This Broken Wondrous World

by Jon Skovron

  As we went farther into the house, we lost the benefit of the moonlight through the windows, and the rooms became nearly pitch black. Only Mozart was able to see well, so the rest of us lined up behind him and stuck close together. I started to feel like there were eyes watching us off in the dark corners. A few times I heard noises, like something large and scaly moving around.

  “Why are all the bloody lights out?” muttered Claire. Her head kept turning in different directions, like she’d be able to see something if she just moved fast enough.

  “We’re sitting on top of an active volcano,” said Robert. “Electricity is mostly generated from a geothermal system that Moreau constructed beneath the house. There are also some solar panels on top of the house and some windmills on the north side of the island that add a little extra. Even so, electricity is a precious commodity here on Noble’s Isle, generally reserved for Moreau’s work.”

  “What work?” asked Mozart.

  “That front room we were in is usually dark as well,” said Robert, like he hadn’t heard Mozart’s question. “He left the porch light on for you.”

  “So sweet of him,” Claire said.

  Finally, we could see a lit room ahead. It had the same harsh white halogen lamps, which I realized were probably a lot more energy efficient. Although when we entered the room, I wondered why bother conserving that little bit when there were so many things in here sucking power. This room was about three times the size of any of the other rooms. Instead of antique furniture and rugs, it was lined with sterile white tile. Along one wall were big refrigerators, a sink, a stove, and glass cabinets containing beakers and vials filled with a rainbow of liquids. The far wall was completely covered by thick metal blinds. And in the center was a massive stainless-steel table with a collection of really unpleasant-looking tools; dull, corroded implements, some with blades, points, hooks, or saw teeth. And something that looked a lot like a massive antique bolt cutter.

  “If he has been cut off from civilization for over a hundred years, then he would not have even had a refrigerator when this island was sealed off,” said La Perricholi, nodding to the refrigerators. “Did you bring it all with you?”

  “I didn’t bring any of this equipment with me,” said Robert.

  “Then who did?” asked Mozart.

  Robert’s eyes darted away, and for the first time, he looked nervous. But then his eyes caught something on the far end of the room and his face lit up with a relieved smile.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” he said. “Allow me to introduce our host, Dr. Moreau.”

  “Welcome, all of you,” came a thick, coarse voice.

  Then we turned and saw Moreau for the first time.

  He was huge. Bigger than me or Stephen or even my dad. Here and there were patches of pale, wrinkled human skin. But for the most part, he seemed to be comprised of animal parts. He had large pointy bat ears and piercing yellow hawk eyes. His nose and mouth jutted out like an ape’s, and his hair looked more like coarse animal fur. He was dressed in white, loose-fitting robes of some kind so I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on with his body, but his hands were clawed and his bare feet looked very catlike. And I was pretty sure there was a prehensile tail of some kind swishing behind him beneath the robes.

  We all stared at him for a little while. Then finally Mozart cleared his throat.

  “My name is Mozart. I’ll be acting as Ruthven’s liaison. We understood that you were . . . human?”

  “I know who you are, Wolfgang. I know who all of you are,” said Moreau. It seemed tricky to talk around that giant set of primate teeth, especially the long canines, but he did a pretty good job of it. “And yes, ‘were’ is the correct word to use. I was human when they imprisoned me on this island.”

  “You did this to yourself?” asked La Perricholi.

  “Yes, Perricholi. I am a self-made monster,” said Moreau. “It was clear to me that the most formidable obstacle in reaching my goals was my own mortality. So naturally, before I proceeded with any other work, I had to find a way to extend my life.”

  “So as your own body parts started to wear out, you replaced them with animal parts?” I asked.

  His apelike face grimaced into something that I think was supposed to be a smile. “Quite correct, Boy. At first I used surgery, but I found that to be highly unreliable, and messy, particularly when trying to operate on myself. Eventually, I turned to stem-cell development. That allowed for a great deal more precision. However, the biggest problem continued to be tissue rejection. If you try to simply graft an ape hand onto the end of your arm, your body will reject it. But I was eventually able to find a way to suppress that reaction. Now, I am happy to say, I can graft any anatomical feature from one creature onto another without rejection.”

  “That’s amazing,” I said.

  “I’m glad you appreciate it.”

  “Must’ve taken a lot of trial and error to get there,” said Mozart. “A lot of test subjects.”

  “One can accomplish a great deal when one is not inhibited by ethical constraints.”

  “Yeah, that’s what worries me.”

  “No doubt you are wondering why I asked you and your companions to come so very far and in such a dramatic fashion,” said Moreau.

  “It’s been on my mind. Especially the part where Stephen nearly killed us.”

  “What?” said Moreau, his yellow bird eyes widening. It was difficult to read his expression, but he sounded genuinely surprised.

  “Eh, Stephen . . .” said Robert, cringing slightly. “He wanted to make sure they were . . . worth your time.”

  “I see,” said Moreau. “While I appreciate his intent, his methods were counterproductive. I won’t be able to overlook this.”

  “I . . . understand,” said Robert, his face growing even more pale than usual.

  Moreau turned back to us. “I am truly sorry about that. The last thing I wanted was to alienate you. After all, I am hoping to enlist your aid. But before we get to all of that, may I ask, do you know why I was imprisoned on this island so long ago?”

  “Something about exposing the monster secret to humans. Ruthven never told me the full details.”

  “Of course he didn’t. Vampires do love their secrets. Sometimes even when it is dangerous to withhold certain pieces of information.”

  “So now you’re going to tell me that you were framed, right? That you didn’t try to sell us out to the humans.”

  Moreau slowly blinked his yellow eagle eyes as he stared at Mozart, one bat ear twitching with irritation. “I did not try to ‘sell you out,’ as you put it. But in a sense, I did try to expose the monster secret to the humans.”

  “Don’t start getting semantic with me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Moreau, his ape mouth grimacing again. “But let me explain the reason why I wanted to shatter this secret that has lasted for so many centuries.”

  Mozart glanced at La Perricholi. She shrugged.

  “All right. Give us your sales pitch.”

  “How gracious of you,” said Moreau. He walked over to the large metal table, his motions slow and liquid on his great cat feet. He reached out with one clawed hand and touched the creepy metal instruments. I tried not to think of how many animals he’d opened up with those things.

  “As you are probably aware,” he began, “before I discovered your monster world, I spent years on this island trying to surgically alter animals to become more like humans. It was a misguided goal that failed spectacularly and nearly got me killed. But it did attract the attention of Ruthven and Kemp. I was flattered when they contacted me. I felt like I’d suddenly become privy to an entirely new dimension of existence. An aspect of the world that I had always longed for, but never dared believe was possible.”

  He began to lay out the tools neatly, side by side. He did it with the easy precis
ion of someone who had done it many times.

  “This was decades before The Show or The Studio existed, of course. There was almost no unity among monsters. Some lived alone, others in small groups. They existed on the outskirts of human society, or beneath it in sewers, or else in barren, uninhabited wastelands. Once-proud creatures cowering in filth—starving, miserable, dying. Ruthven and Kemp feared that monsters would not survive the coming advances of the twentieth century. They asked me what I thought they should do.”

  He picked up a small, jagged saw that still had tiny bits of yellow bone stuck in the teeth.

  “I told them they should unite all monsters under a single coalition and slaughter approximately one-eighth of the world’s human population.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You told them they should stage a monster revolution?”

  “Karl Marx and socialism were just beginning to take hold at the time. It seemed like sound, fair logic to me.”

  “I’m pretty sure Marx never advocated killing millions of people,” said Mozart.

  “Yes,” said Moreau. “And look at the state of socialism now.”

  “So, they locked you away because you told them to revolt against humanity?” asked Claire.

  “No, Ms. Hyde. They locked me away because, when they balked at the idea, I marshaled a small force of monsters and tried to do it myself.”

  “And how did you do that?” asked Mozart.

  “I invaded Lima, naturally.”

  “What?” said La Perricholi.

  “It was nothing personal,” said Moreau. “It was merely the most logical choice. Close proximity, unstable government, large enough to make the world take notice, but not so large as to be impossible. I remember one of your predecessors at the head of the defensive. She was a formidable opponent, but my forces were far superior. If Ruthven, Kemp, Boy’s father, and the Dragon Lady had not stepped in, Peru would have fallen and a new country would have risen.”

  “You wanted to make a monster government?” I asked.

  “The rest of the world would have been forced to grant us legitimacy. They would have had to broaden the concept of personhood to include nonhumans and accept that they aren’t the only ones who deserve basic rights and a place in the world. An action that I think all of you would agree is long overdue, would you not?” He put down his tools and turned to me. “You walk freely in the world, but your own father cannot. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Don’t you want to do something about it?”

  “Well . . . yeah.”

  “Naturally.” He turned to Claire. “Robert told me of your mothers’ tragic end. Imagine a world that had mental health counseling that took into consideration the complex identity issues they faced. A world in which they could have gotten the help they needed, rather than be forced to live a life of constant repression and fear. All these things could have been possible.”

  “If you’d strong-armed a small country in South America?” asked Mozart. “I don’t think so.”

  “Agreed,” said Moreau. “Peru would have just been the initial foothold.”

  “Then you would have slowly annexed country after country until you controlled all of South America.”

  “Darwin’s law. Survival of the fittest.”

  “So far, humans seem to be the fitter of the two,” said La Perricholi. “We are the ones in control.”

  “We?” asked Moreau. He turned away from his tools and his piercing eyes focused on her. “After everything you’ve seen, after everything you’ve done, do you think you really still have a place in humanity? I have altered my physical form into something monstrous. But your insides, I’ll wager, have altered just as grotesquely over the years. Tell me I’m wrong.”

  She stared at him, her face hard. But she said nothing.

  “And as for which is superior, the only reason humans remain dominant is through sheer strength of numbers. New monsters, whether they begin life that way like Boy and Claire, or transformed like Kemp or Ruthven, have always been difficult to make. The process is usually unplanned and the results unpredictable.”

  He walked over to the cabinets that contained vials and beakers of brightly colored liquid. He placed his clawed hand on the glass door. His long tail swished back and forth beneath his white robes.

  “Until now.”

  “I’m getting a little tired of the runaround, Moreau.” Mozart’s voice was little more than a quiet growl. “Why did you bring us here?”

  “I can best answer your question by showing you.” He nodded to Robert. “If you’ll do the honors, Mr. Jekyll.”

  “Gladly,” said Robert. He walked to the far wall and pulled a cord next to the metal blinds so that they slowly lifted to reveal a large bay window that stretched most of the way across the room. It looked outside onto a massive field lit up in the darkness by lines of flickering torches.

  Covering the field was a sea of monsters.

  It was difficult to make out a lot of details in the firelight. Most of them were roughly human-shaped, with fur or feathers, scales or spikes. I spotted lion creatures, lizard creatures, elephant creatures, vulture creatures, and many others, some of which I couldn’t even identify. They stood at attention, row upon row of them. Like an army.

  Moreau moved over to the window and lifted one hand. All the monsters out on the field roared, so loud it rattled the glass. Then he dropped his hand and they fell silent.

  “I’m starting a new revolution,” said Moreau, still facing out the window. His long, prehensile tail swished languidly back and forth beneath his robes. “Robert and Stephen have already pledged themselves to the cause. I invite you to join us in finally creating a world that respects monsters and gives us the basic rights we deserve.”

  “And if we say no?” asked La Perricholi. Her hand dropped down to her thigh where her gun was holstered.

  “You are guests in my house. I will not keep you here against your will. And of course, I am not unreasonable. You will want time to consider and discuss with Ruthven and the rest of your community. It would be a great boon to the cause if all of The Show joined us.”

  He turned to us, the legion of monsters at his back.

  “But know that if we meet again on opposite sides of a battlefield, I will show no mercy. Whether human or monster, the only options I offer are to join me, or die.”

  THE BALD LEMUR in the tuxedo escorted us back to the front door. Robert remained behind with Moreau. When we got outside, the night was no longer quiet. Off in the distance, behind Moreau’s house, where the fields of militant monsters were assembled, it sounded like a party was starting. Screeches, roars, and other animal noises mixed with laughter and shouting, and underneath was the pounding of drums. Bonfires flickered into life, casting shadows against the treetops that moved in jerks and spasms.

  I heard a cough coming from the roof of the house. I turned, and just above the front door perched a raven with human hands instead of talons.

  “Never,” it croaked.

  “Can we please get out of here?” I asked.

  The sounds of the beast people party continued as we slowly made our way back down the cliff and into the jungle. As time went on, the screeches grew louder and more frenetic, like the beast people were in pain.

  “Are they fighting each other?” asked Claire.

  “Mating,” said Mozart.

  By the time we got back to the boat, the sounds were little more than distant echoes, mostly drowned out by the rolling waves as the tide came in. The sky was just beginning to lighten with the first red rays of dawn.

  Red sky at morning, sailors take warning, I thought.

  14

  What Matters

  WE HIT SOME really bad weather on the return voyage, so it was four days before we finally got back to La Perricholi’s house. Maria ha
d taken one look at us and started making cocktails. Now we sat around the dining room table, drinking something she called a pisco sour that was sort of sweet, sort of bitter, and very strong, and scarfing down a big bowl of toasted corn kernels called cancha.

  “I am surprised Moreau let you go so easily,” said Maria.

  “He seemed pretty confident we’ll join up,” said Mozart.

  “But we’re not going to do that, right?” Henri asked.

  Mozart turned to Maria. “Has Ruthven called back?”

  She shook her head.

  His lip peeled back in a snarl. “That’s not like him. Something’s going on. I can feel it.” He turned to Claire, then me. “We have to get back to New York. I’ll get us a flight first thing tomorrow.” Then he turned to La Perricholi. “You want to come with us?”

  “No. There is an army hostile to humans within striking distance of my homeland. I cannot leave now. If need be, La Perricholi will once again defend the shores of Peru from Moreau’s army.”

  “What about you?” I asked Henri. “You want to come back to New York or go straight to Geneva? I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to bail. I have a feeling this could get pretty crazy.”

  “Eh . . . actually . . .” His eyes flickered to Maria for a moment. “I thought I might see if I could be of some help here in Lima.” Then he turned to La Perricholi. “That is, if you do not mind.”

  La Perricholi pursed her lips and looked at him appraisingly. “Boy tells me you have a talent for working with technology. That could be helpful, since it is not one of my strong suits.”

  “Yes, absolutely, I am your man!” he said eagerly.

  “This would not be a vacation.”

  “I understand completely.”

  “Then you may stay.”

  Vi’s phone rumbled in my pocket.

  IT WAS A hot night and I lay on top of the bedcovers, just wearing a pair of boxer shorts. The window was open next to me, and the cool night breeze snaked across my skin.

  We had a little bathroom right in our room, almost like a hotel. Claire stood at the sink, brushing her teeth. Sophie would wear little silky things to bed, which was nice. Claire always just wore a T-shirt, and as I gazed at her long, tan, muscular legs and the beginning curve of her butt just peeking out from under the white hem, I decided that was nice, too.