Doctor Rat

by William Kotzwinkle

  As I became familiar with it, his signal ceased to alarm me, and now I have begun to perceive its special nature. Over and over through the night I hear inside my head: I rise. I always rise.

  All of us, in our own way, have bent under the heel of our captors; even the lions have learned pettiness in their sunken field, finding little ways to endear themselves to their attendants. But never does the eagle bend or fawn, never is his vigil less than complete. Blood, bone, and feather are always on the alert, every sinew, every fiber of his being ready at every moment for ascension to the heavens.

  With such an example, we have all straightened our backbone a little. We have taken up the Imperial cry; we too would be free upon the heights of jungle mountain and forest cloud. Somehow we will make an inspired dash, tear our cages to bits, and escape.

  The air has become ever more electric, singing with the energy of our souls. Our great conspiracy is spreading from cage to cage, and our captors have become aware of it, for they’re having difficulty cleaning our cages and feeding us. Our teeth are always bared, our tails are up, our ears back. And suddenly it’s they who have become nervous and oppressed, while we grow stronger and more fierce.

  And always the Chief is pacing, back and forth upon his gray dead branch, which rocks as he moves upon it, sending out a thumping message through the night. I am certain that if he allowed himself to rest for a moment, he would perceive the hopelessness of his position and instantly die of suffocation. As it is, I see his naked fury ever rising, as if he were gathering into himself our newly awakened will, just as we have all been touched by his soul of steel.

  Our primal fire is once more burning, and some of the more delicate frames have not survived its heat. The red fox, with a howl that pierced to every heart, dropped dead in the moonlight. The Imperial Eagle’s rocking branch was silent for a moment, and then rocked on, thumping out the cadence for the fox’s fleeing soul.

  After several such inexplicable deaths, our keepers have come round with injections, fearing an epidemic has begun. Something is spreading through us, but it won’t be subdued by a needle. Self-nature has dawned for us, and it can’t be snuffed out by men. Often I wonder at the force of it when I feel it moving within me, like an ancient being in the cave of my body. My bars then seem like no bars at all. My captivity has been necessary, so it seems to me, in order that I could rise to this higher level of self-awareness. It’s then we stop thinking of ourselves as the least fortunate of beasts. Instead, we see that we have been chosen for a mighty purpose, and in this conviction our signal intensifies until, at times, I think it must surely pass far off into those native lands we dream of, touching our fellow beasts and quickening their freedom, making it ever more free. Indeed, I’m certain now that something great is being born amongst us, that our entire kingdom is quivering with new insight, which we the chained ones have discovered, through him, the High One come down to us.

  Summer brings the children, and of course their favorite fun is the elephant ride. I must admit I enjoy watching him, as the old giant lumbers up the pathway past my cage, the happy laughing children in the huge basket upon his back. At least it’s a form of communication other than the embarrassing stares visitors always give us through the bars of our cage. And the elephant seems to enjoy the ride too—he’s a very philosophical type, beyond all thoughts of imprisonment or freedom as he shuffles along with the squealing children on his gray old spine. Because of his good and gentle nature, he’s the most trusted of all the beasts in the prison and consequently has the greatest measure of freedom—the summer walk, around and around the grounds, carrying baskets of children all day. And this is why we’ve chosen him for our great task.

  His keeper walks beside him, lazily twirling a stick. I’m sitting in my cage, nose through the wire, trying to remain calm. I can’t help myself; I laugh uncontrollably. The elephant, with great dignity, turns to the Imperial Eagle’s cage and puts his trunk through the heavy handle of the door. The keeper strikes the trunk a vicious blow, shouting loudly. The elephant, unconcerned, tears the door off the cage and flings it to the ground.

  I see only a black streak. The keeper sinks beneath it, covering his head. The elephant raises his trunk, trumpeting wildly. A howling cry goes up throughout the prison, each of us saluting the Chief as he soars to the heights. He’s but a dot in the blue sky, and on the roaring of the lions and the howling of the wolves, on the neighing of the zebra and the squeaking of the mouse, he’s gone, gone, gone!

  I look up at the faces of the children, which are also turned to the sky. In their eyes I see the joy they too feel at the release of the Chief. It has made me think differently about men of late, as I continue the rounds of my cage. But after a while the ways of men gradually lose all meaning for me and I return to the contemplation of an ever diminishing speck of blackness in the clear sky. He is far from us now, upon a mountain peak, but I hear his cry inside my heart. I know I am doomed to perish here, but like the elephant I have become philosophical. And in the contemplation of the eagle’s flight, I find myself aloft, upon the wind, looking down from cloud heights to the earth below. I do not know how this comes about, but other of the animals have discovered the same trance. And so we turn inward, and so we fly, borne aloft on the trail-winds of his mighty spirit.

  I’m temporarily in command of the microscope stand, fighting off a bunch of swellheaded rabble. “Get back, you hydrocephalic hypocrites. A little sterile paraffin oil in your skulls has given you big ideas!” (See “Injecting Mineral Oil into the Frontal Bone,” Scien. Journ., 1969.) “Back I say! Back into your cages where you belong! Haven’t you read St. Paul? God has no love for oxen.”

  I’m alone in my fight to save the lab. Everyone else has become excessively emotional.

  “All right, take hold of him and put him in the Problem Box.”

  “Let go of me, you—how dare you—a Learned Mad Doctor—a graduate of—get back—”

  Taking hold of me, dragging me along. A rebel lieutenant is opening the gate to the Fishbinder Problem Box. They’re swinging me—tossed in on my tail!

  “You fuckers! You won’t get away with this!”

  Down goes the gate, and the sliding door. I’m locked in. As if I didn’t have enough frustration without all the obstructions in here.

  However, I recall that at the center of this Problem Box is a Goal Room containing a bowl of pressed biscuit. A bit of the old biscuit will make me feel much better and give me renewed vigor.

  I’ve got to crawl over wire…crawling over…down along this narrow channel. They’ll pay for this. They’ll be sorry they tossed Doctor Rat in the pen, cf. Temporary Dominance among Males, Perkins and Morgan.

  Making my way along the incentive corridor, toward the multiple-door problem. Two doors. If I open the wrong one I’ll be punished by a powerful jet of air which will knock me over and roll me against the wall. I know such punishment will help mankind better to understand city planning, but I’m not eager to undergo it at the present time. I’ve got plans of my own which must be carried out; therefore I’ve got to choose correctly.

  I recall this dilemma from my undergraduate days when I was slowly going nuts in the various mazes. I solved this entry-problem before. Yes, of course, it was this door here, on the right.

  SWOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

  POW!

  Flum, flump, flump. Flattened by a Fishbinder fart.

  Slowly I pick myself off the wall. My compliments, Professor Fishbinder, you fooled me again.

  All right, so it’s the other door. I approach it slowly, my knees wobbling. Pushing the door with my nose, going into the Goal Room. Yes, I recognize the smell of pressed biscuit, delicious.

  But what is this! The rebels! In the Goal Room! Sitting here in the sacred Psychological Center, at the very heart of the Fishbinder Box—see his paper, “Specific Needs of Rats.”

  “Get out of here, you bums! At once! Out of the Problem Box Goal Center, out! I’ve climbed over wire and subjected mys
elf to a Fishbinder fart so I could find my way to the sacred pressed wafer here at the center. Where is it, you filthy rat-bastards! Who ate my biscuit! Fishbinder is going to hear of this, and he’ll descend on you like the wrath of Claude Bernard himself.”

  “Sit down, Doc, and shut up, unless you want to have your gizzard incised.”

  “Do you think that I’m afraid of the scalpel? I, who have had my bowel traumatized by hemostat clamps?”

  “Have you had your tail torn off yet?”

  “No, why do you ask?”

  “It can be arranged.”

  “It will do you no good to threaten a Learned Mad Doctor. I—”

  A knock on the head can be quite illuminating sometimes. Slowly I collapse at the center of the Problem Box, brained by a rebel activating the Fishbinder Frustration Window Number 2, which he dropped on my head. Through glazed eyes, I see the rebels gathering around a whirling rat. I recognize the fellow. He’s got a severe brain lesion. We induced it last week. The lesion seems to have made him a perfect intuitive medium. He’s chasing his tail, gripping it in his teeth. A whirling dervish in the Problem Box! His circling motion is producing the intuitive field, many bright colors whirling about, molten reds and yellows. He’s just added a dash of green to the picture, producing a lovely sort of moss. The yellow is slowly turning into a bright sun, shining on a mountain capped by white snows. Are we going to get a commercial from an airline? Or is this the main feature already? It looks like a travelogue.

  What is that movement I see? There, among the cracks of the mountaintop. Do I spy a snake? Don’t go near the snake, Brother Rats. He’ll eat you right up!

  On Vulture Peak, the eagle sits. I have watched him often from my hole here in the rocks. He’s been sitting, staring out over the far mountaintops for many days, calling with his heart.

  Thump, thump, thump, thump, drum, drum, drum, calling, calling, come, come, come.

  His whole manner has been strange since his arrival here on the peak; he was in a frantic state, desperate for this great height. I felt the clamor of his wings for many hours, felt the urgency in his flight—that only this place would suit him, here upon the very uppermost heights which take every ounce of strength and courage to achieve, for the winds are great and the cold is fierce.

  But he’s taken the terrace now, and he sits, drumming his message out across the snow-capped ranges. He’s a King Eagle; every fiber of his body is electrified with power. It’s for the sight of such an eagle that I, a lowly ring snake, made the long and laborious climb to these heights. I’d heard it was the place to see the King of Life and I crawled for many months—and when I got here no one was around!

  But now the King has come. And now he sits upon the peak, staring out with his haunting eyes. I’ve had to wait a long time but a King finally came, driven by the winds and pursued by ghosts. I saw them—the specters that chased him with nets and wires. They made his flight all the faster! And the moment he reached the peak and looked down into the yawning gulf below, his specters vanished.

  Then his calling began—thump, thump, thump, come, come, come. The idea must have been born in him while he flew away from his specters, for when he landed, there was no time lost—he wants a meeting.

  What good fortune that I should have made my ascent at just this time. Now, as I look back upon the struggle I made—through swamps and sand, through jungle and river, down valleys and up great rock walls—when I think of all my slithering on a sore and tired belly, I can laugh and say it was worth it all, for I’m here and the King Eagle is calling a meeting.

  Come, come, come!

  “First we’ll dismantle the cisternal puncture stand—”

  “Then we’ll blow up the pneumothorax inducer—”

  “Fellow rats, please, the pneumothorax inducer was federally endowed. You’re committing a federal offense.”

  “Shut up, Rat, before we nail you to the floor.”

  I crawl to the corner of the Goal Room and curl my beloved tail around me once, thoughtfully.

  Rebels going in and out of the Goal Room, carrying the sacred biscuits and stuffing them everywhere. The wheels of the movable cages are already gummed up with fox chow. Carrying, carrying…the motor on the respirator is now jammed—plugged with pressed biscuit.

  I’d like to grab a few of these rebel leaders and take some blood samples via the decapitation procedure. Perhaps you saw my paper, “Off with Their Heads,” Scien. Dig., 1974. Decapitation is the best way of getting blood from a fetal or newborn rat. And I must cut the head off this newborn revolution.

  “…take over the sterilizing room…”

  “…we’ve got someone on the metabolism cage…”

  I know where an especially malignant sarcoma is kept, one with real kick in it. If I could just bore a hole in a few of these revolutionary heads and then pop the tumor down the hole. I’ve seen the Learned Professor do it many times.

  “We have captured the Aeroil Torch, Captain.”

  “Good. Use it to open the rest of the cages.”

  Suffering Suctorians! (Suctorida) The Aeroil Torch (no. 99) burns at 200 degrees! These rebels have got a powerful tool of anarchy! I’ve got to do something—see “Braining a Rat”: roof of cranium removed and cerebral hemispheres scooped out with a spoon.

  But this damned whirling revolutionary dervish has started spinning again, tail in his mouth. He’s going round and round, hypnotizing all of us. I try to look away, but the rebels grab my head and force me to look. The dervish is becoming a blur, and from the center of his whirling comes the intuitive picture.

  Watch out! It’s that awful snake again!

  And now I see them coming—specks in the distance beyond the snowy peaks. From the four directions of space I see them coming toward our Vulture Peak, their dark wings beating against the sky.

  The King Eagle sits imperiously on his terrace, watching them as they near, his bright eyes flashing golden light across the snows.

  I must wriggle out a bit farther. I don’t think that in the great rush of wings and wind the King and his court will notice a little ring snake. Yes, that’s better, I can see them clearly now. In the western sky an eagle Prince is circling, making ready to land, and his eyes are exchanging fire with the King. Lightning merges with lightning in a crack of power. Joy on the mountain, and trembling!

  The western eagle alights upon the terrace, keeping a respectful distance from the King. The winds ruffle their black shining feathers and the tiny white feathers of their crowns, and they hold their perches, staring out to where the other eagles are beginning their dive toward the terrace.

  At the very center of the terrace, upon a single gigantic rock that places him above the others, the King Eagle sits. His eyes are radiant with fires of grand comprehension, for he has the whole of this mountain range before him, with all its chilling and majestic splendor to feast on. And his gaze burns through these mountains, searching out something far below, far, far below.

  The black-feathered birds of his court sit in similar meditation, their eyes blazing too, feverish from their great struggle to arrive here and ecstatic to have made it. Why, even when I, a lowly ring snake, made this height, I danced on the end of my tail!

  And the drumming of hearts! All of their hearts are drumming now, drumming come-come-come! Royal hearts beating as one, beating come-come-come!

  Long ago, down below, near the villages, I listened to the gatherings of men and their celebrations. I have a fondness for music, I must admit, and was hypnotized by the flutes, which made a winding, snakelike sound in the air. Many times I heard those celebrations, dreaming along with the drums of the village.

  But this afternoon the drum is an eagle’s heart and the flute is an eagle’s cry—kyrrieeeeeeeeeeeeeee—out over the depths and echoing down through the rock chambers—kyrrieeeeeeeeeeeee. Never have I known such celebration as this, eagle cries gathering and climbing. A faint shimmering veil hangs over our terrace, with many marvelous hues inside it,
spreading in a delicate arc and forming a great ring which spreads and shines like a rainbow, a rain of color born of incredible tension in the atmosphere, here, where the eagle leaders sit, crying with one voice—kyrrieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

  How I would love to whip up a good hundred percent Lethal Dose and pass it around the lab. Make a clean sweep of this rotten gang. Methyl alcohol in the drinking water would be sufficient; 22 cc’s would induce a lovely coma, and they’d all be dead in a few hours. (A complete discussion of lethal dosages may be found in the works of Messrs. Gill, Johnson, and Brown. These gentlemen have successfully killed whole laboratories many times, and may safely be designated as experts. Fatal convulsions, rah, rah, rah! Important for the country, siss-boom-bah!)

  I’m cracking up in this fucking Fishbinder Problem Box. A terrible seizure is coming on, I can feel its sinister pulsation creeping up my spine as I gnaw my tail apprehensively, grinding my teeth with anxiety, wishing I had some DDT to drown these rats in misery, repetitive cycles of poetry, symptoms of psychotic activity, rhyming of lines endlessly, results of Mazes D and E, dervish spinning round me vis-à-vis, Poole, Broome, and Helvicki, help me, please, somebody, take a look at my pedigree, Albino Number 243, Doctor of Psychology, rashes, warts, and a small goatee, expert in lobotomy, performed six times on a chimpanzee, sweet land of liberty, Jesus this is agony, poisonous snake subfamily, here he comes after me!

  The eagles are departing one by one to the valley. I’ll follow in my own way, on my belly, over the stones. I hope that I’ll be in time for the great gathering they’ve planned. Well, going down is easier than coming up, so down I go, over sticks and stones. Maybe some snakes would rather just lie in the sun all day and go no place, but not me. There’s something wonderful going on. The eagles have a very bold plan, but there’s no telling if it will work. See them now, swooping down, far below, over the jungle treetops, as their cry fills the air.