Captains Stupendous

by Rhys Hughes

  The Russian Civil War was raging; conflicting armies of Reds, Whites and Anarchists were stampeding back and forth across the steppes; there was precious little room in Lenin’s bald, ailing dome for scientific matters. But Ivanov’s bizarre proposal also came to the notice of Stalin, who found it thrilling. Stalin went over the head of Lenin, squinting against the glare as he did so, and issued an official reply.

  Ivanov received formal permission and limited funds to commence a series of experiments. There was an ape sanctuary in Sukhumi, capital of Abkhazia, a republic recently absorbed into the Soviet Empire. The apes had belonged to a wealthy trader called Zander. Now they belonged to the Bolsheviks. Ivanov travelled to Sukhumi to inspect them, but they were all useless. The war had traumatised them.

  ‘I can hardly expect a shell-shocked primate to produce healthy and useful offspring!’ he grumbled to himself.

  If he wanted to secure specimens in perfect health there was no option but to travel to the original source of the apes. He must travel to Africa! Ivanov made the appropriate enquiries and frittered away in bribes most of the roubles he had been awarded; but extra funds were made available to him. Stalin had charged him with sending regular reports back; he did whatever he could to smooth Ivanov’s path.

  And so it was that in early 1924 Ivanov found himself a passenger on a steamer bound for French Guinea, for the port city of Conakry. Stalin had arranged this for him. That appalling tyrant rubbed his hands in glee and drained the last drop of vodka in the bottle. A chimp-human hybrid would suit his purposes very well indeed. The more, the merrier! Lenin was on his deathbed. Destiny was muttering.

  Stalin saw great potential in an army of humanzees. A special division of obedient subhumans, stronger than men, more malign than apes, armed with rifles and short swords and long clubs. Such creatures could march, swing and lope across Europe, smashing the Western Powers to yellowish pulp. Properly controlled humanzees would be almost unstoppable! Stalin called for more vodka and chuckled heartily.

  When he finally reached French Guinea after a rough crossing, Ivanov waited for the greenish tinge to leave his cheeks, a matter of only a few days, and then made contact with a group of communists who had been instructed to assist him. The corrupt priests of a religious mission house deep in the forest were willing to help in return for money. Ivanov set off for this remote locale with all his equipment.

  The mission house contained a specialist hospital for the treatment of young women. The priest in charge of the hospital, Father Phigga, shook hands solemnly with Ivanov and whispered, ‘Ignore all those who already have children. Impregnate only the virgins. They won’t know anything is wrong when they give birth to hairy babes.’ And Ivanov agreed this was sagacious advice. He began work immediately.

  Nets were strung between trees in the grounds of the hospital; bait in the form of fruit was scattered nearby. After a night of terrible screams and thrashings, a dozen chimpanzees were discovered tangled in the traps the following morning. The females were released; the males were taken into the improvised laboratory that Ivanov had set up behind the altar of the hospital chapel. He operated in solitude.

  Secrecy was important to the project. Stalin had warned Ivanov that if any news of what he was doing leaked out and reached the ears of foreign governments, the medical researcher would be killed without any fuss by one of Stalin’s numerous assassins. Ivanov was careful to hide the details of his experiment even from his guides in Guinea. Only the meddlesome Father Phigga knew more than he should have.

  Ivanov removed the testicles of the captured apes. With the fluid they contained, he surreptitiously inseminated the fittest and most attractive of the female patients in the wards. He told them he was injecting them with a new medicine. There was no need to obtain consent: he was a Stalinist to the roots of his identity. In time, some of the virgins became pregnant. He informed them that the bulges were tumours.

  He delivered the babies himself, still maintaining the illusion that this was a radical form of surgery to extract the cancers that were eating them. By this time, Father Phigga had succumbed to a new illness that bizarrely resembled strychnine poisoning. Probably he had caught it from the birds he liked he shoot and devour lightly grilled in the jungle. His grotesquely contorted body was cremated without an autopsy.

  Ivanov raised the infant humanzees in a wing of the mission house that was off-limits to everyone but he. The furniture and ornaments there had been the property of Father Phigga. The hybrids learned everything from Ivanov alone. He became the father he had always wished his own father had been, indulgent, patient, merry; stern but not unjust. The humanzees were six in number, healthy, hirsute individuals.

  One died in an accident, falling into the piano that another was playing in a wild frenzy, striking the keys with fingers strong enough to snap the necks of men in a moment. The resultant music sounded not unlike some of the less successful avant-garde pieces of such contemporary composers as Schoenberg and Varèse. A year later another humanzee died, choking on a narrow shoe it had unwisely tried to consume.

  Ilya Ivanov waited for instructions from Stalin. Eventually a message arrived that ordered him back to Russia, his creatures and unspent funds included. It was time for a formal evaluation of Ivanov’s work. And so the scientist packed up his equipment; but one of the humanzees escaped in the process. Ivanov went after it with a shotgun, but it had fled deep into the jungle, settling in a village in the mountains.

  The villagers welcomed the humanzee, made him a permanent guest in the community. People who assume they worshipped the beast as a fetish need to realign their attitudes; for the men who dwell in the mountains of Guinea are not fools. They knew the humanzee wasn’t a god. Nonetheless they made him a sort of minor chieftain, and they carved a massive bone banana in his honour. And called him Fabalo …

  Meanwhile, Ilya Ivanov had sailed back to Russia with the three other humanzees, none of which had real names. They were simply known as Specimens One, Two and Three; for Ivanov lacked the imagination of the mountain dwellers of Guinea. These apes sickened and died while still in transit. Ivanov arrived in Russia empty handed; Stalin sent him into exile in Siberia, where he became a latrine attendant.

  Fabalo was the object of the amorous attentions of countless maidens of the forest. Perhaps he was regarded as the epitome of potency. Many were the children he fathered in the moonlit shadow of the bone banana; and soon his family was mighty and strong. His sons and daughters were one third chimp and two-thirds human. Some of these later mated with pure chimps, others with humans; and so the flux of genetic percentages soon made strict accounting extremely tricky.

  One day, a member of his tribe went wandering off into the forest and never returned. Fabalo sent out a search party, but to no avail. The rains came and obliterated his tracks. Lost for weeks, the youth somehow made his way down to the coast. He was found by an old sailor with very poor eyesight who gave him a set of old clothes. Dressed like a beachcomber, the lost youth wandered into the city of Conakry.

  Now we must turn our attention to another eccentric Russian scientist, a fellow called Filip Filippovich Preobrazhensky. For many years, in his Moscow apartment, he had been experimenting with the surgical insertion of chimp glands into the bodies of ageing men and women; rejuvenation was his main objective. But he had discussed a secret project with Stalin, namely the generation of a dog-human hybrid.

  Preobrazhensky had already inserted the pituitary gland of a deceased human into a mongrel dog; and the animal had demonstrated increasingly human characteristics within a short space of time. Now Stalin suggested a variation of the procedure: the transplantation of a dog’s pituitary gland into a human. Just to see what might happen. But the maverick scientist was told to procure his own dog and human.

  Walking the streets of Moscow in a snowstorm, Preobrazhensky soon found a homeless dog and a homeless man; he brought them back to his cosy apartment. A cloth soaked in chloroform was applied to each; and the opera
tion was performed. When the heavily-bandaged patient woke, Preobrazhensky leaned over him and spoke. But the patient understood not a word. The researcher tried other languages.

  Finally, he had success. The patient appeared to know French. ‘You are an immigrant? From West Africa maybe?’

  The patient nodded. Already part ape and part human, he would soon also become part dog. A man-dog-ape hybrid unplanned by anyone! For he was the lost youth who had Fabalo for a father. Half man, half chimp, half hound, he was perhaps the most curious being then alive on the surface of the planet. And before you object that those fractions don’t add up properly, what does add up in this world? Answer me that, if you think you’re so smart. Bet you can’t. Told you so.

  The Fungus

  I set off with my companions, Distanto Faraway and Rais Uli, with only a tiny amount of apprehension in the cavity where my heart had once been. I emitted a dull brown glow as I walked; this was due partly to the mystic preserving energy that suffused me, partly to the fungus that sheathed my bones. My friends did not shine at all.

  We left the forgotten (or unknown) land of Alirgnahs by scaling to the top of one of the peaks that ringed it. Then we turned and looked down on its sweet meadows, the dinosaurs and yeti that gambolled there. Only the powerful stink of the rotting corpses of a recently-defeated invading army ruined the illusion of utopian splendour.

  We descended the mountain on its southern slope; it was such a steep climb that Distanto and Rais Uli were forced to hack steps in the ice with their blades. I felt no chill, despite the absence of my flesh; and immunity of that kind was welcome. Yet I cared not to listen to the wind whistling through my exposed ribs and vertebrae.

  ‘Perhaps I ought to clothe myself before continuing?’ I wondered. My companions nodded silently at this. Rais Uli had a spare cloak; he gave it to me and I wrapped myself in its indigo folds with contentment. At last I felt the weight of a great responsibility lifted from my sharp shoulders. It was a relief no longer to be frightening.

  As if reading my thoughts, Distanto said, ‘The improvement isn’t quite as complete as you assume. Your sticklike arms and legs jut out; and your skull-face peeps from beneath the hood.’

  ‘Surely that’s more acceptable than being a bare skeleton?’

  ‘You look like the Grim Reaper.’

  I appealed to Rais Uli for a second opinion. He said:

  ‘I’m afraid that’s the truth, Mr Griffiths. I advise you never to accept a scythe if it’s offered to you. Also, try to ensure that you never hold in one hand a rapidly emptying hourglass.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll bear those suggestions in mind. Truly.’

  But in fact I was bewildered.

  Distanto said, ‘We’re at the bottom now.’

  Right at the base of the lofty mountain stood a weathered old signpost that pointed to the south and proclaimed that India was in that direction. I was delighted by this reminder. Dreams of that exotic realm had filled my head for many years; the country seemed a repository of wonders, magic, adventure. A spicy future beckoned.

  We had little money between us; I wondered if I might earn a living in India as a guru. When skeletons dispense wisdom, people are more prone to pay attention. That was my theory.

  ‘What gives you that idea?’ retorted Distanto.

  ‘Enlighten us,’ urged Rais Uli.

  I drew a deep unnecessary breath and said:

  ‘Wisdom exists inside every man; so does a skeleton. Clearly there’s a connection between skeletons and sagacity. I am a skeleton. I know what is inside a man, for I am what is inside a man. Wisdom isn’t inside me; it is on my outside. I am coated with wisdom. I don’t need to reach within. I merely scrape some wisdom off my bones like butter from breakfast toast and cast it bountifully into the winds.’

  ‘You have the tongue of a sophist,’ commented Rais Uli.

  ‘He has no tongue at all,’ said Distanto.

  ‘And no eyes, just empty sockets. How does he see?’ Rais Uli plucked at his beard and I stopped in my tracks.

  ‘That’s an interesting point you have raised,’ I said unhappily. It was a question that had been bothering me ever since I lost my flesh. The jellies that enable men to process photons into images had been gouged from my face; my empty sockets loomed like miniature cave mouths in the side of a cliff sculpted into the form of a skull.

  That simile seems to have gone round in a circle. Forgive my awkward writing style. I’m a journalist for The Western Mail. My eye sockets were empty, yet they worked. I wasn’t blind!

  ‘He can see just as well now as before,’ said Distanto.

  ‘True,’ agreed Rais Uli, ‘but how?’

  Distanto smoothed his moustache. ‘Perhaps the fungus that covers him is responsible. Some odd sort of inter-species symbiotic relationship now exists between the man and the mould. After all, fungus is photosensitive. Clearly it sees for him; and in return he allows it to feed on the marrow in his bones. That’s my educated guess.’

  I was shocked to hear this. ‘What will happen when all my marrow is gone?’ I squealed. Rais Uli considered the query and finally provided an answer both practical and dreamlike.

  ‘You’ll sound exactly like a xylophone, Mr Griffiths.’

  ‘And then the fungus will depart and seek a new host. You’ll be just a blind hollow nobody,’ added Distanto.

  ‘Your theory is wrong,’ I growled.

  He arched his eyebrows. ‘Really? How so?’

  ‘I’m wrapped up tight in this cloak. How can any fungus see through such thick cloth? Even a mushroom with a telescope wouldn’t be able to manage such a stunt. It’s ridiculous!’

  ‘As I pointed out earlier, your arms and legs protrude.’

  ‘I am seeing with my hands?’

  He nodded. ‘And your feet. You can see with any part of your body as keenly as a vulture; or if not a vulture, for I often tend to exaggerate such things, then a gerbil. I envy you that.’

  Rais Uli contributed to the airship captain’s reverie. ‘Ah yes! You’ll be able to peer around corners and into small spaces simply by positioning a toe or finger in the correct place. A marvellous gift! You have become an all-over eye. A total-surface-area spy!’

  ‘Around corners, yes. And also into opaque jars.’

  ‘If you are swimming underwater, you’ll be able to raise one hand like a periscope. You can peer anywhere.’

  ‘Up skirts too, if necessary.’

  The conversation lapsed. We trudged onwards.

  At last I could bear it no longer.

  ‘I’m not a raper,’ I said.

  Distanto turned to regard me. ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘You said that I looked like the Grim Raper. But I’ve never forced any woman against her will. It’s a lie.’

  ‘Reaper, you fool! There’s no such word as “raper”.’

  And he was right about that.

  But I never managed to clarify in my brain the difference between the two terms. Many years later, when I was a very old man, a modern music group who called themselves (I think) the Green Cockle Sect released a song entitled ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ and I still imagined it referred to a felon who molested women. Weird.

  The Clean Balloon

  We kept going until we reached the outskirts of civilisation. The sun had set by this time. Instead of entering the village in darkness and scaring the inhabitants, or rousing their dogs with the smell of my bones, we decided to camp on the banks of a river. In the morning, Rais Uli or else Distanto would make contact with the locals.

  The riverbank was bright with clothes pegged on poles to dry. Nobody washes clothes with such vigour and thoroughness as the dhobis of India. River washing in India is an artform. These clothes flapped in the breeze of a cool evening. We camped near them; chewing the food the yeti had given us and drinking their petal beer.

  I lay down to sleep very drunk and wondering how a being without an appetite, stomach or guts could manage to hold his liquor as well as
I had. My dreams were awful. Black dogs came and buried me. Cannibals took me and poked me through their noses. Children snapped me in half, made wishes; used my femurs as cricket bats.

  Something was licking my face. A tiger or bear?

  No, the tongue was that of a fire.

  An inferno was raging!

  It was still night but the mad glow of the flames enabled me to witness everything in perfect detail. Distanto had stolen the clothes from the poles and had somehow stitched them together. Now he was throwing logs onto the fire, making it hotter and hotter …

  ‘What are you doing, Monsieur?’ I screeched.

  He lifted a finger to his lips.

  ‘I refuse to be quiet!’ I protested. ‘Those clothes aren’t yours.’

  ‘Priority of need,’ he hissed back.

  ‘Your brother Scipio would never lower himself to such a deed,’ cried I with passion. ‘He had morality!’

  ‘Bah! You and Scipio! Marry him if you think he’s so perfect! I had to grow up with that pretentious oaf!’

  I fell back in horror at this suggestion. A skeleton marry a man! It was disgusting to my ears. I know that in the more enlightened times in which you are reading this, such things don’t matter too much. But we were still prejudiced back then; we were bigots.

  ‘I belong in the skies. Not on the ground!’ he added.

  ‘That’s no excuse for stealing—’

  ‘Yes it is. Up, up and away for me. Goodbye!’

  ‘How will dry clothes aid you?’

  ‘Are you blind, you all-seeing buffoon? I have made myself a balloon! The heat of this fire is currently inflating it. Soon I shall float free of what I regard as a ball of filth, the Earth!’