Various Fiction, page 254
“Calm yourself,” Garcia said, unimpressed by my rage.
“I will calm myself after we dispose of the dogs!” I shouted. “Come, senora, enter my rooms and look under the bed for your hallucinations. And when you are satisfied, you will kindly refund me the remainder of my month’s rent and my month’s security, and I will go live somewhere else with my invisible dogs.”
Garcia looked at me curiously. I suppose he has seen a great deal of bravado in his time. It is said to be typical of a certain type of criminal. He said to Senora Elvira: “Shall we take a look?”
My landlady surprised me. She said—incredibly!—“Certainly not! The gentleman has given his word.” And she turned and walked away.
I was about to complete the bluff by insisting that Garcia search for himself if he were not completely satisfied. Luckily, I stopped myself. Garcia is no respector of properties. He is not afraid of making a fool of himself.
“I am tired,” I said. “I am going to lie down.”
And that was the end of it.
This time I locked my front door. It had been a near thing. While we had been talking, the poor wretched creature had gnawed through its leash and died on the kitchen floor.
I disposed of it in the usual way, by feeding it to the others. Thereafter I doubled my precautions. I bought a radio to cover what little noise they made. I put heavy straw matting under their cages. And I masked their odor with heavy tobacco, for I thought that incense would be too obvious.
But it is strange and ironic that anyone should suspect me of keeping dogs. They are my implacable enemies. They know what goes on in my apartment. They have allied themselves with mankind. They are renegade animals, just as I am a renegade human. If the dogs could speak, they would hurry to the police station with their denunciamentos.
When the battle against humanity is finally begun, the dogs will have to stand or fall with their masters.
A note of cautious optimism: the last litter was quite promising. Four of the twelve survived, and grew sleek and clever and strong. But they are not as ferocious as I had expected. That part of their genetic inheritance seems to have been lost. They actually seem fond of me—like dogs! But this surely can be bred out of them.
Mankind has dire legends of hybrids produced by the cross-breeding of various species. Among these are the chimera, the griffin, and the sphinx, to name but a few. It seems to me that these antique nightmares might have been a memory of the future-like Garcia’s perception of my not-yet-committed crimes.
Pliny and Diodorus record the monstrous offspring of camel and ostrich, lion and eagle, horse, dragon, and tiger. What would they have thought of a composite wolverine and rat? What would a modern biologist think of this prodigy?
The scientists of today will deny its existence even when my heraldic beasts are swarming into towns and cities. No reasonable man will believe in a creature the size of a wolf, as savage and cunning as a wolverine, as social, adaptable, and as great a breeder as a rat. A confirmed rationalist will deny credence to this indescribable and apocryphal beast even as it tears out his throat.
And he will be almost right in his skepticism. Such a product of cross-hybridization was clearly impossible—until I produced it last year.
Secrecy can begin as a necessity and end as a habit. Even in this journal, in which I intended to tell everything, I see that I have not recorded my reasons for breeding monsters, nor what I intend them to do.
Their work should begin in about three months, in early July. By then, local residents will be remarking on a horde of animals which has begun to infest the slums surrounding the Zocalo. Descriptions will be hazy, but people will remark on the size of these creatures, their ferocity and elusiveness. The authorities will be notified, the newspapers will take note. The blame will probably be laid to wolves or wild dogs at first, despite the uncanine appearance of these beasts.
Standard methods of extermination will be tried, and will fail. The mysterious creatures will spread out through the capital, and then into the wealthy suburbs of Pedregal and Coyoacan. It will be known by now that they are omnivores, like man himself. And it will be suspected—correctly—that they possess an extremely high rate of reproduction.
Perhaps not until later will their high degree of intelligence be appreciated.
The armed forces will be called in, to no avail. The air force will thunder over the countryside; but what will they find to bomb? These creatures present no mass target for conventional weaponry. They live behind the walls, under the sofa, inside the closet—always just beyond the outer edge of your eyesight.
Poison? But these hybrids eat what you possess, not what you offer.
And besides, it is August now, the situation is completely out of hand. The army is spread symbolically throughout Mexico City; but the cohorts of the beasts have overrun Toluca, Ixtapan, Tepalcingo, Cuernavaca, and they have been reported in San Luis Potosi, in Oaxaca and Veracruz.
Scientists confer, crash programs are drawn up, experts come to Mexico from all over the world. The beasts hold no conferences and publish no manifestos. They simply spawn and spread, north to Durango, south to Villahermosa.
The United States closes its borders; another symbolic gesture. The beasts come down to Piedras Negras, they cross the Eagle Pass without permission; unauthorized, they appear in El Paso, Laredo, Brownsville.
They sweep across the plains and deserts like a whirlwind, they flow into the cities like a tidal wave. Doctor Zombie’s little furry friends have arrived, and they are here to stay.
And at last mankind realizes that the problem is not how to exterminate these creatures. No, the problem is how to prevent these creatures from exterminating man.
This can be done, I have no doubt. But it is going to require the full efforts and ingenuity of the human race.
That is what I expect to achieve by breeding monsters.
You see, something must be done. I intend my hybrids to act as a counterbalance, a load to control the free-running human engine that is tearing up the earth and itself. I consider this job ethically imperative. After all: Does man have the right to exterminate whatever species he pleases? Must everything in creation serve his ill-considered schemes, or be obliterated? Don’t all life forms and systems have a right to live, an absolute right with no possibility of qualification?
Despite the extremity of the measure, there will be benefits to mankind. No one will have to worry again about hydrogen bombs, germ warfare, defoliation, pollution, greenhouse effect, and the like. Overnight, these preoccupations will become—medieval. Man will return to a life in nature. He will still be unique, still intelligent, still a predator; but now he will be subject again to certain checks and balances which he had previously evaded.
His most prized freedom will remain; he will still be at liberty to kill; he will simply lose the ability to exterminate.
Pneumonia is a great leveler of aspirations. It has killed my creatures. Yesterday the last of them raised its head and looked at me. Its large pale eyes were filmed over. It raised a paw, extended its claws, and scratched me lightly on the forearm.
I cried then, for I knew that my poor beast had done that only to please me, knowing how much I desired it to be fierce, implacable, a scourge against mankind.
The effort was too much. Those marvelous eyes closed. It died with barely a twitch.
Pneumonia is not really a sufficient explanation, of course. Beyond that, the will was simply not there. No species has had much vitality since man pre-empted the earth. The slave-raccoons still play in the tattered Adirondack forests, and the slave-lions sniff beer cans in Kruger Park. They and all the others exist only on our sufferance, as squatters on our land. And they know it.
Under the circumstances, you can’t expect to find much vitality and spirit among non-humans. Spirit is the property of the victors.
The death of my last beast has become my own end. I am too tired and too heartsick to begin again. I regret that I have failed mankind. I regret having failed the lions, ostriches, tigers, whales, and other species threatened with extinction. But most of all I regret having failed the sparrows, crows, rats, hyenas—the vermin of the earth, the trash species who exist only to be exterminated by man. My truest sympathy has always been with the outlawed, abandoned, or worthless, in whose categories I include myself.
Are they vermin simply because they do not serve man? Don’t all life forms and systems have a right to live, an absolute right with no possibility of qualification? Must everything in creation continue to serve one species, or be obliterated?
Some other man must feel as I do. I ask him to take up the fight, become a guerrilla against his own kind, oppose them as he would oppose a raging fire.
The record has been written for that hypothetical man.
As for me: not long ago, Garcia and another official came to my apartment on a “routine” health inspection. They found the bodies of several of my composite creatures, which I had not yet had the opportunity to destroy. I was arrested and charged with cruelty to animals, and with operating a slaughterhouse without a license.
I shall plead guilty to the charges. Despite their falseness, I recognize them as essentially and undeniably true.
GAME—FIRST SCHEMATIC
Perhaps he was not yet fully awake, perhaps that could account for the shock of walking down the dark corridor and through the oval door into the sudden silence and immensity of the arena. The concentric stone tiers rose dizzyingly above his head, stopping down the dome of the sky, concentrating and focusing the heat and energy of the crowd. The morning sun glared off the white sand, and for a moment he couldn’t remember where he was.
He looked down at himself: he was wearing a collarless blue shirt and red shorts—A leather mitaxl was strapped to his left hand. In his right hand he held the daenum, its four-foot length heavy and reassuring. He wore padded knee and elbow guards as required by the regulations. He also wore a little feathered yellow cap. The regulations didn’t call for it, but they didn’t forbid it either.
All of which was meant to be familiar and reassuring. But was it?
He tested the webbing and linkages of the mitaxl, made sure that the daenum could travel freely on its bronze spindle. He touched his waist and felt the customary soft weight of the sentrae tied to his belt, its rough side turned in. He told himself that everything was in order. But he was uneasy, for it seemed to him—madly enough—that he had never been in an arena before, had never heard of a daenum, didn’t even know the name of the game he was supposed to play. But that was crazy, that was nerves, that could be ignored. He shook his head brusquely and took three gliding steps to test the ball-bearings in his skates, reversed and circled his own square.
Now he could hear the crowd, they always got restless just before a contest began; yes, and abusive. It was the skates, of course, the skates were not traditional, the crowd could never forgive him for the skates. But didn’t they realize that playing on skates was more difficult than on foot’ Did they ever consider the problem of returning a low volley while skating backwards? Didn’t they know that the advantage of speed was canceled out by the increased complexities of judgement? Surely they were aware that he could also win on foot!
He rubbed his forehead and looked toward the reviewing stand. The three judges had taken their places, they were looking out through the eye slits in their feathered masks. The blindfolded woman reached into the high wicker basket, selected a ball and threw it to him.
He weighed it in his hand, an oblate spheroid, difficult to serve, harder to return. He saw that his opponent in the opposite court was waiting, knees flexed, body hunched forward. So he threw the ball into the air and quickly, without thinking, put spin on it with the daenum. The crowd became quiet, watching the ball spinning miraculously three feet above the ground. He adjusted tilt with the mitaxl, a routine operation but one that filled him with sudden despair, for he realized that this was not his day to win, not his week, not his year, maybe not his decade . . .
He pulled himself together, let the daenum slide to the end of the spindle, and served. The ball fluttered away from him like a wounded bird, and the crowd roared with laughter. Still, it was a deceptively good stroke, the ball came alive just before entering the net (his patent serve!) and skipped upward and over, catching the opposing player flatfooted.
He turned away, heard the crowd roar again, and knew that his opponent had somehow managed to return it. He saw the ball, heavy with unintentional backspin, come skipping slowly toward him. It was not much of a return; he could have laid into it on rebote, driven his opponent out of position, scored a psychological point. But he chose to let the ball go past him into the backboard; and now, presumably, his opponent had the edge.
He heard a few boos and whistles. He ignored them, it was damned hot today, his legs ached, he was bored. He felt, not for the first time, that the contest had become meaningless. It was ludicrous, when you thought about it—a grown man playing so seriously at a game! After all, life was more than that, life was love and children and sunsets and good food. Why had this contest come to epitomize his entire existence?
Another ball had been put into play, a big, shapeless, mushy thing, too light, not at all his kind of ball. He couldn’t get anything into a ball like that. He rejected it, as was his privilege, and rejected the next two as well, out of pique, even though the last one might have been tailored to his talents. But he let it drop away, pivoted on his skates and glided over to the sideline bench. The contest hadn’t begun yet, but his right shoulder hurt and he was thirsty.
He drank a cup of water, shading his eyes with the mitaxl, then motioned to the club boy for another cup. He couldn’t tell if the judges were watching him or not; presumably they were, he was delaying the match. But it couldn’t be helped, he needed time to think out his strategy, for he did like to have a definite game plan. Not a blueprint or a schematic (despite the advice of several outstanding professionals); just a general strategy, flexible and based upon good general principles and embodying all available information. But of course, he didn’t need to have a game plan. Like any professional he could play with or without a plan, he could play drunk, sick, or half-dead. He might not win, but he could always play. That was what it meant to be a professional.
He turned now to study the arena, the hatched scoring squares, the black interdicted area, the red and blue striped no-man’s land. But suddenly he couldn’t remember the rules, couldn’t remember how you scored points, didn’t know what was fair and what was foul. And, in a panic, he saw himself, a bewildered man dressed in gym clothes, balanced precariously on roller skates, standing in front of a hostile crowd, about to play a game he had never before heard of.
He finished his second cup of water and skated back into the court. There was a taste of acid in his mouth, and sweat stung his eyes. The mitaxl creaked as he picked up his stride, and the daenum flopped against his leg like a broken bird.
Here came his ball, shaped like a goddamned lozenge, a freak of a ball, an impossible ball even for him, the acknowledged master of impossible balls. He’d never get this one to the net, much less over it!
Of course, if he did get it over—
But he’d never get it over.
He told himself without conviction that the game was more important than the win. He hefted the ball, flapped the sentrae into guard position, took up the stylized serving posture. Then he threw the ball down.
The crowd was absolutely quiet.
“Now look,” he said, in a conversational voice that carried to the highest sun-drenched bleacher, “I told the management beforehand that I insisted upon a sunscreen. You will note that it has not been forthcoming. Yet, in expectation of it, I did not wear sunglasses. Clearly, this is a breach of contract. Ladies and gentlemen, I am sorry, there will be no game today.”
He bowed, sweeping off his feathered cap. There were a few murmurs, a few catcalls, but they took it well, filing out without undue protest. They were used to it, of course: although he was famous for appearing on the courts every day, rain or shine, he didn’t actually complete more than a dozen matches a year. He didn’t have to, there was plenty of precedent, you could look at the contests-engaged column in any newspaper and see the number of scratches. Even in the Smithsonian where the first historical references to the game were recorded, even there, engraved in stone, you could see that the legendary contenders of antiquity had had spotty attendance records.
Still, he felt bad about it. The judges left and he bowed to them, but they didn’t acknowledge his salutation.
He went back to the sidelines and drank another cup of water. When he looked up, he saw that his opponent had left. He glided back into the court and took practice shots against the wall, moving smoothly back and forth across the enameled tiles, retrieving his shots, marveling at his own skill. He was going well now, he was sorry that this one didn’t count. But what had the man said? “Everything’s easy to hit except the money ball.”
At the end of the day the sand was streaked black, and dotted with drops of his sweat and blood. But none of it counted, so he ignored the scattering of applause. He knew that he had practiced in order to stay occupied, and in order to keep his own respect, so that he could continue to believe that he would play and win at this game.
At any rate, he was tired now. He ducked into the dressing room and changed back into street clothes. He went out the back door into the street.
To his surprise it was dark outside. Dark already? What had he been doing all day? Incredibly, he was not completely sure, but it seemed to him that he had been engaging in some kind of weird contest.
He went home then and he wanted to tell his wife about the game, but he couldn’t think of what to say or how to tell about it, so he didn’t say anything, and when his wife asked how his work had gone, he said all right, by which they both understood that it hadn’t gone well, not this time, not today.
