It was growing dark when we reached the market, but through the dusk we could see that there was an unusually large supply of food — a great mound of it — near the centre of the square, away from the roofed-over portion. I suppose that should have served as a warning, but it didn’t. I remember Jenner’s saying, ‘They must have had a really busy day,’ and we ran joyfully towards the pile along with several dozen other rats.
Just as we reached the food it happened. All around us suddenly there was shouting. Bright, blinding searchlights flashed on, aimed at us and at the mound of food, so that when we tried to run away from it, we could not see where we were going. Between and behind the lights there were shadows moving swiftly, and as they came towards us I could see that they were men — men in white uniforms carrying nets, round nets with long handles.
‘Look out!’ cried Jenner. ‘They’re trying to catch us.’ He darted in one direction, I in another, and I lost sight of him.
We all ran — straight towards the men with the nets. There was no other way to run; they had us encircled. The nets flailed down, scooped, flailed again. I suppose some rats got through, slipping between the men and past the lights. I felt a swish — a net just missed me. I turned and ran back towards the mound, thinking I might hide myself in it. But then came another swish, and that time I felt the enveloping fibres fall over me. They entangled my legs, then my neck, I was lifted from the ground along with three other rats, and the net closed around us.
In the Cage
Mrs Frisby said: ‘But why did they want to catch you? And how did you ever get away again?’
‘At first,’ said Nicodemus, ‘I thought it must be because they didn’t like our stealing the food. And yet you could hardly even call it stealing — it was waste food, and all they did with it was haul it away to the city incinerator. So what harm if we ate some of it? Of course, there are people who just dislike rats, whether they’re doing any harm or not.
‘And mice, too,’ said Mrs Frisby.
‘True,’ said Nicodemus. ‘Though not so much as rats. I think. Anyway, that wasn’t the reason at all; but what the real reason was, I didn’t find out for a while. As to getting away — that, too, didn’t happen until much later.’
No, I was firmly and inextricably caught, snared in the net and helpless (Nicodemus continued). When the man who held it saw that he had four rats, he pulled a draw string that closed it up. He put the net down and picked up another, an empty one. He moved on into the square, leaving us to lie there. I tried gnawing my way out, but the strands were made of some kind of plastic, as hard as wire.
The noise and movements began to die down eventually; I supposed the rats in the square had all either been caught or had escaped. I heard one man call to another: ‘I suppose that’s the lot.’ Someone else was turning a light this way and that, searching the rest of the market area.
‘Not a one to be seen.’
‘We could hide and wait for another wave.’
‘There won’t be another wave. Not tonight. Probably not for four or five nights.’
‘Word gets around.’
‘You mean they communicate?’ A third voice.
‘You bet they communicate. And the next time they do come, you can be sure they’ll case the place carefully. We were lucky. These rats hadn’t been bothered for years. They’d grown careless.’
‘How many did the lab order?’ Someone was turning out the lights one at a time.
‘Five dozen. How many have we got?’
‘About that. Maybe more.’
‘Let’s load the truck.’
In a minute or so I felt myself being lifted up; and swinging back and forth in the net, I was carried with my three companions to the white truck I had seen earlier. Its back doors were open, and it was lighted inside. I could see that its whole interior was a large wire cage. Into this our net was thrust; the man then opened the draw string and we were dumped on to the floor, which was covered with sawdust. The other nets were emptied one at a time the same way; and in a few minutes there was a good-sized crowd of us on the floor, all more or less dazed and all (if I was typical) terrified. The cage was locked, the doors clanged shut, and the lights went out. I heard the truck motor start; a second later the floor lurched beneath me. We were moving. Where were they taking us? For what purpose?
Then, in the dark, I heard a voice beside me.
‘Nicodemus?’ It was Jenner. You can imagine how glad I was to hear him. But I was sorry, too.
‘Jenner. I thought maybe you got away.’
‘I was in the last net. I thought I saw you across the floor.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘What’s a lab?’
‘A laboratory.’
‘Yes, but what is it?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve just heard the word somewhere.’
‘Well, I think that’s where we’re going. Whatever it is.’
The truck rumbled along through the dark, over bumpy streets at first, then, at a higher speed, over a smooth road. There were no windows in the back, so it was impossible to see where we were going — not that I would have known anyway, never before having been more than half a dozen streets from home. I think we drove for about two hours, but it might have been less, before the truck slowed down, and turned, and finally came to a stop.
The back doors were opened again, and through the wire wall of the cage I saw that we had come to a building, very modern, of white cement and glass. It was square and big, about ten storeys tall. Night had fallen, and most of its windows were dark, but the platform to which our truck drove us was lighted, and there were people waiting for us.
A door opened, and three men came out. One of them pushed a cart, a trolley piled with small wire cages. The man beside him was dressed in a heavy coat, boots, and thick leather gloves. The third man wore heavy horn-rimmed glasses and a white coat. He was obviously the leader.
The men from the truck, the ones who had caught us, now joined the men from the building.
‘How many did you get?’ asked the man in the white coat.
‘Hard to count — they keep moving around. But I make it between sixty and seventy.’
‘Good. Any trouble?’
‘No. It was easy. They acted almost tame.’
‘I hope not. I’ve got enough tame ones.’
‘Oh, they’re lively enough. And they look healthy.’
‘Let’s get them out.’
The man with the gloves and the boots then donned a wire face-mask as well, and climbed in among us. He opened a small sliding trapdoor at the back of our cage; a man outside held one of the small cages up to the opening, and one at a time we were pushed out into our individual little prisons. A few of the rats snarled and tried to bite; I did not, and neither did Jenner; it was too obviously futile. When it was finished, the man in the white coat said, ‘Sixty-three — good work.’ A man from the trolley said, ‘Thanks, Dr Schultz.’ And we were stacked on the hand truck and wheeled into the building.
Dr Schultz. I did not know it then, but I was to be his prisoner (and his pupil) for the next three years.
We spent the rest of that night in a long white room. It was, in fact, a laboratory, with a lot of equipment at one end that I didn’t understand at all then — bottles and shiny metal things and black boxes with wires trailing from them. But our end held only rows of cages on shelves, each cage with a tag on it, and each separated from its neighbours by wooden partitions on both sides. Someone came around with a stack of small jars and fastened one to my cage; a little pipe led through the bars like a sipping straw — drinking water. Then the lights were dimmed and we were left alone.
That cage was my home for a long time. It was not uncomfortable; it had a floor of some kind of plastic, medium soft and warm to the touch; with wire walls and ceiling, it was airy enough. Yet just the fact that it was a cage made it horrible. I, who had always run where I wanted, could go three hops forward
, three hops back again, and that was all. But worse was the dreadful feeling — I know we all had it — that we were completely at the mercy of someone we knew not at all, for some purpose we could not guess. What were their plans for us?
As it turned out, the uncertainty itself was the worst suffering we had to undergo. We were treated well enough, except for some very small, very quick flashes of pain, which were part of our training. And we were always well fed, though the food, scientifically compiled pellets, was not what you’d call delicious.
But of course we didn’t know that when we arrived, and I doubt that any of us got much sleep that first night. I know I didn’t. So, in a way, it was a relief when early the next morning the lights snapped on and Dr Schultz entered. There were two other people with him, a young man and a young woman. Like him, they were dressed in white laboratory coats. He was talking to them as they entered the room and walked towards our cages.
‘… three groups. Twenty for training on injection series A, twenty on series B. That will leave twenty-three for the control group. They get no injections at all — except, to keep the test exactly even, we will prick them with a plain needle. Let’s call the groups A, B, and C for control; tag them and number them A-1 to A-20, B-1 to B-20, and so on. Number the cages the same way, and keep each rat in the same cage throughout. Diet will be the same for all.’
‘When do we start the injections?’
‘As soon as we’re through with the tagging. We’ll do that now. George, you number the tags and the cages. Julie, you tie them on. I’ll hold.’
So the young woman’s name was Julie; the young man was George. They all put gloves on, long, tough plastic ones that came to their elbows. One by one we were taken from our cages, held gently but firmly by Dr Schultz while Julie fastened around each of our necks a narrow ribbon of yellow plastic bearing a number. I learned eventually that mine was number A-10.
They were kind, especially Julie. I remember that when one rat was being tagged, she looked at it and said, ‘Poor little thing, he’s frightened. Look how he’s trembling.’
‘What kind of biologist are you?’ said Dr Schultz. ‘The “poor little thing” is a she, not a he.’
When my turn came, the door of my cage slid open just enough for Dr Schultz to put his gloved hand through. I cowered to the back of the cage, which was just what he expected me to do; one hand pressed me flat against the wire wall; then his fingers gripped my shoulders. The other hand held my head just behind the ears, and I was powerless. I was lifted from the cage and felt the plastic collar clipped around my neck. I was back inside with the door closed in less than a minute. The collar was not tight, but by no amount of tugging, twisting or shaking was I ever able to get it off.
I watched through the wire front of my cage as the others were caught and tagged. About six cages down from me, on the same shelf, I saw them put a collar on Jenner; but once he was back in his cage, I could see him no longer.
A little later in the morning they came around again, this time pushing a table on wheels. It was loaded with a bottle of some clear liquid, a long rack of sharp needles, and a plunger. Once more I was lifted from the cage. This time George did the holding while Dr Schultz fastened one of the needles to the plunger. I felt a sharp pain in my hip; then it was over. We all got used to that, for from then on we got injections at least twice a week. What they were injecting and why, I did not know. Yet for twenty of us those injections were to change our whole lives.
The Maze
During the days that followed, our lives fell into a pattern, and the reason for our captivity gradually became clear. Dr Schultz was a neurologist — that is, an expert on brains, nerves, intelligence, and how people learn things. He hoped, by experimenting on us, to find out whether certain injections could help us to learn more and faster. The two younger people working with him, George and Julie, were graduate workers in biology.
‘Watch always,’ he told them, ‘for signs of improvement, faster learning, quicker reaction in group A as compared to group B, and both as compared to the control group.’
My own training began on the day after the first injections. It was George who did it; I suppose Julie and Dr Schultz were doing the same test on other rats. He took my cage from the shelf and carried it to another room, similar to the first one but with more equipment in it, and no shelves of cages. He placed the cage in a slot against a wall, slid open the end, opened a matching door in the wall — and I was free.
Or so I thought. The small doorway in the wall led into a short corridor, which opened, or seemed to, directly on to a green lawn. I could see it clearly, and behind it some bushes, and behind them a street — all outdoors, and nothing but air between me and them. Furthermore, I could smell the fresh outdoor breeze blowing in. Were they letting me go?
I made a dash towards the open end of the corridor — and then jumped back, I could not go on. About two feet from my cage (still open behind me) there was something dreadfully wrong with the floor. When my feet touched it, a terrible, prickling feeling came over my skin, my muscles cramped, my eyes blurred and I got instantly dizzy. I never got used to that feeling — no one ever does — but I did experience it many times, and eventually learned what it was: electric shock. It is not exactly a pain, but it is unbearable.
Yet I was in a frenzy to reach that open lawn, to run for the bushes, to get away from the cage. I tried again — and jumped back again. No use. Then I saw, leading off to the left, another corridor. I had not noticed it at first because I had been looking so eagerly at the open end of the one I was in. The second one seemed to stop about five feet away in a blank wall. Yet there was light there: it must turn a corner. I ran down it, cautiously, not trusting the floor. At the end it turned right — and there was the lawn again, another opening. I got closer that time; then just as I thought I was going to make it — another shock. I pulled back and saw that there was still another corridor, leading off to the right. Again I ran, again I saw the open escape hole, and again I was stopped by shock. This was repeated over and over; yet each time I seemed to get a little closer to freedom.
But when finally I reached it and the grass was only a step away, a wire wall snapped down in front of me, another behind me; the ceiling opened above me and a gloved hand reached in and picked me up.
A voice said: ‘Four minutes, thirty-seven seconds.’
It was George.
I had, after all my running through the corridors, emerged into a trap only a few feet from where I had started, and, through a concealed opening up above, George had been watching everything I did.
I had been in what is called a maze, a device to test intelligence and memory. I was put in it many times again, and so were the others. The second time I got through it a little faster, because I remembered — to some extent — which corridors had electric floors and which did not. The third time I was still faster; and after each trial George (or sometimes Julie, sometimes Dr Schultz) would write down how long it took. You might ask: Why would I bother to run through it at all, if I knew it was only a trick? The answer is I couldn’t help it. When you’ve lived in a cage, you can’t bear not to run, even if what you’re running towards is an illusion.
There were more injections, and other kinds of tests, and some of these were more important than the maze, because the maze was designed only to find out how quickly we could learn, while some of the others actually taught us things — or at least led up to the actual teaching.
One was what Dr Schultz called ‘shape recognition’. We would be put into a small room with three doors leading out — one round, one square, and one triangular. These doors were on hinges, with springs that held them shut, but they were easy to push open, and each door led into another room with three more doors like the first one. But the trick was this: If you went through the wrong door, the room you entered had an electric floor, and you got a shock. So you had to learn: In the first room, you used the round door; second room, triangle, and so on.
He was a young rat, probably the youngest of all that had been caught, and by chance he was in the cage next to mine; I might mention that like Jenner and me, he was in the group Dr Schultz called A. His name was Justin.
It was late one night that I heard him calling to me, speaking softly, around the wooden partition between our cages. Those partitions generally kept all of us from getting to know each other as well as we might have done, and discouraged us from talking much to one another; it was quite hard to hear around them, and of course you could never see the one you were talking to. I think Dr Schultz had purposely had them made of some soundproof material. But you could hear, if you and your neighbour got in the corners of the cages nearest each other and spoke out through the wire front.
‘Nicodemus?’
‘Yes?’ I went over to the corner.
‘How long have we been here?’
‘You mean since the beginning? Since we were caught?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t know. Several months — I think, but I have no way to keep track.’
‘I know. I don’t either. Do you suppose it’s winter outside now?’
‘Probably. Or late autumn.’
‘It will be cold.’
‘But not in here.’
‘No. But I’m going to try to get out.’
‘Get out? But how? Your cage is shut.’
‘Tomorrow we get injections, so they’ll open it. When they do, I’m going to run.’
‘Run where?’
‘I don’t know. At least I’ll get a look around. There might be some way out. What can I lose?’
Mrs Frisby and the Rats of NIMH Page 8