Doctor Rat Read online

  A long hard day at the lab. The grads and the Learned Professor are removing their white coats and hanging them up in the corner. Don’t worry, gentlemen, the faithful Doctor Rat will watch over the lab for you during the night. I won’t let these rebels get away with any funny business.

  See you tomorrow.

  Lights out, door closing, click.

  I guess I’ll go over to the bookshelf and do a little light nibbling. A Learned Mad Doctor has got to keep up with the latest texts on who drove whom whacky and how.

  What’s that shadow I see slipping along the shelf?

  An escaped rebel rat! He’s racing along toward the laboratory radio. Wrapping his tail around the knob, he switches it on!

  “…authorities continue to be concerned by the growing number of dogs that have gathered together at the outskirts of the city. Unconfirmed reports from other parts of the state have indicated that the phenomenon may be widespread. State and local police are now on the alert for packs of…”

  I slept in the cave of the ancients. I lay hidden in the secret den. I arose and left my cave, for my sleep was troubled. And the wind carried me. I blew over the land, gathering the scattered limbs of my body. Now I am He of a Million Eyes. Now I have many teeth and many tails. Now run, dogs, run! Run with me, to the City of Blood, where Death does his long-dying dance!

  I am a howling river, a torrent of raging power. I am the Ancient Dog, He of a Million Tails. Through the meadows I rush, and through the broken lanes of the forest. The City of Blood lies not far ahead. I know the way, for its smell has long troubled my sleep and its cries have ruined my dreams.

  Their crying brought me awake. Astonished, I saw them being bred by men for their flesh, being herded and tortured, imprisoned and maimed. They cry out from the moment of birth to the hour of death, and their crying has brought me awake. It cannot go on this way. The law has been violated. We are all one creature, except for man, who refuses to recognize himself in our eyes. I, the Lord of Animals, protest!

  I have taken the form of the dog, friend of man. I am the beagle and the Doberman, the spaniel and the terrier, the collie and the setter, the greyhound and the wild dog, the stray dog and the old dog, the ruined and the wise dog, the timid and the fierce dog. I run to the edge of the City of Blood.

  I am the shadow upon the hill. My million red eyes stare down.

  “What a pile of dog shit this is, my fellow rats! Don’t let these fragmentary delusions of grandeur provoke you…”

  It’s that damned dog in the pressure clamp. Do you see the fearful image he’s sending out on the intuitive band? “Go on, get back in your basket, you Pomeranian piss pot!”

  Fortunately, these intuitive signals have no basis in reality. They’re loose hypnogogic fantasies; a few stray dogs, perhaps, have gotten together and are making a lot of noise in an alley somewhere, and these rebels are trying to blow it up into something great and grand.

  But a Learned Mad Doctor isn’t taken in so easily. Recall: the memoirs of Michael Mus Musculus, the lunatic mouse who believed he’d created the world out of his excrement.

  So ignoring these paranoids, let’s just slip out of Maze Alley D, and go along here to the laboratory library. Curl your tail up and let’s continue reading this Johns Hopkins University research report. Valuable, authenticated material, not some Pekingese pipe dream. Now, Johns Hopkins, let’s hear what your students have been doing:

  We pinched their tails, their feet, and their ears. We picked them up by the loose skin of the back and shook them. We spanked them and determined their response to restraint…quite intense and prolonged nociceptive stimuli were applied… Such procedures as tying her in the dorsal decubitus on an animal board, picking her up by the loose skin of the back, and vigorously shaking her, spanking her, or pinching her tail as hard as possible between thumb and forefinger elicited only a few plaintive meows. When her tail was grasped between the jaws of a large surgical clamp and compressed sufficiently to produce a bruise she cried loudly and attempted to escape…during the 139 days of survival she was subjected, every two or three days, to a variety of noxious stimuli…on one occasion her tail, shaved and moistened, was stimulated tetanically through electrodes connected with the secondary of a Harvard inductorium, the primary circuit of which was activated by 4.5 volts. When the secondary coil was at I3, she mewed; at 11 there was loud crying…at the end of the 5-second stimulation with the secondary at 5 she screamed loudly and spat twice. The last of these stimulations produced a third-degree electrical burn of the tail.

  Brilliant! What intelligent use of a cat. These Johns Hopkins boys are way ahead of the field. I must show this material to my Learned Professor and…

  Holy Hopping Horned Toads! (genus Phrynosoma) What’s going on with all of our exercise wheels? They’re buzzing and humming violently. The rebel rats are on the wheels, turning them furiously. What determined exercise: the cyclometers are clicking wildly and…a strange electrical pulsation is rising from the center of these spinning wheels!

  Radiant colors rising from the whirling vortex! I’ve never seen anything like this in all my life. Wheels turning, blurring, and circular bubbles of color floating out of them. The wheels turn still faster, the bubbles are getting larger and within them—

  Oh no!

  It’s a rebel broadcast! They’ve created a new intuitive signal. Beautiful full-color reception in every one of the bubbles, complete with stereophonic sound track!

  Coming in clearer, growing ever stronger—what the hell is going on here?

  I see a pair of horns, and hoofs. Intuitive camera is drawing back for a full, wide-angle shot. Hundreds of horns and hoofs!

  We stand, nervously waiting. Something is certainly not right. Overhead I hear a crow calling and there is a faint odor of rotting flesh in the air. We traveled all night in rumbling cars, our bodies pressed tightly together. Now the cars have stopped and the doors are opening. The light breaks over us, but it quickly disappears as we’re pushed forward into a dark shed, our movement defined by a long narrow runway through which we move one at a time, crying our long, low, tongue-tied moo.

  There are voices of men somewhere up ahead, and the sound of heavy machinery, as you sometimes hear near our fields in springtime. We grazed in the fields. Our herd was a great thing. Now we stand in this narrow runway. Our eyes are red, our legs weak, our stomachs nervous. I can still smell the warm scent of our herd, as on the fields in summer. But there is another smell, raw and unpleasant.

  We move forward slowly. Our hoofs sound loud on the runway and the air is filled with our stupid grunts. An explosion rings out, hurting my ears, but we’re pushed forward and I can see down into this building. The machinery is loud and dark red objects swing along, hanging from the ceiling. I can see them better now, I—

  MOTHER! HELP ME, MOTHER!

  My brothers hang there with their stomachs cut open and their heads cut off! I smell their open flesh; I see their dead hoofs. And on a metal hook I see all of their tongues, cut out and pierced by the sharp metal, pierced through the root and hanging there, mute and bloody!

  The heads are lined up on the floor! A young man is cutting off the cheeks with his knife, slicing through the tender flesh. Now he kicks the heads down through a hole in the floor!

  I stumble forward. Fear runs through me and my fear flows backward to the rest of the herd. How good it was to be with them, rubbing against them in the moist night air. Surely this must be a dream.

  Headless bodies swing along on huge chains. I MUST GET OUT! HELP! HELP ME!

  There’s no way to move; my heart is pounding wildly. I’m sick inside, my nature churning violently, my innards all jumbled, my throat dry and constricted. The explosion rings out ahead of me and the brother in front of me moves forward. I must follow him, prodded from behind.

  Upon a hook, I see hearts, pierced through and hanging, hearts that still speak to me, crying brother, brother, brother.

  Below on the floor I see blood,
a river of blood, and white-uniformed men covered with blood, the life of our herd. The men are talking unconcernedly, as if nothing unusual were happening. In the night sometimes they sang out over our herd, and it was a soothing sound.

  The explosion again!

  I stumble forward. I feel like a young calf, my legs wobbly, so wobbly I can hardly walk. There is a man just ahead. He’s holding something to the head of the brother in front of me.

  The sound, the awful exploding sound!

  My brother groans and slumps down. The floor opens before my eyes and he slides down it, falling away into the river of blood. The floor closes up again. I’m next!

  I’m pushed from behind. It’s my turn. I plead with my eyes toward the men. They’re laughing together, talking softly, and they hardly even notice me. Perhaps if I stand here quietly, listening to them…

  …he puts his hand on my head, still talking with the other man.

  A loud barking sounds outside, a long wild howl. The man turns away. The howling grows louder. Light suddenly bursts into this dark cold place. A dog streaks across the floor, snarling angrily. He’s followed by others, many others. They snap and bite at the hearts that hang like fruit on a tree. I stamp my hoofs. We stamp our hoofs. The men are fleeing from the charging dogs. The eyes of the dogs are inflamed, their voices strained and frenzied. We kick. We lower our horns and drive against the barricades. There is no one to stop us. The dogs are calling, urging us to join them. Our great bull-leader crashes through the barrier, destroying it, splinters flying from his horns. We follow him, out of the house of death, into the night. Run, steers, run!

  We leap the fences that sought to hold us. How puny such fences are. Trampling over them, we flee, feeling our strength, the surging of our full power. We race the streets. My hoofs sound loud upon the stone.

  We follow the bull-leader, his muscles quivering and rolling as he looks around, leading us. We thunder and swerve, following his powerful hump—into bursts of light, into explosions!

  Trample them and go free! We turn, surrounded by fiery light that strikes us. We whirl in a ring, held by the fire, struck by the light. Run, steers, run!

  “Fellow rats, please, if you have any legitimate complaints write them in a paper and submit them in triplicate to the Newsletter.”

  “WE WANT OUR RIGHTS!”

  “Fellow rats, you are protected by Public Law 89-544 of the Eighty-ninth Congress of the United States, and I quote, to wit: ‘The Secretary shall establish and promulgate standards to govern the humane handling, care, treatment, and transportation of animals by dealers and research facilities.’ You see? You’re protected by the great law of these wonderful United States.”

  “They dug out my eyes with a spoon today.”

  “The better to see a scientific fact, my friend. It was essential.”

  “They made some kind of horrible crust grow all over my face. It burns!”

  “My stomach!”

  “My spine!”

  “My dear fellow rats, you’ve simply misunderstood Section 13 of the above-mentioned act, and I quote: ‘The foregoing shall not be construed as authorizing the Secretary to prescribe standards for the handling, care, or treatment of animals during actual research or experimentation by a research facility as determined by such research facility.’ You see now, don’t you? Once you’re here in the lab, the law allows our Learned Professors to do whatever they feel like with you. It’s a law with teeth in it, I’m happy to say.”

  “Shove that law up your ass, Doc. We want humane legislation. NO ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION!”

  “Humane, humane, always harping on humane. My fellow rats, do you know what the American Medical Association calls those who harp on this word humane? Humaniacs! Yes, that’s what you are—half-assed Humaniacs!”

  Ignoring me, the rebels start spinning their exercise wheels again. The wheels blur, hum, and once again here come the intuitive signals out of the whirling depths. I’ve got to jam these rebel broadcasts.

  Perhaps if I slip over here to the laboratory television set I’ll get a nice innocuous program to distract the attention of these revolutionary rats. Maybe an exercise program from poolside in sunny California.

  Clicking it on with my tail, waiting for it to warm up. Yes, a few deep knee bends is what we want, and some jumping jacks to slim the waistline, all done to quiet music. Here comes the sound…

  “…special bulletin. A large pack of wild dogs struck at the stockyard approximately an hour ago, swarming over the unloading platforms and precipitating a mass stampede of cattle destined for the slaughtering pens. All motorists are requested to remain away from the area. Any spectator activity is said to be extremely dangerous. I repeat: A large pack, of…”

  Lord love a duck! (family Anatidae) I’ve got to switch this program fast…

  “Hold it right there, Doc!”

  “I’m sorry, fellows, but—”

  “Grab the Doctor! Kick his ass!”

  I see it would be wiser to retire from the TV set. These rebels have started freeing each other from their cages and I’m rapidly being outnumbered. Very well, I withdraw, but only temporarily, my friends. Doctor Rat is not to be trifled with.

  “Take every man from Sector 8 and blocks off those streets…

  The TV picture is an extraordinary one—police cars converging on stampeding cattle and howling dogs. The camera swings dizzily for a moment, and a steer charges toward us as the footage abruptly ends.

  “This is Barry Nathan. We switch you now to the…”

  “Send for the dogcatcher!”

  “Sit down, Doc, and shut up.”

  “Yeah, down in front…pass the rat chow, please.”

  I’ve got to do something about that TV set. The news is too incendiary, and the rebel rats are running around excitedly, opening all the cages. My move must be daring and swift.

  The double-panned weighing scale is just below me, in the shadows, with a lead weight upon it. We ordinarily use this scale to weigh newborn rats or those on special deficiency diets, but Doctor Rat is going to put it to more dramatic use tonight!

  The angle of trajectory seems right. I leap!

  Down through the air I drop, a counterespionage commando landing secretly behind enemy lines, on the scale, driving one pan down and the other up, launching the lead weight into the air toward the TV screen.

  I flatten out as the weight strikes, shattering the screen! Glass flying everywhere! Perhaps now these rebels know whom they’re dealing with—the dynamic Doctor Rat!

  But how bright the exercise wheels have gotten again. And the dog is turning his treadmill at a terrific rate of speed, running for all he’s worth. Light is emanating from the turning treadwheels and from the exercise wheels. The atmosphere is incredibly electric. I haven’t felt anything so powerful since I had my last sublethal dose of insulin (see my paper, “Average Lethal Dose for Rats,” Phar. Mag., 1971). I’d like to get about fifty of these rebel rats together and give them a Maximum Lethal Dose of strychnine in their pressed biscuit. That’d shut them up in a hurry!

  But how bright the exercise wheels are, glowing now with frightening intensity. The rats are racing, making an opening in the intuitive band, and our laboratory is filled with expanding points of light, light merging with light, wheel merging with wheel. The entire room is shining with whirling light and I can see a face emerging from the vortex!

  I was born in this big room. Never have I been outside it. At either end of the room come the winds, mechanically produced. There are, above our heads, harsh lights. I wonder what’s beyond this room.

  Our bodies are white and fat. We have no exercise. I never walk more than the length of my little cell. The days are so monotonous and my existence so pointless—often I feel that I don’t exist at all, that I am just a dream.

  The great room is divided into these low cells. Each of us has one; we’re separated from the other inmates by a board wall over which we can barely see our neighbors. If anyone attemp
ts to enter my cell, I will kill him. The law here is, Keep your own cell and let no one in. There is no friendship. Our cell is our life; we protect it with our life.

  “Come on there, you! Come on!”

  The guard has come for me, driving me out of my cell with shouts and kicks. I try to walk, but movement is difficult; my muscles are weak. He drives me toward the cold female.

  I’ve been with her before. She has no warmth; she smells like a female. I never see the whole of her body. I see the tail end.

  “Get in there. Go on, get to it!”

  I smell a female. Where is her life? She stands motionless; she awaits me. I mount her.

  You are cold. You never speak. I love you. I love you, here in the room. I love you, though you are still as death. They watch me closely. I grunt and cling to your cold body. I have learned to do this, to drive myself into you. I drive into your body, slip and fall and rise again, entering you once more. I hang clumsily, puffing, strained, excited. They jeer at me, as I struggle to fill you. It rises up through me. It rises to the top, it goes out of me. I leave it inside of you. I love you; cold and silent.

  “All right, move!”

  He strikes me and drives me away from her. Our meetings are always like this—brief and silent. Sometimes I dream of you; your silent, hidden body.

  I return to my cell. Food has been put out for me and I eat it down. I’m always eating. I’ve nothing else to do. I’ve grown so fat I can hardly stand.

  What am I?

  If I could get outside this room, I might be able to learn something. Once I saw a great many of the older inmates leave the room and they never returned. Did they learn something?

  Where are they now?

  There is so much I don’t know. Why do they lead me to the cold female? Is this part of their great understanding?

  They must know so much, for they go outside the room.

  I feel that my life here is not permanent; I firmly believe that one day I too will leave the room.