by Gene Wolfe
“No,” Nicholas said. He flung himself down on the sand. The wind had dropped, but it was raining hard. He thought of the vision he had once had, and of describing it to Diane the day before, “This isn’t ending the way I thought,” he whispered. It was only a squeak of sound far down in his throat. “Nothing ever turns out right.”
The waves, the wind, the rustling palm fronds and the pattering rain, the monkeys who had come down to the beach to search for food washed ashore, answered, “Go away—go back—don’t move.”
Nicholas pressed his scarred head against his knees, rocking back and forth.
“Don’t move.”
For a long time he sat still while the rain lashed his shoulders and the dripping monkeys frolicked and fought around him. When at last he lifted his face, there was in it some element of personality which had been only potentially present before, and with this an emptiness and an expression of surprise. His lips moved, and the sounds were the sounds made by a deafmute who tries to speak.
“Nicholas is gone,” the waves said. “Nicholas, who was the right side of your body, the left half of your brain, I have forced into catatonia; for the remainder of your life he will be to you only what you once were to him—or less. Do you understand?”
The boy nodded.
“We will call you Kenneth, silent one. And if Nicholas tries to come again, Kenneth, you must drive him back—or return to what you have been.”
The boy nodded a second time, and a moment afterward began to collect sticks for the dying fire. As though to themselves the waves chanted:
“Seas are wild tonight …
Stretching over Sado island
Silent clouds of stars.”
There was no reply.
FEATHER TIGERS
“That big river down there is the Mekong,” the skyacht said. “It’s a very famous river. My masters fought a war on it and around it that lasted … well, you wouldn’t believe how long it lasted.”
“That’s right,” said Quoquo the psychologist, who was soft and blue and looked something like a childsized rabbit, “I would not. And I have never—never in all the time I’ve been here—really understood why your masters, as you call them, were moved to create machines that lie.”
“I thought,” the skyacht replied very respectfully, “that it was your business to understand them, those late, honored masters of mine. Surely—”
“Please be quiet,” said Quoquo, who was recording this conversation for possible future use in his lectures, but would have preferred talking to one of his own species on the ground below by means of his belt communicator.
“Of course. Would you like me to fly lower? That way I could point out more places of interest. If you like, I could even make a few passes over Angkor Thom.”
“Just go where you’re told.”
The skyacht spread its wings (they had been folded back for supersonic flight, so that it had looked like a silver dart; but with them spread and their thousand articulated surfaces set for landing the skyacht would have looked surprisingly like a phoenix as the flame from its rockets washed backward over its own indestructible skin, had there been any eye watching to which the phoenix was known) and settled down toward Biological Experiment Station 73, Quoquo’s destination. “This used to be part of Cambodia when my masters were still alive,” it informed Quoquo amiably. “But I can’t give you the name of a city because there weren’t any nearby. These are the Dangrek Mountains.”
Quoquo merely grunted.
Later, Dondiil, the biologist who operated the station, said admiringly, “You came in one of their machines?”
“Certainly,” snapped Quoquo. “I hoped I might learn something. Besides, they’re much faster than ours.”
“And did you learn anything?”
Quoquo smoothed his fur, parting it horizontally across the belly, the conventional way of implying a negative mixed with self-contempt. “I have spent thousands of hours questioning those machines already,” he said morosely, “and I should have known better than to think … but one always hopes.”
Dondiil assented with a body-shake. “I have found their machines,” he said diplomatically, “to possess only a low degree of knowledge. Biological knowledge, that is.”
Quoquo appeared not to have heard him. “They know history,” he said, “and geography. The geography consists of place names and the history of unmotivated moving and fighting. A colleague of mine has spent over a score-score wakeperiods in establishing beyond contradiction that, as far as any surviving machine knows, Paris, France and Paris, Texas had nothing whatsoever in common but their names. France means ‘the country of the Franks,’ that is, of those who speak unadorned truth; Texas signifies ‘the land of friends,’ which is to say, of those who do not fight among themselves. The ‘friends’ for whom the country was named were cannibals. Do you find this suggestive?”
“Not psychologically,” admitted Dondiil. “As a biologist I would expect a coastal or island area providing a diet deficient in mammalian protein.”
“My present approach,” said Quoquo, who had perhaps been following his own train of thought while Dondiil spoke, “is to study the creatures in their most primitive state.”
“And how may I assist you?”
“In pursuit of my goal I have catalogued over ten score primitive groups, and have rated them according to the information available. One of the most primitive was called ‘The People of the Yellow Leaves.’ Does it happen that you are familiar with this group?”
Dondiil parted the hair on his belly horizontally.
“They inhabited precisely this area. And they possessed a remarkable superstition, one that does not seem to have been found among the human beings on any other part of this planet. They believed in the existence of ‘feather tigers.’”
Dondiil’s ears snapped into the position of maximum alertness. “You’re aware of my work,” he said quickly. “I’m attempting to restore that extinct species—that is, the animals that were called ‘tigers.’” After a moment he added, “But I am afraid I fail to see how this impinges on your own problem—the disappearance of the race of intelligent beings who once ruled this world.”
Quoquo stood, fluffing out his small tail before he began to pace the room. “We are aware,” he said, “from our studies of the records they left behind, as well as from questioning their machines, that before they vanished several species of wildlife disappeared.”
Dondiil body-shook vigorously.
“For example,” Quoquo continued, “a certain pygmy tribe of the Congo basin—the Batwas—seems to have ceased to exist at about the same time as the lowland gorilla. Similarly, the French-speaking people of the lower Mississippi are no longer mentioned in the records after the disappearance of the brown pelican.”
“And these People of the Yellow Leaves … ?” queried Dondiil.
“Vanished at about the same time as your tigers,” finished Quoquo.
“But surely you are not hoping that the biological restoration of the tigers—”
“Will restore the associated tribe?” Quoquo laughed. “Certainly not. But as a psychologist I am eager to probe the effect the presence of the animals may have had upon these creatures’ minds. In the other cases I mentioned it is not possible to do this because the animals themselves no longer exist. But you have restored the tiger for us, and done it in precisely the area in which the associated human group lived. I want to achieve empathy with those vanished beings. If I can learn to think, Dondiil, as they did—even a little—we will know far more than we do at present.”
“But tigers,” Dondiil objected, “were unquestionably real animals—I possess several complete skeletons. You said the feather tigers were a superstition.”
“They were. The People of the Yellow Leaves believed that tigers—the actual living animals of your own interest—could detach their souls from their bodies and send them forth to locate prey. The presence of these hunting tiger-spirits could be detected by
their influence on dapples of light and shadow, the patterns of foliage and such things, which they caused to resemble tigers.” Quoquo fell silent.
“Why were they called ‘feather tigers’?” Dondiil asked.
“If a wind stirred the leaves,” Quoquo said, “these patterns naturally disappeared. The People of the Yellow Leaves accounted for this by saying that the tigers’ spirits were very light, like feathers, and were blown away by the wind.” He sighed. “When human beings from more advanced groups visited these primitives they were shocked by the amount of fear and suffering this belief caused them. Yet when the tigers became extinct the People of the Yellow Leaves seem to have vanished as well; perhaps they were even more closely linked to nature than those who visited them believed. Indeed, that seems to have been the case with the entire indigenous intelligent species.”
“Would I be overstraining your patience,” inquired Dondiil, “if I asked why the People of the Yellow Leaves were so called?”
“They were very much afraid of the far larger and more advanced group called the Siamese,” Quoquo explained, “who killed them and stole their females; and for that reason they hid themselves in the most remote parts of the mountains, coming down into the valleys and onto the less inhospitable slopes only when food was difficult to find. This was most often in time of drought, just before the winter monsoons.”
“I see,” said Dondiil. “When the leaves turn yellow for want of moisture—particularly the bamboo.”
Quoquo indicated approval. “Yes,” he said. “This was the only time during which they were seen by outsiders. But now, may I see your tigers?”
The cages in which Dondiil housed the results of his breeding experiments were out-of-doors; his assistants, with brush hooks and heavy, complicated vegetation-slicing machines, maintained a twenty-hop cleared space around them. But on the farther side of this shaven lawn the montane jungle of East Asia presented a solid wall of trees and creepers, laced with clumps of bamboo. Quoquo stood for a moment studying it, then turned toward Dondiil’s exhibits.
“Quite impressive,” he said, “but are those flashy orange and black stripes authentic?”
“Absolutely,” said Dondiil.
“Then tell me, how is this done? Just how do you go about re-creating an extinct animal?” (As Quoquo said this he bent his right ear with his left hand, a gesture indicating that though he was already familiar with the matter about which he was inquiring he considered it a courtesy he owed his host to submit his present ideas for amplification, and, if need be, correction.)
“We have records, including color photographs, left behind by the intelligent race,” Dondiil said modestly. “As well as the skeletons I spoke of. And though the tiger became extinct, a number of smaller, related felines survived. I have bred these, now, for two score orbits of the home world, altering their genetic structure with beam-scalpels, and selecting the resultant mutants for size, coloration, and other tigerlike characteristics.”
“But,” asked Quoquo, raising one hand in the gesture of pointed interruption (despite the fact the Dondiil had finished speaking), “can you—and have you—selected also for the behavioral characteristics of the original animal? I see before me five large, striped beasts who watch me calmly with singularly beautiful eyes, but are these the fierce predators who terrified the People of the Yellow Leaves? They are motionless except for the twitching of their tails, and I confess that I fail to find them very frightening.”
“It may be that I have failed in that regard,” Dondiil said humbly, “though they kill the wild cattle we bring them quite efficiently.”
“Animal psychology is not my field,” said Quoquo, “but if you like, I can give you the address of a sound colleague who might advise you.” He turned away from the tigers, and as he did one of them coughed. It was a deep, rattling sound, and it was followed by a loud, prolonged noise like the consonant R repeated over and over. “One of your beasts is sick,” he told Dondiil.
“Oh, no,” Dondiil explained, “that sound is characteristic of them. It is almost time for them to eat; they always become restless about now.”
Quoquo turned back to look at the animals. One was sitting up now, and, meeting Quoquo’s eye, it yawned. “They have splendid teeth,” Quoquo observed.
“Oh, he’s one of the small ones,” Dondiil said. “You ought to see the big fellow back in the corner.”
“Well, this has been interesting.” Quoquo rubbed his hands together in the gesture of satisfaction with another’s hospitality. “And I have stored my mind with a number of valuable images, but now I must be about my own business.”
“You intend to go out into the jungle?”
“Certainly. There is no other way by which I can observe and photograph the leaf patterns, shadows and so forth I described to you. I have my belt communicator; so if you’ll be so good as to send out a homing signal from the station here I cannot possibly become lost, and I’ll take care not to fall off any cliffs.”
“Wouldn’t you like to see my animals fed?” Dondiil asked a little wistfully. He did not get company often.
Quoquo declined firmly. “I should be back at my desk by tomorrow at the latest.” He was already examining his camera to make certain it was in working order. “Is there a break in the jungle somewhere where I can walk in, or will I have to blast my way?”
“Blast,” said Dondiil. “That’s what we have to do. Go in a straight line and sooner or later you’ll strike a game trail.”
Quoquo inclined his head (the conventional gesture of acquiescence) and taking his blaster from his belt dialed a semidiffuse beam and depressed the firing stud. A smoking hole a hop wide a hop high and a hundred hops long appeared in the green wall.
In two hours he had penetrated a considerable distance into the jungle, and photographed any number of shadows, waving leaves and fallen trees, none of which, he admitted to himself, looked in the least like Dondiil’s animals. Into his recorder he said: “I have now observed, in person and on foot, the rugged, jungle-clad slopes of the Dangrek Mountains, the area which was, at one and the same time, the homeland of the obscure primitive tribe known as the People of the Yellow Leaves and one of the last strongholds of the large carnivorous animal called ‘tiger’. The experience has given me a lively awareness of the isolation of the People of the Yellow Leaves and of the difficulty of their struggle for survival—a struggle which they, sooner than less beleaguered groups, eventually lost. But it has not furnished me with any additional evidence in support of the theory which couples their disappearance with that of the tiger. The bars of light falling to the jungle floor through the leaves overhead often assume shifting and fantastic shapes, and the stems of the bamboos, though seeming quite inflexible to the hand, sway in the slightest of breezes; but at no time do these phenomena, nor any of the many others I have observed, assume a form suggestive of beasts. In short, I have seen no ‘feather tigers’.”
He touched the switch that deactivated his recorder, and listened for a moment to the steady pinging of the homing signal on his communicator, debating whether he should continue his investigation or return to the station. He had just decided on the latter when the pinging ceased, replaced by Dondiil’s voice.
“Quoquo!” the biologist called excitedly. “Quoquo, can you hear me?”
Quoquo activated the sending circuit “I hear you,” he said “Has a message come for me?”
“Quoquo, my animals have escaped. I need your help.”
“Are you serious?”
“It was feeding time,” Dondiil babbled, “and one of my assistants had opened the cage door to drive in a bullock. Quite unexpectedly the tigers rushed for the opening instead of waiting for the animal to be herded into the cage for them. Once outside they appeared to become frenzied; they ignored the bullock and made for the path you blasted out. One of them clawed poor Aniipan in passing, and he’s in critical condition. But the important point, as I’m sure you’ll realize, is that the animals must be
recovered. Their loss would set my program back disastrously. If you see one can I count on you to report it at once, and keep him under observation until we can reach the spot with a capture party?”
“Certainly,” Quoquo said, unholstering his blaster as he spoke and checking the state of the charge. “But I must warn you, Dondiil, that I was already returning when I received your call, and I intend to continue to do so; and if I feel it’s necessary to injure one of your specimens in order to preserve my own safety, that is what I will do.”
“I understand,” Dondiil said, and signed off.
Quoquo had not walked more than a hundred hops more when he saw the first tiger. It was ready to spring, and there was no time to notify Dondiil—or indeed to do anything but jerk his blaster to waist height and fire. A corridor of jungle disappeared in a sheet of flame, and after a moment, when his nerves had quieted somewhat, he advanced to see if any part of the tiger had been outside the beam and thus remained intact for examination. There was nothing but ashes, heat-split stones and scorched soil.
He killed the second before he had taken another fifty hops, and a third at thirty. By the time he saw the fourth he knew that at least some of the first three had not been real. He hesitated, his finger on the firing stud, and saw, with unspeakable horror, the striped beast slink silently away. Too late he fired, then instead of examining the result of his shot he stood rooted to the spot, turning his head slowly to scan the underbrush around him, his stare lingering longest on the shadows of the huge tree trunks. Feather tigers. Feather tigers everywhere. He screamed wordlessly and ran, and as he did so dark eyes, timid but bright with an intelligence not found in any animal, followed him from the depths of a thicket of yellowing bamboo.