by Sean Wallace
“It all began on a lovely April afternoon in 1883, back when the Society was content to play croquet with inorganic balls,” Lady Witherspoon said. “I had arranged for a brilliant French scientist to address our group – Henri Renault, Director of the Paris Museum of Natural History. A devotee of Charles Darwin, Dr Renault perforce believed that modern apes and contemporary humans share a common though extinct ancestor. It had become his obsession to corroborate Darwin through chemistry. After a decade of research, Renault concocted a potent drug from human neuronal tissue and simian cerebrospinal fluid. He soon learned that, over a course of three injections, this serum would transform an orangutan or a gorilla into – not a human being, exactly, but a creature of far greater talents than nature ever granted an ape. Renault called his discovery Infusion U.”
“U for Uplift?” I ventured.
“U for Unknown,” Lady Witherspoon corrected me. “Monsieur le docteur was probing that interstice where science ends and enigma begins.” Approaching a cabinet jammed with glass vessels, the baroness took down a stoppered Erlenmeyer flask containing a bright blue fluid. “I recently acquired a quantity of Renault’s evolutionary catalyst. One day soon I shall conduct my own investigations using Infusion U.”
“One day soon? From what I saw in the gaming pit, I would say you’ve already performed numerous such experiments.”
“Our tournaments have nothing to do with Infusion U.” Briefly Lady Witherspoon contemplated the flask, its contents coruscating in the sallow light. Gingerly she reshelved the arcane chemical. “A few years after creating serum number one, Renault perfected its precise inverse – Infusion D.”
“For Devolution?”
“For Demimonde,” the baroness replied, pointing to the burbling beaker. “Such unorthodox research belongs to the shadows.”
With the aid of an insulated clamp she removed the hot beaker from the flame’s influence and, availing herself of a funnel, decanted the contents into a rack of test tubes. She returned Infusion D to the burner. After the batch had cooled sufficiently, the baroness took up a hypodermic syringe and filled the barrel.
“It was this second formula that Renault demonstrated to the Society,” the baroness said. “After we’d seated ourselves in the drawing room, he injected 5 cubic centiliters into a recently condemned murderer, one Jean-Marc Girard, who proceeded to regress before our eyes.”
Lady Witherspoon now performed the identical experiment on Ben Towson, locating a large vein in his forearm, inserting the needle and pushing the plunger. I knew precisely what was going to happen, and yet I could not bring myself entirely to believe it. Whilst Infusion D seethed in its beaker and the gas hissed through the laboratory lamps, Towson began to change. Even as he fought against his straps, his jaw diminished, his brow expanded and his eyes receded like successfully pocketed billiard balls. Each nostril grew to a diameter that would admit a chestnut. Great whorling tufts of fur appeared on his skin like weeds emerging from fecund soil. He whimpered like a whipped dog.
“Good God,” I said.
“A striking metamorphosis, yes, but inchoate, for he will become his full simian self only after two more injections,” Lady Witherspoon said, though to my naive eye Towson already appeared identical to the brutes I’d observed in the arena. “What we have here is the very sort of being Renault fashioned for our edification that memorable spring afternoon. He assured us that, before delivering Girard to the executioner, he would employ Infusion U in restoring the miscreant, lest the hangman imagine he was killing an innocent ape.” The Towson beast bucked and lurched, thus prompting the baroness to tighten the straps on his wrists. “It was obvious from his presentation that Renault saw no practical use for his discovery beyond validating the theory of evolution. But we of the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club immediately envisioned a benevolent application.”
“Benevolent by certain lights,” I noted, scanning the patient. His procreative paraphernalia had become grotesquely enlarged, though evidently it would not achieve croquet caliber until injection number three. “By other lights, controversial. By still others, criminal.”
Lady Witherspoon did not address my argument directly but instead contrived the slyest of smiles, took my hand, and said, “Tell me, dear Kitty, how do you view the human male?”
“I am fond of certain men,” I replied. Such as Mr Pertuis, I almost added. “Others annoy me – and some I fear.”
“Would you not agree that, whilst isolated specimens of the male can be amusing and occasionally even valuable, there is something profoundly unwell about the gender as a whole, a demon impulse that inclines men to treat their fellow beings, women particularly, with cruelty?”
“I have suffered the slings of male entitlement,” I said in a voice of assent. “The director of Marylebone Workhouse took liberties with my person that I would prefer not to discuss.”
Before releasing my hand, the baroness accorded it a sympathetic squeeze. “Our idea was a paragon of simplicity. Turn the male demon against itself. Teach it to fear and loathe its own gender rather than the female. Debase it with bludgeons. Humble it with mud. For the final fillip, deprive it of the ability to sire additional fiends.”
“Your Society thinks as boldly as the Vivoidians who populate Mr Pertuis’s saga of the Übermenschen.”
“I have not read your fellow poet’s epic, but I shall take your remark as a compliment. Thanks to Monsieur le docteur, we have in our possession an antidote for masculinity – a remedy that falls so far short of homicide that even a woman of the most refined temperament may apply it without qualm. To be sure, there are more conventional ways of dealing with the demon. But what sane woman, informed of Infusion D, would prefer to rely instead on the normal institutions of justice, whose barristers and judges are invariably of the scrotal persuasion?”
“Not only do I follow your logic,” I said, cinching the strap on the apeman’s left ankle, “I confess to sharing your enthusiasm.”
“Dear Kitty, your intelligence never ceases to amaze me. Even Renault, when I told him that the Society had set out to cure men of themselves, assumed I was joking.” Bending over her rack of Infusion D, Lady Witherspoon ran her palms along the test tubes as if playing a glass harmonica. “Have you perchance heard of Jack the Ripper?” she asked abruptly.
“The Whitechapel maniac?” I cinched the right ankle-strap. “For six weeks running, London’s journalists wrote of little else.”
“The butcher slit the throats of at least five West End trollops, mutilating their bodies in ways that beggar the imagination. Last night Lady Pembroke went home carrying half the Ripper’s manhood in her handbag, whilst Lady Unsworth made off with the other half. You were likewise witness to the rehabilitation of Milton Starling, a legislator who, before running afoul of our agents, alternately raped his niece in his barn and denounced the cause of women’s suffrage on the floor of Parliament. You also beheld the gelding of Josiah Lippert, who until recently earned a handsome income delivering orphan girls from the slums of London to the brothels of Constantinople.”
“No doubt the past lives of Martin and Andrew are similarly checkered.”
“Prior to their encounter with the Society, they brokered the sale of nearly three hundred young women into white slavery throughout the Empire.”
“What ultimately happens to your eunuchs?” I asked. “Are they all granted situations at Briarwood and the estates of your other ladies?”
“Martin and Andrew are merely making themselves useful whilst awaiting deportation,” the baroness replied. “Once every six months, we transfer a boat-load of castrati to an uncharted island in the Indian Ocean – Atonement Atoll, we call it – that they may live out their seedless lives in harmony with nature.”
The patient, I noticed, had fallen asleep. “Is he still a carnivore, I wonder” – I gestured toward the slumbering beast – “or does he now dream of bananas?”
“A pertinent question, Kitty. I am not privy to the immediate content
s of Towson’s head, just as I cannot imagine what was passing through his mind when he kicked his wife to death.”
“God save the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club and Benevolent Society,” I said.
“And the Queen,” my patroness added.
“And the Queen,” I said.
Sunday, 26 May
The second gathering of the Witherspoon Academy of Arts and Letters proved every bit as bracing as the first. Miss Ruggles presented four odes so vivid in their particulars that I shall never regard a windmill, a button, a child’s kite, or a gutted fish in quite the same way again. Mr Crowther charmed us with another installment of his verse drama about Lazarus, an episode in which the resurrected aristocrat, thinking himself commensurate with Christ, travels to Chorazin with the aim of founding a salvationistic religion. Mr Pertuis brought his Übermensch into contact with a cadre of Hegelian philosophers, a trauma so disruptive of their neoPlatonic world-view that they all went irretrievably insane. For my own contribution, I performed a scene in which Boadicea, bound and gagged, is forced to watch as her two daughters are molested by the Romans. The other poets claimed to be impressed by my depiction of the ghastly event, with Miss Ruggles declaring that she’d never heard anything quite so affecting in all her life.
But the real reason I shall always cherish this day concerns an incident that occurred after the workshop adjourned. Once Miss Ruggles and Mr Crowther had sped away in their respective coaches, having exchanged manuscripts with the aim of offering each other further appreciative commentary, Mr Pertuis approached me and announced, in a diffident but heartfelt tone, that I had been in his thoughts of late, and he hoped I might accord him an opportunity to earn my admiration of his personhood, as opposed to his poetry. I responded that his personhood had not escaped my notice, then invited him for a stroll along the brook that girds the manor house.
We had not gone 20 yards when, acting on a sudden impulse, I told my companion the whole perplexing story of the Hampstead Ladies’ Croquet Club. I omitted no proper noun: Dr Renault, Ben Towson, Jean-Marc Girard, Jack the Ripper, Infusion U, Infusion D. At first he reacted with skepticism, but when I noted that my tale could be easily corroborated – I need merely lead him into the depths of Briarwood House and show him the caged brutes awaiting humiliation – he grew more liberal in his judgement.
“You present me with two possibilities,” Mr Pertuis said. “Either I am becoming friends with an insane poet who writes of ancient female warriors, or else Lady Elizabeth Witherspoon is the most capable woman in England, excepting of course the Queen. Given my fondness for you, I prefer to embrace the second theory.”
“Naturally I must insist that you not repeat these revelations to another living soul.”
“I shan’t repeat them even to the dead.”
“Were you to betray my confidence, Mr Pertuis, my attitude to you would curdle in an instant.”
“You may trust me implicitly, Miss Glover. But pray indulge my philosophical side. As a votary of Herr Nietzsche, I cannot but speculate on the potential benefits of these astonishing chemicals. Assuming Lady Witherspoon withheld no pertinent fact from you, I would conclude that, whilst the utility of Infusion D has been exhausted, this is manifestly not the case with the uplift serum. May I speak plainly? I am the sort of man who, if he possessed a quantity of the drug, would not scruple to experiment with it.”
“Mais pourquoi, Mr Pertuis? Have you a pet orangutan with whom you desire to play chess?”
“I do not see why the uplift serum should be employed solely for the betterment of apes. I do not see why—”
“Why it should not be introduced into a human subject?” I said, at once aghast and fascinated.
“A blasphemous idea, I quite agree. And yet, were you to put such forbidden fruit on my plate, I would be tempted to take a bite. Infusion U, you say – U for Unknown. No, Miss Glover – for Übermensch!”
Saturday, 1 June
When I awoke I had no inkling that this would be the most memorable day of my life. If anything, it promised to be only the most philosophical, for I spent the morning conjecturing about what Friedrich Nietzsche himself might have made of Infusion U. Being by all reports insane, the man is unlikely ever to form an opinion of Dr Renault’s research, much less share that judgement with the world.
Here is my supposition. Based upon my untutored and doubtless superficial reading of The Joyful Wisdom, I imagine Herr Nietzsche would be unimpressed by the uplift serum. I believe he would dismiss it as mere liquid decadence, yet another quack cure that, like all quack cures – most notoriously Christianity, the ultimate pater nostrum – prevents us from looking brute reality in the eye and admitting there are no happy endings, only eternal returns, even as we resolve to redress our tragic circumstances with a heroic and defiant “Yes!”
By contrast, I am confident that, presented with a potion that promised to fortify her spirit, my cruel and beautiful Boadicea would have swallowed it on the spot. After all, here was a woman who took on the world’s mightiest empire, leading a revolt that obliged her to sack the cities that today we call St Albans, Colchester and London, leaving 70,000 Roman corpses behind. For a warrior queen, whatever works is good, be it razor-sharp knives on the wheels of your chariot or a rare Gallic elixir in your goblet.
This afternoon Mr Pertuis and I traveled in his coach to the Spaniard’s Inn, where we dined with Dionysian abandon on grilled turbot, stewed beef à la jardinière, and lamb cutlets with asparagus.
Landing next in Regent’s Park, we rented a rowboat and went out on the lake. My swain stroked us to the far shore, shipped the oars and, clasping my hand, averred that he wished to discuss a matter of passing urgency.
“Two matters, really,” he elaborated. “The first pertains to my intellect, the second to my affections.”
“Both organs are of considerable interest to me,” I said.
“To be blunt, I have resolved to augment my brain’s potential through the uplift serum, but only if I have your blessing. I am similarly determined to enhance my heart’s capacity by taking a wife, but only if my bride is your incomparable self.”
My own heart immediately assented to his second scheme, fluttering against my ribs like a caged bird. “On first principles I endorse both your ambitions,” I replied, blushing so deeply that I imagined the surrounding water reddening with my reflection, “but I would expect you to fulfill several preliminary conditions.”
“Oh, my dearest Miss Glover, I shall grant you any wish within reason, and many beyond reason as well.”
“Concerning our wedding, it must be a private affair attended by only a handful of witnesses and conducted by Mr Crowther. Your Kitty is a shyer creature than you might suppose.”
“Agreed.”
“Concerning the serum, you will limit yourself to a single injection of five centiliters.”
“Not one drop more.”
“You must further consent to make me your collaborator in the grand experiment. Yes, dear Edward, I wish to accompany you on your journey into the dark, feral, occult continent of Infusion U.”
“Is that really a place for a person of your gender?”
“I can tell you how Boadicea would answer. A woman’s place is in the wild.”
Dear diary, it was not the English countryside that glided past the window of Mr Pertuis’s coach on our return trip, for Albion had become Eden that day. Each tree was fruited with luminous apples, glowing plums and glistening figs. From every blossom a golden nectar flowed in great munificent streams.
We reached Hampstead just as the Society was finishing its final match of the day. Standing on the edge of the grassy court, we watched Lady Harcourt make an astonishing shot in which the generative sphere leapt smartly from the tip of her mallet, traversed seven feet of lawn, rolled through the fifth hoop, and came to rest at a spot not ten inches from the peg. The other ladies broke into spontaneous applause.
Now Mr Pertuis led me behind the privet hedge and placed a
farewell kiss – a kiss! – on my lips, then repaired to his coach, whereupon Lady Witherspoon likewise drew me aside and averred she had news that would send my spirits soaring.
“Today I informed the others that, acting on your own initiative, you learned of the Society’s true purpose,” she said. “Having already judged you a person of impeccable character, they are happy to admit you to our company. Will you accept our invitation to an evening of demon baiting?”
“Avec plaisir,” I said.
“Amongst the scheduled contestants is a notorious workhouse supervisor whom our agents abducted but four days ago. Yes, dear Kitty, tonight you will see a simian edition of the odious Ezekiel Snavely take the field.”
My heart leapt up, though not to the same altitude occasioned by Mr Pertuis’s marriage proposal. “If Snavely were to fall,” I muttered, “and if it were permitted, I would put the knife to him myself.”
“I fully understand your desire, but we decided long ago that the incision must always be made and dressed by a practiced hand,” Lady Witherspoon said. “The gods have entrusted us with their ichor, dear Kitty, and we must remain worthy of the gift.”
Monday, 3 June
Saturday night’s tournament did not turn out as I had hoped. My bête noir conquered his opponent, an abhorrent West End procurer. Dear God, what if Snavely continues to win his battles, month after month? What if he is standing tall after the Benevolent Society has been discovered and toppled by the London Metropolitan Police? Will his apish incarnation, gonads and all, receive sanctuary in some zoo? Quelle horreur!
In contrast to recent events in the arena, this morning’s scientific experiments went swimmingly. We had no difficulty stealthily transferring the Erlenmeyer flask and the hypodermic syringe from the north tower to my cottage. So lovingly did Mr Pertuis work the needle into my vein that the pain proved but a pinch, and I believe that, when I injected my swain in turn, I caused him only mild discomfort.
“Herr Nietzsche calls humankind the unfinished animal,” he said. “If that hypothesis is true, then perhaps you and I, fair Kitty, are about to bring our species to completion.”