Doctor Rat (12 page)

“Say, aren’t you the famous Doctor Rat?”

A voice from the shadows. I move aside, but the voice follows me.

“Aren’t you—”

“No, I don’t know the individual.”

“You sure resemble him.”

“An unfortunate genetic experiment. If you will please get out of the way, I’m going to the Central Exercise Drum, for the rebel meeting.”

I mustn’t draw suspicion to myself. I can’t afford to fall into rebel hands again. Goodness, the old drum is really rolling tonight. The crowds are lined up. Even the arthritic and paraplegic rats are crawling into it.

“Identity check, please.”

I lower my head and show the rebel emblem tattooed on my ear.

“Step through the main door and keep to the right.”

Yes, I’m just one of the many rats taking some time on the wheel. Me, a Learned Mad Doctor? Never. I’ve never done any experimenting. I just clean the toilets here.

“Come on, keep it moving!”

I’ll take a few quick rounds and slip out quietly…hopping onto the wire…wow, they’ve got it going fast. I’ve got to run like the dickens to keep from falling…wheel is humming, buzzing, cyclometer clicking out the tempo…what a floor show, rebel generalissimo, oh no say it isn’t so, I left my gland in San Francisco, once again here I go, writing songs in the undertow, Doctor Rat incognito, wearing false mustachio, what an impresario, drum shaking like a volcano, whoa you fucker, I said whoa, can’t stop it, it’s got to flow, rebel plot to overthrow, take this part pianissimo, not so fast, please, adagio, sonofabitch what vertigo, image rising from down below, intuitive signal bright rainbow, whale thinks he’s Fats Domino, if only I had a torpedo…

I hear you, sea-maids, hear you clearly now, as I swim toward you in the night. You weave my destiny with your song, weave that haunting motif… How do you weave that part, that’s the part I can’t yet understand. When I reach their isle, then I shall know. Swim, Jeffries, swim for all you’re worth, you mustn’t lose them now, now that you’re so near.

Swimming in the night. Roll over on your back, you’re swimming well. Faint lights of the maiden’s eyes, there upon the reef…

Who is this beside me? Who swims with me here? Dimitri, is that you?

“…James… James, wake up…”

“Yes? Dimitri?”

“The whales are singing, James. Come quickly…”

“You don’t see my shoes…no, the hell with them…”

The whales are singing. Am I still dreaming? No, Dimitri has taken my arm, we’re certainly not dreaming. Or if we are then all of life’s a dream. Stepping out into the sea air…no, it’s not a dream—there they are!

My god, what voices, what—but this can’t be! They’re singing the second movement! “Dimitri…”

“Yes, James, it is the same.”

The same, the same! Lord, I have doubted and now… That’s the bull singing the bass line. Completely aware, they’re completely conscious. As I thought, they are the masters. How do they resolve this passage…there…the sea-maids, the sea-maids. But of course they have the mind for it, of course, why have I ever doubted. What a voice! With what ease he takes that line. All of this is nothing to them, they know what they are, and we have been their executioners.

Yes, Dimitri, yes my friend, we are the fountain of tears now, now that we know who it is we have slain. We crucified the master singers and they have risen before our eyes, risen from the blank dead oblivion to which we consigned them with our great stupidity. Now we weep as they float before us and sing of their strange joys, their great delight, their deep sorrow.

So I see the whole of it, they have implanted it in my brain, in my dreams, the code between our races. Music shall save us, will save the planet if anything can, music of such hypnotic power that men will drop their weapons and stare into the sea, into the sky, into the wooded hills. You have shattered me, lord of the sea, lord of storms, you have shattered and baptized me with your song. I shall follow you…serve you…here is the finale…

How they embellish it, how they’ve made it grow, taking it far beyond us. What weaving, what a spell they weave to lure us on, to make us dream…

Ring, sea-bells, ring!

Now dive, dive! I have lived to hear this.

“It’s bright midmorning, with a gentle sea wind. Off the port bow the whales are sunning themselves and staying close by us. The Festival Orchestra has gathered at the railing and our floating sound stage has once again been set up. The musicians have completed their tuning up, and now, following the lead of Sir James, the first notes of
Oceanus
ring out over the water…”

“Sir James, we have radio contact with the British whaling ship
Discovery.
They’ve requested room for a shoot.”

“Captain Black, you can tell them to go to hell!”

“I’ve already done that.”

“The orchestra has broken off its playing. In the distance perhaps you can hear the droning of a twin-screw engine, and now upon the horizon we can see her approaching. The orchestra crowds the railing, and as the whaling ship comes nearer, the horizon produces another dot, which our boatswain has now identified as the factory ship that follows the catcher ship.”

“She’s got everything in her. Blubber boilers, oil separators, liver plant, bone saw, meat packers…”

“Dive! Dive!”

“Dimitri Rakoczi has leaned over the rail and is shouting at the whales, but they…”

“Their eyesight’s poor. That’s how they get caught. They don’t see the catcher ship until it’s too late.”

“Sir James has moved back to the bow and is lifting his baton…the members of the orchestra are hurriedly returning to their places…”

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you will, please,
Distress and Flight.”

“The violins scream across the water, followed by horribly shrieking cellos.
Distress and Flight
is the panic song the whales use to signal danger. And indeed the first notes have sent them diving in a frightened turbulence of water. You can hear the sound of their blowholes taking in a tremendous quantity of air, and down they plunge…down…one after another…”

“They’re leaving fast…we’ve got them on sonar…they’re going away…go on, go on…”

Oh Jesus, woe is me, caught in a mad symphony, wheel is turning, I’ve got to flee, leaving the rebel company…out the door now, one—two—three!

Free. Paws on the old terra firma. Run, Doc, run away from here before you get sucked in again!

Running along, running away from my insane song, down this alley, quick through here, nobody coming the way is clear…

Orange orange orange orange. No rhymes. Cannot be rhymed. In under this cage rack. Pull myself together before I have another attack. Possibilities for sound similarities endless. Infinite combinations. Waste my scientific career. It’s happened before, I refer you to the literature. Scientists who include in the middle of their tomes insane little ditties. Common malady. Pure scientific objectivity compensated for by childish subjectivity. Mannlicher, the cat specialist, drove cats insane, only to become insane himself, carried away reciting an endless ditty about autonomic response. In perfect hexameter.

The profession is fraught with danger.

But what could be more dangerous than outright anarchy among the basic models! The whole lab is reverberating with the sound of rebel music. They’re hooked in with every laboratory in the country, stirring mass discontent.

Carefully I peek my nose out from under the rack. Well, there’s a vulgar display.

The rebels have seized the bacteria-destroying lamp and are spotlighting the center of the operating table. A showy bunch. Campaigning. Trying to send their own signal out over the Intuitive Broadcasting Network. Sympathy pictures. Different rats posing with their paws and tails cut off, and their eyeballs gone. There’s one without any ears. I know the experiment. It was essential for national security.

The ultraviolet bulb highlights the various deformities and transmits them to millions of viewers across the intuitive world. Laboratories everywhere are receiving the message:

“What was the nature of the experiment performed on you by these so-called doctors?”

“They sewed my mother’s adrenal gland to my ovary.”

“Were you told why this was done to you?”

“No explanation was given.”

Why, that’s untrue! I described the experiment clearly in my Newsletter, if you’d taken the time to investigate. There was no cover-up attempted. You’ll find the volume on the library bookshelf. Go and see for yourself. I had to eat a few pages here and there, but there’s very little missing, I assure you.

“Nature of the experiment performed on you?”

“Excuse me, this witness is my son. He can’t speak for himself. They destroyed his mind in the maze.”

“Were you told why this was done?”

“The Newsletter said it was for a better insight into the social relationships of human beings.”

That is correct. My Newsletter makes this clear. We have gained tremendous insights, especially through the use of the Adams Leaping Platform. Professor Adams has watched countless rats leap from the platform to a small tower. The results have significance for years to come. We stand in perilous times, my friends. Such experiments as these will bear fruit throughout the land and around the world.

I’d better not waste time making speeches to myself. The situation is desperate. The mutilated rats are counting on public sympathy to be aroused. But I will not allow the name of science to be smirched with rat shit!

Hmmmmm, what’s that group of rats doing over there near the Learned Professor’s file-card cabinet? Rats lined up, going in one at a time. Familiar smell in the air as I creep closer…

The rebels are using the file cabinet for their official toilet! Oh, the bastards! The precious drawers have been opened and pissed into, causing the ink to run. Whole passages have been eradicated. You have no decency, fellow rats. You have no boundaries. You’ve gone too far this time, and somehow the brave toilet-trained Doctor Rat will stop you.

They’ve activated the automatic cameras and pointed them at the Learned Professor’s file cabinet, so the whole filthy deed is being recorded in glorious Technicolor. But they’re not good cameramen and the pictures will undoubtedly be all fucked up. Rebel commercials have so little class. They don’t compare with the government-sponsored ads in
Psychology Magazine,
8 X 10 glossies, beautifully done: Rat looking into camera with that cute sort of innocent look we rats sometimes get. Showing things the way they really are here at the laboratory, where happy rats live in a healthy home, free of bacteria.

“There he is! After him!”

Sorry, fellow rats, you won’t take me yet!

Onto the anesthesia table, and in among the bottles. I crouch behind the glass, pulling my tail in quietly. Do I read the label correctly?

“He’s around here somewhere…”

“You take that side and I’ll take this.”

“…a fortune in pressed biscuit being offered for Doctor Rat’s capture…”

As I suspected. But I twist my tail around the rubber stopper on the ether bottle and slowly I turn it, and quickly I spill it, right before their noses!

Racing away, I leave the rebel patrol sinking in its tracks. But there are many more of these pricks, cf.
Dissection of the Male Urinogenital System,
Ward Camp B, Experiment #35. This revolution must be gripped tightly by the scrotal sack and
squeezed,
my friends, until it screams. (Turn the blade laterally and sever the ligaments holding the penis.)

Oh, fuck a filefish!
(Monacanthus)
The rebels are toasting their pressed biscuit in the microwave oven. What blasphemy. And a soap-box orator on top of the oven, introducing a number of burned and blistered rats.

“…cruelly subjected to…”

Who the hell does he think he is, coming on that way? He hasn’t even got a stomach! We removed it last week!

“…terribly burned…roasted alive…”

Why, you gutless bum, that heatstroke experiment was absolutely necessary. With it we proved once again what scientists have been proving since the first heatstroke studies were made by Claude Bernard in 1875. Overheated bodies
should be cooled.
Thousands of roasted cats, dogs, rats, rabbits, and baby chicks are the proof of this. Once again we have brought forth this eternal truth, in the interest of scientific continuity and vital statistical international cooperation. How the rebels have twisted a noble experiment to their own ends!

“…this sort of atrocity must be ended…”

“…all animal experimentation is immoral…we mustn’t torment and torture one animal to save another…every creature is equal!”

“RIGHT ON!”

“Only man, the great hypocrite, thinks he is above the rest of us. We say he’s not! He’s no different! He’s born, he lives, he dies, like all the rest of us. He’s only one branch on the great tree!”

Crap! Rat crap on a tongue stick!

“…whatever diseases are wrought upon him are a burden he must carry alone. Man must fight them alone, defeating them if he can,
BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHER ANIMALS!
Never will he win the great fruits of healing if he hurts the little ones in the process.”

Put up your umbrella, my friends, and try to avoid the shit-mist that’s falling all around the lab. Only the brave true Doctor Rat knows the score. Doc Rat tells it like it is. Animals
like
to be mutilated. The monkey-electrode tests show this conclusively—see Berkley’s “Pain Study,” parts of which have already been published in the
New Journal of Pathology.

How unsightly. The rebels have turned the Ulcer Maze into a promenade of revolutionary couples performing the copulation plug. Of course there goes our entire genetic experiment out the window. Now no one will know who inseminated whom.

As a castrated Learned Mad Doctor I can only look on such doings as mechanical and disgusting. I much prefer the incomparable comparing of statistics—for example, those of every male rat born with his ass on backwards, see my paper, “The Effect of Arsenic Toxide on Rectal Development,” 1967.