Doctor Rat (13 page)

The females are stiffening, squealing their little love words in the dark maze. I go soundlessly over the top of the maze, but it’s rather distracting to watch all these copulating couples, as my testicle scars are beginning to itch.

In and out they go, all along the row. A peaceful protest, they say. Not for me it isn’t. My old wounds are itching terribly and there’s nothing peaceful about that.

Still they go mating, plugging in pairs. This revolutionary tableau is too strong for me. I’ve got to block those lovely females out of my mind. I close my eyes, but I cannot close my ears.

“Seventy times a minute, go, go.”

“…ah…go…go…”

Flashing the frustration bulbs on the bodies of the mating couples is a typically tasteless revolutionary number, oh my itching wounds!

“Up there! It’s Doctor Rat!”

Leaping beyond the maze I scurry through the darkness, moving with the enemy on my tail. A doorway here. Into it, into it.

Good heavens, I’m in the Kirby Initiation Chamber. For newborn rats. It has been found that it’s possible to produce schizophrenia in a rat, even though he’s only a few minutes old. Well, this chamber doesn’t bother me, because I’m already cracked! I took my basic training in this place. Just as long as there aren’t any of those rebel wheels. But of course there aren’t. The Learned Professor Kirby doesn’t use the intuitive band. Just old-fashioned ambivalent stimuli.

Let the floor roll back and forth. Let the loud gongs go off. This is the fun house for me, dear friends.

But none of the other rats dare come into it. Only a Learned Mad Doctor can take the information feed in here, scrambled as it is, everything lopsided and sliding.

A Mad Doctor can handle this place with his tail tied around his nose. The old place hasn’t changed much since I last went through. Crazy corners, falling apart if you touch them. Emptying out into rolling blackness.

Yes, I love to stroll through this kind of insane environment because it’s so soothing to my learned nerves. Professor Kirby, I must give you a very prominent position in my Newsletter this month. The work you’ve done is splendid, have no doubt. Doctor Rat assures you that the doors are falling sideways as you wanted them to, causing me to lose the horizontal plane entirely. Yes, I slip through sideways thinking that I’m upright. The rebels have picketed this Initiation Chamber, claiming it’s unfair to destroy the mind of a newborn rat. I say it’s a wonderful way to wake up. You wake up nuts, so what? Is any harm being done?

I’m at the very center of the Initiation Chamber now, with confusion mirrors all around me. Multiple images of the handsome Doctor Rat, repeated down a seemingly endless corridor of glass. It doesn’t confuse me at all. Notice my John Barry-mouse profile. Had it not been for my birth here in the lab, I might be a strolling player-rat today, out in the fields somewhere, singing my wonderful songs.

But such is fate. I was not made for frivolity. Mine is the vocation of service to mankind. Speaking of which, I’d better get off my tail and find the exit. As I recall, it’s down this sliding hallway…

…steady…keep your balance…false door…electric grid…ouch…ouch…ouch…

The family wakes and we cast the leaves off our huddled bodies.

“Did you hear someone calling?”

“…far off in the jungle.”

I crawl to the edge of the branch on which we’ve made our nest. In the nearby trees, other chimps are waking, as the calling comes closer. It’s a low rough voice, but it belongs to a chimp. He must be tired; I think he’s traveled far.

Swinging out of this tree to another, I clamber up its branches toward the top. My hands are old and wrinkled, but I climb well. Many of the younger ones don’t climb so easily. I leap and grab—and leap again, these old hands always finding a hold.

The other chimps below me are climbing too. Through the dark branches we go, to the top, toward the great unreachable fruit in the night sky. It is full tonight. How delicious it must be. I am at the top, and jump, my arms stretched out—and the unreachable fruit eludes me, as always.

The calling traveler is closer now, and our tribe is quickly gathering on the treetops. I watch the young chimps leap for the unreachable fruit. But no matter how great the leap it can’t be reached. It’s beautiful to look at, so far away, riding high upon the winds. So it goes with us older ones; we start to watch and watch, and one night we disappear.

One day, these youngsters will wake and find me gone. They’ll look for me and call out, but they won’t find me. I’ll be far away in the meadow, in the place where the unreachable fruit finally touches the treetops. They’ll call out but they won’t find me.

Who is this calling out tonight? Is it some frightened youngster who set out to find the fruit too soon? He certainly must be young to travel so fast. I see him now, coming swiftly toward us through the topmost branches. Look, he almost runs along the treetops. I have to laugh, for he looks like a snake is chasing him!

We call out to him, calling the name of our tribe:

“Koo-loo, Koo-loo!”

We sing, all of us, in the treetops, welcoming this chattering youngster. And he answers us excitedly:

“A meeting! There’s going to be a meeting!”

“A meeting? Where? For what reason?”

“Why, you deaf old ape, haven’t you been hearing the crying of the birds and the roaring of the lions?”

“Forgive me, brilliant youngster, I must have been dreaming.”

“You certainly must have, for everyone is talking of only that.”

“Well, you talk to us now, traveler. Open our ears if you can.”

“Tomorrow, old chimp, you must set out with your tribe. Travel toward the unreachable fruit until it has come and gone seven times. Then you will be at the edge of the great plain.”

“And that’s where the meeting will be?”

“Everyone will be there. I must go now…”

“And what is the reason for this meeting?”

“Each one you talk to will give you a different reason. There are already as many stories floating in the jungle as there are leaves on this tree.”

“But what do you think, bright youngster, whose eyes are wise as two unreachable fruits? Give the offering of your wisdom to a stupid old ape.”

The impatient youngster looks at me with perfect disdain. His self-assurance is wonderful. I’ve seen many young ones like him hanging upside down between poles slung on the shoulders of man.

“Then listen carefully, old ape. We’re meeting for one reason and one reason only.”

“My ears are sticking out like toadstools, youngster, eager to hear your story.”

“The time has come for us to gather in great numbers so that we can merge our thought streams as one. All the creatures of this forest will merge, as will creatures of far-distant forests, for the eagles are carrying the word everywhere.”

“And the purpose of this merger, youngster? Please, unfold it for me, for my ears are now as big as an elephant’s.”

“Once we gather this way, man will come too. He will realize that we are all one creature, and he will stop killing us. His realization will be sudden and wonderful.”

“Hurry then, young chimp. Hurry on your way. Continue on as if a snake were chasing you. For you have already caused my ears to exceed all expectations, and they are beginning to attract the native hunters who will use them to make shoes. Please, go quickly, before my ears wind up on the feet of some great Man-chief.”

There he goes, proudly on his way, carrying the word of the great meeting. So it is true, then, the stories we’ve been hearing. I’d thought it was only another silly bit of monkey gossip.

“Elder, look!”

Across the great white unreachable fruit, the shadow of a big bird passes.

“When will we start out toward the meeting, Elder? Will we start in the morning?”

The young ones in my tribe will not sleep tonight. They’ll turn in the fork of the tree, and toss their protective leaves to the ground. In the morning, they’ll beat upon the tree stumps, eager to go.

“Come, Elder, come lie with me now.” The female, She-who-knows-me, takes me gently by the arm.

“It’s a dangerous thing, to move all the tribes to one place.”

“But, Elder, think of all we’ll see and hear.”

“There is a little stream not far from here. Have you heard all that it can say?”

“Elder, how could I? The little stream talks constantly, talks on and on.”

I lie beside her, and cover myself with leaves. There’s no turning back this desire that sweeps through them now. For even I, old enough to appreciate the peace of the treetops and the many cunning magical voices of the stream, even I, with all this around me here in our domain, am eager to be gone in the morning toward the meeting.

“You sigh, Elder. Lay your head upon my breast.”

Excuse me, I was just eating some highly classified tapes. When we pulled the fingers off our chimpanzee we naturally recorded her screams of delight. But there was a trouble-making humaniac on the faculty who threatened to use the tapes against us in front of Congress. Can you imagine? It might have jeopardized our grant! Not that there was anything
wrong
on those tapes, but the way the chimp screamed when we sliced off her head
could
have been misinterpreted. I figured it would be best if we just deep-sixed the evidence down my stomach. I mean, who could keep their mouth shut better than a rat? During these revolutionary times, the most innocent kind of material will be used by the rebels. And the iron oxide on the tape has given me quite a lot of pep!

Goddamnit, the rebel rats are gnawing their way through the wall of my refuge here in the Kirby Initiation Maze. Gnosh, gnosh, gnosh, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw—I’d better slip out through the reward window and across the high-tension suspension wire.

“There he is! Grab him!”

They see me, but who among them dares follow me across the frustration wire? In my day, I’ve hung here for hours while the graduate assistants took notes. The results are included in their learned dissertation, “Rats on High Wire,”
Psy. Bull.,
1969.
If
hung on a wire, a rat will hang there
—I believe that’s how the article begins. It’s a very valuable piece of information in its entirety, I assure you. The rebel troops, being unfamiliar with the article, fall clumsily downward while I, the Learned Doctor Rat, leap lightly off the end of the wire and scurry away.

Ah, but they’ve gotten control of the operating table, where they’re continuing their smear investigation:

“Nature of the experiment performed on your daughter?”

“At the age of twenty-eight days she was injected with hormones. Three days later she was killed and her ovaries taken out and weighed.”

And so it goes, broadcast out to innocent animals everywhere. After this disgusting revolution has been squelched, I’ll seek equal air time and explain to our listeners that this female rat wasn’t killed;
a necropsy was performed.
There’s a world of difference. If I could have gotten more of the folks dancing to the New Necropsy, this revolution might have been avoided. I must prepare a request for a larger musical-money grant from the government. Arrange for the blandest kind of music to be played in the lab, constantly, to dull the nerve endings.

And do the New Necropsy with me!

Rats everywhere now, in all the aisles. They’re starting to chew their way through the fuse box. The whole lab is going to be hit by a power failure and all kinds of experiments ruined. Yes, and they’ve begun issuing massive doses of euphoric drugs. They’ve commandeered a hypodermic needle and are lining up beneath the tremendous instrument, which is being manipulated by a gang pulley of tails. Squeezing out the opiate to their people. Well, I might as well get a little too, just to keep abreast of the rebel program. Let there be no misunderstanding about that. My taking of this rebel injection is purely scientific.

“Next.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Do you accept the Revolution?”

“Oh yes, of course, indubitably. Without question. I might add—”

“Wait a moment! You’re Doctor Rat!”

Leaping away, the rebel whiskers on my tail! Through this narrow lane, in among some filthy cages. An oriental rat steps from the shadows and bows ceremoniously:

“Honorable Doctor, follow me to safety…”

I quickly join him in the shadows. Who is this fellow? Let me just check my notes…hmmmmn, he’s a Chinese bamboo rat (family
Rhizomyidae).

“You’re out of danger here, Doctor. Shall we mount the ladder of blue clouds?”

He extends his arm toward a foul-looking staircase. Sleepy-eyed bamboo rats (genus
Rhizomys)
are sprawled on the stairs, twisted in various postures. What an unsavory corner of the laboratory.

“Please, Doctor, have no fear. The thin smoke rises to highest heaven, and I am Lem Kee at your service.”

The rebel rats are still prowling around outside. I’d better follow this Lem Kee until the neighborhood cools down.

“Excellent, Doctor, go right on up. Miss Hop Toy awaits you at the head of the stairs.”

Well, what a charming young female, smiling at me from above. I must say these bamboo rats are very gracious, even if their staircase is all jammed up.

“Good evening, Doctor. Won’t you go inside?” Miss Hop Toy gestures toward a narrow doorway, and Mr. Kem Lee takes my arm.

“You’ll find only friends here, Doctor, be assured.”

A dark little room. Figures lying on the floor, their faces lit by a flickering lamp. Kem Lee speaks:

“Doctor, let me introduce some fellow scholars—Mr. Li Young, Mr. Yenshee…”

“We are honored by your presence, Doctor.”

Li Young and Yenshee raise their long elegant tails, making room for me on the floor. A pale green ash clings to their paws and they smile graciously.

“What are you fellows studying, if I may ask?”

“We study the roofs of paradise, Doctor, and the flight of the yellow crane.”

“Oh yes, family
Gruidae.
I don’t fancy them myself, as they’re known to dine on rodents.”

“Please, Doctor, have a few drops of our precious candy, there, in the crock.”