Salvage Rites: And Other Stories

by Ian Watson

  And I still want to see my baby.

  O

  * * *

  Maybe you’d even try to make out I was able to copy Doris’ mind with my rapport powers – hers particularly -because she was high on Dream Dust plus Fairy Fire when the VW went crump.

  You can’t say that when I’m a chimp, though.

  Look, I scratch under my hairy armpits. Here’s a flea.

  P

  * * *

  Pardon my exuberance. You can expect me to be a bit spaced out after my time on Chimp Island, then shut in a cage, then leased out to the Lab. I mean, it’s stressful.

  Still, I came through with flying colours, mentally. Would you have done as well?

  If only I’d been able to communicate sooner! But no way could I. Not till I got to this typewriter. Word processor, whatever you like to call it. Good machine, this. I like the way my words pop up on the TV screen. It even corrects my spelling. Don’t worry, I’ll be careful. Chimps aren’t gorillas, you know.

  Q

  * * *

  Incidentally, as Doris Hoffman I never got pregnant. You can check that out with the guys at Shambala. They ought to remember; it wasn’t so long ago. Doris always took the Pill, when she remembered to. Look, I do want to see my baby, even if he is a half a chimp. I don’t mind – me, I’m all chimp. So it’s the human bit that’s weird.

  R

  * * *

  I read somewhere that humans and chimps are ninety-nine per cent compatible in the proteins, or something. That’s how you can fertilize a chimp egg with human sperm.

  You don’t suppose it a human woman took Dream Dust, and hyped it up with Fairy Fire, that she could sort of dream her womb back through time, and conceive a baby that looks like a monkey?

  Oh, but I’m forgetting: people aren’t descended from monkeys. So that couldn’t happen. It’s the other way round: monkeys are descended from people, way back when. I read that in a magazine too.

  S

  * * *

  Isn’t it about time you set up a press conference? I mean, we might all be hit by a meteor, or the San Andreas fault could blow.

  This news is gonna enhance the spirituality of people all round the globe. I know that everyone else has sick karma. The DoD are even polluting outer space now. Most everyone gets reborn as a worm or a jellyfish or a spider.

  T

  * * *

  And it’ll bring this zoo a lot of publicity. Money as well. You’ll be able to let the other animals out of their cages. You’ll be able to build a Lion Island and Bear Island and everything.

  Personally I’ll move into an apartment. A luxury pent-house one, with security guards. Just as soon as I sell rights to my story I’ll be able to pay for all that. But you’ll do well out of it too, so long as you have the balls to call that press conference, and not clear it with the DoD first. Then it’ll be a fait accompli. Anyway, the DoD only fund the Lab, not this zoo – right?

  U

  * * *

  The DoD’s bad karma. I know. Doris Hoffman’s Daddy worked for them in Albuquerque. That’s why she ran away.

  Why I ran away. Me. I had really special karma, good enough to make chimp in the next life. My Daddy will probably only make a scorpion or tarantula. Mom – my human Mom, I mean – she’ll be a dung beetle when she dies. Sweep, sweep, sweep.

  V

  * * *

  They didn’t even let me hold my baby for a little. But I got a peek at him anyhow: all hairy, just like me.

  W

  * * *

  Who was the sperm donor? I suppose they have to keep that sort of thing secret. Otherwise I’m his old lady, in a funny sort of way. His old lady’s a chimp.

  X

  * * *

  You think it might scare people? This isn’t how people usually imagine reincarnation. But it’s what the eastern wisdom books all tell you. The way you behave in life decides whether you’ll become a lower being or a higher one afterwards. If you’re a dog with good karma, you’ll get a turn as a human next time round. But every soul screws it up once it’s inside a man or woman. Greed, selfishness, cruelty. We’re always slipping right back down the evolutionary ladder again. I just slipped a little way. And I can remember: that’s the Main Thing. I’ve got continuity. That’s what I can tell the world about: the continuity of all creation, worms and bugs and rabbits and men. The spiritual ecology. The great roundabout of souls.

  Are you a vegetarian? You ought to be. I was.

  Y

  * * *

  Don’t worry about the DoD. Just as soon as the news breaks, they’ll be discredited. There’ll be no more slaughter. Peace and harmony. Love.

  Z

  * * *

  This zoo could be rebuilt beautifully. It should be. All those lousy cages. Even this office of yours has bars on the window. Though that didn’t stop me busting in through the door. I’m pretty smart for a chimp. I ought to be. I’m a reincarnated human woman. So just keep the Keepers away from me, and call that press conference, huh? Soon.

  It’ll be a fun thing, too. We’ll amaze the world. I haven’t had much fun since Doris last popped Dust and Fairy Fire. Still, those helped her karma, didn’t they?

  To: Major James D. Zimmerman

  Dear Jim:

  I haven’t the slightest idea how this got printed out over your terminal. She must have pressed more keys than I thought. Naturally I’m very sorry. But as I’ve pointed out, we’re severely underfinanced here.

  Anyway, if this stuff does get printed out somewhere embarrassing, don’t worry. I’ve told you, our own code is just one digit different from Hayward Psychiatric’s. So the explanation’s quite simple: the print-out came from the nut-house. From some drug-scrambled kid they’re trying to sort out with computer interaction. You can square that, can’t you? If it arises. Sure you can.

  Meanwhile, we’re locking Doris up in quarantine out of harm’s way.

  Cordially,

  Rick

  P.S. Good thing it was me in the office when she bust in and started typing sense. Though Lord, who would ever have guessed it: that reincarnation’s true? I might tell you, Jim – in strictest confidence -I was nearly tempted to go ahead and call that news conference. Good thing I did know why the DoD’s so buttoned up about the crossbreeding biz – you do get a bit indiscreet on Wild Turkey, old son.

  P.P.S. But we could do with much better accommodation for the big cats. And all the bears. She’s right there. And a new aquarium building. How about it?

  P.P.P.S. And just in case you think I’m kidding, come visit Doris in quarantine, if you wish. I’ll lay on a typewriter for the occasion. But come alone, and don’t bring anything silly. Such as a gun. My Keepers have reactions like cheetahs. In fact, they all deserve better pay. So do I. But that’s peanuts compared with a new elephant house.

  Day of the Wolf

  Joshua Chagula swung his Tanzanian-built Land Rover off the main road and headed down the winding lane, muddy from fresh rainfall. The hedgerow was confetti-strewn with hawthorn flowers, and now that the sun had come out again poppies and willowherb set the verge ablaze.

  Joshua was glad to leave the broken metalled road with its water-logged pits and potholes, some of them treacherously deep. Already today he had passed one break-down and one burnt-out derelict. The main routes through the Northamptonshire National Park were especially poor due to the heavy traffic which still used them to gain access to the Midlands, where industry survived, whether in native hands or managed by Africans.

  There was much charm, to his eyes, in the tumbledown, overgrown villages of this sector of England, and he took delight in the rural lanes still linking them. In his heart he hoped that several such stretches of hedgerow might survive the reafforestation project. Yet this couldn’t really happen. Already the oak and ash forests of the ancient, true landscape were spreading far out from the nuclei of the primary forest sites which had survived all the ravages of the English.

  Soon, one such great swa
the of oak wood rose ahead, surrounded by many hundreds of acres of new plantings, the tending of which provided a reasonable amount of native employment. In a few more years the village of Oakley Gibion would be quite cut off from the sight of open, rolling fields. For the fields would be fields no longer; Oakley Gibion would have returned to its original status as a forest settlement.

  Presently, as he passed through sun-dappled woodland, his eye was momentarily caught by a gleam, a tiny detail, something out of place.

  He braked and reversed back down the lane, then scanned the underbrush of hazel, hawthorn and black-thorn with his binoculars.

  Eventually – for he was a patient man – he distinguished a line which was too straight and thin to be that of a sapling.

  Was it a wire? The sun may have caught it as he passed.

  Stretching up into a tree?

  He climbed out, swinging his rifle over his shoulder, and made his way into the wood.

  And of course, as he’d feared, the wire was part of a snare, designed to hoist its hapless victim – presumably a red deer – aloft by the leg or the neck.

  Joshua smiled grimly to himself as he sprung the trap. Much as he hated poaching, just this once the poachers would be a help to him.

  He whistled as he got back into the Land Rover, tossing the coiled wire on to the passenger seat and laying his gun across it.

  ‘Now they can’t complain that a wolf has gobbled up some old grandmother!’ he thought.

  Now the Parish Council couldn’t put in some preposterous claim for compensation, nor demand that he go out and shoot that valuable animal. Not with this evidence against them.

  By the time he arrived in Oakley Gibion, though, Joshua had begun to wonder whether the villagers might not claim that what was obviously a deer snare was in fact intended for the supposedly marauding wolf…

  He parked on the village green, where a dozen fat young sheep were tethered, cropping perfect circles in the long grass. An old, ragged man with an unlit pipe in his mouth and a knobbly stick in his hand was keeping an eye on them. A couple of tanners worked outside the doors of their thatched ironstone cottages, boiling stripped oak bark to treat leather destined for shoes, for which this county was famous.

  Joshua was assailed by other doubts, too. Really, a grandmother was a most unlikely victim of a wolf attack. That wasn’t because wolves preferred young meat to old – naturally they would pull down the stragglers of any herd, whether young and feeble, or old and infirm. But human beings simply didn’t move around in herds, with faltering toddlers and hobbling grandmothers bringing up the rear. Grandmothers tended to stay at home in their cottages, and lock the door at night.

  So how did a wolf manage to kill a grandmother? No, more than merely kill her: eat her?

  Had the unfortunate grandmother in actual fact died of natural – or assisted – causes, and then been put out in the woods as wolf-bait, to cause trouble?

  Joshua felt most suspicious about the whole affair by now. Dealing with the survivors of the English was difficult at the best of times. And indeed Joshua prided himself on his ability at this. Not for him the cynical advice to tourists and foreign residents that if you run over a native with your vehicle you had best keep on driving till you reach the next police post. Yet he sensed that something was not quite right here.

  The two tanners and the shepherd regarded him blankly, hardly acknowledging his presence. But then, as was the way of these things in native villages, word had got around and people appeared from all over. In particular they boiled out of the pub, The Royal Oak, where they had no doubt been playing table skittles for halfpenny stakes, tossing the wooden ‘cheese’ with a great thunder and clatter on to the stout table with its upswooping net at the back, letting out whoops of innocent excitement.

  Men and women pressed around the Land Rover, a few still clutching flagons of warm, flat ale.

  Joshua quickly located the chairman of the Parish Council, John Merriwell, who also happened to be the landlord of The Royal Oak – and in whose back garden, Joshua recalled, there was barbecue equipment supposedly intended for sheep roasts: bricks, steel gratings, charcoal…

  Joshua shoved the door of the Land Rover open, clearing a space for himself. Stepping out, he flourished the coils of wire.

  ‘What’s this, then, eh, Bwana Merriwell?’

  John Merriwell stared at the snare as though he had never seen such a thing in his life before.

  ‘Eh? I don’t know, do I? Some wire. You aren’t going to try and catch the wolf with that, are you? We want it shot, Mr Chagula. Or else we damn well want a gun licence to protect our flocks and families from this lunacy!’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Joshua soothingly. “Lunacy” is a case of getting one’s facts mixed up. The fact is that someone,’ and he eyed the crowd of villagers, but Merriwell most of all, ‘someone has been trying to snare deer – which, you know, are protected by the World Wildlife Fund, of which I have the honour to be a warden.’

  An old man spat.

  ‘Another fact is that Granny Butler has been eaten by one of your precious wolves! And I hear you’re reintroducing them bears now, over in Rockingham Forest. Are we going to see bears here soon, as well as wolves?’

  Joshua sighed. Really, dealing with English villagers was like dealing with children. A kindly firmness was required.

  He tossed the snare back into the Land Rover, his point made.

  ‘Of course there will be bears… Now, I know what that wire was for. But I’m prepared to overlook it this once, since no animal was actually harmed. Just so long as there is no repetition of this, Bwana Merriwell! Do you understand?’

  John Merriwell growled, and nodded.

  ‘I shall be coming by more often. I hold you responsible, John. Remember the penalty, if I happen to find any pasties or sausages made of venison on your premises: forfeiture of your licence.’

  ‘What about Granny Butler?’

  ‘Ah yes. Her. She lived up in Plumpton Wood, right? I’m not at all satisfied that she was eaten by a wolf.’

  ‘Oh, aren’t you now? Well, there happens to be a witness – who barely escaped being eaten, herself!’

  The crowd parted, as if on cue (oh yes, they were up to their old tricks!), and a girl of eleven or twelve years dressed in a red cape with the hood fastened by a bow stepped pertly through. It was little Joy Butler, Joshua saw. Her Granny had sewn that cape for her out of an ancient riding jacket, some years ago, and though it was rather small for her now she refused to pass it on.

  ‘Oh, Mr Chagula,’ she piped up, ‘my Granny was feeling ill, so my Mum sent me up through the woods to take her a home-made walnut cake and a bottle of elderflower wine, to do her good.’

  ‘So she was feeling ill, was she? Very ill?’

  ‘Just a little bit ill.’ Joy simpered, and twirled her red cape.

  Joshua filed away the fact of Granny Butler’s illness and, yes, confinement to bed in her cottage.

  ‘I didn’t run all the way to Granny’s, so that I wouldn’t break the bottle. And up in the wood I saw one of your wolves skulking about.’

  ‘All on its own? Wolves are highly sociable animals, my dear! They have an admirable social system of their own. They have been grossly maligned by human beings for far too long. Oh, it has been such a smear campaign, driving them to the verge of extinction – along with so many other worthy creatures! – an extinction from which, I am happy to say, they are now recovering nicely, and recovering their old haunts. As are the bison in America, thanks to the sterling efforts of the Indians.’

  ‘I don’t know nothing about America,’ said Joy. ‘But there were such lovely flowers in the wood that I thought Granny would love a bunch of them to help her recover. There were purple foxgloves –’

  ‘But foxgloves are poisonous. They contain digitalis. Why ever would you pick poison flowers for your Granny?’

  ‘You can’t be poisoned by looking.’

  No, but you can be poisoned by a b
ite of cake or a glass of elderflower wine with something in it… And all because Granny Butler was a surplus mouth to feed? Little Joy had been careful to mention taking a gift of walnut cake. Was she implicated too, so young? Really, wolves possessed a finer social system than these damned villagers of Oakley Gibion.

  Or was this something even more sinister?

  ‘Weren’t you scared when you saw the wolf, little Joy?’

  ‘Oh, but I’ve seen a wolf about in those woods once or twice before. That is, since you began reintroducing them … This one was sniffing about in the woodland flowers. The sunbeams were dancing through the trees. It was ever so nice. Anyway, off the wolf ran – and I carried on. But when I got to my Granny’s house, her door was wide open. I went in, and that wolf was inside the cottage -with its great big ears and its great big eyes and its great big mouth. It was on Granny’s bed! And Granny wasn’t there at all!’

  ‘So you see,’ said John Merriwell, ‘the wolf ate Mrs Butler up. In her own home, too. And it was waiting for little Joy.’

  ‘I ran and ran,’ said the girl. ‘My Dad took an axe up to the cottage – he works on the plantings, you know -but the wolf had run away by then.’

  ‘So we sent for you, Mr Chagula, Bwana, seeing as it was one of your Wildlife Fund wolves, and we can’t do nothing about that, can we?’ Merriwell glanced significantly in the direction of the snare in the Land Rover.

  Joshua reached in and took his rifle.

  It was a good thing that he understood the natives. An inexperienced game warden might have made a fool of himself at this point.

  Obviously the villagers couldn’t tell him the truth in so many words. They had to concoct this absurd slander about a murderous wolf. But he knew. He knew.