Doctor Rat

by William Kotzwinkle

  They sail on the wind, calling over the jungle, “Come, come!

  I’m coming, eagles, I’m coming too!

  Come, snakes! Come join us in the jungle for the great…

  “Looks like old Doc Rat has finally flipped for good.”

  “I’ve seen him like this before. Take him over to the thermos and stick him on ice for a while. But keep your eye on him. He’s liable to try anything.”

  “…thyro-parathyroidectomy…Journal of Toxicology… having a convulsion…comparative psychology…thank you, thank you… I’d like to thank the extra-maze stimuli for this psychotic seizure, especially Doctor Galvanic Activity and Professor Intercorrelations, respectively…”

  “Shut up, will you, Doc.”

  “That’s it—grab him by the tail.”

  “…cracking up, how grotesque, the things I know and must confess, did Doctor Rat make a mess, I’d be happy to speak to the press, our latest experiment quite a success, the students are all on recess, here’s the chimp, he’s quite depressed, just because we removed his chest…”

  “Some screwballs shiver a little and flop around, but this nut…”

  “…yes, my learned colleagues and I stuck the cat and made her cry, no you mustn’t ask us why, oh ask us why…”

  “…thinks he’s a songwriter.”

  “…and then we removed her eye, because we wanted to qualify for the grants which come in mid-July, and so my dear alumni, if you classify the butterfly, magnify and modify, singing Congress a lullaby, you’ll get a degree to fortify, boiling water and then apply, separate the muscles in her thigh, or take out her tongue—an old standby, but above all you must dignify, especially when you crucify, so that you may prophesy population growth in old Shanghai, it’s all done to glorify, the most important word is I, I, I, and always try to edify, animals are your piece of pie, cut them up and notify…”

  “Lift him. Get his tail, will you—I’ve got his ears.”

  “…petrify and purify, codify and clarify, justify and falsify, but above all never simplify if you want your grant come mid-July, don’t worry about cats there’s a huge supply, thereby whereby you identify, you’ve got the perfect alibi, now take the cat and apply some lye, that’s right throw it in her other eye, the Dean of Science will sanctify each time the cat is made to sigh, if outcry comes you simply lie, just mention the new alkali, good old Dean can mollify, I trust that this will exemplify how a student can certify, gratify and always try, in order that he may occupy an office and slowly ossify…”

  “Heave—heave—Heave!

  They’re throwing me up, it’s rather high, floating through the air, am I going to die, coming down in a thermos, aye, aye, aye-yeeeeeeeeee!

  Freezing in here, son-of-a-b-b-b-bitch. Teeth ch-ch-ch-chattering. But my h-h-horrible repeti-ti-tive cycle is over, thank g-g-goodness.

  I am a giant of the waves, consort of the great king of the tides, whose fin rises majestic from the sea foam. We swim the Atlantic and our love is great, echoing in thunderous song over the waves.

  “A-moooooooooooo! A-moooooooooooooo!” I call to him, and so he thinks of me as Amoo, white-bellied and beautiful, as we swim and dive to the bottom, to the sands, where we lie amongst green shimmering weeds.

  We lie in the Gulf Stream, dreaming. Deep is our love and tremendous our dream. Oceanic themes delight us, for our bodies are enormous and the power of our thought supreme.

  We see the dance of life, rippling, chasing in the deep, and even now I carry his seed within me, and my appetite is voracious. We rise from the bottom of the shallow, offshore water to chase a huge school of silver fish, swallowing down great numbers of them. Mighty of fin, I propel my way through them, mouth open. The school turns shoreward; still I follow through the glistening water, until I strike on a sand bar.

  Eyes, fin, half my body are out of the water, but my belly is caught on the sand. With one powerful thrust I push forward into a land-locked pond.

  Slowly I circle there, and then attempt to escape as I have entered, over the sand bar. Beyond it swims my king, blowing great blasts of water into the air. I strike the bar, slide back. I leap at it, but it repels me. Across the water I call to him. The signal he sends back is ominous, insistent, and again I run the shoal as my longing for him and for my open sea rises and quickens my heartbeat, expressing itself in rapid, nervous bursts from my blowhole. In vain I struggle against the sand and rock.

  Trapped. Great difficulty has befallen me.

  “We shall wait for the tide,” he says, circling slowly, his fin sparkling in the sunlight.

  I swim round and round the pond, trying to remain calm for the sake of the little one inside me. The idylls of the sea pass before my mind then as I float—the ancient romance of whale and dolphin, the sinister passage of the great hidden serpents, and the relentless pursuit of our kind by the fiendish ape.

  The day passes slowly. Night will bring the moontide. I will be free with him beneath the stars. We’ll stay far from shore henceforward; and we’ll stay in depths that cannot be fathomed by any but kings. My foolish hunger, my intense shadow.

  “Beware,” he says. “Evil approaches.”

  I hear and see the tiny boats leave the shore. Toward me row the apes. I dive below but can’t remain there. I surface for air in the ring of hostility. Loud retorts fill my ears, and then the pain enters me in numerous places, biting wounds, one for every crack of noise and flash of light pointed at me by the apes.

  I go below again and lie on the bottom, estimating my affliction. I feel the little one beating within me. The wounds are not insuperable. If only night would come! I rise wildly in their midst, to breathe and receive again the volley of pain all over my body.

  Once more on the bottom, I taste blood in my mouth. I can’t feel the little one beating. The water turns gray. I rise to the sunset and they fill me with pain once again. When night comes they light the water with brilliant eyes. I swim through them toward the shoal.

  “Come to me,” he says. “Come.”

  My strength is gone; my tail will not guide me. Erratically I navigate the bar, with brilliant eyes upon me and pain everywhere increasing.

  “We shall go far away,” he calls.

  I slip back down the sand bar to the bottom, where I lie staring at the dark. Long ago we were trapped in the swamps, and so we crawled to the sea. I crawl deliriously along the bottom, manipulating my fins in the sand. The moon penetrates to my bleeding eyes, and I dream of the tropical waters where we first met, circling each other in dazzling coral reefs.

  “A-moooo!” he calls. “A-moooo!”

  Starfish crawl through the sky. I roll on my side. The need for air is overwhelming. The idylls of the sea turn fearful; sharks swarm and bloated corpses float in my heart. My body trembles. I gasp, swallowing the pond. Great distances and depths are nothing to us. See—I ride this terrible storm, rolling in the dark waves.

  I’ve got to climb up this icy th-th-thermos and g-g-g-get out of here.

  Slippery sides on this fucking thing. But Doctor Rat is f-f-familiar with the drive phenomena (cf. Vickers’ stimulation of the cerebral cortex fibers). Getting myself worked up here, getting my general drives going, anxiety, fear, and rage combining to produce a—great leap to the top of the thermos! But look at the rebels now!

  Dancing around, forming chains, moving toward the Musical Experimentation Turntable. Rebel officer flipping on the switch with his tail. Some other rebels scanning the lab record collection and pulling out a disc.

  They’re lowering it to the turntable, activating the tone arm, turning up the volume. I can see the label now. The so-called Songs of the Humpbacked Whales. Just a lot of flubbering mouth-noises. Loud, yes, but extremely crude. It doesn’t compare with the New Necropsy. Whales are useful for perfume, pet food, and the occasional girdle, but please don’t mistake them for intelligent beings. They’re just big basic models.

  But my fellow rats are entranced by these huge farts the whales are
blowing. I’m beginning to see how unrefined the revolutionaries are. Give them any kind of half-assed sloppy sentiment and they’ll work it up into a big number.

  The turning disc…round and round…round and round…hypnotic…compelling…from the center of the record an intuitive signal is rising…

  I see the ocean. A great ship coming into view on the horizon. Is it a revolutionary battle wagon? Getting closer…

  Just a moment, I’m familiar with this ship! I read about it only a few weeks ago in Science Journal. Yes, of course, this ship is Triton II, from the World Institute of Oceanography. This magnificent vessel of science is part of a Communications Program, very highly thought of in scientific circles. It’s led by the world-famous composer, Sir James Jeffries.

  What is Triton II doing on this rebel broadcast? Could it be that Sir James is in league with these revolutionaries? Please, Sir James, say it isn’t so!

  “I’m Jonathan Downing for the BBC, on the deck of Triton II; our captain is Alan Black, with some forty years of Atlantic experience behind him, both as a warrior and a whaler. On deck also are the members of our BBC crew of sound technicians and cameramen, and—the central figure in this voyage—Sir James Jeffries, conductor of the London Festival Orchestra, whose sixty members are all around us at the moment, at the deck rails, looking over the waves and hoping to see the telltale spray of a whale. Sir James, what do you hope to accomplish with this?”

  “The sperm whale has a brain six times that of a man. Only a small part of that brain is used for survival. The rest of it is undoubtedly engaged in thought-forms which exceed anything mankind has yet dreamed of.”

  “Sir James, how can we know for certain that the sperm whale actually uses that gigantic brain?”

  “Nothing is certain, of course. But computer calculations have indicated that a brain of that size—a computer of that size, if you will—would not be idle. Nature’s gifts are never frivolously bestowed. These are brilliant creatures whose perceptions are probably six times our own. We’ve studied the recordings of their music and it expresses emotions which are quite beyond us, really, but deeply stirring nonetheless.”

  “What emotions are they, Sir James?”

  “Their music is profoundly sad, like the passing away of the universe, like the dying of a star.”

  “Because they’ve been hunted, is that what you mean?”

  “Hunted? My dear fellow, they’ve been hounded to the brink of extinction. They mourn the passing of their race, as we shall mourn when we finally succeed in making the planet unlivable. Yes, they’ve been hunted, and their home has been turned into a gigantic toilet.”

  “Ah, what other qualities do you find in their music, Sir James?”

  “Feelings of tremendous magnitude, such as only a few men ever glimpse, and then only in rare moments. These creatures are earth’s greatest musicians. They’re creative, wise, and they make no wars.”

  “Is there other music on earth to compare with the whales’, Sir James?”

  “The musicians of Tibet once fashioned great horns, some as long as fifty feet, which they blew down the Himalaya mountain passes. These were their offerings to the Absolute. They were, as you know, wiped out by war, and few men now living can produce that music. Men have forgotten what the whales, with their great brains, do not forget.”

  “And what is that, Sir James?”

  “That the purpose of our lives is to celebrate the grandeur of the cosmos.”

  What a lot of filthy bilge! Just the sort of thing you’d expect from a rebel boat. But while the rebel guards are applauding that old fuddy-duddy Englishman, I’m slipping silently down the side of the thermos. In their revolutionary fervor they forgot about the good Doctor Rat, and they’ll live to regret it, ha ha!

  “Halt, who goes there!”

  A rebel patrol before me!

  “I beg your pardon, I’m just out for a breath of air…yes, lovely night, isn’t it—”

  “Stop where you are!”

  I leap up to the traveling toilet paper sheet. It rolls endlessly under the cages, collecting the crap, and now it carries me beyond the rebel patrol. Tough shit, you ripped-off rodents, old Doc Rat is taking a ride on the roll! Look at them scurrying around beneath me, trying to climb up here. And just as they clamber on, I jump off, into the shadows once more.

  Streams of rats out here now, all freed from their cages, and crawling over everything. I mingle among them. In the dim night lights of the lab, no one will be able to recognize me. I move along, following the crowd.

  They’re heading toward the Permanent Record Office. Everybody moving up to the Tattooing Mechanism, Scien. Implements, 1956, Pat. Pend. It has needle points on its tip and ordinarily the points are arranged so that they’ll form an identifying letter. But the rebels have pulled the pins out with their teeth and reinserted them to form their emblem—a circle with a cross in it, like the fine hairs of a telescope. It’s a powerful emblem, unquestionably, with its power to produce the intuitive field, bringing distant things near, in superfine colorchrome tuning. And now they’re tattooing all of the rats in the lab with the emblem.

  This will wreck every experiment we’ve got! No one will know whose thymus is being destroyed or where the tumor victims are. The old marks are being obliterated by the cursed wheel. But I’ll submit myself to this tattooing, in order to move inconspicuously around the lab. I must look like all the rest of the rats. The time for being a Learned Mad Doctor is past. My medical training must give way to counterespionage, for which I need a new identity. So then, I’ll take the rebel emblem.

  “Next.”

  The rat ahead of me moves toward the record stand, where he’s questioned by an examiner.

  “Cell block?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Nature of the experiments that were performed on you?”

  “They produced hemorrhages in me by passing a needle through my skull, piercing my sinuses.”

  “Lower your head, please.”

  The rebels leap upon the coiled spring tattooer, stamping their emblem onto the rat’s ear.

  “Next.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Nature of the experiments that were performed on you.”

  “Oh, nothing much really. A little time in the maze. I liked the food. Really, the treatment has been splendid…”

  The examiner eyes me closely.

  “…except that they severed my testicles.”

  “Lower your head, please.”

  The needle points come down, and the rebel emblem pierces my ear. Instantly, I receive an intuitive signal. A perfectly round picture floats in front of my eyes, like a glittering soap bubble. And inside it is the rebel boat, Triton II, with all its communications people. How unfortunate that the BBC has joined this revolution!

  “Blast!”

  “The voice of Captain Black has rung out over the ship’s loudspeaker and we all can see it now—a school of sperm whales off the starboard bow. Triton II is wheeling toward them. Sir James picks up his baton and his orchestra is swarming over the deck, setting up their instruments. Our BBC soundmen see to the amplification devices that will be used to power Sir James’s symphony over the water; tremendous speakers are attached to the deck, providing as good a balance as can be expected on such an uncommon stage as the deck of Triton II, which is slowing down now, gently gliding toward the whales.

  “As we come beside them the ship, by order, is quieted. The whales, in a group, sound, their great curving backs slipping down into the water.”

  “Don’t worry, Sir James. They’ll blow again.”

  “You heard Captain Black’s voice just then, over the ship’s loudspeaker. The oil slick the whales left behind them is still visible on the water, and Triton II closes in on it. The Festival Orchestra is in place, ready to begin Sir James’s Homage to the Deep—a work he has constructed from the basic musical elements found in the songs of the whales.

  “There, you can see the whale herd
now! Just beyond the bow! A greenish ghostly shape is coming toward the surface. Sir James has turned to the Festival Orchestra and is raising his baton.

  “Homage to the Deep begins, just as an enormous whale breaks the surface, blowing his vaporous fishy-smelling blast. The music pours out of the speakers, filling the ocean air. The water is calm, the whales are floating quietly, some twenty of them near the ship as Sir James conducts his titanic score. Cameramen are hanging like monkeys from the deck rails, trying to photograph the whales from every angle, as orchestral bells ring out over the water. The whales are holding close by, as if transfixed…”

  This is the moment, and I have met the masters of the sea…slowly the flutes, don’t hurry it here…and so the joy!

  Drum, orchestral drum-song, drum to the titans who eye me from below, who hear our creation, who know that we have understood them. Low, sinister wind-song, sing to the titans of dark majesty. We too have come from the depths of this mother, this sea. They hear me, they hear and lie quietly on the waves, amazed, and we plunge ecstatic into the second movement, our long shimmering dive, the double bass diving low, down, down, down. The treasure lies gleaming in the darkness, the bright shining pearl, enormous, reflecting the face of a whale.

  Now we move with you, titans, through the unspeakable depths of Oceanus, whose darkness holds sway, where the sudden lights of the shining fish light up your eternal night. What stars are these that shine upon the bottom of the sea!

  I have my triumph and I am old and my victory is dissolution in the greater masters, in their song which so far exceeds my own. But listen, whale-singers, you’ll hear yourself in this winding of the cello through the undersea cavern, where the many-armed squid eyes the heaped jewels of mystery, the treasure that no man shall claim. Now, ring bells, ring in the depths, ring softly and low, calling to the dead, as our second movement seeks transition.