Lynx glanced at the prisoners, who were now on their feet and hurrying away.
Lion and the monkeyman were soon lost in the darkness, but Lynx could hear them cursing. He considered waking Tiger, who might restrain Lion. But Tiger might also notice the prisoners fleeing.
Then the monkeyman let out an anguished wail, and Tiger opened his eyes. Lynx had no choice. He cried, “Tiger!”
The templar reached for his sword. “What?”
Lynx pointed. “Lion. He’s gone crazy!”
Tiger leapt up, and Lynx followed. As they reached the bottom of the hill, Lion stepped from the shadows.
Tiger shouted, “What have you done?”
Lion was smug. “The monkeyman blasphemed with every word. I have silenced him.”
No! Lynx thought, hurrying forward, scanning the ground for a corpse.
But the monkeyman was alive, weeping, kneeling over the smashed remains of his magic amulet. There was a gash over his brow, and his eyes were forlorn as he uttered a string of gibberish.
Lion had spared the monkeyman’s life, but now there wasn’t a single being on Earth that the monkeyman could talk to.
Lynx said, “I’m so sorry…Charles.”
At the sound of his name, the monkeyman looked up. “Charles,” he repeated. He took a deep breath, wiped his eyes, and rose to his feet. Lynx took him by the arm, and they hiked back up the hill.
They entered camp just behind Tiger, who said, “Where are the prisoners?”
Lion looked stricken. He glanced about.
Tiger cursed. He ran across the camp and stared off down the far side of the hill. “Nothing. They’re gone.”
“I…” Lion hesitated. Then he pointed to the monkeyman. “It’s his fault!”
“His fault?” Tiger raged. “Was it his job to watch the prisoners? Or was it yours?”
Lion stomped away, then turned back and glared at the monkeyman. “He knows something.”
“Maybe,” Tiger said. “No one’s ever freed themselves from my ropes before. We could question him…if you hadn’t ‘silenced’ him.”
Lion scowled.
Tiger gathered up some belongings. “It won’t matter. We’ll catch the dogmen again, and we’ll have the truth from their own lips.” His tone was grim. “And we’ll take no more chances. No more prisoners. The dogmen die.”
The catmen walked all through the night, and at dawn they came upon a shallow cave in which the dogmen were huddled together, sick and weary.
The templars strode forward, drawing their swords and advancing on the dogmen, who stood to meet them. The male pounded his meaty fist into his palm—a futile gesture of defiance. The dogmen were unarmed, and would be slaughtered. Lynx and the monkeyman watched helplessly.
But then Lynx called out, “Wait!”
Tiger paused and glanced back.
Lynx said, “Let Cat judge them.”
Lion sneered. “Cat’s feelings toward dogmen are well known.”
“Then what’s the harm?”
Tiger thought this over. He lowered his blade. “All right.”
Lynx approached the monkeyman, who was confused. Lynx nodded at the satchel, and the monkeyman got the idea. He lifted Cat free and set him on the ground.
Lynx knelt. “My lord, we have need of your wisdom. What is your wish for these dogmen? Please, give us a sign.”
Cat looked up at Lynx and said nothing.
Lion growled, “Why trouble Cat with this? He has already decreed death for all dogmen. Long ago.”
Lynx stood up and took a step back. He called gently, “Here, kitty kitty.”
Lion said, “What are you doing?”
Lynx backed up until he stood between the dogmen, then he crouched and called, “Here, kitty kitty kitty.”
Cat continued to stare.
Lynx said to the dogmen, “Come on. Like this.” He added softly, “Please, just try.”
After a moment, the female bent down and called, “Here, kitty kitty.” The male did the same.
Lion was outraged. “What is this?”
But sure enough, Cat stirred. He picked his way across the ground until he stood before Lynx and the dogmen. Lynx reached out and scratched between Cat’s ears, and Cat purred. The female stroked Cat’s back. Cat wound among Lynx and the dogmen and rubbed against their legs.
The templars stood stunned. Tiger intoned, “Cat shows them favor.”
Lion said, “No! The Cat I serve shows no mercy to dogmen!”
Tiger gestured. “Look.”
“It’s some trick,” Lion said. “This…this is not Cat. It cannot be. Maybe this is one of the cats who—”
“That is heresy,” Tiger warned. “The cats were transformed into catmen. All of them.”
Lynx cried out, “Cat returns to Earth with a new message of peace!”
“No!” Lion shouted. “No! Cat, the eternal, does not change his mind.”
Tiger turned away and sheathed his sword.
Lion stared at him in horror. “What are you doing?”
“I will not stand against the incarnation.”
Lion was shocked. “What?”
Tiger said, “I must think on all this.” He stared coldly over his shoulder at the dogmen and said to them, “You have a reprieve from me, for now.” He began to walk away. To Lion he said, “Do as you like.”
Lion looked all around, at Cat, at the dogmen, at the monkeyman. Finally Lion shot Lynx a withering glare, then followed after Tiger.
Lynx waited until the templars were a good distance off, then he let out a long sigh of relief. He thought to himself: I can’t believe it. We won.
But his gladness was tempered by apprehension. The templars would return, and even if they didn’t they’d spread their tale. What would Father Cougar think? Or Lynx’s parents? And what would become of Cat and the monkeyman and the dogmen now? Others would come seeking them, he knew.
For a moment the group all watched each other uncertainly.
Then the monkeyman laughed. He stepped forward and introduced himself to the male. “Charles.” And then again to the female. “Charles.”
She glanced at Lynx, who gave her a bemused smile and shrugged.
Cat purred and rubbed against Lynx’s shins. In that moment, he felt a bit of hope. If they all just stuck together, he thought, things might work out, in the end.
He bent down and petted Cat, and scratched his chin.
He whispered, “Good cat.”
David Barr Kirtley (www.davidbarrkirtley.com) has been described as “one of the newest and freshest voices in sf.” His work frequently appears in Realms of Fantasy, and he has also sold fiction to the magazines Weird Tales and Intergalactic Medicine Show, the podcasts Escape Pod and Pseudopod, and the anthologies New Voices in Science Fiction, The Dragon Done It, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. He’s also appeared in several of John Joseph Adams’s anthologies: The Living Dead and The Living Dead 2, and he has a story forthcoming in the anthology The Way of the Wizard that’s due out in November. Kirtley is also the co-host (with Adams) of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast.
Spotlight: David Barr Kirtley
The theme of curiosity comes up in two ways in “Cats in Victory”: as the gravest sin, and as the path to learning. How are those related in your mind?
In this post-apocalyptic future, obviously most knowledge has been lost, but it seemed possible to me that the idea of “curiosity killed the cat” might be something that catmen would fixate on and would pass down through the generations, so that it takes on greatly magnified significance. (The idea that their cat god has nine lives is a similar sort of thing.) Of course, most religions seem to discourage their adherents from asking too many questions—see Adam and Eve, Prometheus and Pandora, etc.—so the two ideas dovetailed really nicely. The catmen religion actually seems pretty logical to me. Sometimes things just work out like that when you’re writing. Obviously I’m most sympathetic to the view that you should keep asking questions and a
cquiring knowledge, but on the other hand, if our technology ends up completely destroying us—nuclear war, catastrophic climate change, something along those lines—then I guess curiosity really will turn out to be our gravest sin.
Your characters are confronted with evidence that directly counters their understanding of their history, their faith, and who they are. They all respond in different ways. Do you relate to that experience, and to the response of any or all of your characters?
Well, the version of history I was taught in school as a child was wildly inaccurate: Columbus proved that the world was round, the pilgrims and Indians were best friends, and America is the best at everything and is always on the right side of everything, and so on. It was very unsettling to piece together a more realistic view (and it left me extremely cynical about education). So I certainly empathize with Lynx at the level of finding out that your whole understanding of history is wrong. My parents are both scientists and I was raised with a very scientific outlook, so fortunately I never had any kind of religious indoctrination that I needed to struggle with, but it’s a subject that fascinates me and I’ve talked to or listened to interviews with hundreds of people about how they walked away from their church. For most people it’s an extremely gradual, painful process, but for some, like Lynx, it’s pretty quick—they read one book on evolution and that’s it. My take on it is that about 10% of the population is hard-wired for skeptical thinking and about 10% is hard-wired for magical thinking, and everyone else just kind of takes their cues from their social group and could go either way.
The genetically-enhanced soldier is a fairly common theme in science fiction. It’s more unusual to see it applied to different species, as in “Cats in Victory.” Is there backstory in the “Cats” universe that led to dogs and cats being modified, rather than humans?
I imagine the catmen and dogmen as having been created by mixing human and animal DNA—mostly human, actually—so they actually are modified humans, in that sense. It’s not an uncommon idea in science fiction, I don’t think. I mean, The Island of Doctor Moreau, etc.
What about human beings, do you think that’s where we’re headed? What do you think it would take to get past the ethical issues and stigma of ‘playing God’?
I don’t honestly think the issue of “playing God” is going to be much of a factor in the long run. It may stymie research in the US for a while, as it has with stem cells, but that just means Europe and Asia (for example) will leave us in the dust. I don’t really think it’s possible to halt technological progress, since all it takes is one non-conforming lab somewhere in the world to break any ban. All technological progress has been widely denounced in its day as the work of the devil—everything from vaccines to the telephone. No doubt our distant ancestors who tamed fire and invented the wheel were felt to be “playing God.” Of course, I feel that all gods and spirits are inventions of the human imagination, so a hesitance about trespassing on “their” turf strikes me as completely nonsensical. There are of course serious ethical issues surrounding genetic engineering, but those need to be discussed in an intellectually serious way, and the phrase “playing God” contributes nothing to the conversation. In any event, I have no doubt that someday—should we survive that long—we’ll be changing our genes as casually as we change our clothes, that our descendants will look like all manner of wild, alien creatures to us, and that no one will even remember that a debate over tampering with human DNA ever took place.
So, are you a dog person or a cat person?
Definitely a cat person. I grew up with a cat named Maxwell (after the physicist James Clerk Maxwell), and I currently have two cats, Hobbes and Kzin. I’ve never owned a dog. Actually, the original incarnation of “Cats in Victory” was a series of picture books I did starting around age 5, in which the cats were the heroes and the dogs were the villains, and the cats simply slaughtered the dogs and always emerged victorious (hence the title). Looking back on these books now, I’m pretty horrified by the messages they contain, and this short story was in part an attempt to expiate my guilt over all those dead dogs. It’s also pretty apparent, looking at my very early work, how much my worldview was shaped by violent Saturday morning cartoons. (If you’re conversant with Saturday morning cartoons from the ‘80s, you may spot a few references to them scattered throughout the text.) So with this story, I wanted to create something with that same sense of color and adventure, which I still really enjoy, but with a more thoughtful message. And I do hope the story is something that parents will want to share with their kids.
Is there anything else you would like us to know about your story?
I’m very excited to see it appear in the debut issue of Lightspeed!
Top Ten Reasons Why Uplifted Animals Don’t Make Good Pets
Carol Pinchefsky
From Cordwainer Smith’s “The Ballad of Lost C’Mell” to the “Pern” series to Alan Dean Foster’s “Taken” trilogy, animals gifted with genetically-enhanced intelligence have been, and still are, a popular science fiction trope. But aside from getting Timmy out of the well a whole heck of a lot faster, what are the real-world implications of teaching Lassie to talk? Would cats’ natural curiosity lead to all our embarrassing secrets being exposed on Fluffy’s Twitter feed? Would Seaworld still be so popular if we had to jump through burning hoops for Flipper’s amusement?
Hmmm, maybe we ought to save some of that intelligence enhancement technology for our own species. I think we’re gonna need it.
TOP TEN REASONS WHY UPLIFTED ANIMALS DON’T MAKE GOOD PETS
10. Your budgie demands repeated viewings of Howard the Duck.
9. Your tabby is arrested for selling catnip blunts.
8. Your poodle snidely comments, “Bitch, please,” during episodes of It’s Me or The Dog.
7. Your salamander wants a quiet word with you about your alligator shoes.
6. Pet Court
5. Polly wants a cracker. And a Ferrari.
4. No matter how much you pound on the bathroom door, your ferret still won’t curtail her grooming regimen.
3. You have to teach the bunnies family planning.
2. The dog has seen you naked. And he doesn’t like what he sees.
And finally…
1. The dog has seen you naked. And he likes what he sees.
When she is not freelance writing, Carol Pinchefsky is the editor of the Space Future Journal (www.spacefuture.com), a website dedicated to space tourism, as well as the humor competition editor for F&SF. To Serve Man is her favorite cookbook.
Amaryllis
Carrie Vaughn
I never knew my mother, and I never understood why she did what she did. I ought to be grateful that she was crazy enough to cut out her implant so she could get pregnant. But it also meant she was crazy enough to hide the pregnancy until termination wasn’t an option, knowing the whole time that she’d never get to keep the baby. That she’d lose everything. That her household would lose everything because of her.
I never understood how she couldn’t care. I wondered what her family thought when they learned what she’d done, when their committee split up the household, scattered them—broke them, because of her.
Did she think I was worth it?
It was all about quotas.
“They’re using cages up north, I heard. Off shore, anchored,” Nina said. “Fifty feet across—twice as much protein grown with half the resources, and we’d never have to touch the wild population again. We could double our quota.”
I hadn’t really been listening to her. We were resting, just for a moment; she sat with me on the railing at the prow of Amaryllis and talked about her big plans.
Wind pulled the sails taut and the fiberglass hull cut through waves without a sound, we sailed so smooth. Garrett and Sun hauled up the nets behind us, dragging in the catch. Amaryllis was elegant, a 30-foot sleek vessel with just enough cabin and cargo space—an antique but more than seaworthy. She was a good boat, with a good crew. The
best.
“Marie—” Nina said, pleading.
I sighed and woke up. “We’ve been over this. We can’t just double our quota.”
“But if we got authorization—”
“Don’t you think we’re doing all right as it is?” We had a good crew—we were well fed and not exceeding our quotas; I thought we’d be best off not screwing all that up. Not making waves, so to speak.
Nina’s big brown eyes filled with tears—I’d said the wrong thing, because I knew what she was really after, and the status quo wasn’t it.
“That’s just it,” she said. “We’ve met our quotas and kept everyone healthy for years now. I really think we should try. We can at least ask, can’t we?”
The truth was: No, I wasn’t sure we deserved it. I wasn’t sure that kind of responsibility would be worth it. I didn’t want the prestige. Nina didn’t even want the prestige—she just wanted the baby.
“It’s out of our hands at any rate,” I said, looking away because I couldn’t bear the intensity of her expression.
Pushing herself off the rail, Nina stomped down Amaryllis’ port side to join the rest of the crew hauling in the catch. She wasn’t old enough to want a baby. She was lithe, fit, and golden, running barefoot on the deck, sun-bleached streaks gleaming in her brown hair. Actually, no, she was old enough. She’d been with the house for seven years—she was twenty, now. It hadn’t seemed so long.
“Whoa!” Sun called. There was a splash and a thud as something in the net kicked against the hull. He leaned over the side, the muscles along his broad, coppery back flexing as he clung to a net that was about to slide back into the water. Nina, petite next to his strong frame, reached with him. I ran down and grabbed them by the waistbands of their trousers to hold them steady. The fourth of our crew, Garrett, latched a boat hook into the net. Together we hauled the catch onto the deck. We’d caught something big, heavy, and full of powerful muscles.
We had a couple of aggregators—large buoys made of scrap steel and wood—anchored fifty miles or so off the coast. Schooling fish were attracted to the aggregators, and we found the fish—mainly mackerel, sardines, sablefish, and whiting. An occasional shark or marlin found its way into the nets, but those we let go; they were rare and outside our quotas. That was what I expected to see—something unusually large thrashing among the slick silvery mass of smaller fish. This thing was large, yes, as big as Nina—no wonder it had almost pulled them over—but it wasn’t the right shape. Sleek and streamlined, a powerful swimmer. Silvery like the rest of the catch.
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 1 Page 7
