, where they seated themselves on pillowy vegetables called thirmlings and throgs. Vandercook liked the throgs because they didn't squeak like the thirmlings, and besides they were dry.
Of course, it wasn't really as informal as that. Vandercook didn't actually walk on the grass. Dr. Birdmouse's odd little friends always unrolled a splendid red carpet that stretched from the door of the spaceboat through the out-grove, through the place where the gestures were made, into the in-grove. There they brought in the big breakfast banquet, a sort of fruit-salad-smorgasbord-vegetable-plate, and made their prettiest gestures as Vandercook ate it, keeping them up until Eetwee's twelfth moon – the quick, green one – made its third trip overhead.
Vandercook attributed all this to his own resourcefulness and quick thinking. As soon as Dr. Birdmouse had learned enough English to ask him his business, he had announced himself as Envoy Extraordinary and Ambassador Plenipotentiary from Earth to Eetwee. This ruse had made it unnecessary for him to tell Dr. Birdmouse the truth about his profession – how he traveled from planet to planet playing the piano, and how the light from the three romantic old curlicued oil-lamps shone on his slick wavy hair, and his spangled tuxedo, and his red smile and white, hairy hands – and how lean, lonely young women, and hungry middle-aged women, and wistful old women sat there and listened, devouring him with their moist, stupid eyes.
He had a bad moment or two when Dr. Birdmouse's personality, flowering with his fluency, began to bear an uncanny resemblance to that of his own Uncle Edwin, an elderly person of indeterminate sex with enough of an income to swish around on the edge of the Arts. After Dr. Birdmouse addressed him as “dear boy” several times, following this up with a perfect rendition of Uncle Edwin's soprano giggle, Vandercook asked him outright, “Are you reading my mind?” and Dr. Birdmouse giggled and swished, and replied, “Dear silly boy, I'd just love to read it and know all the sweet things you're thinking. But I can't. We're all awfully intuitive here on dear little Eetwee, but I'm just not telepathic.”
Vandercook settled down on his throg, fairly certain that the sweet things in his mind were safely concealed. These concerned what he had been doing before his arrival, and his plans for the future, which he had made within fifteen minutes after landing on Eetwee.
His profession was not as rewarding as it was said to have been back in the juicer days of the Twentieth Century, and he had been wanting to quit it. Besides, he was weary of ardent but unpleasing women, one at a time or by the whole hall full. He was sick and tired of the coarse jokes his fat brother, Hughie, was always cracking about them, especially in public and to his loud, red-faced friends. Hughie was a trucking contractor with a whole string of starlets and models and absolutely grade-A nightclub strippers. Vandercook had been brooding about it. Suddenly he made his decision, abandoned his manager-navigator, decamped with the spaceboat and proceeds. Then, promptly losing his way, he had blundered on Eetwee.
Well, pretty soon now, if he wanted, he'd be able to buy himself the world's fanciest harem. He imagined them – brunettes, blondes, and redheads, all in a sort of lush Turkish-bath setting, with Hughie drooling with envy outside the door. Boy, would that show him!
He had seen right away that Dr. Birdmouse's friends were worth money. They were worth so much money that even the spaceboat could carry enough of them to make him a fortune. Usually it wasn't worthwhile exhibiting extraterre
strials; they were too different. A couple of monkeys out of a zoo could steal their audience away any time. Besides, they required special atmospheres and temperatures, to say nothing of menus. But Dr. Birdmouse's friends were all oxygen breathers, and each of them looked so almost familiar that you could stare at it for hours just trying to figure it out. Then you'd finally conclude, as Vandercook had at first, that every one was a species all by itself.
Vandercook knew that if you take a tall glass, pour in a jigger of brandy and one of tequila, and then fill it up with champagne, you get something unique. It may remind you of what has gone into it, but it has new and special characteristics all its own, and they are decidedly functional. Dr. Birdmouse was like that. At first glance, he reminded Vandercook of pouring together a rather large bird, perhaps of the pheasant variety, and a very large mouse – not a forced crossing, not an unnatural linking of hostile genes, but a subtle blending which itself modified the ingredients. Dr. Birdmouse was not mouse plus bird. He rose above that. He had neither feathers nor fur, but he had their resultant, a soft covering which, beneath its gray surface, showed the bright patterns of his ancestral plumage. He had wings which folded discreetly so as not to mar his mousely appearance after he landed. He had a little, dark nose-beak which wiggled, hands fore and aft, and a parasol-fan at the end of his tail which he used as a stabilizer. He was Dr. Birdmouse, and nobody else. And in this single respect, of their utter uniqueness, all his friends were just like him.
As soon as he could, Vandercook had asked why this was. “Where is the rest of each species?” he asked. “Why is it I've seen only one of a kind?”
“Species? The rest?” Dr. Birdmouse looked startled.
“Sure,” Vandercook said, “all the critters who're just like each other, all the bears or tigers or horses or owls, all the— well, all the birdmice.”
“You mean--” Dr. Birdmouse suddenly became very excited. “--you mean that you still have species on Earth?”